God is the state in which there is perfect healing all the time, not that there is 'something to heal' due to there being sickness, but that there is `pro-active healing` which PREVENTS there from being sickness, all the time. So God is in a state of health and grace forever.

God is also the source and creator of who I am as His Son. So, I extend from God. And everything I have must therefore have been given me BY God. Jesus says that the only difference between Him and us now is that he does not have anything OTHER than what God gave Him... meaning that the rest of us cling to what we think is 'other' stuff that we got from somewhere 'else', because we made it up separate from God. And none of it has any power.

Love inspires miracles and miracles are all based on love, and therefore they are expressions of love, and therefore they are expressions of GOD. They start in God. God is perpetually in a state of CHOOSING health by pro-actively always creating health. And by health I mean, a healed state in which sickness is impossible because there is only love. All true healing must then either flow from God or involve us entering INTO God to share in what God is.

So it comes down to a matter of what seems to be, two vantage points. 1) Healing flows FROM God TO where we are, and 2) We go TO God in order to share IN healing.

Most of what we seem to attempt to do in our awakening process is to go TO God in the knowledge that as we get closer to God we open up TO the healing state that is in God, so that we can share in health. However, God also is coming to us :-) God is extending constantly, and wants total health at all times, and shares total health at all times. He has no desire to 'make sick' or to 'keep sick'. And, given the chance, he would immediately flow His health to us and share it with us, healing us of all sickness.

When some portion of ego 'meets' God, God transmutes it into love and healing, or rather, health, is restored. It seems however that we live in a world where there is all kinds of sickness happening which appears not to have been 'corrected' by God yet, as if somehow it has some kind of power over God or that God for some reason does not attempt to 'heal' it or correct it. And this can lead to confusion as to exactly how it's possible that God is total health but the world is full of sickness.

Part of the issue is that we each have written 'agreements' i.e. 'scripts' before each lifetime, which were essentially sequences of events that we would 'allow' and which we would be at least a little willing to use as learning devices, to bring us ultimately closer to God, WILLINGLY, rather than necessarily being 'forced' into love. And because we did not want healing, having rejected God in the separation, it seems we now have to go through the plans that we lay out to learn our lessons and become more 'receptive' to God's love. And that can take time, and it can also seem to mean we 'have to suffer'.

However, God has no intention of making you suffer or of it having to take a long time to heal. God's Spirit works NOW. God is spontaneous and immediate and has absolutely no reason for delays of any kind, being of absolute confidence and certainty. He would heal the world in an instant. He does, however, honor the wishes of each of us to dream and pretend, up to a point. However, let's be clear, that our scripts and our excuses as to why we will not accept healing, is OUR issue, and not God's. God is not the one who keeps resisting healing or the provision of it. God wants to heal ALL THE TIME.

Because of this, I do believe it is possible that God is perfectly open to 'bypassing' your script, if an appropriate request is made. I asked Archangel Raphael about this and was surprised when he said "there is a process", and that a "petition" must be made to God. Because, how everything is sort of 'set up', we have all these agreements over many lifetimes to go through various processes to gradually awaken. God doesn't really care how long that takes, having infinite patience and knowing we're not really separate. But God is also still very immediate and instantaneous. AND, God only wants to LOVE US all of the time.

So since God is in constant love with us, and wants for us ONLY to return to Him as soon as possible so that WE can experience love and not suffering, as an act of compassion, God is perfectly capable of bypassing the script and enacting 'gifts' or 'blessings' or 'miracles' which are capable of healing someone or bringing them closer to Him 'in spite of' the ego contracts. It is possible for Holy Spirit, who has the power of God (!), to enact miracles of healing and restoration of health on all levels, at any time and to any extent. As we awaken and open to love we become co-facilitators of this and miracles become more common and natural. However, Holy Spirit is not held back by us and does not depend on us to be able to heal.

It is possible to pray for someone and to request healing for them. And this prayer basically entails you going to God in some fashion, with whatever amount of openness you currently have, and first of all emphasizing the nature of God, which is to be grateful for what already is. Grateful that God loves us, grateful that God already loves the other person, and grateful that healing and health are natural and are ALREADY TRUE. "Thank you God" is very appropriate, up-front.

We thank God profusely for having already accomplished our full and total healing, which may not be apparent in TIME but has already been accomplished in eternity. And then we might take action to EXTEND God's love (which we then are feeling) to others. We might simply ASK God/Jesus to heal someone, acknowledging and being thankful that it is DONE ALREADY (you could call this having faith), and you could even command this healing occur now.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are then perfectly capable of healing ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, and that means, correcting you FOR you, or correcting another person FOR them, without them necessarily knowing HOW to correct themselves or being capable of enlightening themselves. It is an 'intervention', a blessing and a gift. It is an extension of love. If healing is possible, it has to mean that it can occur IN SPITE OF the ego and TO UNDO THE EGO, meaning we are not really required to necessarily become miracle-minded in order to receive a miracle... IF someone else is willing to request the miracle for us. We can even request it ourselves and receive more than we asked for.

God loves us very much. We do not need to suffer. And unconditional love has NO CONDITIONS that prevent its extension.

Your miracle WORKING, DOING, PERFORMING, is supposed to restore the right mindedness of SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS *NOT* IN THEIR RIGHT MIND!!!!!!!

"We said in a previous section that ***the miracle is an expression*** of miracle-Mindedness. Miracle-Mindedness merely means Right-Mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker ***nor of the miracle receiver***. However, ***as a creative act***, the miracle need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. *******In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind.******* But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness ***in someone else.***"

"All forms of not-Right-Mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement FOR YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places himself in the position to recognize that those who need to be healed are simply those who have NOT done so. "

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from overevaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner. "

"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."

"It must be understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle to another, he IS shortening the suffering of both."

"Miracles supply a lack."

"Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less."

"Miracles strengthen both the giver and the receiver."

In every way, being right minded does NOT entail a state in which OTHERS ARE FREE FROM SUFFERING. And because of this, MIRACLES have a PURPOSE to offer healing TO THOSE WHO ARE LACKING or who have not yet chosen to enter miracle mindedness themselves. This is why "Miracles are a SERVICE, they are the maximal service you can render to another." Miracle working is all about what you DO to HELP OTHERS who are NOT WHERE YOU ARE AT. And this easily proves the fact that just because you are healed it does NOT MEAN that you no longer see people in need, lacking, sick, suffering or dying. You simply do not believe it is true of them, but you STILL HEAL THEM THROUGH MIRACLES.

Miracles are a CREATIVE ACT. "Miracles are a spark of life".

Jesus is encouraging you to open your mind, transcend your boundaries, and develop your psychic abilities. All abilities can be used with the Holy Spirit for good. In fact minds are joined naturally and those who have become better at accessing this are moving closer to God. We have to find ways to reach out past the body with the mind, join with other minds, and use the power of the mind for good.

"It is equally obvious, however, that each individual has many abilities of which he is unaware. As his awareness increases, he may well develop abilities that seem quite startling to him." "Certainly there are many "psychic" powers that are clearly in line with this course. Communication is not limited to the small range of channels the world recognizes."

"The limits the world places on communication is the chief barrier to direct experience of the Holy Spirit, Whose Presence is always there and Whose Voice is available but for the hearing. These limits are placed out of fear, for without them the walls that surround all the separate places of the world would fall at the holy sound of His Voice. Who transcends these limits in any way is merely becoming more natural. He is doing nothing special, and there is no magic in his accomplishments."

"The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids."

"no-one has any powers that are not available to everyone."

"There is, however, a particular appeal in unusual abilities which can be curiously tempting. Here are strengths which the Holy Spirit wants and needs. Yet the ego sees in these same strengths an opportunity to glorify itself."

"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good. To this there is no exception. And the more unusual and unexpected the power, the greater its potential usefulness. Salvation has need of all abilities, for what the world would destroy the Holy Spirit would restore."

"Psychic" abilities have been used to call upon the devil, which merely means to strengthen the ego. Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service."

"Those who have developed "psychic" powers have merely let some of the limitations they laid upon their minds be lifted."

"The Holy Spirit needs these gifts, and those who offer them to Him and Him alone go with Christ's gratitude upon their hearts, and His holy sight not far behind."

AND WHY THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES...

In this world, forms of objects and bodies and planets are all made to establish how one thing is DIFFERENT to another.

So when we look at the spectrum of types of sickness for example, we have DIFFERENCES in appearances. A headache, a cold, some back pain, a broken leg, a disease, and death, all SEEM different in their FORMS.

However, difference IS NOT reality or truth or sanity. Differences are fundamentally an ego thing.

So what do you think happens to your body when all of its "differences" are undone? Clearly it cannot even exist at all. If it is not being used to make differences real, then it is not being used to differentiate degrees of sickness.

It is DIFFERENCE between things that produces all forms of sickness and death. Or in other words, forms of SEPARATION. Total death requires total intense separation from Life, identifying the body as being so UNLIKE LIFE that it must be dead.

So on this spectrum, death is literally just an attempt to reinforce or EMPHASIZE how "unlike life" the body is. And that's a result of the MIND that is projecting and using the body, and ITS degree of belief in how unlike life it is. Death is ISOLATION from life, which confines you to and identifies you closely with being a body, because a body is a symbol of something STANDING APART from the whole.

When you believe you are NOT LIKE GOD, or you are not the way God created you which is in His likeness, you WILL produce some kind of "difference" in your mind and that WILL produce an APPEARANCE (illusion) of difference in the body. The body will start to look like it is not LIKE LIFE, and so will start to show up as falling apart and malfunctioning and dying.

The body ITSELF, in terms of its FORM, was made as an attempt to assert that what you are is DIFFERENT from all others. That's because "your body" is literally physically cut off from other bodies, does not look like them, has different qualities and seems not to be operated by any other minds, if you ARE this body then you are SEPARATE from others, and therefore you are UNLIKE WHOLENESS, and therefore you are not like LIFE, and therefore you are DEAD.

So the body itself is actually a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son, or the idea that the Son is DEAD because it has been separated out into illusions of distinct different parts which are unlike and disconnected from each other. This fragmentation of identity as FORMS OF DIFFERENCE is, however, an ILLUSION.

The mind does not HAVE to elect to SEE this way. It does not have to regard itself as confined to or IDENTIFIED BY the body or the way that this particular body is showing up versus those of others. The mind can elect to OVERLOOK the body, recognizing that it actually was made to SEPARATE, by its fundamental nature of appearing different and isolated, and it was designed as an instrument for ISOLATING YOU to one very small limited location.

The mind can elect to NOT BELIEVE that this isolated body form is actually representative of its identity. It can believe and perceive that this one body is not ITSELF, and does not limit it, and that the mind is not "identified as" the body. To do that however requires the undoing of mental beliefs in DIFFERENCES BEING REAL. And that means learning to OVERLOOK ALL DIFFERENCES and to not believe in them.

That means you have to learn to not be convinced that one APPEARANCE is actually TRULY different to another, that one sickness is more severe than another, or that even death itself is any more "true" than a paper-cut. When we believe in separation we believe in difference and therefore automatically start believing in the "hierarchy of illusions", which is TOTAL FICTION.

When you can learn to NOT pay attention to the ILLUSION OF DIFFERENCES, of forms, and LOOK PAST them, which DOES mean to FORGIVE them, you get into the kind of mind that recognizes that ALL forms are illusions and are all THE SAME, NOT DIFFERENT, and therefore any miracle that you would apply to one is THE SAME as would be applied to another.

This is what results in awareness that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES. If death is not REALLY any different to a broken nose, then it should not in any way present any greater difficulty in healing than to stop the nose bleeding. Jesus in fact mentions in the Course that the idea of raising the dead should really be no harder than anything seemingly less severe. This does however require total faith and quite an advanced degree of NOT BELIEVING illusions of separation, or appearances.

ALL appearances of difference were made to DECEIVE and BLIND YOU. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form". The Holy Spirit CAN utilize the body as a holy temple through which it is only used for COMMUNICATION. Communication means extension, ie total SHARING, oneness, unity, IDENTICALITY, seeing that you and your brother are ALIKE in every way, overlooking all DIFFERENCES, and recognizing that the same Love that God put in YOU is also in your brother. This results in HEALTH and HEALING, because the belief in *separation* is the root cause of ALL sickness and death.

Without BELIEVING YOUR EYES, or rather, without believing that "differences are true", you can no longer believe that a certain form is any more true or difficult to heal than another. It also therefore means, that when you can demonstrate that THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE, and that the appearance of a difference - regardless of its extremeness - can be easily "ironed out" by a mind that does not BELIEVE in the difference (because it's an illusion), this can literally IRON OUT the difference IN FORM, producing a collapsing of the extremes of "different forms", the reversal of sickness, and even restoring LIFE to the DEAD.

The "erasing of death" should thus be natural to a miracle worker, and as easy as showing that there IS NO SEPARATION in any sickness. That sickness itself is merely an idea of fictional difference and a mind that does not believe in it can produce changes in APPEARANCE that represent NO DIFFERENCE, which causes sickness to literally disappear from the form because the mind is stronger than the body and stronger than all forms.

This also ultimately means, that once communication is whole and there is no belief in the LIE OF MATTER, and not being convinced by ANY illusory APPEARANCE of difference in form, this ENTIRE UNIVERSE must simply be cancelled out. If there cannot be any differences, and if all differences are illusions, and the entire fabric of MATTER is based on belief in one thing being separate or different from another, there literally CANNOT BE ANY MATTER, because there ARE no differences between things, and thus does this universe COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR once it is RECOGNIZED as an illusion. "Illusions recognized must disappear".

This is why there is no world and why God could not have created something that exhibits conflict and separation and death.

Miracle working entails the use of PRAYER. "Prayer is the medium of miracles." "Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."

Miracles are NOT a shift in perception. The only way perception is involved is that perception must be loving (as close to true perception as possible), and fear must be suspended. "Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles." Wholeness of perception is not a shift. It is miracle mindedness, resting on forgiveness, which sees with MAXIMAL love.

Miracles, in a course in miracles, are expressive acts of power which can heal others. And they are performed through PRAYER. However, this doesn’t mean you have to pray using words. God does not understand words. Prayers are requests made in your HEART, in awareness of LOVE. Love is essential for miracle working. Your heart requests and receives and experiences, in certainty and decisiveness.

Some parts of ACIM speak specifically to "how to perform miracles." Here is one of them:

21. What Is the Role of Words in Healing?

M-21.1. Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. 2 The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. 3 What you ask for you receive. 4 But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. 5 Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. 6 It does not matter. 7 God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. 8 Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. 9 Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. 10 They are thus twice removed from reality.

M-21.2. As symbols, words have quite specific references. 2 Even when they seem most abstract, the picture that comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. 3 Unless a specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word has little or no practical meaning, and thus cannot help the healing process. 4 The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. 5 It always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the bringers of the desired experience in the opinion of the asker. 6 The words, then, are symbols for the things asked for, but the things themselves but stand for the experiences that are hoped for.

M-21.3. The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. 2 If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. 3 It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. 4 If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own. 5 The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. 6 Herein lie hell and Heaven. 7 The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. 8 It is enough. 9 His words do not matter. 10 Only the Word of God has any meaning, because it symbolizes that which has no human symbols at all. 11 The Holy Spirit alone understands what this Word stands for. 12 And this, too, is enough.

M-21.4. Is the teacher of God, then, to avoid the use of words in his teaching? 2 No, indeed! 3 There are many who must be reached through words, being as yet unable to hear in silence. 4 The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. 5 Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. 6 This process is merely a special case of the lesson in the workbook that says, "I will step back and let Him lead the way." 7 The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him, and gives as he receives. 8 He does not control the direction of his speaking. 9 He listens and hears and speaks.

M-21.5. A major hindrance in this aspect of his learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. 2 And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. 3 It may also seem to be quite irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may, in fact, confront the teacher with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing to him. 4 All these are judgments that have no value. 5 They are his own, coming from a shabby self-perception which he would leave behind. 6 Judge not the words that come to you, but offer them in confidence. 7 They are far wiser than your own. 8 God's teachers have God's Word behind their symbols. 9 And He Himself gives to the words they use the power of His Spirit, raising them from meaningless symbols to the Call of Heaven itself.

You may be accustomed to just thinking about "stuff". As if thought is a natural function which you can use however you like. It seems like you can think about anything without any effect. As if every thought is neutral.

But you may also notice that when you think about something unpleasant, you do not feel happy. When you have a fearful thoughts, you do not feel safe. When you have an attacking thought in anger, you do not feel peaceful. And when you have an accusation thoughts, you feel guilty.

The issue then is that just by the mere fact that you are HAVING these thoughts, that is WHY you are not feeling happy and at peace. Just by HAVING the thought, you are producing an upset.

This doesn't mean that, therefore, you should not have thoughts, because thought is life and the mind must think. However, the thoughts of attack and fear and so on are not CONSTRUCTIVE thoughts. They are thoughts of destruction. And when you USE thought to think in such a way, you hurt yourself.

You can play with this idea by simply asking yourself, whenever you are thinking about something and not feeling good, would you have still felt this way if you DID NOT HAVE the thought? If you did not THINK THIS, would you be unhappy? Are you ONLY feeling unhappy because you thought this? And you'll find the answer is yes.

If you had not thought of attack and fear and horrible things, you would NOT be experiencing hell, upset, fear, loss, anger, or any other unpleasant response. Your thoughts are CAUSING your suffering. Your thoughts are CAUSING your emotions. Your thoughts are NOT neutral, and are in fact having an effect on you.

You think you can just use thoughts without any effects, without any responsibility, without causing a change. As if it isn't the fact that you are having an attack thought that's causing you to feel threatened and guilty. As if having the thought is just some neutral observation, passive, that just reflects what's going on.

We might think then that our thoughts are just little mirrors which are interacting with the world and reflecting what's in it, commenting on it and responding to it as if we only have reactionary thoughts. As if thought is all just an EFFECT of the world. But this is not at all true. Thought is CAUSAL.

When thought is causal, HAVING a thought CAUSES things to happen. Thought creates some kind of form. Thought has power. Thought produces effects. Thoughts MAKE YOU sick and unhappy and angry and upset. Thoughts produce death. Thoughts put you in hell. HAVING these negative thoughts is the real problem, and it's in your mind.

However, you need a better thought if you want to be happy. You need to start USING thought constructively, supportively, empoweringly, happily, and with more light and love. Loving thoughts are healing thoughts. Loving thoughts tune to the power of God. Loving thoughts can literally move mountains and raise the dead. Loving thoughts are resurrectors. Thoughts are GIVING.

If you think of LIFE, then you are CAUSING LIFE. If you think of HEALTH, then you are causing health. If you think about how HAPPY someone is, you are helping them to be happy. If you having a true optimism, which is a proper use of denial, then you are rejecting suffering and sickness and death. True thoughts empower you just as much as false thoughts bring your own suffering. And NOTHING other than your thoughts cause you to be happy or unhappy, sick or well.

"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. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are."

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

There is a curious property of all things God, in that it doesn't need to do anything. But, IF there are illusions present, something seems to happen. If there is only light, then it seems the light just shines. But if there is darkness, the light does something "to" the darkness - it shines it away.

Forgiveness - it generally sees there is no sin and there is nothing to forgive. However, IF there were some illusions present, moving into forgiveness actually seems to "do" something, in that the illusions disappear.

Gratitude - it generally is grateful only for what exists, in God, but if something does not exist and you are grateful for it, it brings it about.

Miracles - generally speaking there is no real need for miracles given that there is no real separation and everything in Heaven is miraculous. But if there is some ego condition showing up or some sickness or death or whatever, miracles undo it, reverse it, and restore life.

I need to nothing - yes, I do nothing because nothing has happened and nothing has gone wrong. However, if it seems that something IS happening or going wrong, the truth in this statement brings about the cessation of what was happening or going wrong, restoring us to a state where there is no need to do anything.

So it's interesting that, on the one hand, in truth, God does not have anything to forgive, love does not need to work any miracles because there is no reality to illusions, everything that exists we are grateful for, and we don't need to do anything because everything is complete already. But once the illusions of separation show up, all of these things take on a new "role" as it were. They are corrective. They bring truth and undo illusions. They reverse sin. They heal sickness. And they raise the dead back to life in resurrection.

So yes it's true there is technically seemingly "no point" performing miracles because this world doesn't exist, but IF this world seems to be showing up, there IS temporarily a purpose for miracles.

And yes it's true there is nothing to forgive so why bother doing any forgiveness either? Well, that's fine so long as truly nothing else is showing up, but if some illusions or ego forms are showing up to block forgiveness, then forgiveness suddenly seems to have a purpose and a function.

Forgiveness, miracles, etc may seem like unnecessary illusions, and there was not a "need" for healing before the separation, nor was there a need for the atonement. But after the separation a "need" (albeit illusory) did arise, and so there became a seeming NEED to heal, to forgive, and to perform miracles. And they will continue to be needed unto this whole separation is undone.

A collection of related quotes where the physical is no longer seen...

"By focusing upon the good in him, THE BODY GROWS DECREASINGLY PERSISTENT IN YOUR SIGHT, and will at length be SEEN AS LITTLE MORE THAN JUST A SHADOW CIRCLING AROUND THE GOOD. 4 And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world BEYOND THE SIGHT YOUR EYES ALONG CAN OFFER YOU TO SEE. 5 For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. 6 And in His sight THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD."

"The veil across the face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, they all are different names for just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself that holds him off from you, and you away from him."

"And so you and your brother stand, here in this holy place, BEFORE THE VEIL OF SIN that hangs between you and the face of Christ. 2 Let it be lifted!"

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. 2 Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last."

"Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well."

"The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must be passed that BOTH MAY DISAPPEAR, so that perception finds no hiding place"

"Your CHOSEN HOME is on THE OTHER SIDE, BEYOND THE VEIL. 2 It has been carefully prepared for you, and it is ready to receive you now. "

"Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. 3 Nothing has changed."

"But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a FRAGILE VEIL, so EASILY DISPELLED that it can last no longer than an instant."

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

"The veil that you have drawn across the face of love has DISAPPEARED."

"The veil is lifted through its gentleness, and nothing hides the face of Christ from its beholders."

"Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight."

"(sin) THE BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT AS SOLID GRANITE, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT easily, because it is an error. 6 The form it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS from reason's eyes."

"Reason will tell you that if form is not reality it MUST BE AN ILLUSION, and IS NOT THERE to see. 5 And if you see it you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what CAN NOT BE REAL as if it were."

"Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see. 3 Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins AND OF HIS BODY."

"You SEE THE FLESH or recognize the spirit. 2 There is no compromise between the two. 3 If one is real the other MUST be false, for what is real denies its opposite. 4 There is no choice in vision but this one."

"If you choose FLESH, you never will escape the BODY as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. 8 But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may SEE THE WORLD OF FLESH NO MORE *except* to heal and comfort and to bless."

"In Christ's sight, the world and God's creation meet, and as they come together ALL PERCEPTION DISAPPEARS." (world is not creation)

"The real beauty of the temple cannot be seen with the PHYSICAL EYE. 11 Spiritual sight, on the other hand, cannot see the structure at all because it is perfect vision. 12 It can, however, see the altar with perfect clarity."

"This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously WEAKENING THE INVESTMENT IN PHYSICAL SIGHT."

"True vision is the natural perception of spiritual sight, but it is still a A CORRECTION RATHER THAN A FACT. 2 Spiritual sight is SYMBOLIC, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. 3 It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle. 4 A "vision of God" would be a miracle rather than a revelation. 5 The fact that perception is involved at all REMOVES THE EXPERIENCE from the realm of knowledge. 6 That is why visions, however holy, do not last." (even 'heaven on earth' does not last)

"W-pII.10.2. The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. 2 For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and WHOLLY PURPOSELESS. 3 WITHOUT A CAUSE, and now WITHOUT A FUNCTION in Christ's sight, it merely SLIPS AWAY INTO NOTHINGNESS. 4 THERE IT WAS BORN, and there IT ENDS AS WELL. 5 And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. 6 BODIES NOW ARE USELESS, and will therefore FADE AWAY, because the Son of God is limitless."

Everything in the physical world is temporary. It comes, it lingers a while, and then it goes. This applies to absolutely everything. Bodies, worlds, animals, foods, cars, birds, insects, bicycles, trees, you name it. It seems to begin, it seems to remain as if promising to be there always, but then it leaves. Always, always, always it leaves.

However, the things of God are not temporary, they are permanent and eternal. They do not come and go, or last only a little while, or even a long while. They are forever. They have no beginning and no end. They are endless and immortal, incapable of fading away or decaying, of becoming sick or dissolving into death. Because what God has created cannot BE put asunder.

When you assign the properties of God's creations to the things of this world, you will have psychological sickness, because they will fail to be permanent. This includes valuing the things of this world as if they can be kept, being attached to the things of this world as if they are worth having, wanting the things of this world to never end, trying to keep bodies going for as long as possible, resisting change, not letting go of what inevitably must pass, and even attempting to stop death from happening.

Trying to make this world eternal is a mistake. Trying to give it reality and life, will and power, mind and value, is all a mistake. Every time you think of the things of this world as though they should last forever, believing they will not end, wishing they would always be there, or wanting them to never die, you are confusing immortality and mortality. Believing this world is your permanent home will tear you apart, because this world will tear apart.

Believing the things of the world must last forever, you will suffer psychologically. The things of this world WILL end, and the whole world will end, and everything you ever wanted to keep here will be destroyed. Even the things you spend a lifetime building. All the world's roads lead to death and destruction. It will leave, and it will take away, and all things physically will die. So when you're busy wanting them not to, you will be torn apart and experience loss and grief. The things you think you value will be destroyed, the bodies you think should live indefinitely will be mangled, and every treasure will be crushed.

You will suffer if you believe this world is anything BUT temporary, or anything but death. Trying to have it be permanent is to confuse it for heaven. It is not of God, it is not his kingdom, and it is not his will. Nor is it like him, having been made to be opposite to his kingdom in every way. All forms of attachment, resistance, ownership, specialness, valuing, believing real, trying to sustain, not wanting it to end, will make you suffer. Because it will end anyway and everything you thought you loved will be ripped away, leaving you empty and bereft, while you play with death.

The only way to alleviate this suffering is to cease the confusion of levels between heaven and earth. To stop trying to make this world last indefinitely. To stop trying to keep people in bodies. To stop valuing things that will die, and to stop resisting their going. You have to let the whole world go, because it is going to go whether you like it or not.

The only way to find salvation from a world that was dying before it was born, is to transcend the world and rise above it. To detach from it and recognize it as temporary and old and destined to die. The kingdom of God offers you everything that this world cannot give, and just as this world has disappointed you since time began, heaven has delighted you and will do so without end. Only the creations of God can satisfy you and bring lasting happiness.

Bodily relationships will come and go. You'll think they'll last forever and then they will end and you will be upset because you wanted it to last. All your collections and objects and toys will be destroyed. Everything you eat will turn to shit, if you manage to eat it before it rots. All places through all seasons will destroy everything they contain. Even entire solar systems and galaxies will be swallowed up and exploded apart.

Nothing in this world will last forever. The sooner this can be accepted and sink deeply within, such that you become willing to release it and let it all go, the sooner you will find happiness and peace.

"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."

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

"You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

"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."

The ego is the idea of the TOTAL opposite of God. It is vile bitter hatred and death and darkness.

Usually, however, we are not really aware of just how vicious it is, because it hides most of its viciousness behind the persona, which covers up most of the "special hate" with "special love" and other illusions of things being okay.

The world we live in is largely populated by personas and fake identities all colluding together to repress and hide and reject everything that they deem unacceptable. They shove all of this hatred and darkness into the 'shadow' which is the more unconscious, more opposed-to-God aspect of the ego.

Sometimes, when you work on becoming more authentic, you are dissolving the persona and undoing the fake sense of identity it contains. As you do this, however, it's going to 'unmask' the ego. It's taking the covers off the repressed vicious darkness that lurks under the surface.

Now, in regular day-to-day interactions most people are quite fake and they will not genuinely, authentically or fully express how they 'really feel', regardless of what that feeling is. So a lot of actually genuine feelings become heavily repressed and stuck in the unconscious layers of the ego. These feelings might actually be more genuine than you realize, because they might express how someone actually DID betray you, or how someone actually WAS being dishonest, or how you really DID feel victimized... given that you probably instead covered up these 'genuine' awarenesses for the sake of saving face or not confronting people or people-pleasing or whatever other persona-tactic you were using.

So then when the ego persona mask comes off, even temporarily, it can sometimes trigger the exposure of and 'release of', or shine a light upon, the darker hidden repressed expressions of yourself. The shadow self. This is where the vicious ego experiences a much more immediate and unfiltered engagement with every form of negativity. So all of those repressed feelings, regardless of their subject matter or justification, start to flood out. They flood into the conscious mind and take it over and make the mind become unconscious, meaning that you are put into the dark, cannot see, cannot think clearly, lose sight of what is real, become lost in intense negative delusions and can't see past these strong feelings.

So these strong negative feelings arise, as all the feelings you repressed and didn't experience due to the persona saying it was not 'appropriate' or 'allowed' or 'acceptable' at the time, or due to you holding onto them for some reason. And so then the person experiencing this might start to point out much more bluntly how other people suck, how other people are deceptive, how other people are liars, how other people are haters, how other people are victimizers, etc... all the repressed feelings which might actually have had a basis in 'reality' of some kind, start to flood out. And it can be extremely negative. But these are, if you like, genuine feelings, which really are trying to be released and fully processed.

So what we then have to do is become willing to find ways to actually be more authentic, to be more real, and to make it okay and acceptable and allowed to have these negative feelings, at least so that you can fully feel and process them and release them. Fuck society if they don't like it or its not appropriate, society is completely fake anyway. So this release of 'darkness' is really a release that's asking for healing and light and forgiveness and acknowledgement. When seen as such we can become willing to let go and allow and accept this darkness of the furthest extremes of the ego, and instead of fighting with or trying to repress or get away from it, find instead ways to transcend it and transmute it and transform because of it. And this can produce awakening.

In this world, all things lead to death. It's as though a missile has been fired, flying through the sky, and hurtling toward the ground. There is a sense of inevitability of decay, that everything will just gradually erode and age and suffer and die eventually. As though this is the way of the world.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

When you look at the world in this way you can't really help but notice this is the case, except if you are denial of this fact. And while in that denial you might be thinking the world isn't so bad, except that eventually it proves itself. "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."

I recognize that when I am looking with my ego, or my worldly earthly body-identified 'normal view', this is the view I am adopting. I am going along with this "plan" of the world that everything before my eyes will wither and die. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

This is just how the world functions. It's how we set it up. It's what we call "natural". So when the leaves fall from the trees we think this is totally normal. When the bodies lay in the graves we think this is totally normal. But this entire system is entirely unnatural and not at all like God's reality.

"Without the idea of death there is no world." When you are aligning yourself with God's reality, with heaven's true nature, you are in support of life. In fact you support eternal longevity. You reject all notions of decay, degradation and death. In fact you not only move away from the downward "arc" of death's direction, you move UPWARD in a direction towards God. In this direction there is an arrow pointing toward the sky, as things which were death come back to life, and life is restored, and things are working out, and there is healing and miracles and reasons for happiness.

After a while of trying to recognize that God's ways are upward-bound, and earth's ways spiral into the dirt, the two "systems" of thinking become more clearly distinguished. And they are very much opposed to each other. The contrast between the two "modes of perception" becomes more intense and obivous.

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

The world might be giving a message like "this is just going to get worse until there is death". But a God-aligned mind is asserting life, saying "This is going to get better and better until there is immortality." The two paths or viewpoints do not meet in the middle, they do not converge or agree with each other at all. They point in totally different directions - toward heaven or hell, towards life or death.

If you look at something happening and you say to yourself, this is real, and it's true, and this is natural, and this is how it's just going to be, and there is no hope and no future and eventually there's going to be death, then you're in the ego. You're falling for TEMPTATION. You're getting lost in the world and doing nothing to counteract its lies. Because the world is NOTHING like heaven and all its efforts are attempts to prove that sin is real and death is justified.

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. 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. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."

To be in this world but OF ANOTHER WORLD, to be of God and heaven and yet with your feed on the earth, is to be UNNATURAL in terms of what the world thinks is natural. But in fact it is to be ABOVE the nature of the world - which means super-natural. It is the world that is unnatural. It is the world that is false and a lie. To recognize it for what it is, one has to adopt the upward-pointing resurrective miraculous path. Otherwise you are simply heading for the grave.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. For there alone their SEEMING clearness SEEMS TO BE CLEARLY SEEN. Let us now turn AWAY from them, and follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."

Oneness does NOT mean you do not have a self or free will.

ACIM quotes:

God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. (T-4.VII.5:1)

God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. (T-6.II.8:1-2)

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite. (W-pII.11.1:1)

God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. (T-3.III.7:9-10)

In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. (T-2.I.1:2)

The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:7)

What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

When the Atonement has been completed [and we are back in Heaven], all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. (T-1.V.3:1)

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. (T-5.I.5:5,7)

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (T-5.II.1:2)

God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. (T-9.VI.3:5)

It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. (W-pI.161.4:1 8)

When you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. (T-16.II.3:2-3)

I was thinking for a while that maybe certain people were inept. Maybe it was certain groups of people. Maybe it was medical people. And maybe it was the body. Maybe it was just some portion of things. But the more I look at it the more I realize that the ENTIRE WORLD, the whole SYSTEM of thought of this lower-order reality of spacetime, is fundamentally broken. It is an impossible system, based on laws of failure and lack and insufficiency.

The whole thing functions in a ridiculously faulty way. Every motion, every action, every doing, every impulse, causes a disruption and changes and side effects. You cannot do anything physical without it potentially leading to more problems. Everything you do to fix something gives rise to new problems. Every use of materials degrades the material. Every aspect of this entire cosmos is fundamentally stupid as fuck and ridiculously backwards.

The whole thing simultaneously gives one thing and takes away another, in a two-faced self-contradicting self-denying expression of incapability and limitation. Nothing in the world has any ability ever to truly do anything unconditionally or perfectly. There is no unlimited giving, no flawless correction, no ultimate solution, no perfect response, no clear answer, and no magical salvation.

There is literally no salvation in the world which produces a state of utter hopelessness. This is the stupidity of the world at large, and the whole thing is one big giant fuckup. There is no escape from it. The only way out of this hell is through transcendence and forgiveness, recognizing it is NOT REAL, and therefore thankfully there ARE no unsolvable problems. Such is the miracle's ability to reverse everything the world says can never be undone.

The world is an ILLUSION. An illusion that presents itself as being one thing when in fact it is its opposite. Everything it tries to do it does the opposite. Every way it helps it hurts. Every pleasure leads to pain. Every solution becomes broken. It cannot go towards God because everything if offers ALWAYS points towards death and destruction. Even its so-called "life" has death in it.

Contemplating this fact of the world's bullshittery made me laugh so much.

"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."

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

"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."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

This is a pretty awesome section of the clarification of terms. Some important key points made here:

1. "In this world, because the mind is split, the Sons of God appear to be separate. 2 Nor do their minds seem to be joined"

2. "The term "soul" is not used except in direct biblical quotations because of its highly controversial nature. 3 It would, however, be an equivalent of "spirit," with the understanding that, being of God, it is eternal and was never born."

3. "This Will is always unified and therefore has no meaning in this world"

4. "Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. 3 This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. 4 Here time and illusions end together."

5. "Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened."

6. "Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice."

7. "Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm."

8. "At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. 6 Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge."

--&--

C-1.1. The term mind is used to represent the activating agent of spirit, supplying its creative energy. 2 When the term is capitalized it refers to God or Christ (i.e., the Mind of God or the Mind of Christ). 3 Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself. 4 The unified spirit is God's one Son, or Christ.

C-1.2. In this world, because the mind is split, the Sons of God appear to be separate. 2 Nor do their minds seem to be joined. 3 In this illusory state, the concept of an "individual mind" seems to be meaningful. 4 It is therefore described in the course as if it has two parts; spirit and ego.

C-1.3. Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well. 2 The term "soul" is not used except in direct biblical quotations because of its highly controversial nature. 3 It would, however, be an equivalent of "spirit," with the understanding that, being of God, it is eternal and was never born.

C-1.4. The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. 2 Spirit retains the potential for creating, but its Will, which is God's, seems to be imprisoned while the mind is not unified. 3 Creation continues unabated because that is the Will of God. 4 This Will is always unified and therefore has no meaning in this world. 5 It has no opposite and no degrees.

C-1.5. The mind can be right or wrong, depending on the voice to which it listens. 2 Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. 3 This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. 4 Here time and illusions end together.

C-1.6. Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. 2 Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. 3 Therefore it is not the One-mindedness of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is One with God's.

C-1.7. In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; always between two choices or two voices. 2 Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. 3 Consciousness is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. 4 Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. 5 At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. 6 Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge.

When the world is seen with false perception, that is, with the body's eyes being believed and seeing nothing else, blinded by perception of form, the world seems like a dark prison and God is nowhere.

When you lift up and see with Christ Vision, or true perception, which is a spiritual seeing by the mind itself, not dependent on the body's eyes or on photons of light bouncing off surfaces, the world vanishes. The spiritual eye is love looking upon love, Christ looking upon Christ.

However, just before this, in the in-between stages, when you are working on your forgiveness, healing and purification, there is an intermediary "mix" between these two. The spiritual eye is coming online, but the body's sight is still believed to some extent.

What this produces is that the world, which is like a veil of sin hanging in front of Christ's face, becomes more transparent. It's forms are less believed, it's matter is less blocking.

All sense of real sin is being lifted away from its appearances. Guilt is being unprojected. And this makes the world appear to gradually become brighter, lighter, more lovely, more forgiven.

However, it's only possible for this "world in the process of being forgiven" to show up PRIOR to seeing the face of Christ in full. If you were to reach true perception, you wouldn't be able to see the world at all, because the veil lifts at the very top, at the last moment, becoming completely invisible.

In a way, we could say that what appears to be the visible world, the physical world, becomes gradually more invisible. And the seemingly invisible world, the real world, becomes gradually more visible. And as Jesus says, "you cannot see both worlds."

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

He also says that what you consider to be "false", you do NOT see, and what you consider to be TRUE, you do see. So if the real world is true, and Earth is false, which it is, then seeing the truth of the real world "blinds you" to seeing Earth.

So at the top, when you reach totally purified perception, the veil of physical matter, the granite block of sin, becomes fully transparent and disappears from sight. Like a dream that fades.

That "forgiven veil", is the forgiven world. By forgiving the world, you are shining it away. By forgiving it, you are overlooking it to the light beyond it.

"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."

"And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place."

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body."

The more you forgive the world and stop projecting sin onto it, the more forgiven it becomes. BUT ALSO, the more it disappears. It fades because it is not really there. This is why:

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

You cannot forgive something that is REAL. Forgiveness makes stuff disappear. You cannot forgive the world and KEEP it. Things you forgive are ILLUSIONS. "Illusions recognized must disappear." If you are to forgive the world, it MUST be an illusion. And it must disappear.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

If this world is real, then it is a cruel world. And all its paths lead eventually to death. There is no escape in the world. "The world was made that problems could not be escaped."

In this world, when something goes wrong, it stays wrong. Unless you can find a physical solution which seems to solve the problem. But the problem does not really get cured, and the solution does not prevent more problems.

The ego's plan for this world is that everything ends in death. It does not matter how long it takes or what form it takes. All that is physical is inherently made of the idea of death.

If this world is true, then if someone becomes physically sick, there is no hope. There is no way to undo it. If something goes terribly wrong, there is no hope. No way to solve it. The world was made to be a place of hopelessness, and if you follow its laws and its rules there is literally no hope of escaping its death sentence.

This is why we are being asked in ACIM to rise above this battlefield, to awaken from it, to lift up and see it from a different vantage point. We're asked to forgive and overlook it, to not believe it is reality, and to not regard it as true. Only in this way, by recognizing there is ANOTHER world filled with hope, that you can have any hope at all.

Recognizing that this world is fundamentally cruel and insane, your ONLY hope is to learn to recognize that because of its insanity it cannot be real. The pain and hell that arise from its cruelty are seemingly tolerable up to a point, but produce hellish nightmarish experiences.

There comes a turning point where you can no longer accept that this world CAN be real, because of its utter cruelty and hell-bent focus on inevitable death and irreversible damage. There has to be a better way. There has to be some other world more true than this. There has to be some way to have hope.

This is where we begin to seek out the light, to leave the darkness of the desert and find a way to rise above the bullshit of the planet. This begins to open up what ACIM calls our spiritual eye. It's an attempt to liberate ourselves from suffering, to laugh in the face of death, and to even become miraculous.

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

This flies in the face of everything the world says is true. It requires you to DENY the world through a proper use of denial, such that you are not willing to accept what it shows you, what it tells you, or the plans it has for your demise. It goes totally against the grain and against everything the world believes is true and possible. Because "it is the world you see that is impossible."

The world, being as utterly insane as it is, cannot possibly be real. If it is real then we might as well give up and die, because it offers on way out.

"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."

Overcoming the world requires an ability to resurrect. It requires an ability to go against the laws of the world. It requires a movement into miraculousness, because only through a literal breaking of the laws of spacetime can you truly overcome death.

You have to fly in the face of everything that seems to be happening and defy it. You have to rise up above it and have a power over it. You have to be able and willing to undo it, reverse it, and demonstrate the cancellation of sin and death. Through miracles there is hope, but without the possibility of operating opposite to the world there is no hope at all.

We have to find a way, a path to the light, which the world does not support, which the world says is impossible, which the world actively tries to oppose. It requires the proper use of denial, the weakening of the investment in physical sight, the ignoring of physical sensory inputs which lie to you through the body, and to look beyond appearances. This means recognizing illusions as illusions and not being tempted or deceived by the world. This is a tough challenge. But the world must be denied, otherwise it is true.

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

The ultimate pinnacle of this teaching is that there literally is no world here at all. "There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach". Only if there is NO world, and NOTHING has happened, and this is ONLY a dream, can there be hope of escape, and hope of liberation from its nightmare. Only through recognizing that it IS NOT REAL is there any way to laugh at its unbelievable bullshit, to find a way back to God, and to return to a state of happiness.

The only way out of hell is through forgiveness, the overlooking of illusions and the recognition of ACTUAL reality, which is the Kingdom of God and not the Earth.

"There is another advantage, - and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt.It is the essence of the Atonement.It is the core of the curriculum.The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion that you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One to Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

"A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. ***And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion call of life.*** This call has power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto His Own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. 11 Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

You have made a secret agreement with all your victimizers and attackers.

1) Their half of the bargain entails they must appear to be responsible for all the guilt you do not want to own in yourself, which you thought was true of you. They must carry the burden of it and be condemned by it, by you. You get to blame it all on them and to displace it away from yourself, rendering you seemingly innocent and them guilty. You get to claim they are the cause of all problems and that you did nothing at all.

2) Your half of the bargain entails you must allow them to attack and victimize you, in direct relation to how much guilt they are carrying for you. The more guilt you put onto them, the more you will experience them as an enemy, and the more you hate them the more they will hate you. You give them a permit to punish you, in exchange for their service.

3) You will suffer because of them, and you will not want it, and you will be terrified of it, and you will create tremendous drama about how you did not ask for it due to your newfound 'innocence', BUT deep down you KNOW that you gave them every permission to do this to you, and as such you AGREE with it (oh the horror!).

4) You secretly PREFER that they victimize you compared to having to carry the responsibility of the GUILT that was yours to begin with. You think its a bargain, because you experience yourself as 'innocent' while experiencing them as 'guilty'. It's just unfortunate that, in this innocence, you also MUST be an 'innocent victim'. That is the price you have to pay.

This whole agreement is set up to defend you against your own guilt. You hire everyone who provides this service for you and does this to you, and you are grateful that it creates an illusion of innocence for you. You would rather tolerate this than to actually obtain REAL innocence, which you DO NOT BELIEVE IN, because you DO believe it is true that you are sinful and guilty and deserve to die.

Nothing heavy.

You do, however, have a clause in the contract. You are permitted to break the agreement. However, breaking the agreement has TERMS. The terms are:

1) You must take back the guilt that you projected onto them and find them innocent. You must stop blaming them or scapegoating them or accusing them in ANY way of being the cause of ANYTHING you are experiencing.

2) You must ADMIT that you were the one who wanted this agreement, you are the one who agreed to it, and you were the one who ACCEPTED the consequences, even if you did not like how it felt.

3) You must be willing to take back all of the guilt, which undoes your own perception of yourself as innocent (and that alone is terrifying), and which places responsibility for ALL of it back in your own lap. You may not want this. And if you stay in this perception for long you will suffer. That suffering is why you wanted to make the agreement in the first place.

4) You must admit that you were only ever a WILLING victim, a willing participant, that you wanted every single attack, and were willing to LAY DOWN AND DIE if it would mean you are seen as innocent again. Nobody dies without their own consent.

5) You must admit that, now, because these people are NO LONGER in the contract with you, that they are wholly innocent, and this means they ARE NOT victimizing you and you HAVE NOT BEEN victimized by them. All blame for any past experiences must be lifted from them and you must be willing to see them as forgiven. You MUST also be willing to THANK them for their cooperation, service, perfect role-play, and for carrying out your contract to perfection, recognizing they did ONLY what you wanted them to and they did it well.

Having taken full responsibility for arranging this agreement, you are holding the guilt, but you have an exit option. The option states you are permitted to either re-enter the victimhood agreement with more people, and continue seeking for artificial innocence, OR, you can seek for real innocence, by appealing to an AUTHORITY ON TRUTH, such as the Holy Spirit. You have to be willing to go before Him, take your guilt with you, expose it TO Him, allow Him to be aware of all of it WITH you, look upon it from HIS perspective (in the light), and be willing to be SHOWN the truth about it. You must agree to accept His verdict, whether it is that you are innocent or guilty (and btw it will always be that you are truly innocent).

If you take the exit option, you must be willing to surrender the guilt that you placed on yourself and own up to the deeper truth that you are TRULY INNOCENT, HAVE DONE THING WRONG, and you must accept God's love again. Too much to ask? Choose again? You could always choose to be a victim some more.

You as love cannot be attacked by the ego. The ego in others or in the world is utterly incapable of doing ANYTHING to love. Love is completely outside of the entire realm of the ego’s dream. All ego identities are totally out of reach of it. Never the two will meet.

The course says "Love was never in the world." Meaning, the world - ego, people’s attacks, war and conflict, have no ability to be where love is (because love is everywhere and ego does not really exist). This is also why nothing can assail the Kingdom of God.

However,. ...! ... IF you choose to believe that you are something other than love, if you believe that something else is true of you and that it is not true that you are ONLY love, THAT IDENTITY that you’ve made-up is now WITHIN the realm of the ego. It’s now a PART of the ego’s thought system. This makes it possible for it to be attacked.

This is why minds (which are fused with love) cannot be attacked, but it seems that bodies can be attacked. Bodies are part of the ego’s dream.

IF you have chosen to believe that something false is true of you, such as... you are guilty, sinful, unworthy, unlovable, not good enough, shameful, inferior, right/wrong, good/bad etc, then you are positioning yourself "on the battlefield" in amongst the rest of the ego.

The ego can and does attack ITSELF, because the ego IS the idea of self-attack. It is inner conflict, a war with yourself. It’s attacks are illusions, but the ego believes they are reality. If YOU believe that your false beliefs are true of you, YOU will see yourself as "attackable".

Once you are *identifying* yourself as equated with something false/ego/untrue, you’re going to experience vulnerability, victimhood, you will seem to be "accessible" to attackers, and you can seem to be hurt.

If you do something in which you feel you’ve sinned, or are guilty or wrong or unlovable in some way, you will walk about the world feeling like there is a TARGET on your back. You will become paranoid. You will FEAR that someone is going to do something to you. You will see yourself as being constantly looked at, which makes you feel very "self conscious". You SUSPECT everyone of having a murderous intention towards you, and this completely undermines your sense of feeling safe.

You cannot feel safe or certain of being unharmable, while you hold false beliefs about yourself. With these beliefs intact, whenever anyone attempts to insinuate that something false is true of you, you will not be truly able to stop or deny the accusation, because YOU believe it is true, even if you don’t want to admit that. You will AGREE that you SHOULD be attacked. Even if you try to avoid attack, believing things true of the ego are true of you, ASKS for you to be victimized.

No-one who regards themselves as part of the ego thought system, by believing something false is true, can escape attack. However, if you HEAL your false beliefs and let them go, your IDENTITY is going to shift away from "I am guilty" (made of guilt), "I am sinful" (made of sin) etc... to... I AM LOVE (made of love).

When you are made of love, YOU CANNOT BE ATTACKED. The ego has absolutely no ability to make its illusions do anything to reality. In love, you are *invulnerable and immortal*. And I mean this literally. Absolutely beyond all ability to ever be attacked ever again. Becoming REAL therefore makes you invulnerable, because "nothing real can be threatened". And since this state recognizes that illusions have NO POWER, NO WILL and NO CAUSALITY, the tranquility of PEACE is permanently undisturbed.

You are safe in God because you are innocent, lovable and loved. When this is your IDENTITY, YOU will not perceive that anything anyone does can affect you in any way. You will not perceive that their insanity has anything to do with you. You will take nothing personally. You will see the insanity of others as a CALL FOR LOVE. And anything anyone ever tries to claim about "you" will only ever be a claim about some ego identity. Who YOU ARE will be different to the ego identity that other people are trying to target, and so it will be CLEAR AND OVIOUS that they weren’t even targeting you at all. This makes it impossible for you to see yourself as being attacked.

You are immortal spirit. Immortal spirit is literally invulnerable. Love CANNOT be damaged. Nothing real can be threatened because only love exists. Love is your real identity. You are IMMORTAL.

"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body’s worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

You as Immortal Spirit do not need a body to exist. Period.

The body was "added" to you as a projection of the idea of sin.

You think you need it, want it, desire it, rely on it, depend on it.

This is artificial.

You are sustained by the love of God at all times. You are pure spirit. You can exist without a body.

Given that your Spirit is capable of anything, has no needs, is immortal, cannot die, and is forever happy, what purpose does the body have?

It is pointless. It is meaningless. It is worthless. It is nothing.

We do however need to be careful not to let the ego come in here and use this information as an attack on the body, to judge it or hate it or condemn it with labels.

The body is not there. It is not real. It must disappear because it never really existed to begin with.

You don't need it. It cannot enter Heaven, and it was always a substitute for pretending you had needs that your Spirit could not supply.

When you have no more use for it, or belief that it has a usefulness at all, you will lay it down, disappear it, and go home to God.

"My Father gives all power unto me."

"all power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His"

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING."

Our natural relationship with God is quite different to how we think of ourselves in a separated state.

Here we might think of ourselves as independent, relying on no-one, having our own power and our own abilities. We walk in separate bodies and think of ourselves as self-sufficient and reliant on ourselves. But this isn't a natural state to be in, and it isn't how God set it up.

From God's point of view, he does not create separate things, which stand apart from him as though disconnected. He doesn't create things which have special stuff of their own, or powers that they don't share with others. Nor does he let go of them or cut the off or stop being a part of them.

When God creates you he extends his own self, gives everything he has, and includes you within his own being as part of himself. It's like living and staying in the womb forever. You have nothing that you've gathered for yourself, and nothing that didn't come from God. And everything you do have, remains his as well, but shared simultaneously with you.

Your natural condition then is to actually be completely dependent on God, in which you host God within yourself. It's like, without him you are an empty vessel, and he places his own power, mind, will, thought, life, love, peace etc, into you. And now you act as a host to him. And this mean that unless you are hosting him, you don't really have anything. No power, no mind, no love, nothing.

So in order to be in your natural state, functioning the way God intended, you actually have to rely on God and depend on him to BE the qualities that are best in you. There is no other source and you literally cannot live without him.

The sense of strength that you have does not come from you, it is actually the presence of God in you. The light which you see in isn't a light that you put there, it's his light shining in your mind from God. The will you will with, the thoughts you think, the freedom you share, your very own life, is actually all HIS. He shares it with you and you therefore have a symbiotic relationship with him.

This really means that not only do you have nothing that is exclusively your own, you literally have nothing at all without him. You are nothing and do not exist without him. However, with him you share and have everything that he has. You have all his gifts, all his power, all his thought and mind, all his will and freedom, all his love and life. It is in you, but it is not of you. Yet it is yours, because it is his, and you are part of him.

This means the only way to function naturally is to acknowledge God in everything, to let him BE the strength in you, to let his light shine through you so that you can see, to align with his will and thoughts, to do his will, and to function as a team with him. He does protect you and strengthen you and provide for you.

This plugs you into his power, and regardless of having NO power of your own, you have ALL of his power. By allowing your power to be his power, shared with him and expressing through you, his power becomes your own. He has given it to you, but without losing it himself, and so both of you have it. Without what God has given you, you have no power to do anything.

This is why the model of your body and your ego are against your inherent nature. They are ways to cut you off from everything and to have nothing. They disconnect you from God and from the only source of anything real. And once you are orphaned, you basically have nothing but scraps of lifelessnes and weakness and incapability with which to function. You can't live life like that, as an exclusively autonomous prisoner, captive to nothingness.

You can only really live and be happy and have strength and sanity by sharing life with God. He has to be acknowledged, interfaced with, and allowed to be a part of you. He has to be integrated into who and what you are. You have to make room for him. You have to let go and let him deal with stuff through you, because you simply cannot do it alone. He lives withiin you at your inner altar.

Depending on your own strength will only make you afraid because you know you are too weak to deal with anything without God. Depending on God however, you become all-powerful, strong, confident, certain and capable. And then there is nothing your holiness cannot do, miraculously, because he does it for and with you. God has taken care of everything.

I received this inspired definition of what A Course in Miracles is today.

A Course in Miracles says it is a "required course", that you do not have any option on whether or not to take it, and that only the time that you take it is voluntary. It says there is a curriculum which you must follow which you do not have any say in defining, meaning there are no other curriculums.

This is a point of much controversy and misunderstanding. But Jesus is telling the truth.

The "Course", if you will, the actual Course that Jesus is referring to in the book "A Course in Miracles", is not a Course that exists AS the book, but the book is REFERRING to the Course.

The Course, the one curriculum, is referring to every metaphysical truth and every metaphysical step which must at some point be taken in order to return to God. This applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There are no exceptions or options. It doesn't matter who you are, what religion you belong to, what you believe, you do NOT have a say in determining what the metaphysics of existence is, how it operates, what the laws are, or how you are meant to function.

There IS only one truth. And from that One Truth, following the separation, extends all of the metaphysical levels and layers and facts, which are on an absolutely colossal scale in the trans-personal, trans-temporal mind of the One Son of God. The structural composition of the levels of mind, the stages of separation, the steps that you have to go through in order to fall asleep, the things you MUST experience if you take those steps, are all absolutely irrefutable FACTS. There is a "WAY", there is only ONE way, and it is this one way that Jesus has labelled "A Course in Miracles".

Stop right there before you associate the book form with what the Course is. Jesus, outside of the book, is referring to the metaphysical structure of reality and the illusion and everything that can possibly take place in it, the "true nature" of existence, and in His book titled "A Course in Miracles" He has chosen to NAME that experiential metaphysical structure "the curriculum." There is no room for bending the rules or breaking the laws of the curriculum.

As a result of choosing separation, certain things came into existence which have a certain structure, a certain behavior, a certain inter-relationship with each other, and it is all entirely based on metaphysical facts. Everything that seemed to happen after the separation happened according to completely clear-cut causes and effects. Basically, by choosing ego, you MUST experience very exact "effects", and it is only by reversing those exact effects that you can be free of the ego. You took 3 steps forward, you MUST take 3 steps back.

Therefore there IS only one real curriculum. Either you are moving away from God or toward God. Movements toward God are the curriculum. This applies to everyone in all walks of life regardless of whether they heard of "A Course in Miracles" or not. In a way, though, Jesus has associated the term with the curriculum, because at the beginning He says:

"This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required Course."

Therefore Jesus is really referring to the one universal curriculum, the one universal metaphysics, and the steps required in order to follow the curriculum, as "A Course in Miracles". Not the book per se. The metaphysical structure of the dream and all of its levels and layers and facts and side-effects is all what defines the fixed curriculum, and taking a "course" in that, is the "Course in Miracles".

It is called a Course in MIRACLES because if you take an actual step in following the curriculum, making actual metaphysical progress in awakening, no matter what belief system you are surrounding those steps with, you are performing miracles. Corrections of mind.

It must be true that you are ALWAYS inside of the curriculum, you are always taking the curriculum, and you are alway bound by its rules. However, the option you have is whether or not to LEARN, i.e. take the curriculum, and so you are free to choose WHEN to learn it, i.e. when to take the next steps toward God. You do not get to choose what those steps are because they are based on the metaphysics. You can continue to be in DENIAL of this truth, which is an attempt to not take the curriculum, but you cannot CHANGE this truth, and sooner or later you MUST take it.

The curriculum therefore exists outside of the "book" of the Course, and applies in ALL belief systems at all times. There is only one "real" path to God. There are corrections necessary in order to awaken to the one truth. Whatever so-called path you are using, even if you never heard of A Course in Miracles, it MUST contain at least some metaphysical truth IF it is going to WORK at all. If it is not in alignment with the metaphysical truth and if it does not advance you along the ONE curriculum, then it CANNOT work.

Also different belief systems and religions either make the metaphysical truth clear, or obscure it, to varying degrees. Some belief systems obscure more than others and may obscure heavily. For example, satanism most likely is going to be very effective at denying the curriculum and electing "not to take it yet". Similarly there are many other delaying maneuvers.

However, what we see as the BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", the FORMAT it takes, and the way it describes the metaphysical truth, is perhaps one of, if not THE, most effective, clear, inspired, ACCURATE, least obscuring, and maximally EFFICIENT formats on the planet today. It can save significant time, because it very closely aligns to the one curriculum, and very effectively teaches about what the metaphysical truth is.

The BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", is piggybacking, or describing, the "real course", which is the curriculum, which is experiential and applies to everyone at all times. The book itself is not necessarily "required" to be read or followed in order to awaken. HOWEVER, whatever FORM of a path you choose, whatever the belief system, whatever theology, it MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* correspond to the metaphysical truth taught in A Course in Miracles if it is going to WORK at all, and if it does not, it will NOT work and will only delay your awakening by producing more delusions.

You can wake up to the ONE TRUTH, through many many many paths. In fact, "all paths lead to God" is true because even the most obscure, highly delaying, extremely denying paths still have at least some amount of the curriculum applying to them, still present lessons, still offers the truth in some small way, and is still governed by the same ONE metaphysical system.

For example, Christianity's interpretation of the metaphysics is correct in some areas and a little off in others. It is correct that there is One God, and that Christ is God's One Son. It is also true that as Jesus (as Christ) said, He is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Not one of many. THE ONLY ONE. And it is also true that no-one can come to the father but by Him. HOWEVER, Christianity is mistaken in its claim that this means you are forever separate and non-equal with Christ, that other FORMS of paths to God are wrong, that the Christian religion is the only "way" to God, and that all other paths are evil. That's not true.

Christianity CAN be an effective path to awakening and to becoming equal with Christ, but in many many of its flavors and interpretations, it is riddled with a heavy weight of delusion, illusion, confusion, and deception, which masquerade as truth but actually are part of the delaying maneuvers which attempt to PUT OFF the true curriculum. The only way Christianity can WORK is when it is in correct alignment with the truth that has been described in the book "A Course in Miracles", and is following the ONE CURRICULUM which Jesus has basically named "A Course in Miracles" (beyond the book).

Effectively that means that anyone who takes the Christian path (or any other religion or system), CAN ONLY wake up to the truth IF they have actually either inadvertently or on purpose taken the One Curriculum, which IS actually A Course in Miracles. Remember that Jesus begins the Course with "This is a course in miracles. It is a required Course." He goes on to say this is the only curriculum and that you do not have an option about what the curriculum entails. That means, if you woke up "through" Christianity, you actually DID take A Course in Miracles - the metaphysical, experiential, spiritually corrective path back to God, which is present in EVERYONE's mind and MUST be followed in order to return to God.

In this respect, A Course in Miracles, the one true curriculum, IS the only way to God, it IS the way that Jesus is referring to that HE woke up to being Christ, it IS the way that Buddha woke up, it IS the way that any other ascended master woke up, and It MUST be the way that everyone wakes up.

All of the rest of the descriptions and forms and formats and supposed ILLUSIONS of separate paths that people seem to be taking, where they might claim "I am not doing A Course in Miracles", or that they don't believe in it, or that they aren't taking the One Curriculum, are heavily clad in ILLUSIONS that make it seem like they are not taking the One Curriculum, BUT THEY ARE.

*cue meme with "there is no escape" and evil laugh*

Either you are taking A Course in Miracles and learning the metaphysical truth and following the one curriculum and are waking up to God, which is THE ONLY WAY, which does not necessarily have to entail having anything to do with the book whatsoever,

OR

You are delaying the one curriculum, are attempting not to take the "Course", and are in denial.

THAT is the true nature of A Course in Miracles. It is not just a Course that you are only taking IF you are doing your forgiveness or IF you own the book of IF the book is in your hands with you studying it. It is ALWAYS the course, whether you like it or not, and you are always taking it, whether you like it or not!

It is not just a book. It is not just a bunch of text and a set of lessons and a manual. That's just one format. One expression of ACIM. It's one way of explaining what the Course is, one way of TEACHING what the Course is. The Course is the one metaphysical curriculum for awakening which applies to everyone at all times. There are many ways to teach it. The BOOK "A Course in Miracles" is Jesus's way of teaching it, and is a very accurate way. There are an unlimited number of ways of teaching it. Some will appear to be extremely close to the true nature of the one curriculum, and some will seem to be so far removed that you would not say it is the one curriculum at all. But there is no escaping the one curriculum.

This is the metaphysical nature of A Course in Miracles. And this is why it is REQUIRED, and this is why Jesus said it is required. He is not lying. You just have to get your definition of what the "Course" is correct so that it makes sense.

If Christians are making ANY headway towards God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Muslims are making ANY headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Hindu's are making headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. What Jesus has described AS A Course in Miracles is the one, the only, the profound metaphysical teaching, which is completely factual and 100% FIXED and cannot be changed and has no exceptions. That's what He has revealed to us and has attempted to outline and teach in the book. Whether you opt to use the book or not, you are still bound by the curriculum and you still cannot take any other curriculum that works without it being a curriculum in miracles.

If you think of this in terms of ... God contributes some of the decisions, and you contribute other parts.... then no, this is not how you co-create with God. This is co-creation based in separation/ego.

It is not that God does some portion of creation and you do some other portion. It's also not that God finished doing his portion on a Sunday ;-) and now for the rest of the week you get to do whatever the hell you like without Him. ;-)

However, if you think of co-creation in terms of you NOT being separate from God, in which you are aligned with, one with, a medium for, and a conduit of God, then you effectively create WITH God when you are carrying out God's will.

This means that you do not necessarily have a separate will which can co-create to do things which God would not do. You only get to co-create with God, by being WITH God, and that means extending the creative ideals that God expresses. Love, peace, joy etc.

So yes you are co-creator because you EXTEND the Kingdom. But no, you are not co-creator who is on some kind of 'God team' who goes off by himself and calls the shots.

That said, there is perfect freedom in your union with God, and you are free to create anything with God, using God's power, which he shares with you on purpose to allow you to do this, provided your creations are in service and are aligned with God's laws.

Besides projecting your guilt onto others, you also project your WILL and your POWER.

You take a chunk of your own power, which is tied to your will, and you give it to someone else. As you shift ownership of the guilt into someone else's hands, you are not just handing over guilt but also "who is the cause" of the guilt. That causality, that power to cause, is your own will. So you simultaneously hand over your own will to the other person.

Then the other person now looks like they have an extra amount of willpower - an "alien will", a separate will. It seems like this will has power to do stuff, sure. But the problem is you now perceive that this will is separated from your own will and that it has power over or against what is left of your will. A split mind has a split will in conflict with itself.

This makes sense, because really you can only do anything to yourself, so YOUR OWN WILL that you put into the other person DOES seem to have the power to do something to you. IF it were really the will that belonged to someone else, it would NOT have the power to do anything to you.

So literally you are then acting against yourself, through someone else, using your own will as your own attacker. So even when you are victimized, it's still you doing it to yourself. Nobody ever does anything to you.

By disowning your will and handing it over, you strip yourself of seeming power, and become weakened or powerless. You have to do that because you can't see yourself as a victim if you are powerful. Nothing can happen to you but by your own will, so you literally have to lay down your own power and 'pretend' that you are weak, vulnerable, at-the-effect of the dream, and susceptible to being easily influenced. None of that is possible for those who are powerful, so you have to disown your power to do so. And since nothing happens without your consent, and BY your own will, you have to GIVE your own will to someone else in order for them to seem to use will against you. Otherwise they have no power over you.

You can't, however, get rid of power. Instead you displace it onto the people that you're projecting the guilt onto. You give it to them. And it is by giving them power over you, at least in your imagination, that you literally give them the 'power to do something to you'. They don't really have this power because it's really just your own will that you are afraid will attack you. But while you project and hallucinate that it is IN someone else, you associate it WITH someone else so that you can disassociate from your guilt, so now you think it is NOT your will that you see out there.

So really you are just afraid of your own will that you projected onto someone else, staring you back in the face and threatening to attack you. You think it's that person attacking you, but its really you. And you're afraid of the sense of power that they have, particularly the more you give it away and the weaker and more vulnerable you see yourself. They seem to loom large over you like there is nothing you can do and nowhere you can go to be safe from it. But it's really YOUR POWER that you're afraid of - the projected power that you need to reclaim.

So on the one hand, taking back that guilt and dropping your false innocence and letting go of victimhood seems like something you don't want to do, especially because it means you would have to own up to being guilty. But on the other hand, when you do take it back you are ALSO TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. You are literally taking back your own will, that you lost and displaced. The other person does not HAVE any power over you and the idea of an alien will was entirely an illusion. Nothing's stopping you from taking your power back. You just have to recognize IT IS YOURS and it is not theirs, because you gave it to them (or tried to).

So now you take back your guilt but also you take back your power, take back your will, and this renders you much less able to be victimized, or to believe that you are victimizable. Your sense of vulnerability will reduce and you will feel 'stronger' and more confident about being able to stand your ground. You won't NEED to stand your ground 'against' the oppressive others, however, because by taking your power back AWAY from them, they now are not artificially empowered and you no longer PERCEIVE that they have 'extra power' to do something to you. And so you are not threatened. And so you can now feel safe.

You are safe when you are in your own power. You are safe when you do not give your own will to other people. You are safe when you do not choose to be a victim. You are safe when there is nothing to be afraid of because the only thing you were afraid of was YOUR OWN WILL. You are only afraid of it when you disown it, and when you reclaim it you are EMPOWERED.

Then, when you take your guilt and you take it to Holy Spirit to let Him decide if you are innocent, and you ACCEPT that you are innocent, you will be even MORE empowered because you won't be weakened by guilt. Innocence needs no defense. True innocence is powerful.

"I am not weak but strong."

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

-ACIM

An interesting insight I had is that what we see as causing us, we literally take to mean it is causing us to exist. If we are the effect of it, we are whatever it decides we are.

When we are caused by God, we are forever an effect of God. Whatever God wills us to be we are that. God has total authority and privilege in this and we have absolutely no say in it.

Fortunately God's idea of us and what he wants us to be is very loving and beautiful, and so we are created and "forced to be" perfect happy immortal beings forever.

But if you switch your idea of what causes you to anything else, anything of the world, the body, the ego, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, a similar thing happens. Your SELF is once again defined by it.

So let's say the world does something to "you", someone attacks your body or something, you might see it as not changing YOU but maybe changing your body or causing upsetting feelings. But you assume that YOU are still you.

However, this can't be true, because if you perceive that these external things are CAUSING you at all, you MUST believe you are their effect. YOU, your self, your identity, is the effect of them. And they have the power to change you, alter you, upset you, affect you, modify you according to their will.

This is part of how the mind shifts its IDENTITY from being identified with spirit/Christ to identifying with other things like the the ego or body. When we try to become one with these things, or we give them power, or we see ourselves as caused BY them, our very sense of SELF actually changes.

You begin to see yourself kind of like through the eyes of this other thing, the thing you gave power to. However it's treating you, whatever it's doing to you, is redefining you. You now become the effect of it and your whole sense of identity repositions as a victim and a sufferer and that which is attacked and weakened.

When we look for things to forgive, we might say that a person did this or that to us, or something in the world is upsetting us. But it's not just that it does something to upset us, it does something to CHANGE us, and that literally changes our sense of who we are.

When you believe the world, which is your dream, is dreaming you, and it has power to affect you or change what you are, your sense of self shifts from an immortal being to a temporary mortal suffering entity. The mind shifts its view of itself as though it's now being caused BY the world, and loses track of the soul. As if what causes you CREATES you.

Who you see yourself as, the role you play, how you are positioned, who you are in the drama or story, all becomes defined BY the causes you perceive to be having an effect on you. This can happen even with emotions and thoughts where you start developing a sort of sense of being a suffering person who the emotions or thoughts are happening to.

To wake up from this we have to become clear that we're not only not affected by anything in the whole world, but that nothing in the world has any power to CHANGE us in any way. Otherwise it has the power to change our SELF, and convert our identity into something we're not. Even a slight upset emotion is a change in identity, a twinge of unhappiness, a minor fear, it's all going to change your view of what is true of you.

So we have to learn to stop making ourselves CAUSED BY anything other than God. Nothing in the world does ANYTHING to us. We are UNCHANGEABLE, and nothing anywhere can change us except for God - who has no intention of ever changing his mind about us. We have to let ourselves be only what he wants us to be, and accept the truth of ourselves, in order to recognize WHO we really are.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." W191L9

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." M6C3

"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." URW190L5

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253

The passages below are pretty intense (each is from different parts of the course). They're basically saying that EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS DESTINED TO DIE. And that isn't an easy thing to comprehend yet alone accept. And if you CAN accept it (the meaninglessness of the world), perhaps you will be willing to go home?

The main reason we don't accept it is because it SEEMS as though, in the short term, some things live. That there can be seeming gaps in the dying, or sometimes paths will seem lighter and easier, even "pleasant" and enjoyable, and yet, NEVERTHELESS, even these brief vacations from death ultimately TURN INTO DEATH.

Even the lovely fresh bouquet of flowers, withers and dies and rots. Even the newborn baby, grows and ages and wrinkles and malfunctions and dies. Even the planet is born in the cosmos and evolved over billions of years only to be destroyed when its sun explodes. No matter what it is, no matter what you look at, ALL the things of this world are DESIGNED TO DIE, sooner or late.

This is the sense of the inevitability of death in this world, that "the world of bodies is the world of sin" and, therefore, since "the wages of sin is death", ALL types of bodies must die. And please note that I am not being negative or pessimistic here. I'm taking a square look at some facts. Facts that we like to avoid and pretend aren't true.

Such as the fact that EVERYTHING in the world eventually breaks down, goes wrong, malfunctions, decays. Yes it might take a while, and in the meantime it may seem that there are signs of life, of positivity, or purpose and meaning, activity, reasons to live, things to do and places to go. Which is sort of temporarily true. But then what happens eventually? It all goes to shit. Bar nothing.

Not one single thing in this world lasts forever. Not one single thing is permanent. This means the world cannot offer you safety, it cannot offer you freedom, it cannot offer you relief from problems, it cannot offer you life, it cannot offer you happiness, and in fact it really cannot truly promise ANYTHING, because ultimately everything is designed to die. Which means the world really has NOTHING TO GIVE. And that is because IT ONLY TAKES AWAY.

This is why, the only real salvation is found by TRANSCENDING THE WORLD, going within, rising above the battlefield, overcoming the world, moving beyond the earth, opening up to another world, returning to heaven, and waving bye bye to the dream of death. You can't find salvation outside of you because outside you there is only death and illusions of life. And this ultimately means, THERE IS NO WORLD. When will we be done playing with lifeless toys and dreams of mortality?

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."

"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."

"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."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"I see only the perishable.

I see nothing that will last.

What I see is a form of vengeance."

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

1) You already have eternal life because God creates only that which is permanent and lives forever.

2) It is not possible to change eternal life or to bring an end to it.

3) You do have the freedom however to DENY whether you have eternal life by PRETENDING that you don't.

4) Denial of eternal life does not stop it. All it does is it puts you into a mindset of blocking out awareness of the fact that eternal life is still there, causing you to HIDE it from your awareness as if to pretend it is not there.

5) Denial of eternal life shows up as death. It's a fictional attempt to make it SEEM as if eternal life is not true, doesn't exist, or has ended.

6) Death as "denial of life" is not END OF LIFE, it is an illusion PRETENDING that real eternal life can be affected in any way whatsoever.

7) You can become quite accomplished in making it look like you are mortal and can die. But it is fake. And it can therefore be easily reversed, because it has no truth in it. Death is a lie.

8) Given that you already have eternal life and are just pretending otherwise, at some point you might as well stop being in denial and just return to being eternal. Immortality is your natural inheritance.

9) When you stop being in DENIAL of eternal life, you will simply accept it and "live with it" and experience it, allowing it to be your truth without resistance or denial.

10) When you accept the atonement you are accepting the pre-existing truth that you already have eternal life, it cannot be removed, it's always been true of you, and you literally are incapable of really dying. In this, you are accepting that you are immortal and therefore CANNOT die and never did. And in this acceptance, death is recognized as and becomes impossible for you.

There is a huge amount of focus on "correcting perception". But perception is the SECOND step in our process.

It is PROJECTION that comes first. What about correcting projection?

Jesus describes our perception as a selective mechanism, in which we choose what we want to perceive IN what has been projected, to focus on some parts and ignore others. That means that within our mind, we are being "selective" in what we perceive, or the value we give to certain ASPECTS of what has been projected. We highlight certain things making them special while demoting other things by attacking them.

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It literally picks it out, as mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are NOT equal. For what you look for you are far more likely to discover, REGARDLESS of its color, shape, or size, than what you would prefer to overlook. ... Perception is a choice, and not a fact."

Now, in order to correct perception, you need to be looking at "what you make of" what has been projected, as though "changing your mind ABOUT the world", assuming the world is out there as a kind of canvas of possibilities from which to select. When perception is highly warped with differences and divisions, it is very excluding and isolating in terms of what it will accept and reject. When there is an intense contrast between what you choose to accept and what you reject, such as in special relationships or idol worship etc, you live in an perceptual experience of right and wrong, good and bad, etc.

When perception becomes "accurate", ie true perception, meaning that all the selectivity and conditionality and preference and exclusivity has been removed, leaving unconditionality and inclusiveness, you "perceive wholly" or perceive the whole, as is, without separating out one thing from another. This can lead to perception of the "real world" ie a reflection of heaven on earth, or seeing God or some kind of unity "in" the world. Also "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles".

However, we are still here dealing with the second-hand mechanism of perceiving what seems to be already out there. Perception is selective in which parts of what has been projected are looked at. But behind perception there is something else happening. Projection. And this doesn't refer to the kind of projection where you project guilt onto the world or blame people etc. Projection in its natural sense is more to do with extension, creation, the making of worlds, the manifesting of matter, ie "dreaming".

So you can get to this place where your perception is accurate and able to see a reflection of wholeness, which is an awakening that a number of people have reached. But what this has done is purify PERCEPTION and therefore you now "see" in a "whole way". However, what you look upon, the stuff that is out there, the seemingly physical world, where does that fit into the equation? How is it that this world is showing up at all? Because you are PROJECTING it from your mind.

The mind projects the body. The mind projects the world. THEN you perceive it.

So the mind has this additional underlying function, which is the realm of mind over matter, the working of miracles, the ability to change forms, and the defying of ego laws which are all formed at the perceptual level. Perception is once removed from causality. It takes into the mind what has been projected.

The thing we need to get in touch with, is our power to project, our choice to dream, our MAKING of the world and our bodies, and becoming masterful over THAT, in additional to having a clarified perception OF whatever it is that we choose to make.

So it's not all about correcting perception. That's part of it, but it takes you only so far. When you stop there, perceiving a peaceful seemingly forgiven world, what next? Well, there's the matter of your mind's projection, its creative function, its ability and power to demonstrate that the mind is stronger than the body, and to perform miracles. That's all in the realm of recognizing you are the dreamer and the PROJECTOR of forms and materials, and therefore your mind is capable of changing those forms and materials at will.

It means you have the ability, which you have to learn to master and harness, to be supernaturally powerful over all forms and to undo sickness and death and whatever was "manifest" in others. This is what is required in order to OVERCOME DEATH. Otherwise, if all attention is only given to having a correct perception OF what is projected, there is no real causal ownership over having been the one who put it out there in the first place. To overcome death requires you to NOT CHOOSE IT, which means to not MAKE IT, which means to not PROJECT it onto the body or AS the body.

Projection MAKES ...... perception selects from what is made. We're becoming good at correcting perception, but not so good at changing what we PROJECT. People correct their perception, then die. It's not enough. Death has to be overcome completely by ceasing to "project death" onto the body or onto the world, and ceasing to believe there are laws in the world which control your mind or have power over you. That includes even the physical, chemical, biological laws, which are all illusions.

This world only exists within the space-time belief. Space time IS a belief, and it is a false belief. All beliefs will end. Earth cannot exist without space or time. Spacetime is what holds it apart from itself and animates it. When there is no space - as in infinite reality/heaven, and there is no time, as in eternity, there can be no Earth! Unless you prefer your planet to be like a bowl of cosmic soup. ;-) Anything based on spacetime (such as planets, starts, etc) DOES NOT EXIST.

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."

It's important to become able to distinguish clearly between 'love' and a 'call for love'. However, know that to do this correctly requires Holy Spirit-level awareness. As Jesus says:

"You cannot safely make this division (between love and a call for love), for you are much too confused, either to recognize love, or to believe that EVERYTHING else is nothing but a NEED for love. You are too bound to form, and NOT to content. What you CONSIDER content, is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do NOT respond to what a brother REALLY offers you, but only to the particular perception o this offering by which your EGO judges it. The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content MUST be. Otherwise, it will attack the form."

So here Jesus is saying that Holy Spirit is able to clearly distinguish love from a 'call for love' because He clearly recognizes what love really IS, and therefore can tell when something is a call for love. But we have a lot of ego judgements in us and this prevents us from being able to make this call on our own, at least not until later after there has been a lot of purification. We are here to learn HOW to discern love from a call for love, by getting our own call for love answered BY love, enough to have some discernment. Discernment is a characteristic of the Holy Spirit, not the ego.

The answer is love, which is God.

The act of putting distance between myself and love has introduced unlove into my mind. My mind is now uncertain, doesn't know what the truth is, is confused and afraid. This is what questions are made of.

You will then seek to try to find answers to these questions, thinking they are anywhere other than in God. You don't think to reverse the question and go back to where the question sprung from. Instead you try to keep the question and answer it.

You will fail, because the answer is always love. Love is the answer to all questions because love renders the question unnecessary.

If you have questions it is because you are separate from God. Returning to God in some way, however small, will shine a light which will help to dissolve the NEED for finding an answer, and the question will disappear.

Especially if you are willing to really commune with God, and if you went to God with a whole bunch of questions in your mind, you may notice that they all totally just disappear. They don't necessary get the answers that you thought they must provide, and you didn't necessarily get pieces of information that satisfy the questions.... the questions just vanished.

It seems it would not be a bad idea if you are doubtful, afraid, uncertain or questioning, to just go join with God for a while. Soak up some love. Watch the questions dissolve, and you'll be better off.

It was really love that you wanted to find. Love was always the answer to your seeking.

Miracle principle 11 says "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 believe and perceive that your neighbor is not yourself, that they are a separate person, and you are not one, you will find yourself unwilling to give to them.

There is a very simple reason for this. If the two of you are separate, then logically when you give something to them, you are excluded from receiving it. What is theirs is not yours.

This leads to the quite sensible conclusion that, since your brother seems separate from you, you should NOT give to them, because if you do, you will stand to lose everything that you give.

It makes perfect sense because if the premise is that the two of you are separated, then it also makes sense to say that what belongs to you does not belong to them, and vice versa.

Believing that the two of you are separate, you will therefore find yourself "naturally" unwilling to give to others. You will not want to perform any miracles. You will not want to share yourself or give love.

Giving love across a divide, to a separate person, who is cut off from you, can only seem to entail a sense of loss. You believe quite logically that whatever you give you will lose, and giving will be a sacrifice.

This is rooted in the fundamental dynamic that giving and receiving are not one. If you and your brother are separated, then giving and receiving are also separated. Who you give to will appear to exclude your self, and so you will see yourself as not the receiver. If you do not stand to receive, then you will not want to give away, because it will seem detrimental to you.

In a sense, you could say that this appears to be selfish. However, the person is really just doing what seems logical based on the premise that they are separate. A person is unwilling to give because they want to keep what they give. They want to be included in the receipt of it. But because they see themselves as not included in the "list of receivers", they conclude that hoarding is a better strategy. This is entirely sensible and logical.

What this means then is that if you see yourself as separate from another, and you think you have something they lack, or you see yourself as a healer or giver, but do not see yourself as one with the other person, you will not want to give to them. You will be unwilling to perform a miracle of union on the grounds that giving so fully will deprive you of everything. And no-one is going to argue that this makes no sense.

If your brother is indeed separate from you, then by all means you should not give anything to him, because what he stands to gain you stand to lose. And so the ego will counsel that it's important to recognize the separation, make it real, and therefore stay within your private prison. And that it is in your best interests not to even try to give, or to perform a miracle of love, because this runs against your best interests.

So long as this separateness is maintained, you will of course maintain separate interests. What is in your own best interests is not the same as what is in the interests of another. If the two of you are not actually one, then there is no way for you to really receive or keep what you're giving. Only IF the two of you are one, can your interests be mutual, and therefore shared.

Only through shared interests, recognizing that you are one with the other person, they are a part of your self, and therefore it IS in your best interest to give to the part of you that you share with them, can you be naturally and logically willing to perform a miracle.

The ego will suggest this is impossible because it claims that you are currently separate. And if you are separate, there is no logical basis for saying that giving is going to help your situation. In fact giving will appear to deprive you, so long as you remain separate. And it's clue here is that if you give love, in an attempt to heal, the healing will have no effect on YOU, and therefore there is no way to bridge the gap anyway.

The interesting thing, however, is that regardless of how separated you are right now, when you TRY to give, you will find that the giving of love actually heals you along with it. You cannot heal without being healed. The love that you try to squeeze through to share with another is actually received by you as well. It includes you in it. And this inclusiveness of love actually unifies your minds and lifts your spirits.

If you can recognize therefore, however dimly, that your brother is yourself, and is part of you, and therefore you are not losing by giving, then you will become willing to give. Giving is sharing and inclusion, not loss If you believe that giving is going to deprive you, then you have to recognize you currently see yourself as separate. It's actually then a necessity to be willing to try to overcome this sense of separateness, in order for you to be okay with giving.

Indeed the course suggests that "miracles are taken first on faith", because you may be in a position where you do NOT really recognize your oneness with another, and you do not see them as part of yourself. They still seem separate to you. Which means that you're going to have to "take it on faith" that IF you give love and attempt to join, to heal the isolation that keeps you apart, then the love will do its job and make it clearer to you that you are in fact NOT separate, AND that you stand to gain from the giving.

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."

Your willingness to try to share, join, be one with, see yourself as, with others, brings a healing love to you, to heal the gap in your own mind, and to lift you up in addition to lifting another up. You actually receive the love that you give. When you try to heal another, therefore, you should find that you yourself become healed as well. Both of you are recipients of love's benefit because it is inclusive.

So if you assess how much you see another as separate from you, you'll also find that this correlates to how much of an "unhealed healer" you are. If you regard yourself as having something others lack, you are seeing yourself as separate. And then you will feel that you can expend effort and therefore become taxed by trying to give healing.

This sense of limitation or that "healing is a sacrifice", is all part of the unhealed healer's thought process. To overcome this the healer has to be included in the healing and thus receive what is given. If I feel that I cannot perform miracles because it would be too much effort, would require me to give a lot, and I'm not willing to lose a lot in order to do so - because I'm selfish, then obviously I need to learn that by giving I will receive and the sense of separation and sacrifice is unfounded.

By learning to give to another AS yourself, you can actually take that all the way, and through such equality of giving and receving you will find God.

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."

"The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss."

"Yet it is always God Who calls to you, and he who asks your help is but yourself. Who is the giver and the receiver then? Who asks the gift and who is given it?"

"Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same."

""Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. I must return It, for I want It mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind, and keeping it within Its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!""

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

A slight omission from the Course...

From the urtext beginning:

"It is crucial to say first that A Course In Miracles is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all.

You will see miracles thru your hands thru me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today.")"

The same introduction in the FIP version:

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. .............. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

Do you notice the complete removal of the text:

"You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today""

????????????!!

MIRACLES THROUGH YOUR HANDS THROUGH ME!!

Why was this removed? You think someone had an issue with the idea that we are asked to lay hands on people and perform miracles on a daily basis?

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened."

Notice here that Jesus talks about how God has his own "completeness", which is not in any way affected by our choice to separate. His own being, his real identity, is unaffected.

However, his "going out", his extending, his loving, his radiating, his creating, is BLOCKED, when the sons of God do not communicate with Him fully. This is because the sons have their own freedom. God's inner completeness is "separate from" the individual souls.

His creating, his radiating, goes out FROM his inner completeness, to create souls, but his own completeness is not changed by this act. Therefore the sons "are not God" as such. You are not merely the effect of God, or "God's radiance". You are more than that. God has ADDED TO existence in creating you as a distinct entity, "outside of" his own completeness. (really inside, but).

So there is a difference between what God IS - his completeness - his inner being - contrasted against his radiance, extension or creation, which goes out FROM Him to create his children, heaven, angels, holy spirit etc. God is thus complete within himself regardless of what his creation gets up to, which is why he does not participate in the separation, nor get dragged into it by his creations.

The key here is that God is free, and God creates beings who are free.

I don’t like having to go into Bible references, but there is one statement Jesus made which encapsulates in one place all the key miracle working principles of ACIM. It’s to do with moving mountains. There are different versions but this is a good one:

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith."

There are key parts to this which are ALL important and have ACIM principles to back them up.

~~~~~~

1) You must pray with your heart. It doesn’t matter what words you say because God does not understand words, but He understands what is in your heart.

ACIM: "Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for you receive. But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. It does not matter. God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality."

~~~~~~

2) You must have faith and trust in the Holy Spirit. Faith means trusting in God’s laws. "I am under no laws but God’s". Faith means believing, knowing, accepting (atonement), aligning with, the Will of God.

ACIM: "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought you saw."

~~~~~~

3) You must BELIEVE that it will happen and be convinced, essentially that it has alread been received.

ACIM: "There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid and giving them away."

~~~~~~

4) This believing entails a kind of IMAGINATION or VISUALISATION of the END RESULT of what you want to happen. Ie seeing the mountain in the sea in your mind’s eye.

ACIM: Not sure on a quote for this yet but other miracle workers have taught that the mind’s eye/imagination must be used to visualize what the person or thing will be like AFTER it has been healed/received. E.g. picturing someone swinging their arms around after paralysis has been removed.

~~~~~~

5) You must not have any doubt or fear. NONE. That means there will be LOVE and WHOLENESS in your heart and mind and perception.

AICM: You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do. But they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt.

Remember my own question, before you ask yours "Oh ye of little faith, wherefore didsth thou DOUBT."

(Reference to Christ and the apostles walking on water.)"

"Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles" - meaning, shifts in perception are not miracles because they are not *wholeness*. You must perceive with wholeness/love.

~~~~~~

6) Prayer is the medium of miracles. You must actually pray to "ask" and receive. The miracle doesn’t happen by just looking at the mountain.

"We said before that prayer is the medium of miracles."

"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."

~~~~~~

7) God/Holy Spirit are the power that makes the miracle happen, "not you". They work through you. The Holy Spirit is not a metaphor. It is a SPIRIT, a permanent creation of God, and it shares the POWER OF GOD.

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. He recognizes both God's creations and your illusions. He separates the true from the false by His ability to perceive totally rather than selectively."

~~~~~~

8) You must be single minded. That comes from being whole hearted, aware of love.

"A divided will can accomplish nothing." Or "a split mind can accomplish nothing" or "an untrained mind can accomplish nothing."

~~~~~~

Through these principles used in this combination, THIS is how supernatural miracles are performed. This may however be easier said than done. To have no fear. To have love in the heart. To be single minded you have to be aware of love, your heart has to be whole. You can’t have any fear or doubts. You have to have STRONG belief.

ACIM also puts it this way:

"There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don’t really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains.

It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don’t believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

Remember this: "There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do."

This is a course in HOW TO MOVE A MOUNTAIN. That is a miracle.

What we need to do, is learn to PRACTICE THE PRINCIPLES.

The truth is plain and clear. It can be presented in a perfectly clear manner. It can be spelled out with such logical clarity that anyone in their right mind would have absolutely no problem accepting it makes sense and is true. "No-one can argue with a fact" IF they are in their right mind.

However, when someone is not in their right mind and has an ego, something very weird happens.

It doesn't even matter how clear the truth is. It doesn't even matter that we are surrounded by and immersed in the absolute truth of God in Heaven RIGHT NOW. We still for some reason do not see it, recognize it, accept it, or want it. What is up with that?

Presenting the truth to someone extremely clearly, with maximal black and white clarity, leaving no room for confusion, STILL is not enough to get someone to accept it. This is why Jesus said he took every measure to make the course as clear as possible, but that people CAN AND WILL find controversy in it IF they look for it (with ego).

The problem boils down to.... the ego IS NOT WILLING to accept it.

We could be shown plain and simple what the truth IS. And yet we could still DENY it by being UNWILLING to accept it is true. This reminds me of Helen S saying that she knew the course was the truth but she could not believe it.

The ego has this very weird thing it does, a kind of blindness, an insanity, a sort of vibe it gets, even if something is totally plain and simple truth, that it will STILL persist with a sense of "I don't believe this", "It's not true". To have that kind of stubbornness in the face of the facts, is nothing less than an act of denial.

For example.

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (so now we know any opposite to love does not exist)

"Your Love is Heaven" (so now we know heaven is love - and expressed in many other phrases)

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." (so now we know, heaven and earth are opposites in EVERY way)

And because of this, logically, 100% bulletproof logic, earth therefore DOES NOT EXIST. Because love, which is the same as heaven, has no opposite that exists.

This is a FACT.

However, you can put this fact down in a post or put it in front of someone's face in big letters, saying:

HEAVEN IS LOVE AND HAS NO OPPOSITE, EARTH IS OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN, THEREFORE EARTH DOES NOT EXIST.

You can even put flashing lights around it if you like. And big giant arrows pointing to it. Even a sign that says "this is the truth, learn it well." And maybe even have it make big loud sounds so as many people come to look at it as possible.

But if someone is IN DENIAL... they will not be WILLING to accept this. They may in more extreme cases bawlk at it like some kind of horrendous lie was just told. Or launch into some kind of tirade trying to find holes or redefine words or come up with SOME RATIONALIZATION that seems to suggest, maybe this is not the truth. It is nothing short of the ego defending itself against the truth.

That denial is utterly insane. It is an unwillingness, nothing else. It's got nothing to do with whether the facts are true or not. The facts are true. They are solid. God established them forever. The only problem is, some people will see these facts and STILL, over and over again, DENY that they are true. There is an UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT IT.

That can only mean, the person (their ego) believes something ELSE is true, which they do not want to accept is FALSE. The unwillingness to accept something is FALSE, that you believe is truth, is the whole problem the ego poses for us. It thinks it knows what's true already. It's already decided, because IT wants to decide what ALL truth is instead of accepting it from God. ITS will to CHOOSE what the truth means, the authority problem, is its UNWILLINGNESS to accept God's Will. The facts. And so the ego WILL DENY the truth, until a person chooses to stop being IN DENIAL, and to become WILLING to accept that the truth is true.

The truth is, there is no Earth. Period. This is the meaning of "there is no world". Period. This isn't opinion. The logic of the metaphysics is utterly irrefutable. Jesus agrees with it. Jesus has expressed it. WE are the ones who WANT to deny it.

Denial of the truth really is the only problem we seem to have. It is an UNWILLINGNESS.

And what that means is, we are WILLING AGAINST GOD's WILL, willing with the ego, willing to have a separate will. Our separate will blocks us from accepting God's Will.

So if someone cannot accept this truth, that there is no world, and Earth does not exist AT ALL, it is because they are still rejecting God's Will.

When we become willing, we will be willing to accept. We have to be willing to accept truth in order to accept the atonement. This requires the willingness to put aside willing against God, and to will WITH Him. To carry out His will. Because his will for us is perfect happiness and eternal life. If we will against it, we will be in denial and choosing suffering and unhappiness and mortality's illusion.

We can stay in denial as long as we like. This is how we delay the curriculum. The time you take it is VOLUNTARY because you have FREE WILL. You need to be willing, to accept the truth as IT defines itself, and to align yourself with it, by being willing to let go of your belief that something else is true. No-one can enter heaven without accepting the truth as it is.

The idea that the world is just a dream, may sound very simple. But to fully and completely embrace it is a very tall order. If the world is just a dream, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to everything, to all people and object and events and places. Every single happening is framed differently, every interaction has a different meaning, and every piece of physical matter is up for question.

To accept this idea intellectually is very easy. It makes a lot of sense. If you can see the logic behind it, that we made this world as an opposite to God, and is therefore not real, you can accept that as making sense.

But to live it, to deep dive into it, to apply it everywhere and at all times, to remember it in the midsts of all happenings, to use it in all relationships, and to completely uproot all previous beliefs is long term challenge.

For me, the seemingly logical and clear conclusion that the world is not real, has become so refined and polished that I can see nothing to contradict it. Like, it makes total sense on paper. However, I still have a vast repository of "other beliefs" which have been convinced otherwise over time.

Beliefs in bodies being real. Beliefs in being a body. Beliefs in other people being bodies. Beliefs in events happening. Beliefs in seriousness and importance. Beliefs in value and priorities and hierarchies of difficulty. Beliefs in justified reactions and ego emotions and normality and human nature. All of those things scream that the world is real.

So what I find is that although I understand it in theory, my mind and beliefs still are quite uncertain about this idea. I go towards it a little more only to find other beliefs springing up into awareness saying, "but what about....". And every SINGLE one of those beliefs is rooted in the belief that the world is reality. The basic opposite premise of the dream. Each one of them signals and testifies that this is not just a dream.

So the mind then finds itself pulled in two directions. One direction pulls toward the seemingly glowing new "idea" or light, that it's true the world is just a dream and nothing is happening and no-one has ever sinned. And the other direction pulls towards the old worn out darkness of nightmares and hell, that there is sin everywhere and no hope for salvation.

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success."

"If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching."

I will go towards the light of the truth, and the ego mind will go into doubt, which is fear. It will say, but what about this, and what about that.... there will be an uncertainty and a "not sure about this" and a "can this really be true?". There is a DIS-BELIEF.

"Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs. The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief."

And the fact is that EVERY single opposition to the truth has to be uprooted and corrected and dispelled in order to have NO OBJECTIONS to accepting the atonement. If there is even a slight reason why you might not trust the truth, or suspect that it is false, or have a slight confusion about whether it is true or false, then you will not whole-heartedly accept the salvation it offers. Atonement can only be fully accepted through TOTAL willingness and certainty.

So I keep "naturally" checking and re-checking, looking at what the course says, reminding myself of its facts, re-considering the possibility that I might be mistaken about this new idea. I can't help but be "open minded" about the possibility that it is WRONG, because my ego already believes it is wrong and this pulls me into entertaining its possibility. And until I am wholly certain of its truth, which has to run VERY deeply and fully, this will keep happening.

"Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue."

These vacillations are to be expected for anyone who is attempting to awaken from the dream. If the world IS a dream and we have been believing it is NOT a dream, but a reality, then our entire way of believing and thinking and perceiving is going to have to go through a 180-degree transformation. Or as Jesus puts it, the upside-down thought system has to be turned right-side up, and that means nothing short of a complete reversal of your thought system and "world view".

Reversing your thought system WILL entail nothing less than realizing that everything you thought was what you did NOT want, you want. Everything you thought was evil, is good. Everything you thought was good, is evil. And all ego beliefs which claim a lie are actually claiming something else. It requires a tremendous sorting out of what is TRUE and what is FALSE, and in this endeavor you WILL be mistaken throughout the process. Which is why it requires a little willingness to consider the possibility that something else might be true, beyond what you currently believe.

I approach and I retreat. I get closer to accepting and then the ego fear pops up. I use the confusion as an opportunity to find more clarity, and then advance forward again. Each time becoming a little and more convinced, not just in theory but in practice, in direct experience, of the world's unreality. Because if what ACIM says is true, then "awareness of dreaming" and "the body is a dream" must become my new reality, before I can go home to God.

One thing is for sure, the road home to God is winding with spluttering false starts and lurches and gradual progress."I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright.""He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again."

"Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream"

"The Second Coming is merely the return of sense."

I was watching a little bug crawling along the edge of the floor. I noticed how its "design" was going to mean it had a certain short amount of time to live, to crawl around trying to find food, likely to eventually starve, and die. It seemed obvious that death is built into things in this world, into the forms, into the growth and death cycle. And then a spider noticed the bug and approached and killed it and ate it.

Obviously the life of the bug is not exactly rewarding. It's demise is more or less programmed into its body. It's life duration is only mildly flexible and definitely short. It is born and it grows and suffers and dies. Like a guarantee. Like a destiny or fate. The bug was going to die, right from the start. It could not escape this. And how completely closed and cruel and insane that is.

This is the "nature" of this world. This is the fundamental way of space and time. Of separation. Of a world made in false perception, as an attack on God and life, and as an attempt to reject reality. The world we made is fundamentally cruel and insane and everything in it is made to die.

It is ridiculous that such a system, which on the physical level no bodies can seemingly escape, guarantees that death will happen to everything. And if you think that your body will escape this as well, you are mistaken, unless you can become miraculous. For most, death will take its toll sooner or late. Not if, but when.

The fate of the bug is the fate of every body. How ridiculous that we should think it natural that this is what happens, or what is going to happen. And who would still be insane to deny that this too is likely to happen to them. You can pretend a while, but eventually it will bite you in the ass.

If this is true, and if this is real, there is no way out. There is then essentially no hope. Sooner or later death will strike. Sooner or later, no matter what you try, the body will end. It is inevitable, unless you are a miracle worker. The only way for there to BE hope, to BE a way out, to BE sanity and sense, is if the world is not true or real. If this isn't the ONLY way. If this perpetual prison is in fact somehow transcend-able then you have a way out of hell. But otherwise you are stuck, and denying you are is pointless.

This is why "there must be a better way". A way that is better than the world itself. A way that is light and free and outside of the confines of the laws of this world, the laws of death and the laws of suffering. Only if there is an alternative, another world, another reality, another set of laws to live by, can there be any hope at all. And fortunately there is, because the laws of God and the nature of HIS Kingdom is nothing like this hellish place.

The task then becomes to learn to rise above the prison sentence, beyond the destiny of death, and to overcome the hell you made. To find a way to exist that is nothing like the existence of the body. To rejoin a thread of hope and life and power and miraculousness. Because it literally will take a miracle to free you from death. It will literally require you to break the laws of space and time, to set yourself free from the cycle of birth.

Fortunately God has a plan and it is the atonement, the way home. There IS a way out of hell, through forgiveness. And this requires un-learning everything the world told you is true, rejecting all notions of limitation and lack and suffering and death. And accepting the FREEDOM that God has given you in your creation.

You are free from hell because you are not of this world. You are free from death because God who created you gave you eternal life. And you are free from the nightmare of inevitable suffering, because in God there is only perfect peace. There is no world, there is no suffering, and there is no death. And only through acceptance of life without opposite can you set yourself free.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"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."

"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."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

Ego is always about believing you are SEPARATE FROM the things you attack. That cause and effect are separate. That you can escape the consequences, and get away with murder.

If you project guilt through anger, you believe that the other person is guilty and not yourself. You might not be quite so aware that when you JUDGE in any way, you are doing the same thing.

You judge something that you believe is NOT YOU, in order to believe you've escaped the consequences of judging.

However, because the Golden Rule always applies, when you do to others you do to yourself. Because you are one with them, and a part of them. The part of you in them is attacked by your attack, and judged by your judgment.

You cannot help but feel judged, victimised, embarrassed, ashamed and guilty, when you judge something. And this is because all judgements you make are with the ego. They are attempt to separate off and evaluate independent parts, which splits your mind, and causes you to hurt yourself.

It's not merely that you should not judge because "its mean to someone else." Or that you'd be guilty if you did that to someone not yourself. But more that you should not judge because you CANNOT get away with it, and WILL experience effects upon yourself.

You think you sit within your body and observe and are passive and can hand out judgements on things outside of you with no effect whatsoever. This is not true. Judgement will disturb your peace and remove your happiness, because you cannot condemn and love at the same time.

"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." UrT29J2

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment" UrM16A2

"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." UrT3H1

The ego always thinks in terms of exclusion, because its entire logical system is based on "separation" between things.

e.g. A car is not a house. I am here but not there. That was loud, this is quiet.

The hierarchy of illusions comes from this.

No two objects sharing anything comes from this.

Finite limits come from this.

Not being able to truly share anything comes from this.

However, it is an assumption to presume that logic REQUIRES "separation" in order to make logical conclusions.

The ego's thought system of logic is based on a false premise that separation is a given. It is not.

If you take the "required separation between things" OUT of the equation, it is still possible to be logical.

That means you can say something like:

When I give this to you I do not lose it, it increases.

I have this, but I can share it with you, and we both can have it.

I am one with God, and so are you.

I have everything, and you also have everything.

This is the inclusive logic of Heaven and God's laws, which all follow the "absence of separation" in its thought progression and reasoning. God reasons that He will share, without loss, and thereby increase, by adding to existence, through creation. God also reasons that if He shares all of Himself with one son, there will still be all of God left to share with another son. And so on. This is perfectly logical when separation is absent from the reasoning.

When you think WITH the ego - using a form of logical reasoning based on exclusion and separation, you can come to a lot of conclusions. Those conclusions seem to make sense in reference to how THIS world seems to operate - your every day experience. But when you are talking about God's world, if you try to use exclusive logic to put stuff in boxes and separate things out - WHICH EVERYONE DOES - you will come to false conclusions.

You have to learn to think in an entirely new way. To think without separation. That's part of waking up.

When you be afraid of something, you are attempting to increase a sense of separation between you and something. You hope that if you can separate yourself from it more, you will feel safer.

It doesn't work. It is the opposite.

The more you try to resist or push away or separate from what you think is the thing you do not want, the more intense it will become, the more threatening it will appear, and the more you will be magnetized to it.

It is as though, as you pull away from it, using a psychological 'force' of withdrawal, you simultaneously create a great 'pull' of equal and opposite effect, which draws that very scary thing to you.

Perhaps you've had a dream, where in the dream you are afraid and are running away from someone who is chasing you. It seems that the more you fight to get away, the more versatile they become at closing in on you. Eventually, however, you might find (if you chose well) that you surrender the fight, and you stop running. What happens when you stop running? The person stops chasing. And not only do they stop chasing, but they stop seeming like they even wanted to catch up to you, and they don't even attack you. How about that? This is the mind symbolizing what is happening in the psyche when you become afraid - what you resist persists, until you stop resisting and then it literally becomes your friend instead of your enemy.

It is hilarious that, therefore, the very thing you are trying to get rid of, you are intensely CAUSING to come after you. The very thing you try to separate yourself from, tries to come closer to you. The very thing you don't want, seems to show up even more as though you want it very much. This is the simple functioning of the mind. You are literally creating your own enemies because intensifying the sense of separation between you and your enemy simultaneously renders them appearing to be an even stronger enemy.

Surrender is the antidote of fear, whereby you stop fighting with yourself and give up the pursuit of freedom from enemies, which causes you to be free from enemies. A paradox it seems, but this is how the mind works. Stop fighting and your enemies stop fighting you back. Stop attacking and your enemies stop being attackers. Stop fearing and things stop seeming so fear-inducing.

Stop.

Everything is ok. Absolutely everything. There is nothing to be worried about. Everyone is safe. Everything is light.

However, at the same time, there's this little voice that's saying "maybe everything is not ok". It's kind of a question, questioning whether things are ok. It feels like fear.

But it's not possible that both of these be true at the same time. One of them MUST be mistaken. As Jesus says in ACIM, they can't both be true and you can't tolerate contradictory thought systems, nor can you reconcile both of them being possible at the same time.

One of them is true, one of them is false.

Everything is ok. Everything is completely okay.

So what is this voice that says, maybe things aren't okay? That voice has to be insane, it has to be ego, it has to be trying to insist that things are not okay EVEN WHEN THEY ARE OK.

The ONLY thing asked of us, and the only thing we need to do, and the only thing we can do, is our function of forgiveness. The willingness, even a little bit, to consider that it might be TRUE that everything is okay. And it might NOT be true that things are not ok.

Can you find the willingness to consider that possibility? Maybe the voice which says things are not ok and that you need to be afraid - and its understandable that you would be afraid if things are not ok - maybe that voice is perhaps not the truth? And how could it be the truth if it is always permanently true that everything IS okay?

Everything is always okay because God makes sure of it. God's guarantee is that you are forever permanently real, permanently safe, permanently home, permanently free, permanently at peace. Anything that says otherwise cannot be true, ever. So what is this ego which comes along and attempt to say that, yes, that's true... BUT, something else is still more true?

It is an IMPOSSIBILITY that things are not ok. It absolutely impossible that things have gone wrong. It is not God's will. Everything is okay. And that means it's not possible to claim that things are not okay. That's a lie. It's a mistake. It's false.

You just need to identify that lie for what it is. Rather than consider it possible or true, consider it impossible and untrue. That's what it is. It IS impossible. It is ONLY possible that you are perfectly alright in God's love.

Only the truth is true.

I feel this is quite an important point. The body and its eyes were made NOT to see reality. They fixate on physical appearances only and CANNOT see anything else. They reports only the physical nature of objects. This is totally blind.

However, there is another part to the perceptual mechanism. Your mind uses perception to INTERPRET what the body’s eyes report. You can interpret the messages as true and real, or as false and illusion.

When you are being unforgiving, you look at the physical messages and believe you are seeing reality. Your mind emphasizes differences, believes appearances, and regards the physical as reality. This is FALSE PERCEPTION. Believing the body’s eyes is an error.

When you are being forgiving, you look at the physical messages and recognize them as ALL UNREAL. Forgiveness looks PAST the physical images and doesn’t believe what they report. Your mind will still SEE the physical images, but OVERLOOK them and barely register them. A forgiving mind looks PAST bodies to the Holy Spirit and Christ in your brother, beyond the body.

In true perception, seeing the "forgiven world", your mind is going to be very loving and happy and holy, and it’s going to perceive in a "whole" way. Whatever signals the body’s eyes send to the mind, it will shine PAST them. Love extends, it does not stop at surfaces. It moves beyond the limited, to the unlimited. So you’ll be loving, BUT simultaneously recognizing this world IS NOT REAL and reality is BEYOND it.

To see the "forgiven world" or to perceive the "real world", must therefore require looking PAST the physical forms that the body STILL is looking at. Here the mind is looking "towards" Heaven with perception, and perceives the light beyond the physical. But perception is stil interpretation. Jesus says those who perceive STILL need healing! To perceive towards reality is STILL a state of separation. There is only one reality, not two. Perception itself must end.

When perception ends, it ends along with the body, which was made to have something to perceive WITH. The mind overlooks the physical ENTIRELY, has absolutely no perception of form, and experiences ONLY formless reality. In this reality there are no forms, bodies, or planets, all of which were designed to BLOCK AWARENESS. In Heaven, there is only light, love, mind and spirit.

MINDS DO NOT NEED BODIES TO COMMUNICATE!

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, IT HAS NO FUNCTION. For ***MINDS NEED NOT THE BODY TO COMMUNICATE***. The sight that sees the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have not been brought in line."

"***ONLY MINDS COMMUNCIATE***. Since the ego CANNOT obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to CREATE, it can only try to teach you that the BODY can both communicate AND create, and therefore does not NEED the mind. The ego, then, tries to teach you that the body can ACT like the mind, and therefore IS self-sufficient. But we have learned that behavior is NOT the level for either teaching OR learning."

Now, I know that some people LOVE the statements in the course about the body being used "as a communication device" or "only for communication". However, think about this.

The body ITSELF does not communicate. It does not HAVE a function or a holy ability. It is like, a completely blank canvas or "speaker system" which can do NOTHING but allow the Holy Spirit to pass through and beyond it, IGNORING IT. It is the holy spirit that communicates. It is MINDS that communicate MIND TO MIND, OVERLOOKING THE BODY, BYPASSING THE BODY.

The body itself doesn't DO anything magical or special when it is used for communication. Essentially the body is inert and has absolutely NO FUNCTION other than for Holy Spirit to move PAST IT as a kind of temporary portal into this world. The body becomes nothing but an open window. Making the body "special" by saying it's a communication device, or that it is important, or does something, or is worth keeping for that reason, is a mistake.

MINDS DO NOT NEED BODIES TO COMMUNICATE. The body was made to limit communication. The body **ITSELF** DOES NOT COMMUNICATE. The Holy Spirit communicates THROUGH or BEYOND it, as if the body wasn't even there. Let's stop trying to make the body spiritual and God's gift to man. It's nothing but a separation device and only by IGNORING IT can communication happen IN SPITE OF IT.

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body."

"You have the vision that enables you to see the body not."

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid aside, and that is all."

"I will not use the body s eyes today."

See if you can follow this. It's quite simple and clear....

"A world forgiven cannot last. 2 It was the home of bodies .... 5 The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. 6 From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. 7 And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? 8 For place has gone as well, along with time."

"...for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. 7 For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever"

Ok. Focus on a few vital facts here.

1. The FORGIVEN WORLD, is the home of bodies. Human bodies. 3D physical flesh and bones.

2. When sin/guilt is gone (ego is gone), there is nothing to hold SPACE AND TIME in place. They both end.

3. The forgiven world depends ENTIRELY on the existence of space and time.

4. After seeing the face of Christ with Christ Vision/True Perception, the "last perception of the world", all WALLS and BODIES no longer exist. "No walls, no bodies." They are not merely there but seen differently. There are NONE. ZERO.

5. In REALITY, there are no walls, and no bodies.

THEREFORE. .... this is absolutely sound logic...

THE WORLD OF BODIES IS NOT REAL.

The world of bodies DEPENDS ENTIRELY on space and time, and when space and time END, which they will, THE ETNIRE CONTENTS of space and time, all three dimensional objects, all bodies, ALL PLANETS, ALL STARS, ALL GALAXIES, CANNOT REMAIN! Without SPACE, they cannot BE what they are in 3D. Without TIME they cannot show up at all.

ALL OF IT, the entire content of this universe, ALL BODIES, ALL FORMS, ALL PLANETS, are not real. They DO NOT exist in reality where there are NO BODIES, and NO WALLS, and NO TIME, and NO SPACE.

Misperception OF the world, merely distorts what the world IS. However, that doesn't mean the world IS real behind your misperceptions OF it. The world ITSELF, is an illusion. Your correct perceiving of it, your forgiving of it, merely reveals to you the truth ABOUT it, which is that IT IS NOT REAL. And this is why "a forgiven world CANNOT LAST." The forgiven world IS NOT REALITY.

If you can follow this and see the sense, congratulations. If not. ... well.... try again?

You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"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."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

If you believe bodies and sickness are real, you will look upon bodies suffering and want to fix them. The nightmare of things going wrong compels you to do something in guilt and desperation. So you try to heal, but you are simultaneously reinforcing the sickness with a belief in it. You attack the sickness to try to destroy it, and fight against it wishing it would leave.

Some small measure of healing can be possible this way, beacuse there is at least a partial desire to heal and help, and this can have some effect. But it is thwarted by the conviction that it won't work, based on an ongoing attack upon the victim.

By seeing them as a body, and as sick, as if true, you pull them down from being an immortal perfect Christ being in heaven and frame them as weak and suffering, which is an attempt to weaken and destroy them.

True healing completely ignores the sickness, recognizing that sickness and bodies are lies. They are not true or real, and what they present is a decoy designed to tempt you away from the truth. The bodies screams with its fits of proclamation as to what is wrong with a person and all the ways the are guilty.

To heal is to look past this with forgiveness, to not be deceived and to not listen to what the body says is true. The forms of sickness do not matter, the type of sickness does not matter, the alleged severety or length does not matter, and how it seemed to arrive deos not matter.

Instead the healer looks to the truth and focuses only on what is actually real, not deceived by false illusions. You look for the fact that the person in God's creation is already perfect, already immortal, already unharmed and already whole. This IS the truth about them, which their body and sickness are designed to hide.

So you must recognize that the sickness is a deceptive lie, a form of denial, covering up the truth that the person is NOT sick at all. The mind is playing games and covering over perfection with imperfection. Our focus should be only on the perfection of the person.

In fact, in truth, this means the person does not really need to be healed, because their spiritual self is still as it always was - perfect and unchanging, incapable of sickness, unable to die, and always the same. It is only their mind which seems distorted and lost, trying to form pictures of suffering that don't apply.

By focusing on the true light of the person you become glad and thankful to God that he has blessed you with this divine holy gift that is your brother. And so your brother is seen as YOUR savior and healer. And by thus recognizing his changeless perfection, he shares that perfection from God with you and you reflect it back to him.

As you become aware in your mind of the Holy Spirit in him, the changeless perfection in him, and given that your light IS your brother's light, and your mind IS part of his mind, you lift up his mind FOR him and help him to remember his own light. He thus is healed because you saw him AS healed, which is a fact and a truth and a reality, and not a wish or a desire. Something to recognize.

By recognizing that your brother is healed, this strengthens his view of himself in what seems to be his own mind, because your minds are shared. And so he is resurrected in your sight and the shining of this light INTO his mind AS his own shared light and identity, prevents him from having such strong belief in his own separation.

True healing is thus the extending and sharing of light and power and life from your mind into your brother's mind to enlighten and brighten his mind so that he can see his own perfection.

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else does not share WITH him. Magic ALWAYS sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does NOT have it."

"You might well ask why SOME healing CAN result from this kind of thinking, and there is a real reason for this. However misguided the "magical healer" may be, and however much he may be trying to strengthen his ego, HE IS ALSO TRYING TO HELP. He IS conflicted and unstable, but AT TIMES he is offering SOMETHING to the Sonship, and the ONLY thing the Sonship can ACCEPT IS healing."

"Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in an instant, and change the world in the next. That is because by changing HIS mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created FOR change."

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him."

"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM. This light will shine back upon YOU and on the whole Sonship because this IS your proper gift to God."

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

"When I am healed, I am not healed alone."

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

Nightmares and happy dreams have one thing in common, they are both dreams. It cannot be the fact that it is a dream that determines whether it is happy or not. It also can't really be a matter of what the dream depicts as happening.

A dream of a beach with a nice sunset and lapping waves might be regarded as a happy dream, while a plane crash with broken bodies strewn upon the ground might be considered an unhappy dream. But this is not really what makes a dream happy or not. If you think the form of what happens determines whether you are happy, you are being a victim of the world and are blind.

There can be an illusion of happiness, whereby a dream takes on a form of happy things, or things we think of as positive or uplifting. And there can be an illusion of unhappiness, whereby a dream takes on forms we do not like such as things going wrong. And likely we will decide only to be happy along with happy things, and to be upset around the bad stuff.

But what really determines whether we are in a nightmare or a happy dream has a lot more to do with one factor alone: HOW REAL IS IT. It's not a matter of what the dream is about or what it depicts, which is a trap easily fallen into. Dreams going in your favor are a trap just as much as evil doings.

Dreams are always essentially always dreams of death. They are dreams of death because reality, which is the opposite of dreams, is always eternal life. Every dream has underpinnings of separation and conflict.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So in effect, every dream you have has its basis in the separation from God, in opposition to God's nature, and in the idea of an opposite to eternal life. The themes of dreams, even the ones with the seashores and sunsets, are still rooted in some degree of separation.

What makes a dream a dream is that it opposes reality. It is a protest against reality. It's an attempt to turn reality into something unreal, something impossible, and something unnatural. Even if a dream is not real or is recognized as not real, it will always feature things happening which cannot happen in God's reality.

It isn't so much the fact that strange and unnatural things happen in dreams, because if you were to recognize it's just a dream you would laugh it off. It's more to do with the fact that you take it seriously.

A dream which is believed to be real, is given far more weight than a dream that is recognized as nothing. A real dream becomes a nightmare. If it is real, then everything that happens in it is true. If it is true, then all the experiences are real threats, real dangers, real awful situations, and real horrors.

The mind then experiences them as if reality is now a horrifying, twisted, unnatural but nevertheless real thing. As if it's true that someone has died a horrible death, or its true that everyone died in the plane crash, or its true that there was a revolting murder. Only IF IT IS TRUE does the dream upset you.

What ACIM is telling us then, is that since we're appearing to live in a dream world, a seemingly waking dream of Earth, if we believe it is real and true it will seem like a nightmare. Sometimes it will seem tolerable if the events taking place are regarded as safer, but it won't be long before it comes up with some new problems or disasters.

"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."

You can be sure then that the world is setup to be highly problematic, with temporarily illusions of reprieve and peace, in between vast hordes of horrors and stresses. But what determines whether it UPSETS you is whether your mind believes it is REAL or not. What makes it a living hell, is not so much what happens, but WHETHER it really happens. Whether it is true or not.

A happy dream then isn't so much a dream where nice stuff happens and you have a gap in between the world going to shit, because the world is permanently shit. It's more a matter of a mindset or way of looking at the world, in which it is not GIVEN reality or truth or power, and so it is recognized as not having any.

It cannot upset you because you don't choose to use it to do so. It does not hurt you because you know you can only hurt yourself by believing the world is capable of real harm. It cannot make you sick or die unless you use the world as a prop to pretend that you, as an immortal being, can suffer and die.

So what once would've been interpreted as a nightmare, comes to be reinterpreted as harmless, because you have lifted away from it the one thing that ever made it dangerous - the idea that it is REALLY HAPPENING. If the world is nothing BUT a dream, and is regarded correctly as NOT REAL AT ALL, then nothing in it can threaten you, hurt you, make you sick, or destroy you.

A happy dream is a dream thus in which your mind is free from the world because it does not GIVE it any reality, power or truth. It has power OVER the world because of this. You are now recognizing yourself as the dreamer of A DREAM, and not of a reality. And no nightmare can remain a nightmare when its heavy darkness is lifted away by the light of truth.

"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."

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds."

"Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."

"That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death." "In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."

The "one mind" or "one mindedness" is the mind of the soul in total union with all of creation.

The "right mind" or "right mindedness" is the same as miracle mindedness, the Holy Spirit's mind of atonement, a state of true perception, and the end of the dream.

The "wrong mind" or "wrong mindedness" is the same as false perception or various states of denial within perception.

HOWEVER, at times Jesus has referred to you having a right mind BEFORE the separation. e.g. "You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor." This suggests you and others (souls in heaven) had "right minds" prior to the separation idea. If being right-minded is being sane, it means you were sane before the separation, and right-mindedness as in atonement is a reflection of that.

It seems the right mind "ends" when one mindedness takes over but you cannot become LESS right-minded when this happens, so one-mindedness includes right mindedness.

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction in which it can move."

"The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"We said in a previous section that the miracle is an expression of miracle-Mindedness. Miracle-Mindedness merely means Right-Mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker nor of the miracle receiver. However, as a creative act, the miracle need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind. But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness in someone else. "

"In this sense, when their behavior is unstable, they are obviously disagreeing with God's idea of the Creation. This is a fundamental right of man, although not one he would care to exercise if he were in his Right Mind."

"Biblical quotation relates to the healing of a devil-possessed man, in which the sufferer was subsequently found healed, in his right mind, and sitting at feet of Jesus."

"He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit, that which is nothing more than your right Mind, reminds you."

"The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which IS real, that it IS its own learning device, and that the learning device is more real than IT is. No-one in his right mind could POSSIBLY believe this, and no-one in his right mind DOES believe it. "

"Innocent (or true) perception means that you NEVER misperceive, and ALWAYS see truly. More simply, this means that you never see what does not exist in reality. Whenever you lack confidence in what someone else will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his Right Mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying (incorrect use) the essentially creative power of the miracle. The miracle perceives everything AS IT IS. If nothing but the truth exists (and this is really redundant in statement, because what is not true CANNOT exist) Right-Minded seeing cannot see ANYTHING BUT perfection. We have said many times that ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real existence. This, then, is all that the innocent can see. They do not suffer from the delusions of the Separated ones."

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order. "

"Only One-Mindedness is without confusion. A separate, or divided, mind MUST be confused. A divided mind is uncertain by definition. It HAS to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. "

"The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer is at last possible. As you well know, transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be TRANSFERRED to knowledge, or CROSS OVER into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning "carried over," for the last step is taken by God. "

"Punishment as a concept is in total opposition to Right-Mindedness. The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. "

"This is what his own Right-Mindedness cannot but dictate. The purpose of time is solely to "give him time" to achieve this judgment. It is his own perfect judgment of his own creation. When everything that he retains is lovable, there is no reason for any fear to remain in him. This IS his part in the Atonement. "

"NEVER confuse right-with wrong-mindedness. Responding to ANY form of miscreation with anything EXCEPT a DESIRE TO HEAL (or a miracle) is an expression of this confusion. "

"Only Right-Mindedness CAN create in a way that has any real effect."

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it. "

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him. "

If their ego is strong, or they are afraid, sharing the truth with them may be grossly misinterpreted.

Your belief in the truth is admirable. Your conviction and faith in it is well placed. And you wish therefore that everyone would simply see this same truth and be set free.

However, this is assuming that people are PERCEIVING CORRECTLY, and that just by sharing truth they will "get it".

People are not perceiving correctly when they are "in need" of help. Therefore if you share truth with them, they will see their own misperceptions in it, will interpret it as an attack (at least at first), and will reject it.

People WANT to be unconscious and asleep. People WANT to be sick. If you try to take that away from them when they aren't ready or willing, or push them too fast, you will just continue to scare the shit out of them.

This is an error I have made many times. Allowing someone to stay in suffering is quite a challenge, especially if they do not want to be helped. It's a challenge to accept them unconditionally regardless of their willingness to change.

If someone is insane and hallucinating and you show them something that is true, they will not see it as it is. They will see what they mis-perceive in it. They will see their ego reflected back. This will frighten them. They will react to this frightening perception by blocking it, making them sick.

Jesus warns us against trying to perform miracles all of the time because, in some cases, the person's reaction to something "miraculous" happening could frighten them even more than the amount of fear you were trying to heal.

This is perhaps also why God doesn't just rush in and scoop everyone up "forceably". Love does not force. It has infinite patience. So we need to learn to be discerning and allowing, letting people have their chosen suffering even if that's all they can accept for now. Slowly and eventually they will come around.

The more you try to help, save, fix, heal, liberate, etc, the more you may be pushing someone into reactions and defenses which are making them sicker.

If you try to shove Course truth down someone's throat when they are unwell or afraid, it may make them even more depressed. Mis-perceptions are the problem, they interfere with communication, they impose a "learning disability", and make it harder to correctly reach someone.

Unless perhaps you are Christ or Holy Spirit and know exactly what is most appropriate. But even then, the person has to have willingness to allow themselves to be helped. If you step away from their help, they will not force it on you.

Either its love or a call for love. But you can't recognize that a call for love is ONLY a call for love if you are not already loving.

So there you are, not being loving yourself, and you see another person not being loving either, and instead of being able to see clearly and recognize their call for love, you instead see it as a call for attack.

In other words, you see your own attack reflected in the person and can't look past it.

So it's all very well saying that people are calling for love and that we need to give love, but if you are not giving love you won't even be able to perceive this clearly. You'll see the person attacking you and not loving you and you won't think, oh, that person is calling for love - it won't be obvious and immediate - and if you try to force yourself to 'see it' then you're just faking it.

When you are love, it frames all of reality and all perception in such a way that everything strikes you differently. You have enough clarity and knowing to be able to DISCERN that someone is either being loving or is calling for love. Its obvious to you that the person is hurting or that they need help or that their real need is love, rather than what they say they need.

I don't know that it's helpful to try to go around thinking of everyone as calling out for love. If I'm not 100% loving then it isn't genuine. It can be a GOAL, however, to become able to discern that there is only love or a lack of love, but I can't possibly expect myself to be able to perceive this while I still have an ego.

With an ego I will see ego in others and I will see it as a justified attack that justifies why I should NOT love in return. I need to use this to help me to raise my own awareness about how *I* have blocked love and am calling for love, then allow love in, so that I can allow it to extend to others also.

Once I've done that, and have become the light of love, then I WILL be able to see that what other people are doing is calling out for love, and that love is the ONLY appropriate answer to respond with in every case.

ACIM: "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

"However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

It's a very common belief that ACIM teaches "separation is impossible". It's the idea that "the separation did not happen". And this also leads to the belief that "I need do nothing" because nothing's really happened. Which then justifies literally "doing nothing" in the presence of "something happening".

The fact remains, that there is a "something" body sitting looking at a screen reading these words on the surface of a physical object. And no matter whether separation "happened" or not, something other than total abstract reality IS occurring right now. You ARE reading this. If it were "the whole story" that "separation did not happen", it would not even be possible to read these words, or for you to even have eyeballs. But it is. And denying that is not helpful. Something is happening here. Or at the very least, SEEMING to.

The distinction that needs to be made is this. REAL separation is not possible. Let's be clear, that you cannot in reality change God or His Creation. "What God has has brought together let no man put asunder" basically means what God creates is permanent. So literally, you cannot create a REAL split in Reality. You can't ACTUALLY cut your REAL self off from the REAL Father.

It is in this sense and only in this sense, that separation is impossible and has not happened. You literally cannot and have not separated. It's the same thing as saying you cannot sin because you cannot cause God. Which means there literally is no REAL sin. Nothing real can be threatened. So we can say, you cannot REALLY separate from God. However, this is not the end of the story.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

While on the one hand you can co-create with God freely, in accord with His will, you CAN also DENY creation, because you HAVE that freedom. This is what "mis-creation" means. You use your freedom to create, against itself, to try to create nothingness. And here is the fact. We DID attempt to do this.

We DID have a tiny mad idea, that it was POSSIBLE to deny creation. Not merely to conceive of mis-creating or denying reality, but that by doing so it would have REAL EFFECTS. By mis-creating or attempting not to create, the result in truth is NOTHING HAPPENS. It's more like you become unwilling and stop willing anything at all, so you don't really do anything.

But you BELIEVE that by denying reality you DO something REAL, which you believe has real consequences or effects. You think that somehow "willing nothing" (death) can be real, and can replace reality. That "not creating" can be considered a "happening". It's because you believe in the mad idea, that you "make it real" to you. And whatever you believe in SEEMS like reality.

You cannot produce a REAL separation, and you haven't. BUT, you can deny reality and TRY to believe that an IMAGINED separation is possible. You can dream of separation. You can invent illusions, which is what it looks like when you repress or withhold extension. You can put the brakes on eternal life, by resisting your own creative power. And this is an attempt to STOP creation. ie, to kill it.

This results in what seems to be a state of death, or a dream of death. "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." As the mind denies itself, which imprisons its will, this kind of "puts it to sleep". It is resisting its own wakefulness. This resistance against life seems to take on the form of bodies and forms and sickness and death. These are the "slowing down" of unlimited extension, or the contraction of fear which "materializes" as physical matter. Or as the Course says, "the granite block of sin."

You can believe in this dream and make it seem real to you. You can imagine or mistake this dream for "actual" separation. And therefore can believe that a sin has really occurred. You can look to "events" and believe them, as if proving separation IS happening. But it's not REAL sin or REAL separation that we're trying to fight our way out of, it's an IDEA of it. We're believing that an IMPOSSIBLE separation is possible. And this believing is PRODUCING the world.

This is why Jesus says "The separation HAS occurred." Because He isn't referring to an ACTUAL separation. "The separation", also referred to as "the fall of man", isn't a name for a REAL separation from God. ACIM isn't even dealing with a real separation. But it is dealing with the fact that you DID have an idea of the impossible being possible, and you DID believe in it, and you DID mis-create, and you DID resist and deny reality.

While this "state" is not real separation, it IS a "mis-use" of freedom to create against creation. It has resulted in the "illusory" state of what it looks like to seemingly "not create". Or rather, to use creative power to make it seem like there is no creative power. To use life to pretend there is no life. To use the mind to pretend there is no mind. Even in death, a state of "no choice or will", both choice and will are being fully utilized to make it seem to happen.

"The separation" isn't anything to do with "you actually did separate". It's to do with you ACTUALLY DID DENY reality. You DID conceive of using free will against itself. You DID use your mind to deny your mind, putting it into what seem to be states of unconsciousness (death).

This has resulted in "dreaming", which has resulted in the making of entire illusory worlds, complete with seemingly happening bodies. And yet "all events are nowhere" because they are really a DENIAL of happening. The "occurring" or "happening" is actually a NOT occurring or happening, masquerading as an occurring or happening. This is how it deceives. It SEEMS to be real.

This has thus "made up" (fiction) a world which Jesus refers to as "a lower order reality". It is something you made in an attempt to NOT create anything. It is a NOT world. It is made of NOT bodies. It is the dream of pretending you are not creating anything, and not having eternal life. It's what you get when you use freedom to will against will. THIS illusory mis-creative state DID OCCUR. Mind DID go to sleep a while. It HAS dreamed of a universe made of nothing.

This doesn't mean a real separation has happened. But a fictional separation HAS happened. And so long as we believe it is a "something", rather than an attempt "not to do anything", or "not to live", we are in a state of denial. This denial produces all illusions of suffering and death. Thinking UNREAL things are real, that the world is real, is a mistake. It is a DENIAL OF reality.

"The world was made as a place where God (reality) could enter not".

God wills only to create. He does not ever will to use creation against itself. He does not deny himself or go to sleep. However, creation BY His children is not yet perfected, and so we need help to return to "sanity", which means only using creation constructively.

To be in reality means to not use will against itself, and to not believe that doing so does something. All it does is nothing. Mistaking the nothing for a something is "the fall of man", ie "the separation." Deception, denial, confusion, insanity, and the dream of death.

"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are afraid, you ARE deceived. Your mind is NOT serving your Soul. "

"Your creation by God is the only foundation which cannot be shaken, because the light is IN it. "

So we ARE in a situation where we're making an illusory world, made of nothing, which seems like a something. And it's not quite a total nothingness otherwise even this would not seem to happen. It has a little amount of reality left in it. Even the ego depends on God a little. But these dreams of opposition to creation are lesser realities, denials of happiness and blocks to awareness. They also deny permanence and eternal life.

So the fact is, we DO need to "do something", given the context of the denial state we are in. Which is why God created the curriculum and the Holy Spirit. Because we DID choose to believe in unreality (the rejection of reality, using reality against itself). We are trying to hold a fake world in place. We, in time, are still choosing the ego.

"I need do nothing" is an atonement-level truth, only LIVED when fully accepted. It means there are no REAL NEEDS. You don't NEED to accomplish something because all that's happened is the ABSENCE of accomplishment. Darkness is the ABSENCE of light.

Even though in reality there are no real needs, your investment in neediness DOES have to be undone. You do need to UNLEARN everything you taught yourself in error. Until there is no more "need" for time and space. The curriculum therefore is aimed to help you to remember that mis-creating against your will is not what you want, and has no merit, or appeal.

It is futile, because you are merely attempting to NOT CREATE anything. The "creation" of death is not creation of anything. Or in other words, "the separation" does not cause anything to happen, has no real consequences, and is pointless. The "sane" would recognize this, and not bother to entertain the notion that "denying creation" is a worthwhile exercise. And in the total withdrawal from trying to make it achieve something real, the world you made disappears.

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

There has been no real separation.

There has been AN ATTEMPT to make the impossible possible.

You have TRIED to separate from God.

You have used creative will against itself, denying your will to will anything at all.

You mistook the "willing of nothingness" for a "something".

You now seem to NEED atonement. To correct the mistaken belief that willing nothing will produce a SECOND KINGDOM.

Once you accept that ONLY the Kingdom of God accepts its own existence and is in accord with willingness, the world that was NOT created does not exist.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

There is no world. But you think there is.

I went back and slowly re-read the entire "miracle principles" from a very early urtext version, plus some other sections.

The impression I have of miracles now is different and more cohesive. Whatever our understanding of them is, they must incorporate every single thing Jesus says about them, including the ability to literally move mountains, to heal the sick and raise the dead, and also to correct perception. Here are some key points and new clarity on the subject.

1) Miracles are best understood in a vertical direction. They come down from above and lift upwards, or restore life and reality. "Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven." "performed by those who have more (above) for those who have less (below)". They extend or radiate down into the world from God. They also go out sideways between brothers because brothers are ultimately IN heaven.

2) Every aspect of the "descent" into egotism, separation, degrading reality, becoming insane, unwillingness, unconsciousness, etc which is all an attempt to introduce separation between brother's minds (to split the sonship or divide the Kingdom), to interfere with mind-to-mind communication, is the exact opposite of miracles. Projection is opposite to miracles. Magic is opposite to miracles. Miracles inherently correct level confusion, heal projections, undo magic (which includes sickness), and restores awareness of the truth.

3) Every movement towards restoring communication, reintegrating reality, bringing wholeness to your mind AND your brother's mind, uniting you with your brother, healing relationships, removing separations, all effects resulting from separation and sin (including sickness, illness, suffering, death), and cancelling out the "consequences" of sin, are accomplished by miracles. "Miracles unite you directly with your brother". "The purpose of miracles is to restore reality". "Miracles make brothers one in God" etc. The ultimate aim of miracles is to induce revelation and direct communion with God. This however does not exclude miracles that manipulate forms or move mountains, because mountains are actually also thought-forms in the MIND and are actually BELIEFS which mind can manipulate. "The world IS perception" (in the mind).

4) Miracles originate in the mind of Christ. They require the absence of fear, and an awareness of Christ's presence. Jesus inspires them. While they come FROM the Christ mind, you can be in varying degrees of "miracle mindedness" depending on whether your mind is functioning and responding in an ego-driven way or a love-based way. "Miracles are seen in light" "Miracles reflect an inner awareness of Christ." They are therefore typically requiring quite an advanced state of mind, BUT they also can be performed even by "beginners" who are able to temporarily put fear aside and shift into VERTICAL perception away from the horizontal belief system, which allows them to bring forth a miracle which helps develop "conviction in the ability" by seeing physical appearances change. The ability to make this shift isn't necessarily an act of your own purification but a USE OF the parts of your mind that have already been purified.

5) There are two aspects - miracle-mindedness/readiness, and miracle-working. To be miracle-minded is based on the STATE of your mind. But a mind based on love is not unexpressive or static. It is a mind that extends, gives in order to have, shares, increases, creates. Being miracle-minded/ready emphasizes that you are "ready, willing, and able" to "perform" or "do" miracles. The "action" aspect of miracles should be under Christ control (Jesus) due to the atonement plan and should be "involuntary". You are not supposed to consciously control that part of it yourself, but you ARE responsible for becoming "ready, willing and able".

6) "Miracles are thought-creations". Our mind goes through varying degrees of power to CREATE or project, depending on how much ego there is. We become more able to express creatively as we wake up. The mind can shine INTO and BLESS other minds due to having both been created by the "same spark" of God - being of like kind. Miracles not only unite you with your brother, they also increase your own strength by giving love, and also strengthen your brother. They in a sense "repair" the sense of separation between both of you, increase the level of communication, and therefore UNDO the manifestations of the separation idea (forms of sickness etc). Miracles are tightly associated with CREATION, and therefore are capable of creating. They combine "thought-creation" with belief, in order to produce results, which includes changes to *appearances* - meaning all forms, in a law-defying way (including moving mountains).

7) Miracles are not shifts in perception as such. However they can produce a shift in the perception OF OTHERS. Miracles are inter-personal ACTS. They are something you DO to EXPRESS the state of love that you are. They are an "application" of your holiness, and thus create in the same way that God applies himself to create. Because they can "correct" misperceptions in yourself AND others, they can heal your brother and yourself. They bestow grace and blessing on others. Miracles can correct perception and shift it, but when you yourself "correct thinking" and "change perception" that act itself is not necessarily a miracle. Miracles express from above downwards, changes of mind express from below upwards. You stepping "up" to the miraculous mind can require many steps before you are "high" enough to express "downward" with miracles. In a way though, any movement towards God/truth/love is a step in the right direction. The shifting itself isn't the miracle, the miracle is the love that expresses AFTER the blocks to awareness are removed. Although having said that, when you express a miracle it strengthens you also, increasing your sanity, so....

8) The miracle-mind thought system is totally different to the ego thought system in that it has an omnipresent and holographic nature. This means that the miracle is everywhere. It also means the miracle can express in "a part" of the dream and seem to produce a wide variety of specific results. However all miracles are inherently united and consistent and devoid of any recognition of levels of difficulty or heirarchy or size or any other ego construct. "To God all things are possible." I visualize God as like this ocean of liquid where all aspects are fluidly flowing all over the place and completely defies the entire ego thought system and all of its very rigid, compartmentalizing laws. The miracle-minded are literally miraculous in that they can create anything, can do anything, can heal anything, can produce any changes to any appearance, and there is nothing they cannot do.

9) Miracles collapse time because they introduce sort of a separate "moment" of time in which all of the horizontal laws are defied and a "new state" is directly implemented, instantly, which is almost like taking a tiny clip from "the future" and inserting it into the current timeline "out of the temporal order". Another analogy is a vynil record, as if you suddenly bump the arm and it skips some tracks and resumes playing further along in the song. The interval in-between of the "thousands of years" that were skipped, essentially has collapsed or deleted an entire portion of the timeline. Their purpose IS to collapse time and bring about the end of the need for time. Ultimately they lead to revelation and total wholeness, and then are no longer needed. This is all to do with mind. But this DOES NOT exclude apparent changes to forms, bodies, sickness or death, because all of those things are actually mental states, thought-forms, ideas, images in the mind, which are just as much within the scope of mind-power as anything you would normally consider "inside your mind". You have to realize the entire universe is WITHIN our shared minds, and therefore even physical forms have to be ultimately disappeared and "healed" and "shone away" by our light, in order for the the entire sonship to totally be free from dreaming.

10) Miracles are a maximal service you can render a brother. All expressions of love are maximal. That means they express FROM "total" love, not partial. However, you can be in varying degrees of miracle mindedness depending on how you express or "relate". If in a given situation, you have one possible response which is egotism where you make the problem real and use it for attack etc, and another possible response is that you remain "in love" and affirm the truth of both of you and see your brother as sinless and calling out for love and you "empower" both of you, this is a miracle. You chose to love instead of hate, you chose to express a truthful healing charitable gracious blessing rather than attack.

11) Miracles are also "energizing" in that they give LIFE to others ("all around the signs of life spring up"). They supply a lack. They are given by those who have more to those who have less. Lack is just "lack of love", so by supplying love you bless and remove a curse and energize and shine light onto the "area of separation" which causes it to reintegrate and become whole again. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness" because you have to be in a mindset of wholeness (miracle readiness) in order to see your brother's holiness and innocence, which strengthens this in both of you and thus energizes and gives life to both of you. When you heal, therefore, BOTH of you receive healing. Separation isn't a "private idea", it's something that "comes between" like a double-sided sword, and removing this sword restores communication in BOTH directions.

12) Miracles can move mountains and raise the dead. Since both of them are illusions and all forms are illusions, and all illusions are based on separation, the miracle-minded have total power OVER these things, either by bringing life to them and healing them, or by demonstrating this power OVER them by changing appearances. A body returning from death and decay to life, or a mounting moving from left to right, are both "changes to appearance". Miracles change appearances to PROVE and demonstrate that the forms themselves ARE illusions BECAUSE they could be changed, and therefore cannot be real because they are so easily manipulated by the mind. The illusion of objects being physical, heavy, large, or that death is too difficult to undo etc, all these illusions crumble to nothing when they are shown to be changeable.

13) Miracles require faith and trust. Having faith in your brother's innocence even when they show up as guilty/sinful/sick, overcomes/overlooks/forgives their illusions and can shine them away. Your mind CAN enter the mind of another and enlighten it. Also certainty (fearlessness) is required (even if temporarily suspended), because miracles occur as thought-acts which are decisive and committal. You don't have to merely have "strong belief" "of your own", you need to also RELY ON or depend on God, trusting HIS power and strength, and knowing what HE is capable of, so that you have TRUST in the certainty of the outcome and KNOWING that it must occur. This goes beyond your "self" as an individual or separate miracle worker. You can do nothing on your own, but you can work WITH God to co-create. Faith/trust also correlates to belief.

14) Miracles also correlate to acceptance/receiving of atonement. They are expressed through PRAYER, which brings about the active "doing" of miracles, because in the prayer you combine thought and belief and faith (key ingredients that are MUST have's), and ask with the heart (not necessary to use words). This "asking" is almost the same thing as "expressing" or "stating" and "seeing" what change you want to occur, as though it has already happened and has been received. "Believe you have received and you shall have it." Miracles EXPRESS FROM the atonement. You have to accept some atonement to accept some "miracle juice", so that you can give it. That means that in some small way, in some part of you, on some issue, you accepted the truth about you as innocent and loved, rather than condemn yourself with sin. This part of you now has received a miracle or has been restored to a more miracle-oriented way of being, and this now can express to others. In a healed part of you, when confronted with another situation like what happened before, you might now "bless" instead of "see sin", and this IS capable of healing others.

15) Overall it seems miracles are essentially HOW the entire illusion of separation is reversed. In all its way, all its appearances, all its consequences. Every form of suffering, all sickness, death, and also demonstrations of the falseness of the ego's laws. Moving a mountain may well demonstrate and violate laws of physics and weight and size and so on, proving that these are not TRUE, that illusory limitations are not true, and this can bring healing to the mind. Miracles can be teaching devices. They remind you and your brother of what is true about you. The entire "lifting up" of all brothers and the "lifting away" of all forms of separation and the "disappearing" of all suffering and forms and illusions and eventually the universe itself, is "the miracle", which is kind of everywhere and omnipresent and comes from God.

16) You are a miracle. This means that God creates miraculously because God is also miraculous. It's natural to be miraculous. You are miraculous in the sense that anything is possible to the holy, and God who is alive has miraculously created the sonship. To the ego, it should not be possible, but it is. A miracle as a "creative expression of thought" is your natural way of creating in heaven. It's how you express love. It's an extension of yourself and increases joy and overcomes lack and restores BOTH you and the thing you create. When you express miracles or miraculously in the world it similarly follows the same laws of GOD and creates wholeness, healing, health, happiness, freedom, love, perfection, holiness, joy, peace, life.

17) Miracles are super-natural. This means they are totally above the ego's "nature", and fly in the face of everything we think of as "the nature" of this universe. This includes all ego laws and physics and time and space. They express from above the battlefield, from heaven, falling like drops of healing rain on the desert (absence of love) below and supply a lack and bring the dead back to life, raising it up towards resurrection. Miracle workers are like angels or holy beings who step inside a dream of death and start expressing themselves, demonstrating all over the place that nothing here is fixed or limiting or has any power over you at all. As beings of light and immortality and creativity, when we express as this kind of identity (christ-aligned) we totally defy every law of the world and therefore literally produce "miraculous" effects. To the ego, miracles are considered un-natural, but to God they are considered completely natural. There is nothing they cannot do and there is nothing your holiness cannot do. You are UNLIMITED, and the sheer degree of limitation of this ego world is shown to be extremely false by every miracle expression.

18) Being miraculous is your natural inheritance and does not require anyone else to choose to be miraculous. It doesn't "require" a holy relationship. BUT, it can IMPLEMENT a holy relationship due to the fact that it heals the separation between brothers. Jesus as the one who woke up can perform them for anyone, and he inspires all miracles which intercede for your holiness, but in so doing, he also unites you with Himself and the two of your minds join and share love, if you are willing. You still have free will and no-one can force anyone to wake up or be healed if they do not want it or if it would frighten them.

19) If you can grasp how God's mind is omnipresent and this means that all of him is in every location FULLY at the same time, which TOTALLY defies the entire ego world and all its forms of matter and space and time, you can get a better sense of how anything is possible in God. And how, in contrast to that, this world and its laws are set up to be extremely limiting, to suggest no two things share anything, forms are things in their own right, nothing is coming from the mind, mind has no power over anything ("the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this"), and everything is separated off and compartmentalized into boxes and finite objects. This is SO TOTALLY OPPOSITE to God's nature and the nature of anyone who has access the miracle-working mind or the "attitude of love". Love isn't just a finite thing in a box. It is miraculous, life-giving, spacetime defying, and completely ignores all illusory differences. When the world is PROVEN to be NOT separated out, and NOT disconnected from the mind, and NOT a thing in its own right and can easily be changed by the power of the mind, the true nature of God's UNLIMITEDNESS is revealed.

20) Miracles are what happens when an ego-defying, omnipresent, spatially-defying, time-defying, massively potential, unlimited, whole miraculous mind, comes into contact with the ego illusion of limitation and separateness. You can express them and bestow them everywhere, they are unlimited in number, and all support each other forming a "web" of atonement. You have to realize that all physical objects are part of the MIND, and are thoughts, and are perceptions, and are ideas in the mind. Therefore when mind changes and there are actions of expression of miracle-mindedness, this CAN and DOES also change and manipulate the appearance of physical objects. Separating mind from body is an error in this sense. Mind has power OVER the body. "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body." Whenever you elect to "be a bit more miraculous" or "be a bit more loving" or "express and stay strong in the truth" or "utilize your creative power" or "bless another" or "repair separation" or "reveal the unreality of an illusion" or "demonstrate that you are not limited" or "join minds with your brother" in any way, you are being miraculous.

ACIM: "Miracle Principle 7

Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

DICITIONARY: "the process of making something spiritually or ceremonially clean."

What is purification? It is the process of removing "impurities", so that you end up with something that is "pure" and has no impurities in it.

What is it we are purifying? Our minds. We are removing "impure thoughts", beliefs, values and attitudes, so that we can be pure. Or rather, aware of our purity in God.

What are examples of impurities? All of the ego stuff, including evil thoughts, attack thoughts, grievances, unforgiveness, blame, anger, murderousness, all forms of sickness and death, separation ideas, body identification, guilt, fear, a sense of sinfulness, unworthiness, etc.

Heaven is a state of perfect purity. Another word for purity is innocence. It's a state completely devoid of any kind of sin or evil. It's so pure, that there isn't even a tiny trace of desire to attack or hurt, there isn't the slightest hint of anger or resentment, and absolutely no sense of fear resulting from seeing others as attackers.

Heaven is SO pure, it is very likely far more pure than you can imagine. And in order to enter awareness of heaven, you have to purify yourself of all states and attitudes that are impure. This actually entails being willing to give up a whole bucketload of ego things, which you may not be currently totally happy about giving up.

You have to give up ALL anger. You have to give up ALL attacking. You have to give up ALL guilt. You have to give up ALL sin. You have to give up ALL temptation to see yourself as victimized. You have to give up ALL desire to hurt other people. You have to give up ALL guilt, shame, and sense of not being good enough. You have to give up ALL motives relating to trying to get stuff. You have to give up all specialness, all selfishness, and all trace of conditional love. You have to give up unhappiness, sickness, suffering and death. And you have to give up the entire ego thought system.

The end result of this relinquishment, is a state of PERFECT PURITY. It is a purity SO pure that it is utterly immaculate, undefiled, and completely holy. The degree of holiness is off the charts in the extreme. You cannot enter such a state with any trace of malice in your heart or any amount of unforgiveness. You have to have forgiven absolutely everyone and everything, and hold nothing against anyone, and see yourself as utterly absolutely sinless.

Only through the complete removal of the belief in sin can you achieve this, because it is the atonement. It is the recognition that there is no sin anywhere, not in you, and not in anyone or anything. It is a state of TOTAL SINLESSNESS. That doesn't mean like, sin is real and evil is real and you have to stop being that through repentance, but more like, the recognition that these things are NOT real and you CANNOT BE them. That sin does not exist for you. There is only total harmlessness, gentleness, softness and love.

The most holy and pure, the most innocent and harmless, the most gentle and clean, the most unwilling to hurt, the most beautiful and new, are those who have purified themselves of the ego, of temptation and of death. It is the purity of the angels. It is absolute allegiance to God. It is a complete and total surrender of all control and egotism and all false ideas of self. It is the complete letting go of all false goals and made-up laws and artificial identities, and any attempt to be other than God created you.

So ACIM is saying that in order to become miraculous, to access the miracle-minded state in which you can PERFORM MIRACLES, which is a very loving state of sinlessness and holiness, you have to FIRST purify yourself. Your mind has to be decluttered and washed out with the spirit and ALL ego in you has to be utterly removed. You have to be cleansed and spiritually renewed. Jesus refers to this in ACIM also as a "rebirth", like becoming new again, as if nothing had ever happened to turn you into an evil monster.

You purify through whatever process works for you. But let's also realize that forgiveness is really the state OF purity, of atonement and of true perception. We are trying to reach that state. Because "only christ forgives" and that means we need total acceptance and alignment and awareness of Christ, TOTAL, MAXIMAL LOVE, in order to be in a state of forgiveness. Anything we do towards that goal is our "practice" or "application" of course principles in which we are trying to move ourselves CLOSER to that state.

This is why ultimately our entire work with the course up to its end goal of resurrection, is really a process of PURIFICATION, which RESULTS IN a state of total forgiveness. In which you have completely forgiven yourself, ie, have recognized that there is absolutely zero ego or sin or death in you. Where your mind is completely open and clear and in the service of spirit. Where Christ can now move through you, and Jesus can perform miracles through your hands.

To purify, you do whatever works, provided it entails the successful progress of moving closer toward total purity. Closer towards God, who is utterly pure, sinless and innocent. You can't be having attitudes of ego, attack, anger, blame, guilt, shaming, destruction etc, if you are to be pure. You can't be a keyboard warrior on facebook. This is the part the ego in you does not like or want, because it means giving up the things the ego CHERISHES and wants. Its way of relating to others through murderous attitudes. It does not WANT purity or holiness, it wants to be evil and wrong and bad, vulnerable and unhappy and destructive.

You can use catharsis, letting go, surrendering, development of trust, opening your mind, trusting God, various modalities of healing, practicing performing miracles, tuning into the love and light in you, prayer, asking for help, receiving love and healing, inviting the Holy Spirit to operate on you (mind/body/emotions), affirmations, cancelling error, reprogramming yourself, convincing yourself, reminding yourself, doing workbook lessons.

You can purify by forgiving people, polishing up your relationships to make them holy and equal and sharing, learning to be more unconditionally loving, working with the angels, giving the day to the Holy Spirit, seeking out blocks to love and removing them, digging out old hurts and unforgivenesses, getting rid of secret sins and hidden hates in the light, handing stuff over to the Holy Spirit, receiving guidance, doing Christ's work etc.

Whatever works. However you purify, however it is you can get yourself into a state of PURITY, of innocence and holiness. A state where you no longer WANT to hurt yourself, or others. A state where you see your TOTAL SINLESSNESS, and therefore project sinlessness onto others and the world, seeing them as sinless, and therefore having no grounds for fear or blame. Purity gives you harmlessness, just as it also puts your mind into a supernatural state of being invulnerable and IMMORTAL.

The innocent are strong and powerful. They are protected by God. They cannot BE hurt and DO not hurt themselves. "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" etc. They feel safe and secure and protected and guided. They cannot be attacked and are above the battleground. Nothing can intrude upon them because of the strength of spirit. And they can bestow healing and miracles and life upon those who are not yet purified - those who believe they are the living dead.

Once purification is reached, in part or in whole, you will have access to miraculous power. You will have the innocence with which to love, and the light with which to see. You will have the purity of heart and the total angelic harmlessness and gentleness with which to heal others. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing." You will become a miracle worker, able to raise the dead and resurrect the impure.

You will be able to actually purify others for them. "It is the privilege of the forgiven (pure) to forgive (purify)." And now you are doing God's work, until you go home to heaven, to the state of total and utter purity and innocence forever.

It is clear from what Jesus says, and metaphysically, that physical matter, space and time are entirely illusions, made to oppose reality. The term physical always refers to literally PHYSICAL objects. Matter, bodies, planets, galaxies, animals, trees, flesh and bones, brains and so on.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

"Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel." ... "If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving."

Some people do not like this definition that PHYSICAL MEANS LITERALLY PHYSICAL, because they think that the ACTUALLY physical is somehow God's creation that we're misperceiving. And to justify this they'll come up with ingenious forms of denial to try to frame the term "physical" as meaning ... ANYTHING BUT physical. This is a TOTAL reversal of what physical means. When Jesus says physical he means physical. When he says Earth he means planet Earth's physical matter. When he says body he means the physical flesh and bones body.

It's fairly obvious when such a huge modification to the meaning of words is happening, that it's going way outside of what Jesus ever intended it to mean. To claim that "physical body" is not referring to your actual flesh and bones physical body but some kind of esoteric mental identification, is a major form of denial. Body identification means identifying WITH the physical, not that the body itself is a mental construct. Or that the "body's eyes" is some kind of "false mind eyeballs" that doesn't refer to the actual PHYSICAL eyeballs and their biological sight.

Yes in some way the physical is just thought and dream and illusion and is in the mind, but this can't be used to ever frame them as being truly spiritual, holy, perfect, or permanent. Physicality entirely depends on space and time, to keep the atoms separated and prevent a massive nuclear explosion. Without the illusion of space, matter is not possible and all physicality cannot seem to exist at all. And space itself is nothing but a belief.

That which is physical is FALSE PERCEPTION. "The world is false perception". It is the granite block of sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin". It is the veil which covers over reality and the face of christ. It is the gap of separation which splits the mind and comes between you and your NON-physical brothers. Nothing physical is real. Everything physical is an illusion. And the physical flesh and bones body can only see the physical world, not reality.

If physical matter is TRUE, and is REAL, then physical matter HAS TO BE GOD. And this means God HAS TO be decay and torture and scarcity and limitation and suffering and sickness and death. This simply does not fly. The physical Earth is nothing like God. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary. "

"Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. "

"When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and glory are lost to you and SO ARE YOURS."

"Thought cannot be MADE into flesh except by belief, because thought is not physical."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"Physical medicines are a form of "spells.""

"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."

"What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the "hero" to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body?""Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."

"This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark."

"It frequently happens that an individual asks for physical healing, because he is fearful OF BODILY HARM."

"However, at the same time, if he WERE healed physically, the threat to his thought-system would be considerably MORE fearful to him than its physical EXPRESSION."

"The first involved the fallacy that only the physical is real.""The third involves the endowment of the physical with non-physical properties."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

"His "birth trauma", another valid idea, was also too limited, in that it did not refer to the Separation, which was really a FALSE idea of birth. Physical birth is not a trauma in itself. It can, however, remind the individual of the Separation, which was a very real cause of fear."

"The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major perceptual distortion. Physical impulses are misdirected miracle impulses."

"You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable."

"The body is merely part of your experience in the physical world. Its abilities can be and frequently are overevaluated.""The so-called "battle for survival" is only the ego's struggle to preserve itself, and its interpretation of its own beginning. This beginning is usually associated with physical birth, because it is hard to maintain that the ego existed before that point in time."

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son by taking on a physical appearance. It is this the body's eyes look upon."

"Attack is always physical. When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since this is the ego's interpretation of the body. You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation."

"If you are physical, your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

It is not possible for you to suffer unless there is guilt in your own mind. The only way for a mind to have guilt in it, is for that same mind to believe it is guilty, thus identifying itself as guilty. All suffering is self-inflicted.

When it seems that you are upset in relation to someone else, suffering or feeling hurt by them, with them seeming to do something to you, or as though they are the cause of your upset, something has gone wrong with your perception.

You first believe yourself to be sinful and therefore guilty. But then you deny and repress this belief, portraying yourself as an innocent victim in order to pretend you are not guilty.

Then someone comes along and does something. It doesn't matter what they do, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and does not cause anything. It is "neutral". However, it may reflect, correlate to, play upon, emphasize, or put focus on, your own hidden belief in your own guilt.

This will "trigger" your own guilt to rise into your conscious awareness. Having denied that it exists, which places it into unconsciousness, it suddenly appears to come out of nowhere, and you still believe you are not the one who put it there.

It seems then fairly logical, even obvious, that this guilt only showed up when someone did or said something, so what they did must be tied to it or the cause of it somehow. Therefore, you conclude, they are the one who just hurt you and made you feel bad.

This is of course a mis-perception. But it leads you now to launch into a lengthy story, driven by pain, about how this other person must be the one who is mistaken. Whatever or whoever they are, if they caused your guilt and suffering, then there must be something wrong with them.

You then explain that they are the one who must change in order for correction to occur. You will feel justified in attacking them, getting revenge or seeing them as wrong, because you do not see how you have attacked your own self by believing you are guilty.

You can become very lost in this. This story unfolds in your perception about how this person is doing all this hurtful, upsetting stuff to you, causing you to suffer. And while you're in this mode, you will be stuck.

You'll be stuck because they are not the cause of your guilt, so getting them to change, even if you could get them to change, will not get rid of your guilt. The ego will tempt you to try to change another in order to atone and correct the situation, promising that it will "work" and succeed in restoring your illusion of peace. But it won't work, because only you are the cause of your guilt and suffering.

When you have identified your sense of self with sinfulness and guilt, you yourself have come to perceive and believe that you are made from sin and guilt. It redefines your identity. Sin and guilt can be targeted by the ego in others, because these things are inside of the ego thought system.

Anything within the ego thought system is fair game and open to being attacked by any other part of the ego thought system. If your sense of self is "within" this mind, made of or defined by what this mind believes, then this ego mind can attack what you are.

If you have identified yourself as made of sin and guilt, being sinful and guilty, you have identified yourself AS ego. You are now joined with and a part of the ego's belief system. Anything within that belief system can be attacked by that belief system. Then you will seem to experience that what you are can be attacked by other people's egos.

However, if your sense of Self, your identity, is outside of the ego's thought system entirely - if you are unconditional love, one with Holy Spirit, then you are literally out of reach of the ego's thought system. It cannot target you, it cannot attach to you, it cannot see you, it cannot identify you, it cannot interact with you, it cannot touch you, and it cannot hurt you.

The ego is incapable of accessing the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the light of truth and light dispels darkness. Approach the light and the darkness in the mind must be dispelled and disappear. The ego is shown to be nothing, in the Holy Spirit's thought system, so it simply cannot exist where He exists.

You, identified as innocent and holy, are incapable of being affected by the ego, by any kind of attack, by any kind of guilt-inducing behavior, or any judgements or accusations from others. Without guilt in your own mind, and without you being the one to put that guilt there, nobody can put guilt there on your behalf. Nobody can reach outside of the ego and put guilt into the mind of the Son of God.

Therefore, without guilt in the mind, the mind cannot suffer. "A guiltless mind cannot suffer". A mind which does not, itself, believe in its own guilt, cannot suffer. A mind which does believe in its own guilt, must suffer, by its own hand, and it will project the cause of this suffering onto others. Yet nobody else is ever attacking what you are. Only the ego attacks itself, it never attacks love because it can't.

So if you are upset, caught up in a drama about what someone else is doing to you, how they are wrong, how they are causing you to be unhappy and stressed and upset, you are mistaken. It is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty. It is YOUR sin and guilt that is triggered by them. They have merely come to show you, reflect to you, make you aware of, point out and trigger, the pre-existing belief in sin that you yourself put into your own mind. You cannot blame them for telling you what you believe is true.

Although you will hate for them to point out your own belief in your own faults, you can hardly blame them for what you yourself believe about yourself. You have to learn to admit that it is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty, and your experience of upset because of this is entirely something you have chosen to experience. You yourself put it in place, and you yourself can undo it.

You are not upset because of someone else, you are upset because you believe you're sinful. You still believe you are guilty. And regardless of the form or specifics of someone else's attempted attack or judgement, it will touch upon and remind you of the guilt that you believe in. Thus you agree with the content of their attack, that it means you are guilty.

You will react and exclaim that no, they are not telling the truth, and that you have been unfairly attacked, but look again. You DO believe in what they say about you. You DO believe you are guilty. You DO believe you should suffer and be hurt. You DO believe in your own guilt. And that is the only reason you are upset.

You need to learn that all attack is really self attack. You need to learn that the secret to salvation is the admittance that you are doing this to yourself. That you chose this sin and guilt, and can change your mind about yourself - forgive yourself. It is YOU who needs forgiveness, not another person.

You cannot forgive another person. It is metaphysically impossible. You can only forgive yourself, because only you have really attacked yourself. It is not real or true that anyone else ever attacks you, so it cannot be something that is open for forgiveness.

Have you really sinned in the way that you believe you have? Was it a real sin? Or are you forgiven because you did not sin in reality? Are you forgiven because you cannot sin and are still innocent? These are the questions you need to be finding answers to, not attempting to figure out why someone else is hating you for you.

You are innocent. You are holy. You have done nothing wrong. Your sin is false. You are not guilty at all. Let yourself be free.

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"The world is but an effect and not a cause at all."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

"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 that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

----- There are two levels -----

1. Higher mind, which is causal and causes everything. It causes the EFFECT of a lower level 3D world, which is entirely governed by what this mind decides to make happen. This is the level of "the dreamer."

2. The world, a 3D projected image which is entirely an EFFECT of the higher level. This level has NO causality and cannot make anything happen on its own. No part of it causes any other part of it to do anything. This is the level of "the dream."

The higher level CAUSES the lower level effects. That means causality is "vertical". It proceeds from above to below.

The lower level of the world itself, has NO CAUSALITY in it. It is 100% pure effect. It is not alive, it has no will, it has no mind, there are no forces or powers, no reactions, no chain of events, nothing. It's like a movie that's been projected onto a screen. The movie cannot DO anything outside of the content that the PROJECTOR has put onto the screen.

However, the higher level mind is capable of creating ILLUSIONS of lower-level causality. For example, it can place an apple in the world, next to an orange. It can then make the orange move (which cannot move by itself). The orange can move towards the apple. However, there are NO lower-level laws that DO anything, not even laws of physics. So the orange moves THROUGH the apple, having no effect on it. It's like it's not even there. It's just an IMAGE. Two images overlapping.

In order to make the orange "collide with" the apple, the higher level mind of causality has to make the apple move, at just the right moment as the orange SEEMS to touch it, so that there is an ILLUSION of a reaction, which makes it look AS IF the orange collided with the apple. There were NO laws on the level of the world causing this reaction. It's entirely fictional, decided upon by the higher level mind.

To an observer who has "bought into the illusion", it SEEMS as if there is some kind of "law" on the lower level, governing what will happen when the orange hits the apple. And the these are described as laws of physics. These laws are based on the idea that stuff on the lower level is capable of CAUSING EFFECTS on the SAME lower level. This is the idea of "horizontal causality". ACIM refers to the illusion of this as "horizontal perception."

The illusion is so convincing that it seems there is a "law" in effect, some kind of universal rule, that ensures the apple and the orange will act AS IF they are colliding. These are then thought to be natural laws or laws of nature. THEY ARE NOT. THEY DO NOT EXIST! The orange NEVER causes anything to happen. The apple NEVER is affected by the orange. BOTH OF THEM are being simultaneously moved and animated BY the higher level mind.

So in the world, it SEEMS as though there are laws of physics which govern how everything interacts, but it's 100% once removed from what ACTUALLY causes everything to occur. The world ITSELF is once removed from reality/causality, which is why it is an EFFECT or illusion and DOES NOT EXIST!

The things in the world that you THINK are "causes" or "causing something", are NOT THE CAUSE. Cause is always in the mind! They are ILLUSIONS of causes, pretending to be causes. Both causes AND effects on the level of the world are BOTH EFFECTS. This is why Jesus says "the world you see DOES NOTHING. It has no effects at all" (it has no causal power at all).

So while there is this horizontal illusion of cause and effect, which is of the ego, since these so-called "laws" are actually fictional and not the REAL cause, when the mind decides to make a change in what it PROJECTS, it is capable of BREAKING THE LAWS. If the mind decides suddenly, that the apple and the orange will combine together to produce a banana, THEN SO BE IT.

Vertical mind will CAUSE a banana to be projected INTO the world as a banana showing up. This will VIOLATE every conceivable "horizontal law" that you can imagine. And THIS IS MIRACULOUS! "Miracles violate every law of reality as the world judges it." The mind has simply decided to CHANGE ITS DREAM, and this breaks all of the FICTIONAL horizontal laws that APPEAR to explain why things are the way they are, or what limits they are restricted by. Mind OVERRIDES the law!

Miracles are also demonstrations. And miracles are also teaching devices. When the higher mind expresses its power OVER the lower level, and shows that it is the AUTHOR of the "fake laws" by breaking those laws, it demonstrates that those laws ARE ILLUSIONS. "Appearances can be changed." And by changing those appearances, it is PROVEN that those appearances MUST have been illusions. This is educational.

Additionally, the "nature" or "natural law" of the horizontal level, which is fake, is BELOW the TRUE NATURE of the higher level mind that causes it all. That means that which CAUSES the lower level effects is ABOVE the NATURE of the lower level. Another word for that is SUPER (above) NATURAL. Supernatural. Miracles are supernatural! They transcend the "nature" of the "ego", which is the illusion that horizontal causality is real. Also the idea that horizontal causality is real, is really the ego idea that there is no God! That there is no HIGHER CAUSE.

This is why it was possible for Jesus to do things like walking on water to defy gravity, multiplying food to defy ideas of limited materials, changing a tree branch into a snake and back again, raising a body from seeming death, etc.

These are all POSSIBLE because the mind that MAKES all this worldly content show up has POWER OVER IT from a higher level. When a person's mind has become VERTICALLY ORIENTED, which relates to "miracles entail a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception", the mind aligned with CAUSALITY can make ANY changes you can possibly conceive of, OUTSIDE of the illusion of "laws that can't be broken." And this is what MIRACLE WORKERS demonstrate. The idea of irreversibility is SIN. Miracles prove sin is not real by CHANGING what the world says cannot be changed.

The distinction between what is CAUSE, and what is its EFFECT, perfectly explains the structure of cause and effect and WHY supernatural miracles are possible and HOW they operate. They are acts of MIND and WILL firmly rooted in causal power, simply electing to produce a different EFFECT. Since "the world is but an effect and not a cause at all", there is nothing in the world or OF the world that cannot be changed, healed, undone, reversed or manipulated by the power of the Mind. This includes bodily sickness and death. "The mind (cause) must be stronger than the body (effect), every miracle demonstrates this!"

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Separation HAS occurred? Sort of.

Some people claim that it is impossible to explain the "tiny mad idea". It seems logical at first, because when the ego asks a question like "what if", it's not really a question, and the tiny mad idea hasn't "really" happened in reality. It has no real consequences in reality, and it's just a dream.

But the tiny mad idea HAS happened in IMAGINATION. It HAS happened in your mind, and you've "made it real to you". That is why you are sitting there right now reading this on your screen, which *seems* real. A dream "at all" wouldn't even be possible unless God gave you free will to choose to mis-create and dream.

"Whatever is true & real is eternal, & cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

Your mind has FREEDOM, and therefore can be used to choose EITHER to will with God's will, or to will against it. Either in service to the soul/spirit, or in service to a fictional ego. This freedom granted you the very REAL "possibility" of being ABLE to make this choice, to use will against will, and to mis-create. God would not give you an `option` that could *actually* hurt you at all, and it has not, but this freedom HAS given you the ability to OPT not to laugh at the idea of separation, if you choose.

Jesus also describes below how while you have free will, it is necessary to choose both FOR (toward) God and AWAY from the option of ego/dreaming.

"While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting ALWAYS entails both election AND rejection. If two candidates are voted for for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.

This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent ANY REAL allegiance.

Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

So you can see here that the mind actually has the freedom to "choose to dream" if it wants to. It CAN place itself under tyrranical rule and seem to "sleep". Of course this dreaming is FICTIONAL and it is not REALLY happening in reality, it has no real consequences in heaven, but it IS still a "valid option" that you are free to entertain or ELECT.

This essentially means that, the tiny mad idea is a POSSIBLE CHOICE, but it is not a REAL choice. That's a vital distinction. You COULD choose to dream if you want to, to mis-create, to opposte God's will (or try to), but it's not a REAL option. It's an option of unreality that the mind is quite capable of making if it chooses to. This is why "heaven is a choice I must make" - the mind HAS to freely, willingly, elect to choose heaven, ie the only real option, and not the ego, which is an imaginary option you've tried to MAKE real.

Does this mean the dream "has happened"? It has not happened IN REALITY, but it HAS occurred within the context of the mind's freedom to dream. It doesn't have REALITY to it, but it IS something you are CAPABLE OF PRODUCING through mis-creation. And when you DO freely choose it, with your free will, it will become seemingly real to you because what you accept into your mind becomes your reality.

"To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

The mind has to ELECT (choose) to be under service to Christ. This IS a free-willed choice, not something forced upon you. God does not create slaves.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea"

There DID creep an idea, a thought, an imagining, into the mind, because IT COULD. The mind CAN DREAM. But the dream that it produces is not real or like God. Elsewhere Jesus refers to it as "an order of reality", meaning that you gave reality TO it to try to turn it into reality, through belief, but the belief is based on a false premise, so it is ultimately unfounded and fundamentally unreal at its core.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea", at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

I will leave you this statement by Jesus:

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

What he means here, is not that the separation is REAL, but that in the MIND, it HAS OCCURRED as a thought, an idea, an IMAGINED possibility. There HAS been an attempt to usurp God's will. There HAS been a "dream". Not REALLY, but ... in the proper context, in the mind, this IS something that we CHOSE, something we TRIED TO MAKE REAL, something we tried to DO, to will it, to mis-create. We DID mis-create. That's the ONLY reason that you are able to be sitting there seeming to be a body reading this text right now. But the ultimate truth is, this is a dream, an unreality, it's ultimately based on a false foundation or premise - that there is an alternative to God's will, and because that is untrue, it is not REALLY REAL. So it hasn't REALLY happened in truth, in the biggest picture.

You DO, in a sense, dream a dream. But you CAN stop dreaming, by changing your mind. Dreaming is a state of MIND, of insanity, believing that time can replace eternity and space can replace God's presence. Effectively, there HAS been a "fall of man", but the fall is imaginary. It is ONLY an idea, but it IS an idea, not less than that. The "existence" of this idea, however, must be temporary, because it is an idea of being temporary, and is naturally limited and finite. It is therefore INEVITABLE that the dream will end and the IDEA - in which this entire physical universe dwells - will disappear.

Here in ACIM Chapter 2, the section on "Separation and the Atonement", Jesus spells out CLEARLY just how powerful the mind is to produce miracles.

He speaks of the combination of belief and thought with a power so great that it can LITERALLY move a physical mountain. It is not a metaphor, and it has nothing to do with mind correction or a shift in perception or an undoing of an illusion.

He also tells us that we FEAR the power of our mind and would rather believe that we have no influence, which is part of our disowning of our power and an attempt to render the mind impotent and incapable.

Jesus was able to do the kind of miracles He did because he knew how to use belief and thought combined with the Power of God/Holy Spirit to express and bring about "changes" in the world. For Him, He was performing these kinds of miracles all the time. And it is these kinds of miracles that He IS trying to teach us to become capable of in A Course in Miracles.

Why are we so afraid of this? Why do we have so many defenses against this definition of miracles? What will it take to believe it? A demonstration? Does it take a miracle to believe in miracles?

I think the ACIM community is in for a big shakeup and a probably additional layers of denial and defense, when some people start to perform these miracles consistently and convincingly. Miracles will be proven because they are demonstrations of the truth. And yet even when they are demonstrated there will be further denial.

........

"Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating.

It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it.

You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level."

- Jesus

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

Nothing belongs to you exclusively. Everything is shared by everyone inclusively. This is the law of God.

"We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth."

"what is Yours belongs to me as well"

"As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me."

"We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth."

"everything WE do belongs to you as well"

"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part."

"Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son."

"And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."

"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."

You have nothing that is yours alone. Which means you have nothing special or exclusive or just for you. This means you aren't special, have not been granted special favor, and don't have any treasures that belong just to you. This however doesn't mean you have nothing at all, because in fact you share everything with everyone. God's Kingdom is not a place of exclusive ownership. It's kind of like an open buffet. Everyone is welcome, everything is for everyone, everything belongs to everyone, and everyone has simultaneous access to everything. It's completely open and unlimited.

"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."

God who is complete, cannot add anything to himself. He is already infinite and everywhere. He is kind of like a closed system that way. However, all parts of God host all of God, because every part of God is God. And this means every part of God shares the whole of God. All of God belongs to every part of God, and every part of God is whole.

God can therefore create by sharing himself. He hosts his creations within his own being, literally sharing his own existence. But this requires that anything he creates, must be created to purely and completely share all of himself. Any created being must have full access to everything God has, and must inherit everything from him.

Inheriting from God does not mean you receive a windfall that's exclusively just for you. It's not like winning the lottery. Everything that exists still belongs to God, and is him. But he creates you by allowing you to share everything he has. He gives himself to you in your creation. You inherit God, and inherit everything from God, but God is a co-owner of everything he shares.

"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever."

"And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him."

"The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

This means that you are created to share everything, and the only way you can exist at all is if you share absolutely everything. God cannot add anything onto the outside of himself, so can only share what is inside of himself. You are hosted by God within his own being, and your entire function must be to share everything openly and fully. Only by sharing it can you have it at all, and you must be willing to give it all in order to have it.

This creates an environment in the Kingdom that we might describe as a totally open society. It's a relationship in which everyone has total full access to everything at all times. Everyone has all of God. Everyone is plugged into God. Everyone has FULL access to everything that exists, simultaneously and in parallel. One being having full access does not deprive any other being any kind of access. Their access overlaps.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

You can exist only if God shares everything that exists with you. And now both of you have everything that already exists. And you can only exist if you are willing to fully share everything that exists with everyone else. Which means that no-one anywhere in the Kingdom has anything that anyone else lacks, and no-one lacks anything that anyone else has. Everything belongs to everyone forever.

This also leads to the fact that no-one can have anything that belongs ONLY to them. You have absolutely nothing that is yours alone. The ego begs to differ, because "the ego is the idea of selfishness." It is the part of you that believes in specialness and in exclusivity. It wants to have everything for itself, such that it shares nothing with anyone. The ego is the antithesis of sharing and openness, and wants exclusive rights, ownership and control. It was the desire not to share that led to the separation. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."

What this leads to is the truth that, in and of yourself, by yourself, alone, you have absolutely NOTHING that belongs exclusively to you. Nothing you can put your name tag on, nothing you can say is legally yours, nothing that is just yours and no-one else's. If it seems that you have such things, possessions, toys, clothes, cars, houses, bodies, whatever, which seem to be exclusively "yours", and no-one else's, then you are aligned with the ego.

We need to recognize that in and of our own selves, we can do nothing. We have no life without God. We have no power without God. We have NOTHING without God. You don't even have any existence without God. You have nothing that is personal just to you which is yours alone. Nothing belongs just to you. In effect, you are utterly powerless and tiny and weak and afraid and empty and non-existent if it all boils down to "what is only mine".

"I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."

"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."

This is where it becomes interesting. You alone, on your own, in isolation, have absolutely NOTHING. That is to say, ignoring God for a moment, ignoring your inheritance, ignoring anything that anyone else has, you actually have absolutely ZERO "for yourself'. Zero that is "of you". Nothing that has been sourced in you, that you have invented, within yourself, which is unshared or belongs to you alone.

That really means that you don't have any kind of special talents or abilities that can be said to "make you unique". You don't have any special "super powers" that others lack. You don't have any exclusive "something", some kind of special secret treasure, that no-one else has. You don't have any possessions that really are yours alone, which is easily proven by the fact that anyone can take them away from you, and they all can be lost, because they were never really yours to begin with.

So you are empty. Without God, you are nothing. Without God you don't even have existence. HOWEVER, you are not without God. If you are willing to go beyond your ego, you in fact regain access to your inheritance. You become once again a member of the Sonship. You open up to receiving your inheritance, which is everything real, in exchange for giving up the NOTHING that you have otherwise. "We will gain EVERYTHING by giving HIM the power and the

glory, and keeping NO illusions of where they are."

"As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"

"for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing" "Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"

"Of yourself you can do none of these things."

"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light."

So here are your options. On the one hand you have what the ego is offering, which is absolutely nothing, disguised as something special and rare, something which is exclusive just for you, something special, which makes you important and unique and different. But which really is made of nothing at all, and is not something you can really have, nor can it last forever. And by trying to have it, you may seem to gain the fictional world, and lose your soul.

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" The alternative on offer, is that you are invited as a guest to join in the Kingdom of God, in which you are allowed to participate openly, freely, and fully. Provided that you are willing to share everything that exists with everyone. And provided you are willing to share your entire self with everyone. And provided you are willing to grant everyone total free access to everything at all times.

And provided you do not in any way attempt to hoard anything for yourself, to have any trace of selfishness, nor to regard anything as belonging ONLY to you. That nothing belongs ONLY to you doesn't mean you have nothing, only that what you HAVE isn't ONLY yours to have and must be shared. You DO have power, but it only so long as you acknowledge that you SHARE this power with God and with everyone. To take it away from them, to have it just for you, is to strip it from yourself and be powerless.

Provided you are willing to enter into a relationship with the whole sonship, where everything belongs to everyone equally, then you can enter the Kingdom of God. To receive your inheritance isn't to receive a big special christmas gift that no-one else gets to play with. All things that are real, that you can actually HAVE, have to belong to everyone. It belongs to God, it belongs to you, AND it belongs to all your brothers. And everyone can access all of it all the time at the same time. "To have all, give all to all."

So you can either have basically nothing for yourself, disguised as receiving the illusory riches of the world, which appear to be valuable bullshit items that you don't even really want, and which have no real value, but which appear to be extremely valuable treasures. Or, you can openly share non-exclusive rights with everyone, to own ALL of the Kingdom of God, ALONG WITH God and with everyone else, in which everything belongs to everyone.

The gifts of God are given in order to "passed forward". He gives you the power to create, so that you can share and give what you have been given. Quite simply, "give what you have been given" is the only rule of the system. Give the love that God has given you. Nothing is ever given to just you alone, it is given FOR everyone.

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"Healing must be for everyone"

"It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you."

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."

"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons?"

"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."

"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE."

Quite simply, you either can be utterly powerless, afraid, weak, lacking, deprived, miserable, sick, unhappy, lost, desperate, improverished, bereft, and empty, OR .... you can acknowledge that the ONLY real thing you can HAVE is everything God has given already, and you can ONLY have it IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SHARE IT. Be selfish and end up alone and with nothing, or share with everyone and gain everything there is to have.

You can truly have what EVERYONE has, and only by ackowledging that it belong to them as well, OR you will end up empty handed. To try to take possession of some part of heaven for yourself, all of heaven will slip through your fingers. The more you try to own something, the less you have it. The more you try to depend on yourself alone, the less you become able to deal with life. The more you try to "go it alone", the more helpless you become.

God is your strength! His shared strength is literally YOUR strength. Without God, you have no strength at all. Of yourself you are nothing and have nothing. He is the battery-pack which fuels your power. However, because you are OF GOD, you HAVE EVERYTHING AND ARE EVERYTHING. God's power belongs to you, God's life belongs to you, God's entire creation belongs to you.

Everything real is YOURS. It is not just partly yours, it is FULLY yours. But it is also fully everyone's. You cannot have it by grasping for it to keep it for yourself, you can ONLY have it by acknowledging that it is EVERYONE'S RIGHT. And therefore you have to be open to GIVING IT. You must give what you have received, be open to sharing what you have, and everything must belong to everyone.

To admit that you have nothing SPECIAL about you, is humility. But this does not leave you powerless. It simply leaves you without a SPECIAL power that you invented. It strips you of your "super powers", your fictional sense of personal strength, and your illusion that you can do this ON YOUR OWN. You cannot do ANYTHING on your own. You are helpless and powerless on your own. The ONLY way you can live at all is to join with God and let him help you.

This is why you have to surrender your ego. You simply can't do life by yourself. When you try to you will depend on your own exclusive strength, which is pitiful at best and nothing at worst. And you will not be able to deal with anything. Only WITH God do you have stength. Only WITH God do you have anything at all! But with God, you are ALL POWERFUL. With God, you CAN DO ANYTHING.

"You can do ANYTHING I ask." "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "Do his works." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."

"The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."

"It knows that it is EVERYWHERE, just as it has EVERYTHING and FOREVER." "No-one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he value the body's offerings."

"Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special."

"No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT."

"Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."

"Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness."

"When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary."

"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them."

A simple meditation technique I tried last night with unexpected results - it basically revolves around intense listening.

1) Know/imagine that there is going to be an extremely quiet sound that you are going to hear in your mind. It's so quiet, it's quieter than even your thoughts. It will be very very subtle so you're going to have to listen very carefully. If you want to anticipate that this sound will be a voice, that's ok too, but it's going to be really really quiet and barely noticeable.

2) Spend time listening really really carefully within, listening for this very quiet sound. Do not try to listen for 'silence' or to become silent or to silence your thoughts - that's too hard. Anticipate there will be a very quiet sound you're trying to find. You're trying to seek out a very quiet sound in your mind and it's going to be really almost too quiet to notice unless you listen really really intently, so you're going to have to pay really careful attention.

3) Do this for a while and you'll probably drift into normal thinking several times and go off on tangents. Hopefully you'll remember to come back to listening for this quiet sound again and focus again on listening intently. When I did this I got distracted several times but kept coming back to listening for something very very quiet.

4) At some point when you're ready and you've been doing this a while, your mind will have quieted down and you'll be quite focused, and you'll notice you haven't heard the sound yet. If you heard thoughts or voices that's ok, but that's not the sound we want. We want to focus on something subtler, a bit like transcendental meditation. However, we're now going to switch our focus a little bit.

5) Instead of listening for that quiet sound, which we didn't hear yet ;-), we're going to now shift to listening to God. The sound is going to come from God. We're going to put all our attention on God and listen really really carefully in his direction, just as before, because God has a really quiet voice. Just listen intently, be receptive.

6) You should hopefully notice that you feel you are directly 'in front of God' and that He is right in front of you, with nothing else coming between you. It may feel more intimate than you've ever felt with God before. And you'll just keep listening and staying focused on His presence, listening to what sound He might make. You can stay doing that as long as you like.

7) Optional final step, if you want, is to ask God something, and then continue listening to see if he will answer. Even if you don't do this step, I feel it's been helping in quieting your mind and helping you to focus on God, which is communion, which is good. I was really surprised how much I felt I was in direct contact with God more than ever before, with no middle-men/thoughts anywhere.

Give it a try ?

There are no requirements that must be met for you to return to God. There isn't anything that you must do, otherwise you won't be able to be with God.

If there is anything in the dream or in our ego identities that is capable of preventing God, then we would be stuck in the dream forever. If anything has the power to overthrow God's will, for real, we would be completely lost. So it is fortunate this is not so.

We do pretend not to be with God, and we can seemingly 'deny' that we are with God, but even while we're denying that we are with God, we are still with Him. We also can deny that we have eternal life, but even while we're denying that we have eternal life, we have eternal life. And even while we deny that we are completely loved, we are still completely loved.

It would seem we can 'hold off' the love and prevent the eternal life and reject God's will by making certain choices for ego and death. But even these choices do not affect God's love, or our eternal life. They are mistakes. They are make-believe. They are illusions of achievement. Nothing in a dream has the power to stop the dreamer from awakening.

Jesus does describe how The Kingdom of God has certain 'conditions', and that you need to meet those conditions in order to be ABLE to be in the Kingdom. However, those conditions effectively are always met and cannot be unmet. We are pretending not to meet them, but are not actually failing to meet them. Because we haven't left Heaven for real, and leaving is impossible.

So in our unconditional love, we need to be aware that there are absolutely no rules or requirements or demands as to why you can't be included in love or why you cannot be healed or why you cannot live forever. The ego has no power to overthrow God's will or God's creation. Sure, it can be deluded into believing it can, and you can seem to side with it and believe that you're actually pulling it off. But you're not really. You're severely mistaken, and thank God it IS only a mistake.

Nobody is denied God's love. Everyone is welcome. Everyone has full and free access. And just because a cloud comes along to seem to cover up the sun, it doesn't make the sun go away. We can cover ourselves up all we want, or try to, or make illusions that *seem* that they really do so, but they don't actually. It takes the awareness of CHRIST to be able to discern that these illusions ARE just illusions and to not buy into them. Illusions are very appealing and distracting, but they are not true.

All are welcome in God. All ARE in God. Everyone is loved fully and equally. And we are all Home already. Any illusion which seems to prevent your inclusion in love is merely that, an illusion, because nothing can prevail against the Kingdom of God or keep you apart from His love.

The world in and of itself is completely hopeless. You think it isn't. You think there are ways it can work out. You think there is hope to be had. And most likely you have confused a more positive hopeful outlook with the world. Which makes you believe it's the world that has some hope. So let's separate it out VERY clearly and carefully.

The world ITSELF, physical form, the laws of physics, spacetime, all of it, IS HOPELESS. 100% hopeless. Occasionally things seem to go a little better than others, but eventually it all turns to shit. This it the absolute fact of it. Time is death and anything that changes will die. All things in the world will be destroyed. It all ends in death because it begins in death.

"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."

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

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with perception. It has nothing to do with your beliefs or values or interpretations or how you see the world or what you use it for. The world itself is hopeless. There cannot be hope in it because everything in it ends in death. Everything is destroyed. The very same seeming force of "time" that seems to allow flowers to grow and bloom is the very same force that kills them off.

ALL the world's roads lead to death. Sometimes there is a temporary illusions of peace in which the "thorns are not felt" at once, but later it settles in and takes everything away from you. The world was made SO THAT problems could not BE escaped. That means there is NO END to problems, no matter how much you are in denial or how ingeniously you keep insisting they can all be solved. You wilL NEVER solve them. It was made TO disappoint. It HAS disappointed you since time began.

"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."

So let's be completely clear. The world in and of itself has NO hope. What hope can there be when everything you do, everything you try to build, everything you make, everything you achieve, it is all going to eventually be DESTROYED by time. All the cities will fall. All the bodies will die. It is a BLEAK outlook because the world IS bleak. In and of itself has nothing to offer and nothing to give and nothing of value.

The people of the world are hell-bent in DENIAL, trying to find ways to constantly turn the world into a better place. A better place in terms of trying to civilize it. This is in effect an attempt to tame hell. It's a form of denial where we keep trying to take something which STILL will be destroyed, EVEN from the outset of making shiny new things, in one more futile attempt to get the dead world to live. To be renewed, refreshed, worth staying in. Until it dies. Until a supernova blows it all to shit and renders the human race totally irrelevant.

You should not look to the world FOR your hope. You should not look to the world for your salvation. You should not look to it for things to value and treasure and keep. It should not hold out hope to you, because it WILL take it away. This is the way of the world itself. This has nothing to do with the people or what the people think or how they perceive. It does this even WITHOUT any people around. It destroys and takes away and reduces and decays and rots. That is its nature.

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

Those poor worms. They thought they had a chance, living off the rotting fetid flesh of death, but they too were doomed to die even since they were born. This is the world's FUNCTION. This is what it was DESIGNED to to. It cannot function any other way because it was made to BE an opposite to how God functions. It was made to attack his function and be the opposite of life. It cannot succeed, it cannot work, it cannot provide, it cannot protect, it cannot produce life, it cannot save you, and it cannot love you. The world wants you dead.

You have to become very clear about this, because so long as you keep confusing your "trying to look on the bright side" with the world itself, you'll think the world itself has hope in it. You have to sort out the fact of what the world IS from your USE of it. Then you will realize that regardless of perceptions, the world ITSELF is just a piece of trash not worth anything. It is NOTHINGNESS pretending to be something.

So long as you believe that the world itself is SOMETHING, and can therefore GIVE you something, make you something, cause you something you prefer, and provide for you, you will WANT it. You will idolize it and treasure it and want to keep it. And the COST of this is that you will REJECT GOD. The price of choosing to believe in a made-up world is the DENIAL of the Kingdom, which is inherently the denial of life and happiness and real hope.

This is what people do not want to look at. You cannot get to realizing that you WANT heaven, until you realize that the world IS NOT heaven. So long as you think the world IS heaven, which all insane people do, you will want to keep it. You will seek and not find salvation and solutions IN AND OF the world which will always disappoint you. They will fail and will only partly work. And if you keep trusting them you will not be able to trust God.

Only when you can admit and accept that the world just fundamentally SUCKS, that it was made to BE broken and NEVER work, only then will you realize the inner stirring that happens. The sense that, surely, given how horrendously stupid the world is, this CAN'T BE THE WORLD GOD CREATED. It just can't be reality. It can't be true. It can't be how the laws of existence really function. it can't be where you're supposed to be living. And it can't really exist.

THEN.... you will be willing to turn around and look for A REAL ALTERNATIVE. The real alternative comes from the inner insistence that there MUST BE A BETTER WAY. There must be some kind of world or reality where all of this shite does not happen. There MUST be a reality where sickness and death don't exist. There MUST be a way to see that doesn't make hell seem like a nightmare. And there MUST be a whole different mindset that WORKS AND NEVER FAILS.

This is the opening up of the spiritual eye. This is where the physical sight begins to be not believed. Because you now realize that nothing in OR OF the world can show you reality.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So you now start to realize that there MUST BE another world, another light, a higher mind, another thought system, another POSSIBILITY, and a REAL HOPE, that comes from BEYOND THIS WORLD. It is the light of heaven, the REAL potential of happiness that lasts and is never disappointed, and the actual accessible possibility of eternal life. It is what God has GIVEN, and is opposite to everything in the world. It is completely alien to everything everyone in the world thinks, and it reveals that the world holds NOTHING that you want.

Only by not wanting the world can you want God. You can't want both because they are opposites. Only be realizing there IS NO HOPE in the world can you open up to the fact that there must be a world where there IS HOPE. There has to be a real hope, rather than the false idle wishful thinking and fake denial and pretense that you've used your whole life to RESIST HELL and to try to make the world stop falling apart. Let the world fall apart and realize that's all it CAN do. And then bring the light of ANOTHER world where things do NOT fall apart, to this world, to perform miracles.

This higher healthier saner attitude of optimism and true hope and possibility must be rooted in God. It must be founded on the real truth and the DENIAL OF THE WORLD. To ACCEPT the other world at all is the acceptance of atonement. It's to accept that you are under no laws but God's and there is no truth but God's. That salvation is OF ANOTHER WORLD. That the only hope you have is God's HELP. That the only POWER there is, the only POSSIBILITY without limits, is the power of God - a power not of this world, which ENABLES YOU instead of disabling you.

The world has no hope whatsoever. It is already made of the idea of death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

Your false perceptions OF the world emphasize its hopelessness and pull out its pictures of hate and put borders around its scenes of crime and sickness and decay. Your true perceptions reinterpret these hopeless scenes and GIVE them hope from another world. Not a hope the world HAS, or is made of, but a hope that you find only by giving it, through projection onto it. An invitation TO those in the world, a signpost which points to ANOTHER world, which says "this way to happiness." This is the road out of hell, a road which the world itself will never offer.

"Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy."

"The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

With regards to your ego and the ego of your brother, everything about it is self inflicted and separate. What is in your ego is not in your brother's ego. They are two separate, private worlds. They do not connect or join or communicate or share.

Everything happening within your own ego is not happening because of or in connection with or caused by what's happening in someone else's ego. It's all happening entirely independently.

Therefore, where the ego is concerned, you need to be completely responsible for the self-contained world that your ego lives in, which is a closed world, closed to your brother. Everything about it, all of the ego experiences, feelings, reactions, perceptions, are all entirely within yourself and are yours. Own them.

You need to disconnect your ego from the egos of other people. You need to realize that two egos do not communicate. You need to realize that what another person's ego is doing (anything unloving) is not in any way shape or form a cause of anything happening in your own ego. And vice versa. You are not doing anything to their ego and their ego is not doing anything to you. Egos are separate. Egos are individuals.

However, there is something that you do share with your brother. The only thing you can share with your brother, is sharing itself. Sharing means love, joining, communication, openness, equality, freedom, truth. These things, you DO share with your brother. These things, happen to both of you at the same time. These things are mutual, shared interests. These things connect you to your brother and join you together.

So be clear about this. The parts of your experience that are ego, you need to become very clear that these are SEPARATE from your brother and have nothing to do with him. They are your own private hallucinatory world. Nothing goes outside of this world. Ideas leave not their source. Your brother's ego ideas do not leave your brother either. Neither of you causes anything in each other through the ego. Your egos are completely separate and disconnected. All they can do is make noises and postulate before each other, but it is up to each person to decide whether to use their ego or Holy Spirit in perceiving the activities of another.

If it's ego, its yours. If it's love, it's shared. Never do egos really communicate and never do egos really cause things to happen to each other. The idea of attack is entirely an illusion because attack is withdrawal into a private world. Nothing any ego says is ever about you. Nothing your ego says is ever about anyone else.

Only in the holy relationship is there any real sharing or real communication or real relationship because it is a relationship based in reality. Ego relationships are not relationships at all.

Our mind has impeccable logic. The thought system of the Holy Spirit has impeccable logic. Everything which extends from God has impeccable logic. The metaphysics of the course is PERFECTLY logical. If something does not correlate logically it is false.

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. Fear is the opposite of love. If love has an opposite it creates a state which does not exist." ergo.. logically... fear does not exist.

"He (God) did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way. God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven?"

Our mind has this capacity for perfect logic because it is perfect. However, when we are in the ego, the ego also USES our perfect logic to develop its entire thought system. Every single part of the ego's thought system is derived perfectly logically from an initial false premise.

All aspects of separation, the reason for the making of matter, the result of sickness and death, the making of an artificial world, all wars and conflicts, all dynamics of interpersonal relationships, all specialness and attack, is ALL - ABSOLUTELY ALL - based on a progression of IMPECCABLE LOGIC.

This world coming about and the arising of bodies and the invention of sickness and war and death can ALL be explained using nothing but logical statements. No interpretation or "fluffy glue" or fanciful ideas needed to make sense of it. It is all BLACK AND WHITE.

The belief that you are guilty because you sinned, is logic. The belief that your real sin affected God and therefore God is justified in a counter attack, is logic. The idea of denial is a logical split with entirely predictable logical consequences. Every consequence and result that has come about from the separation from God, can only happen ONE WAY and with ONE RESULT because it is all derived LOGICALLY.

If you can see the logic, you are seeing the METAPHYSICS.

"The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is fear because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again, let us remember that both are in you. In Heaven there is no guilt because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create. The word "create" is appropriate here because, once what you have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in creation."

The ego thrives on two sides of a coin: desire and fear.

Desire is its attempt to "get", which really means to steal from another and deprive them of it.

Fear is its attempt to "not get" or to "get rid of", which means to be stolen from and deprived.

These are the two sides of the same horizontal axis in which some finite amount of something is transferred to or from another, to or from the separate self.

Fear is actually a form of attack which is an attempt to murder, and an attempt to "make it go away", or a rejection of something - typically to get rid of "only what is negative".

Greed, shall we say, is more a form of selfishness and an attempt to be given "only what is positive".

So the ego is always trying to get rid of/kill what it perceives as negative, through fear, and to get more of what it regards as positive through possession or attachment.

Everyone always tries to get rid of what they consider "false", while trying to get more of what they consider "true", whether it be on the level of spirit/reality or in illusions. The ego and the soul both want what they consider to be true, and what is true is always valuable.

However, attachment through getting, also leads to the potential for loss, because you can only seem to lose what you seem to have stolen. Believing it can be stolen from another is to believe it can be stolen from you.

And similarly fear can attract to you what you do not what, in the same vein as "what you resist persists". Fearing makes it real and, while saying you do not want it, is a choice to have more of it.

So in effect the ego attacks itself by making itself be threatened by the very things it says it does not want, so that they haunt it and pursue it relentlessly. Which is why fear also entails a sort of running away and being chased (especially in dreams).

And then on the flipside the ego causes itself to lose the very things it cherishes by trying to stop them leaving, which is a kind of push/pull energy that forces them away.

In other words, attraction and repulsion are the same thing. Since the ego also fears what it thinks it wants, this prevents it from gaining it, and so deprives itself.

What you try gain you lose. What you fear comes to you. Success is failure. Failure is success. Attachment becomes loss. Gain becomes the fear of loss. Loss becomes deprivation which inspires lack and wanting, which leads to trying to get, etc. The metaphysics/dynamics/logic here is quite interesting.

And on it goes, feeding upon its own madness.

"Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss." UrW41L1

ACIM leads off with this:

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

It is saying that we are REQUIRED to take this 'course', and that there is some kind of 'curriculum' that is not optional.

Many believe this means that we each have an individual curriculum, which we do (a script).

But what it is also points to, is that there is a set of metaphysics which describes a kind of pre-set or structured layout to existence, describing the mechanics of the dimensions of the dream, how things are 'set up', where the truth IS (God), what the truth is not (ego), and what steps are necessary in order to find true peace.

This layout, or 'plan', if you will, is not optional. It is not something you can interfere with. It is not something you get to determine. It is a set of 'rules' or 'law' by which everything is governed. There is a law of cause and effect. There is a law that what you do to others you do to yourself. etc... these are non negotiable.

The ego thinks it has the power and freedom to establish the rules, to determine where the truth is, what laws govern existence, that you have an 'option' of living without God, that you can just make everything up to be the way you want it, that you can find truth in what is false, that you can live without God (Life), etc... the ego has this fictional idea that it is 'above the law'.

The christians would say that the ego (as the devil), is the law-breaker which thinks it can 'sin' by breaking God's laws, i.e. defying the curriculum. But we're all doing this whether we're christians or not.

The curriculum is the metaphysics. The curriculum is God's plan. The curriculum is the 'how' and the 'requirements' and 'conditions' necessary in order to return to awareness of God. It's like, a set of laws that you have to accept and agree to, if you want to play-nice with the establishment.

As such the metaphysics determines the 'way to God', so all that's left really is the timing of your willingness to ACCEPT the path to atonement, by surrendering the ego idea of self-control and the illusion of choice.

I'd like to try to explain from my point of view what a miracle is. However, I have to acknowledge that there are still some aspects of miracles I do not understand. So this is a work in progress. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Firstly, there are two levels. A higher level and a lower level. Think of each level as a realm of existence. The higher level is where God hangs out. In-between them is the idea of separation, and then below is where the ego hangs out. You could equate these to heaven and earth.

In truth, the higher level is the only causal power. In this higher level sits the Son of God who is dreaming, and in His dreaming he makes the lower level. He sort of projects it downwards from above. Mind, as cause, produces the picture of the world, an effect.

This picture of the world contains *everything* in the world, and he simultaneously puts in place everything that moves or seems to have affects on other things, plus the effects that those causes seem to have.

There are no causes inside the dream, only effects. So he is actually like a puppeteer pulling the strings to make BOTH the "causes and effects" or "victims and victimizers" do everything that they seem to do, and the "story" of how one causes the other is FICTIONAL.

In this perspective, cause and effect are VERTICAL. What is above, causes what is below. So this means everything in the world below is only an effect of the dreamer above.

Within the world below, however, there are illusions of separation, and many of these illusions make it SEEM as if there are independent causes within the dream. An example would be that the wind blows and makes the leaves on the tree move. Or a person kicks a ball.

The wind DOES NOT blow the tree - the wind AND the tree moving are BOTH dreamed SIMULTANEOUSLY by the higher level mind. The person does NOT kick the ball, the person kicking and the ball moving are BOTH dreamed simultaneously by a single mind, to create an ILLUSION of cause and effect when viewed in "linear time".

In this perspective, cause and effect are HORIZONTAL. Or in other words, there is an ILLUSION that something in the dream is able to "cause" something else in the dream to be an effect. In essence, this turns the "effect" of dreaming into a cause in its own right. So then we believe that this world contains "causes" which produce "effects". In the horizontal, causes are VICTIMIZERS, and effects are VICTIMS. And it is possible for victimizers to be affected as causes transform into effects and back again, because they are all the same ILLUSION.

Someone kicks you in the leg and you develop a bruise. If you are a body, this puts you AT THE EFFECT of the world, making you an instant VICTIM. Being born "by" the world into a body is an ILLUSION which makes you an instant victim, but in truth you are NOT at the effect of the world, and you are NOT "created by" your parent's bodies.

This horizontal perception of cause and effect is ENTIRELY illusory, because even the things which seem to "cause" other things, and the "effects" of those causes, are actually BOTH EFFECTS of the higher level mind which is the only cause of them. The higher level mind, in its vertical causality, manifests both the person kicking the leg, and the bruise on the leg, simultaneously, making it SEEM as though there was a horizontal cause of the bruise.

In the horizontal perception, we come to believe there are thus illusory "laws" which SEEM to describe what we are seeing happen from within this level, without being awakened to the true nature of cause and effect. It SEEMS to us that every action (cause) has an equal and opposite reaction (effect). The laws of physics are based on this. Science has gone to great lengths to describe the APPARENT way in which stuff happens at the level of being inside the dream, unaware of the higher level.

All of these ego laws, horiziontal laws, are SHOWN to be completely false and illusory, when the higher level decides to DEMONSTRATE that IT is the cause of everything. It is therefore possible for the higher level to decide to project a different image or dream, below, which is unlike the condition it was in previously, WITHOUT OBEYING any of the lower level illusory laws. Because the higher level "overrides" the lower level, any illusions of how things are supposed to happen, or what is supposed to be possible, are completely ignored.

The higher level is the level of love. But it is not just love as we think of love "separate from" other qualities. It is also joy, peace, life etc. In particular, it is ALIVE. God's love is a LIVING PRESENCE, which contains within it life-giving, eternal-life giving qualities. It is able to extend life forever. It is able to express SO MUCH "livingness", that it is permanently in a state of incorruptible "health", it is absolutely impossible for it to become sick or die, and it is therefore a state of immortality.

The life-giving quality of God's love, naturally EXPRESSES at all times. God is therefore ALWAYS giving life and continuing life. God's love is so life-giving and restorative and absolutely refuses to include any form of death or problem, that if any kind of illusion of sickness or death were "exposed" to it, it would be so INFUSED with life, that all signs of decay or sickness or death will be completely reversed. Health (light) will totally obliterate suffering (darkness), shining it away permanently.

This life-giving quality of God, is what we refer to as MIRACULOUS. It literally is 100% unlimited in what it can do, and there is absolutely nothing that can deter it or prevent it from healing, ie being in a permanent state of perfection. God is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. Permanently life-giving. And so is His Son. It is completely NATURAL for God and His Son to be permanently miraculous. If they were to seem to be not miraculous, something must have gone wrong! Miraculousness does not ever stop. It is an eternal aspect of God's creative power.

With this in mind, when we "descend" into the darkness, going down to the lower "level", into the ego world, hell, we are attempting to put distance between ourselves and God. The further we become distant from God, as though descending further downwards towards death (eventually to be buried in the ground), the more we will be blocked from the life-giving properties of God's loving expression. This will result in a mind which believes sickness and death are reality, and it will project a body which is sick and later dead.

Death, in the ego's world, is the final statement that God's life has ended, or that we are so distant from God's Will to Live, that "our" will to live is no longer a will to live, but a will to cease living, ie to die. This means we believe we are becoming *completely* separate from God. Death of the body and mind is the ego's final attempt to completely escape the realm where God's light shines. Only complete "non-existence" can seem to fulfill the ego's wish to be separate from where God is.

In the dark, our mind is believing in separation, and is therefore sick. We have blocks to awareness, so do not see the light very well. This causes us to attack ourselves and our body will show this. Forms of sickness will appear, and eventually the body will die because we have attacked it. In order to UNDO this and reverse it, even to reverse what shows up as physical death, we need a miracle. We need some of the miraculous life-giving radiance of God's love.

Exposure to such radiance will RESURRECT us back to life, first a restoration of health and life in the mind and body, and then later the completion of the resurrection in which the body disappears, because the mind has become SO pure that it can no longer be bound by a body image. There are degrees of darkness and because the body is an outward picture of an inner condition at all times, if the mind resurrects, the body will also. Any "symptoms" (fake effects) from the illusion of horizontal causality, will be UNDONE by the shift to vertical perception (true causality - mind over matter).

A "miracle" as we tend to think of it, seems to be a step towards God. Or as some people call it, a "shift in perception" from death to life. However, we need to be clear that God is permanently miraculous and so is His Son. The miraculous life-giving property of God never stops. The ability to do absolutely anything never comes to an end. The creative power of the mind never ceases. And God is ALWAYS being loving. Anything that comes from love as an expression of love, IS MIRACULOUS. This means that God is ALWAYS MIRACULOUS.

A miracle then, CANNOT BE defined as the shift from death to life itself. The miracle is the LOVE which EXPRESSES in order to PRODUCE a shift from death to life. The shift is an EFFECT. The shift takes place entirely in the realm of the ego's world, the lower level, the level of EFFECT, because a miracle is an expression from the higher level of love, shining down onto what is below, and lifting it upwards towards God.

A helpful analogy, is when Jesus says beautifully:

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

What this is saying is, miraculous healing love shines "down from above" onto the illusory world below where stuff seemed dead, giving it life, pulling it closer to itself, and "life" erupts to show SIGNS (symbols) of the immortality that has been extended from love. Love expresses, the dead come back to life, even forms and bodies and objects come back towards life. As far as forms of life can, being limited as symbols in a dream.

Corresponding to this then, realize that miracles come down from heaven, from the higher level, FROM LOVE, as an expression of Love, and BLESS what is below (the dusty dead world), bestowing upon it the MIRACULOUS radiance of love's life-giving properties, and therefore "bringing life" to what is there, RESTORING to being "more alive".

Jesus says in his analogy that the signs of life now spring up. Simply, what once was seemingly dead or even partly dead, has had some measure of its "dead-ness" lifted away, that thing has been RAISED upwards, vertically, towards God, and therefore is now in closer proximity to the life-giving power of God's love, and therefore COMES BACK TO LIFE. This even means that ROADKILL can be brought back to life, all "effects" of war can be undone, and all death reversed. The body can even be made immortal, incapable of sickness and death, because it is SO infused with the life-giving power of love. A miracle indeed.

Miracles are also referred to as a shift in perception - FROM HORIZONTAL TO VERTICAL PERCEPTION. As I described, when the mind changes how it sees things, and no longer sees things entirely in a "horizontal" way in terms of cause and effect, is no longer believing that one thing in the dream caused another thing, it shifts its VIEWPOINT by moving awareness VERTICALLY up towards God.

Vertical perception is the awareness that the higher level (love) is the ONLY CAUSE, and everything "below" that seems to be in the world - bodies and such, is ONLY EFFECT. This so-called shift into alignment with how God operates, is a shift into the recognition that cause is inside you not outside you, or to put it another way, cause is above, and all effects are below.

The "shifting" itself IS NOT the miracle as such. The shifting itself, the transition from darkness to light, is not really what causes healing. What causes healing is God's LOVE expressing FROM above, shining down onto what is below, causing what is below to be partly dissolved, such that the mind seems to shift upward.

This has to be true, because if the miracle itself - the miraculousness of love - were ONLY the shifting from horizontal to vertical, then once the "shifting" itself had been completed, the miracle would be ENDED, and that means, love would stop being miraculous. Love is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. It cannot stop being miraculous.

What happens is, once a shift to vertical has taken place and healing has been RECEIVED FROM ABOVE, and the level of communication has been raised (oneness increased, separation decreased), there are simply LESS BLOCKS to the extension of love. More love is allowed to SHINE from above, through the mind, and to extend outward.

It extends outward completely naturally because that is what love does all the time. So when you remove your block to awareness, whether you call it a shift or not, you REVEAL the presence of love in the mind, you open up to the higher level and allow it to shine through you, and therefore love can now EXTEND THROUGH YOU.

Removing blocks to love, is an act of removing blocks to the AWARENESS of love's presence, because love is ALREADY FULLY PRESENT, being miraculous all the time. Correction, shifting, purification, or removal of blocks, simply UNCOVERS the love which was trying to express, allowing it to express more.

Shifting perception DOES NOT CAUSE A MIRACLE and DOES NOT CAUSE LOVE TO EXIST. Love, miraculousness, already exists. That is the *ego's version of miracles*, which it thinks IT causes, because IT thinks that IT has power over love to make healing happen! The shift is seen by the ego as a cause, but it is an EFFECT from a higher level. A gift. A sign that the mind is WILLING TO RECEIVE LOVE, not an ability to 'make love happen'.

The shift merely puts us closer TO it and allows us to EXTEND it, thus RECEIVING healing FROM love. "We" do not cause healing by shifting perception, LOVE DOES ALL THE WORK. And this also means, that being open to RECEIVING LOVE from God is important in healing, not just doing stuff with your mind on your own. You do not have to do everything yourself, God WANTS TO HEAL YOU FOR YOU.

The INCREASE in the expressability of that love through you is what HEALS YOU. The shift does not heal, the unblocking does not heal, LOVE IS THE ONLY HEALER. Love is the miracle.

After a while, when you have removed enough blocks to love that you are starting to RADIATE LOVE on a more constant basis, or at least something approaching towards love, YOUR MIND is now being restored as a conduit or medium through which love can naturally extend.

This means you will now be willing and able to extend love outward. And since you're still in the body at the moment, that means you will be able to DO GOD'S WILL ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, ie you will be able to express the LOVE OF GOD, here, which means expressing God's LIFE-GIVING POWER, here, to HEAL and undo absolutely any sign of "non-life" you encounter.

In other words, you do not simply perform a miracle in order to shift your mind towards love. You shift your mind towards love SO THAT you can be miraculous. Otherwise it would mean that someone who is heavily steeped in ego lies, upon making their first little shift, is suddenly a full-blown miracle worker. That is pretty much impossible.

"Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST". This means that your purification efforts will have to happen first, possibly over a prolonged period of time, BEFORE you will GAIN ACCESS TO the right to perform miracles. This is because you need to remove quite a lot of blocks to love BEFORE love can flow through you fully enough to show up as miracles in your life or on behalf of others. If you have a lot of blocks to love, you are GETTING IN THE WAY of the extension of love and therefore are blocking miracles.

You are not miraculous just because you start studying the course or doing the workbook, or "shifting your perception". Miracles come LATER, after much purification work ie correction of your mind, letting go of ego, applying forgiveness etc. Shifts in perception are not miracles, but eventually they LEAD TO miracles. If you could suddenly shift your perception very much to a highly vertical perception, you could conceivably perform a miracle right now. But it is uncommon. Usually we have to "prepare" to be able to do that.

You will OPEN UP TO miracles over time, the more you release blocks to love, because you will be placing yourself closer to God and therefore regaining access to love, a willingness to extend it, and therefore miracles can work through you from God. You can then perform God's WILL, but you are not going to be able to perform God's will after a few perceptual adjustments.

However, at some point, you WILL get to the point where you are spending much more of your time IN vertical perception, not believing in the horizontal ILLUSION of causality, and will become much more miraculous. When miracles are not happening ALL THE TIME, something has gone wrong. This means that miracles are a PERMANENT PART of the NATURE of the Son of God. And of God. It is a natural part of love and life. When we are not being constantly miraculous, constantly loving, we are not performing miracles all the time, so something is wrong.

When we do become more consistently aligned with God's Will, the Power of God will now extend through us. We will now be ABLE to EXPRESS LOVE. And since we're still in this world, this means, we are able to render the MAXIMAL SERVICE to our brothers, which is what every miracle does. At this point, "miracle working" does NOT simply entail shifting someone's perception towards truth. It entails utilizing the vertical perception of the higher level (God/Love/Life) to OVERRIDE any and every illusory "effect", or "cause" in this world.

This means your holiness is very powerful and there is literally nothing that it cannot do in the world. Miracles expressing from the higher level, love, do not see orders of difficulty because they do not believe the lower-level illusion of cause and effect. They overthrow ALL physical laws because all laws on the horizontal level are FICTION. What appears to be a cause in the world is NOT A CAUSE. Any state or condition or sickness or form of suffering or even physical death, CAN BE REVERSED.

Why would you do this? Well, you're going be expressing a LOT OF LOVE. And it is NATURAL for love to be miraculous. It is NATURAL for love to want to HEAL, to reverse suffering, to undo ego pain, to heal the SEPARATION, and so if separation is showing up as physical sickness or broken bodies, LOVE WANTS TO HEAL IT. It is not God's will that ANYONE suffer or die. It is God's Will that EVERYONE experience perfect health and resurrection and permanent happiness.

Why express miracles in a world which isn't real? First of all, that's level confusion. Second of all, it's because this is what LOVE WANTS TO DO. Love wants to HEAL THE WORLD to resurrect everything to a reflection of perfect health and incorruptability, and to then bring everyone home across the tiny gap between that "real world" and heaven. The world NEEDS miracles of healing from love. And third of all, it is our FUNCTION in this world to HEAL, a function which we share with the holy spirit, and while we are here, it is our natural RIGHT and PURPOSE to heal at all times.

This means PERFORMING MIRACLES EVERY SINGLE DAY. God wants us to BE MIRACLE WORKERS, in the world, helping our brother, healing our brother SUPERNATURALLY through the Holy Spirit, DEMONSTRATING that vertical perception is the truth, demonstrating that ego laws DO NOT APPLY, and teaching everyone by EXAMPLE what the TRUTH OF LOVE IS. We ARE supposed to be going out and healing the sick and raising the dead and teaching everyone that God is Love and all limitations are fictional. Miracles are the MAXIMAL SERVICE you can render your brother, and that means, extending God's love TO EVERYONE, which WILL HEAL THEM.

And what will the nature of these miracles be, will it be that we help someone to see differently? Perhaps. ANY expression of love is miraculous. But love is also capable of healing the sick, raising the dead, reversing death, undoing all suffering, curing all incurable diseases, even transforming bodies into different bodies. Love has so much power that it also is capable of DEFYING ALL PHYSICAL LAWS, including laws of gravity and space and time and size and mass and properties of matter and anything else which is an ILLUSION on this level.

This means, if necessary, you will have the ability to DO ANYTHING if it is helpful and loving. If it demonstrates that the egos' horizontal laws are COMPLETELY UNTRUE, and easily proven to be false, you will be willing to do it. If that means, lifting up a car with your mind to show that gravity means nothing, so be it. If it means, moving an entire physical mountain in order to show that the mind has power over the world, so be it. If it means manifesting food out of thin air to feed 5000 people, so be it. If it means making your body walk on water to prove that the laws of physics are bullshit, so be it.

You will walk this earth PROVING that cause and effect are VERTICAL, proving that love has the power to GIVE LIFE to the dead, curing what everyone says cannot be undone, proving that resurrection is God's Guarantee, and there will be literally NOTHING that your holiness cannot do. You will heal sick people, you will raise the dead, you will move mountains, and you will SAVE THE WORLD.

Saving the world does not so much mean that you save it FROM some attacker, but rather, that you save it from itself, because it is an ILLUSION. The ultimate healing of all the world will be the restoration of "immortal bodies" temporarily, the total undoing of all sickness across the entire planet, the recognition of the real world by the entire sonship, and then the complete DISAPPEARANCE of the universe, revealing that ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL.

Miracles are the MEANS of the atonement - how YOU get there, but because they are expressions from a higher level of love, you will also BECOME PART OF THE ATONEMENT by continuing to express love even as you are about to accept the atonement, still in a body, walking the earth. You become part of the atonement by becoming part of LOVE, part of God's Will, and DOING WHAT GOD WANTS YOU TO DO, which is to extend love and healing to everyone who needs it!

This is why you will join the "great crusade" and be part of the plan of atonement long-term, because it is YOUR NATURAL FUNCTION when you have received healing and naturally desire to alleviate the suffering of others. You will not have any willingness to support or keep sickness in yourself OR in others. You will be miraculous ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY. Being miraculous is a PERMANENT QUALITY of the Son of God and all of God's creations. Being constantly miraculous in this world is NORMAL. Being un-miraculous is ABNORMAL. You will also have no desire to "opt out" of this crusade. Jesus needs active miracle workers to bring about the resurrection!

Miracles raise everyone towards God's eternal life. We are to use them WHILE it seems there is a "need". But miracles really acknowledge that "there is nothing to heal" just as forgiveness recognizes "there is nothing to forgive" and God's power recognizes "there is nothing to have power over". So long as illusions persist however, miracles HEAL the illusion, forgiveness UNDOES the ego, and God's power DEMONSTRATES what is true.

Miracles mean life. Resurrection of "what is dead" and brought back to life is the goal of the atonement. Miracles lead to revelation and atonement as the ultimate healing. We are in a state of semi-death right now, in this dream world, separate from God. We NEED miracles. The whole world NEEDS miracles from God. This world NEEDS LOVE.

And love will restore life, to turn the world into a SYMBOL of life, and then the symbol will give way to REAL LIFE. The lower level will disappear (since it was never real) and all that will be LEFT will be the higher level of God/heaven/truth. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect, a cause in how to express the miracle of love from that higher level, not to suffer as a victim of fake effects of death in an ego illusion!

Then we will simply extend God's love forever, which has been happening all along, continuing the miracle of eternal life.

Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.

Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.

When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.

However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

(Urtext T27I10)

In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.

However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.

Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.

Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.

As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.

Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and ***no one dies without his own consent***. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.

And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.

You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.

And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.

You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.

Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. 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."

(Urtext T27I10)

The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.

All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed ***from his own crucifixion***, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

Sometimes people say that concepts have to be let go. The course even says that concepts have to be let go. The course even says to let go of the course and come to God with empty hands.

Yes. However, the entire ACIM "Text" is conceptual. It's entirely theoretical. The workbook is part conceptual and part practical. And the manual for teachers is also conceptual.

Concepts are needed to help people's minds to adapt to a new paradigm of thought. I think there is even somewhere in the Text where it says you should do the text first in order to alleviate the likelihood of becoming afraid when you do the practice, because without a firm footing in the theory you are likely to come to a number of false conclusions and become frightened.

It seems that even with the Text under people's belts, moving on to the workbook in many cases still gives rise to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. That's partly because the Text is not well understood and the Course's metaphysics are not well understood.

I'm no saying to be purely conceptual or to get totally obsessed with theory, but it sure does help to clarify what the course is saying and what it means.

At some point the concepts will give way to experience, given that even in course terms a universal theology is impossible. But concepts help to pave the way to the truth and are important in learning to clearly perceive the workings of the ego mind so that you are not so easily deceived by it.

It's not possible to teach "love", because love is an experience without words or symbols. So if anything is going to be taught, it's going to have to be a concept about not just the truth but about the nature and behavior of illusions. To teach the concepts is to learn how to identify illusions, how to look at blocks to awareness, and discovering what your hidden motivations are. Concepts help you with your "work" of undoing the ego.

Obviously at some point they will be no longer useful when reality dawns on the mind. But until then, it is definitely helpful to have a firm footing in the metaphysical "theory" and to be informed about how the ego functions. Without that you're likely to take a lot longer to find your way to the truth and will be more easily confused or mistaken about how to get there.

Concepts that can be applied are especially helpful. It's all part of learning to discern what is true and what is false. The truth is taken first on faith, which means, believing in it conceptually and not as a direct experience. We need to be careful of course not to get lost in the concepts or spin our wheels in the intellect, but so long as it's helping us to move forward it's all good.

"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less." Unless perception, at every level, involves selectivity, it is incapable of organization. In all types of perception, there is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, of organizing and reorganizing, and of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential aspect of perception, because a judgment MUST be made for selection. "Lack of lack" is a concept which is meaningless to a perceiver, because the ability to perceive at all RESTS ON lack."

"What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments, and there is nothing BUT perfect equality? Perception is automatically useless. Truth can only be KNOWN."

"Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends ALL of the laws which govern perception. Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

"In electing the ability to perceive instead of the will to know, man placed himself in a position where he could resemble his Father ONLY by perceiving miraculously. But he lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a miracle."

"Unless perception rests on some knowing basis, it is so unstable that it doesn't mean anything. Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning. "

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"Perception is fundamentally unstable."

"The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike."

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love."

"Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"The miracle is a way of PERCEIVING, not a way of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not ask questions at all when you know."

"Since perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this implies variability by definition."

"The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

"Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form."

"Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will also ultimately replace (or correct for) them."

"For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"Perception, at its loftiest, is NEVER complete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven."

"But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

"God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning."

"Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not."

We don't want to ask for help. Because in our ego we think we don't need help. Because we think we're so amazing and masterful all on our own, that we can do everything on our own, and don't even need any help. This means we believe there's not even anything wrong with us, and that we're amazing super advanced beings already. But the fact is that we need to admit that we are LESS THAN PERFECT, having attacked ourselves and limited ourselves. And we are IN DENIAL about this. We don't want to admit that we suck.

Admitting it is frightening because it means realising that we're "not in a good spot". That we might even be believing we're in danger or are living in fear or are full of guilt or are sick or whatever. But ADMITTING this also means, your mind is going to accept that you DO NEED HELP. And only by recognizing that you are in NEED, will you be willing to ASK FOR HELP. Only by recognising that you are NOT DOING WELL, will you reach out, or acknowledge the fact that you cannot get out of this all by yourself.

Only by having that honesty to admit to failure and lack and not knowing how to get yourself out of it, resigning as your own teacher, will you ASK the Holy Spirit to help you. And then you will be WILLING with a little willingness to LET HIM help you, to let him heal you and guide you. If you can't admit that you are crap all on your own and you don't know what to do about it, you're never going to get to the point where you realize you need God to save you, in which you will turn to him.

People sometimes only reach this when they hit rock bottom and crash agains the rocks and realize they can't help themselves, which is an excellent thing to recognize because it finally means you surrender your egoic efforts to save yourself and become open to something from outside the ego. This is when we are wiling to admit ego defeat, ie failure, which is a GOOD THING, and can then crack open and let some light in from beyond the ego. This is when we want a better way, because our tolerance for pain and suffering has reached its limit.

Those who have suffered and have been tested and have failed and have realised the meagre limitation and powerlessness of their ego self, have been blessed with an opportunity to find God, to turn to him and to trust him. If we're not willing to "admit defeat", we'll just keep fighting ourselves all on our own and continue the suffering, trying to tolerate the pain and misery for as long as we can stand it.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

There is a reason why the Holy Spirit is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Heaven is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Christ is invisible to the body's eyes. The body's eyes CANNOT SEE REALITY and they never will. That which is invisible "to the Earth" is real. What has "become" visible - this planet, is FAKE VISIBILITY. It is a block to sight, crammed in front of your face so that you will be distracted by illusions and NOT SEE. The time will come when all things VISIBLE will end. That includes this planet. Christ Vision is how you see the invisible, which MUST ENTAIL no longer seeing that which you THOUGHT was visible, which is in fact non-existent.

"When you made what is NOT true visible, what is true became invisible. But it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity."

"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world. Nor can his song of union and of joy be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him REPLACE the body's eyes."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there. "

"How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. "

"What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible."

"For, in the NEW perception, the mind CORRECTS it when it SEEMS to be seen, and it becomes invisible."

"These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon."

"For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness."

"But the time will come when all things visible will have an end. The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen"

"Here is what is really here made visible, while all the shadows which appeared to hide it sink to obscurity."

"Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you. Today we are trying to use the new kind of projection."

"Loss is not loss when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream."

I had to think a bit on this one.

It reminds me of denial, because Jesus says that denial when properly perceive attests to the thing being denied.

When you deny something, you're saying that you believe the thing DOES EXIST, but that you are hidden from it, seemingly unaware of its existence. Just because you are unaware of it doesn't however make it go away for real. The denial doesn't CHANGE what's there, it just changes how you look at it.

Similarly perhaps, loss is not loss, because if you believe you have lost something, you BELIEVE IN that thing existing. You're saying, I believe I have lost this real thing. If it is real, if it exists, if you COULD lose it, it must still exist and so is not really lost. The loss attests to the continued existence of the thing.

So if I say I'm having loss about someone being dead, for example, I'm really saying that I believe in the existence of what has died. The loss comes from the belief that I am being denied something that exists. I want it, believing it's there to be wanted, but cannot seem to have it. This produces suffering because I am out of alignment with reality.

Obviously for example the "loss of a body" is really a belief that the body is real and is the person, and that the body is "gone", and therefore lost. But I can't really truly be believing that the body is gone if I'm believing I have "lost it", because the loss is affirming the belief in its existence, its reality, its importance.

In a way then, loss is itself a denial, in which it i claiming to be an experience of "having lost something", but is really a way to try to "hold onto something" and let it NOT be lost. Because the so-called loss, really is an undercurrent of a "belief in having" the thing. It seems like loss, but it is an attempt to gain. So loss realise is the flip side of a coin, and on the other side is attachment.

The loss therefore is an illusion, a suggestion that only one side off the coin exists. That there is only loss, and that there is no actual belief in the existence of the thing. But you can't have loss without the belief in it, just as you can't have denial without the belief in the existence of what you are denying. To say I am feeling loss is to say I am pretending to believe something is gone while believing it hasn't. That I'm wanting it to exist even more but this wanting is disguised as not having.

It's all rather complicated. lol But as Jesus says, loss when properly perceived is not loss. When properly perceived it's really an assertion of having, of holding onto, of possessing. A grasping.

Jesus also goes on to say that grief and suffering are nothing but a dream. In this sense, what seems like a loss can't really be a loss because only dream-stuff seems to have gone away. There is no loss in God, nothing related can ever be lost, and no part of myself - one with everything - can be lost.

While persona ego self, within our body, is firm in the belief that our shadow self, projected outside of our body, is 'not me', there is a sense of separation between the two and there is war and conflict.

In this condition, the in-here self will not want to claim ownership of the projected shadow content (guilt etc) because it *appears* unwanted. The persona does not like to accept things that it does not want, it focuses on rejection in order to include selectively.

So while we're in this state, with stuff projected, it will APPEAR to us that what we projected is terrible, bad, unwanted, hated, unforgiveable, evil etc. And because it appears that way, nobody in their 'right mind' would want to claim ownership of it.

However, it ONLY looks that way BECAUSE the persona is trying to reject it, condemn it, judge it, and get rid of it. If the persona in our mind, in our body, was not perceiving our 'self' as being intensely opposed to the projected 'out there' self that is our shadow content (guilt etc), then this IMPRESSION that the shadow is an evil external enemy would not be perceived. But this would also mean the inner persona self would not be able to see itself as a separate limited identity of 'goodness and innocence'. And it doesn't want to give up that facade.

So it's really only because the persona and shadow are kept SEPARATE and (as in a split mind) are war with each other, that it seems they appear to each other as enemies. If they were NOT kept apart, but instead came together as a unified, ONE SELF, the separation would dissolve, the impression of evil enemies would disappear, and we would not see that projected self as evil or attacking us.

In other words, the secret here is.... your enemy only seems to be an enemy while you choose to PERCEIVE them as an enemy, and if you weren't doing that, and you weren't putting walls up between you, and you weren't attacking 'them', you would simultaneously realize that they are no longer seeming to attack you. And this is how the two become one, and the persona and shadow then dissolve into each other and are undone (which means the whole ego is undone, because the ego is a split mind), and what is LEFT is the personality which is your real self.

What seems like a scary monster behind the door only seems that way while the light is off. Turn on the light, the light of truth, the light of awareness that you are BOTH the persona and shadow and that really you cannot be against yourself, and the fear and horror and conflict must melt away. Instead you find peace.

I hope I am clearly conveying what the ego's TRICK is here.... it is only an illusion that your enemy is your enemy.... it's really the separation BETWEEN the two of you that is the problem, and it's making them seem like an enemy. 'They' are really the other half of yourself. The two need to come together and stop being separate and against each other, which means the persona has to stop rejecting and attacking and being conditional, and the shadow has to stop doing the same. Then you are of one mind, a whole mind, which is at peace, realizing it was the war that made everyone look like enemies, and really both sides were innocent all along.

It is not possible to see bodies as equal. I know there is a strong movement in society towards trying to see all body types, shapes, sizes, persuasions, as equal. However, this is insane.

If you take the attempt to see all bodies as equal to its logical conclusion, it MUST mean that ALL bodies, all body types, all shapes and sizes, BECOME COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to who or what a person is. And that means recognizing that people ARE NOT BODIES AT ALL.

The body is ITSELF an attack, and a misrepresentation of a person. A person is a spirit, not a body. The body and its differences automatically conflict with the differences of other bodies. If my body is one shape or color and yours is another, this IS an attack. It is an attempt to assert that we are not the same.

You cannot keep the bodies and pretend there is equality. You cannot keep the differences and pretend there is no difference. It is denial to say that several different body types are all equally lovable. There would not BE different types in love. Love does not SEE differences. It looks past the differences entirely, and ignores them.

We are not meant to find yet another way to KEEP the body and make it "spiritual". This is our ego's attempt to spiritualize the body and pretend that it is holy and worthy and special. All that does is stroke the ego. While anyone is represented as NOT IDENTICAL, there is no equality. Physical bodies are automatically devices for separation. If you SEE ONE, you are separate.

You must learn to look past bodies entirely, because the body actually BLINDS YOU and hides from your sight what the person actually IS. Behind the body, which SEEMS like a picture of a "person" with a face, there is a hidden being, a spirit being, whose body BLOCKS you from seeing them. If you see the body SURFACE and do not see past it to the spiritual being inside, you are NOT seeing the person.

To be enamored with someone's body is NOT spirituality. To put the body on a pedestal, to defend it, or to worship it, is NOT spirituality. Bodies are not supposed to be there. People, children of God, are all absolutely perfectly equal in their mind and heart, as God created them ALL in his own likeness, and they are all identical. Identical children. Anything which looks like it is DIFFERENT, is NOT the person.

So we can't really say, a black person and a white person, or a male or a female, or a gay or a straight, or anything else that relates to THE BODY, and equate that with THE PERSON. If you do that, if you associate the person with their body, you are attacking them. To be identified with a body is to be confused about who you are, and about who other people are. People are not bodies. You are not a body. It is not your self. You are deceived by what your own body's eyes tell you about other people's bodies. Bodies do not SEE the spirit. They were made NOT to see the spirit. It's a trap.

A Course in Miracles might seem like a self-study where you do certain prescribed steps and have your own willingness and wake up all by yourself.

But, Holy Spirit has other ideas.

He is not only willing to help you, but is capable of helping you, in ways that are beyond what you can do for yourself. Including supernatural ways, ways of healing your mind, emotions and your body. Things which all by yourself you are not equipped to accomplish or even understand, but which are still possible in spite of your inability to comprehend it.

I think that as you become more willing and open and surrender more ego, instead of it being all bout what your ego does to become spiritual, it becomes more about what you're willing to accept and receive and allow, and this opens the flood gates for Holy Spirit/God to come in and help you.

Your development of trust in God allows you to become willing to operate in God's gifts, to extend those gifts, and to receive them for yourself and others.

Holy Spirit isn't a Holy Bystander, although His perception is uninvolved with the ego. He recognizes our beliefs and illusions and overlooks them and leads us into the light with True Empathy. But this also means, besides Him lifting you up into the light, that He can reach into your illusions and work on them with you. He can heal them, and all forms of separation, including death. Let's also remember that Jesus was raised from the dead BY the Holy Spirit.

Welcome Holy Spirit into you. Invite Him in. Encourage Him to enter by being willing to surrender, relax, let go, and trust to receive His helpful support and healing power.

I was having, or was going to have, a big release as part of a healing that I wanted to "get over with". However, upon being willing to start to release it, Holy Spirit came in and said "you don't have to suffer" and started to heal me, draining and disappearing those feelings as they were coming up.

Often I also now find that if I am upset and need to cry, at the instant that I become willing to cry and let it out, Holy Spirit steps in and suddenly starts to clear it for me. No tears come out, but the issue goes away. Holy Spirit asked, when I was wondering why the heck He kept doing this, "would you rather cry?"

You don't have to do this all yourself, and you don't have to suffer, and you don't have to put up with symptoms, and you don't have to even go through all of your unhealed pain all by yourself. What a relief!

"Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

This is very powerful and important. The consequences of your wrong decision, whatever it may be, is whatever came from your belief in separation. Self attack, denial, emotional pain, physical sickness, disability, mental illness, whatever. Holy Spirit CAN and WILL undo all of those 'symptoms of separation' - the alleged consequences of sin - the "real effects" which your belief in sin produced. IF you will let Him, and to let Him, you have to develop trust in Him and in allowing Him to operate in and through you.

You have help! Use it.

If the body is unreal, and assigning reality to the unreality is something only the MIND does, how does the BODY make the world seem real?

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Since the body is itself an illusion, a dream, an unreality, it is PART OF an unreality. This means it does not contradict that unreality. It agrees with it totally. Without any contrast, any disagreement, or any rejection of the unreality, it is fully accepted.

This acceptance of it is unquestioning, and does not doubt what the body senses. Therefore, an unreal body in an unreal world, detects the world as if it is "real" to the body. As far as the body is concerned, being part of the very unreality it observes, it registers it as "just as real" as itself. In this way the body seems to regard the unreal world as though it is completely real. Its nature is accepted as identical to its own, and everything about it is similar to itself. It's a kind of reality "within a context" of unreality.

What this means for the MIND, however, is that the mind on another level has to decide whether to assign reality to the unreal world AND the body, or whether to withdraw it from BOTH. To recognize the body is unreal, is also to recognize that everything the body regards as real is actually unreal. The way it makes the world SEEM real, cannot be true, and has to be recognized as a misinterpretation. It's a blindness within a blind world.

To not be DECEIVED by the way the body makes the world seem real, the mind has to DISAGREE with the world and the body. It has to recognize a contrast, and be opposite to its nature. The mind needs to realize that only God's reality is real, and therefore the body, the world, and everything the body reports about the world, is entirely false. Even if what the body reports is a seemingly real world, the MIND has to disregard this and not be deceived by it.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. "

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. "

"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

If you are trying to be separate from God, you are trying to be the antichrist.

If you believe in separation to any degree, this is the same thing as believing that you are in darkness, and therefore that you are evil.

Although you may say you don't believe in evil, or that it is relegated to only those who are in the extreme of it, evil basically is the opposite of 'live' (spelled backwards) and, more than just a play on words, is the attempt to be different to what God created.

In that sense, most of the people in the world are evil.

However, evil is not real. It is not possible to be really evil, because evil means darkness and darkness is an illusion. It is not possible for darkness to remove the light or replace the light. On the contrary, light shines away darkness by its mere presence. This is why darkness has no real power over God's Kingdom.

Similarly, what you think of yourself as being dark, which can take on many forms such as believing you are unworthy of love, that you are guilty or afraid, etc... these are all forms of believing in darkness. You think that darkness has come to block out the light and that it has succeeded. That is a magical belief and is essentially 'evil', if there were such a thing.

Efforts that you might make to make darkness real, or to side with darkness, or to think that darkness has some kind of power over the light, are efforts to enact 'magic'. These can be nothing more than attempts to make illusions real or to turn things which are untrue into true. This is always impossible of course, and darkness really does not exist at all.

So while you might be currently pretending to be the antichrist, fear not, because your efforts have no real effects and God still knows that deep down you're really Christ. This will never change. And your attempt to make yourself into the antichrist (the ego), really is just a make-believe fairytale about it being possible. It isn't.

Regardless of how evil you think someone is, or what special cases you reserve for evil, or how evil you think you are, and believe me if you think you're anything less than 100% innocent you believe you are evil, it doesn't matter to God. God loves and forgives absolutely all, knowing that we are really incapable of sin and that evil is not reality.

You're not really evil. Your darkness is just an illusion you use to pretend to hide the light, and what you keep in darkness or keep from the light seems to take on a kind of reality. You hide it to protect it because exposure to the light would show you that it is not true and does not matter. Unconditional love would sweep it away and pay no attention to it. You only keep your, twisted, wicked evil ways hidden, because to expose them to light would show you that you are just mistaken and cannot ever be evil at all.

You are christ, holy and innocent, permanently loved by God, incapable of sin and are absolutely forgiven. If you are the antichrist, it only means you are christ pretending not to be christ. Ultimately we are all christ and there is no antichrist at all.

'I'm not the antichrist but I play one on TV"

Last night I used the below process, but in a different way. I did it VERY slowly. I re-stated each phrase several times over and really let it sink in before moving on to the next one. I actually found this to be quite powerful.

For example, in saying that I decided wrongly.. when I really dwell on that I come to realize that I actually DECIDED and I get in touch with that sense of responsibility and decision-making at having been the one who not only put in place this upset, but actually chose it myself.

There is tremendous power in getting in touch with your power of decision. Your decision making is not just a neutral act, it has power to it. It is causal. And I've also started to dabble in the idea of... .instead of just reacting to stuff and going along with it, instead, stopping and DECIDING... "I am" or "I am not" .... and feeling a kind of instantaneous change simply by making a firm decision.

I also inquired about the last sentence... letting Him decide for God for me. Jesus clarified that this really means allowing Holy Spirit to 'favor' or 'choose FOR rather than AGAINST' God, on my behalf. Allowing Him to favor God and to then accept His viewpoint. In this way, "for God" really means "towards God" or "in agreement with God". That made more sense to me.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

It's also quite important to keep in mind the statement Jesus makes just prior to this prayer:

"But let me first remind you of something I told you myself. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as sin, you become defensive because you EXPECT ATTACK. The decision to react in that way, however, was YOURS, and can therefore be undone. It CANNOT be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error, rather than allowing it to be undone FOR you.

Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE.

Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the UNDOING process, which does NOT come from you, is nevertheless WITHIN you because God placed it there. YOUR part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:"

There are two sort of perspectives relating to perception that we seem to fall into.

1. There is an objective world with our perception OF it, and what we project ONTO it is to do with how we interpret it.

2. There isn't an objective world and we're just dreaming it up and not projecting anything "onto" it because we're projecting IT in the first place.

I am coming to see that neither of these is correct.

There is a third possibility.

3. I am having a dream, which is surrounding me with a fictional environment which is coming from my mind. Without my dreaming of it - my projecting it - there wouldn't be any world here at all. There is NO objective world. There is ONLY a subjective world. My projection makes my perception and makes "the world I see."

The important distinction here is that the world I am projecting/dreaming, is coming from my mind and SEEMS to be an objective world. AND yet at the SAME TIME, this world is being projected BY me. So it seems to be both objective and subjective.

The key is that the objective part does not exist at all, and that's what ACIM means by "there is no world apart from what you wish", and wishes are dreams.

So it's not just to do with hey, I'm projecting something "onto" the objective world. It's that literally I am projecting the world ITSELF - that I think is an objective world - with my dreaming mind. And when my mind dreams of a different world, I project out an entirely different world. The old world doesn't transform because it has no objective reality or continuity of its own. I just project a different dream and stop projecting the old one.

When we go into false perception, however, there is an additional LAYER of projection, which seems to project "onto" the dream. Like, you're filled with anger and hate and so this seems like it projects "onto" the objective world. But the objective world itself is still being projected from your mind at that same time. So in truth, you are not really projecting ONTO the world, you are projecting the world and your "bad projecting" is actually changing the world and making it appear like a bad world to you.

In this way, it would appear that ACIM is never really talking about "projecting onto" anything. It's entirely talking about you projecting the world itself, directly, and your "bad attitude" projects what later is perceived to be a world that you seem to experience in a negative way. You think there is some other objective world that is "not negative" hiding underneath your negativity, but there isn't! You think you're projecting ONTO the world, but in fact you're not. You're projecting the world, period. Projection makes perception. Not "projection makes perception makes projection makes perception."

Just as at night when you dream, your mind forms en entire environment/world filled with buildings and people and stuff, and you seem to show up as a single body person. But your mind is making the world AND your body person. How the body person seems to experience the dream is an illusion because the person is actually MAKING the environment. Any attacker in the dream is you. People in the dream are figments of your own mind. It's the same with "waking life". We are literally dreaming of an entire universe.

You can decide only this:

a) I am caused by God.

b) I am caused by the world.

When believing you are at the effect of the world, upset by someone, hurt by something, vulnerable in some way, offended, attacked, damaged, sick, etc.... you are believing that you are CAUSED BY the world, and thus that the world is your creator. It means you have forgotten that you are ONLY the result of God creating.

Anything true of you, anything about your nature, your condition, what you are, who you are, is entirely OUT OF YOUR HANDS. Who and what you are is purely God's decision and you have absolutely no power to change that. You can however deny that you are as God created you and pretend to be something else, but to do that you HAVE to make yourself be caused BY something else, hence needing an entire world and false God to be your new daddy.

Essentially, by rejecting God as your father and source of your inheritance, you are forced to see yourself as a victim of the world. You can't be denying God's fatherhood and expect to "get away with it" by being in a world but not attacked by the world. Either God will cause you, or the world will cause you. The only choice you have is which thought system you want to be caused by or a part of.

To know yourself is to recognize and remember that you are ONLY what God created, you a AS God created you, you have NO desire to make anything else of yourself, you cannot and have not changed, and you are STILL the perfect divine innocent being that HE chose to create. Accepting your real identity and nature, is accepting God as your father, and therefore accepting the truth about you.

You don't get to be the source of yourself, nor do you get to redefine who and what you are. As soon a you try to do so you deny God and your own self and invent an illusory identity. This is a state of denial, and so your false self is rooted in denial of yourself. It can hardly function in any healthy way when it is constantly attacking itself.

Either you can be in self attack, thus see yourself as caused by the world, or you can be healthy by seeing yourself as caused by God. If you are caused by God, you cannot be sick or dead or unhappy or vulnerable. If you are ONLY as God created you, and are under NO laws but God's, you are not under the laws of the world, nor are you caused BY the world or anything in it.

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

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

"I am not a victim of the world."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"I am still as God created me."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

"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."

Jesus here tells us that this world, Earth, which comprises homes and cities and roads etc, has the mark of death upon it. That even from the start, even when it was made, it already had death and disappointment infused into it. It was made in an idea of death, being the idea of the opposite to eternal life. This is because "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." and so an illusory world is really a dream of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it ****are the laws of death****."

Recognize then that by death he's talking about the fact that everything in spacetime, including spacetime itself, is founded on the idea of an interruption to life, or an attempt to change the eternal into the temporary. Things coming to an end. Things changing over time. Things decaying and rotting and dying. Things becoming sick. Things lacking and sacrificing and losing. Even things growing and transforming. All various forms of limitation. A limit on life and on eternity. A notion of "not forever".

One thing that I've been doing lately is just accepting the fact that this world's laws, the laws of physics, are just automatically set up to fail. Chaos becomes possible because of the way that objects interact with each other seemingly randomly. Your car breaks down. Objects fall on the ground. You bump into things. Stuff breaks. Your new toy has a mark on it. Your clothes wear out. Your food rots. Your house needs repairs. Your kitchen smells bad. And your clothes are all dirty.

We could struggle against such things as if we have an expectation that the world can be perfect or free from defects. And some people try to control the world and twist it into an illusory palace of perfection. But the problem is, it can't be that. It is fundamentally rooted in the idea of death, of interruption and inconsistency and difference and change and transformation. All the royal castles crumble. Always there is the drive to become something it's not now.

If we try to expect that we can make a life where these things are avoided, or you can make a little oasis or illusion of safety and security, you really are in denial. Sooner or later the grim reaper is coming to look for you and yours. Either in terms of bodies dying or in terms of melting your phone or sickening your pets or scorching your grass or breaking your flowers or freezing your toes or puking in your shoes or whatever.

"Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

It's better to recognize this is the way of the world, based on its laws. It's just how it is. It's how this whole system, this whole universe, functions. There's no point in being mad about stuff breaking, or things falling on the floor, or stuff getting trapped in the door, or physical objects doing their quirky strangely annoying things, especailly when you're in a bad mood. They kind of can't help it. They are governed by rules that force them to "behave" this way, like they always will. Even in a forgiven world, the cookies still crumble.

I've been finding a lot more patience and forgiveness in just accepting that this is the functioning of this whole world. It just is broken from the start. The laws of physics are simply "at it again". Gravity is messing with you. Forces and energies are messing with you. And none of it is really "personal" because it's just doing what it does blindly and mindlessly. To expect it to ever not be like this must be some kind of insanity because a separated world cannot help but act this way.

We do need to accept that we did in fact make a fundamentally broken world. A world that does not really function properly according to the laws of God. A world where stuff is pretty much destined to change and break and grow old and die eventually. Where things collide and conflict and seem to attack, and where you can seemingly even be hurt - a notion which is utterly impossible in heaven's reality.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

Jesus is clear that you cannot really want this world, because it is not a perfect world. It is not heaven. It was made in a mad idea of rebellion against reality. It is a protest against harmony and peace. It was made to attack God and to attempt to depict the death of his creations.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love."

"Here is the world you do NOT want"

We have to be willing to look at this. The world is not EVER going to satisfy you and make you happy. It is not ever going to give you what you want. It is not ever going to feed your properly. It is not ever going to make you well or heal you or fix your problems. It has a neverending supply of madness and problems and difficulties. ALL its roads are pointed towards change, dissolution and death. Even planets and stars and galaxies die off eventually. And problems are completely built into its chaotic systems.

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

The world does not really give you any real choice, because ALL of its options are rooted in death. This isn't a pessimistic or negative view either. It is an honest and truthful view. The entire system was set up on a basis of separation and attack. Everything about it is aimed towards punishment for original sin, trying to bring about the death of life and the end of God.

"The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore, give no obedience to its laws, for they ARE laws of punishment." "The laws of sin DEMAND a victim. WHO it may be makes little difference. But death MUST be the cost and MUST be paid."

"Sin calls for punishment"

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"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."

Can you accept that everything in this world was set up to die, right from the start? That this its inherent NATURE? Because only by looking at that and recognizing "there is no way out", on its terms, can you be willing to seek for a better way.

This is just how the world is set up. There is no point in denying it. There is no point in expecting it to behave differently. The laws of physics work how they work. The only reason we become angry about stuff breaking and things failing and attacks happening and so on is because we have an unrealistic expectation that the world isn't going to be like this. That somehow in the world we can make a little safe corner where the bad things don't happen, to fend off death and keep attack at bay. Good luck with that delusion.

Now, of course if this were the only state of affairs then we would indeed be screwed. But fortunately we are not stuck inside this closed-loop of hell. There is another way. There is another perception and another belief and another reality. This other way, however, isn't a rose-tinted glass of pretending in denial that the world isn't a world of death. Nor is it a form of denial that says it's okay that things die and suffer. Or an attempt to dress up the world or to expect it to be something it's not. The world can't work because it began with an impossible goal.

We can become miraculous, in that we can in fact override the laws of death. We can overcome the laws of physics. We can see past what the world was made to see. We can see with a mechanism of vision that doesn't depend on the physical eyes. We can overlook and not hold the world against itself, or condemn it for its shortcomings. We can recognize that a world made in error cannot help but be mistaken. And we can disregard notions that the world is real in its sin and attack. Indeed we are supposed to do this in order to be forgiving and to be set free from suffering.

For me lately, I have been doing a lot of physical stuff. Rearranging the house, buying and assembling new furniture, throwing out old stuff, cleaning, organizing, moving things around, and to some extent enjoying new stuff. But I've also become aware that all of these things are already fundamentally limited in what they are and can be. I'm not in denial or pretending that they can be perfect.

The furniture with the dents in it, the gaps between the planks of wood, the poorly written instructions, the missing parts, the slightly wrong color, the stuff that doesn't fit, the wrongly shipped item, the misunderstood specs, all the ways that there is shortcomings and failures and forms of death. Lacks of perfection and order.

But I feel mostly unbothered by all these things because I am no longer expecting the world to be capable of better. It is not capable of being perfect, so I now accept that "good enough" or "less than perfect" is the best it can acheive. And then I can let it go instead of trying to find perfection where it is impossible.

We made a broken world. It can't fix itself. And it's not capable of taking on a form of perfection. It will not ever fully satisfy us. And even in forgiveness where it is seen beyond and reflects heaven, even then it still falls short in its forms and its functioning. Ultimately, the world cannot make you happy. It cannot give you peace, or take it away. It cannot be the cause of anything. Nor can it really have any meaning of its own.

At best it can reflect meaning you give to it, and that is all, because by itself it is an empty void. We made a meaningless, chaotic, broken world, and we need to simply recognize this about it. The world is not our home.

"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

The sooner you realize this the better, provided you also realize what CAN make you happy. What makes you happy is to laugh at the fundamental brokenness of the world. To realize the WHOLE THING is limited and false and can't do what you hoped it could do. The whole world is handicapped and disabled, falling short and incapable of eternal life. That's all it can be. And yet there is another world, a world we want, where this need not be.

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."

"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. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?

In ACIM there is a lot of talk about imprisoning someone, and also about setting them free. Jesus actually says that you can either a) amplify the sickness of another by reinforcing beliefs they already have, or b) weaken the sickness of another by withdrawing belief in it.

It is one thing to realize that you can potentially "positively" help someone to heal and to set them free, by not projecting guilt or fear or sin onto them, but it is another to willingly look at the possibility that you may be "cursing" them with your ego.

This doesn't mean necessarily that you originate a person's sickness, or that you can curse them against their will. But Jesus does say that you can reinforce beliefs they already have, exploit their weaknesses, and essentially increase their guilt or sickness by projecting yours onto them. We do "affect" each other.

It however remains true that a person who is strong in the truth becomes invulnerable, and has set themselves free both from imprisonment and from the potential for being imprisoned. It is not possible to drag such a person into the darkness.

But if a person has volunteered to "play along with" the idea that they are guilty, or deserve to suffer, or to not be loved, this is like a kind of invitation. If we just lay down and accept that we should suffer as a result of being guilty, we make ourselves sort of "open to" forms of suffering or attack, allowing or using them to hurt ourselves. If we set up a mechanism of self-hurt, it becomes possible for another person to leverage that.

In essence, Jesus is saying that if someone buys into sin and guilt, the projected sin and guilt of others can compound it. It can make their situation worse, further weakening their mind and health. I've certainly heard stories of people falling sick and having medical issues due to being in proximity to guilty, blameful or fearful individuals. And I can say from personal experience that toxic-energy people have to sometimes be avoided.

If it's true that your mind can influence another mind, which appears to be exactly what Jesus is saying - because minds are joined - then it is possible to either abuse this fact or use it for constructive purposes. When the mind is turned to more constructive uses it can leverage the strength it sees in another to amplify that strength, increasing the light and innocence in another's mind, and therefore inducing healing on their behalf.

We need therefore to be mindful that either we are blessing or cursing, hurting or healing. We can pull up or we can pull down. We can be the light of the world or the darkness of the world. And what we choose to give to another we will experience for ourselves. We cannot escape this law because it's the law of God. What you do unto others, you to do yourself, and vice versa.

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

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."

Recognize in this passage, further confirmation that when the mind is healed, the body CANNOT BE SICK.

Elsewhere Jesus tells us that sickness is merely another form of guilt. If a guiltless mind cannot suffer, it is because without guilt, there cannot be sickness.

Jesus tells us "sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return." ... telling us that it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for sickness to remain or come back, because without guilt, it is impossible. Sickness is MADE OF guilt. It is a thought of sinfulness.

Sickness does mean separation from God. Separation from God does include the mental belief in separation, AND it includes the physical universe and the physical body. All of the content of the ego’s dream of separation is part of "sickness". All of it is governed by this same irrefutable law that when mind is healed, the sickness cannot stay.

This applies to all levels and forms. And it is because of this, that the entire physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR when the entire sonship relinquishes the last ounces of guilt and sin. This is also why when the body is finally recognized as an idea of sin ("the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards"), it too will DISAPPEAR - not die. The dream is left by truth, not death.

This does NOT mean that the mind transcends sickness and the sickness remains, with the mind being all happy and peaceful "in spite of sickness". A broken body PROVES the mind has not been healed, and a healed mind shows it’s PROOF of healing by demonstrating a body free of sickness.

While sickness remains in the body, we are accusing our brothers and the whole world of attacking and causing us to suffer. We are being victims, defending against truth, and are in denial of awakening. We also put sickness into the body in order to PROVE that we can be hurt. Why would we do that, if we are at peace and awake? We not only would not, we could not.

It is easy to say that sick bodies and healthy bodies are all the same. However, this is the experience of the final atonement of the entire sonship, and if it is not being experienced, it remains a concept. To experience your own body with a HOLY mind, causing the body to be free of sickness, is the first step in "personal atonement".

To undo and disappear the body is a major accomplishment. But until ALL BODIES ARE HEALED because ALL MINDS ARE HEALED, only then when *everyone is experiencing holiness* does it matter that all bodies are the same illusion. Only then, as the entire sonship wakes in union, is it experientially true that all bodies are the same illusion, and at that point, there CANNOT BE ANY SICK BODIES.

No one dies without their own consent. No one is sick without their own consent. The secret salvation is that you do it all to yourself. You choose it. Somewhere, somehow, you choose it. Consent to suffer is not awakening. Consent to be sick and die is not peace. If people do not wish to continue to suffer, they must CHOOSE AGAIN. And they have the power to do so.

Everyone has the power to undo ALL of the suffering of the world. Otherwise, how will you be the light and salvation of the world if you are half dead or worse? Suffering is optional, provided you want the conditions that accompany health. Healed mind, healed body.

How was the tiny mad idea possible? How was it possible for us to mis-create? Why did God give us the ability to try to sin? Did we lose our innocence in the separation? How is it that this world seems to exist?

When God created his children, He gave them the freedom to will and create. The mind is not capable of ever doing anything that God didn't give it the ability to do. It cannot add abilities to itself, it can only operate within the parameters of its design. This means you literally cannot go against God's will or do anything He did not make possible.

"God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them."

But what God did do, was give you freedom. The power of the mind to freely choose to will to co-create. And this freedom is fully given.

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. "

Within the context of being "completely free", it is technically possible for you to try to USE your freedom against itself. You HAVE to be free to do this, in order to truly have freedom. While you have free will, it HAS to be possible for you to potentially USE that free will to try NOT to will anything. If this weren't a part of the freedom of will, you would not have free will. It's not a productive USE of will, since it creates nothing, but it is still part of it.

The thing is, although you are free to TRY to deny freedom, something completely pointless happens when you do so. Since it remains true that God's will cannot be opposed, and you cannot remove your freedom from yourself, and you cannot make yourself unpowerful, and you cannot be changed in any way, the exercise of TRYING to use your will to NOT will, to be "unwilling" or to oppose God's will, HAS to be futile.

It's not that you aren't free to TRY to do this, it's just that there is really no point in doing it. It's not possible to cause anything real to happen this way, because it denies creation. So it's like saying, I want to use my free will against itself to cause nothing to happen. I want to will not to will. I want to not create anything. I want to deny myself.

There is a circular logic which enters into this. You are trying to use your free will to cause your free will to stop being free and to will nothing. But how can you still be WILLING that you will nothing? You have to still USE the will to will that you don't will anything. So the notion is really absurd. You have to keep using the will, while claiming that you're not using it. And so it has to entail denial and it has to NOT accomplish what you're trying to make it accomplish. And never can you will the WILL itself to cease to exist, because you'd have to USE will to do that.

It has to be a state of denial, because the fact remains you can't change your freedom or power. So trying to DO so can only mean you are going into a DENIAL of what is true of you, and are PRETENDING to do whatever you're doing. You can't actually make yourself un-free or destroy your power. You can, however, seemingly deceive yourself in believing that its possible. Precisely BECAUSE you are free to do so. God did make it possible for you to be free to try to not be free, but He did not make it possible for you to ACTUALLY affect your freedom.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Another way to put it is, it is not possible to change God's will or to cause your own will to stop. It is literally impossible to separate from God or be where God is not. However, you are FREE to use your freedom to TRY to do so. You can INSIST that it is possible, and invest belief in it, and try to GIVE IT truth and make it real and convince yourself of it and deceive yourself, but you STILL cannot make it a reality or actually do it in reality.

As you try to do so, as you attempt to use your freedom to stop being free, as you try to will not to will anything, or as you try to will nothingness, or try to give reality and meaning to something impossible, you go into what we're calling the "tiny mad idea". The idea of separation and sin. Which just means you're insisting that something impossible is possible - that something false is true. That you CAN separate, you CAN sin, you have done so, and there is proof that the impossible is happening.

This can only be self deception and denial, because it's still impossible. But you are free to believe it if you want to. To believe it you have to DENY what is true, try to be out of touch with the facts, and pretend that the will has been denied. You are free to pretend that you have no freedom, which seems to place the mind in a state of "sleep" or dormancy, as though it is not creating or has no power, or is not alive. A sort of "stand-by mode", in which the mind believes that everything impossible is possible, and thus imagines that the opposite of God is happening through a kind of hallucinatory process of wishful thinking. ("There is no world apart from what you wish").

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

Now, going into this state, is NOT A SIN. NOR is it outside of the scope of what God made possible. You can never actually rewrite the laws of God. You can't give yourself something He did not give you. You cannot change yourself. You cannot destroy yourself or your freedom or your will. But it IS within your rights and within your power to deny or pretend that you can do these things.

Pretending that you are not immortal is the best you can do, because you cannot cause yourself to die. But you certainly can produce illusions, fabrications, that its happening, through the DESIRE to have it be possible. You can confuse your identity with these illusions. You can also believe that the suffering is real. But it remains unreal, and the truth is unchanged.

What this simply means is that by "mis-using" the mind to believe that impossibilities are possible and happening, you hallucinate a world of make-believe, which you try to invest in and convince yourself is true and real. You even try to give it immortality and life and will and a mind of its own. But you can't succeed. You can only fake it. But you are free to fake it.

Entering into this state of "denying that you are free", using your freedom of will to try to will not to have freedom of will, you are ONLY entering into a state of being MISTAKEN. If it is true that you HAVE freedom and will, you are mistaken when you believe that you don't. If it is true that you are immortal, you are mistaken when you believe death is possible. If it is true that sin is utterly impossible, you are mistaken when you believe sin is happening.

Being mistaken is still an "innocent" condition. Guilt does not have to enter into it at all. Someone can make an "innocent mistake", which is simply a failure to willingly admit that you're trying to do something which makes no sense. You can be mistaken in believing that willing against God's free will is possible. It's not possible. Nor can you really will against yourself. But you are free to believe it's possible, and to try to do it, and to try to convince yourself that you've done it. But you cannot do it, and so are mistaken when you believe this.

Believing that you can be separate from God, is a simple mistake. Since it's not possible, you can't do it. But you can try to convince yourself that it's possible. Doing that is pointless and futile because it can't BE possible. But you are free to try. You are free to resist the truth. Or to use your power to try to pretend to be powerless. You are innocent in this because all you're doing is using your God-given powers in a way that is a pointless exercise. A way which results in nothing really happening, as you "play small" and try to be little and powerless.

Provided that you recognize that mis-creation is just a state of being mistaken, and is not a sin, and is still well within the laws of God, and that at no time is God's will violated, even when you are mistaken, then you can also see that mis-creating is an innocent act. It's really not an act at all. And it does not change the truth about you. All it does is set up some illusion of deception and some confusion about what's really possible.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

The Course also talks about how entering into this "detour into fear", which is just an attempt to make true what is not true, or to use will against itself, produced a "lower order mind" or a "system of thought" which seems to function opposite to how God originally indended it in higher reality. This lower (ego) mind is a mind of denial, deception, untruth and confusion. But it is not a sin. It's just a mis-configured and unwise mis-use of your God-given abilities.

"Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual."

The physical world of bodies is what is produced in the deceptive state of being mistaken about the truth. In the state of denial, the dream of death, the illusion of separation, the pretense at being powerless and imprisoned, it produces the "forms of error" which the body sees. Error is just a mistake.

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

Attempting to assert that will can cause will not to will, produced an illusion of an "unwilling world." A world in opposition to God. But this is STILL within the confines of the Son of God's freedom. The angels also have this freedom.

"Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit..."

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.""God does not coerce".

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception. "

God is not viewing your excursion into "trying to make impossible things possible", as being a sin. He doesn't see it as a real threat to what you are, either. Nor does he coerce you into stopping doing this against your will. For God to oppose your free will he would have to oppose his own. He does however "encourage" and guide and help his children to "come to their senses". Because it remains true that "trying not to will anything" is a rather pointless exercise which can't really result in anything creative. It's more like, taking a nap where you dream of destruction or "the opposite of creating". A dream of mortality and death as "the opposite of eternal life."

We mis-created the world, but only as a mistake. Not as a sin. When it is recognized as only a mistake, sin is lifted away from it and it is regarded as forgiven. Being an illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible, this is seen through and beyond, and this overlooking is forgiveness. It's a forgiveness which looks past bodies and the physical to the light of reality, not deceived by the illusion that false things are true. To the the light of sanity and reason. We simply made the world in error and it can be undone.

"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

"Miracles reflect..." "I have done this thing and it is this I would undo."All we're doing here, is basically, innocently, trying to do something which isn't really possible. We're using our freedom to try to imprison ourselves. We're using our immortality to pretend to be mortal. We're using our holiness to pretend to be sinners. And we're using the power of the mind to pretend to be weak and powerless. We can't ACTUALLY be imprisoned, or mortal, or sinful, or powerless. And so we're using all these things against themselves, to PRETEND that we don't have these things. This BLOCKS and disguises them, using illusions to make it appear something is true which isn't.

Seen as nothing more than an error, a mistake, a futile attempt, a pointless exercise, the dream of death is not "against" God's will, which cannot be opposed, but is an ATTEMPT to believe that opposing God's will is possible or has merit. The mind is just stretching the truth. But using the mind in a "destructive" way, against its own nature, isn't constructive or creative and it also doesn't allow you to experience happiness.

"The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

God DOES will that you maintain the sanity of the clear recognition that there is NO POINT trying to use your freedom against itself. That it is truly impossible to WILL nothing. Or to make yourself have no power. Believing you are powerless when you are powerful, or that you are imprisoned when you are free, is obviously a state of denial, and this denial of life can only produce illusions of suffering and pain and misery."We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all."

"Whenever projection (creation) in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth."

When you try NOT to create, you enter into "making" illusions. You produce an "emptiness" or lack of love, which is the world of "sin", meaning just the illusion of love's absence, or the absence of light. It isn't the presence of darkness, or of sin, or of real death, it is the illusion of the absence of their opposite. Because even in illusions you can't get outside of God's laws. You can never violate the parameters of your functioning as given by God. And so the world remains ONLY a mistake, not a real sin.

God's own will follows the knowledge that it is pointless to use will against itself, even though its possible to TRY to do so. Because when you try to do so, nothing is willed, and so nothing happens. God knows this and he is sane. His will is that you know it also. When you refuse to know it or you deny it, insisting that you CAN will nothingness to be something, you become deceived and confused. And God does not will that you enter into such suffering. "God's will for me is perfect happiness". And you can only be happy when you will in accord with God's true will - purely constructively and using your freedom to create. Free from self destruction.

"God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

"The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false."

In all this, you always remain innocent, you can be correct or mistaken, but you cannot change the laws of God or of your true nature. You can be asleep in a denial state of trying to pretend that impossibilities are possible, but you can't ACTUALLY cause an opposite to God to happen. You can dream of it, imagine it, try to give it reality, even convince yourself of it, but you can't make it true. So at some point you have to admit, it's a fruitless exercise, and just return to creating with God. Using will to willingly will your creations, as God intended.

Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…

“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”

“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”

“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”

“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”

“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”

“I rest in God today, and let Him work

In me and through me, while I rest in Him

In quiet and in perfect certainty.”

“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”

“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”

“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."

“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”

“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”

“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”

“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”

“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”

“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”

“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”

“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”

“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”

“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”

“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”

“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”

“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”

“I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.”

“It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”

“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”

“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”

“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”

“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”

“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”

“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”

“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”

“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”

“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”

“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”

“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions." .... ie the mind IS separate from bodily conditions. And since "if I defend myself I am attacked", if you try to DIRECTLY defend the body you will attack it and keep it sick.

However...

"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, ***and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument*** through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over."

Therefore, by recognizing that the mind is distinct from the body and NOT at the effect of the body, the mind assumes a position of healing, which HEALS the body. By focusing first on the healing of the mind, the healed mind HEALS the body.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

These statements are not saying that you can just focus on mind and ignore the body's condition. Or that by recognizing mind is SEPARATE from the body - thus not affected BY it - that the mind would still maintain or allow the body's sickened state.

Instead, Jesus is saying that once you DO see that your mind IS NOT your body, THIS state of mind will CAUSE the body to heal.

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

Then the body will become "a healthy serviceable instrument."

It is made healthy due to the removal of the level confusion that's inherent to the belief that the mind IS the body, or that the identity is the body/ego. Once you become clearer about WHAT YOU ARE, and what mind is, the mind adopts its natural HEALING function and cures all sickness.

This teaching has nothing to do with just escaping the body and being only identified with spirit - which IS a goal - but the EFFECT of this goal is that mind regains its POWER, and can now CAUSE healing and life to be restored.

In other words, you heal the body INDIRECTLY by DIRECTLY healing the mind so that IT IN TURN heals the body. But if you swap this around and try to heal the body first without healing the mind, you won't get a lasting healing.

"Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death."

While it's true that if you FOCUS ON the body first and foremost, you are really reinforcing it as real and really sick and separate. And this attacks it and keeps it sick. In that state of mind you are NOT really in a position to "heal it".

So it seems like a PARADOX... or counter intuitive. .. but you in fact are being instructed that if you DO want the body to heal, you GO ABOUT IT BY healing the mind/identity, SO THAT this leads to the mind mind indirectly healing the body.

By focusing on the body first you are trying to really bring about death in the NAME of healing. But if you focus on healing the mind first you are attempting to bring about LIFE, and this RAISES THE BODY FROM DEATH.

"A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

There are a set of steps by which your own sin comes to find itself inside of your brother.

1) Believe you are sinful (oops, are you sure?)

2) Grab ahold of that sin

3) Hand it over to your brother and shove it down his throat (project)

4) Disassociate yourself from it and wash your hands of it

5) Put on your 'happy face' and pretend you are innocent

6) Point a finger at the sin, which is now in your brother

7) Accuse your brother's sin of being evil, and attack it

You then see sin in your brother and seemingly 'not' in yourself, because your mask of pretend innocence HIDES the fact that the sin is still in you and never left. The face of innocence covers up your guilt and makes everyone believe you didn't do it.

The one left holding the baby is then your brother in whom you see your projected sin, and you attack him for it, to make sure it stays well away from you.

At the same time, you are then terried that your own sin, which you got rid of, might come back to haunt you. You start to suspect it's going to attack you, find you, hunt you down and enact itself upon you again.

As this is playing out, it seems to transpire that 'the sin' does indeed come back to attack you, manifested in forms of punishment and victimhood, seemingly done 'by' the person in whom you shoved your sin, and now you get to claim:

"I am an innocent victim, I did not ask for this, they are attacking me without my will, the sin is in them, look look I can see the sin in them, it's all their fault".

Well, pretty convenient, to keep up this charade, given that it conceals the sin in you, within your own mind, and puts on a show that you are not sinful at all. You're trying to convince yourself and everyone around you that you do not believe you are the sinner, all the while keeping your sin hidden in the shadows of your mind underneath your blanket of fake innocence.

Now, to reverse this is going to mean, you have to take off the fake mask of innocence, you are going to have to stop being a victim, AND - horror of all horrors - you are going to have to TAKE BACK the sin that you shoved into your brother. It's yours, anyway. You have to separate your brother from your sin, i.e. from the guilt. You have to find a way to see them as innocent and as not `owning` the sin. It's not theirs. They are not sinful.

But you don't really want to do this because if you take back your sin, lo and behold, your mask of innocence (which was a total farce) has to be taken off of yourself, and you have to come face to face again with the sin being IN YOU. You do not like the sin being in you, that's why you tried to get rid of it in the first place.

So why would anyone 'seemingly' in their right mind want to take off their lovely sheen of innocence and own up to being a sinner? It's not exactly an attractive offer.

However, until you do this you have no chance to really heal it. And there is a healing option. If you take it quickly to Holy Spirit and let Him decide whether it's true or not, he will guarantee to find you ALWAYS innocent. It's pretty easy, but you have to be open minded about ACCEPTING that it's true that you're innocent.

There is a way out of hell.

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."

Jesus says the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness. In effect this means asking to BE forgiven.

We know, however, that real forgiveness is a recognition that there is nothing TO forgive, because forgiveness SEES innocence and completely disregards sin.

The question then is why would you ASK (pray) to be forgiven?

The fact is that the Holy Spirit is in fact God's idea of healing the separation, and the Holy Spirit himself forgives. ie the Holy Spirit looks upon everything with innocence and sees it reflected, and therefore disregards all sin. He recognizes the truth about YOU. Therefore, in order for YOU to experience forgiveness, you need to ask the Holy Spirit to "forgive you", and to let yourself "be" forgiven BY him ..... which means to open up to allow him to HEAL YOU, and to CORRECT your mind, and to help you to align with how HE sees you.

"ANY attempt you make to correct a brother, means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

He already looks upon you with forgiving, loving eyes. He also has the power to UNDO what you have made and heal it FOR you. Your function therefore isn't to necessarily be the "professional forgiver" all the time, but instead the RECEIVER of miracles from the Holy Spirit. The receiver of healing. So that you can then in turn GIVE the miracles you have received.

If it were all up to you, you'd see yourself as having to be the one who does the forgiving. But ACIM's view is that the Holy Spirit provides the vision of Christ in which all is seen AS forgiven, and then SHARES this with you, and so you are to accept it as God's ANSWER to the problems you see. Rather than trying to figure it out on your own or fix your own mind. Let the Holy Spirit heal you FOR you and be open to BEING forgiven.

This is why the meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, ie to ask to be forgiven and to accept and receive that forgiveness. That means receiving healing and having the Holy Spirit do something TO you and FOR you and THROUGH you. In turn when you have become forgiven, you are now able to extend that forgiveness to others, which ACTUALLY means that you now perform miracles with the Holy Spirit to heal others.

Our function therefore is to LET THE HOLY SPIRIT HEAL US, instead of trying to do this all on our own.

"Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

"Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven ALL your sins, and left without a single one you cherish still."

"It is the privilege of the forgiven (healed) to forgive (heal others)."

Resurrecetion and salvation is all about finding freedom from GUILT. Which means reclaiming your INNOCENCE. Guilt is the subtrate of the ego, of all sickness, all forms of suffering, the world, and even death. Without guilt there is no separation, no misery, no spacetime and no ego. Guilt is death just as innocence is life. The attraction of guilt is the opposite to the attraction of God. Guilt is hell, innocence is heaven. We must purge ALL GUILT from our minds and reclaim the innocence that was hidden!

"****Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing.****" "And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

"Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered to the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation."

"His real escape from guilt can lie only in the recognition that the guilt has gone. And how can this be recognized as long as he hides it in another, and does not see it as his own?"

"From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end."

"Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness." "With everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice." "The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct, if it is understood."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is NOT its goal, and the ESCAPE from guilt becomes its aim."

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."

"Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt."

"In the crystal cleanness of the release you GIVE, is YOUR INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You MUST be holy, if you OFFER holiness."

"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack MAKES GUILT REAL, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been."

"Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released"

"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well."

"God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt."

"The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

But often you feel vulnerable.

Vulnerability is an experience of feeling exposed, accessible, hurt-able, noticeable, visible, targeted and attacked. When you are vulnerable you perceive that the whole world is out to get you.

Experiencing vulnerability is a familiar state that you normally refer to as "afraid". It's another word for it. You can't help but experience what you call 'fear' when you are seeing yourself as being attackable.

However, this sense of being vulnerable has only come about because you have created an enemy within your own mind. You've projected this enemy onto other people or situations, thinking they now are the cause of the threat, but the enemy is still in your own mind. And since you created it, you can undo it.

It is therefore possible to stop feeling vulnerable, and to re-access a state of INVULNERABILITY.

Any form of resistance will create a division in your mind, a separation, and will make your mind be "split". Literally, your mind seems to take on two identities, one which experiences itself as being victimized, and the other which experiences itself as being a victimizer.

Usually the part that is a victim uses denial and disassociation to block awareness that the victimizer part is also a part of the same mind. It is the victim's resistance to the victimizer that makes it a victim in the first place, and denies and therefore projects the victimizer into being. The victim then does not perceive that they themselves are the cause of their own victimization, that they are literally doing it to themselves within their own mind, that their mind is in a state of self-attack, and that they therefore could do something to stop it.

A sense of vulnerability must occur as soon as you have made yourself unwhole. This can happen in many forms including self-abandonment, self-attack, self-rejection, denial, believing in enemies, resistance to the truth, trying to block awareness, blame, scapegoating, trying to stop things from happening, being controlling, not accepting everything as it is, etc. These are all forms of separating and putting up walls. And putting up walls, experientially, actually takes down walls in your mind, producing an experiencing of having become exposed to something that you were previously safe from.

You can't feel safe while you are attacking yourself.

What you can realize though, is that it is YOU that is attacking yourself, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. Immediately you will feel significant reduction in the experience of exposure and vulnerability, if you can remind yourself that you are not being affected by other people or situations. They are NOT the cause. That alone will relieve much of your anxiety. This also deflates some of your belief in separation and your resistance to yourself. But you need to take it further and undo as much as you can of the split that's happened inside your own self.

Quite literally, you can become completely invulnerable. Or rather, recognize that your invulnerability is still completely intact and was simply blocked from your awareness when you thought you were vulnerable. You can become whole, free of the split mind of the ego, and experiencing your SELF as free of attack. In such a state, there is nothing outside of you which can bring about an internal experience of attack, and therefore you are invulnerable to everything. Nobody can give it to you or take it away. If you do not choose to believe in attack, you will have no enemies. And then you will enjoy peace of mind.

As I found myself believing that I was angry with someone, what then came to mind was that both 'that person' and 'me' were two parts contained in my own mind.

It had to be true that I was at war with myself. Even if I think that my thoughts about the other person were about someone 'not me', that's not true. I had to admit that I quite literally was being angry at myself, had split myself into two people, and was believing that this 'other person' was the cause of my problems.

Once I saw this and claimed responsibility for 'containing' this entire scenario within myself - that this was my own mind attacking itself, and that this had absolutely nothing to do with that person that I thought it was to do with.... something happened.

A short time passed and somehow, the anger had completely disappeared. I didn't even notice it leave. There was no transition or gradual weaning off of it, or having to work on it or attack it or try to change it. I just sort of noticed there wasn't any, not even a trace, like it was never there at all.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

I'm seeing this more and more now. My mind is not really capable of having a separate objective view of an external world, with external separate people doing stuff to me. However I experience it, all of the 'content' of this scene is within me. Even my thoughts about how someone else is to blame, even my thoughts about how they're the ones who are wrong, that's all still a part of myself attacking another part of myself. My mind seems to have projected and 'mapped' onto the physical scenario - me vs another person - but really this is all happening inside me.

So ... it's not really possible to be upset at a separate person. I am only upset with myself. And if my mind contains content that says someone else is doing something to me, that's ME doing something to me. This is simply the secret to salvation - that we are literally doing this to ourselves, because any time we perceive an enemy we have made an enemy WTIHIN our own mind, FROM our own self, and we are at war with ourselves. We might imagine that it's got something to do with other people but it doesn't. We literally split our minds and form multiple personalities and they seem to interact as though separate people.

This isn't an insanity that's particular to me. This is apparently what most of us are doing all the time. I can't perceive conflict with others unless I have conflict within me. I can't be against or offended by others without having to separate off a part of my mind, label it as another person, and attack it.

So what happens when I realize that both me and my enemy are still parts of myself? That I am both of these people? That I am all of this war? That I am both sides of this conflict? Then the unawareness of ego, of being unconscious and lost in the battlefield, its foundation is ripped out by the light of truth. And then all effects from that inner conflict have to disappear. And they do.

You are your own worst enemy. You are your ONLY enemy. You are against yourself, and this is the only war you are fighting. You have no external enemies whatsoever. It's just you, doing this to yourself, having an internal war in a private world. This is the secret to salvation - that you are doing this all to yourself - that you are you AND your enemies combined. And this has got nothing to do with anyone else, because there isn't really an 'other' separate entity out there.

Just because you forget the light from time to time doesn't mean it goes away. It is permanent. It waits for you to return to it. And even after your next round of madness it is still there waiting for your return. It's never possible to remove it and it doesn't go away.

The ego's voice will come up with countless ways to persuade you that there is no light left anymore. All doom and gloom and darkness and death. It'll tell you there is no light and you might as well give up. This is not actually true. The light is always there, inviting you to join it.

To join the light you have to step out of the darkness, which means no longer dwelling in the ego's viewpoint and shifting your perspective to the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the light of truth.

Taking things lightly or lightening up doesn't have to mean you've got to fake being happy or not care about anything. It means you get to genuinely be happy and carefree because the light sets you free. The "light side" is a way of looking, a way of perceiving, and a way of experiencing. It arises from sanity and truth and certainty.

The Holy Spirit's offering is one of peace and calm and illumination and clarity. He is available to show you a view of the world which can't be taken seriously, which shows you how trivial everything is here, and recognizes that all this ego stuff really is literally nothing.

What were you so worried about? It was nothing. What was so alarming and shocking? It's nothing. The Holy Spirit looks upon the illusion of "the dark side" and recognizes it is false. It has no truth to it. It has no credibility. It isn't to be listened to and has no argument that can convince the Holy Spirit it has a solid foundation. The Holy Spirit merely looks upon it, recognizes it is completely false, and that therefore there really IS no ego. It IS nothing.

If you are caught up in the story of life or the suffering agenda of the ego or the seeming bleakness of the ego's lies, then you need some light. You can't just `lighten up` by denying, however. Sometimes you have to work through your clouds and process your feelings and coming to a point where you're ready to look at things in a different way.

But at some point you DO need to open up to the Holy Spirit. You can't get to the light by ignoring him or not including Him. Similarly Jesus is with you in the light and you can't be in the light without Him being with you.

There is hope, because darkness is never permanent or true and the light is forever and always truthful. There is hope because the Holy Spirit is with you now and always will be and WILL NOT FAIL to lead you home to the light. We but need to be willing to stop listening to our own ego voice and turn within to listen to His voice of sanity and calm and reassurance.

Everything IS alright. Nothing has gone wrong. We are already saved.

Let's also remember that God Himself has appointed the Holy Spirit as his ANSWER to all of our suffering and darkness. God has GIVEN His support. He is in us, eager to help us in any way possible if we would allow it. His Help has no limits other than our resistance to accept it. It isn't bits of truth or quotes or thoughts or certain feelings or justifications or explanations that will save you, it is the LIGHT OF GOD - as the Holy Spirit - in your mind. This is what you need to connect with. He is your APPOINTED TEACHER, comforter, and friend. He is there for a reason. Use him.

There is a clear teaching in ACIM that there are TWO worlds, and you can ONLY see one of the two in its entirety at any given time. Seeing one, REQUIRES you NOT TO SEE the other. You CANNOT see both of them in full simultaneously. And each of them uses a different KIND of vision, designed ONLY to see one kind of world.

One of these two worlds is Earth and its environment - all galaxies etc. The other is the real world/heaven - God's creation. You can ONLY see ONE of the two in full. If you shift your vision to true perception you can see God's world. If you shift your vision to false perception you can see the physical world. But you CANNOT DO BOTH AT ONCE.

So there is a dynamic, whereby the MORE that you see the real world, the LESS you see the physical world. As the real world "phases in", the physical world "fades out". You cannot see both at once, and in order to see one or the other you have to sacrifice the ability to see its opposite.

To the DEGREE that you value one of the worlds, that is how much you will see it, and inversely, this valuing of it causes you NOT TO VALUE the opposite world, which causes you to SEE IT LESS. This is a basic function of perception, that you see what you value, because you believe in it, and thus want to see it. You do NOT SEE what you DO NOT VALUE. And any world you consider "false" due to its opposite being "true", becomes invisible to you.

This is a very core teaching. You are choosing between heaven or hell.

"The world is false perception" and relies on physical sight of photons using the biological apparatus of the eyeballs an nerves etc.

The real world is true perception/christ vision and relies on the spiritual eye, which in turn DOES NOT rely on the body, and is direct mind-seeing.

Two types of perception. Two ways of seeing. Two worlds resulting. "The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

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

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear"

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

""The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten"

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear."

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear."

We have to be careful when using terms like "real world" and so on. There is a propensity to associate "real" with "ultimate reality", permanence, eternity, heaven etc. As though describing "places". Like you can be "in" reality or outside of it. If something is considered real, you might equate it with Heaven for example.

But this is not really what ACIM means when it refers to things as real. For example it tells you to "make the world real unto yourself", while in the next breath "there is no world".

Real, in these terms, really means "aligned with truth". Or let's say a person is insane, and to that insane person they experience things in an unreal way, a distorted way. When they return to sanity, they return to "reality". In other words, to "what is", or the truth about what is here, rather than the distorted view of it.

So the world we made, Earth, can "become real to you", in the sense that it it can be seen with Christ Vision from a perspective of real love, which lends it the meaning of love. Or moreso, truth. And so now the world is seen in the light of truth and for what it "really is". But this doesn't mean it's real as in ultimate reality. It means you're having what Jesus describes as "accurate perception" of it.

That accuracy, without distortion, is what it means when he refers to "the real world". A world as seen through loving eyes that reveals the "true nature of" the world. The true nature of the world, however, is that it is still an illusion of a world.

So when you make it real unto yourself, that means to love the world regardless of it being an illusion. To see it "with reality" or aligned with truth. Rather than seeing the "unreal world" which is seen through false perception, a distorted, condemned, dark version of the world. A misinterpreted world.

This is why "the real world" is called the real world. It doesn't mean it is reality as in, the location of Heaven. It doesn't mean it is "where ultimate reality is" either. But it does mean this is a state of mind and awareness in which the world is seen through vision, through sane eyes, recognized for what it actually is, rather than having bought into lies, illusions, deceptions or temptations. A clear mind, a right mind, looking with sanity upon simply what it is and nothing more or less.

We reach "the real world" through this process of sorting out perception and aligning with truth. Becoming able to see, without ego distortions and interruptions, what is actually there. What is there, as the world, without our projections of sin and guilt upon it. A forgiven world. A world seen through love's eyes. And in fact a world that God loves. BUT, this does not "make it real" in the sense of it being now some kind of permanent eternal reality. It just means it is now seen in the light, seen with truth, seen with sanity, and recognized. Its "true nature" or "the reality of it" is revealed. But the world's true nature is still that it is an illusion.

This is why "the real world still is but a dream". We move on from the real world.... the forgiven world... the world seen through "realities eyes" so to speak, to go "to reality", where we can now rightfully associate reality and location, or reality and permanence, or reality and eternal life. The Kingdom of God, where everything IS real, is recognized, and ALSO is eternal.

False perception is an illusory world seen in an "unreal way", which makes it seem like hell on earth.

The real world is an illusory world seen in a "real way". This makes it seem like heaven on earth.

Heaven is a real world, the Kingdom, seen in a real way.

In the ego's world, having expectations seems to produce stress and upset. We seem to be tasked with dropping all expectations, so that whatever happens, we will be okay with it. It is good not to have attachments to outcomes, or to be trying to control things, or to expect or hope that something is going to turn out a certain way only to have that expectation dashed against the rocks.

But here's what's really going on.

If you have an expectation, with the ego, it is typically a half-arsed wishful thinking, which has no power, and doesn't actually CAUSE anything to occur. Yet the ego believes that its expectations are lining up with how things will be. Then, because of this lack of POWER, when events do not follow the expectation there is anger and frustration and suffering. And so then it seems to be better not to use expectation at all since it always seems to lead to upset. We need to let go of the ego's form of expectation, but we shouldn't throw expectation out of the window altogether because Holy Spirit has his own use of it.

The fact is that you can either be expecting WITH the ego, or you can be expecting WITH Holy Spirit.

Expecting with the ego is what most people are familiar with as expectations. In other words, the ego perception doesn't believe it has any power over anything, since it wants to be a victim, and so makes INSANE expectations which really are a resistance to what is happening. Resistance is the ego's form of magical power, which it thinks it can wield in order to 'make' the world be the way it wants it to be. This is of course denial-based, and a deception, and basically leads to great suffering because it's out of touch with reality. When the ego expects something, it is choosing a wholly SEPARATE version of events than those that will possibly happen, as a form of rebellion, and its degree of belief in things turning out that way is really actually very weak. Resistance is weakness. And so usually it is thwarted and then you end up miserable and angry that things didn't turn out. So yes, it's good not to have ego expectations or ego attachment to outcomes.

HOWEVER ....

Expecting with the Holy Spirit is not like this. Holy Spirit doesn't use resistance, he uses EXTENSION, which is a creative power. Expecting with the Holy Spirit means that you are extending the POWER OF GOD, demanding and requiring that illusions fall into place. Expecting with the Holy Spirit has real authoritative power. Power to heal, power to manifest, power to change the world. Expectation through Holy Spirit means you are lining up with GOD's will, rather than the ego's fictional will, and what God will's MUST occur. It is not a matter of a request that things change, or a desire that things be different. It FORCES them to be different.

God has a constant expectation that there is perfect peace and permanent divine health. If God were to stop 'expecting' this to be true, he would enter into delusions. He is so certain that there will always be immortality, and that no illusion can assail his Kingdom, that he has every right to have ABSOLUTE EXPECTATION. Absolute knowing. Not just like, referring to something and asking it if it might be the way He wants it to be, but CREATION, actually PUTTING INTO EFFECT God's will. Making it so. Creating by His will to produce what he wants to be. There is no room for 'events' turning out any other way in this. There is no room for a conflict between expectation and what is. God's expectation overrides all illusions.

So it is perfectly okay, and encouraged, to expect with God. To expect in alignment with Holy Spirit. To expect that miracles will occur. To expect that there will be an end to death. To expect that a person can live forever. To expect immortality. And that faith isn't misplaced. It's not a delusion. It is law.

You may find it hard to accept the truth, because you do not believe it about yourself. You look within yourself to see if it applies there and find yourself wanting. Your self doubts and your limitations work against your attempts to believe it.

What I'm finding is it can be more effective to borrow some clout from God. The train of thought goes along the lines of, "Is this true of God?". I ask myself if God can have this thing, this false thing, this problem, this suffering, this sickness, whatever it is.

For some reason I seem to be much more convinced that God is perfect and immortal and incapable of any kind of suffering than I am. So I use that fact. I contrast it against his nature and ask myself if I can believe that God has this. And usually I cannot, usually it seems ridiculous to even suggest it, and this helps me to be unconvinced of it also.

The underlying process here is simply "being one with God" more and more. Sharing everything with God. If something is true of God it is true of me. If it is not true of God then it is not true of me either. I am part of God. If I have something, God has to have it also. If God has something, I have to have it also. No exceptions, because we are one.

So if you are finding it a struggle to convince yourself that certain things are not true of you, that you don't have sufferings or illnesses or fears or guilts or whatever, instead of "doing it all by yourself" or in relation to yourself, do it in relation to God. Include God in the equation and question. You may find it a lot more effective and easier to let things go when you can see the impossibility of God having anything wrong with him.

You might also consider that this kind of practice is not merely one of many tools, but is in fact the end goal. We are supposed to be increasing our oneness with God. We are supposed to be seeing ourselves as sharing everything with him, and being like him in every way, having been created in his perfect likeness. To be one with God and like God is to remember your own true nature! This is the goal of the course, reunion with God and Self.

"But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to UNITE with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness IS to recognize the Father."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

"And every dream serves only to conceal the Self Which is God's only Son, the likeness of Himself, the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever, as He still abides in me."

"Shut off from your Self, Who remains aware of His likeness to His Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake."

"Here is your answer to the world, and God's as well. For here it is you join with Him, His likeness being yours in this alone."

"God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit." Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

The way Jesus describes the separation from God, there's a huge laundry list of aspects to this "state" that we've entered. The whole entire ego thought system and all its contents, has been given many labels by Jesus. Labels which simultaneously apply to all of it.

He describes the separation as a "detour into fear" for example. He describes that any state where there's even a slight lack of love, as a state of sin. He describes the whole of spacetime as the idea of death, in that "without the idea of death there is no world" - an entire dream of death. He describes that any state less than wholeness will induce sickness and disease.

He also equates sickness with the denial of God. He equates sin with insanity. All forms of unforgiveness ie judgement come into it. All physical sensory states of false perception. Every conceivable form of attack and murder, war and destruction. ALL of it applies to the WHOLE system. Even though it may appear that all these things are *separate things* unrelated to each other.

That means that everything in the ego thought system is a state of fear, death, sickness, judgement, false perception, confusion, insanity, sin, murder, evil, unreality, war, conflict, suffering, denial etc.

What this then tells you about the true nature of fear, is that when you are afraid, you're not just having a small emotion of fear. You're actually "doing the whole system".

You're being entirely ego. And it's a total package deal, in which you are doing all the other aspects of the separation as well. Fear is an attack, fear is denial, fear is conflict, fear is insanity, fear is sin, fear is death, fear is sickness, fear is deception, etc.

If you also consider the split mind, given that Jesus also refers to the separation as a matter of dissociation, going into a dissociated state means one part of your mind is seemingly cut off from the other. This happens in fear. In fear you believe that you are a victim and not a victimizer, that something is happening to you against your will, and you're not the cause of it. It's a state of projection and blame. Fingers are pointed anywhere other than yourself, so that you're totally out of touch with the fact you're threatening yourself.

All special relationships are affected by fear as well. There is mistrust, inequality, and idol worship, all of which inspire a sense of fear that the other person will take away what you lack. Or even the fear that you've given them the right to do something to you. To be special is to be at war, which means to be conflicted, therefore uncertain, therefore afraid. The entire fall of man is a fall into fear - a detour into fear.

(re leaving the garden of eden, being cast out of heaven) "There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended. "

We need to understand how and why fear is not just fear on its own, separate from guilt, or separate from death, or separate from sin. We need to RECOGNIZE that ALL the attributes of the ego ALL go together. You can't be participating in one without the other. Fear is actually death. Fear is actually sin. Fear is actually every possible aspect of the ego system rolled into one. Just as death is sin and war is murder and blame is guilt and insanity is judgement.

When you are afraid, you are not "just afraid", helpless and weak and unvinvolved, or cut off from the other ego aspects. You must also be being unloving, attacking, murderous, blameful, judgemental, hurtful, guilty, deceptive, confused, insane, sinful, etc.

Eventually we have to realize that all aspects of the ego system are ONE system, one idea, one problem, one state, calling for one solution. To not be deceived by the idea that you can be participating in only a little part of the system and not the whole thing. All illusions of the separations between these different things are not true. The entire ego, the whole separation idea, is rolled into every part of it. It is all the same.

I’ve come to realize the Course refers to miracles on three distinct levels.

1. Everything in Heaven is miraculous. All expressions of love, in reality, are miraculous. The soul is miraculous. Creation is miraculous. Everything real has a miraculous nature. You are miraculous. You are a miracle. Miraculousness is permanent, natural, and the way God’s thought system always functions. Miracles give LIFE. At this level miracles defy every ego limitation and law. Life itself is a miracle.

2. After the separation, God blessed the Sonship with a miracle. The miracle was the answer to the separation, a healing thought, designed to fully heal the separation. This produced the Holy Spirit. References to "the miracle" are referring to the Holy Spirit. He is the "mechanism of miracles" because He is the way by which miracles (on level 3) are produced. This "one miracle" contains all individual (level 3) miracles. Accepting "the miracle" is accepting the atonement.

3. Within the realm of perception, there are many seemingly individual miracles. Course references to "miracles" in plural refer to this. E.g. "Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother" etc. These miracles are holographic, in that each of them contains wholeness and maximal love. They are all reflections of the one miracle, all support each other, are all equal, and all transcend orders of difficulty. These are the "miracles" that you perform IN the world as a miracle worker. These miracles can heal the sick, raise the dead, change perception, and repair the separations between brothers. As a subset, these may also include "shifts in perception" which are not "what a miracle is", but are one of their results. "A miracle is a correction introduced into wrong-minded thinking etc". Here the aim of miracles is to heal the separation between the sonship and induce revelation.

These are all tied together by statements such as "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Similarly, miracles extend through Christ as their source, as in "miracles express from an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His atonement."

Miracles do NOT originate at the ego level. They do not originate in your attempts to correct perception. YOU do not do them without God/Christ. Miracles require the absence of fear (ie maximal love), and express FROM a state of miracle mindedness, which is equivalent to true perception. Blocks to awareness must be removed, extensively, before FULL love is allowed to express with enough wholeness to perform a miracle. "The perceptual content of miracles is WHOLENESS." They require vertical perception which is a recognition of mind over matter cause-effect, in which the world is recognized as an EFFECT only, containing no causes, and transcends all ego laws and breaks every law of this world. Miracles are supernatural.

Miracles can correct perception. They can even correct the mind of your brother. However, "the world IS perception" and so additionally, miracles can correct the world. They have power over all forms. Earth is a world of tremendous limitation. Miracles demonstrate that this world is an illusion by changing its forms to show that they are not real. Mind is stronger than the body, and every miracle demonstrates this. Miracles can literally move mountains.

You as a miracle worker become MORE miraculous as you remove blocks to love. When you are done shifting perception, miracles do not come to a stop. Instead, you perform miracles ALL THE TIME. Miraculousness is your God-given NATURE. It is completely natural to your spirit, which is omnipresent and beyond ego laws. Your soul is permanently miraculous. To extend God’s love as LIFE is miraculous. Miracles are life-giving creative acts. They supply a lack. Death is lack of life, so miracles can raise the dead.

There is no sin and nothing impossible that miracles cannot reverse and undo. Believing otherwise is believing the hierarchy of illusions, which is a belief in orders of difficulty. Miracles are all the same. They ignore difficulty. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." You cannot be loving without being miraculous. Atonement, which includes miracle working, is the natural profession of the Children of God.

Look at all these clear statements by Jesus testifying that you can either be IN HEAVEN, or ON EARTH. They are TWO WORLDS, two places, two locations if you will. You can be IN heaven, or ON earth. When you are on earth, you are not in heaven. The two worlds do not overlap. One is real, one is illusion.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heavens peace."

"earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. "

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. "

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."

"God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."

"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here."

"Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven."

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected."

"So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. "

"Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven."

"It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."

"For there is nothing in Heaven OR earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you CANNOT find it, because it is NOT real."

"The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete."

"And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. "

"On earth, it is your ONLY function, and you must learn that it is ALL YOU WANT TO LEARN."

"Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that YOU HAVE DECIDED AGAINST YOUR FUNCTION IN HEAVEN, and consider carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION?

While it may seem in many ways that ACIM is telling you to change your perceptions, you can't actually do this by changing your perception.

"Projection makes perception" tells you that perception is caused by projection. This statement confirms it.

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Which means that perception is an EFFECT. And you cannot change effects without changing their causes. The cause of perception is projection. Which tells you that you need to change WHAT you project, in order to change what you perceive.

"The world IS perception" and "The world is effect" tells you the same thing. You project a world as an EFFECT, not as something causal, and changing your perception does not cause anything.

However, in the question of what you project, projection ITSELF is merely a "medium" through which the "what" is projected. Jesus in fact tells us that your mind cannot exist without projecting, and it either projects ego or projects the Holy Spirit/truth.

So it's not really a question of whether you project or not, but more to do with "who with" or "what" you project. And that means that your perception isn't a matter of whether or not you are projecting, but what is coming out. And where does that something come from?

Well in fact he also tells us that the mechanisms for seeing begins by looking WITHIN first, at the content of your BELIEF, which you then project outward. So this tells you that in order to end up changing your perceptions you have to change your beliefs, so that you project a different belief, resulting in a changed perception.

But this too is not the end of the story. Because he in fact says that you believe IN what you VALUE, and so belief is something applied to what you value to try to give it value. And belief is also tied to what you WANT, because it then becomes what you want to SEE, resulting in you projecting it in order to end up perceiving it.

So in fact what you value or "hold true" or "make real" is what begins the whole process. What you value or hold true is what you want, which is what you then believe in, which is what you project, which is what you end up perceiving. This is the mechanism.

So while ACIM is seeming to tell you to shift your perceptions, or seems to be all about changing perceptions of things, it really isn't. That's an end result. It's main focus is that you find the cause in the mind, the root, the starting point of what ends up being projected and perceived. And that involves changing what you value and believe. And to do that you have to have a little willingness. Mainly because it all hinges around what you WANT, which is to do with your free will.

Ultimately then it's really an act of WILL, as to whether or not you will change your mind about what it values and believes is true. Which is why without a little willingness nothing can change at all. Will, or the attempted resistance of will, to become unwilling, is what made perception and the world in the first place, and it is through willingness that you return to freedom from it.

Perception just happens to be changed along the way as a side effect. It's not even something you can directly do anything about. Similarly to how you cannot directly "heal the body". You have to change the mind first. Just as Jesus says, the only meaningful change of mind is when you choose a totally different thought system, which really means choosing heaven over hell.

The only freedom you have left is the power of your decision, your choosing. "Mind is the mechanism of decision" and it is where the free will is. And you exercising your free will IS the only choice you have left in this world. So it all starts with your willingness and then your perception will automatically take care of itself as you adjust what you want and what you value.

Why do 'lessons' show up in your life as negative, unwanted, like things are going wrong, or something bad is happening?

Whatever your current beliefs are, your idea of truth is what you think of as 100% true. If there is anything that happens that seems to agree with these beliefs, you see those things as truth. You welcome them, see them as an ally, experience them as wanted and desirable. They reinforce your belief and confirm or provide evidence that your belief is the truth.

Even if something bad happens, let's say that you have a belief that you are unworthy of love. You will create in your life an experience where someone is mistreating you perhaps. But at first you won't really be able to see that this person is doing that, instead you'll believe that they are treating you how you are supposed to be treated, because you agree that you are unworthy. In contrast, if someone comes along and loves you unconditionally, you will recoil and attack them, certain that they are lying to you, deceiving you, and must have some secret ulterior motive. Your belief in suffering does not and cannot understand a healing presence.

So like any thought system or belief, whatever agrees with your belief you will experience as welcome and true, and anything that seems to be against your belief you will experience like it is your worst enemy. You will see everything 'false' in them and will reject them. This has nothing to do with whether they are actually the Real Truth or not, and hinges entirely around what you believe the truth is.

So now because you have a false belief, there is something that you believe falsely and so you are in need of 'learning' what the real truth is. It wouldn't really be helpful to you to send you a situation or event or person who simply exactly mirrors your own false belief, because you would see that as highly agreeable, as proof that what you believe is true. You would welcome them and learn nothing from them.

In the interests of your spiritual growth and awakening, it serves you to, instead, be given events and situations and people who seem to represent a Real Truth, or who 'carry a potential' to teach you a Real Truth, so that you will be challenged. When they show up, however, you will initially believe they fall into your 'false' category, you'll experience them as though they're your enemy, or exactly what you don't want, or you didn't ask for this, or you hate it when this happens etc. You do not yet recognize the opportunity or the benefit that's hiding in the presence of this thing. You don't recognize it AS a bringer of truth, so you think it's just there to piss you off.

Each thing that shows up in your life, that seems to be what you don't want, is put there by arrangement to help you awaken. But that means that you're going to have to go through some kind of transformation of your perspective. Your idea of truth is going to have to be challenged. It is directly challenged by what you think of as intolerably false, showing up and being *experienced* by you as unwanted, because of what you currently believe you want. You will hate and reject it and wish it weren't happening and like it's unfair and everything sucks. But, this thing, whatever it is, is actually there as your savior, attempting to help you to awaken to a shift in allegiance, from what is Truly false, to what is Truly True.

So this thing will trigger off and push your buttons and disturb your sense of status quo. It will put a crow bar in your resistance to Truth and leverage it to try to open you up. And often this happens because the thing that comes along to bother you practically 'forces' you to have to change your perspective, in order to deal with that stimuli.

For example, perhaps someone close to you becomes sick and you absolutely can't stand the fact this is happening, and it keeps triggering you, and you get upset about it a lot. Obviously this is very upsetting as though some curse has come upon your life. BUT, over the course of time, you will find that, if you are working some program of purification, healing and honesty, that this thing is triggering you only because you've got some kind of false belief or unhealed pain stuck in your awareness that needs to change.

The stimuli triggers that pain and it keeps coming up, so if you keep trying to make it go away, or if you keep trying to fix the seeming cause of the trigger - the other person or event - you are actually avoiding learning the lesson. And you WILL have this resistance to some extent especially at the beginning. Nobody in their right mind who believes they know what the truth is, would accept and not reject something that appears to be completely false. It's just that we're very mistaken about what its actually true and false.

Over time, in this example, you might come to realize that in order to not be upset and triggered, YOU need to change something about yourself. You need healing, correction, light, and a higher truth. You need to, and are often forced to, confront your own inner mental condition and belief system and bring it into question. You might even have to get down on your knees and be pleading with God before you become willing to surrender your false view of reality. But eventually, it will transform you and you will come to realize a greater truth, and you will actually let go of your false belief, and you will open up to a higher level of functioning that you never thought you were even capable of. You will find an unconditional love that you never thought you were capable of. And this was what the challenge came to give to you.

It's not until this so-called 'problem' has finished transforming you, or has 'completed the mission' that it has to stimulate your errors and to get you to look at and transform your false ATTITUDE, that it will be 'done with'. It's actually there to help you wake up, but it definitely doesn't look like this at first. It can take some time. And if you ask Holy Spirit for guidance along the way He might tell you, this is a lesson. And it's not as though the answer to the lesson is being concealed from you or made to be especially hard to 'get'... and many times you'll find yourself saying "I just don't get it!" "what am I supposed to be learning here?!".... it's just that, you need to be transformed by the situation and the transformation isn't quite complete yet. And whatever it is supposed to provoke in you, or push out of you, or get you to question, or however it's meant to open your heart or deepen your unconditionality, it has to DO that and finish doing that before the lesson is learned.

So let's say, someone comes along into your life with an attacking angry attitude. Maybe they accuse you of stuff. They seem like your enemy. They hate you. This provokes and upset you a lot and you seem victimized. You may find it unacceptable to allow them to be this way. And you may find yourself angry and having reactions and being triggered, because you believe deep down some of what they're saying. And maybe it takes time for you to realize and heal those deep-down beliefs that you have. And maybe you'll find yourself admitting, I just can't love this person.. there is just no way I can forgive and love them, I am very limited in my love.

And then if you STICK WITH IT, and persevere with learning, you will actually become willing to DIG EVEN DEEPER to find even more love and patience and unconditionality, such that you thought perhaps you could never access. And so you 'learn' how to love and forgive this person, not necessarily for their benefit, but so that YOU learn to receive and express unconditional love in the face of what appears to be an attack. And this is a GIFT that is hard-won, and this is what the attacking person was trying to GIVE you, through their role play.

So then after you've got past all the victimhood and 'why me' crap, you come to realize, the person has helped you. The person actually forced you to grow and to become more forgiving or loving or whatever. You actually gained in strength, you grew in patience, your heart opened. And that is what you needed to LEARN from this lesson. And then you can be grateful that this person came along to provoke the shit out of you, because now, on a spiritual level, you can recognize that what appeared at first to be the exact opposite of your truth, has transformed your truth to where you can now SEE, that this person is actually welcome, lovable, acceptable, forgiven - i.e. you now see Real Truth where you once saw something false.

This is why shit happens. We only see it as shit because we don't yet realize how it is not only helping us to wake up, but it is also a gift and blessing, in the bigger picture, disguised as something unwanted. It's important not to try to get rid of your lessons, or other people's lessons, or 'bad stuff', if it's meant to be there to transform you. This is not to say you have to suffer, but IF you need to grow, sometimes you need a catalist to coerce you into that growth. Into awakening. And eventually you will be grateful for every 'bad thing' that ever happened. And you can even then be grateful for what we call 'the ego', for having supplied us with every opportunity for awakening. This is how the Holy Spirit USES everything for His purposes.

Eventually it is the end of victimhood when we learn everything about the Real Truth that we need to experience it constantly. Thank you God for that.

Cause and effect means that causes produce effects. Cause is a power and effects result from it. This is only has any meaning in terms of a dreamworld because outside the dream there is no dream and no dreamer.

Either you are identified with cause, or you are identified with effect. This means either you are dreaming the dreamworld, or the dreamworld is dreaming you. When the dreamworld is dreaming you, what this really means is the dreamer of the dream is dreaming of a world in which he himself becomes identified as part of the dream, so that it seems he is dreamed by the dream - ie dreamed by himself. This is the ego's entire concept of creation.

You come into the world through what appears to be the dream giving birth to you, originating in the parent's bodies and taking the form of a baby. If this is true, then the dream has dreamed you and you are its effect. If this is true, you were created by the ego/dream and not by God. But the truth is that you are not a body or a form of a part of a dream and God DID create you, but the dream will never testify to that. As God's creation, YOU are the cause of the dreamworld and you are the one who invented ALL bodies and all body-based relationships.

Cause and effect become reversed the moment that you identify with the dream and believe that you are a part of it, made from it, or created by it. The responsibility for causal power which was inside you, capable of dreaming, is now projected outside of you AS the dream, and the dream now seems to be the causal power. The dream IS your own causal power displaced away from you and disowned.

If the dream is causal, then it is indeed true that it would seem the dream has the power to both create you (birth) and destroy you (death) at its own whim, and in complete violation of any supposed rights or power you might have. When the dreamworld is causal, YOU become its effect. As an effect, you are powerless and are a VICTIM. Whatever the dreamworld wants to throw at you, whatever it wants to do to you, however it wants to REDEFINE who and what you are, you can do nothing to stop it.

When you are the effect of the world you see, therefore, you become 'affected by' the world. It does stuff to you. It seems to change you. It seems to be capable of eliciting a REACTION in you. This is what it means to be an effect. External causes decide who and what you are, you do not. You are then a passive victim and if the world decides to CHANGE YOU in any way, to redefine your identity, to treat you a certain way as if to say that this is how you should be treated because of what you are, you can do nothing to stop it. If you believe the dream is causal, then this is what will happen to you.

In childhood, then, when you have entered the dream through a 'doorway' of birth, after which you believe that the dream has created you, you have a mind which perceives this way. As a baby you are a passive victim. You receive. You soak everything in. You have no identity of your own but you start to develop one. You develop an identity based on what the DREAM tells you you are. This can come through the form of any person or experience that occurs, mainly through parents role-modeling or examples given by others. You "learn" an identity based on what the dream/ego tells you you are.

It goes further. Because now, anything that happens to you BY the dream, redefines not only the meaning of who you are (as anything other than powerful, unconditionally lovable, truth, God-Created, immortal etc). Since the dream is itself void of any truth it can only redefine you FALSELY, and however it treats you is like a statement telling you what is true of you. So if someone abuses you, that person represents a signal from the causal dream, as if it is an expression of TRUTH, telling you what you are.

If you are abused, and if the abuse is truth, then you MUST be something abuseable, you MUST have asked for it, there MUST be something wrong with you, and you simply ACCEPT and ALLOW this display of lies to enter your mind. It reconfigures your sense of who you ARE, which modifies your IDENTITY. And especially as a young person you have no memory of your true self and nobody is modeling unconditional love for you all the time, so you basically lose sight of the truth about you. You form a sense of self which is artificial, dictated by the world, and you actually believe it is true - it is what you are. You have been turned into an abused victim by the dream, not by the events that seemed to make this happen or by the people who were involved, but by the sheer fact that you believed and perceived the dream was your creator, it had power to define you, and that you are at its effect.

This can of course go on for years before you start to get a sense of discord within yourself, which may lead you to healing paths or exploring who you really are or trying to find out why these things happened. But ultimately, it all boils down to the reversal of cause and effect. All the ways the "dream dreams you", dictates your identity and defines what you are. If you allow that, accept it, believe it, or go along with it in any way, having abandoned your TRUE SELF, you become a powerless victim. Unconscious. The dream would kill you if you let it.

Correction is needed. Healing is called for. A reawakening to the TRUTH about you is absolutely required. You need to reverse cause and effect back to its proper orientation, which means learning that YOU are the cause and the dream is YOUR effect. You have command over it, dominion over it, power over it, and it extends solely from you. It never happens TO you, you are never victimized BY it, it is never responsible for turning you into an effect against your will, and essentially, it is nothing. Effects are nothing. They have no power, they do not make anything happen, they aren't real.

Recognize then that EVERY SINGLE TIME that you RE-ACT to the dreamworld, it must be that you believe the dream is dreaming you. You have become the effect of it, and the cause has been displaced outside of you. You are reacting TO it because of what it is doing TO you. You've disowned your power. You've got things back to front. You've forgotten that YOU are the cause, and have turned into a victim. You cannot be victimized when you take back your power and learn that you are the cause of the dream. You are the dreamer, not the other way around!

All reactions are reactions to the belief that cause is outside of you. All reactions are the responses that the `powerful dream` with an `alien will` has determined you are supposed to have. Its as if the dream is broadcasting a signal "this is what you are" and you are receiving it, and your experience of victimhood or upset is how it feels to receive that signal and to experience its power OVER you, changing you against your will. All reactions are the redefinition that the dream is trying to impose onto you, to change who you are and to affect you. All reactions are responses and retaliations that map to the stimuli that is being thrown at you.

Seemingly serious and important external causes seem to call forth seemingly larger reactions in you. This is the hierarchy of illusions. Big causes call for big effect. If you are constantly re-acting to the dreamworld, it is because you firmly believe that CAUSE is outside of you and that YOU are at its effect. Everything about the dream testifies to this. Every single thing that 'happens' is an attempt to affect you and redefine your identity as the ego. The ego is the dream fabric and the ego-dream wants you to be described AS a dream. It sees you only as a victim and as your own victimizer.

Because projection makes perception, and because perception could be likened to 'receiving' the dream into your senses (symbolically), it is perception which seems to trigger ALL reactions. You perceive something external has caused something, and now it has produced effects in you. These artificial effects attempt to mangle and distort you and throw you into chaos, with upset emotions and crazed thinking. All reactions are reactions to perceptions. What came before perception?

Before perception there is projection. And this is why you have to take responsibility for what you are projecting, in order to free yourself from your OWN reactions to your OWN STUFF. It is YOUR OWN CAUSALITY out there staring you back in the face and scaring the shit out of you, to which you then react as if it is NOT yours and is some other horror show made to upset you. YOU gave it its power, YOU gave it its causality, by disowning your own. It's YOU that is attacking you. It is YOU that has been projected AS the very dream that now attempts to dream you. You must move past the reactions by realizing you are reacting to your own projected power, AND TAKE BACK THAT POWER, so that you can admit that the cause is IN YOU. YOU are the dreamer of the dream. Get it straight! It takes orders from you. You're the boss.

What is life like when you are 100% the cause? When you are 100% cause there are no effects, no dream, no illusion, no suffering, no death. Immortality is a state of perfect causality, the 'effect' of which is the same thing as the cause, with no separation between them. You are not a victim of the world you see. Take another look at this with Holy Spirit and admit the truth. The truth shall set you free. You dreamed up all this shit, remember?

Here is even more proof.

God created free-willed individual souls. That is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE if God is purely a concept of "no parts" or "a single thing". Even ONENESS cannot mean "one thing", because a "one thing" does NOT create "separate beings" as quoted below. Nor can the son of God dream WITHOUT God being part of the dreaming, if they are literally "one".

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, NEVERTHELESS CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS WHO HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY, but who want (free willed) to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself CREATED YOU. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"If you believe that ALL THE SOULS THAT GOD CREATED ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One (does not mean no souls), then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness (still many parts which share) DOES transcend the sum of its parts (see, there are parts). However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts (more parts) are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved UNTIL all of the INDIVIDUAL PARTS OF THE SONSHIP have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."

So you can see, if you can accept this, that God DID create individuals, and Jesus even goes so far as to say "separate beings". He also says the sonship contains multiple parts. This kind of thing just is totally incompatible with ideas of oneness, singularities, non-dualities, "God is and nothing else is" etc.

The truth is though, it's not a question of EITHER God is Oneness OR God has created parts.... it's actually that BOTH ARE TRUE. There is a oneness, as in a SHARING, BY PARTS, which does not undo the fact they are parts. This sharing allows them to AGREE WITH God's Will, freely.

More pertinent quotes:

"To be egocentric IS to be despirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul."

"Projection (creation), as defined above, is a fundamental attribute of God, which he also gave to his Son. In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons."

Here is the clincher, Jesus stating that GOD GAVE FREE WILL TO ALL HIS SONS:

"In this sense the creation includes both the creation of the Son by God, and the Son's creations when his mind is healed. 8 THIS REQUIRES GOD'S ENDOWMENT OF THE SON WITH FREE WILL, because all loving creation is freely given in one continuous line, in which all aspects are of the same order." - ie the son MUST have the freedom to CHOOSE to WILL, otherwise he does not have freedom and is not like God. God therefore HAS CREATED individually free-willed sons.

I had a re-read of much of Chapter 21: Reason and perception, to try to better understand the workings of perception. Below are some takeaways. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.

Typically, we look out upon a world which seems to be there independently, and however it looks to us, we take it to be how it is. If it seems like a horrible place, some kind of hell, we believe it actually IS that way. We don’t question it. We don’t for a moment think that there is something we are doing to make it LOOK that way.

But the Course is telling us that in fact, we are doing this all the time. It is telling us, there is a "forgiven world" right here in front of our faces, which has no guilt in it, no sin, which is shiny and sparkly and new, and even seems to have a reflection of heaven in it. But we’re not SEEING it, because our own minds have some kind of "gunk" in them which is making the world seem dim and dark and lonely and depressing.

In fact, it even tells us there is a reflection of Christ (the face of Christ) and God right here, that we can "See God" here, to a degree, if we have awareness of God in our mind. That we could look at flowers and tables and trees and such and see God twinkling back at us somehow. But that if we do not SEE that, due to some kind of "filtering" that is going on in our perception, the world becomes lackluster and dull and we don’t seem to see God at all.

There is a kind of perceptual trap, whereby if you believe that how the world looks, is how it IS, inherently, you will not realize that there is ANOTHER world hidden behind the one you’re seeing, that you COULD be seeing, if you were to change your mind. Since "projection makes perception", it produces CIRCULAR LOGIC in which a) you decide what you want to see, b) you project it, c) you see/perceive it, d) it tells YOU what is there, e) you believe what you perceive. Kind of a vicious cycle.

Not realizing that your mind has something to do with how things appear to you, you will just ASSUME that this world simply IS the way that you’ve always seen it to be. If it seems to really suck bad, if all your relationships seem strained by separation, if you feel lonely and cut off, if you are depressed and living in darkness, you may think that this is HOW THE WORLD IS, not realizing that you are actually MAKING IT look that way because of the content of your mind.

So in order to get out of that trap, you have to suspend belief for a moment, consider that what you are seeing is POSSIBLY not how the world actually is, that there is a world here you WANT to see - in which you’ll have to place some faith that it is here but simply hidden from view temporarily, and then take steps to change your mind so that you can finally SEE it. You almost have to IGNORE what you are perceiving now, stop accepting that you are stuck with the "results of past decisions", and that if you choose to believe differently, this shitty world will disappear and be replaced by a much lovelier version.

The course also basically says that when you are seeing the projected content of your own self-hate, sin etc, which makes the WHOLE WORLD look hateful and sinful to you, you are not SEEING correctly. Or rather, you are lacking VISION. Vision is the ability to see what is here, without distortion, without sin, without any dark content in your mind, so that you can see the forgiven world simply for how it IS.

Jesus says we need to become able to SEE, first, before we can RECOGNIZE what it is we are seeing as an illusory world. To see the "real world", relatively speaking, is to regain vision, ie to see without filtering it with your ego junk, such that you can simply look upon what’s there without adding or removing anything. This will show you clearly, correctly, what is THERE, without your contribution added to it, and in that clarity you will RECOGNIZE that even the real/forgiven world is an illusory world made as the opposite to heaven.

So right now, if you are having an experience that this world seems like a nightmare of hell, it’s not because it IS, it’s because you have a nightmare of hell happening in your MIND, which is making this world SEEM like it is hell. I’ve personally had experiences which at the time seemed like a horrible nightmare. Later, after much healing, the nightmare was over and the world did not seem so bad anymore.

The content of our mind massively influences what we see, because we will project that content out TO see, and WILL see it, overlaid on top of the "real world". It is imagined content, but it hugely influences our perception. False ego beliefs really have the "power", because we put faith in them, to greatly distort how the world registers with us, what we see it as, whether it seems harmless or harmful, and whether it feels like a happy place or a miserable place. It is not any of the things we project ONTO it. It is only what it is - a pretend planet that we dreamed, essentially neutral and meaningless.

"I have given the world all the meaning it has for me" is precisely talking about perception. You may not realize it, but your consciousness, your mind, your experience of "reality", can become significantly DISTORTED by any ego beliefs that you have, such that it will make you PERCEIVE things which are not even there at all. It causes you to hallucinate! To see imagined meaning or content where it does not exist. Your perception is capable of "shifting" from experiencing the "real word" as a nightmarish hell, to seemingly to be a reflection of heaven.

Have you ever had a day, where you are in a really bad mood... where you are perhaps having an emotional release of some heavy feelings. On that day, it seems to you as though everyone is in a bad mood! Everyone seems angry and intense and upset. Then you let yourself cry and you cathart this painful content. Suddenly, when you’re done, you feel better, but you also notice, what the heck happened to everyone else’s mood?

Suddenly other people don’t seem like they are unhappy at all? They don’t seem angry or stressed out or upset with you. You then find yourself wondering, were they really nightmarish figures who were against you and pissed off along with you or.... were you making that up this whole time? That all this time you thought they were also upset, they were actually happy?! That you just couldn’t see it and your mind was hallucinating that they were upset with you?

That’s because your ego beliefs that were in your conscious awareness were majorly distorting your perception of reality.

Jesus talks about how we get "stuck" in the circle of projecting then perceiving, whereby since we think that how the world looks is how it IS, that somehow IT decided to be the way it is, and that we didn’t MAKE IT BE that way at all, we simply accept it as if objectively real and then "make adjustments" to try to "live with it" or accomodate as though simply accepting it is really this way. We can spend a very long time living in a perceived "bad world" trying to cope with how it seems to be, making horizontal/linear adjustments instead of rising above it into "vertical perception", not even realizing that if we were to change our mind, our perception would shift UPWARDS, and we’d see a very different "higher vibrational" world that doesn’t call for any of those adjustments. ie, we don’t have to STAY in hell.

Another experience you might have is where you see the form of someone’s body, perhaps they have a broken arm or scars on their face from a fire. It will depend entirely on the content of your mind as to HOW you will perceive this, and what you will see IN it. If you believe in real sin and real sickness, and if that belief is heavy, when you see this person with theirs scars and a broken arm, you will not ONLY experience what’s there in form, their body in its condition, you will ALSO experience the content of your mind.

You might therefore be horrified, repulsed, upset, saddened, guilty, etc... seeing the disfigurement as something the person is stuck with for life, seeing sin in it like they must’ve done something wrong, holding it against them, fearing it like it will infect you if you get too close. The horror show in your mind has nothing to do with the person’s body or its form, it’s entirely to do with YOUR beliefs that you are seeing ON TOP OF what’s there. They still have a "broken body", but you are seeing "YOUR sickness" added to it.

If you then go away and do some forgiveness and undo these beliefs in real sin and real sickness, you may later be walking around and see that person again. And their body may well be in *exactly* the same condition, form-wise, because that’s something that they still believe in and they are still putting it there.

But instead of seeing it as attacking you, or repulsing you, or threatening, or being ugly, or judging them for it, or seeing it as irreversible, or hating them for it, you may instead see them with love and freedom and recognize, they are not bound by this, they are not this form, they are not this body, and you could offer them a miracle. *RECOGNIZING* what is there, versus failing to recognize what is there (seeing your own added shit), is the difference between true perception and false perception. Both of them perceive the form, but true perception does not ADD sin to it.

Someone close to me has paralysis. Her left arm can barely move and hardly any movement in any fingers. She had a stroke. When this first happened, each time that I saw this I was very upset. Or I should say... each time that I saw this form and ALSO some dark content in my own mind, I was very upset. I saw sickness as real. I believed in it. And this had apparently already been established in my belief system before this event happened. Instantly it would trigger off deep upset and guilt and grief whenever I saw it. However, it wasn’t the form or the tragedy or the paralysis that was actually upsetting, it was what I saw IN it.

Over time, I forgave this and more or less HAD to use this as a way to learn that sickness is not real, that I am not the cause of the sickness, that I am not guilty for otherse being sick, and that there is no TRUTH in that sickness. My personal perception of that person now, is that when I see this paralysis that she STILL HAS, and which has not changed whatsoever, I am not upset by it. I don’t see it as tragic or despairing. I don’t see guilt in it. I don’t see it as something having gone very wrong. I don’t see it as unfair or unchosen. It does not trigger me into deeply hurt feelings. All of that has been healed in me, and therefore in my perception. And yet, I still see - perceive - this person, and they stil have the symptoms of this stroke. They are still paralyzed. I simply do not see it with the ADDED content of my own personal beliefs in sin.

Quite possibly at some time, if I choose to really thoroughly excavate all trace of belief in sickness from my mind, maybe that will offer healing to her and undo that sickness. But if she is not ready to receive it, or if that would be frightening, it would not be appropriate to force it. This too is a lesson, that often the sick do not want to be healed against their will or readiness. My perception has changed of "what is there" and I now see it more squarely for what it IS... an illusion of sickness that doesn’t mean anything and has no power of its own. Of course this is still an area of experimental miracle-working so we’ll see what happens in future.

Regarding another’s sickness, since you are no longer believing in irreversible sin, you would not be holding their form "against them", or believing that they are stuck with it, or seeing them as victimized by it. You would not see it as "real sickness". It will strike you as an ILLUSION of sickness. Fake sickness. A simple choice to pretend to be hurt. You would not believe it has the power to stay on its own, and you could offer to heal it. It depends on the person as to whether they can accept and receive the healing, however. They have free will and their will is just as powerful as yours. Similarly Jesus cannot remove stuff from us that we are unwilling to give up because our will is as powerful as his.

One other thing I want to touch upon is the kind of experience you will have when in false perception vs true. In false perception, since you believe heavily that separation is real, and since you project what you will later perceive, you project separation. When you perceive it, you’re going to perceive that you are seeing something that has separations in it. The world is going to look to you as though it is separate from "you". It will seem like it has causal power, a will of its own, a mind of its own, and that it is not an effect, and therefore that because it is cause not effect, "you" surely did not cause IT.

You can see how this is a vicious cycle because if your mind has separation content in it, you will project that separation content onto the world, it will appear to be separate from you, and this will justify your belief that you DID NOT project it or cause it. This undermines the awareness that you projected in the first place, and somewhat "locks in" the idea that how the world appears to you is how IT IS inherently. That you are not contributing to how it appears at all. So false perception is its own trap, making it harder to tell that your mind alone determines what things look like to you.

The counter to this, is what happens in true perception.

There, your mind does not have a belief in separation. You don’t believe in real sin, or level confusions, nor do you see yourself as at the effect of anything outside of you. You recognize yourself as cause, and even see yourself projecting. Therefore, as you project, you are practically not projecting ANYTHING "onto" the world, or are not adding to it or removing anything from it, and so when you then PERCEIVE what’s there, you see it only for what it inherently IS. It shows YOU what is there, and you may even see God in it. This shows you the "real world", real in the sense that, in comparison to your unreal world of false perception and hallucinated hell, it is "real-er".

In true perception then, you will not be experiencing that the world is its own thing, that it has a will, or a mind or a power over you. You will not believe it has cause in it. You will recognize it as EFFECT only. And you will recognize that you are CAUSE only, not effect. Seeing God "in it" also will not mean that this world is "cause". God is cause, so seeing God "in" the world does NOT mean God IS the world or that the world is a cause! In this awareness, whatever the world ‘is’, MUST be coming entirely from you, and you see God IN it because God is IN your mind, not really out there. This means, you will also recognize, not simply what the world inherently IS (an illusion you made), but that EVERYTHING it is, is coming from YOU. You are dreaming it!

At this level, you are capable of manipulating it in any way you see fit simply by changing your mind, by adjusting your desire, or shifting your focus. "The word is only what you gave it" indicates that in false perception, there seemed to be you AND the world, and in true perception, there is only YOU. At this level, being aware that you are THE DREAMER of this world, reveals to you that it is 100% illusion, that the real world is an illusion, that even its forms are coming from your mind, and that therefore..... drumroll please..... THERE IS NO WORLD APART FROM WHAT YOU WISH. Meaning, there is literally no world there, just a bunch of wishes.

There is no world here because it is ONLY the content of our mind being projected. There is no world because even the real world, the "happy dream", is but a dream. When perception is perfected, it shows us there is NO SEPARATION between what is within and what is without. That planet out there, is inside our mind. It’s just an idea that has not left its source. "The real world is still an illusion". We made it up and are dreaming it, it’s not really there at all.

As dreaming ends, the entire content of this dream, this made-up world, this projected fantasy, will simply cease to be. It is not changed, it is simply unprotected. It does not live on, it simply vanishes. It is not converted into reality or heaven, ONLY THE TRUTH REMAINS and everything else NEVER REALLY EXISTED. Hence there is no world and Earth does not exist beyond our dreaming of it.

"ANY mistake can be corrected, if TRUTH be left to judge it. But, if the mistake is given the STATUS of truth, to what CAN it be brought? The "holiness" of sin is kept in place by just this strange device."

What is a mistake? It's just a conclusion you come to when you don't have all the facts. It's what you experience when you deny what is really true, and hide from it. Hiding from the facts makes you unaware of them.

You will base your conclusions on all the information you have. But if your information is lacking due to being hidden, you are very likely going to make a mistake. Based on what you DO know, your conclusions will seem to make total sense. But the problem is you have left out some facts, and that could change everything.

For example, the "tiny mad idea" that you can be separate from God, is an idea of something impossible. You cannot be separate from God because God is everywhere. The idea is ridiculous and makes no sense. However, if you go in denial and hide from the truth, you will lose sight of the facts. And now you can potentially convince yourself that separation is possible.

Believing separation is possible, IS a mistake. Because the fact remains that it is not possible at all. But we don't RECOGNIZE that it is a mistake, because we think that in our state of denial we still have full access to all the information. And in this we are also mistaken, because being in denial shuts information out of your awareness.

So as we go into the so-called "separation from God", as we "buy into" what seem to actually be very logical conclusions, making sense of reality based on what we think we know, we can become very mistaken and NOT RECOGNIZE that we are. We can believe separation is possible, even though it isn't. And this sets us on a slippery staircase where we're likely to make one mistake after another.

"Brothers, take not one step in the descent to hell. For, HAVING taken one, you will NOT RECOGNIZE the rest for what they are. And they WILL follow. Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven. Yet, any instant, it is possible to have this all undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell?"

Being in a mistaken state of mind, ie lacking awareness of the whole truth of God, you WILL come to false conclusions. You will assume that you are correct in believing that separation is possible. In order TO believe it, however, you have to assign the attributes of God TO the mad idea.

God means truth and reality and meaning and permanence. If you are mistaken, you are confused about what reality IS, and will lose track of WHAT is real. You will now start to assign God's attributes to the mistakes you're making. You will claim that your mistakes are NOT mistakes, and you will instead GIVE them reality and truth. You'll interpret them as ACTUAL FACTS.

Believing that a mistaken idea is actually a fact, GIVES the mistake a sense of truth, validity, power, causation, reality, permanence and life. It is by this mechanism that you convert mistakes into SINS. Sin is now the idea that, even though you are ONLY mistaken, you're not ACTUALLY mistaken, but are in fact correct, and therefore your mistakes are REAL.

If what you do in mistakes is real, then every time you make a mistake you are REALLY doing it. And you will find that once you start off on the wrong foot, believing in separation, you will progress ever more deeply into mistake upon mistake, until the descent into hell becomes so twisted and unrecognizable that you can't even tell what anything is anymore.

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is BECAUSE it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and AWAY from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."

A sin, then, is really just a mistaken state of mind, which has mistakenly believed that some property of God belongs to the mistake. It ASSOCIATES reality and truth with something that isn't true or real. It mistakes something false FOR something true. And it therefore produces confusion and insanity.

What this really means is that what we call "the ego" or the "split mind", is NOT a sinful state. There IS no real sin, on any level at any time. The ego is not really a sinful approach to reality. It is a MISTAKEN approach. It is nothing more than mistaken. The whole notion that "you are really separate" is a mistake. Separation is not possible, so you can't be separated off. To believe that you are, is to be mistaken, but not sinful.

You cannot be guilty unless you are sinful. You can only be sinful, or believe that you are, if you combine reality with illusions. If you mix the attributes of God with the attributes of something UNREAL, you get sin. A mistake is interpreted as permanent, as having real effects, as causing with a power of its own, and of attacking the vulnerability of something as though it were true and possible. IF that were true, your mistakes WOULD be sins. But it isn't.

The ENTIRE ego thought system is nothing more than a mistaken state of mind. A mind that does not RECOGNIZE what is true and false. It arises in a mind that has lost sight of the truth, due to being in denial of God. This denial has hidden the truth and concealed it, making it hard to recognize or see. And in that lack of light, things which are NOT true are CONFUSED with things that are. This means you are lost, but it does not mean you are sinful.

If the ego assertion is that "separation is possible" or "you are separate", it will base all of its sense of identity and truth on this premise. This includes its seemingly "selfish" attitude of self-preservation and self-interest and general selfishness. But these are not really sins. They are just a mind being mistaken. And the mind is actually trying to be very very logical in drawing its conclusions, based on what it believes is true.

If separation IS true, then you ARE separated off, and you SHOULD be selfish, because there is no-one else you're connected to that you can share anything with. It all becomes about "me alone" because you literally are believing you exist on a desert island in isolation. It makes perfect sense to such a mind that it CAN only look out for its own interests, because there has been a breakdown in communication and relationship with everyone else due to the separation.

This doesn't make the ego a sinner, it just makes it confused. It is just mistaken. The belief in separation is a mistaken belief because separation is impossible. WHEN the mind finally recognizes that its conclusions of "I am separate" were simply based on a false premise, that this entire way of thinking in terms of "me alone" was based on a LIE, that same mind will have a eureka moment and wake up to the truth.

There is no call for guilt, because real sin does not exist. When you believe that sin HAS reality, then guilt IS entirely justified AND inescapable. You WILL be forced to feel guilty and to seek to destroy yourself to atone for what you really did, IF what you did is believed to be taking place in reality. If it is not recognized that this world IS A DREAM, then you will, by mistake, condemn yourself to death for your "real" mistakes. Real mistakes are unforgivable.

To forgive then, or to apply forgiveness, we simply need to learn to recognize that we are mistaken. We are mistaken because we are in denial. The denial is making us unaware of the whole truth. We do not have all the facts. We don't really know what anything is, or what it is for. We can't judge anything correctly because we can't see the whole picture and are highly liable to come to a false conclusion. We can't draw ANY conclusions because we don't RECOGNIZE the problem or situation.

Therefore we need the help of the Holy Spirit who stands outside of this mistakenness and sees it for what it is. HE recognizes that we are ONLY mistaken. All of heaven knows this. All the angels know this. They come to our aid knowing that all we're doing is being asleep and having a bad dream, which seems real, but which isn't, in which all kinds of upsetting things seem to happen. And not one single thing we dream of is real or true, nor does it have any consequences whatsoever.

They come to our aid to simply tell us, we are mistaken and are incorrect. We need gentle corrections. We don't have all the facts and need to open up to a bigger truth than the one we believe currently. We need to have a little willingness to entertain the idea that we ARE in a mistaken state, and become open to the possibility of having drawn a false conclusion. The truth might even be totally opposite to what we believe, making it seem like something we do not want.

You are not guilty because you have not really sinned. Reality and truth can only appropriately be assigned to God. You should never assign reality or truth to a dream or anything in it. The world is not real and doesn't exist, because you are still at home with God in heaven, dreaming of exile. Nothing that you seem to do in your dream happens to anything real. Nothing real is ever affected. Only by giving it reality or truth can you deceive yourself that you HAVE done what you think is possible, but what remains impossible in truth.

Undoing the ego then is nothing more than recognizing that you are merely mistaken, and not sinful. This is forgiveness. The recognition that you HAVE NOT DONE what you think you did. You cannot have done it because it is IMPOSSIBLE in God's reality. Therefore it cannot be real or true. You DID NOT do what you think you did, in reality, you just dreamed of it. And you only dreamed of it because you were mistaken. Your mistake can be corrected and undone without ANY punishment or guilt or suffering whatsoever. "Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL tod ecide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

For something to be special it has to have a value that is different to the value of something else. We give it its value by taking away value from something else.

So if I have an apple and an orange, which are essentially equal, and I say, well, I like apples more than oranges, I have to 'demote' the orange and withdraw some of its value and give it to the apple. Now I have a sense that the apple is more important or 'special' than the orange.

What this does, is it makes me have a 'special love' relationship with the apple, and a 'special hate' relationship with the orange. I've also turned the apple into an idol, and the orange into an enemy.

The Course also talks about how we use special love to cover up special hate. The ego has made a world from separation and has made everything in the world be separate. This is based on hate. It is an attack on God. However, the ego then comes along and tries to 'cover up' and deny this hate by creating the illusion that things are somehow joined. It does this by the illusion of 'sameness', things being similar, of like mind, or having minimal conflict.

Minimally conflicting individuals end up as 'friends and allies'. And as the Course says, these allegiances are formed because two people temporarily agree to be against something else. Thus their allegiance still 'includes' an idea of attack and rejection, because it can't exist unless 'everyone else' is not like them. Thus the friends become special and have a special love relationship. But this special love is at best temporary, and covers up the foundation of the relationship which is hate. Separation from others. Isolation. Exclusivity. And so if something takes away that veneer of special love, it 'reveals' the hate beneath it and the claws come out.

While we attempt to make certain parts of the world more important or valuable than others, we make them special. This is our attempt to 'spiritualize' the dream. We attempt to make some parts more spiritual than others, so that at least some of the parts seem sacred, spiritual, holy, valuable, rather than it all being equal and neutral. In this way the ego holds onto these parts of the dream to make it real and to be attracted to it. And of course, to be attracted to one part of the dream requires the formation of a 'shadow' attitude which is against other parts.

So for example, to me, Apple Mac computers are more special than Windows PC's. Green grass is more special than brown. Summer days are more special than winter. Certain TV shows are more special than others. The olympics are more special than regular team sports. And raspberry-anything is more special than most other flavors. These are things I've made special, at the expense of other things being despised and disliked.

This is where the Holy Relationship comes in. With a goal of true holiness, we recognize that instead of depending on another separate thing to 'get' what we lack, or to reinforce our own self-specialness, we instead become wholly dependent on God. It is now God who created us, not our parents. God now also created our children, and he is responsible for them, not us. This of course dissolves all family structures. Absolute equality is the only family - God's family. Equality dissolves specialness and sees everything with unconditional love.

You can still be having your relationships and your favorite foods and whatever, but eventually we will let Holy Spirit choose everything for us and we will live in freedom. We may well remain with those we had special love with and no longer see them with specialness. But this doesn't mean we don't love them. It means we love them even MORE. We love them with an unconditional, ego-free love. One where being together is voluntary and not forced, or maintained out of guilt. But not until we are truly ready to accept this. It can't be forced while we still value specialness or we will experience sacrifice and loss.

You can still be in a one-to-one parternship all the way to waking up. Just look at Jesus and Mary as an example.

Here's some very simple logic which will be hard to actually accept if you have an ego.

In God's truth, nothing real has happened to warrant any kind of upset, suffering or concern. Absolutely nothing has gone wrong. There's no grounds for any kind of upset whatsoever.

SOooooo... IF you are upset or suffering in some way, you are not upset about something that's REALLY happened because it has, in truth, NOT really happened.

THEREFORE..... ALL of your upsets and suffering are FALSE, are COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED, you have NO good reason why you should be upset, all of your upset is 100% unjustified, and the ONLY thing that is justified is that you be happy and alive and joyfully with God.

This SHOULD mean, that if you could get this, you'd simply cast aside every single problem and upset and form of suffering instantly and it would leave you. Immediately. Because it is utterly without any basis in reality.

There IS no REAL reason to be upset about anything!

Every time you are upset, it is about something that IS NOT REALLY HAPPENING. This is reflected in the workbook lesson "I am not upset for the reason I think", and also "I am upset because I see something that is not there".

Recently, I was quite upset and emotional and crying about something that seemed big and intense and not at all pleasant. It seemed to me that this amount of upset was justified or called for (hierarchy of illusions). However, I had this little thought, "maybe I'm making this into something more than it is". And Jesus chimed in, "BIGTIME".

And yet, here I was, upset, snot and tears, and believing that something has gone wrong and I should be upset.. and yet... in the middle of that... there's this idea... this ENTIRE UPSET is completely without any basis in the truth WHATSOEVER. I am upset about something that I should not even be upset about because it's not true!!!

I am literally upset for reasons that are not a "real" cause for upset, because they are not real. I am upset because I believe something is happening in this scary dream which is not really happening and IS just a dream. I am upset because I think all kinds of shit has gone wrong and people are suffering and I'm suffering, but all of that is based in and around this ONE simple core belief.... that separation from God HAS really happened, something REALLY has gone wrong, and therefore I SHOULD be upset about this.

Its bullshit!

As unpleasant as it is to suffer, and as unpleasant as it is to feel upset and unhappy and releasing emotions, and as gentle and kind and patient as Holy Spirit and Jesus will be with me when I am like that, comforting me and supporting me and not pushing me at all, IF I am willing, there is a much bigger truth at hand. The truth is, you have no reason whatsoever for being upset or to suffer at all. There is no reason to die. There is no reason to be in pain. There is no reason to be unhappy. There is no reason to be in ANY state other than a state of total happiness, which is God's WILL for you!

So all this other stuff... lol.... fetch the kleenex... but ... really, it's all very very mistaken. If we could just get this, it's so simple but the ego has so many defenses against it. In truth nothing has happened. In truth, only Love is real. In truth, there is only cause for celebration and joy. In truth, everyone is okay. In truth, disasters and murder and death and destruction are not real. In truth, nobody is really abused. In truth, nobody has been truly victimized. In truth, nothing unreal has happened and nothing unreal exists.

We should be jumping for joy all day long every day! This is the "good news" that Jesus is bringing to us in the Course.

But.... much easier said than done, to one who believes in suffering. And that's me and probably most of you too.

More forgiveness to do.

It is not possible to PERCEIVE **within** reality, because there is no perception WITHIN reality. Perception is an interpretative process based on judgement. You can evaluate reality and PERCEIVE it, but this isn't the SAME as knowing it or DIRECTLY experiencing it.

"Only your vision can convey to you what YOU can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you."

Perception ends before you enter the Kingdom, this does not mean that you cannot SEE in some manner WITHIN the Kingdom.

"Only the mind CAN SEE."

In fact, after an extensive search, I found a great deal of evidence in ACIM that mind in fact DOES have a permanent ability to see. And that even God can see. This seeing does not use PERCEPTION, however. It uses cognition, recognition, and knowledge.

It is possible to KNOW reality, and to RE-COGNIZE God and your brothers. This knowing is a DIRECT experience of what IS THERE. You KNOW it, in awareness. This may well not entail BODIES, but you are SPIRIT, and spirit can be known and SEEN. The son of God can also be seen. YOU are a perfect shaft of light, which can be seen. The great rays can also be seen and they stretch to infinity.

Perception is a way of seeing based on JUDGING or EVALUATING what is there. It is interpretative. Beyond perception, WITHOUT judgement or interpretation, you can directly KNOW what is there. This knowing isn't just some fact or piece of information of non-visual experience. You can SEE GOD and His Creation - the universe of love. Knowing is UNDERNEATH perception and provides direct awareness of reality.

I will present below only a small segment of all the quotes I found. These ones speak more directly to seeing in God, seeing God, seeing His Son, God's ability to see, beyond perception, and beyond vision.

"Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance."

"Perception changes, made to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known." (does not mean it cannot be SEEN!)

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"The innocence of God is the true state of ***the mind of His Son.*** ***In this state, man's mind DOES see God***, and because ***he sees Him as he Is***"

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. ***He recognizes them*** perfectly."

"Blessed are the pure in heart for ***they shall see God***" is another way of saying the same thing. Only ***the innocent CAN see God.***"

"The soul never leaves ***the sight of God***"

"ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, ***has any real existence***. ***This, then, is all that the innocent can see.***"

"The wish to see calls down the grace of God upon your eyes, and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible. ***Will you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him.***"

"***See His creations as His Son***, for yours were created in honor of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes lost the ability to see. ***Look upon the glory of His creation***, and you will learn what God has kept for you."

"***You will see that God Himself*** is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears"

"***God is in everything I see*** because God is in my mind."

"***God is the light in which I see.***"

"***You cannot see apart from God*** because you cannot be apart from God."

"When you ***look upon knowledge***, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables ***recognition to REPLACE perception.***"

"Judgment is the process on which perception but not ***cognition*** rests." ... "It is ***perfectly possible to look on reality without judgment***, and merely ***KNOW it is there*** By knowing this, you are not doubting its reality at all."

"The innocent see safety, and ***the pure see God within His Son***, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."

Becoming angry, blameful, accusing someone or believing someone is guilty, is really your secret attempt to get rid of a guilt that's inside yourself. A guilt which you put there. When you try to project it onto someone else, you are trying to dissociate from it and associate it with them. Like "pinning it" on them literally. You're trying to make them take a hit for you.

The purpose of this is really murder. By trying to destroy the other person you're believing that they are the solely guilty party and you are not. The more you can separate yourself from the projected guilt the more you think you're innocent. Which means your brother has to go down with the guilt so that you are spared.

The more they deserve destruction and hatred the more innocent you seem to be. But if you separate yourself off from them you have attacked yourself, because they are part of you. The more separate or dissociated you become, the more your mind is split and the sicker you are.

The separation from God was an act of dissociation. It was a way in which the sons of God, who shared everything with each other, could dis-associate themselves from each other and pull away into separate corners. Wanting nothing to do with each other, they rejected each other and did not want to share. Seeing themselves as separated off, they could not relate or communicate, and instead saw each other as strangers.

We CONTINUE to be in a separated state, and keep the separation going, by maintaining or even trying to increase the dissociation. By not seeing ourselves as one with each other, and instead focusing on taking sides and trying to pin the blame on others, we are keeping the separation going. The way to end the separation is therefore in your relationship with each other and with yourselves.

You have to learn to stop excluding others from yourself, stop using hate and anger and blame to increase the rift between you, stop projecting guilt in an effort to distance yourself from your brothers, and learn to share interests with everyone. Their interests are in your best interests when you recognize them as part of yourself. Without recognizing them as brothers or included in you, you'll keep seeing reasons to push them away.

Only when minds join can there be peace. That means you have to re-associate yourself with others. To be willing to be around them, intimate with them, love them, share with them, including them in your interests, side with them against no-one, unite with everyone, and return to the divine family of God, in and as his Kingdom. Only when dissociation ends, is the separation over.

"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."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

(this will be a fairly long post, so please bare with me)

The ego thought system is based on separation. Separation resulted in space and time. In space, spatial relations are HOW the ego thinks. The physical universe IS its thought system.

This includes physical objects, which are separated out, where an object is EITHER HERE OR THERE, (but not in both places). This is a "natural" ego thought process. One thing seems to exist in one location only and not all locations. One thing is NOT something else, and all things are DIFFERENT, separate, and kept apart.

The entire physical universe is arranged according to this WAY that the ego thinks. It regards the entire thing as structured by SEPARATIONS. One object versus another. One location versus another. And then it draws comparisons, and has reasoning, and finds conclusions, based WITHIN the framework of separation.

So you, in your ego thought processes, then start to THINK this way. You think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. And this seems to make SENSE to you because it maps directly to how the world is arranged. It then becomes "second nature" to think of anything in the world in SEPARATE terms.

For example, I parked my car in the first spot, not the second. I ordered the fries instead of the onion rings. My car is red, not blue. This is my body, not your body. Earth is not Mars. etc.

Our whole WAY of thinking runs according to these rules, based on SEPARATING things out, sectioning them off, isolating them, keeping them APART, emphasizing their differences, and locking them up in little prison boxes. And we think this is a natural way to think, to relate, to communicate, to reason.

Then we go about USING this way of thinking, to think about EVERYTHING. Not just to think about things which ARE based on a thought system of separation, but even to think about things which are completely BEYOND the ego thought system.

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

This may not seem to present any problems when you use SEPARATION-BASED reasoning to discuss the things of space and time, but it COMPLETELY misses the mark when you think this way about heaven, God, creation, sonships, sons, souls, etc.

The Kingdom of God is a thought system, and God similarly has a WAY of thinking. His WAY of thinking is NOT based in the idea of separation. It is NOT based on the limitations of space or time or spatial relations. It does NOT separate things off, make them different, put them in SEPARATE BOXES, or keep them apart.

God's thought system/reality also does not demand that something HAS to be separate from something else. It does not require something to be EXCLUSIVE to one box and not another. Nor does it assert that everything that exists MUST be partitioned off into EITHER one state OR another. God simply does not THINK in terms of "either this or that".

God's mind, his creation, his way of THINKING, is actually based on a totally different kind of reasoning. This reasoning is INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive. It also completely embraces the idea of SHARING. The ego's thought system completely blots out ALL suggestions of sharing, overlap, simultaneity, unity or oneness.

In God's system, it is NATURAL for there to be one thing, which SHARES all of itself with another. It is natural for one thing to GIVE all of itself and STILL RETAIN all of itself without loss. It is natural for TWO things to BE one thing. It is natural for one thing to be in ALL locations simultaneously. It is natural for one thing to be in one box, AND in another box, at the same time. It is natural for something to SPAN and TRANSCEND separations.

The Golden Rule, the law of God and of equality, simply states that what is true of one thing is true of another. Whatever is true of God is true of His Sons. Whatever is true or me is true of you. This is equality. God treats all his creations the same way. The Golden Rule reflects this, because it is a rule based on INCLUSION. We are both included in the same truth. The ego however is COMPLETELY AGAINST sharing and inclusion. And so is this world.

In reality, God THINKS in a holographic way. In a hologram, the whole is in every part, and every part is a whole in its own right, and every part shares the entirety of the whole with the whole. ACIM confirms that this is the way by which God thinks, and NOT through a process of separation:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

This means for example that GOD IS WHOLE, being infinite. And God as a creator therefore extends and creates ANOTHER WHOLE. His Son, is a WHOLE SON. A full creation. As described here:

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

"There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

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

However, for God to BE whole, and to CREATE wholly, and thus to create another WHOLE.... becomes TOTAL NONSENSE to the way that the EGO thinks. And if you think in the same separation-based way that the ego thinks, this FACT registers to you as total nonsense. You will reason, "how can it be possible that there are TWO wholes, that makes no sense!". It makes no sense to a thought system of separation, yes. But God's reality is NOT based on that kind of system. God is not limited by separation or spacetime.

In order to recognize AND accept, that God's mind and creation DO NOT follow the ego's rules, and that God does not THINK or create like the ego would, and God's Kingdom is NOT spatially separated out like the physical world is, you will have to become willing to think massively outside the box. You CANNOT use separation-based logical reasoning to evaluate the truths or falseties of reality.

Let's look at what happens when you try to shove God into a box-based thought system. God for example gives ALL of Himself when he creates. His Son inherits EVERYTHING. But... if you are thinking with the ego, you SHOULD conclude that by God giving all of Himself AWAY, there SHOULD be nothing left. Thus God should snuff out of existence and only His Son should remain. This is LOGICAL to the ego because the ego believes in SACRIFICE AND LOSS, which is inherent to a box-based world. But it is complete nonsense.

Similarly, you could suggest that if God gives EVERYTHING to ONE SON, there is NOTHING LEFT to give to another Son. This is how the ego would think in finite terms. However, God has ALL of Himself left to give again to ANOTHER son, and another, and another, without any reduction at all in Himself. And this is how the Kingdom INCREASES. And by giving ALL of himself away, reality is increased. As stated here:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"To have all, give all to all."

You can see that if you think in exclusive, separating terms, you WILL come to FALSE conclusions about what's happening in reality. You'll conclude that if I have everything, you have nothing. But in reality, as Jesus describes in ACIM, me having everything DOES NOT prevent you from having everything also. How is it possible that we BOTH simultaneously have everything? Because we SHARE IT. And this sharing does NOT mean compromise or that we each only get half.

Sharing is the way by which God's Kingdom INCREASES. Because if it weren't for the ability to share, there would be no logical way for God to ever create anything more than just God, because he is already unlimited and everywhere. As this states:

"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."

If SHARING, INCLUSION, BOTH/AND is the natural thought SYSTEM of Heaven's reality, and it follows that thought PROCESS when it reasons anything, then SELFISHNESS, EXCLUSION, EITHER/OR, SEPARATION is the natural thought system of spacetime. And they are TOTALLY opposite. They are opposite because "this not that" is a direct reflection of the separation idea of "ego not God" or "death not life" or "non-existence not existence." The ego thought system is the NEGATION of reality.

If God creates two sons, who are brothers, and both are whole beings who have and share everything, co-creating with God, and then we look at this fact WITH THE EGO, we will see false conclusions. For example we'll say that there can't BE two sons. Or that if there are two sons, that's "duality", because now the two sons are KEPT APART in separate boxes meaning duality.

But this is not how it works at all. The fact that there are two, WHO SHARE, violates the boundaries of those boxes. One son is IN the other son and vice versa because they share everything. So there are two sons, who are ALSO each other.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."This also extends to the relationship you have with God. Those who think LIKE the ego, will reason that EITHER.... God is all there is, OR there is a separation. Or similarly, EITHER God and I are one thing, OR we are two things. Or that, if you get rid of all separations, you will end up with oneness.

There is a major flaw in that reasoning. The ego first establishes that you MUST think in a separating way, in which there is duality, and all things are kept apart. THEN it has you DESTROY all of the other parts except for one of them, by getting rid of the idea of separations between the parts. But it will not have you get rid of the ego thought process. Then it concludes falsely, that when you remove the separations, you end up with ONE THING. And this one thing is thought to mean "oneness", or to represent God.

This however is a false conclusion, because now "separate boxes" have been mapped onto God, and God has been shoved into a separate box, all by himself, and there is no creation and no sonship and NO SHARING. And the ego rejoices that it has imprisoned God this way, in the name of freedom.

When you look at what ACIM says, Jesus DOES NOT say that God is alone, or that he is separated off from creation, or that he has no creations. Instead it tells you in fact that God has a huge family and is simultaneously one with them. And that His oneness DOES NOT ERASE their manyness.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Children and their creations."

This does not mean the Kingdom is duality or that it contains separate boxes. It means it contains overlapping shared beings who ALL have everything and ARE everything, seemingly as OPEN boxes who are not in any way confined, yet are still many things. HOW that's possible, is due to heaven's miraculous nature.

Ego thought processes do not allow this to be true. Nor does ego thinking allow it to be possible that when you are "one with God", you still have an individual self. EGOS then become AVERSE to any notion of individuality, which is self destructive, which the ego loves. You being one with God, DOES NOT ERASE your individuality.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

There ARE STILL "separate parts" in the statement, AND in some ways God is NOT totally like His sons, in terms of function or role. Meaning, YOU still exist as a distinct entity, AND God exists as a distinct entity. And what you SHARE between you, is your oneness with each other, AS TWO BEINGS. That is what ACIM teaches. And its definition of oneness is not "one thing being alone", it is EQUALITY. Being of THE SAME KIND. And an equality which is more than just two separate boxes next to each other - an equality where you SPAN the boxes.

Similarly, the ego will falsely conclude that if God and His Son are TWO things, this is duality. It is not, because we're again jumping the gun and projecting separate boxes onto heaven. Just because they are TWO, does NOT mean they do not share, and does NOT mean there is no unity. The Father and the Son are one, but there is still a Father and a Son. Just as WE will ALWAYS be brothers even in heaven.

In fact, the way by which God is everything, AND YET, His children are also FULLY created beings, who are also everything, is the course's definition of MIRACULOUSNESS. This miraculousness is completely alien to the ego thought system and all separation-based reasoning. The ego has NO CLUE, how it is possible, that God could have even created ANYTHING, yet alone multiple beings who somehow have been added-on to an already infinite reality. Nevertheless:

"MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human (ego) thinking"

"Miraculousness", is the nature of God's reality. UN-miraculousness is the nature of spacetime. Everything in God's MIND and reality is permanently miraculous. It is miraculous because it makes possible what the ego says is IMPOSSIBLE. Just as the ego is the idea of impossibility.

For one soul to be a whole being, that shares everything with another whole being, as brothers, and with God, without a loss of self or individuality, and without ceasing to be "separate", and without being CONFINED to separate boxes, is miraculous.

This miraculousness is also reflected in THE MIRACLE. And in true perception. And in learning to THINK LIKE GOD, which the course asks you to do. In order to think like God, you have to TRANSCEND the "separating off and putting in boxes" nature of the ego and its thoughts. And that includes thinking of souls as separate bodies.

This entails overlooking separations and seeing unity beyond it. It requires you to not be blinded by perception of form, because form is anchored in separation. Your whole perception has to become similar to heaven's reality, which breaks all the ego laws. And this is also why miracles break all the laws of space and time AND of ego reasoning.

Becoming able to THINK LIKE GOD, requires you to align with the truth of the Golden Rule, in holy relationship, where what is true of you is true of all others. Where differences are completely ignored. Where no-one is IMPRISONED in a box. And where your whole way of REASONING is LIKE God's.... that is, based on "paralogical reasoning" - or AND/BOTH reasoning, rather than either/or.

We could say, THE ENTIRE COURSE is geared towards developing this BOTH/AND kind of perception, thought and experience, for all students. We are supposed to stop thinking with the ego, OR LIKE the ego. And we are supposed to learn that we are undo no laws but God's, and HIS laws are NOT laws of separation, exclusion, spatial relations, or limitations.

In order to fully grasp ANYTHING that ACIM says about the pre-separation state, God, the Kingdom, oneness, sonship, sons, souls, creation, extension, holy spirit, etc..... any of that non-ego stuff, you CANNOT USE the ego-based reasoning method. If you do, you will fail. Guaranteed. And you will see truth that is false, and what is really true will appear false to you. That's how BACKWARDS the ego thought system is.

Any conclusions you come to about God or oneness etc, if it's rooted in "either this or that", IS WRONG. Guaranteed 100%. Only when you start to think in terms of BOTH.... me AND you.... WE.... only then do you start to approach the NATURAL way of thinking like God, which is a miraculous state of mind. And ONLY by thinking that way will you understand and grasp the metaphysical facts of God's nature.

Non-duality for example is complete bullshit. It is bullshit because it is the result of an EGO thought process. The ego reasons, well, I believe all things are separate, so if we attack all the parts and end up with one victor, this ONE THING that's leftover, which is practically nothing, but is a single thing, symbolizes God. Because to the ego "less separation" is equated with spirituality or simplicity. So it will then map this "one thing" idea of oneness onto God and claim God is one thing - that there is NOTHING ELSE other than God. That God is SEPARATED OFF. That is NOT what ACIM teaches at all!

God is not only a creator and a father, God has a HUGE family of whole beings, all of whom are co-creators with each other. You and your brother co-create your creations. You and God and your brother co-create together. Even the holy spirit is a co-creator. And we all have this HUGE family of created beings in heaven. This is utterly incompatible with both the traditional idea of "oneness" and the idea of "non-duality".

And ALL of those beings are of ONE KIND, and SHARE EVERYTHING, and yet ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY. Because that is HOW GOD THINKS. A holographic thought system in which the whole has created many parts and each part shares the whole with the whole of the rest. That is what ACIM says! And in order to INCLUDE all of what ACIM says, WITHOUT EXCLUDING any material or any factual statements, you will ONLY be able to accept ALL of what it says if you think in a non-separating way.

As soon as you get the simple idea that heaven's reality is based on BOTH/AND, rather than either/or, it will all fit into place and become clear. Because everything real is based on a both/and system of reason and thought processes. Creation ITSELF is based on sharing between two. God SHARES HIMSELF, in order to create, and He does not will to be alone. The natural logical outcome of that is that WE, as many permanent brothers, in the sonship which God DIRECTLY created, are all "one" (equal/sharing) because we share everything.

If this does not make sense to you, it is because you are thinking with the ego. If it seems like nonsense, it is because the ego is projecting its separation ideals onto it. If you cannot follow it, either I explained it poorly or you can't get past your ego thinking. But either way, God's entire reality is NOT LIKE EARTH, and you have to learn to RADICALLY think WAAAAAAY outside the realm of boxes if you want to recognize its true nature. Heaven is not spacetime!

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

This is more than just another way to think or use the intellect. This ties into how you should PERCEIVE, how you experience the real world, how you tune into the miraculous state of mind, the nature of the miracle and the atonement, all holy relationships, living by the golden rule, holy spirit's thought system etc.. It's all based on heaven's nature which is NOT based on a world of separate boxes.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous."

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

"To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. 2 And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. 3 The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. 4 Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. 5 And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity."

"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. "

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded,"

"the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole"

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth.""If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.""Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

I thought I'd clarify a bit. In ACIM there are two ways that separation is referred to. One is "separation" in general - the other is "the separation".

Separation in general cannot happen, you cannot never really separate from God, and you haven't. This is what it means by separation being impossible, that "separation hasn't happened."

But you have to be very careful on the wording. ACIM has many references to "THE separation". When it refers to THE separation, it's not talking about the fact that you cannot separate. It's talking about the tiny mad idea which you BELIEVED was possible.

The mad idea is that idea that you CAN separate from God, even though you can't. And believing in the idea is insane, because it makes no sense. Given that the first type of separation - actual separation from God - is utterly impossible, the second variant of separation - the BELIEF THAT IT CAN HAPPEN - still remains possible.

You ARE free to believe things that aren't true if you so wish, and this is what happened when you BELIEVED that you could be separate from God. Even though this belief DID NOT make you separate from God, you still believed that IT DID. And your mind entered a state of sleep and dreaming in which it pretends to be mortal and apart from God, exciled from heaven, even though this is in truth impossible.

That second type of separation, the belief that you can be separate even though you can't, is referred to as "THE separation" in ACIM. It is also referred to as the "fall of man", "the journey into fear", "the descent into hell" etc. It's what happened when you in your mind decided to "listen to the lies of the serpent" and therefore threw your mind into a confused state.

NB: "The separation" shows up on over 45 pages in ACIM and is mentioned close to 90 times.

This second type of separation, HAS in fact happened. The tiny mad idea WAS THOUGHT in the mind. You did HAVE the idea. You also did entertain the idea and put your faith in it, thus believing in it in an attempt to MAKE it be true. You did this because it's NOT true, and although separation is NOT possible, you WANTED it to be possible.

The BELIEF in separation is what THE separation from God is all about, and it is because of this belief - which is a mistaken belief and NOT TRUE, that you find yourself sitting and reading facebook messages. It's why there seems to be a planet under your feet and why you seem to be using a body. All of this came about because of a BELIEF that you COULD be separate from God. And this believing is still ongoing until you reach the atonement.

So in time, we are stuck inside this belief-construct, which ACIM also refers to as "the space-time belief", which houses the cosmos and the galaxies etc. All of this is showing up in your mind as a hallucination because you BELIEVE IN IT. You think it is possible AND happening, and so it SEEMS to be happening. You make it seem real to you because you BELIEVE that separation is possible.

And in this sense, at least a fictional belief that you ARE separate has entered your mind. But this belief is mistaken, in light of the fact that separation is actually impossible. You cannot DENY that you have had this belief, or that you are still having it. You DO believe separation is possible, which is why you are 'here' on planet earth typing on an imaginary keyboard made of separate keys.

This is why ACIM itself DOES state clearly twice, that "THE separation has occurred." But also teaches that separation IN GENERAL is impossible, and therefore THE separation that's happened is a mistaken thought in the mind. The belief that you can separate has to be undone, but this does NOT mean that you HAVEN'T believed it. "THE separation" has happened (or has seemed to), but general separation has not.

God's will is already done.

There is no separation between cause and effect. He has willed what you are, and you share His will with Him. You can therefore will to extend the Kingdom of God and to Create in His likeness.

However, the idea of a separate will is an ego idea. It's really the attempt to STOP the will of God, which means to not have a will at all. It is wishful thinking, because it can't be possible to truly have a separate will.

If you will with God, you will have Life. If you will against God, to have a different will, you will have death. Death is the absence of real will.

Also when you will against God, which is really a withdrawal from willingness, a refusal to will, you will go into the ego split mind in which there will appear to be "your will" and an external "alien will". You'll also believe the body has its own will along with everyone else. Multiple split wills.

Once cause and effect are separated out it's going to appear that everything external has its own will, and that it is willing against you, because you no longer see the connection between cause and effect. So you can't have your "own" will without simultaneously creating an "alien will" that is in opposition to your own. Therefore your separate will is the persona, and the alien will appears to be the shadow. And then everything "you" will separately will be thwarted by the shadow, and you'll be at war - a battle of wills.

As the Course says, there is a metaphysical curriculum of awakening with fundamental truths you need to come to. You cannot change that curriculum because it's the same for everyone (even outside of ACIM), but you can seem to delay learning the truth (the time you take it). You do that by seemingly having your own ego will which goes off busying itself and spinning its wheels and avoiding and denying, which you will then think is free will.

You are free to choose because God's love is not forceful and won't stop you from trying to be separate, but when you are without God's will you will have barely any will at all. That's why you can't perform miracles, which are supposed to be happening all the time. Without God's will miracles are impossible, and Life is impossible.

You will think you have a "life", and that it's your own life, which you control, or have autonomy over, with an authority separate from God, but that's an ego claim. Its a delusion, because in truth your will and God's will are shared, and will only exists when there IS a sharing of real will (God's Will). Will has to be extended, and the ego's will does not extend, it just projects.

Also the ego does not really ever will that you wake up or accept truth or be open to sharing with God or to receive a "cure" that undoes the ego.. It "wills" that you be dead, which is a giving up of the "will" to live. All attempts to have a will separate from God are attempts to relinquish free will and be a victim - the victim who appears to have no will power to actually take action or prevent death. And then the death of the body-identified person is allegedly the death of God's will. The end of Eternal Life.

In a similar vein to that you think you think, but you really only share the thoughts of the thought system you are aligned with, you "think you will", or wish you will, according to the thought system you belong to. Either you are willing "with" the ego, or you are willing with God. And the ego's "will" will be against God's will, because it's just a device for denial. Then whatever the ego wills, which is your death, will become what you're actually choosing and will experience. If you don't want that, you have to align with God's will and accept eternal life. You don't have any other options outside of which of the two thought systems you share in.

You can be of service to God, or of service to the ego. There is no other "separate" will that you have of your 'own' independent of both. Either you're in the "Life Will" or in the "Death Wish".

God's will not my will be done.

In God's Kingdom, each individual being is also all of the other beings. There is a shared oneness. Everyone is everyone.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth." "The Sonship is your soul."

Each brother or Son of God actually IS the other brothers, while still being multiple brothers. It is correct to then say, you are the whole sonship. And also, that other person you know, they are also the whole sonship. And everyone in the world, is the whole sonship. And each one of them individually, is each other, as the whole sonship. This is the natural arrangement of the family of God, where every child of God is one with all other children of God.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

In the physical world however, bodies were constructed as separation devices. Their purpose was to SPLIT OFF each child of God and prevent them from being one with each other. The body then acts like a prison cell with walls, keeping the whole rest of the sonship out, and locking you inside in isolation. This denies that you share ANYTHING with anyone, and asserts that there is NO oneness.

To enter into the bodily state, you enter into the ego thought system of sin and death. And the body is an expression of the idea of sin and death. "The body is clearly a device for separation"

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

Once you're in a body, or have identified with a body, or see yourself as less than the whole sonship in any way, you confine yourself to a little tiny speck in space and time, wrapped and trapped in a body, kept apart from everyone else.

This makes you feel alone, and also as though you are the only person inhabiting your body. And everyone else's bodies are only their own bodies, and no-one shares bodies. And indeed there are vast distances between bodies, to ensure they never meet. And even when the two bodies meet, the two people are still alone and separate and do not really touch each other, inside-to-inside.

Such was the physical world made and arranged, so that bodies would act as separation devices to keep everyone apart. To exclude and isolate and make everyone seem different and unequal. The body was designed to always be different, unfamiliar, unalike, and unrecognizable. Such that they turn all brothers into seeming strangers.

Essentially bodies are expressions of the idea of having NO RELATIONSHIPS with others, no connection, no sharing, and no communication. You can't be related to something you're different from.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

You see a body that you don't remember and you think you never met them before, even though all brothers are part of God's original family. And then it seems like you have to "get to know" people, as if you are starting out with no knowledge of them and have no clue who they are. You ask their name and where they are from and what they do, only because you've been estranged from them for so long you don't even know anything about them.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

This is incredibly unnatural. This is the opposite of the nature of the sonship and the reality of heaven. Everyone's unity, everyone's shared nature, everyone's oneness, the fact the each son of God is all sons of God and the one son of God is hidden completely by bodies. Bodies pull the sonship apart and confine them in containment and limitation, isolate them away from each other and don't allow them to share anything.

This was the original intended purpose of the body, to produce slavery to the ego, to worship and exalt the very prison that keeps you bound, and to anchor you in spacetime so that you'll die along with it.

"What could the purpose of the body Be BUT specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was CONCEIVED to make YOU frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse."

If you look at society in general you'll see that this is a prevalent experience. Everywhere you look there are expressions of individuality in the sense that, each person is their body, and is not another body. The law of the land looks to what one body does to another. You are held responsible for your body's actions, but not those of others. And everyone thinks in terms of "only me".

My house, my car, my food, my television shows, my toys, my bed, my kitchen, my toilet, my day, my life, my separate isolated experience, my unique loneliness, my exclusive specialness, my self-interests, my my me me my my me me. This is the selfishness of the ego thought system, physicalized as bodies. Bodies designed to prevent the sons of God from recognizing or sharing with each other.

We can, however, re-purpose the prisons that the we made in the separation, and use them to help us to transcend the prisons. We can use the body to increase communication, and that doesn't mean to increase talking it means to extend the mind beyond the body's limits and beyond limits of "a solitary identity", beyond exclusion and specialness, to a much broader inclusiveness of everyone.

We can use the body for a higher purpose, but note that the body IS STILL a prison no matter how you use it. It will always be a limit on love. It will always confine and separate and have limited senses. It cannot ever see reality through its eyes and it will not ever enter heaven. So we should be careful to think the body can turn into a physicalization of the freedom of spirit, or that it can be truly holy. But it can serve a holier purpose, within the limits of what it is capable of.

To transcend the body is the body's higher purpose. To use the body to learn that you are not a body. To use the body to render the body unnecessary. To use the very device of separation against itself, so that we move past the body's limits. In this view the body actually is recognized as having NO FUNCTION.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

In effect, the body and its limits needs to get out of the way. In fact a holy relationship should be a way of actually relating BEYOND the body, transcending its limits, mind-to-mind, soul-to-soul, and physicality shouldn't even enter into and need not even be a part of the relationship. The mind needs to learn to extend through the body to join with other minds, beyond their bodies. So that we can recognize again our shared oneness. This is why "miracles unite you with your brother."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

Our challenge then is to learn how to ignore the body's imposed limits, transcend its boundaries through transcendental vision, move the mind through and beyond it to join with other minds, overlook all physical objects of spacetime which were designed to keep everyone separate, and rejoin the sonship. Not just to return to being a member of the collective mind, but to learn to recognize YOU ARE EVERYONE, and NOT just this one little tiny body self.

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body. As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages which are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation (the only re-purposing of it after it was made)."

"For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made"

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

Ok so Jesus lets the cat out of the bag in the section titled "The real alternative." Here he speaks of how utterly disappointing and hopeless the world is. He talks of how all the world's roads lead to death, how there is no real choice among them, and how every path or answer or solution or hope you ever had in the world is secretly hell-bent on the same failure.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death." UT31D2

"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped." UrT31D2

He goes on to say that EVERYONE must look at this eventually. Everyone must come to the awareness that the world is utterly completely disappointing, hopeless, worthless, ridiculous, insane, and without hope of redemption or salvation. And that within its closed system there is absolutely no way out and not a single road truly leads to a real solution.

"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end." UrT31D2

"Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death." UrT31D2

"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." UrT31D2

He describes also that if you come to linger on this, and if you do not sense that "there must be a better way", or "this can't possibly be God's will for me", and if you make the world real or think it is all that exists, you WILL become depressed. In fact, Jesus even says somethings startling here - that "men have died" when looking upon this. And I expect he literally means they dropped dead on the spot because they couldn't handle the bleak hopelessness that arises from this view that the hopeless world is "all there is."

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another." UrT31D3

"Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson." UrT31D3

Then of course he urges us that we should, as well as reaching this point, be sure not to linger there and that we MUST go beyond this. We must become willing to recognize that there MUST be a better way. Yet for many it will require that our "tolerance for pain" has not hit its limit, or you have not scraped to the bottom of the barrel and hit "rock bottom" with the world's bullshit and pain enough to get you to open your mind.

"All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE" UrT31D3

However, he also speaks of there being a great potential in this "lesson", in that seeing the world in such stark clarity, such obviousness of its failure and its impossibility and its hell-bent laws of death and punishment, there is a much higher potential that you will suddenly REJECT it, as a whole.

What your mind HAS to do is it has to become open enough to NOT ACCEPTING this as "the only reality", even when faced with the world's UTTER BULLSHIT, slapping you upside the head on a daily basis. There has to be some light of true hope and sanity in you which stops BUYING into the world's empty promises.

"Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another place, when you HAVE learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? Its purpose is the ANSWER to the search that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found." UrT31D4

"Learn now, WITHOUT despair, there is no hope of answers in the world. But do not judge the lesson which is but BEGUN with this. Seek not another signpost in the world which seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none." T31D4

You have to be willing to see that you've been seeking for salvation in all the wrong places, and every place you've looked you have come up empty handed and disappointed. That nothing in the world has lasted, nor will it ever. And everything has always disappointed and betrayed you, no matter its appearance, no matter its form, no matter how much it shone and sparkled in its frame of death.

If you can get in touch within yourself with a sense that there MUST be a better way, there must be something more than this, there must be a better reality, there must be ANOTHER WORLD, where God's will is supreme an all the Earth's stupid bullshit is utterly impossible, then your mind will open up instead of shut down. It becomes a "perceptual turning point", which in fact causes a rejection of PHYSICAL SIGHT (having lost all faith in the physical) and an opening of the spiritual eye (willingness to see the spirit world).

"For from ***this lowest point*** will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the PURPOSE of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp." UrT31D4

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

It means you are suddenly recognizing EN-MASS and in total GENERALIZATION, that the WHOLE world is utterly flawed and NOT what you want. That it HAS failed you, and CANNOT give you what you wanted it to give you. And now you turn from it, turn your back on the whole thing in disgust, or perhaps quiet recognition, and now your WHOLE AIM focused squarely on the Kingdom of God.

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead? For while he sees a choice where there is none, what power of decision can he use?" UrT31D5

You're whole attention and sense of VALUE and hope is placed on the other world, where there is a REAL HOPE and where there is a real sanity and a real potential to find what you have always wanted. And as such heaven becomes "the real alternative" to you, and your faith in it becomes massively focused.

He says that everyone must come to look at this eventually. EVERYONE has to be willing to look upon the freak-show without flinching and without making it real, or at least with enough of an opening to an alternative that it doesn't just turn into a horrible depressing dark-night of the soul kind of thing. A night in which you seem SO FAR from God, and yet are SO CLOSE to turning your back on the darkness forever.

"The learning that the world can offer but ONE choice, no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a REAL alternative instead. To fight AGAINST this step is to defeat your purpose here. You did not come to learn to find a road the world does not contain." UrT31D5

Once you see just how horrendously stupid the world is, how pointless and disappointing, how hopeless and short-lived, how false in its empty promises and how it is set up only to destroy, you can also potentially see that it CAN ONLY EVER BE THIS WAY. You can see also that since you MADE IT, YOU wanted it to function like this. And you can see that since it is opposite to heaven's reality, it HAS TO FAIL this way. It has no hope because it was made to oppose hope.

"The search for DIFFERENT pathways in the world is but the search for different FORMS of truth. And this would KEEP the truth from being reached. Think not that happiness is EVER found by following a road AWAY from it. This makes NO sense, and CANNOT be the way." UrT31D6

"And EVERY road that goes the other way will NOT advance the purpose to be found." UrT31D6

And this is a great thing to recognize because it means you can forgive the world for being impossibly incapable and utterly flawed. It's only that way because an alternative to heaven CAN ONLY BE that way. And so now you can forgive it and laugh at it and find peace because it is NOT what you want, and because you see NO merit in it, and there is nothing in it that you want to use to keep your false hopes and wishful thinking alive.

"There IS a choice which you have power to make, when you have seen the real alternatives. UNTIL that point is reached you HAVE no choice, and you can but decide how you would choose the better to deceive yourself again. This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake." UrT31D7

"No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal is one with His. What road in all the world will lead within, when EVERY road was made to separate the journey and the purpose it MUST have, unless it be but futile wandering? All roads that lead AWAY from what you are will lead you to confusion and despair." UrT31D8

"There IS no road that leads away from Him (your brother/self). A journey FROM yourself does not exist. How foolish and insane it is to think that there COULD be a road with such an aim. Where could it go? And how could you be made to travel on it, walking there without your own Reality at one with you? Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-less aims." UrT31D9

All we have to do is be willing to look at the UTTER SHIT HOLE with the light of the Holy Spirit and with a willingness to be honest in recognizing its nothingness, and then we will TURN AROUND and vehemently and passionately embrace heaven. And now our vigilance for the Kingdom will be super clarified and magnified and glorified. And then we will walk straight out of hell into the light.

"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." UrT12G3

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." UrW131L7

God willed that you be innocent forever, and God's will is done. Nothing can ever change this. This innocence isn't merely some kind of judgement of your condition. It's your actual permanent state of being. In your being, in your mind, there is still a place that is wholly completely innocent and pure and will never be guilty.

"We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator."

In the separation, we merely went into a state of denial. We pretended that the truth was not true. We also pretended we were no longer ourselves, no longer innocent and no longer a part of God. This denial isn't a fact, because denial doesn't actually make anything go away.

All denial does is hide the awareness of the presence of that which is STILL THERE, pretending it is gone. In fact, Jesus speaks to this property of denial and the fact that even the denial confirms the existence of that which it denies.

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true." So a part of your mind does in fact still believe, right now, and always, that you are perfectly innocent forever. Then your mind became split, and now a second portion of your mind believes it is guilty. You therefore have two conflicting opinions about yourself in your mind at the same time.

"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE."

The problem we typically have, is that once we go into denial, the denial DOES SEEM to block the AWARENESS OF the presence of love. It seems to block the awareness that, in truth, you actually still are holy and innocent. You still are an immortal being in God. And you will never change, nor have you been changed by the denial.

So some portion of you is literally still innocent right now. And some other portion of you believes the opposite. That second portion is what we call ego.

"The ego is a part of your belief about yourself."

However, in order TO DENY the part of you that is still innocent, your mind does block awareness. This produces a shift in premise, which makes it potentially possible to become convinced that what you've denied HAS GONE AWAY. Ie, out of sight out of mind. If you are not aware of it, surely it's not there.

Entering into denial tends to make you believe that you have actually CHANGED, from an innocent holy being, into an evil anti-christ false-self. The denial suggests your real self has been destroyed, and no longer exists. That you have literally transformed from one state to another, and now you are SOLELY in a state of guilt. The unawareness of the continued presence of your innocent self tempts you toward believing these illusions.

All of the world, all bodies, space and time, all sickness and death and suffering, is entirely designed to try to HIDE FROM THE TRUTH. It's an attempt to shut out the FACT of what you STILL ARE. That you actually literally still are as God created you right now. Just as the world was made as an attack on God, it was an attempt to ASSERT a one-sided ego war upon the truth about you. To depict you as if you have been destroyed and turned into something dead.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

All suffering, all death, all states of sickness, all resistance to reality, all defenses against the truth, all blocks to awareness, all lies and deceptions, all body identification, its entire purpose was to resist God. To try to stop God's will. To try to overthrow and usurp his completed permanent works and replace it with something else, in order to PRETEND that his kingdom had been destroyed. That the son of God could be killed.

The strange scenario, however, is that while you are busy being guilty and worthless and deserving of horrible punishments, SIMULTANEOUSLY, there is another self, another PART OF YOU, that is right this instant STILL HOLY AND INNOCENT. It has not in truth changed.

What this then reveals is that the world, the mindset of the ego thought system, all of space and time, and every separation ego idea, is all a COVER UP. It is literally a veil placed OVER the truth of the permanence of the Kingdom of God. It is put there to come BETWEEN you and the truth to HIDE the truth. To hide from the attraction of God. To smother reality with illusions. To keep you from realizing that NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true." "The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear"

Therefore, we can say that "underneath" your guilt, there is ALSO a place any our mind where you are STILL innocent. That innocent place was NOT converted into guilt, it was NOT transformed into an anti-christ, and it remains exactly as God created it. Right now. Even in PARALLEL with the guilty false sense of self that you maintain is your whole identity.

THERE IS STILL INNOCENCE IN YOU AND THERE ALWAYS WILL BE.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

"But most of all, try to sink down and inward, away from the world and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality."

"Go past all the raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God."

"and then try to reach past all your images and preconceptions about yourself to the truth in you. If Love created you like Itself this Self must be in you. And somewhere in your mind It is there for you to find."

So Jesus is actually telling us that below the murky surface "clouds of guilt" which seem to smother and obscure, block and distract, deflect and deceive, BELOW and BEYOND the world and the body and the ego guilt, there is STILL a quiet place within you where you are perfectly innocent still. Where you are still as God created you.

This means that you actually have two parts to you right now. A holy self and a false self. Because your mind is split. The guilt is in one part, and the innocence is in another. And the guilt merely seems to HIDE the innocence, so you think there is no innocence in you, or that you can ONLY be guilty OR innocent at one time. This is not true.

Your mind is in fact divided between TWO goals, and wants two conflicting things at once. One part of you still accepts your innocence while another part is attacking it. The only reason you tolerate this is because you've identified WITH the guilt and have believed the illusions of the denial, such that you don't think the innocent part is EVEN THERE any more. And you maintain the guilt IN ORDER TO keep the innocence hidden.

Because if you were to actually become aware of the sinlessness within you, it would then become obviously clear that you cannot be both innocent AND guilty at the same time. And yet this is what your mind has actually been believing. Covered up, below, beyond, and underneath your guilt, there is a dwelling place of innocence and being as God created you still. And how can that be compatible with being guilty?

If you go within and look for that innocence and realize it MUST still be there, then it also becomes apparent that you cannot ACCEPT being both innocent and guilty, in conscious awareness. Only one of them can be true. One of them must go! And since the innocence has the property of permanence and unchangeability, the guilt MUST be fake. The guilt must be false and a mistake and NOT TRUE. And this also means the world must be false as well.

Jesus actually refers to "the real world" as this borderland of thought or place within your mind, where you come to fully realize that the innocence is true and the guilt is false. Allowing yourself to recognize that ONLY THE TRUTH CAN BE TRUE, ie only the permanent innocence in you can be really there, the guilt is correctly framed as IMPOSSIBLE, and is finally let go.

"Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven."

"It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"They are brought together, and only ONE continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation IS a borderland, where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, OUT of place, and EVERY choice has been ALREADY made."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

When I am upset, feeling unhappy, having a cry, feeling guilty or afraid, or whatever, Holy Spirit is gentle and compassionate. He often says, "I know". Sometimes I feel a hand on my shoulder from Him or Jesus.

They are compassionate in that they know that *I* believe I am experiencing something upsetting, that *I* feel sad or whatever. They are there for me, and they don't judge it. They don't even use the opportunity to push me towards some kind of forgiveness or greater awareness. They just hold me and hug me.

However, the fact is that all upset feelings come from a mis-perception that I chose. And I chose that mis-perception so that I could further my separation from God.

So for example, I might feel upset because I saw myself victimized by someone. I might feel sad about how someone rejected me or whatever. And those feelings seem genuine, it seems like I really feel this way and that it's very sad and unfortunate. But, once I'm done with feeling, at some point I need to find the willingness to move beyond this.

I've witnessed how, in particular, when old hurts come up from the past, to be healed, they always feel like how it felt at the time. They're always based on how I was perceiving when I was younger and less aware. Even though at the time I did not understand what was going on, or what it meant, how it made me feel at the time based on that perception is now the feeling that I need to work through and release. But I've also seen how obvious it is, that these feelings were just how I felt 'within' the framework of a certain way of looking at life, and there is usually some kind of mistake in that.

I saw myself as hurt because I didn't perceive correctly. I saw myself as unloved because I didn't recognize my infinite lovability. I saw myself as unworthy because I devalued myself sort of 'by accident' because I didn't know what i was doing. And so I created feelings of unworthy and unlove and so on, which I must 'heal' and release, but even though these feelings seem like they reflected some kind of 'truth', they're not really the ultimate truth.

I need to become willing to admit that, once I've allowed myself to feel and release the 'energy' produced by a false perception, that the perception ITSELF was faulty. And it was the fault perception that LED to faulty feelings. Unhappy feelings come from unhappy perceptions. So I need to now be willing to see differently, to look for a greater truth, to own up to the part that I played in choosing to suffer, to take back my power, to claim responsibility for doing this to myself, and to realize that nobody involved was doing it without my will.

So there is a 'forgiveness' process that needs to occur, above and beyond unhappy feelings, to correct the perception that led to them. And even though Holy Spirit knows this, he seldom prompts or forces me to 'go there' especially not right when I'm feeling how the feelings felt. I let myself fully feel because this releases the energy, even though it's a FALSE energy, to clear it out. To cathart it. THEN my mind is clearer and can have a cognitive shift, as well as being more willing and able to now apply a 'forgiveness' to change my perception.

It's important to let yourself feel and let out the trapped negative emotions, but recognize also that they are only there because of a mistaken way of looking at life, and that mistake needs to be corrected at some point. When you are ready. And not before. And nobody is pushing you or forcing you to have to do that, especially not when you're in the middle of a deep release. Trying to rush someone out of feeling into truth isn't compassionate.

So it's possible to have compassion for someone who is feeling upset even if you know that their upset is false, and there really isn't a need to be upset. Holy Spirit knows that nothing has gone wrong and there is ONLY reason to celebrate, but to tell me that in the middle of me believing heavily that I've been wronged, isn't entirely helpful because I can't hear it until I'm ready and willing. We really believe we've done something terrible to God and deserve to be punished for it, and as we work through those feelings, Holy Spirit is very patient to give you time to 'process' the consequences of a mistaken decision. And then at some point, when you're ready, you will undo the belief that caused it.

You are never responsible for the freedom of others. If you make yourself responsible, you will believe they are part of your ego. Extending what you are responsible for, is like saying they are inside of the scope of yourself.

And now anything they choose, anything they do, anything that happens to them, is interpreted as being something you are responsible for. And you then are set up on a rocky boat in choppy waters, certain to be tossed around by forces you cannot control, and certain to be guilty for whatever happens.

When they suffer, you suffer along with them. When they are hurt, it hurts you. And when they die, you lose part of yourself. You will then actually grieve for what seems like part of your own self that has died along with them.

This can only possibly result from a sense of mis-identification, losing sight of who you are, and confusing yourself for another person. When you try to control the life of another person, you are effectively saying that you are them. Not in a spiritual way of oneness, but in a violating "shared suffering" kind of way.

You'll have constant concern, worry, fear, guilt and desperation, resulting from believing that this person is part of you, in an egoic way. They are part of you at the level of spirit, but not at the level of separate egos having special relationships.

Special relationships always entails a strange kind of manufactured "bond" or connection between two people. A two-way horizontal cause-effect relationship. It's like a way of trying to fuse two separate people together. To say, you are my ego and I am your ego. Or that you are the cause of me and I am the cause of you. This can only lead to mutual suffering.

In specialness, anything that happens to the "other", who you have tried to "possess", you feel as happening to your self. This can only mean that you literally believe they are you. Which also means you don't even really acknowledge them as a distinct whole person, and instead are really relating to a projected form of your own ego, which is overstepping its bounds."Yet the special relationship which the EGO seeks, does NOT include even ONE whole individual. For the ego WANTS but part of him, and sees ONLY this part, and nothing else."

Egos everywhere love the idea of violating other people's freedom. They are tyrannical rulers, selfish, hoarding, possessing and controlling. They overstep boundaries and invade other people. They are like psychic vampires. They feed off other people. They leave no room and have no humility for allowing others to be themselves. They want to devour and infest and take over other people. Egos overflow and try to spread, to inflate themselves and make themselves consume the space of those around them. And the worst of them even attempt to destroy others to remove the competition.

If a relationship entails any of this encroachment, and of this arrogance, this over-inflation of self, the invasion of other's boundaries and free willed choices, in any way tries to control or manipulate or coerce, or moves into areas of submission or dominance, then the relationship is ego driven and is unholy.

"The dominance-submission problem is related to the perception of helping others VERSUS helping the self. This is a misperception resulting from the failure to recognize the equal worth of both individuals in the interaction."

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself."

What we need to do is get our grubby little opinionated hands off other people's merchandise. Or as Jesus puts eloquently, "be passerby". We need to step back and let go of people. We need to withdraw control and stop coercing. And to do that we have to surrender not only the desire to be more than we are, but also let go of believing we are lacking in the first place.

It's really a sense of inadequacy, lack, inferiority, weakness, unworthiness or guilt that often drives us to overstep our bounds with others. We try to take from them through possession. We try to complete ourselves by assimilating someone else's soul. We try to unite in separation, through sacrifice and dominance. And this will always lead to a loss of peace.

The unwillingness to accept love for yourself is the key driving force behind all of this, producing compulsions of seeking outside of oneself. And that can only turn into an attempt expand the ego. Egos that see themselves as having nothing, attempt to possess everyone and everything.

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

In heaven's reality, there's nothing wrong. At all, in any way. Everything is perfect forever. There is no lack, no needs, nothing missing, nothing damaged, nothing to fix, nothing to become, no urgency or sense of having to do something unless something else goes wrong, absolutely no sense of a REASON to NEED to do anything at all. And that is a state of peace and rest because there is literally nothing that needs to be "addressed" or sorted out or corrected or made to stop doing something wrong in any way. There is nothing to DO, and God's will is DONE.

When we are judging things as wrong, hating people, disliking things, believing that something has gone wrong, believing that something is sick or damaged, believing that death is even possible, we are in denial of God's reality. And that means we are being unforgiving.

So this means that to be FORGIVING, is to recognize that nothing is wrong with anything, nothing is really broken, there is no real damage, sickness and death are an illusion and a lie, and there is a perfection that is so flawless that it has absolutely no need for repair or fixing or changing for any reason. By that I don't mean the physical world is configured as heaven, but that we see past its illusion of "something has gone terrible wrong" to the light of truth that for REAL things, nothing has gone wrong.

As we move closer to our true nature of being ALREADY created perfectly by God, in which we acknowledge the perfection of God's creation and accept its utter flawlessness, its utter impossibility of being corrupt or damaged or in any kind of state a of NEED or LACK at all, this influences our perception here and causes us to be forgiving. A forgiving sight is rooted in that sense of a total lack of need. A sense that you have actually reached a state of wholeness and COMPLETION, in which there is nothing further that need be done to make you any better, in recognition of your perfection. And if you are perfect, you have no need for a spiritual path, learning, growth, healing, becoming, forming a self, or anything else that might change you.

"In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father?"

"However holy his perception may become, no world OUTSIDE himself holds his inheritance. Within HIMSELF he HAS no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace. And from ITSELF, to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity."

"God made nothing either necessary OR difficult. But YOU have perceived both AS IF they were part of His perfect creations. Yet it is surely clear that the perfect NEED nothing, and CANNOT experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment because that is what they ARE."

"I Need Do Nothing" (emphasis on the lack of need)

"To DO anything involves the body. And, if you recognize you NEED do nothing, you HAVE withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and ESCAPE from time."

"And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. YOU make it difficult, because you insist there MUST be more that you need do."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. It is a recognition that you HAVE no needs which mean that something must be DONE."

"Without guilt there is no scarcity. The sinless have no needs." "God's Son can make no needs His Father will not meet, if he but turn to Him ever so little."

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them."

There is a myth which is perpetuating in the ACIM community that the Holy Spirit does not operate in the world. That he does not "find you parking spaces" or help you deal with your bank account, especially not that he might directly have power over or influence physical objects.

This is completely false in terms of what A Course in Miracles ACTUALLY says about the Holy Spirit. We're told instead that he is completely aware of this world, aware of bodies, aware of space and time. He orchestrates them, has power over them, can work THROUGH them. He can even manipulate matter and bodies.

He absolutely CAN assist with finding parking spaces, making your grocery shopping more efficient, giving you advive about anything and everything. This is not something he only does for beginners, or people who have not escaped concepts or people who have not risen up to the heights of non-dual oneness. He does this ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE.

It is simply patently false that the Holy Spirit is not aware of or able to operate upon the world. He in fact repurposes and USES EVERYTHNG in the world for his atonement plan. And if he had no awareness of it or access to it or power over it he would NOT be abe to help us!

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others." UrT8G3

We're told here that the holy spirit is able to USE A BODY and operate THROUGH a body.

" Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured." UrT27B3

We're told here that the holy spirit can MAKE A BODY.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?" UrW135L19

We're told here that the holy spirit PLANS ALL EVENTS IN SPACETIME.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God." UrT25D4

We're told here that the holy spirit is a CO-MAKER of this dream world of physical matter.

"He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE." UrT9D11

Here we are told the holy spirit sends people to you in the world, AND that HE himself will SPEAK through your physical body to that person.

"Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body ONLY as a means of communication." UrT9G2

Here we are told the holy spirit is aware of AND interprets the body and uses it for communication.

"The body disappears because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees." W199L4

Here we are told the holy spirit has a NEED for the body and that he SEES it. "The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing." UrT11G1

Here we are told the holy spirit is aware of the world and whether or not it is useful to you.

"To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins." UrW64L2

Here we are again told the holy spirit is very much aware of the world and what it is to be used for.

"It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan." UrP4C1

Here we are told the holy spirit uses EVERYTHING in this world as part of his atonement plan.

The list goes on and on and on confirming that the Holy Spirit is compeltely aware of this world, of the body, of physical matter, he has total access to it, he can use it for any purpose he sees fit, he can work THROUGH it, it can USE it to literally physically speak to others, to heal bodies, to even move objects and mountains.

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

When you feel angry at someone and believe they are guilty, you will also feel afraid of them. And you will find that behind this fear, YOU feel guilty for some reason. You feel guilty because you have attacked this person with your mind. And you attacked "them" in trying to get rid of the guilt that arose from your self-attack.

You will also find that this idea that you have of them in your mind, this picture, of some kind of monster that you hate, is not really THEM. It's not the person. It's actually a separate image that you've invented which you hate. You hold this image up and hate IT, but it's not really targeted at the person. You see IT, INSTEAD of them, and it blinds you to their light.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality."

Images of guilty people in your mind STAND IN FOR the actual people, which you project ONTO them and think you see IN them. You aim your guilt at this image and you try to destroy it, thinking it is the person, because the image blinds you. You cannot see past it. So you see it instead of them. And while you think you are hating them, you are not really.

In truth, this guilty monster in your mind, your so-called enemy, which comes up every time you think you're thinking of that person, is really just a way that you're separating off YOUR OWN GUILT, and holding it within your own mind, and trying to destroy it. It's part of how you are attacking yourself.

You think you're finding this other person to be guilty, and that the hate is directed NOT at you, but it really is. "Ideas leave not their source", nor does the guilt leave your mind. You are just dissociated, which means your mind is splitting apart and your sense of identity has broken away from this guilty part of you.

To forgive, you have to actually work on forgiving this "idea" of the person, this image that you have of them. It's not really anything to do with the ACTUAL person. It's this overlay that you've put together and built up, a case against them, a frame around them, in which you PICTURE them as guilty and wrong.

This picturing, this projection of guilt, needs to be healed. It's actually your mind that needs the healing. You need to forgive this IMAGE of the person, by seeing light and goodness and innocence in it, giving the imagined person credit, letting them off the hook, seeing what they've done that deserves praise and worthiness. Because you're actually talking about your own self here, a part of YOU that you find guilty.

As you work on this, undoing your false PICTURES of people, which look like other people, but are actually PARTS OF YOU, you are forgiving yourself. You only really need to forgive yourself. It's your mind that has guilt and has become split apart, and needs reintegrating. It's nothing to do with these other actual people out there, you just have used them to form faulty interpretations, and it is the INTERPRETATION of them that you hate.

You need to forgive the images of guilty people that are in your mind, because it's really YOUR MIND that needs forgiveness. Those images are NOT those people, they are stand-ins, and just take on the form of those people while being PARTS OF YOU. Thus you forgive yourself by forgiving "them", by giving these split-off personalities/identities innocence and guiltlessness, so that YOU become guiltless and forgiven.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

In the Holy Mind (whole mind, one mind), what applies to you applies to others, because they are one with you. There is nothing you can do to them that you don’t *directly* do to yourself. Because you are AWARE that you are "in" other people, in harmony with them, it is in your best interests to ONLY LOVE them, in order for you to love yourself.

It is impossible in the shared mind to attack another without attacking yourself. You can’t have something apply to someone that does not apply to you.

Enter then into the ego’s game of death, it’s vast illusion of separation. The game has one rule. If you play within the game, you will die. It’s a very simple rule. However, it is possible to be in DENIAL of the rule, and to start believing there is SOME WAY that you can have something apply to someone else that does not apply to you.

As you lose awareness, you will forget that you have SHARED INTERESTS with everyone because of your Oneness with them. You will start to think they are not one with you, something applies to them differently than applies to you, and therefore there are victims. This also means, you believe you can get away with murder - that you can CAUSE something without experiencing the EFFECTS.

Even if you are under this illusion, believing that this is true and that you’re SUCCEEDING at getting away with murder, rest assured that the RULE of the game does not change. Even if you are in DENIAL of the rule, it applies to you. The law is fixed because it is part of the metaphysics of the one mind. What applies to you ALWAYS applies to others, immediately, directly, and without exception, EVEN if you are in a dream pretending that this is not true.

When you play the ego’s game and take sides, hold a grievance, maintain an enemy, hate someone, attack someone, judge someone, be against or opposed to something, or in any other way USE SEPARATION, it means you are using the EGO. This immediately enacts the one rule of the game - that you will DIE. It also means, that you will have DONE IT TO YOURSELF.

Since the mind of oneness is a mind where what you do to others you do to yourself, you cannot escape the EFFECTS that you attempt to cause. You cannot get away with murder. When you try to, you will KILL YOURSELF.

There is no way to play the game in any special, skilled, clever, educated kind of way. To do so is an attempt to CHANGE THE RULES, which you will NEVER be able to do. Belief in and use of separation is a belief in death, and it will "cause" you to die. This is why all death is suicide, because when you attempt to attack your brother, it destroys YOU, one way or another, sooner or later.

The secret to salvation is the *recognition* that you are doing this all to yourself. You cannot SUCCEED at the game, win over someone else, win a war, or be the victor. Every time you attempt to win, YOU WILL LOSE, beacuse you used separation, and that is self-attack. You cannot WIN the ego’s game of death. Its one rule always applies. If you play it at all, you will die, because that is what you will be choosing.

It doesn’t matter how much you think you can change the rules, find loopholes, figure it out, compete better, one-up someone, make someone else the scapegoat, judge another, or inventively get rid of your sin. If you are playing the ego’s game, YOU WILL DIE, and you will have done it to yourself.

This is why you MUST at some point FORGIVE absolutely everyone. If you don’t, you will hold a grievance against YOURSELF while pretending it is about someone else. You cannot get to heaven with an ego. You cannot win the ego’s game. It is not escaped or won by death or by playing it better. Success at the ego’s game is FAILURE. The only way out, is truth. You MUST surrender the ego, or you will keep weaving illusions of self destruction.

It is perhaps sad news that you have to forgive EVERYONE. It is not welcomed by the ego to recognize the rule of the game clearly. Recognizing the game helps you to NOT PLAY. Only by not playing it can you have awareness of eternal life. This is all metaphysical fact. There is no exception.

"Forgive or die." It is in your best interests to forgive absolutely everything for what it has not done, in order to RECOGNIZE your own innocence. You can only be innocent if the same is true of everyone. It’s all or nothing. The entire sonship is holy, or none of it.

You cannot play the game of death and live. Truth is the ONLY exit.

"The power to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference"?

If you believe there is something outside of you which has causal power that you can do nothing about, you are *GUARANTEED* to live in a state of fear and suffering.

Accepting these "causes" as "outside of your power" CANNOT bring you peace.

"Letting go" of stuff that you supposedly cannot "control", could well be you resigning yourself to powerlessness and inevitable death.

How about.... I can change anything at will?

How about... the mind is so powerful there is nothing it cannot do?

How about... there is nothing that cannot be changed, and nothing that cannot be reveresed, and therefore, no "acceptance" of the consequences of sin is required, or possible? How about, this form of "acceptance" is an attempt to live with sin and death, letting them go unchallenged?

Who can "accept" that the consequences of sin are irreversible, and call that a healthy state of mind? What exactly are these effects which we are supposed to "let be" and do nothing about? How is it possible to live with suffering?

Instead, the Course is not teaching this. The course is not telling us to accept the world "as it is", as such.

Now, to clarify here.... there IS merit in RECOGNIZING what the world really is, clearly, and accurately, with true perception, without adding to or removing anything from it perceptually, which is an act of "not resisting" it. Or, in a sense, letting it be what it is rather than trying to turn it into something it is not.

HOWEVER, THAT DOES NOT MEAN, that you have no power to change it or no reason to do so. Nor does it mean that you are supposed to therefore "accept the form" of it as though it's written in stone tablets and can never be changed. Nor does it mean that whatever sickness or suffering is occurring, you're supposed to just "accept it" and let it be there. Otherwise, we literally would be saying, that we are supposed to accept death. And that is completely the opposite of what the Course is leading us to.

The course is not asking us to accept death, or to accept sickness. It's telling us that both are not reality and can be reversed and undone and healed. It's telling us to demonstrate that there IS NO DEATH and no sickness. It's telling us to show everyone that we are not at the effect of ANY causes in this world, because we are the cause of the world.

Jesus demonstrated in his resurrection that he was able to make another body, simply to show that "the mind that made the body can make another". And therefore that you are immortal spirit. But people did not understand it.

We're not supposed to be making the world real and then, like, believing that there is real sickness and real suffering, and then feeling compelled or motivated to try to "get rid of it" because of how awful it is. That's a trap of becoming a "fixer" and trying to NOT accept what you yourself as making real.

If you've made shit real, and if you either try to "accept it" or "fix it"... BOTH OF THOSE responses are ego and false. The course is not teaching either of those.

But the course is also not saying, that you are powerless to do anything about these things. It is by recognizing that they are NOT real that you will, paradoxically, recognize that you HAVE POWER OVER IT. That "illusions can easily be changed". As you realize that this stuff is not the truth, it becomes EASIER to change it, not harder. As you recognize sickness has NO POWER over you, it becomes EASIER for you to make the sickness GO.

Not to make it go because it seems real and you are "really suffering", but to make it go TO PROVE that your mind is healed and to demonstrate not only that you BELIEVE there is no sickness, but also that you will stop using the sickness to accuse your brother of being the sinner who caused it. Every sickness proves that. And every broken body proves the mind is not healed.

We are asked to NOT ACCEPT sickness or death as real, or as inevitable, or as a "death sentence", or as something we can do nothing about ("because its real") and to then simply turn into a passive mouse sitting on the sidelines waiting to die.

DO NOT ACCEPT DEATH! ACCEPT LIFE. Accepting life is accepting the atonement. But to "accept" that this world is only what it is - an illusion of a world with no power to do anything, and in THAT form of acceptance you will have power over it and not the other way around.

In this world, death is inevitable. This is a scientific and metaphysical fact. Entropy guarantees the end of the universe. It's all going to die.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

Meanwhile, since it seems that the dying is long and drawn out, this can create the impression that there is some life to be lived. There are even what we call new births, growths, things to see and do, entertainment and short-term goals. Do it all - while you still can. The clock is ticking.

This however doesn't mean that even these new things won't die. All the flowers that ever bloomed are dead now. All the babies that were born are dead in the ground. And there's only a handful left to populate the Earth, seeming to live, standing in line, waiting to die.

All that remains of what we call "alive" is a thin surface, a small collection of those things that temporarily aren't fully dead yet. And it's a vey small amount compared to what has come and gone. Life is a small slither of the dying, and billions of years have already come and gone.

The fact is that the world does not GIVE you a choice in this matter. It is set up to guarantee death. It can appear that there is life temporarily, but it is also certain that it will not last. What appears to be life, such as a seed growing into a plant, producing a flower and then dying off, is all living on borrowed time. The flower was destined to die as soon as it was sown.

All the world's roads lead to death. Sometimes there are roads which don't seem like they're so bad, and are tolerable, and sometimes even seemingly enjoyable. These are diversions and detours. They present an illusion of what seems like it's not dying. They might even look like growth and building and construction and birth. But not one of these things will escape death.

There is not one single city that has been built that hasn't crumbled. There is not one house that hasn't been reduced to a pile of rubble. There is not one body that hasn't been laid in the ground, if there was anything left to bury. There is not one food that hasn't rotten. There is not one place that hasn't deteriorated. And there is not one meaningful civilized movement that hasn't come to an end.

Why is that? Because death is built into the system. Space and time MEAN death. Delay, which is time, is an avoidance of being present, an attack on permanence, and an attempt to overthrow eternity. Time means death and time guarantees death. All the things in spacetime end up dead because time itself forces them to change, to stop being what they are, and to stop existing.

"This is the world of time, where all things end."

There is a seeming regurgitation of death, appearing to turn into new life, such as when trees in a forest are feasting on the corpses of their ancestors. New flowers seem to bloom as so-called "nature" attempts to find a way to perpetuate itself. Only to continually be met with an onslaught of destruction. Yet while the "new" stuff seems to perpetuate an illusion of a life, the rest of it just withers and dies. And even the new stuff will end someday.

This dire situation is simply the state of the world. It is hopeless. Anything you begin will end. Anything you build will crumble. Anything you think you've achieved will come tumbling down. Everything you've tried to create will be destroyed. Not one thing you've ever made will withstand the laws of physics. And time will sweep your whole life under the carpet.

Given that death is inevitable then, logically speaking it really means there is no point in living. After all, what's the point in putting in so much effort to do and achieve and accomplish when it's all just going to be destroyed anyway? At some point the sun is going to go supernova and blow your hopes and dreams to smithereens, and there will be not one trace left of everything you worked for.

Civilization rests on the idea that somehow you will leave a legacy and pass on the relay baton to the next runners who, like you, will also have to pass it on to the future generations because they too will die before the finish line. And so mankind pretends to live as screaming corpses toss the temporary illusion of life to the newcomers and ask them to do the same when their time comes to die. And we call this a sustaining of life against all the odds.

This is what spacetime has in store for you. And because of this, there really is no point doing anything. There can only be seeming short-term rewards, temporary advantages, momentary gains and short-lived enjoyment, all guaranteed to come crashing down and be trampled on by the universe. Have you not realized this yet, that the whole world is set up to try to kill you off? It was MADE as an attack on God and as an attempt to destroy you.

The truth is then that even though there sometimes seems to be a reprieve or temporary ceasefire, ALL the worlds roads and paths and choices eventually lead to death. All its roads do NOT lead to God. They all lead to destruction and despair and suffering. This is the way of the world. If you attempt to deny this you are mentally ill, and out of touch with reality. Death has plans for you that it will never give up.

So the truth is that, really, in the big picture, you do not HAVE a choice in life. You are not really choosing between life and death. You are choosing between death now or death later. You are choosing only to some extent when it will happen, and certainly not IF it will happen. And for the most part, it is going to choose for you. A sudden tragedy, a spontaneous seeming sickness, an accident, an act of nature, whatever it is that comes knocking to give you a really bad day.

You don't have a choice, if this world of spacetime is all that exists. If this is all there is, you are bound to death. If this world is the only reality, you will never escape death and it is your destiny to die. That means you are bound by fate and there is nothing you can do about it. Therefore you are not free. You are prisoner in a prison world, doing time, and waiting to die.

The only way, logically speaking, for you to have an ACTUAL CHOICE, is if there is some kind of way of existing that is not bound by the laws of spacetime. The only way you can have an alternative TO choose from, is if there IS actually a real alternative. There has to be an alternative to spacetime, otherwise you have no choice at all.

And don't be deceived in thinking that you have a lot of choices in life, to decide how you can make your life better, to choose something you prefer over something you don't, to choose which compromise appeals to you more. For everything you gain you will lose something else, and will not come out on top overall. Life will give you little scraps and will then take them away again. It will award you and please you and delight you and then shit in your face.

And you'll think it was unfair and unnatural and just some exception that things went to hell. But then it will happen again. And again and again and again. And you won't seem to be getting the message that this is how the whole system is set up. There is NO ESCAPE from the problems of the world. The world was made so that problems would be endless and no escape is possible. There's plenty more in store for you if you stick around. The world has an unlimited supply of hands to slap your face with.

You might believe that problems are only temporary. You might be delighted with your ability to fix things and problem solve. You might think that you're able to create a little oasis in the desert where you seem to be relatively safe and life is good. But that means you're living in denial. You are not prepared for what could happen, and it will happen, and you will be shocked and upset because you thought it could never happen. And then you will exclaim it is unfair and try to move on and look for the next lull in the storm, ever lurching onwards towards the grave like a half-living zombie.

Unless there is another world beyond space and time, out of reach of death and destruction, you have no hope. Unless there is an actual reality where you can live and have life and experience, out of the reach of death's clutches, there is no hope. Unless there is GOD, heaven, creation, God's Kingdom, you do not have any hope. Unless there's an actual real alternative to this world, you are not going to surmount death or overcome the world or find a way to live forever.

It is quite insane to suggest that being born, living for a while, and then dying, is natural. It is commonplace yes, but that doesn't mean it's natural. All the things of "nature" seem to do it, but that also doesn't mean it's natural. It is completely insane to suggest that there could be a life which is given, but you only have a short time, and then it's going to be ripped away unfairly before you're done. That you could live for only a short period and then stop. It makes no sense at all to think that people could just be destroyed endlessly.

Due to death seeming to be so inevitable, people think they do not have a choice. That there is nothing else to choose. In fact they don't even think they have a choice at all, not really. Even though they pretend to choose things all the time, they are just choosing different roads to death that temporary look appealing. And none of them offer any REAL choice because none of them lead to permanent life. There is no alternative when the only option is death, and that means you have no choice to choose with.

If there were to be another option, you actually would have a valid choice. This would mean two things. Firstly that you can choose something else, and secondly that if you choose it you will have it. It has to be true then that death is actually a decision, and that you somehow have it within your power to choose what you want and to make it happen. Otherwise, if permanent life were an option and you chose it, death could still take it away from you. It has to be that somehow in you there is a power of decision which overthrows what happens and determines your own destiny.

This means ultimately that, even while death disguises the fact that you are free to choose, death itself must be chosen in order to happen. This same power in your mind that can choose eternal life can also choose the illusion of death in space and time. If there really is an alternative, and you can choose it, and by choosing it it becomes yours, you must have the power to NOT choose death, to not consent to it, and to therefore PREVENT it. Even to reverse it, undo it, cancel it, and make it impossible.

The only real alternative therefore to this world of eventual death is a world of permanent life, in which death is impossible, and life is inevitable. Where there is a power capable of keeping death at bay, of guaranteeing immortality, of ensuring invulnerability, of making certain that nothing can be attacked or harmed or destroyed in any way. It must be a world of creation and not destruction, rooted in laws of permanence and protection, of safety and of love, of harmlessness and order.

To entertain that there is a valid alternative to the world requires you to believe in God. To have faith in heaven. To trust and be open to the possibility that such a place actually exists, that you can go there and merge with it and live there forever, out of harm's way. To do this is the only way to step out of the downhill slide towards destruction. You have to believe in a movement towards life, and life is God. Going towards life resurrects you and restores your life, while going away from God takes you into the world and towards death.

If you want to live forever, you will have to turn your back on death and on the world. You will have to overthrow the laws of physics. You will have to violate every seeming natural consequence of the world. You will have to become able to demonstrate through miracles that you are under the laws of God and not the laws of death. You will have to be able to raise the dead, resurrect to life, and restore order. Only by surmounting death and preventing sickness and reversing decay can you prove that you really mean business in your commitment to living.

Accepting sickness is not a commitment to living. Sickness is a form of death. Tolerating suffering is not full living. Putting up with dying is not living. Only the sustained continuation of life endlessly is real life. And if you are not in favor of that, are not actively choosing that, are not causing that to happen, then you are choosing death. It's not a difficult thing to consider. You either choose to live or die, and it's on you. Living doesn't mean living for 80+ years. It means living forever.

Since everything in the world points toward death, even in its forms of life and its new births and so on, you will have to fly in the face of the entirety of spacetime in order to overcome death. You will have to believe in laws that are not of this world, you will have to side with God, and you will have to reject every belief in sickness and death. All forms of suffering will have to by uprooted and every denial that you use to pretend you're going to live has to be questioned.

There IS a real alternative to death, and it's not of this world. Life is of God who is eternally alive. If you want to live you will have to side with God. You will have to choose to resume your natural station of being like God. If you do not choose this, you are choosing to be unlike life, and therefore dead. And that is what you will receive. If you do not want to receive it, you will have to choose immortality. And the only way to choose it is to stop choosing anything the world says must happen.

You're going to have to go against the grain, run contrary to the worlds beliefs, defy the opinions of everyone, stand up for the real truth, stop supporting the number-one religion of death-worship, have faith and trust in God's power to correct all problems, and become a medium through which resurrection can occur. The ONLY way out of this is through miracles. The ONLY way to end death and guarantee life, is through the expression of life and the giving of life. And through miracles you will return to an endless life in God.

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

"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."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it still more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no-one asks if a benign Creator could will this."

Here, you can read the THE ONLY PARAGRAPH in the entire Course where a "shift in perception" is mentioned in connection with "miracles". There are NO other references to this and there is not even a single reference to any kind of "shifting" OR changing of perception in relation to "miracles" mentioned within the same context or section of text, anywhere.

I am going to explain what it really means and what a MIRACLE is, below.

"The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary."

So, for a start, the "shift" referred to is in the context of the collapsing of time, and not so much talking about the so-called "shifts in perception" that you undergo when you are correcting/purifying the mind. But it does mention perception.

The KEY sentence is this: "The miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception."

Now, we need to understand what the Course means by a "horizontal perception" and a "vertical perception" and how they are different and what exactly is "entailed" by "shifting" from one to the other.

"Horizontal perception" is ego perception. It means that you believe in and are perceiving causes on this level, which are producing effects on this SAME level. Therefore it seems that cause and effect are operating sideways. So for example, if it SEEMS as if a person throws a ball at another person and it hits them on the head, person A is the cause and person B is affected. This illusion sets up a scenario of victimhood, if the people are thinking with the ego.

On the surface it appears there was an independent, separate cause on this level, which produced independent, separate effects in some other part of this level. This way of perceiving relies on separation and fragmentation of the level, ie multiple separate individual causes and effects. And also in horizontal perception, it is believed that a cause "escapes" from the effects it produces, so is not at the effect of itself and can get away with murder.

Horizontal perception is a murderous thought system of attack and the attempt to deny effects ie to deny oneness, to have separate rules for separate individuals, to perceive inequality and to seem capable of attacking without being attacked. This is all "standard" within horizontal perception. It's ego perception.

"Vertical perception" is very different to this. Instead of looking sideways for causality on this level, or thinking that this level causes effects in a higher level, perception instead places you IN GOD, ie in truth/heaven, looking DOWNWARDS upon the lower level (this world).

From that higher perspective, it is seen that the ENTIRE world is one dream, it is all coming FROM the higher level, the higher level is the cause of it, all of the things happening in the world are EFFECTS ONLY, there ARE no causes in the world on the horizontal level, and therefore there also are no victims, no possibility of one part of the world attacking another, and no separated opposing wills working against each other. It is the perspective of God, or the perspective of the dreamer of the dream.

In vertical perception, you literally RECOGNIZE that everything in this world/lower level is expressing FROM the higher level, thus mind is the cause of everything that's showing up, and there are no other causes of anything. That means there is no horizontal cause of sickness or death. There is nothing that is happening or showing up in the world which "explains" or "justifies" or "causes" anything else on the same level. So someone does not die from a car crash, someone is not sick because of bad food, someone is not suffering with PTSD from a war, someone is not lacking money because someone stole it, etc. No horizontal causes whatsoever.

Instead, vertical perception sees that there can be no victimhood, there are NO causes on the level of form, the entire universe is an effect, mind is the cause, mind has all the power, mind has projected this entire world and it can CHANGE ANYTHING if it so chooses. When it changes something, it basically goes behind the back of any fictional "horizontal laws", which includes all of the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and pulls the plug on them.

That means, while it is physically impossible for a physical object to suddenly disappear from one location and show up in another, based on the horizontal laws of causality, "vertically" this is absolutely effortless. The vertical mind can choose, from above, to simply undo the projection of the object and to project another object somewhere else. To the observer on the physical level it will seem like A MIRACLE! A demonstration of what appears to be horizontally impossible. A law-breaking, physics-defying demonstration that the horizontal laws ARE NOT TRUE, and that the laws of God ARE TRUE.

This is also the true meaning of "there is no order of difficulty in miracles". They are all the same because all that happens is a vertically-perceiving person who does not buy into any of the horizontal illusions/laws whatsoever, decides to rearrange the illusion in a way which completely defies all of the laws and which horizontal-believing people find to be impossible. If at first a person appeared dead, and if the horizontal laws say that once death occurs there is no going back, and the vertically perceiving person decides to remove the dead body and put life back into it and manifest a living body in its place, THAT IS A MIRACLE.

A miracle is an expression, rooted in love, aligned with the Atonement (vertical truth), which CAUSES FROM ABOVE, and produces effects BELOW (e.g. in the physical level). And since all such acts are basically the SAME ACT of causality from above to below, it does not matter whatsoever what the below rules say should be possible, or what seems more difficult or easy, or the magnitude of the effects, or how long lasting they have been, or how many times a person was caused, or how long sickness has been present, or how long someone is dead for. None of it matters vertically because love expresses maximally from above, will full power and effect below, and everything is essentially the SAME ACTION. One problem, one solution.

Now, we need to therefore recognize that when someone is in the ego mindset, if they are trying to apply the course and are trying to shift perception or have a healing or receive a correction, the only "actual" healing possible is to move in the direction of the vertical.

However, if we are being honest here, a person who is just starting out with this and who has a "little" willingness and accepts a small correction, can barely be called a miracle worker. They may "shift" from 99% horizontal perception, to 98.5% horizontal perception. A very slight shift away from horizontal toward vertical truth. And that person WILL NOT be able to move mountains. They will not be able to reverse death nor will they be able to heal the blind etc.

Each little shift in perception gradually, slowly, over a long period of time, moves the person from the horizontal upward toward God. And it takes a LOT of purification work to do this. A huge amount of investment in horizontal ego perception must be let go in order to move upwards. And there is NOT a "sudden shift" here. You do not suddenly go from heavy ego investment to "no ego" in the blink of an eye (at least almost never). We're not talking about going from horizontal to "slightly more vertical" perception. A miracle entails a shift ALL THE WAY to vertical perception.

Notice also it says "entails", which doesn't necessarily mean "is". It's not saying a miracle IS a shift to vertical perception. It ENTAILS getting into vertical perception first. You need to get your mind up there into the perspective of God, first, before you will be able to perform a miracle. And for most people that is going to take YEARS of dedicated undoing and correction, which the course calls PURIFICATION. It's not even the same thing as forgiveness.

Now, there are parts in the Course where Jesus makes a distinction between being "miracle ready" and the actual "action" of performing a miracle. Miracle readiness means being in vertical perception at all times. Actually PERFORMING a miracle, which expresses FROM love, in a vertical direction, producing changes in EFFECTS on the level of this world (almost always observable), is a separate part of being miraculous. You don't just sit there "being miraculous". It is not a spectator sport. Members of Jesus's party are ACTIVE WORKERS. There is an activity involved. A USE of the POWER of causality. An EXPRESSION of it to where love was LACKING, providing what was lacking, so that LIFE is restored and death is reversed. (Miracles fulfill a lack).

So the "shifting of perception" from fear to love, or from ego to truth, or from darkness to light, or from death to life, is not ITSELF a miracle. Miracles flow DOWNWARD FROM HEAVEN. "Miracles fall like drop of healing rain from heaven on a dry a dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." They come DOWN from ABOVE, not up from below, and they are not your movement upwards. Nor do they flow sideways. A sideways shift in perception is not a miracle. A slight shift towards vertical perception is not a miracle. A person is not performing miracles by MOVING UPWARD, they perform miracles by expressing FROM a high place, downward, which then LIFTS upward. The shifting of perception towards God is an EFFECT of a miracle, not a cause.

It is in fact the EGO which likes to believe that IT is a miracle worker. It does this through level confusion, which is the belief that a lower level causes a higher level. In this belief, the ego says, well, if I shift my perception toward truth, then I am being causal and am triggering a miracle. Or as if, the shifting itself is a cause, and it produces vertical effects. This is A LIE. This is classic ego thinking. God is cause, not the ego. Cause comes DOWN from above, not up from below.

Miracles ENTAIL a shift into a vertical perceiving mode, FIRST, in order to SEE with God's eyes, to recognize suffering for the illusion it is so that you do not make it real, and then LOVE EXPRESSES. The expression of love is downwards from God. Causality flows vertically, from God, to us. Getting your perception INTO a state of perceiving vertically IS NOT a miracle, it is PREPARATION for a miracle.

Recognize that miracles are rooted in forgiveness and forgiveness is a HIGH STATE of mind, in which there is nothing LEFT to forgive. It is the atonement. Forgiveness, atonement, salvation, are all the same thing. They are end goals after a great deal of purification work and much correction of perception. Correction of perception is not a miracle, but miracles DO have a corrective function.

They are extensions of, expressions of, the atonement principle, once it has ALREADY been accepted. Atonement has to be RECEIVED, BEFORE miracles can be GIVEN. You can only give the miracles you have received, and miracles are something you SHARE and GIVE, not something that you "only receive". You cannot express a miracle UNTIL you accept atonement, and you cannot accept atonement UNTIL you have "shifted perception". So the shifts in perception have to happen FIRST, over a long period of time, gradually, to get your mind to where you are WILLING to ACCEPT the atonement, and THEN you will be willing to RECEIVE, and THEN you will be ABLE to extend and perform a miracle. You cannot give miracles you have not received and that means you cannot express atonement if you have not accepted it yet!

You can't sit there and think, well, I just shifted "my perception" and so "I" have now received a "miracle" in isolation, which only I have benefited from, and it has no causal effects on anyone else. Giving and receiving are one, and once you accept atonement you GO OUT and you extend the atonement to others and HELP OTHERS. Miracles are services to others FROM a state of love, not little stepping stones in your own awakening.

Miracles can rearrange time because they operate from above and outside of time and therefore can DEFY linear/horizontal causality/time. Does shifting your perception rearrange time? Does it have effects which are POTENTIALLY SPECTACLES, which you then have to be careful not to use AS spectacles (ie for that sake alone)? Could you describe your own correction of your own perception, something that could have the "risk" of being considered SPECTACULAR in the eyes of other people, with effects so extraordinary (like Jesus appearing out of thin air after having "died")? Not likely.

Jesus walking on water to prove that gravity means nothing and He is not under the laws of the horizontal, THAT is a miracle. Jesus completely defying all laws by MULTIPLYING a few loaves of bread and fishes enough to feed 5000 people, that is a MIRACLE. Jesus raising someone from "certain death" and reversing death and restoring him to a living state, that is IMPOSSIBLE on the horizontal level of laws (death is irreversible), but He proved that it is NOT irreversible, because he has his hand on the "controls" of this entire world "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."

If it is not supernatural, it is NOT a miracle. It there is not some kind of causality coming from above and expressing below and BREAKING the ego's laws, it is NOT a demonstration of God's truth and is not a miracle. If it is merely someone having a personal healing in the privacy of their home and perceiving slightly more truthfully afterwards, that is NOT a miracle. It is merely a stepping stone TOWARDS being able to let miracles flow. If all expressions of love (FULL love) are a miracle, then love has to be able to flow fully and freely through you before you can be miraculous, and that is NOT even remotely going to happen while you still have a ton of correction and purification to do. "Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST." Purification is a process of gradual shifting of perception towards truth and a LOT of it is needed FIRST BEFORE you gain access to the right to perform miracles.

MIRACLES ARE NOT SHIFTS IN PERCEPTION!!!!!!!!!

Miracles are expressions from love. To be able to express from love, you have to have willingness to allow love to be in you. You have to be aware of love, and you have to be free of blocks to love. That's a HIGH STATE of mind. That's advanced. You try to get someone who has just picked up ACIM and accepted a little bit of correction, to express God's love through them.

They will not be willing OR able, because there are too many blocks in the way. Miracle working DOES NOT come to the beginner. It takes a lot of undoing and correction of the mind - a lot of "shifts", which add up overall to a much bigger shift, which eventually put you closer to God and more in alignment with vertical perception, which THEN starts to reveal miracle working abilities. The ability to cause from above. To cause from above (super) the natural (ego horizontal nature).

If it does not PROVE and DEMONSTRATE that the ego's laws are not natural and do not APPLY at all, it is not a miracle.

And note that Jesus walking on water COULD have been considered a spectacle. However, the Course actually says, do not use miracles as a spectacle as an attempt to INDUCE BELIEF. This is often cut short. The end part is vital. If you use a miracle ONLY to try to "force" someone to "believe" or to become a follower or to go along with your teaching or whatever, to coerce, to manipulate them, THEN you are producing a (potentially spectacular) miracle for the sake of achieving an ego purpose. And this IS a mistaken understanding of their purpose.

But if you are not doing that, and you're not going around putting on a show just to shock and awe people, without using them to actually TEACH or HEAL or UNDO or RAISE THE DEAD so that people become MORE RESURRECTED, THAT is the only way that they are used incorrectly as spectacles. It's got NOTHING to do with whether the miracle is spectacular or not. And this idea of "not doing anything spectacular" has led people to hide in a hole and be afraid of miracles and to play them down and shove them in a box to suggest not doing ANYTHING that could be considered a spectacle. It's a gross misunderstanding.

So anyway. Stepping off my soapbox for now. Miracles are miraculous. This is a Course in SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES, ego-law breaking miracles, what appears "impossible" to the horizontal ego thought system, and expressions of real love which has the power to LITERALLY move mountains.

Come on people. This is a course in MIRACLES. MIRACLES!!!!! Not a course in fixing yourself up and sitting on a fence.

You may not realize it, but almost everyone in the world has adopted a very unnatural way of thinking. It is based entirely on separation. And this thinking massively distorts A Course in Miracles.

It starts with very simple logic. That "EITHER" this is true, "OR" that is true, but "NOT BOTH". Another way to put this is "this is NOT that", "they are not the same".

This is what we call EXCLUSIVE logic. This thing excludes that thing. One thing is not another thing. Two things are kept apart, excluded from each other. The whole ego thought system runs on exclusive logic, because it was the attempt to EXCLUDE (deny, separate, shut out).

Another way of putting this is the idea that "nothing is shared", as if everything has to be kept in separate isolated boxes, like prisons. What is one thing, must be kept apart from another thing. And this produces what we call "duality".

So then we think along the lines of, "either this is true or that is true, but they can't both be true." Or that "I can choose this or that but not both."

We use this pattern of thinking all over the place. It maps very well to the physical world. Physical objects are a projection of the ego idea of separation, that all things are separate and everything is different. This is really the logical idea of "GOD IS NOT" .. the negation of heaven's reality - opposite to "GOD IS".

For example, I can turn left or right, but not both. A banana is not blue. My body is not your body. I can move up or down. A car is not a house. I can park in the first space or the second space. I will eat the red apple or the green apple. I choose between a vacation in Florida or California. An apple is not an orange. A dog is not a cat.

This seems to work fine in this world. The world itself is a system of exclusion and separation, because it is a projection of the idea of separation. It has produced a world where everything is different. And where it seems that one thing is not another thing. This is the illusion of form. The problem is that we now use this way of thinking about EVERYTHING. Even when thinking about things which are NOT part of the separation, such as God's reality.

The really big problem is that heaven, God's Kingdom, the Sonship, DOES NOT comply with an "either/or" kind of system. Heaven is about INCLUSION, not exclusion. It is about sharing, not isolation. It is a system which runs on a VERY different logical basis.

Heaven operates on a "BOTH/AND" kind of structure. Where BOTH are true. Where the truth applies to one thing AND another. Where two things can SHARE everything. This even means that one thing can be two things simultaneously, and two things can be one thing simultaneously. Nothing is required to "stay in a box by itself."

The notion of separate boxes does not apply to the Kingdom. It is not divided up by SPACE, because there is no space or time. Things in heaven are not limited, or required to exclude each other. They are not isolated to separate prisons, kept apart, or separated off.

EVERYTHING in reality abides by an entirely different system of logic. This system of logic is part of the thought system of God. It is how God himself thinks and creates. It is totally opposite to the idea of "either this or that". It TRANSCENDS boundaries.

For example, what is true of God is true of the Son. The truth is the SAME for both of them. What is true of one son, is true of another. This forms the Golden Rule. There is ONE truth, which ALL things share. And sharing is a fundamental property of reality.

True sharing means, that the whole of something, transcends all separations and walls, and is fully present in ALL locations. It's not a matter of "is it this or that". It's more a matter of it being BOTH this AND that. BOTH/AND is the system of heaven, and "NOT BOTH" or "NEITHER" is the system of the separation.

For example in the course we're told that ideas can be shared and both the giver and the receiver can have the same idea, leading to an increase. That by sharing, or joining, two beings can both have everything. That by giving, you in fact receive, rather than lose.

In an either/or system, EITHER you can have something, OR the other person can have it. This is true of spacetime, but it is NOT true of heaven. In heaven, even if you give everything away, you KEEP it. This is how God was able to create you, by giving ALL of himself, and yet still retains all of himself. In ego terms, God should've ceased to exist if he truly gave all of himself.

The only way to understand how it is POSSIBLE, for both me AND you to have everything, is to think in terms of both/and. This is called paralogical reasoning - you can google it. If I give everything to you, we can BOTH have all of it. We now both share the entirety of it.

This obviously transcends boundaries because, the ego would reason that whatever I give away I lose. If I give you half my pizza, I only have half a pizza left. But in heaven, this does not apply. We can BOTH have the WHOLE pizza at the same time.

In A Course in Miracles, every subject and discussion related to the ego's realm of separation, can be thought of USING exclusive reasoning. Because it is a system of separation. However, as soon as you start to think about anything PRE-separation, about heaven or reality or God or the Sonship, or real relationships between created beings, you CANNOT USE IT.

If you do, you in fact will end up with two things happening. 1) You will project "required separations" where they do NOT exist. 2) You will fail to acknowledge separations where they DO exist. An either/or process of reasoning does NOT map to heaven, and is completely distorting of it and blind to its nature. They are INCOMPATIBLE.

This especially happens for example when people try to understand the idea of the "one son". There ARE indeed many statements that God has only one son. But, there ALSO are many statements that God directly created many sons. In reality, permanently, as brothers. This is the full scope of the course material. Jesus says BOTH things are true.

So then what happens is, people start to think WITH the ego about this. They start looking for separate boxes. They want to put things into one box, OR another box, but not both. So they'll think, ok, it seems more whole to say there is only ONE BOX, and so the "one son" statements must be true. And since TWO boxes seems to be "a separation", the idea of many sons must be false.

This is however a complete logical failure. Heaven is not structured by boxes or separations like this. One son, is in fact, another son. EACH individual being God created, is in fact, ALSO, the other beings.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth." (urtext W161L4)

So we see a lot of SEEMINGLY contradictory statements, which in a both/and system are NOT contradictions. Like this:

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One." (urtext T9E3)

What is going to happen to this if someone uses either/or reasoning? You'll say, EITHER, God has one son, OR, God has many sons. And that they can't BOTH be true. You will likely side with the one son part, and relegate the "them all" to some other realm of separation, such as part of the ego or dream or split mind. This is an error.

It is in fact true, that God has one son, which IS MADE UP OF, many sons, which is the Sonship. And these many beings ARE many in number. BUT, they are not JUST many, like in duality. They are in fact SIMULTANEOUSLY ONE. EVERY son of God, is THE ONE son of God. EACH son of God, is Christ. They all SHARE themselves, so fully and completely, that they ARE each other, while STILL also being many individuals. THAT is what A Course in Miracles clearly states.

What you have to then do is recognize the limitations of how you think, and realize that you need to adopt a HUGELY different way of thinking, if you are to understand anything to do with reality. Any subject to do with pre or post separation, cannot be thought of in either/or terms. If you do, you will DISTORT IT.

This distortion has led to all manner of completely false conclusions. Such as, that the one son split into many parts in the separation. This is not true at all. God created many children BEFORE the separation even happened, and each of those children IS the rest. They all share each other. This sharing is their oneness and unity.

This has also led to the distorted conclusion that there is only one son at all, and therefore that this only child has dreamed of being separate. This is NOT TRUE. "Christ has never slept". The one son DID NOT go into the separation. Only some of the individual parts did - some of the sons of God. This is explicitly stated in the course.

The wrong kind of thought process also leads to the false conclusion that you, in this world, are the only son of God, and everyone else is just "you". As if they don't really exist as independent beings. This is FALSE. This is not what A Course in Miracles teaches. It seems to make sense to those who think with the ego. In truth, the dream of separation is a collaborative dream by many sons of God, who were brothers BEFORE this even happened. And other people DO have free will.

So you have to beware. Watch your thought process. Look at the kind of reasoning you're doing. ANY time that you are in the "either this or that" mode, you are prone to massive errors. Because it is an unnatural, separation-based way of thinking. You are in fact thinking WITH THE EGO when you do that. Thinking with the ego, about NON-EGO things, is going to totally destroy the true nature of those things.

This is the sole reason, in my opinion, why so many people are so confused about ACIM and its teaching. Everyone is assuming that heaven is an either/or state, like spacetime. That's its sort of a second spacetime, with the same reasoning and logic and thought process. It is NOTHING LIKE IT. It is totally alien to this world and how this world thinks.

The world simply thinks backwards and with the ego, and we have to learn another way to think. Human thinking is ALIEN TO the way God thinks, the way heaven is formed, the way the sons of God relate to each other, and how reality is structured. Using an ALIEN thought process to think about what is NATURAL, is going to show you thinks seeming to make sense which are totally nonsense. What makes sense to the ego is nonsense in truth. And the ego's truths about heaven are totally nonsense.

The course is trying to get you to think in a way that is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how the world thinks.

"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." (urtext T3G15)

"This is not the way the world thinks, but you must learn that it is the way you think." (urtext W17L1)

"There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY." (urtext T7H12)

"This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world." (urtext W11L1)

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." (urtext M29A2)

"Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." (urtext M15A3)

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about." (urtext W126L1)

"This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum." (urtext M5H1)

"To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely." (urtext M5J1)

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed." (urtext M15A4)

A course in miracles never mentions the phrase "shift in perception" except in the following paragraph, which is actually a paragraph heavily focused on how miracles relate to TIME. Whenever the Course mentions miracles, there is no trace of any reference to shifting of perception anywhear near it or in the same context.

Here is the only time it says "shift in perception":

"The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary."

Now. What IS horizontal perception, and what is vertical perception?

Horizontal perception is believing in the appearance of the ego world as though it is real, as though there are causes within the world which produce effects within the world. It means you believe in level confusion, magic, victimhood, and all the other signs of the ego. It means you believe and see that something outside of you, to the side of you, has "caused" effects in your life. This is an illusion and it is not true.

Vertical perception is a shift in VIEWPOINT, and a shift into a different state of mind, into the Right Mind, which THEN PERCEIVES the true order of the levels, and the truth that mind is cause and the world is effect. It is a recognition of where the ego shit is coming from. Who is the dreamer. It is a pretty profound BIG shift to go from horizontal perception to vertical. Your little shifts in perception are NOT IT, but they may lead to it eventually.

To get into the right mind is NOT something you are going to be able to do when you start applying forgiveness. It is not something you will even barely be able to do until much later.

Further, Jesus is miraculous right now, and yet he is awake all the way. He has no illusions left to get rid of. There is nothing in his "perception" that needs shifting. Yet he is miraculous, right now. Awake and miraculous. If a miracle is a "shift", if it is the "shifting itself" that is miraculous, then he would be INCAPABLE OF any miracles since he has nothing left to shift. Or in other words, miracles would only be possible FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT YET LOVING AND MIRACULOUS.

This is a complete 180 degree flip, by the ego, based on how *IT* interprets what a miracle is, as part of ITS DEFENSE against miracles. IT thinks that IT does something which causes ITS perception to change, dualistically, from one illusion to another, to a preferable illusion, and that this is "miraculous". Fuck that. It is not even slightly miraculous. It would mean that a person just BEGINNING to apply the course, in their very first CORRECTION of perception, would BE A MIRACLE WORKER. That could not be further from the truth. No-one at the BEGINNING is a miraculous as at the END.

Miracles are also expressions of love. Is someone who has accepted a LITTLE BIT of truth, loving? No. They are only slightly less hateful. Are they expressing unconditional love before, during, or after their "shift"? No. Not until much later. Much, much later. Therefore they are not "expressing love" yet, and therefore are not miraculous.

Also the course says "Miracles are everyone’s RIGHT, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST."

You CANNOT perform miracles until you have done a shit load of purification work. That purification work, IS the work of "shifting perception" towards the truth, it IS the work of accepting CORRECTION of your perception. But it is not the "being corrected" or the "purifyING" that is miraculous.

Purifying the mind is a long slow process. It can take years even lifetimes. These things LEAD TO the development of the ability to be miraculous. Otherwise, hey, anyone picking up a course book can suddenly walk on water, proving the ego’s "horizontal perception" laws are bullshit? I think not.

Being miraculous is your inheritance, it is NATURAL, and it should be the way you are ALL THE TIME. And you WILL NEVER LOSE THE ABILITY to be miraculous when you wake up. Jesus is miraculous NOW, even though HE is completely without any ego to shift. Miracle-mindedness is quite an advanced state of mind. It’s not something watered down and insignificant like some person having a private little change of mind. Miracles are BIG ASS profound demonstrations of the power of the mind!

Miracles are also expressions of love and they are expressions of the atonement. They express FROM the atonement, and from the Christ mind. They do not express FROM THE EGO, nor do they express as part of your purification work. But they may start to express as a RESULT of your purification work after some time, but only because you are becoming WILLING to RECEIVE them. THEY happen because you LET GOD HEAL YOU, not because "you" - your ego - did a little bit of work.

The purpose of purifying and correcting perception is TO REMOVE BLOCKS TO AWARENESS of Love’s presence. To remove the BLOCKS. Not to "make love happen". You UNCOVER love. You reveal it. You allow it to shine. You put aside your denial and your fear and you ALLOW love to love. This is not something you do as a one-off. It is not something you ONLY do when you are "shifting". It is your NATURAL STATE which is buried under piles of shit in your mind. It takes a lot of dgiving out before it even starts to become apparent that it is there, OR that you become able to LET IT EXPRESS.

When love is uncovered, it is free to express itself. Jesus describes this automatic outpouring of love, which comes AFTER a LOT of purification, here:

"The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."

So you have to do quite a lot of "work" before you’re going to uncover love enough that it can go about doing what it does through you. IF you are blocking it, it cannot extend through you. Love MUST extend through you to perform a miracle. "Miracles cannot be accomplished in a spirit of doubt", so if you just did your little "shift" for the day and bemame SLIGHTLY more loving, but are still riddled with fear, YOU DEFINITELY ARE NOT performing miracles that day.

Miracles express from a higher level of mind, like drops of healing rain, falling down upon those that need healing and life. They express the VERTICAL perception, which is quite DIFFICULT to get into fully when you have a lot of ego to sort out. Getting squarely into the right mind, consistently, is pretty advanced and most of us are nowhere near it. I know I’m not, and I have not seem much evidence of many others being there either. Where’s the miracles?!

Since being miraculous is a NATURAL PART OF LOVE, because all expressions of love are miraculous, and because love has life-giving properties, a miracle can only "shift your perception" through a healing that you RECEIVE from God. IT comes "down" to where you are, frees you from a bunch of fear, and therefore you naturally rise up closer to God. But the miracle itself is not your rising up. The miracle is the expressing of love. The miracle is what is coming TO you from God TO heal you SO THAT you might become closer to Him and join him in being loving. You can’t give love if you haven’t received it.

So the shifting, as most people think of it and use it, that shift is not miraculous AT ALL. Not in itself. If it comes about because of an actual MIRACLE being experienced and received, which may only occur when you ACCEPT ATONEMENT to some degree, then the shifting is a SIDE EFFECT of the miracle doing what it does.

Shifting "into" vertical perception first and foremost is not the miracle itself. Shifting TO that perception is required BEFORE the miracle is possible. Once you get INTO that perception, THEN miracles can express, because only then are you willing to receive them. They express FROM vertical perception.

During an intense, drawn out forgiveness process I was practicing on myself, which Holy Spirit was helping me with, the first time that I became willing enough to drop false beliefs to go ALL THE WAY to the atonement principle, and accept, however dimly, that somehow I MUST be innocent still because sin did not happen..... which was only like a year ago after practicing the course for 15-odd years, that was the FIRST TIME that Jesus said to me...."NOW you will be able to perform miracles." It took a LOT of purification for me to become willing enough to "go there", to get into the right mind and perceive from it, just for a short time, as a glimpse of truth. TO receive LOVE from God for the first time.

So miracles are not shifts in perception. They are a permanent WAY OF BEING that is natural to all of God’s creations. They are what naturally happens when love expresses. When love is blocked, "something has gone wrong", causing miracles to NOT HAPPEN. Having blocks to awareness is this problem. MANY BLOCKS must be removed before love is even remotely going to be able to flow through you. IT takes a lot of development of TRUST and willingness and fearlessness to become miracle minded.

Being miracle minded is a A FINAL NATURAL STATE of mind, not a little blip along the way. And if you have fears, particularly FEARS OF MIRACLES, they will not be happening. And MANY people are very afraid of miracles.

The watering down of miracles has come about largely through this error (Holy Spirit’s word) of thinking that a miracle is "only a shift". If a miracle is only a shift, when the shift is done, there is no more miracles. Meaning, love, which is always miraculous, would have to stop being love. This is clearly mistaken. Believing miracles are shifts, is a FANTASTIC WAY to KEEP REAL MIRACLES AWAY FROM YOU in fear and in an unwillingness to entertain the possibilities that miracles present. It happens because people are afraid of the power of the mind and want to keep the course nice and tidy and quiet, studied in private and kept behind closed doors. LET THE MIRACLES OUT!

It should also be noted, that you cannot become loving without becoming miraculous. Miracles are inherent to expressions of love. Not just some.... oh I feel warm and fuzzy about you.... we’re talking about massive POWERFUL love here. The Power of God, nothing less. "There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do." "All Power in heaven and earth has been given you."

By all means keep on a-shifting. It’ll purify your mind and help you to get out of the way of love. But then watch out. Love is going to start expressing, and some pretty law-defying, ego-breaking, "impossible"-seeming stuff is going to start happening. And you will WANT to perform these miracles because you are WILLING to receive them and therefore ACCEPT that everyone else is worthy of them also. "You can only give the miracles you have received".

Notice that this says you GIVE miracles. Notice also that several of the Miracle Principles talk DIRECTLY about miracles you perform FOR others. "Miracles are the maximal Service you can render to others". A SERVICE. Nothing to do with your little perceptual shifts. They are. Interpersonal expressions of love and healing and truth. And that does mean, you’re going to be going up to people and offering miracles of healing live and in person! ARE YOU SCARED OF THAT?! That’s a problem. That will keep miracles from happening. You have to go out on a limb to reach the fruit of the tree! Miracle working can be a RISKY business requiring a LOT OF TRUST!

Miracles are capable of raising the dead, reversing all sickness, undoing all suffering, solving all problems. There is nothing they cannot do. NOTHING. Make a big list of all the things you think miracles cannot do, then throw it away. Including the literal moving of mountains.

We are to be miracle workers. Love expressers. Divine beings. Healers. Light bringers. Saviors. Demonstrators of the truth. Anyone who REALLY believes the truth is true will be willing to ACT ON IT.

Everyone is free. Everyone is entirely given total permission to be free by God. That means that even if you choose to deny God, you are free to do so. Even if you want to try to be evil, you are free to do so. Even if you want to hate and attack and murder and destroy, you are technically free to do so.

That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences that happen as a result of what you choose, however. If you hate you will be hating yourself, and cannot love yourself while you hate. If you attack and murder you are in effect attempting to kill yourself, and you will feel guilty and alone as a result, not to mention society's typical punishments.

But that doesn't meant you are not free if you so choose. God doesn't coerce. He does will your happiness and sanity but it's still up to you if you want to try to be insane and choose things which produce suffering. No i'm not condoning that anyone does anything harmful whatsoever, I'm just saying that you have the freedom.

If someone is being hateful and you start trying to resist their hate, you are actually trying to be affected by it. If you let them be hateful you will feel a sense of relief that you are not as affected by it. You are choosing whether or not you are affected by it. If you are not affected by it then you can feel at peace even as someone tries to hate, because it really is up to your own freedom as to what you experience.

It isn't therefore necessary to try to control or resist or stop people from being hateful or mean or vicious, because if you say that you need them to stop then you're also saying that your peace and happiness depend on their choice. And that means you're trying to deny your own freedom. And then you're trying to deny them their freedom, to imprison them, in order to control reality and try to make things be the way you want them.

You have no real right to control the free will of others, to imprison them for anything they think they do, to stop them or prevent them or resist them or attack them in the name of love. Everyone is always free, even what people call criminals or evil or abusers or enemies. This isn't necessarily a popular view but it's reality.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that we should let the people in the world be as vicious as they may, because the only way that we would be affected by that viciousness would by be forgetting that you had the freedom to dream the dream. If you are able to choose not to be affected, because you are free, and immortal, then obviously it's not really the responsibility of anyone else to "behave correctly" to try to make your world right.

You don't need, and shouldn't need, anyone else to change in order for you to be happy and at peace, otherwise your peace depends on them and now you are seeking outside yourself for salvation. Not to mention that you are shifting responsibility outside of yourself and placing the weight of guilt into the hands of others. Wanting the haters to stop hating is a form of scapegoating, and the projection of justified anger as guilt.

You don't need people to stop hating you, or to acknowledge you, or to recognize you, or to treat you well. You need to claim your immortality and invulnerability and stop using people to attack yourself. They have no power over you that you don't give away to them yourself. When you give no power to the illusion to cause you it has no effect on you. Only you can attack yourself, only you can make yourself suffer, and only you can really hate yourself. Let the world spin, let the haters hate, and let them have their madness. It's not yours.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. 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."

The ego thought system is a system within the mind. It is not physical. The ego has used its distortion of the law of PROJECTION in order to try to place this content OUTSIDE the mind, which has resulted in what we call the physical world. The purpose of doing this is to deny that the insanity is in the mind, hide it from the mind, block awareness of it being in the mind, dissociate from it, and therefore "believe" that it is no longer inside but outside. This "projects" the insanity and this takes the form of the physical universe/world. An inner belief in sin becomes "the world of bodies is the world of sin".

This physical world then is APPEARS to stand alone, as the only reality. And then we look WITHIN it to try to learn what is causing things to happen. We look at horizontal or linear cause and effect. We look at the properties of materials. We look at the seeming needs of one thing, such as food, supplied by another thing. And we look to medicines and magic to supply health when there seems to be a sickness caused by this very same world.

But all of these "laws" are utterly bullshit and made up, attempting to explain why things in the physical world exist, why and how they function, and how to "live with it". The truth however is that this world is not an end in itself, it does not CONTAIN the very cause that PUTS the world there in the first place, and it is in fact only a SYMBOL OF something removed from it, which preceded it.

The "laws" which project onto the world are the egoic laws or beliefs that projected the world in the first place. It is the MIND that is governing the world, causing what happens, deciding whether sickness and death occur, and choosing what events may arise. And the whole world was made to hide this fact. The cause of all the worlds problems is in the mind that made it.

"You maintain the world IN YOUR MIND, WITH YOUR THOUGHTS." We are not therefore really bound by any of the "within the system" laws that we think run the world. Not one single law of physics is true. Nor of biology or chemistry. Not one aspect of quantum physics or anything to do with matter or energy or space or time. None of these things are what runs the world. None of these things are the laws by which it is governed.

These are just effects in a world projected by an ego mind, disguised to make it seem like the world runs itself. As if the world is a closed system. As if the world is first-hand reality. And to look to this projected world for the cause of anything is insane, given that the entire thing is being caused by the mind. We can set ourselves free from all of these meaningless "laws" - laws of health and diet and abundance and safety and preservation and gravity and medicine and whatever.

We are to therefore first of all purge our mind of all the contents of the ego thought system, all the guilty baggage and fear, and all the level confusion which says the physical world causes anything. So that we stop projecting hallucinations of external causation onto what is, effectively, an inert effect. And then we can project "the real world", recognizing that we are under NO LAWS but God's. Eventually this recognition that ONLY God's laws of mind are real laws, will allow us to go beyond the real world to our natural environment in heaven.

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics, and of health. Protect the body and you will be saved. These are not laws, but madness."

The world we made - Earth etc - seems like a world we cannot control. When you look at it, almost no-one has any ability to DIRECTLY move objects with their mind. To change one thing into another. The amount of limitation of the seeming ability to "will that something happens, is EXTREME.

"he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

This is because when we made this world, we were willing AGAINST God's will, and against will itself. We thus imposed a sense of imprisonment ON our will and shut ourselves off from our power. In willing a world based on unwillingness, we made a world that is NOT a world "of will", and this has effectively cut our minds off from being able to "will" that the world change.

"You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it."

This doesn't mean we don't have this power, or cannot access it. But for most people it means they live in such a way that the body limits their entire expression and confines them inside of it. Mind seems unable to reach past it to influence anything. You can't even seem to move a single speck of dust no matter how hard you try.

By making a world of "not will" or unwillingness, or against will, we made a world that seems out of control. A world where things just seem to happen haphazardly and chaotically. Where objects just tumble to the ground, where things just fall and land wherever the wind takes them, and where all manner of stuff just happens seemingly accidentally. As if no-one willed it. As if it just was following some basic laws of physics, which are really the absence of laws.

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

So now we're confronted with a world that we seem unable to control. However, through forgiveness and re-acquiring access to the power of the mind, we can GAIN control over it. And our miracles can demonstrate that this is so. By undoing imprisonment, which involves de-identifying from the prison - the body - we can regain access to the power of the mind.

"Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, will you gain control over it. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision."

"Yet all that stands between you, and the power of God in you, is but your learning of the false, and your attempts to UNDO THE TRUE. Be willing, then, for ALL of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind."

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."

"Your mind is capable of creating worlds"

Your natural state of being is:

1) God is the source of love and extends you

2) You receive everything from God and extend it further

3) Your own creations receive from you

Another way of putting it is:

1) God is the Father and extends you as His Son

2) Since he shares everything He is with you, you also inherit the ability to be a father

3) You therefore father your own creations which are your Sons

And another way of putting it is:

1) God is the source of love and love is miraculous

2) God creates you miraculously and shares miraculousness with you

3) You extend God's miraculous love and perform miracles

In this arrangement, which is the way things are in Heaven, and which is the perfect condition of your relationship with God, you RECEIVE everything from God. God just loves you unconditionally all the time for no reason other than to love you. You receive that, and appreciate the awesome gift that it is, and you joyfully extend it.

Now, when the 'separation' happened, the Fatherhood of God was separated from the Sonship of the Son. The son stopped experiencing Himself as the Son of God because, having cut off God's role as His father, He no longer could see Himself as a Son. However, the former Son of God retained the outward creative fatherhood properties He was given. So He continues to try to create, except that having disconnected from the Father he is no longer EXTENDING God's creation, but instead tries to be the SOURCE of what He creates. That means creating without God, which is MAKING.

The former Son of God also then sees Himself as orphaned from God and, having no source for Himself, is left only with 'Himself' to deal with His situation. Instead of receiving love and support from God, this 'separated self' has to invent its own support and its own substitute or love. Having separated from God, this separated self is now alone and afraid and lacking and limited. He is also powerless and weak. He attempts to continue the behavior of extension but without sourcing 'what to extend' in God. So instead he INVENTS, makes up, dreams and projects an imaginary creation (the world) which does not really exist, which is not sustained by God's love, and which therefore must perish.

Clearly, what's gone wrong in the separated Son's life is the disconnection between Himself and God... the shutting off the FLOW that comes FROM God to sustain Him, to provide for Him, to protect Him, to nourish Him, and to give abundantly to Him and to BE everything for Him. That's what the separation shut out of His mind. So now His mind seems intent on going off on its own tangent, running its own life, deciding everything alone, doing everything alone, and generally failing and suffering a lot. There is only one problem - separation from God, and there is only one solution - repairing the separation from God.

So now we find ourselves in this dreamworld of unreality, with separated lives and separate wills, with everything going to shit, and we wonder why. And we wonder how to get back to peace. And then we start doing our forgiveness and our thought management and so on, but you need this bigger picture in order to realize WHY you are doing all this and what the overall goal is. The goal is to UNDO THE SEPARATION FROM GOD completely. And that must mean, the restoration of the dynamics of the relationship that you had with God before the separation.

So this means, your mind/self now needs to transition from being alone, separate, making up lies and doing everything yourself, to RECONNECTING to God, opening up to receive supply/abundance/safety/love/protection/guidance FROM God again, becoming willing to extend what GOD has created (His love), allowing Him to be the source/God/origin instead of you having to invent stuff on your own, and then EXTENDING that outward to all of creation, acknowledging that this 'ex Son of God' is once again THE Son of God, restored to perfection.

So this means having to learn to surrender all of the side-effects that came about from becoming a separate self, which includes surrendering thinking for yourself, deciding for yourself, controlling life, regarding your life as 'your life' that you own in exclusion/exile, giving up the ways that you block the flow of love/miracles, undoing all sense of judgement/attack/separation/sin/guilt/fear that comes between you and God, opening your mind to RECEIVE from God His guidance and love and support, and weaning yourself off of all the ARTIFICIAL SOURCES of support and coping and replacements for what you lost (special love etc), which you MADE to take the place of God.

So as we RECLAIM our rightful place as Son of God again, and restore the relationship with God, and re-open ourselves to receiving the flow/extension of God's love/miracles, we are returning to being Christ and we're letting go of the 'circumstances' of how things ended up after separating from our Father. All the ways that we 'coped' with the separation need to be undone and replaced with getting our supply from God again.

A few quotes coming to mind...

"God goes with me all through the day"

"I am sustained by the love of God"

Every person is an equal member of the Sonship, meaning that everyone is your brother or sister. Everyone exists on an equal playing field, and the one "parent" is God.

This means that whether you are a parent or a child, and no matter the nature of the relationship between the two, everyone involved is still a brother or sister in the Sonship.

In order for this to express itself fully, it means that all relationships must end up where everyone is equal, no-one has power over anyone else, no-one is anyone else's property, no-one is controlling towards anyone else, no-one blames anyone else, no-one depends on anyone else, no-one expects anyone else to provide for them or decide for them, and no-one is more or less than anyone else.

This is the natural order of the family of God. We are all equals and all have the same inheritance. We all have the same parent and we're all identical in our true nature.

Typical chlidhood and parenting tends to lean much more towards inequality, control, protection, dependence, blame, manipulation and ownership. Those are not modes of relationship that are natural, and are rooted in the ego thought system.

When a child is born and begins to grow, they see themselves as completely dependent on the external world and on parents to supply their every need. And indeed the ego has set up this world so that it's practically impossible for a child to exist independently without starving to death. They have apparent "needs" and need help to survive. This doesn't mean the parents need necessarily own or control or be attached to them, but that's usually what happens.

Later, the child still believes they are dependent on the parent and that it is the parent's fault that so many things are the way they are. They will blame the parent, seeing them as causal, while at the same time attempting to break away from being under their thumb. "The thumb" is usually maintained far too long because the parents tend to form an identity around their role and don't want to let it go. They want to keep having the same relationship of parent to child, ie based in ownership, protection, control and so on. This generally works against the child becoming "independent" and an equal.

Often the case is that the child never really becomes an equal to the parent and there is a constant umbrella of control, dominance, shame and guilt under which the child remains, never breaking through to the light. The parent may not want to let go of the identity they've formed and it can be extremely painful to do so, especially if the raising of children has been the intense focus of their lives for many years and has entailed a great degree of self-sacrifice, leaving a gaping hole in their lives if the role were to end.

The child also will continue to blame the parents well into adulthood, because this is all part of the child's perception that they are a victim at the effect of the external world. They cannot really be independent until they have severed ties with their own ego identity, which means uncovering the true nature of themselves, healing all past hurts resulting from the dysfunctional relationships, and becoming aware of their true relationship to God.

It is, however, possible for the child to eventually stop projecting onto the parent and for the parent to stop projecting onto the child, and for both to give up on "specialness" which has kept the relationship strangled and suffocated in layers of denial and resistance and judgement. Special relationships can turn to holy relationship when forgiveness is used to undo the illusions of the relationship, which are many.

At some point it's possible for the child to become equal with the parent, which must also entail the recognition that the parent is a "temporary guide" who was there to help with lessons and adaptation to being in the world, but who ultimately is an equal brother/sister. Both child and parent are children of God, on exactly the same footing and terms. If the relationship between them can reflect holiness and forgiveness and equality then it has "matured" all the way that it can. If this doesn't happen, the fictional roles and dynamics of parent-child domination and submission will continue, and there will be further tension and conflict.

Acknowledging our equality in the Sonship requires acknowledging that God is the Creator/Father/Mother, and that what applies to oneself applies to all other people including our parents and children. When we go before God, we all go together and our relationship to God is direct, one to one for each of us, with no go-between.

We must learn to undo all of the illusions of the typical parent-child relationship, the entire social structure based on it, and learn that we are all equal under God. This could eventually result in a radically different kind of society, if this were understood and practiced on a mass scale. It need not be that children are property or that they are forced incessantly against their will to comply and obey, rather than being empowered and set free. It need not be that only two people are burdened with the entire upbringing of the children. We are all in this together.

Most of the time, people consider themselves confined to their bodies. The body itself forms a barrier around their mind, shutting it in. The only place on the body where it seems the mind is 'visible' if you will, is perhaps through the eyes. The mind can express through the body in terms of moving the body and expressing, but generally speaking the mind stays inside the body behind the scenes, hidden behind the flesh.

However, some people who are perhaps more open in some ways, either by being 'psychic' or 'empathic', have in some way awoken the ability to go beyond the confines of their own body. This means, they are capable of moving or extending their 'mind' to locations outside the body.

A person for example who is empathic, you can kind of tell (especially if you are also empathic), because you look at them and can feel and sense how some part of their mind is NOT blocked by the body, and instead flows outward past the physical form. Particularly out of the stomache and power-chakra area. In a way, it's almost as if being able to see the mind of the person shining out of this area, as if the physical form of the body isn't even there at all.

Similarly, folks who are psychic tend to be more skilled at projecting a part of their mind outward and locating it at any other location, therefore quite literally being 'aware' in that location and receiving sensations, images, perceptions etc from that location. For example I once experienced a person who claimed to have psychic abilities, and would notice how his mind would quite often come and 'visit', as though he wasn't just over there in a body, but also over here in my body.

This may sound weird at first. But, even these examples of going beyond the boundaries of the body are barely even scratching the surface of what it means to be in Oneness.

In Oneness, the body's boundaries have absolutely no limiting effects on the mind whatsoever, and mind then is effectively capable of being everywhere and anywhere. This is in fact our 'natural state', and it's in fact unnatural and a sickness to not be able to join with other minds, to experience Oneness all the time, or to blend with others.

In effect, humanity is really a large, collective entity which has upon its surface many many seemingly individual points of awareness, which we think of a separate people, and yet is still all connected. It would be NORMAL for any one person in that collective mind to experience things that other people are experiencing also, not only as if it is their own, but that it actually IS their own, because it is shared.

I can tell you from experience personally, in fact, that it is possible for all forms of energy, emotions, even physical sickness, to be transferred and shared between people. You think certain things are contagious? Well, for someone who is quite empathic it is possible to actually, literally, take upon themselves the energetic presence and form of another person's discomfort or illness. And that illness then manifests or plays out in your own body. This can happen on emotional or mental or physical levels. In effect, 'ownership' of matter or form of body stuff can actually be shared and transfer between people.

This shouldn't really be an unusual exception, it in fact should be the rule, that all of us are so connected and One that we share in everything together. And it should not be at all surprising when we experience things that other people are experiencing.

In fact, it would be far clearer and more accurate to say, that NOT experiencing what other people are experiencing means you are very SEPARATE from other people, which means you have disconnected yourself from Oneness and do not 'share well', which means ultimately that you are in a state of sickness. Lacking empathy for example is a sign of a sociopath who has barely any sense of what others are feeling. Isolation, separation, aloneness, loneliness, sickness, withdrawal, darkness, etc are all the same condition of disconnection from the whole.

It isn't healthy for people to be disconnected from each other. And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus clearly lays out how it is by JOINING MINDS that we are capable of healing sickness in ourselves and others, because it is the *separation* of minds and the perception of separation between individuals that causes ALL sickness.

This means, there is a healing that can occur if you are willing to step out and be part of a Oneness, to unite with others empathically, to join with them, to resonate with and unite with them in 'spirit' and in 'energy', and to then transmit and share love and light and truth with that person. Or in other words, to allow Holy Spirit to erase all sense of separation between you, such that wholeness and unity and light are restored to the person, producing what we call a 'healing'.

1) Get quite and join with Love/Holy Spirit/Jesus

2) Become one with another person/empathically tune into them

3) Invite Holy Spirit to heal the separation in them and to send them healing love.

It's as simple as that. We simply join minds with others, share love with them, and love does the rest.

Yesterday I was somewhat excited about the idea, or maybe the 'clarity', that everything is happening INSIDE of myself.

The whole separation from God is 'self contained'. It doesn't do anything to God, who is 'outside' of it. And it also means there really is no 'other' involved - no other people who are 'out there' doing stuff to me.

I used to think the separation from God was all about an 'attack on God', but God has not been changed. I, however, believe that I have been changed - the Son of God - and that is where all of the problem lies.

In this "war with myself", all of this is happening inside me, and so it must be coming FROM me, and TO me, in every instance.

I feel this is significant because ALL of the ego's distractions including sin, guilt, fear, projection, victimhood, stories, death, etc are based on the idea that the problem is NOT inside of myself, is NOT being done by myself, and that a "separate alien will" has taken over.

If we are to be truly responsible and self-empowered then we have to recognize that, at its very CORE, the separation is entirely an internal scenario, being done by and to myself. I also am still 'inside' of God. But there is a lot to be responsible for.

I am the one who is trying to be separate.

I am the one who finds myself sinful.

I am the one who has decided this means I'm guilty.

I am the one who believes my guilt demands a punishment.

I am the one afraid of that punishment coming from myself.

I am the one who gives that punishment to myself.

In this, there is nobody else involved. It's not about my brother or my neighbor or family member or coworker or stranger. It's not about God. ****God did not participate in the separation****.

The reason that this is so IMPORTANT is that we need to VERY CLEARLY DISCERN exactly who is doing what to whom. And if we are to not be victims and not suffer, we really need to know where this suffering is coming from and who is doing it - REALLY - otherwise we will be stuck and helpless.

So the ego has really taken this and run with it. It has tried to project responsibility for separation and 'sin' onto God. It has tried to project the source of guilt and condemnation onto God and `other people`. It has tried to project the source of fear onto God and other people. It has tried to make out that other people are the source of punishment (or God). It has literally asked other people to seem to provide that punishment (or uncontrollable life circumstances). The ego is ALL about shifting the blame and the responsibility away from YOUR INTERNAL SELF, and `out` onto some `other` skapegoat. And that 'other' is none other than our OWN SELF - a portion of our own self that we have separated off.

If we can bring all of that back within, and take responsibility for all of it, there is a TREMENDOUS POWER here - a potential to reclaim the ability to recognize not only, that you have done this to yourself, but the very CLEAR DISTINCTION that nobody else has EVER, EVER, EVER had anything to do with doing this "to you". It is literally the end of victimhood and the end of suffering and the end of death (which is the ultimate form of skapegoating).

If we can clearly see, that everythinig that we're experiencing is FROM OURSELVES, TO OURSELVES, then we can do something about it. If we cannot see this, then we are totally stuck. It we are not willing to see this, we are totally stuck. We HAVE to be willing to admit to this truth. It is the key to salvation - recognizing that you have done this to yourself.

Perhaps this is ALL that you need to know. If you can clearly discern that you have but done this ALL to yourself, that it's YOU that finds you sinful, that it's YOU that finds you guilty, that it's YOU that is demanding your own punishment, that it's YOU that is making yourself afraid of your own punishment, that it's YOU that is literally punishing yourself, and that it's YOU who has a death wish, THEN ....... then there is hope because there is NOTHING ELSE STOPPING YOU from choosing again and reclaiming total innocence!

There is no separate self. There is no other.

Until you can see this clearly, you will see yourself as a victim who has no power to change anything. Yet, when you do see this clearly, you will realize you are NOT a victim and you have ALL of the power to change it.

This is all about you. Not God. Not other people. Not weird discarnate entities. You. You, from you, to you.

The secret to salvation is this: You are doing this TO YOURSELF. That's why this clarity is so exciting, if you can see it and accept it.

Will you allow you to love yourself? That's the question. Will you acknowledge the love that you already are? Will you let God love you?

I've seen how when I want to make something go away, I make myself sick.

We attempt to psychologically reject and push something away when we find it threatening, dangerous or undesirable, all of which is a perceptual error. This however immediately implements some form of sickness. Sickness is INDUCED by the attempt to separate from your BROTHER!

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

When we perceive a threat or danger, or someone is fear-mongering, or there is "bad news", or some obnoxious person is hanging around, or whatever... if we perceive it as having power to attack and we want it to stop, instead of making it stop or dis-believing in it, we put up defenses. We try to reject and separate ourselves from it. That's a bad move. It attacks our body. "If I defend myself I am attacked."

I gave myself a panic attack yesterday at a medical office when the staff started becoming serious about heart problems that aren't real. Try as I might I couldn't help but try to reject and resist, and thus induced sickness and almost fainted. Later during forgiveness I saw how I'd done that to myself, trying to make it go away, as the result of *perceiving* that there was a real threat or danger.

Previously also I recall a very talkative coworker kept hanging around at my desk trying to chat, and wouldn't go away. And then got into chatting with others nearby. And instead of standing up to tell them to leave I just tolerated and tried to be patient, but wanted them to go away. And this induced a sudden immediate headache. Trying to separate from your brother induces sickness.

I also once gave myself an ear infection in a matter of hours as a result of trying to make Holy Spirit go away, having perceived his lack of "boundaries" as a threat. I suffered for a few days before being able to re-approach him without fear and thus recognize what I'd done to myself, and upon recognizing I did not NEED the defense, all symptoms disappeared within a matter of hours.

Whenever we USE SEPARATION as a tool, which is an ego tool, to try to "deal with" perceived situations, our attempt to put up a defense and withdraw into ourselves cuts us off from life, blocks extension, fosters separation, produces sickness, and eventually death ("sickness is but a little death"). Our attempt to DENY GOD or our brothers (whom God is in) is the only cause of bodily death. This is why all death is suicide - we give our consent through our denial of God's will. IT IS NOT GOD's WILL THAT ANYONE DIE. A dream of death is not left THROUGh death, but through life - truth.

Sickness cannot happen at all when you do not have a belief in separation in any way. When your mind extends to your brothers mind sharing love, it undoes all sense of separation and your minds join. In this joining there is no split and no division and no attack, and nothing for sickness to latch onto. It therefore MUST heal, and as such death is surmounted. This is a miracle, it is resurrection.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

Notice it says NOW IS THE *BODY* HEALED.

"You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." This is literal. Sickness becomes impossible when your mind is whole and healed.

Atonement makes sickness IMPOSSIBLE. This DOES MEAN BODY SICKNESS as well as mental illness.

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."

So sickness IS A FORM OF GUILT, and if there is no guilt, there can be no sickness or death. Period.

While you have "false perception", your mind is going to be split. It is not merely separated FROM the truth, it is separated WITHIN itself, divided against itself. The ego is a state of self conflict and contradiction. And that means there is disassociation, or two parts, where one part seems to be "you" and the other part seems to be "not you". When you have false perception you are "in two minds."

It will SEEM as though you are "separate from" this world, as a separate perceiver or some kind of bystander who just observes it. What is outside the body (split) seems to be "not you" and what is inside it seems to be you. Yet BOTH of them are in your mind, which has used the body as a separation device to split you from YOURSELF. In this state, you will think that your "illusions" are ONLY to do with your illusions ABOUT the "world that is separate from you", which seems to be objectively real.

However, the purpose of this split is to disown the fact that the whole PLANET is coming from YOUR MIND, and what is "out there" is literally just another part of YOUR MIND that you've disowned. You are the one who MADE IT, it is PART OF your false perception. "The world is false perception". And you cannot truly get to the recognition/perception that both "inside the body" and "the world out there" are BOTH in you, until you can undo enough of the disassociation. The world "out there" is your unconscious mind. The world "in here" seems to be your conscious mind. The division has to be undone.

The sense that "you are not the world" is the ego, hiding in a dream, associating "self" and "what I want" with "you in the body" and associating "what I don't want" with what's outside. When you dream at night, you create entire environments with buildings and streets and people. And it is your mind making all of it. But at the same time, your mind invents a body for you to inhabit inside of this environment, and puts your awareness into it, and makes you unconscious of the dreaming that is making the environment. And so you then perceive AS IF, you are ONLY that which is in the body, looking out upon a world that you think YOU DID NOT MAKE. Even though your mind is making EVERYTHING in the scene.

It is the same in the waking world. Earth. You SEEM to experience that you did not make the world, that it is too big and complex for you to put there yourself, that you are limited to the inside of your little body, and that everything outside the body is "not of you". You seem to have no control over it, no power to directly manipulate it with your mind, and it seems to do things "on its own". BUT THAT IS PART OF DREAMING. And it is in fact YOU, who is putting ALL of the environment there, and making the houses and streets and people. But you are not aware that your larger mind is DOING that because you've DISASSOCIATED from it and think you are just this tiny little crapper stuck in a body peering out and "perceiving" a world that you didn't make. Which leads you to believe that since you have disowned it (the other half of yourself), GOD must have created it. Which is a lie.

WHEN YOU WAKE UP to the truth, and this disassociation and pretense and "hiding in the dream in a body" is overcome, you will come to recognize that YOU ARE DREAMING THE PLANET. That you are looking at a dream that is coming from your mind in its ENTIRETY, not just your little body or your little fenced off corner of the dream. And so now your mind is responsible for MAKING THE WORLD. And it is a dream world, because you are DREAMING IT. You are inventing it as you go along.

To recognize this is to be "awake in the dream", which really means, to be STILL DREAMING but aware that the dream is coming from your mind. It isn't the end of dreaming, nor does it represent the desire to STOP dreaming and be TRULY awake. It is a state of lucidity, but NOT a state of being TOTALLY AWAKE IN REALITY. And because the body is part of the dream, having it, using it, seeing it, keeping it, is all part of STILL dreaming.

Given you are dreaming of a UNIVERSE, to truly awaken from the dreaming state is to END the universe, to DISAPPEAR the body, to see the world VANISH, and FORGET THIS WORLD ENTIRELY, this whole planet and everything on it and beyond it. And to GO HOME TO HEAVEN. Heaven is the container of your "dreaming self" which is reality and is a PLACE and has not changed since you fell asleep.

And only upon waking up FROM dreaming, do you truly awaken into a state where there IS NO DREAM OF ANY KIND, no bodies, no planets, no animals, no plants, no stars or galaxies. Just pure light, love, immortality and eternal life. Pure spirit. What you REALLY ARE. Your real self in God. The Kingdom of God, which GOD created, and which is your real home.

As Jesus says, "the separation has occurred". The separation is another name for the fall of man. We did in fact "fall asleep" and dream of another world in which we believed in and thus made/maintained "en ego". It has not been fully created because it is not created, but made. But we DID have the tiny mad idea and enter into dreaming.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

In heaven, God thinks holographically. The whole, which God is, creates. Anything he creates must be like himself. Therefore his sons/creations must also be completely whole. To be whole, and given God is everything, they must share all of God. So now you have parts, which are wholes in and of themselves, which also share with and are joined with the whole in "oneness". All the creations are of like kind, whole like God. And also the sons of God who are wholes also create whole children.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

"The soul is the idea of self fullness."

"The soul has not only been created perfect it has been fully created. There is no emptiness (unwholeness) in it."

So we have this whole, which creates more wholes, which are whole as individual beings and who also share the whole with all other wholes.

"God who encompasses all being (is the whole) nevertheless created separate (distinct parts within the whole) beings who have everything (the whole) individually (as whole sons/beings) and want to share it (sharing is fundamental to reality, true sharing is oneness) to increase their joy."

The part where the separation comes in is, where a part, which is a whole joined to the whole, attempts to disconnect itself from sharing the whole. It tries to cut itself off from the whole of God and from its brothers that were previously sharing everything with it.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

So a son of God puts a fence around what appears to be himself, the "part as a whole" individual self, and tries to isolate it from the sharing/communicating-with portion of itself. It tries to "become separated" from sharing with anyone or anything. This turns it into a "part which is not sharing". Which is the idea of selfishness.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Having become "separated off" ie isolated from sharing with the family, we are now "the separated ones" and we have a "separated self". But this doesn't mean we invented a self at this point, it just means we took our self and imprisoned it in a body concept.

"The body is clearly a device for separation."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love (shared wholeness)."

By imposing upon ourselves ideas of "not sharing with the whole", we necessarily shut out some portion of our self which was shared with the whole. And that now means that we are seeing and experiencing ourselves as "partly myself", or a part which has no wholeness. This "partial self" is hemmed in by illusions of separation, and it confuses itself with these illusions and believes they are true of it, thus defining it. This produces "the ego" in the mind, which is basically a belief by a fundamentally whole/joined entity that it is not whole/joined. It's self denial. The ego is the idea of what you are not, which is an attempt to destroy your whole self, which leads to death.

"The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

To awaken we have to undo the illusions of imprisonment by not believing in them, opening and expanding our sense of identity to align our mind with our soul, reconnect with God and the sonship through total sharing (holy relationship), and thereby disappear the egoic selfish idea of being "separated off". Thus we regain and re-inherit our inheritance from God, reclaim our identity as part of Christ, and resume our position in the sonship. Wholeness is restored and we return to being whole (aware of it) and to being "one with God", ie sharing everything with God and the whole Kingdom.

When I first began with the Course's forgiveness, it was much more focused on taking back my projections. The particular projections to be taken back revolved around other people and what they seemed to be doing to me. If things were not going wrong necessarily, I would lapse and not do any forgiveness.

People would say you only have to forgive the stuff that upsets you. And that's more or less the mode that I'd been in for some years. It seemed some part of me wanted to just get on with "my life" and have those assholes just sort of go away as a result of my becoming more honest and less blaming. When people appeared to not disturb me, I wouldn't seem to have any reason to forgive.

The radicalness of the Course, however, asks that we recognize not just that we have psychological issues "about" the world, but that the world ITSELF is also an illusion. That's a really HUGE leap in terms of beliefs and perceptions. That's a seemingly far bigger challenge to even comprehend yet alone overcome.

It isn't just telling me to stop projecting my shit onto people. Ok yes that's part of it. That's a good start. It isn't just telling me that I need to heal my past and let go of blocks to love and so on. Again yes, that's part of it. But there is more.

The body itself is an illusion. The world itself is an illusion. Other people's bodies are illusions. All forms are illusions.

So now, this is a much bigger endeavor. This isn't just a matter of undoing small mistakes in perception so that I can see this world better and feast my eyes on its form with a more loving attitude.

We have to realize that because this world is an illusion, IF you are truly waking up from this illusion it HAS to mean that we're going to not only overlook the world but that HOW it looks is going to change radically. Also what it means is going to shift. A sense of belief in it, or the notion that it is even REAL, is going to change.

If we're moving toward the real truth of God, and if this world is an illusion, its illusory nature is going to start to become apparent. The sense of it being real is going to start to dissolve. The appearance of form as irreversible and causal is going to be radically turned on its head. Our mind is going to move into a very different, very ego-law-breakaing state of awareness.

So then at some point, we have to move out of the "forgive people" mode and into the "forgive everything" mode. And by forgiveness we mean, recognizing the truth and using that truth to overlook and not be deceived by illusions. We might not be recognizing just how deluded we are, and just how deceived we are, that this physical world is REAL, that bodies are real, or that we're really actually "living" here.

The truth is far more radical than this. The truth is that this world is not reality AT ALL. It is literally nothing. A total illusion from top to bottom. Everything in it, all supposed life "forms", all sickness, all death, all suffering, all of the weather, all of the ways that objects affect other objects, all of the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, every property of matter, ALL OF IT is an illusion.

Believing that this stuff is real is a problem. It's insanity. It is not true perception. And if you perceive that this world is real, then you will not be able to perform miracles. Miracles completely defy all of the laws of this universe, coming from outside of spacetime, sourced in God's infinite love. If you're believing the world is real, there is no way that you're going to be able to overthrow the laws of this world. Your wish for it to be "true" - a real world - holds it in place, disabling you from having power (dominion) over it.

So this is a huge shift. Take the next step. Be willing to be open to the idea that there is no REAL sickness, no REAL death, and that this world is not really real at all. Then you will start to sense the power of God to have authority over all illusions and to perform miracles. It's one thing to do little forgivenesses here and there, it's another to realize you have to forgive the entire universe. That then this forgiveness doesn't just mean to see 'a real universe' as innocent, it means to see CELARLY and CORRECTLY, which MUST show you that it is an ILLUSION, not a real world. Otherwise you are not seeing at all.

MY SICKNESS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY

OTHER PEOPLE'S SICKNESS IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

YOU CAN’T WAKE PEOPLE UP FOR THEM

Jesus has the power to undo all sickness in a brother right now, BUT WILL NOT if they do not want it. Love cannot enter where it is not welcome!

I am responsible for everything I experience. Other people are responsible for everything they experience. This is directly supportive of the secret to salvation, that "we are doing this to ourselves".

All sickness we are experiencing is something we are doing TO OURSELF.

Right now, God is 100% awake, and because of this, it IS IMPOSSIBLE that there be sickness in any mind anywhere. In reality anyway. However, Sons of God have the illusory "ability" to DENY GOD. When they do so, they put denial in place, which is a block to life, which implements sickness. This is a FREE WILL CHOICE.

Love does not force anyone to be healed of this against their will. Jesus will simply WAIT for us until we are ready to accept the truth.

This is also why we must have A LITTLE WILLINGNESS, because only when we are WILLING to receive the truth, can the Holy Spirit take the opportunity to heal us. And he WILL take any opportunity we give him, no matter how small. But if we do not give that willingness, we will stay in our illusions of sickness for as long as we choose to against His will.

If we are not willing with God, doing God's will, we are willing against God. That's the entire point of the separation, the idea of sin being that we willed against God (yes, its fiction). If we BELIEVE it, individually, we will enter into a dream of suffering and death. And sickness will feature heavily in that dream because it is what we choose. It won't be real sickness at all, but we'll believe it is, using it as a device for keeping God's love at bay. Sickness is a DEFENSE against the truth. A block to awareness.

To understand this correctly REQUIRES that you believe that there are multiple sons of God, each with their own individual free will. Because if you don't, it will not make sense. To be able to have "your own choice" as to whether you are WILLING to receive healing, your own choice as to whether to ALLOW LOVE IN, is necessary in order to have a "separate will" which acts against God's will. There are many separate wills.

This is also required in order to understand how Jesus could wake up completely and yet that the rest of us are dragging our feet in snoozeville. We do not have the free will to set the curriculum ("learning to love"), but we DO have the free will to DELAY it or to choose WHEN to take it. That means we can choose NOT to accept God's will or God's healing. We can deliberately KEEP sickness if we want to, against God's will, and against Jesus's will. And it is true that there is NOTHING they will or can do about this, except gently lead us to see the error of our ways over time.

Jesus tells us that our will is AS POWERFUL as His, and that this is why he cannot forcibly take away our fears or sicknesses against our will. If we want them or hold onto them, he cannot take them. We have to be WILLING TO LET GO. Just because we are using our powerful will to make an illusion of being weak and little and powerless, doesn't mean our will is diminished at all. Mind retains its creative power at all times. Jesus CANNOT and WILL NOT go against this.

This means that even though AWARENESS OF LOVE can be complete in one brother (e.g. Jesus), it can be highly absent in another, at the same time. "Miracles are gifts given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." This is because IT IS POSSIBLE in illusions for some individuals to be MORE AWAKE THAN OTHERS. That means, it is NOT TRUE, that one person's healed perception automatically heals everyone. It does not. It OFFERS healing to everyone, but other people CAN REFUSE IT. And they CAN retain forms of sickness as long as they want "against your will."

Awakening to the awareness of love's presence cannot extend to the entire sonship UNTIL the sonship is FREELY WILLING to receive it, every single "individual son" has to choose it and be willing to accept it. IF they do not, the sonship remains incomplete, and there's nothing it can do about it other than to keep OFFERING love and waiting patiently for the rest of the sonship to wake up. Love is not forceful. It has INFINITE PATIENCE, which would not be NEEDED unless people weren’t so resistant.

It is true AT SOME LEVEL that your mind is ONE with the mind of others. That you share a mind. You share a mind with Jesus. However, awareness of that sharing can only be fully experienced when both of you are completely purified and healed. And then you will SHARE that state of love.

But until then, it is perfectly possible within illusions for you to REJECT that union, to deny reality, and to choose against God's will. Thus you will retain your own freely chosen sickness and problems, regardless of whether you are surrounded by infinite love and healing or not. God surrounds us RIGHT NOW with unlimited healing, and yet we STILL keep projecting images of sickness in order to REFUSE IT.

This is also why it was possible for Jesus to go around giving a GIFT OF HEALING to those who were suffering, sick, missing limbs, blind, even dead, unable to help themselves due to their own unawareness that they were doing this to themselves, and yet who had enough FAITH in HIS ability, enough trust, enough willingness, to ALLOW Him to heal them for them. You do NOT need to be fully awake in order to receive a miracle! And you CAN only receive it if you TRULY WANT IT.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it.."

Having enough FAITH i.e. trust and WILLINGNESS to receive HELP, from outside of yourself, from a brother who has more love than you do right now, who is more ABLE to help right now, is enough to RECEIVE help from beyond your own current abilities. All you need is ENOUGH trust to allow the Holy Spirit HIMSELF to perform the miracle FOR YOU, from beyond your awareness, showing up as demonstrations of TANGIBLE CHANGES (witnesses), which helps you to learn that HE REALLY IS THERE, and HE REALLY CAN HEAL. This develops trust.

Jesus went around performing miracles for those who temporarily had less, who temporarily were blind, who temporarily were sinful, who temporarily were UNAWARE of the whole truth. He did NOT do this by having a mind which was "pure yet contained sick people". His mind could NOT have been WHOLE, if it was "one with sick people", or had "sick parts" in it. The presence of sick parts in his mind would've rendered him UNCONSCIOUS, just as the presence of ego persona/shadow in our own mind right now renders us UNABLE to be aware of the WHOLE of our identity. Mis-identifying with ego BLINDS YOU. Jesus was WHOLE MINDED, and yet could still perceive the "unwholeness" others were experiencing, without their unwholeness affecting HIS.

Jesus had true perception. Jesus could SEE. He was aware of the truth. He was able to RECOGNIZE that sickness is a complete illusion, not real, and posing no problem whatsoever. This gave HIM this ability to extend the HOLY SPIRIT who is the mechanism of miracles, to perform a healing WHERE it was welcome. And where it was not welcome, HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES. He had to leave entire villages in suffering because their minds were too resistant to receive healing. His state of awakening did not FORCE anyone else to wake up!

Even if He saw those other people as one with Him, even if He knew them to be "himself" or "ourself", even if He was connected to the entire Power of God, there was NOTHING he could do to help those, at that time, who DID NOT WANT IT. This is because, YOU are responsible for YOUR sickness, and for your willingness. If you are unwilling, healing will not "happen to you". Sick people, with broken limbs and defective organs, will not be healed by your true perception, UNLESS they want it. And thinking that you are "healing yourself" by healing what is showing up "as their sickness" is NOT going to work if they do not want it, because IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. THEY MADE IT, NOT YOU.

You are responsible for choosing the atonement for yourself. You are responsible for being WILLING to REJOIN the sonship's oneness for yourself. You are responsible for every sickness you experience within yourself, NOT outside of you in others. You are responsible for your own belief in sin. You never attack anyone else, you never affect anyone else, you never do anything to anyone else. And the reverse is true. No-one ever affects you, no-one ever does anything against your will. You are not at the effect of the world. And no-one is at the effect of you. Your attack does not affect others whatsoever, and nor does your love, unless THEY CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL EXPEIRNCE.

Love can be shared, WHEN it is welcome, and when it is welcome, the person is effectively giving it to themselves. It can be given to those who have a "lack" of it, BY those who have an abundance of it, BECAUSE people are in different states of perception simultaneously. This IS possible because people have an individual will and mind, even if at the highest level they are the One Son. Jesus’s resurrection DID NOT CURE EVERYONE because they did not want to be cured. YOU MUST CHOOSE IT.

Trying to bring about healing by assuming that other people are "you" and therefore their sickness is "your sickness" and that if you undo "that sickness" it will heal the other person, is a twisting of what happens. First of all, it's true that you and your brother are one, yet you are BROTHERS, with your own free will. Secondly, "their sickness" is THEIR CHOICE, not yours, and it is NOT PART OF YOUR MIND, and it is NOT YOUR SICKNESS OR SIN.

When you project YOUR sin, it DOES NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. Ideas leave not their source. IT stays inside of you. You become split minded and perceive this sin as a separate attacker, attacking some other split off part of yourself. You interact with it as though it is outside of this part of you, as though not yours, but it is ALWAYS IN YOU. It never ever even leaves you and goes over to someone else.

It does NOT put sickness into other people against their will! To suggest you can heal someone else’s sickness "because its really your own" is actually to suggest YOU CAN MAKE SOMEONE SICK AGAINST THEIR WILL AND TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN. This is FALSE! If someone else were choosing never to be sick, your attempted projection of sin could not put sickness into them. And if someone else was choosing never to be sick, YOU COULD STILL be believing that you are a sinner and STILL be trying to project your sin and STILL seeing it in the other person. Your projection has NOTHING to do with other people’s state of mind. Withdrawing your projected sin WILL NOT HEAL THEM, if they have chosen to be sick on their own and want to keep it. Go ahead and try to heal someone who does not want to be healed. It will fail!

Otherwise, if someone could be causing someone else to be sick against their will, which is an EGO BELIEF, someone's sickness would INFECT JESUS by the power of their will. This is an extension of the idea that we CAN sin and hurt God, which is impossible. Our sickness is OUR CHOICE against ourselves. Thirdly, just because you RECOGNIZE that their sickness is entirely an illusion, that does not disappear it FOR THEM if they continue to WILL TO KEEP IT. You cannot override their will. You getting healed WILL NOT wake everyone up. You will wake up FROM them, FROM the illusion, FROM the ego, INTO a state of awareness, but if other people choose to stay in the ego, THEY WILL.

The ACT of attempting to undo that sickness, by cancelling it or not believing in it or asserting it is not there or pushing it away or shining love onto it or whatever, that ACT of trying to FORCE IT TO GO is actually the EGO attempting to have power OVER something it made real. This is the attempt to "heal to destroy", to first make real then try to undo what you made real. That’s you fighting with your own sin. It won’t heal the person’s sickness or yours.

The Holy Spirit MUST BE INVOLVED in all miracles, because He is the mechanism of miracles. HE is the one who heals. HE is the one who is capable of raising the dead. He must be the one who performs the healing of the mind because healing must come from outside of separation. While He does not perceive sickness as REAL, He still nevertheless KNOWS that people are experiencing nightmares and that they NEED HEALING, in spite of the fact that HE is already in a state of TOTAL AWARENESS AND LOVE. He will not FORCE himself onto anyone, and just because HE is healed/healing it does not mean PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE HIM. This is why we have to CHOOSE to be willing to listen to his voice rather than the ego. It’s up to us.

It is difficult to accept that some people DO NOT WANT TO BE HAPPY. It is difficult to accept that some people WILL AGAINST GOD AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT LOVE. It is difficult to accept that PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE SICK and that they want to keep being sick to protect themselves. It is difficult to accept PEOPLE DON'T WANT A MIRACLE, and they DON’T WANT YOUR HEALING. And that's their right. And their freedom. And we are to respect that and be patient in waiting for them to BECOME willing. Love isn't forceful. Miracles don't happen to people against their will.

Believe me I've tried... I've tried many times to heal someone who is very sick, and who was not ready to heal, and it did not work. It was very upsetting to me that I could not heal it. It was a difficult lesson personally, but a necessary one, because until we can see how healing might FAIL (be blocked by the recipient), we may not come to LET GO of the belief in sickness for ourselves.

I eventually asked Jesus why this wasn't working. Despite many prayers and attempts at miracles. Even one time I did a miracle-working act where angels came to help and I felt it was very powerful, and Jesus said that "it was fully given". But.... just because it was fully given, DOES NOT mean it was fully received. I asked Him, why didn't it seem to work.

Why was the person still sick?! And I don’t mean... why was I still believing in sickness... the question was, why did that person still maintain an illusion of symptoms of sickness.

His answer simply... "they are not ready to receive it."

This was discouraging, because I used to believe, like many, that it SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to HEAL EVERONE if I just learn HOW. But it does not work that way. It was, however, encouraging to me to also be told that at some point THEY WILL become ready to receive it, which is heartwarming, but we still have to learn, just because WE are waking up to love and are willing to be miraculous, it does NOT mean other people will suddenly stop being sick or unloving. It is their lesson. It is their choice. We have to allow other people to be sick IF they want to. It's not God's will, but it's that person's will. God does not condone sickness, he offers to HEAL IT RIGHT NOW, but people refuse.

Trying to heal everyone, or to "perform miracles indiscriminately", is what Jesus tells us NOT to do. He knows WHO is willing and ready to receive them, and He will send the appropriate WILLING people to us. This won't be EVERYONE. It will only be those who are ready to receive. Some people are, some people aren't. We won’t get to be hero saviors or "ego healers" because other people are NOT playing along with our fantasy.

And just because Jesus COULD POTENTIALLY heal everyone in an instant, THEY DO NOT WANT IT. I asked Jesus time and again to heal someone and do you know what he said, "I cannot". And I asked why - why would someone so powerful and capable and miraculous NOT be able to heal it. "They don’t want it."

Sorry to say... this is why TIME is still ticking over with events happening and lessons being learned RATHER THAN God simply snapping his fingers and waking everyone up RIGHT NOW "against their will". God ALLOWED US to have our free will dream illusion of separation, knowing that at some point we would return to him unscathed. It is not happening because God wills it. If God had his way we never would’ve even DREAMED of separation. But WE had the free will to choose to pretend it’s possible, and it’s still our free will to keep doing that, EACH OF US, if we want to. Individually.

So please let's get off this perspective that if you heal YOUR perception, everyone else will suddenly be free of sickness. That if YOU don't perceive "sickness", you will not SEE anyone suffering with sickness. That if you gain true perception for yourself, you will be incapable of seeing anyone suffering. Or that their sickness is part of your own mind and therefore you need healing. You are only responsible for what YOU DO TO YOURSELF. And even though at a HIGHER LEVEL they are one with you, THEIR CHOICE is their own.

You will still see the form of people’s bodies being projected with sick characteristics, because that's the will of you brother! But you won't see it AS real sickness, you'll see THROUGH it, and recognize it is JUST AN ILLUSION. Just because you don’t believe sickness is REAL, doesn’t mean you will be incapable of seeing that OTHER PEOPLE still think it is real, or that they are still projecting bodies that are sick. Jesus was perfectly CAPABLE of SEEING people who were in need, people who were suffering, and people who were dying or dead, EVEN THOUGH His perception did not INTERPRET those things as reality. Your recognition of it being an illusion WILL NOT BE SHARED by them until they are WILLING AND READY.

Believe me I've tried many many times to heal indiscriminately and to alleviate suffering and it's not necessarily because I can't, but because the people involved were not willing to be healed. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO REFUSE LOVE. They already HAVE refused love. They already DID reject God's eternal life and totally healed condition. They already HAVE attempted to block miracles and to reject life. (Yes, its an illusion) Even GOD did not overthrow their free will to do this. (yes I know its an illusion, didn't happen)... but God RESPECTS free will and will ALLOW people to keep being sick IF THEY WANT TO. And so did Jesus.

This unfortunately is a hard lesson to learn, that some people simply do not want to be well, want to be sick, want to keep being sick, and there IS nothing you can do about that right now. All you can do is keep praying and offering and extending love that MAYBE they will accept and receive it BY their will, and therefore CHOOSE to be well BY THEIR OWN WILL, and therefore CONCUR with the will of God, and thus RECEIVE the love that heals them. Receiving is a choice. You can still attempt to perform miracles, but even if you give a bucketload of love, it STILL won’t produce effects if it is not welcome or goes against the person’s will.

Until you can receive the atonement or even a small piece of atonement on one particular issue you will not be willing to RECEIVE LOVE AT ALL. The first time that I did a really thorough forgiveness and took it all the way to the atonement principle, becoming WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE that I was innocent on a particular topic, I became willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD finally on that topic, and Jesus said to me "Now you will be able to perform miracles". Because I had be WILLING TO RECEIVE for myself. "You can only give the miracles you have received".!

We can offer healing. We cannot force it. We will not undo everyone’s suffering just by undoing our own. Even if we go to Heaven as Jesus did, knowing sickness is impossible, brothers will STILL be dreaming of sickness for as long as they want to. We can but OFFER love to them and pray for them and send miracles to them, but it’s up to them to let go of their resistance, to CLAIM the healing that has already been given.

God has ALREADY GIVEN ALL HEALING, He has already given eternal life, and yet we refuse it. It’s our choice

"The recognition of the part as whole, as of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole."

This is a very key statement in ACIM. It is telling you that GOD THINKS ... in a holographic way. In that, each of his thoughts are of wholeness, and are whole. And therefore each PART of God's creation - his mind - his thought system - heaven - the sonship - your brothers - your creations - all of it is run per the holographic principle. The whole is in every part and every part is the whole. This is natural to God, and to you, in heaven. It is THE NATURE OF HEAVEN.

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded, if he would know the wholeness of his Father."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

EVERY aspect of heaven's reality MUST abide by this law, because all of it IS the thought SYSTEM or "order of reality" of God's mind. And everything IN it is God's system of thought, which functions per his WAY OF THINKING. He thinks holographically because he can only think of "sharing wholeness". This is why there are many sons who are parts of God, forming a sonship, in which EACH son is ALL the sons, and every son is the one son. Because each part of the Sonship IS the whole Sonship.

"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."

"WE are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all."

"If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES transcend the sum of its parts." (this happens only in a holographic system)

"Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same."

A holographic system arises in God's mind simply because God is WHOLE, and CAN ONLY create that which is whole. So each of his creations MUST be whole. And to be truly whole, it has to be one with God, sharing EVERYTHING with him and with all creations. This is why all the children of God are WHOLE beings and SHARE everything with each other. Wholes within wholes, which are still one whole.

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

"the holy Son whom God created whole"

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

"This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

"Sanity IS wholeness. And the sanity of your brothers IS yours."

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness."

"God WOULD be mocked if ANY of his creations lacked holiness. The Creation IS whole. The mark of Wholeness is Holiness, not holes. THE SONSHIP HAS NO HOLES ANYWHERE."

If you can understand this and accept it, it will make your grasp of the course material a LOT easier. But notice that the quote in the image says that we have hurt our minds so much, that it does in fact make it DIFFICULT for us to understand what reality is like.

This why a lot of people do not recognize OR understand the holographic structure of heaven. It is completely alien to life in this world. But he's also saying that if you can understand that the whole is every part, ie God/wholeness IS each of his children, and each child of God IS all the Children of God, then it should be easier to understand.

"You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved UNTIL all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."

In a holographic system, wholeness does not mean "there is a count of one thing". Or one son. Or just God. It means, that everything is shared by all creative beings. Every soul in the sonship IS all other souls. The whole sonship is ONE, because it shares the same whole. And the whole it shares is God.

"It is because the thoughts you think you think ****appear as images**** that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing" was made. ****This is the function you have given your body's eyes.**** It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

Consider a photograph. A photograph appears to be an image of something. Maybe it's an image of a city, which you took while on vacation. As you look at the photograph it appears to you to be a city, and you think there is a city there. Just as when you look at people on the TV you think you're seeing people, and even react as if they were real sometimes. This is because the images are very convincing and lifelike.

However, consider the difference between the photograph and the actual place. The photograph is not really a city, it just looks like one. And the real city is somewhere else. Well, how about we suggest that this physical world, planet Earth etc, is in fact not a real world, but is in fact like a photograph of a world? It LOOKS LIKE a world, but isn't an ACTUAL world. It's an IMAGE OF a world, or what a world would LOOK LIKE, but isn't one.

A tree that you look at, isn't actually a tree. It is a three-dimensional "hologram" of a tree. It sure looks like one, feels like one, moves like one. It even seems alive. But it is still just an image of a tree. A kind of 3D animated picture. Like a movie clip. As it plays out, it sees to sway in the wind and drop its leaves and sprout new ones, but all the while it's not an ACTUAL tree. It's just a picture of one.

This is because everything in this world is not actually a world. It's an IMAGE of a world. A collection of pictures. The body is a picture. The trees and houses and cars are just images. The planet is in fact just a PROJECTED IMAGE from the mind, which has tried to depict what such things would look like if they existed. It is a representation or symbol of such things, but is not really those things.

The body's eyes were designed to "see images" of a world made of images. To reflect back those images into the mind, to form some kind of "sight". And so now you look upon images. And the body can only see images, it cannot see real actual places.

Recognizing that this world is really just a collection of pictures, imagining a world, visualizing forms that don't really exist, you can better understand why this world is a dream or hallucination. The mind is "seeing" what it thinks it wants to see. It is picturing a world of bodies. And these images are made to block true vision. You look upon them thinking you are surrounded by an ACTUAL world, when all you are surrounded by is a hollow empty picture.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the ****image-maker****. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? 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."

"What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real, and guarded as one's own."

"All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust."

"These images, with no reality in truth, bear witness to the fear of God, forgetting being Love. He must be joy."

"You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, REGARDLESS of the images you see."

"That is because you surround yourself with the environment you want. And you want it to protect the image of yourself which you have made. The image is part of it. What you see while you believe you are in it is seen through the eyes of the image. It is not vision. Images cannot see."

"To be told that what you do not see is there sounds like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to see what is there, and to see what is not there instead. You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light."

In many areas of life at the moment, Holy Spirit's guidance to me is to "try".

I have seen in many ways how I stop myself or don't do something, on the basis of the ego's justifications, which basically goes like this:

"I don't think I know how to do that, so I won't"

However, the way Holy Spirit's mind works, the act of "attempting" to do something is actually an act of faith, which only needs to be a "little willingness" to START, to just TRY to do it.

The reason is that as you begin to try to do something, a FLOW starts to happen, Heaven comes to support you, you become receptive to guidance, and you get help. But you don't get the help UNTIL YOU TRY.

An insight here is that your WILLINGNESS TO TRY to represent God, is an invitation for God to enter and support you, to heal through you, and this is how you ASK or "PRAY" and how you receive what you asked for.

So you have to overcome the "I don't know how, so I won't", and turn that into "I don't know how, but I trust Holy Spirit to help me, so I will try".

This actually has a lot to do with learning to work miracles.

Miracles require that you be trusting God/Spirit to work through you, support you, guide you, direct you, in a very spontaneous state of trust/faith, where you simply show up to "do God's bidding"... .ie God's will. It requires you to make yourself available and just be empty and open to receive, and just go along with it, even if you have no idea what's going to happen.

So we have to learn this difficult lesson, of stopping relying on the ego's huge body of thought and learning and information, or the ability to intellectually "figure out on your own" everything you need. We have to shift into a mode of fluid, trust-based willingness to extend God's truth. And there is not really anything the ego can do to prepare you for this.

It takes a lot of BALLS, or guts, in a way, to have COURAGE, to have the confidence to just step up and "do it" with a sense of believing that it simply is going to work out WHEN you do, even if you have NO CLUE how that's going to happen up-front.

That sense of certainty, of dependency on Higher Help, to just go out there and step into the shoes or the role and just fly by the seat of your pants, not alone and frightened to hell (because you will fail if you try to do this with the ego), but based on a deep trust in being supported SUPERNATURALLY if you do so, will lead to miracles.

You have to show up and fulfill your function, in order for Heaven to help you to fulfill that function. It really does take a leap of faith, stepping into the UNKNOWN, stepping into the spontaneous state of trust and being in the moment and not premeditating or practicing or rehearsing or learning ahead of time. Just being flexible and free and WILLING to be used by God.

This is why you often see people doing miracles on the streets where they just go up to total strangers and offer a prayer and just start doing it and Jesus/Holy Spirit show up and people get healed. That takes some pretty major faith/trust that that supernatural help is going to be there. You can't fake it, either. It won't work if you don't "believe" ie have come to believe the truth of God.

The truth of God is that God wants to heal immediately right now and is totally ready to do so right now. It's only you not stepping into the ROLE of healer that is holding the miracles back. This is how Jesus was able to just go around and spontaneously "miracle the shit out of everything." - you can quote me on that ;-) He had no preparation, no reliance on ego skills, He just trusted God really strongly and the support was right there because he got into a flow and was of service.

But if we don't even try to do something, thinking that we are relying entirely on ourselves only, and that we don't have the knowledge or ability, we have already failed. We're in a state of failure. And we know we will fail if we keep trusting only in our own strength. Which is fear. Fear will block miracles because its an attempt to trust only what you know and not what God knows, believing you are the source of miracles or that something about how you perform them gives them their power. All power is from God and can only be SHARED AND EXTENDED by you, and you must learn to trust it.

Once we do learn to get over our ego objections and "I can't so I won't", we'll get more into the miracle-working mindset and miracles will flow naturally. When these miracles aren't flowing, something has gone wrong.

Many here are familiar with a line that says your "sole responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself. This has, however, been butchered and used as a separation device, and an excuse for not doing anything. When you look at ALL of the quotes about taking "sole responsibility", every one of them is tied to some manner of ACTIVITY which ensues when you accept atonement.

This phrase has been misunderstood. People have taken it to mean "the only thing you have to do." Or perhaps worse, "the only thing there is to be done." As though to say, once you do this ONE thing, you have NO responsibilities to do anything else. This is unfortunate because it is TOTALLY opposite to the course's teaching. It has been used to justify against miracles, against healing, and against helping others.

What he's really saying is that, because you are a free willed being, you have the right and the freedom to CHOOSE. The secret of salvation tells you that YOU are responsible for what you experience. YOU are responsible for your own suffering. YOU are responsible for your own sickness and death. You "do it to yourself." Owning that, accepting that, admitting that, being aware of that, is "taking responsibility." It's a recognition of WHO is causing stuff to happen. The PURPOSE of taking responsibility is in fact SO THAT you can be miracle minded and perform miracles FOR OTHERS.

What this leads to is the recognition that you are the ONLY ONE (sole) who is responsible for the condition of your mind and your experience. God has already done his part by creating you and giving you free will. YOUR part is to "be you", or to be as God created you. To be your natural true self. To be true to the truth about you and others. Because you have free will, it is YOUR CHOOSING that determines whether you are experiencing heaven or hell. And it is this choice that you are SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR.

What the course actually says is that you have a responsibility for CHOOSING the atonement (accepting it). This is because it is your free will choice whether to accept or not. "No one comes to the atonement except willingly." "Heaven is a choice I must make." Just because it says "for myself" on the end of it, people's egos have taken a hold of it and have used it to mean "this applies only to me and no-one else is involved." This couldn't be further from the truth because atonement means SHARING WITH OTHERS.

Taking that full responsibility and electing to do God's will and align yourself with truth, puts you in a position of accepting the truth ie the atonement. But this is only to do with the scope of your freedoms. What you CAN do. What you ARE in a position to decide about in relation to your free will. You are responsible for accepting the atonement for yourself because no-one else is capable of forcing you to accept it. You have to "do your part."

This however has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether or not "there are responsibilities" besides this for you to embark upon. In fact, logically speaking, what is true of you must be true of everyone. This is the Golden Rule. As Jesus states in the course you CANNOT accept atonement WITHOUT sharing it. If you are going to accept that YOU deserve love and power, then you MUST also grant ALL OTHERS the same right to love and power. You also MUST support them in accessing that love and power, which means that, because they are PART OF YOU, you cannot fully rest if your brothers are still experiencing hell.

Miracle Principle 24:

"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that ***souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.*** This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to ***heal others, as Physicians of the Lord.*** They were ***also told to heal themselves***, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. ***Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."***

Atonement is not simply a STATE. It is not something that you do IN ISOLATION. It is not something you CAN accept only for yourself. Only yourself CAN CHOOSE to accept it, but OF ITSELF it is not about "just you"! It is something that applies to the entire sonship and by accepting it you are agreeing to UPHOLD it FOR everyone and to participate in bringing EVERYONE into the atonement. It is PART OF YOU. You become PART OF the atonement itself. The process of it, for the whole sonship. And because your brothers are part of you, you CANNOT rest fully knowing that they are still suffering.

In fact what Jesus says is TOTALLY opposite to what many people believe, ie that "the only thing you have to do" is to accept atonement. Like it's some kind of thing you pick up off a shelf and then you "get it" and possess it and it's yours. And then you sit there on a cloud picking your nose. Jesus's view is that to enter into atonement is to enter into RELATIONSHIP with everyone, and to SUPPORT everyone, and to HEAL everyone. To EXPRESS FROM the atonement. Miracles are EXPRESSIONS from the atoned state.

"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

"I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

Atonement is a PURPOSE. The purpose is to bring all your brothers back home to God WITH you. That does not happen by you "just accepting atonement for yourself." In fact, when a person isolates off the atonement as a "me only" thing, they are in fact being utterly selfish. This is the ego's version of accepting the atonement. You get to be included, and everyone else is excluded.

"Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

So Jesus isn't actually saying, in his wording, that you only have a singular "project", or a singular "thing to do". As if you just need to reach the finish line and then you're done. Jesus is still very active in spite of accepting atonement - if you notice he's written a large book and helps you to learn it. He is an active teacher. ANYONE accepting atonement MUST .... HAS TO.... IS REQUIRED TO... CANNOT AVOID.... DOES NOT WANT TO AVOID ..... helping others to find atonement for themselves. It is in fact a metaphysical and logical and mystic condition that your own peace of mind is NOT complete while others remain in darkness. You can't go home without them.

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return."

"only the whole Sonship is a worthy co-creator with God"

"YOUR salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship."

"To teach the WHOLE Sonship WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE ITS WHOLENESS and have learned that it IS One."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of." Jesus does not MEAN that you have only one job to do. He means that there is only one scope of free will that you can be responsible FOR, which is your own free will choice to accept atonement. This in NO WAY means that accepting it absolves you of ALL responsibilities, nor does it mean that you don't HAVE a duty - a responsibility - to help others with their atonement. It is in fact a privilege to do so, not a chore, or some crappy job you don't want.

This is not about spiritual laziness. It's not about you "getting what you want" and then forgetting about everyone else. You can't accept atonement WITHOUT accepting that you are eternally BOUND to everyone else and cannot be entirely at peace knowing that they are still suffering. Regardless of whether that suffering is ultimately real or not. The only thing you CAN be responsible for is your own free willed choice to accept the truth. But you are ALSO responsible for the whole sonship. Once you have accepted atonement and have BECOME TRULY RESPONSIBLE, you are now in a position to BE responsible, and you are now responsible FOR EVERYONE.

"You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you"

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy." "The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself (you are responsible for MAKING THE CHOICE TO ACCEPT IT - this says nothing about what you DO IN THE ATONED STATE). Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition." ( you can't even be a FULL miracle worker until AFTER you accept atonement and THEN are in a position to DO ANYTHING ).

"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."

"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, ...."

"Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone?"

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. ***Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal.*** By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, ***he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others.*** The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."

"Miracle Principle 8

Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."

"I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still ***choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete.*** Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded."

"My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. "

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.

Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and *************MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE************* to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it.

The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

The body is entirely designed to look upon an illusory world and make it seem real. It is designed to take something unreal and give it seeming reality. To turn fantasy into fact and to experience its own unreality as if it were real.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Therefore you cannot ask the body to show you what is real or to ask it to describe anything true. It is not ABLE to see reality. It ALWAYS and permanently fixates on what is not real, and attempts to give it truth. And because the body itself is part of "what it observes", it will tell you that the body ITSELF is real, and will pass this off as a neutral observation.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real.""

The body then is a strange device which is utterly biased and incapable of being objective. The question of whether the body EXISTS or not, is given to the body to answer. And the body can ONLY report that it does exist. It will not ever report its own unreality. It is not capable of seeing reality, or recognizing it, or having the kind of vantage point to be able to discern whether something is real or not. That's because the body ITSELF is unreal and cannot step outside of its own unreality.

So what we do is, we keep using the body to try to evaluate what things are, whether they are true, whether they have reality etc. But the very device we're using to do this is utterly biased towards false perception. The body can ONLY see falsely and CANNOT see truth.

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. "

The problem then is that the body itself is INCAPABLE of reaching outside of its own limitations. It is not capable of seeing heaven, nor is it capable of seeing the real world. The physical eyeballs are LOCKED into a mechanism of physics and biology based on separation, utterly dependent on separation to function. They can "see" only the reflected photons which were rejected by illusory surfaces, put there to BLOCK vision and to not see.

You cannot therefore USE the body to see reality, nor to discern what is true, or to correctly identify anything. It is a device made to be part of the very system that it is observing, such that it literally cannot discern anything unlike itself. And because what it observes IS like itself, it regards this as a validation of "reality" and of its own existence. You use the body to look at the body and the body reports, "this body exists". But this is not true.

The body is completely biased and one-sided and tainted in its supposedly "neutrality" of observation. It is incapable of making neutral observations because it, itself, is completely skewed towards making illusions seem real. It HAS taken sides. And it is on the side of hell and death and proving sin is happening. All things physical do this - they are all part of the deception of spacetime.

If you want to find out what is true or real you have to go beyond the body and beyond the physical. There has to be ANOTHER kind of vision, another way to see, which does NOT depend on the body and does not use the physical eyeballs. A way to discern what is real and what is true and what exists. This is the spiritual eye in the mind.

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"The spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error"

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

We are asked therefore to turn away from this isolating dependency on the PHYSICAL SIGHT, on the physical senses, and all the physical LIES of the body, and open up the spiritual eye to being able to SEE with vision, using the mind only, beyond the physical. This is what the development of true perception is about. It's about going beyond the body into the light where you can actually see what is real and true and not be deceived by an illusory physical world. And that has to mean overcoming the body and leaving it behind.

Do you need to be fully awake in Christ in order to perform miracles? NO!!!!!!!!!

ACIM says of the miracle, "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

I think this is telling us that there are sort of two 'modes' in which miracles can occur.

1) You have a degree of "faith" in the truth being true, which means believing in God, and disbelieving illusions, to at least some degree. And as a result of this, you TRUST a higher source of miracles to provide them. Jesus is the source of said miracles, and Holy Spirit is the mechanism. They come through you and around you, but you DO play a certain facilitating role in being a "conduit" for them. aka laying on of hands, speaking truth etc.

2) Eventually the faith that you had that God's truth was true, which was used to 'bridge the gap' between where you were and where God's truth was, is no longer "needed" as such because you have moved yourself into the Kingdom, into the Holy Spirit's mindset, and you are now in the position to actually perform the miracles directly.

In the paragraph, Jesus explains that the miracle is FIRST taken on faith, and you may not be able to see or understand its origins. This means it's still happening (the witnesses to faith still show up), and it's still a miracle, just that it's coming from a place you presently cannot see and you don't fully understand. But you're open enough to CONCEIVE of it, and that is enough to get you "access" to be part of the miracle process. You're willing to believe in it even if you don't FULLY trust it yet, and this is enough, because miracles depend on God's love, not on YOUR personal strength.

This initial faith will produce miracles and it will provide "proof" to your perception that there must really BE a God, there must really BE a source of miracles beyond what you currently can perceive. And then as your faith grows stronger or you become more awakened (same thing), as you gain trust in the truth, you will become aware of the "world" which the miracles were coming from (Heaven). You are then the Christ, sharing in the source of miracles, and having a fully miraculous mind (miracle readiness).

I think from this metaphysical structure, we can see that most miracles being performed today are in the first category, are based on faith, STILL PRODUCE RESULTS, and demonstrate that God's world is real.

However, there are FEW, if any, who are in the world right now, who are performing miracles as a result of being fully awakened to the Christ mind.

When you look at pretty much all of the Bible-based miracle workers, because they quite strongly believe that Jesus is the only Son of God (most of them anyway), this in a way puts a cap on their ability to "become Christ". Therefore almost the entirety of the miracles they perform appear to be based in a faith in the miracle-working power of Jesus, though unseen, and strengthen through faith. These miracles are impressive, but there is EVEN MORE beyond this that Christ is capable of in those who have fully mastered the illusion. That level of functioning is the final goal, as demonstrated by Jesus.

So yes you can perform miracles, or at least participate in the miracle process, even while you are "not yet Christ". While you are not fully awakened, they can still occur through you and around you and produce significant results. This type of miracle working can even raise the dead. There is no real distinguishing as to what is possible. You can share and extend Jesus' miraculous authority over illusions to produce supernatural results. But if you want to REALLY go all the way, able to demonstrate such things as walking on water, changing one object to another, flying, teleporting, dematerializing, multiplying food, manifesting stuff out of thin air, etc.. the FULL POTENTIAL of miracles, then you need to get yourself all the way to the Christ mind.

The passage also tells us that it is normal and natural as part of our awakening "process" to develop faith first, to have trust in the real truth, to some degree, and that this trust is ENOUGH to bring forth "signs" which demonstrate that miracles are occurring. You yourself are not as yet ONE with their Source, or even aware of their source directly, but you're still able to like... cast a fishing rod into the invisible ocean and pull out a miracle. Later, as you advance, you will become more "directly" positioned in the role of miracle worker.

Gotta start somewhere!

This passage by the way is followed by one of Jesus's beautiful paragraphs, which speaks again to our IMMORTALITY:

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

(signs of Life as in signs of Eternal Life as in Miracles).

Quotes from workbook, p. 463; W-pII.13

I've been having some unexpected encounters with angels recently.

After researching more about miracle-working and watching some more videos from people doing it, I learned that it's possible to use your mind and imagination to not only visualize someone being healed, but to also perceive the current state of their body on a "spiritual" level. The imagination and/or inner vision provides this capability.

I ask Holy Spirit to show me someone's "spiritual body". I don't necessarily need Him to do this, as I can see it myself, but it doesn't hurt to be including Him and getting some support. I don't necessarily mean the physical body, but more like their "astral" or "mind body". This shows up in my inner vision as seeing the person's body, if I will reach out a bit in belief that I can do this. The body shows up not as physical flesh but usually as transparent.

A healthy person typically has a transparent or light-filled body on the mind level, while a person with sickness or issues often has "dark areas". The contrast between the very light joyful transparent areas and the dark areas is really obvious. You can use your inner vision to "scan" the person's body, with your eyes closed, and literally SEE if there's any issues.

These dark areas, some would refer to as "evil spirits". You can also think of them as thought forms, attitudes, or energy formations produced by the person's thinking. It's important to be centered in truth and in authority when doing this because if you start buying into fear or making it real or turning it into some kind of battle, you will give your power away and thereby open yourself up to self attack.

When I saw several of these in a person I commanded them to leave, authoritatively, in the name of Jesus, very directly. "In the name of Jesus Christ you MUST leave, I take authority over you in Jesus's name and I command you to leave right now, and do not come back, in the name of Jesus. Go! Get out!" or words to that effect. They must obey, provided you are sure enough of the truth of Jesus to not buy into fear or take no for an answer.

Some just left. One said to me, telepathically, it was not leaving. However this is not optional. You must be firm and persistent. I told it to go nevertheless and that it must, in Jesus' name. These illusions MUST leave because the Christ mind has authority over them. They have no power to truly resist if you don't give them any, and they must comply "in the name of Jesus", which means with the authority of Christ. Christ has authority over all illusions.

One such "entity" said, after some persistence, "I will leave", and I could sense its presence leaving the person and flying off. These things, whatever they are, however you want to interpret them, while they remain in the person they can be "causing", or at least be the illusion of a belief in causing, the person to be sick. They are the embodiment of their ego beliefs about themselves. So they need to be cast out ie the "cause in the mind" needs to be removed. Or to put it another way, the "consequences of a wrong decision" needs to be undone.

A few of these things which I saw even had teeth, or other partial body parts, or may be attempting to clamp onto something or wrap around something, as though they are partially formed entities. And they can come across as being very "mean" or even vicious. You might call it evil. Jesus told me they essentially are "just fear", either generated by the person or attracted to them as a result of their own belief in sin and ego. They seem to attach to certain parts of the body and produce symptoms either there or in any other area that's seemingly unrelated. They must go, because they are not the truth.

Bear in mind that your own focus on these darknesses, which is ego, is you giving power to them and asking for them. You will attract them to you by making them real or believing in them as reality. They are ultimately nothing. And you do not need to think about "defense" because that's just belief in them. Keep it calm and confident and minimal. You don't want to be attracting some kind of revenge.

I won't get much more into that, and I suggest you have confidence in God's truth enough before you attempt to mess with these things. Not because they are a "real threat", but because if you believe they are, you'll make yourself more vulnerable and maybe scare yourself.

But another part of this is that once the dark parts are cleared, you may sense the overwhelming joy and transparency of that person's body parts, and the energetic feeling of this is so profoundly different that it's literally like night and day. When I cleared a person's body in this way, that person on the higher level thanked me. And as I sensed the area of the body which was now transparent, it was SO incredibly joyful and light and free that at first I could not believe I was seeing it properly. The contrast between extreme vicious darkness and brilliant joyful light is huge.

Now, after clearing these "thought forms" and "attack thoughts", repairs need to be made, ie healing, ie miracles which reconfigure the demonstration and representation of the new state of truth in the mind. This is where things get pretty cool.

I now begin to make statements affirming God's truth about the person, and holding out my hands, begin visualizing that Holy Spirit and "light", or "waters of life", are flowing out or firing out like a laser, into the body part that needs correction. As I apply forgiveness to cancel out illusions and COMMAND correction into that area, with a dedicated focus and not being distracted or trying to do several things at once, I start to feel Holy Spirit flowing.

It's important to point out that you need to use your imagination to VISUALIZE the healing taking place. You can also use your imagination to visualize the dark "entities" leaving. You need to SEE on the spiritual level what the healed final result body condition will look like, what is the new truth of it, before it will show up in the physical. And as you visualize what a "healed brain" or "completely recreated knee" or whatever looks like, this starts a manifestational process.

This is because you need to CONCEIVE of the "future healed state" BEFORE it can manifest. So picture what it's going to look like when the healing is done, as though it has "already happened", avoiding the idea of it not having happened yet and not focussing on signs and symptoms and physical illusions that "prove" nothing has changed..

Now, most of what I've been experiencing doing this has been totally unexpected. I did not expect to be able to "see in the spirit", or to be able to discern "negativities" in people, nor how they'd show up, nor how they would at times appear to be interactive. But what I also did not expect, and what has happened 2 or 3 times now, is that when you start to VISUALIZE the body part in its healed state, while commanding and being authoritative over the illusion of sickness, ANGELS start to show up.

When this happened the first time, I felt suddenly that there was a LARGE, joyful, powerful being that was like, overlapping me. Standing just in front of me or actually in the same place as me. It was definitely larger than myself, maybe like 10 feet tall. It had a joyous, calmly confident, helpful feel to it. I did not know what this was at first. I could really feel the presence of this angel much more than I've ever felt them before, and it seemed to be assisting me with the healing. I thought maybe I was imagining this or making it up.

The second time this happened I noticed it again, and it was completely unexpected, and the angel just showed up in my energy field and awareness as though it once again had noticed what I was doing and had come to provide support. Notice that I DID NOT "ask" for angelic support in any way at all, OTHER than by a direct expression and willingness to DO the will of God and carry out His truth and extend His love. That IS asking for God's support, because this is the highest form of prayer. Not asking for what does not exist, but taking an active role in bringing about what you want to exist. I was, you could say, "fulfilling my function", and when you do this, Heaven rushes in to support and empower you!

This happened last night and I could feel this large angel once again as though I was "inside" of it, and it was bigger than me. I asked if it had a name, and it responded (if I remember) "Adam". I asked if the same angel came each time, and the answer was no.

Now, I think this is pretty cool, but I'm still just getting started. The guy that I learned about this from goes further and has much more experience performing miracles. When he does this stuff, the angel doesn't just show up and join with him, it actually goes to the person, and puts its hands into the person's body and fixes stuff. And those fixes show up in the physical body almost immediately. I feel that I haven't quite got to that stage yet, and there is some step or level of commitment or focus or something that I haven't quite opened up to yet, to cause them to take the next steps on their side.

But basically, your mind is capable of interfacing with other people's minds - their mental body - directly, using your inner vision. And because this is happening on the "spiritual plane" (like astral level), the angels notice this and come to assist. As you step into your role as doing God's healing work, and fulfilling your function as the light of the world, Mighty Companions DO come to help you and to carry out God's will. You get support!

This is also similar to the fact that you need to have faith in God in order for miracles to happen. Faith sort of means, you go ahead and just DO IT even though you may not have evidence or proof that it's going to work. You do it first, based on the TRUST that when you take action, the support will happen, the miracle will come, things will fall into alignment, and stuff will get reorganized to match your commitment and conviction. It's like you have to act "as if" it is going to work based on unseen faith first, and this is the confidence needed to CAUSE the effects to occur.

So similarly, as you start to work at expressing miracles and affirming God's truth and sharing healing with people and so on, Heaven DOES come to support you and help you in your service, BECAUSE you had faith and because you took a risk and stepped up and defended the truth about someone. You are not in this alone. I think there is some ACIM quote about how heaven will rush in to support you and so on, but I'm not sure on the wording.

So, if you're feeling adventurous, give this a try. I'm looking forward to expanding on this as we go along and as this working with the angels unfolds more.

Here's some ACIM quotes:

"The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support"

" Yet to the dedication to the truth as God established it no sacrifice is asked, no strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and guarantee the goal's accomplishment."

God doesn't have an attitude of making you guilty for doing certain things. He isn't up there judging and condemning. He isn't holding grievances or hating you for your choices. Nor does he forcibly stop you from doing whatever you want. Even if it's something that is seemingly hurtful to you and others.

When God created you, he extended his infinite unlimited freedom, giving you total free will. This was like a granting of permission, that you are free to create and do whatever you want. God placed NO LIMITS on your freedom. There are no clauses or exceptions, and no small print. You are completely free. It is because of this giving of total freedom that you are a fully created individual being.

That automatically means God isn't sitting there revoking your freedoms, judging you as guilty for the choices you make, regretting giving you freedom, wanting to enact his wrath because of the sins you commit, aiming to punish you for poor choices, or any other kind of control or coercion or attempts to stop you against your will.

God cannot go against your will because your will is actually shared with his own. To deny your freedom would deny his freedom. He isn't in the business of putting you in chains or binding you to certain rules and regulations.

With God there is always a sense of.... you can come and go as you freely wish. No-one is forcing you. You can choose heaven, you can choose hell. You can choose harmlessness or harm, peace or war, life or death.

One thing you cannot do is alter the laws of God, you cannot undo the golden rule, you cannot influence what reality is, you cannot alter what is ultimately true, and you cannot attack anything real. This is because God wills that reality be perfect and immortal and eternal forever, and reality is his creation, not yours.

You also cannot undo the fact that rejecting God results in illusions of pain and suffering, not because God punishes or makes you suffer for trying to violate his will, but because you choose and induce it upon yourself when you try to deny his nature. You literally assert that you want to suffer rather than be happy.

In granting you total freedom, you were also given the freedom to "mis-use" will, to try to will not to will, to attempt to deny what is still true, to try to use creative power to create nothing, and to attempt to repress and disempower yourself as much as you like.

God did not STOP you from believing that you could be separate from him, even though you can't. He didn't stop you from trying to attack him and his kingdom. He didn't stop you from trying to die, or making war and terror, or trying to enforce sickness, or anything else that ego would consider a sin. He doesn't WILL it for you, but he also doesn't force you not to.

Since you've been given total freedom, nothing that you choose is ever a reason for guilt. If you are free, you have been given permission when you were given freedom. God isn't holding you on a leash or binding you in chains. Nor does love enter where it is not welcome, nor does God demand or control or force anything.

God never says "you shouldn't have done that, you're sinful for breaking the rules". You cannot break the rules because you cannot violate your freedom. There are no rules because there are no limits on your freedom.

You actually are totally free to come and go, live or die, be happy or unhappy, be awake or asleep, whatever you want. But this also means that because you are totally free, you are also totally responsible for your choices. Total freedom IS total responsibility.

When you are willing to take total responsibility for your total freedom, you are also taking responsibility for the power of decision to choose what you want. You are now exercising your will to choose whether to will one thing or another, and whether to go home to heaven. This is why heaven is a choice that you have to make freely and willingly. It cannot be forced upon you.

This also then means that you can never blame anyone else for doing anything to you, because in your freedom you cannot have anything done to you against your freedom. You can attack your own freedom, in illusions, but no one can ever be guilty. Because everyone is always free. And you are always free from attack.

The secret of salvation then comes in, because in total responsibility you are the one who must have denied your own freedom. Attempting to be guilty is an attempt to deny that you are free, accusing self and others of violating God's rules and sinning against his law. But this has to be false because God has granted you the freedom AND POWER to do absolutely anything.

The ramification of this is that you could potentially choose never to go back to him. You could choose to be evil and murderous. You could choose destruction and sickness and death. Just as freely as you could choose healing and love and life. And you have done so - although you can always choose again.

This then reveals that whatever you are getting, you must be choosing, because you are free. And since freedom is power and responsibility, you must be choosing AND CAUSING everything that happens. This includes all forms of suffering, which must be doing to yourself freely. This is why you are master of your own destiny, and why you are ruler of the universe, and why nothing happens without your consent.

The question then is, does God just sit in heaven watching all this, allowing you to suffer for as long as you wish? In a sense, yes, except that God is also loving. God does not will that you suffer, or even believe that you suffer. God wills perfect happiness. God wills eternal life and deathlessness. God wills love not fear.

In his love, God has INVITED you freely to return your awareness to him. God isn't coercing you to go there. God HAS placed an atonement plan in place via the Holy Spirit, to gently orchestrate events and repurpose the world to lead you back to eternal life. And because the Holy Spirit is perfect and powerful, succeeding in doing so is effortless for him.

This doesn't mean you are ever forced to return or to give up your dreams. You STILL have to have a little willingness. You still have to be willing to learn - because the time that you take the curriculum is voluntary. But there is a PLAN in place to ENCOURAGE you to return to God. This plan is gentle and wise.

People are arranged to meet because they have POTENTIAL for a teaching/learning situation - for a holy relationship. There are no chance encounters. Events are organised by the Holy Spirit to be conducive to education and healing. This is why we have 'lessons', which appear as trials, so that we can learn to choose again.

None of this is forced. Before we incarnate we CONSENT to plans and events and encounters based on our current needs and wants. We give free permission for things to occur so that we can learn. We exhibit willingness, to whatever degree, sometimes more than others. And our life in the school unfolds accordingly.

But at NO TIME is there ever force, or requirements, or pressure, or sneering down the nose, or judgement, or reprimand, or punishment, or keeping score, or enforced karmic punishment, or any kind of "you're wrong for doing that".

As best as is GENTLY possible, God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit orchestrates time and space to make its events as conducive to change and spiritual progress as possible. As the therapist, the Holy Spirit knows how to do this expertly and perfectly. He knows how to GUARANTEE that everyone will eventually wake up to reality, and it is only a matter of time before we all do so.

You're still free. You will eventually freely return to God because you want to. Because you see no other alternative. Because you recognize that you gained nothing in leaving and will regain everything in returning. Not because anyone has the whip out. Not because there's hell to pay. Not because there is any kind of bully in the sky waiting to kick you in the ass if you take a step out of line.

It's all very loving and gentle and consenting. This is also why the "script is written" pertains to an OPT-IN free-willed curriculum where there is an outline "plan" for atonement but not a FORCED awakening. Nor are you locked into some kind of rollercoaster you can't get off, or some kind of replay of hell that you have no say in choosing.

This is simply because YOU ARE ALWAYS FREE. Your freedom is permanent. There are no restraints, no special rules or terms and conditions, no requirements, no punishments for your choices, and no judgement from God. God does care about you and wills that you awaken, and you will do so because your will is shared. But WHEN you do is still up to you just as it always has been. And this is why accepting atonement is your sole responsibility, because no-one else can do it for you.

"It is crucial to say first that this is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all." UrT1A1

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself." UrM19A4

"When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence YOURSELF, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they COME from an attempt to PROJECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ERRORS." UrT7I8

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it." UrT8E9

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given" UrT9A9

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." UrT1B30N

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment." UrT2A30

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free." UrT9K9

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His." UrT8E9

"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING." UrT12F12

"Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule." UrT26H9

"Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven." UrT18F2

"Heaven is the decision I must make." UrW138

"Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His." UrT8A2

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way." UrT2B69

"Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will, because it involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception." UrT3F13

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW135L19

"The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In fact, both TIME and MATTER were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will, because of the inevitability of this decision. If you review the idea carefully, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose." UrT2B68

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says that this world - Earth - is upside down, back to front, and inside out. Perhaps we should look at how this is the case, to realize just how OPPOSITE Earth is to heaven in its nature.

"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. In Heaven"

In this world, there is saying that "change is life, stagnation is death". You can find plenty of examples of this in what we call "nature".

For example when water stops moving and becomes still, it stagnates. Oxygen stops exchanging at the surface and the water becomes toxic. It can then become host to numerous bacterias and other nasty things. It begins to smell awful and would be dangerous to drink.

It seems then that movement of the water is life, because when it moves the oxygen can exchange and the water becomes infused with it. The oxygen in the water can then seem to support life, such as fish and aquatic plants. So long as the water keeps flowing, impurities are flushed away and the water remains relatively healthy. So it seems that in this world, the idea of "stillness" is equated physically with DEATH, and "movement" is equated with LIFE.

However, in heaven's reality, this is TOTALLY OPPOSITE. In truth, stillness is in fact life, because it means that there is no change, and therefore there is no end to the life, and life becomes immortal. Real life is eternal life. Life which never depletes or runs out or becomes toxic. Its stillness is its peace, and its peace is guarantee of its health. In fact life and health are now equated with what the world would call "stagnation".

From that view, what we would think of as "change" is in fact evidence of DEATH. Time is death, because it attempts to bring an END to everything. Anything that changes can suffer and die, and cannot be immortal. And so anything which seems to be born, to grow, to age and to die, is really NOT eternal life, and is NOT peace, and is NOT reality. This is the truthful perspective on this world, which recognizes that only CHANGELESSNESS is life, and therefore stillness is life, and change is destruction.

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

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

So if you look at it, the physical world is set up to be completely backwards in its functioning. The laws of physics are totally upside down and the REVERSE of God's laws. The laws of "nature", or what we think of as "natural" in the world, is ACTUALLY completely unnatural. And it could not be MORE unnatural.

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. 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."

If you think about it, in the physical world, when you move towards stillness, it seems that you will move towards death. If you stop breathing, your body may die. Indeed, it seems to prove out that if you exercise more and are more physically active, moving and changing, this seems to be "good for your health". So now health is equated with CHANGE, instead of with stillness. And if you were to become sedentary and not move much, it is proven to indicate that your health will be worse. And indeed we seem to refer to "dead bodies" or "lifelessness" as a complete lack of motion.

But a complete lack of motion is GOD. Total stillness is the nature of reality. NOT change. NOT movement. NOT constant activities. So if the world has kind of "sign posts" pointing in a direction that the ego thinks you should be going, its signposts POINT AWAY from stillness. It suggests to you even biologically that you should move towards activity and away from motionlessness. And that if you were to move towards PHYSICAL PEACE, you are in fact moving towards DEATH. This is why some people think that dead bodies are "resting peacefully", which is utterly nonsense.

"Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is JOINING."

So here for example Jesus clarifies that REAL rest, real peacefulness, actually results from spiritual awakening in which you are awake and alert, NOT from sleeping or being unconscious. But the physical world would suggest that you "get some rest" when you are physically inactive, when you are LOSING consciousness, and when you are NOT awake. This is completely backwards from God's truth.

The more you look at this the more examples you will find, indicating that the PHYSICAL NATURE of planet earth, not even considering any kind of perception or interpretation of it - just its physical functioning and behaviors and ways, is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth of reality and to the nature of the Kingdom of God. This is because Earth is in fact TOTALLY OPPOSITE in its NATURE to God's creation. And because it is totally opposite, it cannot BE God's creation.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

This statement literally states that Earth is opposite to heaven in EVERY way. And I could really go on at considerable length describing the WAYS that earth is nothing like heaven. This is not to reject the part of ACIM that says earth can potentially REFLECT heaven, in some kind of neutral way, but its fundamental functioning, the way the system is set up, the kinds of things which happen when you are active or inactive, etc, all point to the "laws of nature" of the physical planet being BACKWARDS.

There are similar things you can notice about guilt. You see the ego suggests that you should not look within because it says that if you do, you will approach the very thing you do not want. That if you look within you will find guilt and sin. And so as you begin to look within, guilt and sin seem to come into your awareness and the ego uses this to steer you AWAY from that direction. It instead points all its arrows outward away from yourself, away from God, and away from ever connecting with the Holy Spirit in your mind. All of its DIRECTIONS run CONTRARY to what is actually true.

"Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you NOT TO LOOK. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, AND SEE THE GUILT IN THEM."

It's similar in PHYSICAL terms in that as you approach things in the world which might symbolize becoming closer to reality, to peace, to freedom and so on, the more the physical world itself screams at you "go the other way". Or even, to suggest that if you keep going in this direction, you are going in completely the WRONG direction, and WILL NOT FIND what you're looking for. This is a DECOY. It is how spacetime is set up to give you constant messages that say "you're going the wrong way" when you are in fact going the right way, and vice versa. So that you are always moving AWAY from the truth.

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success." BACKWARDNESS IS BUILT INTO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS! THE WORLD'S NATURE IS INSIDE OUT!

The physical world therefore is in fact, so to speak, "inside out". It is a nothing pretending to be something. It is an unreality pretending to be real. It has a nature that could not be MORE unlike heaven. It makes it look like peace is associated with DYING and not with living. It steers you AWAY from stillness. And at every turn it deceives you and points you towards the very opposite of what you're looking for. It's all part of "seek and do not find."

Another example is outer space for example. In heaven, everything is light. Light is everywhere. In spacetime, however, the light has been reduced down, limited, withdrawn, condensed, SO MUCH, that all that's left are tiny little pin-pricks of light in the night sky. As though to suggest that MOST of the universe IS COMPLETELY EMPTY. That "space" itself is a LACK OF light and a lack of substance. And that all that remains of the presence of anything are tiny little specks we call atoms, in tiny little clusters, separated by billions of light years.

And then we look to the little bits of material that remain and we call it the presence of a very big planet, when in fact it is practically nothing in the big picture. It's the REMAINS of what is LEFT OVER when ALMOST EVERYTHING Has been removed. And now the presence of something is no longer recognized as the LACK OF something. The world is the ABSENCE OF a world. It is a LACK OF everywhereness. It is the opposite to heaven.

We can of course repurpose the world and the body and the weird backwards laws of physics, to use them to point in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION from which they naturally point. This is what is required in order TO use them for a higher purpose. Something which was made to KILL has to be used to support life. Something which points AWAY from God has to be used to point towards him.

"As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected." "Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"Let not the world deceive you. It was made to be deception."

It is only possible for the Holy Spirit to repurpose everything in the world, PRECISELY BECAUSE everything in the world moving in the WRONG DIRECTION. And so it HAS to be used in an alternative and totally OPPOSITE way to what it was originally intended. For example the body was made to KILL the son of God. It is a device for SEPARATION, to reinforce impriosnment and keep minds from joining. But the Holy Spirit puts its to use by using it for a purpose TOTALLY OPPOSITE TO ITS NATURE.

When we do this, it does not CHANGE the nature of the things we made. It does not stop the world spinning, or does not make the clouds go away, it does not change the fact that dead bodies are motionless and living bodies are moving. It does not change the fact that water stagnates when it doesn't flow. But it looks at it from a different vantage point which INTERPRETS these things as not MEANING what they originally were meant to mean. Or to USE them in an OPPOSITE WAY to their own inherent nature.

Using something for an alternative purpose than it was DESIGNED TO FUNCTION, does not CHANGE its function. It just works within its limits and uses it as best as possible towards a different GOAL. Such as if you were to grow flowers in a machine gun. Or use what the ego made as an attack on God's children (bodies) to help them to LEAVE bodies permanently. That's the whole point. Everything we made as an attack on God is now being used for a higher purpose, which runs AGAINST its inherent nature, and uses it to undo itself. This is only possible BECAUSE the world IS back to front.

As heaven becomes reflected in the world, it does not change the fact that the world is still running IN REVERSE. And even the illusion of time is actually secretly an attempt to move INTO THE PAST, not the future. The world can reflect heaven when looked at in a heavenly way but NOT in terms of ITS FUNCTIONING. It will still always operate in the same way, with the same physics. Decomposed decayed rotten bodies will still appear to symbolize peace and stillness while objects in motion will seem to have energy, vitality and life. And all of this is STILL going to be backwards if you look upon it with love.

It needs to be more clear and more widely understood the sheer EXTENT of the ways in which this world - space and time - planet earth - all galaxies - all physicality - is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to heaven's nature. They are not AT ALL alike. And only by recognizing this can you realize that the world was made to BE opposite to God. And that is why it is NOT GOD'S CREATION, AND WILL END. We can forgive the world BECAUSE it is a picture of crucifixion, but this will not stop it BEING a system of death. Hell becomes interpreted in a heavenly way, IN ORDER TO end it.

You made the ego as a device for separating from God. Symbolically, the body is the ego - the hero of the dream. The ego is a machine designed to operate in separation, opposition, and delusion, believing that illusions are reality and that reality is an illusion. Its perspective is that what is true is false/evil, and what is false is the truth. It is convinced that death is salvation from God, and that sin is real.

You who made this ego really are not bound by it at all, since it is imaginary and doesn't really exist. But you chose to believe that it is real. You gave reality to it by using it, since it is a device for turning illusions into reality.

Your decision to identify with it, was an attempt to attract yourself and attach yourself, or cling to, something other than God, like a magnet, which would allow you to attempt to resist the attraction of God.

So you tried to wear the ego like a piece of clothing, and this is pretty literally symbolized by the wearing of the body, which is the symbolic manifestation of the ego - the false self image. It is helpful to recognize that the body itself is the symbol of the ego, within this dream, although this entire dream is also the ego.

Now, in order to try to repel God and attract yourself to something more attractive than His Love, your ego device offers you the pretend opportunity to be magnetized to something else. You hold onto the ego, cling to it, attach to it, attempt to join with it, and try to be one with it. You try to make it your identity.

Your very sense of self you try to give to it, you empower it, you add reality to its illusory nature, and really you are trying to bring it to life. It is like a frankenstein which is made of death, that you pretend can be animated and take over your self. This is the ego's version of raising the dead!

One of the major ways that you accomplish this, and how this symbolically plays out in the dream, is in your identification with the body - the symbol of the ego. The ego is hiding in the body, as the body, as its attempt to withdraw from God and be protected against the truth. This is why the body is fundamentally an idea of sickness, which must eventually disappear when it gives way to the truth. The body is a defense.

Knowing this, each time that you identify with the body and thus the ego, you do so in order to pull yourself away from God. You are trying to rip yourself away from being identified with God and to anchor yourself into some other identity. You're trying to fuse yourself with the ego and body and turn yourself into them.

The closer that you associate with the body, and the more you push God away, the more the body starts to exhibit sickness. Sickness is a defense against God, and it makes the body more real. The more reality you give to the body, the more you are able to become "one" with the ego, and therefore whatever happens to the body is happening to you.

Eventually, a profound "unity" with the ego, as the body, produces death. Death simply means that you've created so much sense of clear distinction and separation between you and God, that you have super-magnetized yourself to the body, and have done everything you can to cut off the source of Life.

The body then cannot be long maintained when it is starved of Life, and the perception that you are disassociated from God makes you perceive that you have no power and no causality. What has no cause cannot exist, so without a cause you will die.

In attempting to overcome this, the journey simply involves giving up the identification with the ego and thus the body. But at first this is going to be difficult. Each time that you find a willingness to expose yourself to the truth, your association with the ego is going to have a major reaction. Since you've come to see through the ego and with the ego, you will interpret the meaning of the truth as the ego would interpret it.

Whatever the truth says, the ego perceives to be false, unwanted, an attack, dangerous and threatening. Whatever the truth claims is true, the ego cannot see clearly or correctly, will read into it, and will see reflected back to it its own ego nightmare, which will be frightening. So this produces a lot of resistance. You will defend the ego, protect its beliefs, side with it, trust it, believe it is telling the truth, and go along with its guidance. You will think you're doing this completely sanely and in order to not only uphold innocence but also to protect your life. You are trying to preserve your sense of self.

No-one in any state of mind wants their self to really be destroyed. Whether your self is identified with your real self, or with the ego self/body, you will protect it and defend it. If you are associated with ego and the ego experiences the truth as an attack, you will defend your ego, believing that you're doing exactly the right thing. However, when you defend the ego, you are choosing death.

Each time that you are aligned with the ego and try to protect it, because you think that you are protecting what you are - what you perceive yourself as - your self/identity - you protect illusions and give reality to them. This cuts you off from God/Life, which is a step towards death. It will produce sickness. So in the name of self-preservation, you will actually believe you're preserving your existence while in fact you are destroying yourself.

This is how people choose to die! This is why all death is a choice and all death is suicide. People don't realize that when they're identified with the ego/body, they keep doing the perfectly natural thing of defending themselves, but because their identity is all caught up in the ego, they inadvertently defend the ego. And that is a major problem. Everyone defends the truth, as they see it, and if the truth is the ego's truth, they will defend it to the death, literally.

Also when you are exposed to the truth, if you are holding onto the ego identity/body and believe/see yourself as the body, you will perceive that the truth is threatening you. Anything in agreement with your current beliefs is seen as truth and anything not in agreement is seen as an unwanted evil attack. This is what makes it difficult to learn to trust God - because initially God is thought to be evil, a threat, a danger, and an attempt to stop you from existing.

This is why you have developed in your mind a sense of a "false God" who is evil, out to get you, wants you to stop existing, is trying to destroy you and wants you dead. This is your ego's view of God. This is its interpretation, and you've made it your interpretation. This is the God of wrath and vengeance and revenge. And this part of you, the ego part, really believes that it is God's will that you die. And it uses this as perfectly rational-seeming justification for why you should die - because it's what God wants for you and you think it's inescapable. This is the death wish.

In order to overcome this "evil God", you need to recognize that your association with the ego has clouded your judgement, has presented the truth as something false, has presented what is false as something true, your whole world is upside down and back to front, and you need to become willing to rediscover what the truth really is.

That's not going to seem easy or welcome, especially to your ego alliance, because the real truth appears as the complete opposite to what the ego believes. It seems to be evil and dangerous, and you will feel tremendous resistance to approaching it. You think it wants you dead, and nobody in their right mind would want to approach their most feared enemy.

However, you need to learn that the God you fear is not REALLY what God is like. The God you think will mean you don't exist, does not REALLY prove you don't exist - that's just what the EGO thinks about God. God demonstrates not only that you exist but that you exist forever, are immortal, eternal, and that God completely supports and sustains you in every way.

This isn't the view of God that the ego will ever be able to see or accept, because it was not designed to do so. It was only designed as a kind of filtration device, to block the truth and invert it, and make illusions seem real. That's all it does and that's all it was meant to do. That's what you designed it to be, and that's why the ego cannot awaken. How can an illusion awaken? The ego isn't really anything at all.

So to awaken, you must awaken FROM the ego, in spite of the ego, and in order to recognize that the ego is not real. Everything the ego perceives and believes in MUST be false and unreal. So you get this choice, to decide who you are going to side with. God or the ego. There isn't really a choice because the ego isn't real and doesn't exist, but it will seem like a choice so long as you think the ego is who you are.

Believing you are the ego goes hand in hand with believing you are a physical body, because the body is the symbol of the ego thought system. And as you expose yourself to truth, mis-perceiving it with the ego will threaten "you", or your sense of self (ego aligned self), and you will want to defend yourself against it. Therefore you will resist the truth, resist waking up, want nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, will not want to entertain the idea of powerful miracles, and you will fear the rejection of God. Not just God's rejection but that, if God is real, you (ego) do not exist.

That is terrifying to the ego, so if YOU have associated yourself with the ego and believe it is you (you are a body), then you will be afraid that you don't exist. You might have noticed when you read ACIM especially at the beginning, that you feel like it is saying a truth that completely ignores you, doesn't even mention you, doesn't acknowledge you, and acts as though you don't even exist.

It can be maddening and make you genuinely angry. This is the ego, because the truth DOES ignore the ego and does not acknowledge it as existing. Because it really doesn't. It simply overlooks it entirely and demonstrates that it is not real. So if you are tied to the ego you will think that this applies to YOU, and that is pretty upsetting.

You might even put up a defense against the truth because you do not want it and see it as an evil enemy, and therefore implement sickness in your body/mind/emotions to try to protect your identity from the truth. You'll try to make the body more real than the truth, and give truth to the body.

This will put power into the ego, will distort your view of yourself as someone little and vulnerable, will shut you off from the Source of Life, and will show up in the body/as the body as sickness and disease. Eventually if you do not choose to be willing to accept the real truth as it is, and not the ego's misinterpretation of it, this will produce death, and you will have chosen it on purpose because you thought you were saving your life.

So really it's a struggle to wake up when you have this ego thing that you made that you are still pretty fond of, which you side with and listen to and trust and use, because it makes you very defensive against the truth and very suspicious of it. Remember the ego will go from suspiciousness to visciousness, and you can bet that with enough exposure to "reality" it will turn viscious in an effort to block it out.

Gradually you will surrender and let go, allow the truth to seep in with little steps of willingness, open yourself up to accepting God as the truth, allow Holy Spirit into your heart and mind, and come to recognize that illusions are not real. This will mean realizing the body is not real, just an illusion, as a symbol of the ego in the mind, and that you do not need it.

Your dependence on it and on the ego's laws regarding what the body needs must also go. And so your mis-identification with the ego will come to an end. Finally you will let go of it, detach from it, and recognize that it is nothing at all. It has no power, it is not real, it holds no truth, it cannot do anything to you, and you are free of it. And having no further purpose or use for it, it will disappear, and it will not be YOU that is disappearing but just something that didn't really exist to begin with.

So you can see this is all really an exercise in identity. Who are you? You've become an ego, but it's not who you are. You cling to it and the body like you're trying to turn it into yourself, or yourself into it. You use the body and your oneness with it through sickness to reinforce your ego's reality and deny God's. All because you are always trying to protect your "self" even if your sense of self is misplaced.

The desire to defend yourself isn't misplaced, although the course says "If I defend myself I am attacked", meaning that if you defend the EGO, you are attacked. Defending your enemy will result in attack. You just don't quite as yet recognize fully the ways in which you and the ego are best buddies, trying to stay associated with it and to keep it ONLY because you've become convinced that it is you.

If you were to recognize clearly that YOU are not the ego at all, and it is nothing but an illusory device, having withdrawn all belief that its illusions are real (including sin and death and sickness and physical matter and the body and the world), then you wouldn't have any real reason to need to defend 'it' AS you, and you'd simply be who you really are. YOU need no defense at all when your sense of identity and self is associated with your Real Self - the Higher Self - or even as Christ.

Be free!

A selection of quotes (with mostly my emphasis) talking about how this world ends and how you move beyond it to Heaven...

"Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and TIME HAS DISAPPEARED, taking PERCEPTION with it as it goes, and leaving BUTthe Truth to be Itself. That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God."

"And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and COMES TO TAKE US HOME, reminding us of our Identity Which our forgiveness has restored to us."

"You dwell NOT HERE, BUT IN ETERNITY. You TRAVEL BUT IN DREAMS, while safe at home."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. GONE IS PERCEPTION, false and true alike. GONE IS FORGIVENESS, for its task is done. And GONE ARE BODIES s in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the LAST PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD WITHOUT A PURPOSE AND WITHOUT A CAUSE. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, NO WALLS, NO BODIES, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the BODY is still seen, but NOT exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark CANNOT BE LONG LIMITED TO LITTLENESS. Once you have crossed the bridge, the VALUE OF THE BODY IS SO DIMINISHED in YOUR sight, that you will see no need at all to MAGNIFY it. For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER there."

"The WORLD WILL END when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. IN BLESSING IT DEPARTS, for it will not end as it began."

"The WORLD WILL END when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment.The WORLD WILL END with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, THE WORLD IS OVER. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely CEASE to seem to be."

"And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And, with this final blessing of God's Son UPON HIMSELF, the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

The STARS WILL DISAPPEAR IN LIGHT, and the SUN, which opened up the world to beauty, WILL VANISH. PERCEPTION WILL BE MEANINGLESS, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will HAVE NO FUNCTION. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The PERCEPTION OF THE REAL WORLD WILL BE SO SHORT, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

"From the FORGIVEN WORLD, the Son of God is LIFTED easily TO HIS HOME. And THERE he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

"Even SALVATION WILL BECOME A DREAM, and VANISH from his mind. For SALVATION IS THE END OF DREAMS, and, with the CLOSING OF THE DREAM, will have NO MEANING. Who, AWAKE IN HEAVEN, COULD DREAM that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"BEYOND THE BODY, BEYOND THE SUN AND STARS, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE, and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.

The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it no longer is contained at all. The light expands and covers everything (not earth), extending to infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside. For there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the VISION of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within you, and joined to all of it as surely as all is joined to you.

Accept the vision that can show you this, AND NOT THE BODY."

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, WHERE ALL THE WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and ITS EFFECTS HAVE GONE AS WELL."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his MISCREATIONS CAN DISAPPEAR in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because IT IS A VISUAL MISPERCEPTION. "

"No one remains in HELL, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. 2 You will find Heaven. 3 Everything you seek but this WILL FALL AWAY. 4 Yet not because it has been taken from you. 5 It will go because you DO NOT WANT IT. 6 You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness."

"Heaven remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to this STRANGE WORLD YOU MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did NOT MAKE two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH THE OTHER'S SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

"Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. 2 Angels light the way, so that all DARKNESS VANISHES, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. (not earth) 3 A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light (heaven) reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in DREAMS."

"He offers thanks to you as well as him for you arose with him when he began to save the world. And you will be with him when TIME IS OVER AND NO TRACE REMAINS OF DREAMS of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody. For in its place the hymn to God is heard a little while. And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but to return to the ETERNAL FORMLESSNESS of God."

"LIKE ALL THINGS IN THE WORLD, ITS MEANING IS TEMPORARY AND WILL FADE INTO THE NOTHINGNESS FROM WHICH IT CAME when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons IT IS AN ILLUSION, for in REALITY there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; ***ANOTHER ILLUSION*** that replaces the first, SO BOTH CAN FINALLY DISAPPEAR. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is NOTHING MORE THAN THAT?

It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that THE WORLD HAS NOTHING TO GIVE. What can the sacrifice of NOTHING mean?"

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No one who has escaped the world AND ALL ITS ILLS looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his peace. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses NOTHING as a substitute for everything?"

"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand. "

"When the light comes, and you have said, "God's Will is mine," you will see such beauty that you will KNOW it is not of you. Out of your joy, you will create beauty in His Name, for YOUR joy could no more be contained than His. THE BLEAK LITTLE WORLD WILL VANISH INTO NOTHINGNESS, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will LEAP INTO HEAVEN and into the presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your hearts are not ready. But I CAN tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for YOU, and what He wills for you IS yours. "

"THE WORLD YOU SEE IS AN ILLUSION OF A WORLD. GOD DID NOT CREATE IT, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is NOTHING IN THE WORLD you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when ALL THINGS VISIBLE WILL HAVE AN END.

The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"THE WORLD STANDS LIKE A BLOCK before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as NOTHING MORE THAN JUST A FRAGILE VEIL, SO EASILY DISPELLED that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for ONLY WHAT IT IS. And now it CANNOT FAIL TO DISAPPEAR, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant IS THE WORLD FORGOT, with TIME FOREVER ENDED AS THE WORLD SPINS INTO THE NOTHINGNESS FROM WHICH IT CAME."

"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, OUT OF ILLUSIONS INTO HOLINESS; OUT OF THE WORLD AND INTO ETERNITY; out of all fear and given back to love."

"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 SO 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. "

"There is nothing you CAN hold against REALITY. All that must be forgiven are the ILLUSIONS you have held against your brothers. Their reality HAS no past, and ONLY illusions can BE forgiven. God holds nothing against ANYONE, for He is INCAPABLE of ILLUSIONS of ANY kind. Release your brothers from the slavery of THEIR illusions, by forgiving them for the illusions which YOU perceive in them. Thus will you learn that YOU have been forgiven, for it is YOU who offered THEM illusions. In the holy instant, this is done for you IN TIME, to bring to you the true condition of Heaven."

(in true perception) "The BODY'S EYES WILL CONTINUE TO SEE DIFFERENCES. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will NO LONGER ACKNOWLEDGE THEM. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the BODY'S EYES WILL REPORT THEIR CHANGED APPEARANCES AS BEFORE. 4 But the healed mind will put them ALL IN ONE CATEGORY; ***THEY ARE UNREAL*** 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives FROM WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE OUTSIDE WORLD. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as REALITY IS WHOLLY REAL, APART FROM SIZE AND SHAPE AND TIME AND PLACE—FOR DIFFERENCES CANNOT EXIST WITHIN IT—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all ILLUSIONS is truth."

Forgiveness corrects a reversal of cause and effect.

In every single situation, every false perception, every belief, every error or mistake you can make, every relationship, every drama, you CAN only really make one mistake.

You can only get cause and effect back to front.

The ENTIRE ego thought system, all of the separation, everything that happens in this world, all events and experiences, are ALL entirely based on a reversal of cause and effect.

God is cause. You are God's effect. You also can cause, because you are like God. But you cannot cause God, being His effect.

HOWEVER, because you are free to choose, when you choose to TRY to cause God, all hell breaks loose.

This is simply because you are trying to upset the divine order. You are trying to convert God, who is PURE CAUSE, into an effect. And you are simultaneously trying to change YOU, who are purely an effect of God, INTO the cause of yourself.

In this is the entire authority problem, usurping of God's will, all sense of sin, and every consequence that comes from sin including guilt and fear and sickness and death.

Every form of level confusion is a reversal of cause and effect. All belief in magic, every state of victimhood, every delusion possible in the mind, all conditions of the ego and its thinking, the emergence of a physical body, even death, are all SYMPTOMS of an inverted cause-effect relationship.

Therefore, THE ONLY CORRECTION, the only "forgiveness you need do", is to set cause and effect back into their proper relationship. In all ways, at all levels.

So when you're in the midst of some drama story about who did what to whom, or why you're afraid of this and that, or how you've been caused to be sick against your will, or why death is looming, or why you "can't" or "won't", or why someone else is responsible for your existence etc, this is ALL because somewhere in your mind you are mis-perceiving and have attempted to reverse cause and effect.

There are two parts to this error.

1) The belief that God is causing you against your will and you don't want to be affected.

2) The belief that you are the cause of making yourself and do not need to be an effect of God.

This plays out in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of dramas.

ALL you have to do, to forgive, is fix the causality.

That means, you need to UNDO, ANY belief that says anything to the contrary of how God naturally creates. If there is any aspect of what you believe or perceive that is saying "its happening to me against my will" or "I did not choose this" or "I am not responsible for causing this" or "they did this to me", that's a mistake. That must be flipped around.

It's very EXTREMELY SIMPLE. There is NOTHING ELSE that has gone wrong. It's not merely a sense of separation from God being corrected. That sense of separation arose through attempting to change causality. You wanted to be the cause of God instead of his effect. That's all. And because of that, you now see other people as being the cause of you against your will, which SECRETLY is your desire to be NOT caused BY God.

So you fix the causality. I am not being caused by that person. That person is not doing anything to me at all. I am not experiencing anything because of them. They did not cause this. I am not a victim of them. They can do nothing to me. I take back all of my power that I gave to them. They are not responsible for my life or existence or feelings or experiences. I chose everything I am experiencing myself. I am completely responsible for this whole thing. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I am not a victim of anyone or anything. etc

This is placing you in your proper role of *causing the dream*, but also is placing you in your proper role of BEING THE EFFECT OF GOD.

Because as you acknowledge YOUR causal power, which you inherited from Him, you are acknowledging that God's causal nature is IN YOUR MIND, and therefore so is God.

All you are doing is cancelling out all belief in "horizontal cause-and-effect". There are no causes on this level. There are only effects on this level. You are NOT one of those effects, because you CAUSED this whole level from above.

Fix the broken causality and EVERYTHING ELSE will fall into place.

Miracles are examples of vertical causality which defy all horizontal laws of cause and effect.

There is only one curriculum. It is God's curriculum. It applies to EVERYONE, no matter how awake or asleep or in what walk or life or following what religion, even people who have never heard of A Course in Miracles. There is a difference between ACIM - the book, the course - and "the universal curriculum", which applies to everyone, book or not.

The curriculum is REQUIRED, in that there is only ONE truth, and every single soul has to find their way TO that one truth eventually. The truth is non-negotiable. "The time you take it is voluntary", and you can go closer and retreat and get lost and come back again etc but generally speaking "the truth" is the curriculum that you need to learn, ie the atonement, and either you learn it or you avoid it for a while, but *everyone* HAS to learn it. Because it's God's guarantee that you WILL wake up from dreaming.

God's ANSWER to the separation, which includes ALL PEOPLE, is the Holy Spirit, who he created AS the answer. Not just a bunch of information. Not just some "optional path". He is IN YOUR MIND as a spirit being, and he forms the Christ Mind, which ALL souls share. It is *IMPOSSIBLE* to be awakened and to exclude the Holy Spirit. The truth that you learn, true perception, IS HIS perception. You can only "learn it", by joining YOUR perception with HIS and aligning with His way of seeing. There is NO OTHER way, other than the ego's.

So essentially the Holy Spirit, sooner or later, is going to form a relationship with you, you are going to develop trust, you're going to open up to Him and work with Him. He is your TEACHER. Jesus also calls him "the only therapist", due to His position of knowing the truth. There is only one truth no matter who you are.

This applies to all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindu folk, you name it. The Holy Spirit is *unavoidable* in the curriculum process. Indeed Jesus says that you must learn to join your mind with His and SHARE His mind. You cannot avoid Jesus either. And that's probably something that might piss off some people following the FORM of other paths. That is why Jesus CORRECTLY and truthfully said, "I am the way the truth and the light and no one comes to the father but by me."

Additionally, though some will not like this fact either, being a miracle worker is a God-given right and *completely natural* for anyone who is joining with the Holy Spirit's thought system and waking up to the truth. Removal of blocks to awareness releases or rather stops interfering with miracles, and "miracle working" becomes your natural profession. As Jesus says also, once you accept the atonement you become PART OF the atonement plan and then you PROFESS HIM... ie express Him, because "atonement is the natural profession of the children of God." And that applies to ALL SOULS, no matter how ACIM-oriented you seem to be right now.

The fact is that as you approach the truth and merge with love etc, you WILL, MUST, CANNOT AVOID, becoming miraculous. It is your nature. God created you miraculously and you are miraculous forever. And so you WILL perform miracles as part of your function of healing on Earth. Anyone who "doesn't like" the idea of performing miracles FOR OTHERS (professing Jesus) is going to run into a roadblock at some point because miracles are NATURAL and *EVERYONE* is supposed to be doing them.

So long story short, the curriculum is not optional, nor is becoming intimate with Holy Spirit, nor is having a direct relationship with Jesus, nor is miracle working. This is why Jesus also says you MUST join the great crusade with Him as an active worker. It's not even something you would want NOT to do. It's a given. Part of the metaphysics. You become part of the atonement PLAN which goes far beyond yourself and helps others.

So all this stuff IS MANDATORY. You can, however, avoid it. You can be in denial of it. You can try to reject it. You can refuse to accept it. But it does not change the facts or the truth. At some point, everyone is going to return to God through the universal curriculum. They MIGHT not necessarily do it through the FORMAT of "A Course in Miracles", the book, with the lessons etc... they MIGHT come to it through what SEEM like "other paths", but no matter the appearance of the path, it is ALL part of God's curriculum for awakening, which MUST include the Holy Spirit, joining with ALL brothers including Jesus, and taking lessons to learn the SAME truth as everyone.

"Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality." ALL words in ACIM are symbols TWICE removed from the truth.

The word "apple" is twice removed from reality. The thing it represents, the actual apple itself sitting in your fruit bowl, is once removed from reality. Notice that words are symbols OF SYMBOLS. Therefore the apple itself is a symbol, and is NOT reality. Everything in this world is symbolic, just as all dreams are made of symbols.

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are."

"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin"

"The body is the symbol of the ego"

"As nothingness cannot BE pictured, so there IS no symbol for totality."

"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."

"The body can become a **sign** of life ... and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that ***it represents***." (symbolizes)

Symbols are not an end in themselves. They don't have their own identity. They represent something else. They serve as a reflection or representative for something they point to. The body for example is not a THING in its own right, it is not an end. It SYMBOLIZES something else, and therefore is an effect of something else.

"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end. "

The metaphysics of ACIM does not really exist at the level of words twice removed. The metaphysics is once removed from reality. The words themselves, SYMBOLIZE, the metaphysics. They are expressions FROM or structured BY the metaphysics. Behind the words, deeper than the words, there is a core metaphysical structure which the course's expressed statements are BASED ON or coming from.

Or to put it more accurately, the ACTUAL metaphysics takes place as STATES OF MIND, as REALITIES, as WORLDS, playing out in the mind as SYSTEMS of logical thought. A THOUGHT of separation produces an ENTIRE WORLD representing that LOGICAL STATE. So what is this "deeper" metaphysics? There is a perfectly pure LOGICAL SYSTEM, underlying both reality and illusions. But the system is not a concept. It actually takes places as STATES of mind. As experiences of "realities". Conclusions have effects because PREMISES ARE CAUSES!

Both God's thought system and the ego's thought system are based on a LOGICAL premise. God's premise is Himself. His nature establishes the laws of what is TRUE. As He expresses/creates, His thought SYSTEM functions, and follows the laws established in his nature. The OUTCOME or "logical conclusion" of His system of thinking, MUST be in accord with his nature and be THE ONLY possible outcome that could come from such a starting point.

Because God is eternal, the outcome of His thinking must be eternal. Because God is alive, His thoughts must be alive. Because God is love, His thoughts must be made of love. Because God is happy, His thoughts must be happy and lead to happiness. Because God is a creator, the living beings He creates must be creators also (co-creators).

Everything that comes FROM Him is in accord with His Will and nature, and is in his perfect LIKENESS. It HAS to be in His likeness because in a logical system, everything that comes from the ORIGIN of the system stays WITHIIN the confines of the system and thus is governed by the same laws.

These FACTS, have nothing to do with interpretations, ideals, made-up spirituality, theory or theology, or any other kind of conceptual make-believe. These are ACTUAL FACTS of reality. And "metaphysics" is based on irrefutable FACTS. It is a fact that God is a creator, and therefore it MUST be a fact that God's creation is also a creator. Regardless of whether ACIM ever mentioned that in its words at all, that HAS to be true.

ACIM happens to say "A co-creator with the Father must have a Son." But you can DEDUCE this, LOGICALLY, by following God's system of thought. Simply, God is a creative father. He passes on Himself to whatever He creates. Therefore, logically, if God Himself has a nature which results in a Son, then the Son MUST have a nature which results in a Son of a Son. YOU, as a Son, MUST therefore have creations. This isn't true just because ACIM says so in its words. It's true LOGICALLY. And that is the deeper metaphysics. Jesus has BASED those quoted statements ON that logic.

Let's look at another example, the separation from God. Without even considering anything ACIM says about separation, let's assess it with purely impeccable logic and see what we get.

Ok so God wills eternal life because God IS eternal life. God wills happiness. God wills a total lack of limits because He is unlimited. God gives freedom, because God IS freedom. The co-creative living entities that God MUST create, therefore must have His freedom. But this also means, they are free FROM any kind of limitation or restraint. The only truth is that they must function WITHIN the system of God. They cannot leave God. BUT, they can exercise their co-creative ability to freely choose to try to DENY or oppose God's will and nature, thus opposing their own. What would HAVE to happen if you did that?

Look at it purely logically. Reality is ..... light, life, happiness, peace, love, unlimited, constant, unchanging, equal/harmonious, permanent, truthful, open, immortal, etc. BECAUSE, this is what God is. So everything IN God's system must be this too. What would an OPPOSITE to this be? What would you get, if you DENIED this system and tried to bring about an OPPOSITE system?

Well, an opposite system would have to be based on the "belief" that all of the nature of God is NOT true or real. It has to be a PREMISE, that OPPOSES God's premise. So the premise is, ... darkness, death, unhappiness, conflict, hatred/fear, limitation, change, inequality/difference, impermanence, everything is false, closed, mortality, etc. Because these are the LOGICAL opposites to God's nature. And if this collection of "unpleasant" CONDITIONS is the PREMISE of the entire ego SYSTEM, everything WITHIN this "line of thinking" MUST RESULT IN, all of these things. DEATH, is the logical outcome of the ego thought system.

So the question is, does this logical conclusion LINE UP with what A Course in Miracles says. And the answer is YES. It does. In fact Jesus even says so.

"From the belief in sin (the premise), the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a ***logical conclusion***; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos ***DO follow neatly from their starting-point***. Each is a different form in the **progression** (logical thought process) of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth."

"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."

"The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing."

So what you find is, if you can get a grasp of the PURE LOGICAL BASIS of God's system, and if you can then grasp the idea that the "separation" is simply the idea of AN OPPOSITE TO REALITY, you can LOGICALLY come to conclusions. And the fact is, that these conclusions EXACTLY MATCH what Jesus has described in A Course in Miracles. WITHOUT ERROR. They totally correlate to the separation, the result of separating, the OUTCOME of starting on a basis of sin.

"The wages of sin is death - ie, if you start with sin (which is the idea "an opposite to God is possible", you must end with death". Death is the suppression and denial and NEGATING OF, God's reality. It is the "end of life" because it OPPOSES GOD'S WILL which supports life.

Therefore, and this is a metaphysical FACT.... a belief in separation MUST LEAD TO a seeming "world" or "logical state of mind", wherein everything is based on an idea of sin and death. e.g. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son" - ie its the idea of God's LIVING son, pictured in a condition OPPOSITE to living. Similarly "the world was made as an attack on God" is based on the LOGIC that by trying to OPPOSE THE TRUTH, you "attacked" the premise of the truthful thought system (God), by trying to establish another SYSTEM that was totally opposite.

For example, Jesus says "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way". Why is Earth OPPOSITE to Heaven? Because it is part of a "world" or STATE of OPPOSITION to THE TRUTH. The world is thus a logical outcome of the ego thought system. It is MADE OF DEATH. It is made of denial. It is made of sin. This isn't something I need to say based on ACIM saying it. I can make this "claim", IMPERSONALLY, WITHOUT OPINION, because the METAPHYSICS accurately indicates that this MUST be the case.

Now, here is the interesting thing about metaphysics. The underlying core logic describes VERY accurately, PERFECTLY, not only the nature of God's "system" or world, and the nature of any world that tries to oppose it. Through LOGICAL REASONING, which must be "impeccable", you can actually make "statements"- symbolic word expressions once removed from the metaphysics, that were never written IN the Course itself, but which are TOTALLY in line with it. This is not an opinion or a matter of making something up. The LOGIC tells you, BY ITSELF, WHAT MUST BE TRUE.

For example we could say, anything that is opposite to God who is eternal life must be incapable of living forever. It doesn't necessarily explicitly SAY that in the course, but it MUST be true. It does however say basically the same thing in other words, e.g. "there is no life outside of heaven."

We could also say, "everything in this world opposes reality". It doesn't necessarily say that in the course. But it MUST be true. The metaphysical LOGIC, the impeccable reasoning, TELLS YOU, that it MUST be true because it is perfectly sound logic. And this world IS A LOGICAL SYSTEM BASED ON AN ENTIRELY LOGICAL PREMISE.

The really interesting thing is, the metaphysical LOGICAL SYSTEM completely removes the need for OPINIONS. Of any kind. If God is truth, anything not of God is not true. That is purely logical. It's not an opinion. In fact the LOGIC is such a COMPLETE system, with no strange fuzzy exceptions or loopholes or things unaccounted for, totally black and white in its perfect clarity and precision, that it leaves NO ROOM for ANY INTERPRETATION. NONE.

And this is why the multitude of "interpretations" of the course, ALL of which are NOT really based on pure logic, are faulty and OF THE EGO. And this inevitably results in conflict and arguments because it inherently leads to CONTRADICTIONS. The ego cannot even reason correctly. Our normal ego thought processes don't even typically function "LIKE GOD THINKS", and therefore comes to FALSE conclusions about His system of logic. Frequently. And you can see by all the debate and WAR in this forum the sheer extent of this CONFUSION, which has resulted from NOT SEEING THE METAPHYSICAL FACTS CLEARLY, errors in logical reasoning, and false conclusions that EGOs have arrived at. There is ONLY ONE TRUTH.

All we can do is look at the logical system and let IT TELL US, what the truth MUST be. If we don't, and we start trying to MAKE UP TRUTH, or DECIDE what the truth is, we are now delusional and are not following the logic and are not having REASON. We then will not MAKE SENSE and this leads to all confusion. That means, the logical conclusions being drawn here, or by anyone who can reason impeccably, COMPLETELY TRANSCENDS opinion. It REFLECTS the truth. It is FACT. That means it is not MY opinion, or yours, or anyone's. It is how things actually are.

Therefore, if you can grasp this and SEE the sense in it, you can USE the metaphysical logical BASIS of everything the course says as a TOOL. You can USE it, practically, to inform you of what the course MUST BE MEANING. You can actually hold up a quote, and COMPARE IT, to the metaphysical structure, and provided your grasp of the structure is accurate, it will TELL YOU the context in which the quote is placed, the meaning of the references, what it is referring TO, and thus what it MUST MEAN.

If you get used to doing this, you will find gradually that everything Jesus says in the course is BASED ENTIRELY ON logical reasoning. Jesus is an absolute MASTER of this. And you will then realize that all of the WORDS in the course are in fact expressions OF the metaphysics. The number of ways and forms of expression OF those FACTS, is largely unlimited. Jesus wrote a huge book expression FROM the facts. He could've written more. If you "get the facts straight", and are not in denial or making logical errors, you can evaluate everything the course's WORDS say, and CORRECTLY RECOGNIZE what they MUST MEAN, in light of what the logical truth says MUST be true.

This however is one area that we are all struggling with, because most of us do NOT think logically or impeccably enough. We make a lot of errors. And the main reason for that is simply NOT SEEING the core logical BASIS behind the ENTIRE metaphysics of the course. And so instead, we'll try to "put together the pieces" from the bottom up, starting with loose ends, trying to assemble a cohesive picture, and making a lot of errors along the way. We then depend too heavily on the WORDS. The wordings. The phrasing. What it SEEMS like it says. And we will find that sometimes the CHOICE of words can seem misleading, when you compare it to the metaphysical meaning.

What the logic can do for you though, is it can provide you with a powerful tool for discernment, it can guide you, it can tell you what Jesus's words mean, it can clarify what the words CANNOT mean, and it can help you to get past all the nit-picking arguments and disagreements that come from MULTIPLE OPINIONS, all of which result from a LACK OF true facts and too much faulty reasoning or "blindness" to the LOGICAL METAPHYSICS. All of the discussions about "is it this or that" come from this "difficulty" with seeing the logic behind it.

Does A Course in Miracles line up with a PURELY LOGICAL set of conclusions, a logical system of black and white conclusions? YES. It totally does. Was this world made as a result of a LOGICAL conclusions? YES. Does death occur because of the conclusion that MUST come "inevitably" from a premise of real sin? YES. Would we make BODIES as a logical CONCLUSION in a thought system? YES, because they are the "natural outcome" of WALLS THAT BLOCK TRUTH, as "separation devices". Bodies ARE the idea of the rejection of wholeness. They ARE limitation, as an experiential idea or state of mind.

The atonement is logical too. It is nothing but the recognition that only the truth is true. There is no real sin. An opposite to what is all encompassing does not exist. It is the TRUTH. It represents God's PREMISE and therefore results in the resuming of the extension of creation. IT HAS TO. That's part of its logical basis. This is also why by "denying the denial of truth", you LOGICALLY cancel out the denial. Because you took what is FALSE, and you tried to make it TRUE, in order to deny that the truth is true. So if you REVERSE that by DENYING that the false is true, you deny the denial of the truth, restoring the truth as the only truth. This is entirely logically based.

To restore you to reality, you must UN-OPPOSE God. You must stop "negating" the truth". You must stop believing in sin, which is the idea of God's system having been destroyed and opposed. You must surmount death, which means resurrection is nothing but an assertion of TRUTH, which is life. Everything to do with God's creation, everything to do with the separation, everything to do with the descent into the ego and death, and everything to do with healing and awakening to reality, is all ENTIRELY the interplay of PURELY LOGICAL SYSTEMS or states.

Awakening is even logical and inevitable because you, being an effect of God, must FOREVER be an effect of God, since God never changes, and therefore CANNOT ever stop being God's son. Your reality is SECURED as a result of the logic of the system. The ending of death is just as inevitable, because when you get yourself into a logical STATE of ONLY TRUTH, there cannot be a state of an opposite to life, and death is therefore "snuffed out" as Jesus puts it.

Jesus's choice of words is masterful, but sometimes potentially misleading. There is a lot of material to digest. There seems to be a lot of stuff to figure out. Sometimes things seem contradictory which are not. And our egos make a TON of logical errors. Error, ie sin, is nothing but a logical mistake. You cannot oppose God's will, so it is "error", logically, to CONCLUDE you can. Healing is therefore the undoing of error, by re-establishing the facts of reality and accepting God's premise as the only true one.

This is all the metaphysics. It's behind the words. When you GET it, you can express FROM it, and be coming from the truth. You can express 100,000 books BASED ON this and every single one will be in line with ACIM. We're inside a logical system of thought, albeit based on a FALSE starting point, resulting in FALSE experiences, and FALSE outcomes. A false outcome is SUFFERING. Suffering is inevitable when the entire SYSTEM is founded on opposition to health and life. Suffering means you are "suffering from" being mistaken about the facts of reality.

If you want eternal life and happiness, you must open up to accept the REASONING of the Holy Spirit, which is the SAME as God's SYSTEM or WAY of thinking. Thought BASED ON TRUTH will set you free.

ALL of the conflict in the ACIM community is based on NOT SEEING and NOT ACCEPTING the purely LOGICAL CORE TRUTH in A Course in Miracles. All of the disagreement about what it says, what it means, what it implies, is all based on NOT being logically sound. ALL OPINIONS ARE MUTE! Your opinion has no value, and nor does mine. We are supposed to get away from having opinions. We are supposed to recognize the FACTS OF REALITY, instead of trying to MAKE UP interpretations. Interpretations are entirely ego. The course HAS NO INTERPRETATIONS. The course is based on FACTS. It is based on TRUTH.

And truth is not an intepretation. It is an expression FROM THE PURE LOGIC SYSTEM OF GOD'S THINKING. When everyone finally recognizes this and accepts the ONE CORRECT metaphysics, there will be no more NEED for conflict, no more BASIS for confusion, no more REASON to fight about it, and no more DEBATE about what it means. Behind all the seemingly varied WORDS in the course, behind all the many EXPRESSIONS, behind the choice of phrases and the language and the way Jesus speaks, there is a PURE METAPHYSICAL CLARITY.

Do not be DECEIVED by the ILLUSION OF DIFFERENT FORMS in the course. Do not be deceived by taking the WORDS too literally. The WORDS ARE NOT THE METAPHYSICS. They are only based on it. And if you base your entire understanding on THE WORDS, you will very likely come to false inconsistent conclusions. When you get bogged down in isolated quotes, inconsistent reasoning, things taken out of context, and all the rest of it, you are missing the CLARITY of the course's truth.

Go deeper. Get behind the words. SEE the logical structures. Recognize the metaphysics. It's beyond words. It's beyond those symbols. The course is PURE TRUTHFUL FACT and it is totally consistent without contradiction. If you are confused, wondering about meanings, uncertain about structures, or any other reaction to what's said, you are not using logical reasoning and so are using blind ego interpretation. If you see contradictions, you made a logical error.

If something doesn't fit, you haven't seen the logic behind it clearly enough. And if you conclude things OUT OF ACCORD with what the LOGIC says, you are mistaken, regardless of what the words seem to say. Jesus is 100% perfectly ACCURATE in every single thing he has expressed FROM a PERFECT GRASP of the PERFECTLY CLEAR metaphysical basis of truth. HE has not made any errors. His expressions in words are not erroneous. He is PERFECTLY CORRECT. Our only challenge is coming to SEE, RECOGNIZE and ACCEPT, the CORE TRUTH behind the entire course. REASON will allow you to literally SEE SENSE.

"The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

Actually think about why this makes sense. God is infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, He exists in a totally expanded abstract state in which He is everywhere. Totally spread out to infinity. He is not localized anywhere. There is no way that God can be "only" in one location, and not another.

The idea of a body, is the idea in SPACE and TIME to being spatially and temporarily separated out from the whole. It's the idea of limitation, confinement, imprisonment. "The body is a device for separation". The body was made to represent the idea that you are NOT everywhere, and therefore your mind is trapped in your brain. That you are "located" inside the body, not outside the body.

God, however, who is everywhere, cannot be squeezed down and inserted into the insides of a body, in exclusion of being also outside of the body. He cannot separate off a part of himself and put it "into" a body separately from being outside the body or in all other bodies also. Being everywhere means NOT being in any specific location to the exclusion of any others. Nor does that mean he is in all bodies. He cannot be in ANY bodies.

"God cannot enter a body"

Similarly, you who are trying to be One with God, to experience God, to express God, so long as you confine yourself to a body, limit your awareness to only the body's senses, regard yourself as being "in" or "having" a specific body, or in any way are not experiencing yourself as being infinite, unlimited, larger than the universe, all-expansive, all-encompassing and omnipresent, you are NOT experiencing the fullness of what you are.

And the fact is that God is not going to ever narrow himself down and put himself into a body. He remains in an expanded, abstract state at all times. The only way for you to MEET him and to be in total communion with Him, is to expand your self, expand your awareness, to go beyond the size of the universe, to infinity, to such an extent that you become just as ever-present and transcendent of space, place, location, or time, that you exist EVERYWHERE with Him.

That is the only way that you can be One with God. That is the only way that you can commune with Him, join with Him, be IN him, and experience Heaven. You literally cannot do that by being in ANY WAY limited, in any way less than WHOLE, in any way smaller than the entire magnitude of infinite creation. You are vast, unlimited, and only complete when you are EVERYWHERE. Not confined to your little body, not confined to only one body, not confined to ANY bodies. Larger than the planet. Larger than the solar system. Larger than the galaxy. Aware of EVERYWHERE simultaneously. That is who you are.

So I hear some people saying, believing, thinking, interpreting, that they are having experiences of being one with God in a body, being awake in a body, experiencing the fullness of God in a body. They are mistaken. It is literally impossible to have a FULL complete total experience of God while maintaining the body. Because the body is localization. It is limitation. You cannot keep localization and be infinite and unlimited. You cannot be finite and specific and located in space or time and be simultaneously infinitely abstract.

"The body cannot stay without illusions." "The body cannot remain." "To be WITHOUT a body is to be in your natural state." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "You are not a body." "The body is a limit."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

You can approach God, you can get closer to God, you can feel the warmth of the light, you can radiate love and joy into the world as though joined with God, but you cannot FULLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY immerse yourself in God while maintaining isolation, localization, temporal separation in one moment of time. To be eternal is transcendent of time and space. It means you not only exist EVERYWHERE you also exist EVERYWHEN. You exist in and beyond all moments of time. It makes you a time traveler, transcendent of the temporal order, not merely "I'm in 2019".

Do you really how VAST you are? Do you realize how VAST God is? How totally utterly unlimited? Then look at the body, look at how it IS a limitation, and that having one, using one, seeing one, or believing one exists at all, is causing you to NOT BE WITH GOD.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"God did not create the body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

You HAVE TO LEAVE THE BODY to be with God. You have to leave the body entirely, permanently, never again to need a body EVER. You have to overcome reincarnation. You have to overcome death. You have to overcome the NEED to be in a body AT ALL, if you want to be with God. You cannot KEEP the body and maintain that kind of abstract infinite knowledge. "You cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." You cannot STAY HERE in this fictional world, and be totally joined with God. You can perceive him perhaps, you can see him perhaps, you can love with him perhaps, but you cannot be ONE with Him in a body.

Is Jesus in a body? Nope. I rest my case.

It is very important in the development of trust, that we learn to make room for SPIRIT in our lives and hand over the responsibility for decision making to the Holy Spirit. This means ASKING the Holy Spirit WHAT TO DO. And this includes even in small matters which seem very specific. Just because the matters are small does not mean that you are not advanced.

We are asked to hand over all decision with increasing frequency, allowing him "to decide for God for me." Which means we have to talk to him and we have to listen to his response. We have to open up to trusting and being willing to RECEIVE GUIDANCE. And we have to learn to TRUST this guidance, seeing that it works, seeing that it is always for the best, seeing that it is never harmful, and seeing that it CAN BE trusted. Thus we develop trust.

By giving him all decision making it also absolves us of guilt, because then we are simply following his WISER advice. Part of this is because our attempts to judge anything correctly are heavily flawed and ego-driven because we can't see the big picture and we don't have access to all the variables. We are meant to relinquish judgement, which means we then can't know what anything means, or what to do, or where to go, or how to act. And thus we have to ASK FOR HELP. And our egos really do not want to give up control.

This is an absolute vital and required practice as part of doing this course. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS, and turn to his advice ESPECIALLY in serious and difficult decisions, decisions about health, about life and death even, as well as what's for dinner and which way to go on a walk or which item to buy at the store. ALL THINGS, ALL decisions. Deep trust and handing over of ego autonomy and trusting in your own strength.

It is not only perfectly acceptable AND curriculum-aligned to seek for spiritual guidance, it is in fact what Jesus WANTS us to do. And that includes getting guidance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit, using it, AND sharing it with others to help them. It is a sign of spiritual maturity to do this because it means you're having true humility and are willing to serve God's will.

My wife was in the ICU for the second time, having been oxygen deprived, and was being declared more or less brain dead by the doctor, who told me to my face that she would never recover. She wasn't breathing well and he said we might as well let her die. I however did not trust this advice. The man seemed like the devil incarnate to me, certainly skilled in his profession but still an ego.

I instead sought the Holy Spirit and Jesus to decide for me and tell me what to do, knowing that I myself COULD NOT. I trusted their advice MORE than anyone. Their advice was to "resurrect her". And because of that, I made the decision that she would NOT be terminated and that we would wait.

In the next few days I did my praying and affirming and attempts to heal and so on, whether it helped or not I do not know. But a few days later, she began to wake up. The doctor at first accused me of lying when I told him she'd been trying to communicate. He was rather arrogant that he knew better and that it was impossible. He was completely convinced she would never recover.

But when they tried leaving off the sedation she suddenly came around and was talking. And a couple weeks later she was back at home to continue living. Had I listened to the advanced educated human ego advice of the chief doctor, she would've been put to death. Because Jesus told me what to do, and because I trusted it, she lived.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice period to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:

"What would you have me do?" Where would You have me go? What would You have me say, and to whom?"

"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. "

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."

"When you have learned how to decide WITH God, ALL decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently, as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. "

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. "

God and his Kingdom are a perfect hologram, in which the whole is in every part, and every part is the whole.

But then there was a separation. The separation was an event where we tried to deny the wholeness but keep the parts.

If another name for the wholeness is "non-duality" (or oneness), and another name for the parts is "duality", we tried to keep the duality and reject the non-duality. To "separate off" our selves from God, retaining only our separate selves without sharing anything.

This resulted in what we call seemingly spacetime - the dream of separation - which depicts "exclusive duality" as though it's ONLY duality with no oneness.

In spacetime we have perception. Perception can go to extremes of denial and acceptance of God. In false perception it rejects the oneness entirely, while in true perception it accepts it.

True perception shows you "the real world", which is another way of saying "the world as it is without the distortions of your insanity projected onto it".

This "real world"... has a quality of WHOLENESS. This wholeness is sort of like a dream version of oneness. It is also called the face of Christ. It's like the wholeness aspect of God's divine hologram but in dream form - as a "picture".

So as you reach the real-world level of perception, you're entering into a sort of holographic experience of spacetime. That is, you are accessing a sense of oneness and wholeness and unlimitedness, in which you expand to the size of the universe and seem to contain all of it within you.

In this view, you see that the whole is in every part. Every object's separateness no longer "means" or "tells you" that separation is true. Instead, you see the WHOLE reflected in every part. As though, all of the PICTURE of wholeness is present in every individual object.

This isn't merely the same as waking up and being more alert and seeing the same separate objects head-on with some kind of enhanced alertness. It's a mindset in which you have this greatly expanded wholeness, a sort of reflection of oneness, which is seen to TRANSCEND all boundaries and separations.

This transcendental experience shows you that the REFLECTION of God is in every part and speck of matter ("God is in everything I see"). All of God is pictured "in" every grain of sand. Not simply that God has squeezed himself into one grain, but that he is simultaneously in each and every individual grain, and not in any kind of compromising way either. ALL of him is in EVERY part.

Note however the main difference between the holographic experience of spacetime and heaven, is that heaven is an ACTUAL perfect hologram, whereas spacetime is an IMAGE OF a perfect hologram - a PICTURE. This is why it's also called the FACE of Christ and not Christ itself.

So in our waking up here in/from this world, we should expect to find that the seeming separate differences of objects matter less and mean less. Their forms don't tell us of a hierarchy. All differences become equal and irrelevant. We overlook them, which is forgiveness. And instead of focusing on letting the forms BLIND us to a oneness, we instead see a transcendental oneness pervading the forms and showing that the forms are a way of OBSCURING the hologram.

I have had an experience of God some years ago in which I came to this experience and saw very clearly this exact dynamic, in which the WHOLE was seen in every object, and each part contained ALL of God. And this revealed to me the way that when you focus on the separate objects and forms they OBSCURE the fact that God is all-in-all, and instead present a "broken picture" in which there is NO WHOLE IN ANY PART. And that's the difference between true perception and false perception.

I found a couple of segments in ACIM that speak to this sort of "holographic experience" of the world. Note here when it talks of a "picture" it is saying an image, not the ACTUAL thing but a PICTURE OF it - once removed from it.

"The Holy Spirit's Function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture IN ITSELF. To each he offers his identity, which the WHOLE picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit, which he insisted was himself. And when he sees THIS picture, he will RECOGNIZE himself. If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself." URT28E7

"I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS." UrT28E8

Your mind is very powerful and it chooses what to create. Your thoughts enact real influence. You can change the contents of the world using your mind.

There is a huge amount of scientific evidence for this, from scientists and medical science experiments to psychology experiments. All showing that mind has great influence over matter.

There is the placebo effect which has been shown in some cases to cause people to have the same effect of medications just by believing in it. That a person could have the same pain relief of morphine just by believing they had been given it when they hadn't.

People's cancerous tumors have appeared and disappeared on the basis of whether they believed they were getting a treatment. Some have experienced telekinetic activity where objects in the room move around in different ways depending on their mood. While others have materialized objects out of thin air.

Jesus indeed demonstrated the power of the mind over matter in many ways, including defying gravity, transforming objects into other objects, healing sickness, generating body parts, multiplying food, calming storms and so on.

The problem we have is that we generally DO NOT believe that our minds have ANY power. We believe our thoughts have NO influence over the world or the body or each other. We seem rarely to notice or recognize any changes in our lives that we attribute to some thought or feeling we had. We just don't seem to see the connection between what we think and what happens.

But this is something ACIM is training us to be able to do. It requires a recognition of the mind's power, and it also therefore requires taking RESPONSIBILITY for having that power. The simple fact that what's going to show up and happen is based on what's going on in your mind, and that therefore, you are making stuff up as you go along.

It's YOU that is making sickness show up. It is YOU that is making healing show up. It is YOU that is influencing the weather and adjusting the environment. It's YOU that is orchestrating events and making stuff happen. If you could recognize this you would realize you have to be careful about WHAT you think and where your mind is at, because it produces EFFECTS.

This is the recognition that you are a CAUSE, and not an effect. That you are a CREATOR and not merely a perceiver or victim. That stuff is coming out of you with causal power and influence. And therefore it's your responsibility to carefully and mindfully and constructively use that power for good.

When you realize that "you are doing this to yourself", per the secret of salvation, you also should realize that this means you are CAUSING all of your own suffering and by the POWER OF DECISION you can choose something else.

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time. ... The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will." UrT2E8

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them." UrT2E12

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it." UrT8G14

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose." UrT3F21

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains." UrT2E10

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in chains, as long as he believes he IS in chains. And, when he is RELEASED from them, it will be simply because he no longer BELIEVES in them, WITHDRAWING faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom INSTEAD." UrT21D3

"All miracle-workers HAVE to be trained that way. I have to be able to count on them. This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation." UrT2E18

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

"You cannot resolve your authority problem by depreciating the power of your minds. It CAN hurt you if you misuse it, because you KNOW its strength." UrT3I3

"The Son of God CAN be mistaken; he CAN deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind AGAINST himself." UrT19C3

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." W19

"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do." W38

This is a simple idea. Since the world is neutral, and since you are having a subjective view of it, your mind is able to see it in different ways. And this means that there is always more than one way to look at something.

Sin is the idea or state of mind in which you see an illusion and combine it with reality, resulting in the perception that it cannot change. That perception is fixed. But this suggests there is only one way to look at something. And here it's meaning seems locked into the form it takes.

In truth there is another way to look at everything, because the Holy Spirit and Christ has given an alternative dream. There is always a "bright side to life" which is different to the "dark side of life." There is always another way to see it, other than how the negative ego sees it.

No matter what it is, how severe it seems, what form it takes, there are always at least two interpretations of it. One of them coming from ego makes the things seem dark and stressful and dangerous and unpleasant. The other provided by Christ Vision through Holy Spirit sees the same thing in a very different light.

The higher way to see, Christ Vision, is what the workbook lessons are geared towards developing. The whole process of forgiveness is of shifting from one thought system to another, or simply making a choice between seeing heaven or hell reflected in what you see.

For everything you see that you do not like, there is a miracle of sight which can look on this exact same thing and see it as beneficial and harmless. For everything which seems to be locked into meaning based on its form, there is another view which frees meaning from its form and uses it for a higher purpose.

So in all things, you can simply say to yourself, that you want another way to look at this. There MUST BE a higher way to look at everything. And when that way of looking is what you do consistently and what you choose to move into regularly, you'll develop Christ Vision.

Since Christ Vision is a gift of Christ that you share with him, your alignment with the Holy Spirit to see how HE sees grants you a viewpoint which is much more charitable and benevolent, which then sees this benevolence reflected back to you.

"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."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"There is another way of looking at this."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way."

"I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

"Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk."

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead?" "Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"Yet reason looks on this in another way."

"How COULD there be another way to solve a problem which is VERY simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were MADE to keep the problem unresolved?"

"Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way."

"No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

This is something that few of us want to look at. I don't like looking at it or talking about it either.

But there is a DEATH WISH in our mind which is literally deadly, and is the cause of all death and suicide. It must be undone if you are to surmount death forever.

The decision to consent to death occurs at the moment you believe sin is real, not later. Anyone who believes sin is real, HAS consented to death. However, this doesn't mean you cannot change your mind.

Believing in real sin means you believe you have attacked God, causing him to change or be at the effect of you. Since God was innocent, your "willing against his will" seemed unjustified, and this therefore JUSTIFIES GOD'S ANGER. You reason that God SHOULD be angry with you, because of what you DID do to Him. It proves and supports your belief in sin having real consequences.

So by believing in real sin, you automatically but into the belief that God's wrath is now going to enact revenge. And this means, you believe that it is GOD's WILL that you be dead. This means God is against you (because you are against Him) and therefore is your enemy.

Believing that you therefore cannot find forgiveness or love from God, and there is no way to return to LIFE, your ONLY OPTION LEFT is to head towards death. And so with a sense of shame and guilt, which keeps the sin intact and builds upon it, you head off alone with your tail between your legs. You reason that you "might as well die". You see NO other option because LIFE and forgiveness are off the cards.

What follows after that is simply years of suffering and sickness and unhappiness only to end in death. Death then seems INEVITABLE, precisely because SIN DEMANDS DEATH. The inevitability or sense of fate stems entirely from that initial belief in sin, that "the wages of sin is death", that sin demands guilt, guilt demands punishment, and punishment brings death.

Jesus speaks of how people come into the world to suffer a while, wither and die. He speaks of how no-one dies without consent. Consent TO DIE is given at the instant you believe in sin, not later. What happens later is merely the "onset" of dying or preparation for dying. Jesus describes also how even children come into this world, only to find that love abandons them, they grow old, become sick, suffer and die, and not ONE of them but believes that God is cruel. They believe God is cruel because they believe it is God's WILL that they suffer and die and could see no other option.

Sadly, although it is not real and really we should laugh, nevertheless billions of people choose to die. Or rather, have chosen to. We are perpetual diers, coming into bodies repeatedly, driven by guilt, trying to escape God, only to enter into suffering and sickness and "inevitable death". This is ALL driven by the death wish - the belief in sin. It is this belief ALONE that is responsible for justifying death.

If you did sin, death is inevitable. If you did not sin, LIFE IS INEVITABLE.

This is when as we are purifying and healing and correcting and forgiving, we MUST make sure that we uproot the belief in real sin. Otherwise we are leaving the roots of death in our mind. We must confront this belief. It can be dark and vicious. It can be terrifying. I can seem completely true. You can experience the death wish itself as a strong desire to die. It is not pretty. But you MUST NOT allow it to be true or to act based on it. It has to be undone and shone away, shown to be FALSE.

When you accept atonement and can recognize that you DID NOT SIN IN REALITY, or against God's will, and God has not been hurt, and therefore you MUST BE INNOCENT, this is an acceptance of your ENTITLEMENT TO LIVE. This is the point at which you UNDO THE DEATH WISH. Only in accepting atonement do you accept RESURRECTION and surmount death. Death is literally made IMPOSSIBLE in the atonement. "Only atonement can be said to cure."

Atonement cures death. This is what we need to choose. If we do not seem to WANT to die, even though underneath we secretly DO WANT TO, then we need to look at this, be very honest and own up to this choice to believe in sin, and CHANGE YOUR MIND, so that you stop believing that you sinned for real. Otherwise you are keeping the death wish. And that death wish will find a way to "make you dead". Eternal life is attained through the complete undoing of ALL DEATH through the undoing of SIN.

When there is no sin, there can be no death. Death comes FROM sin. It is the consequence of sin, the payment for sin, the atonement for sin, and the effect of sin. Without sin, there is no death. You must un-believe sin and accept that you HAVE NOT SINNED, in order to overcome death entirely.

ACIM is not really non-duality, or duality. It's sort of both. ACIM makes this clear statement about the nature of God and reality:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you" UrT16C3

This is the holographic principle. There is a whole (God) which has parts (sons of God), and each part contains the whole (oneness with God). The one whole is shared by the whole and the parts (brothers, inheritance etc).

Most people think of reality as sort of "one thing". Like one large area or an expanse or some kind of bigness. But that's more or less the same as the idea of spacetime or the universe. God is not actually like that. God is holographic.

In a holographic system there is a singular wholeness, which we call God. But there is also a characteristic of this wholeness - the entire wholeness is in every part. Every part of God contains the whole of God. ALL of God pays FULL attention to EVERY part simultaneously - because God is infinitely transcendental and can do this even if it sounds impossible.

God is also a creator and is capable of fully absolutely creating secondary beings who are like himself. But he cannot add-on anything outside of himself, so instead he adds on INSIDE of himself.

He does this by SHARING himself entirely with that which he creates, and that means that his creation has to also SHARE all of itself with everything. This is a kind of "internal expansion" of the Kingdom. It does not involve creating OUTSIDE the kingdom or beyond be pre-existing totality of God.

This sharing produces fully-created beings who inherit everything from God and share everything with God. They have a oneness with God. But they ARE fully created individual beings. They are completely full in every sense of the word. They contain everything like God does. Which means they absolutely exist, and yet at the same time are one with the absolute.

This results in a holographic system in which God is the main whole who creates "additional wholes" that share everything with him and with each other. Each part of God has the whole of God in it. Each son of God contains the whole of God and everyone else. We are all unified and merged and fused together.

This doesn't mean we lose our duality. It doesn't mean we lose individuality, or that we can't tell where we end and God begins. We DO have a discrete independent existence as absolute beings. But we ALSO have total oneness with the whole.

This seems like a paradox to most people. But it is actually miraculous.

Because a holographic system has wholeness to it, we identify that wholeness as "oneness" and might call it "non-duality". However, a holographic system ALSO has parts to it - whole parts, which share the whole and yet are whole in their own right. These "parts" might be called "duality".

This means that IN REALITY, the nature of God as a holographic system comprises BOTH ... non-duality AND duality, fused together as one. Everything is God, but God has parts which are living beings in their own right.

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. And it means that there is material which in a certain CONTEXT is focusing on the non-dual aspects of the hologram, such as the oneness and the "God is" and "there is no opposite" and all that. But in other contexts it also speaks of God's infinite creations, the many sons of God, your own creations, your own kingdom, permanent brothers and so on.

ALL of these aspects of the course are simultaneously true. Even if they sound contradictory. If God's reality was NOT holographic they would indeed be contradictory and you'd have to resolve that by separating off some parts as "ego" or "separation" or "illusions". That's what many people do, in error. Because they don't realize reality actually is a holographic system not a "blob".

Ultimately then ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. But it is PARTLY non-duality and PARTLY duality. The two are fused together in a kind of "trans-duality". Transcendent of both exclusive-oneness and exclusive-separateness. God is not EXCLUSIVE anything - God is INCLUSIVE. Which is why the "non-duality" INCLUDES "the duality".

By duality here I do not mean spacetime. Spacetime is duality WITHOUT the non-duality, ie exclusively dual. That's not the same as the trans-duality of God in which every part is the whole. In space time, every part is PARTIAL and incomplete. The opposite of duality is not-nonduality, it's transcendental of the whole "either this or that" mindset.

"The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception." UrT8H2

"There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible." UrT8H2

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." UrT9E5

"Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole." UrW320W113

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small." UrT10G10

"It shines in every part of Him, as in the Whole." UrT17E16

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS." URT5F9

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." UrT7J6

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness." UrT6B13

There are some parts of the course which suggest that if you will just change HOW you look at the world, or what meaning you GIVE it, suddenly seemingly horrifying scenes are interpreted as healed and lovely.

Obviously this loveliness MUST transcend the FORM of what is happening, because a broken leg is still a broken leg, and an explosion is still an explosion. But somehow, Jesus is saying that just by changing your perception, a world which used to look like hell, can look "like heaven".

"What loveliness we look upon today! What holiness we see surrounding us! And it is given us to recognize it is a holiness in which we share"

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

This seems ridiculous at first. You ask yourself how this is remotely possible, and how it is not just a totally insane idea to suggest that THIS world's horrors can be "smiled upon" or interpreted as "lovely". But this is what true perception and forgiveness is offering.

Somehow, a changed perception projects God's love onto the world, God is seen as a reflection IN the world, and Earth now reflects heaven instead of hell. It still has its same forms, and the same things may be happening physically, but what they MEAN changes. And there becomes a light that you see in and around everything.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit can liberate even the darkest bullshit we made, and make it appear lovely and a blessing. That even a dead body could appear to use like it is sparkling and healed. And this doesn't necessarily mean it is in a form or condition that is physically healed, like a cancerous tumor disappearing, but it is still interpreted as healed.

This SEEMS to suggest that the cancer could remain, physically, while perceiving from an advanced perspective of love and light. It would be seen as "lovely". This however doesn't necessarily imply that the cancer SHOULD remain, because the mind is capable of performing miracles to change matter. And sane minds heal bodies so that even symbolically, even in form, they symbolize eternal life and healing.

"Think of the loveliness that you will see, who walk with Him! And think how beautiful will each of you look to the other!"

"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see."

It is hard to get ones head around how it is possible to see this shitty-ass world as beautiful, light-filled, lovable. But ACIM says that even God loves the world. And that we can see God in everything, when God is in our mind, due to projecting God's meaning ONTO the world. That you can see God IN it, because you mix it WITH His love.

I used to get a sense of this, when I would read the course even years ago, where it sounded like he was saying that just by having a different state of mind, the world would be seen as entirely healed. I wasn't sure this was a correct interpretation, because I wanted to also include miracles. But it does seem to hold without undermining miracles of healing.

The world seen through the eyes of Christ, is a "healed world". It's redeemed. It's "translated into heaven", ACIM says. And then this REFLECTION of heaven, paves the way to knowledge and to the return home to the real thing.

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced."

"Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven. For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be."

"Be not unwilling now, you are too near, and you WILL cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace."

"For, once you have accepted it as the ONLY PERCEPTION THAT YOU WANT, it is translated into knowledge, by the part that God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is the ONLY step in it He understands."

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten; the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. 9 The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge."

"Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

There is a simple law about health that you need to know about, as described here:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

If you do not regard yourself as an illusion in any way ("I am not an illusion but a reality"), you do not see YOURSELF as an illusion, and therefore you do not SHOW UP AS an illusion. Instead, you show up as INVISIBLE. As if you have no body. You do not need a body, and the body would not be an accurate identification of what you think of yourself.

The body is always coming from your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Always. It is always being projected outward. It never has its own condition or its own state of being or its own mind or will or power or thoughts or anything else. It’s purely a projected mental image. It is YOUR mental image about what you think your identity is. Or, what you are made of. Or, what you think is true of you.

If you think it is true of you that you are less than as God created you, pure spirit, wholeness, having no form or need for form, you WILL materialize - ie mis-create - what appears to be a body out of nowhere. The mind makes the body. And the mind can make as many bodies as it likes. As Jesus said in the special notes to Helen, here are his exact words where he describes exactly what I’ve just said:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

His body disappeared because He had no illusions about himself, his identity. He did not identify himself as dead, or made of separation, and so He stopped showing up as that. He stopped imagining himself as that.

Note he also says, the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. The mind MAKES the body. And it constantly is projecting a body when it sees itself as limited. It is projecting the body at every moment to sustain an illusion of a constant self. But the body is always an effect, never a cause of anything. So if the mind wants to believe something else, the body MUST change. It has no will to stop the mind.

Now, a very important thing to realize is, the state of the body, being a mental picture of "self", directly corresponds ALWAYS to how a person’s mind is seeing itself. What it believes it is. So if it believes it is sinful or guilty, the mind will attack itself, thus attack its own image of itself which will show up as a body infected by or attacked by guilt and sin. This will make the body appear, ie be projected as though, it seems to be "sick". It does not "have" a sickness, it IS a sickness.

It will REMAIN showing up as sick for as long as the MIND decides to be sick. It will have no ability to heal itself. Bodies DO NOT heal themselves. The immune system is a bullshit ego concept. It is an illusion. Bodies does not heal anything. They do nothing. Only the mind orchestrates stuff happening.

When the mind says jump, the body jumps. Literally. When the mind says, I am sick and separate, a body will be projected which shows signs of sickness and separation. When the mind says, now is the time that I am well and joined with God, the body MUST show up as a picture of a body that is in perfect health.

You have to realize, the body has NO ABILITY to counter the choice of the mind as to how it wants to identify itself. It IS the mind’s attempt to identify itself as an illusion. There also IS NO OTHER CAUSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD that can do anything to the body. It cannot be made sick, or hurt, or damaged in any way, unless the mind is believing it is damaged. And then the MIND puts the damage into the body, not the world. As Jesus says here clearly:

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself ... No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

That means there is NO CAUSE outside of you, at all. Ever. The body CANNOT be caused against YOUR will. Ever. However it shows up, is how you are MAKING IT show up.

There is nothing in the world that makes your body do or feel or adjust or change in any way at all. Any appearance to the contrary is some illusion the mind is putting in place to pretend it is irresponsible. Sickness IS irresponsibility. The mind however is ALWAYS in charge even if it makes an illusion of death. Death cannot happen to the body unless the mind destroys the body itself. "No-one dies without their own consent".

This also means, that if the body is showing up as sick, SOMETHING IS WRONG with the mind. Guaranteed. 100%. If the body is sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. This is metaphysical law with zero exceptions. There can be states of mind reached which seem like awakening, but where the body remains sick. In such states, the mind HAS NOT awoken from the dream of death, as proved by the fact that the body still seems to die, because the mind STILL BELIEVES it does not deserve eternal life, and so accepts death - an illusion of giving up all will and causality. An attempt not to choose at all.

Rather than see this as some kind of condemnation or guilt-inducing statement that, if you are sick, it’s your fault, which the ego would love to indulge, instead see it as perhaps shocking or upsetting at first, to have to admit that YOU are responsible for making your sickness. This is not always welcome news, often producing ego reactions of guilt and fear and so on. But it is also revealing to you a POWER that you have. A power and a CHOICE, a FREEDOM, a HOPE, in which IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, you NEED NOT SUFFER.

This does not EVER mean, that if you change your mind, you will transcend sickness and death and not care that it "happens to you". This is 100% missing the point and a total bastardization of the teaching. No-one can be at peace with death because peace is evidence you do not believe in Eternal Life. Sickness and death DO NOT happen to you. YOU HAPPEN. Sickness only happens in your body beacuse it’s a picture of YOUR MIND’s sickness. Death only happens in your body because YOU DESTROY YOURSELF. This has to be owned up to before you can claim the right, and power, and freedom, to EXERCISE your FREE WILL choice to NEVER SUFFER AGAIN.

It does mean, on the one hand, you HAVE to admit to being responsible for causing ALL of the suffering you have experienced, it was ALL you doing it to yourself, and no-one and nothing-else EVER caused anything you’ve experienced. That can be a big chunk of crap to swallow. BUT.... it also opens the door to the POSSIBILITY, that you still have this power, and can CHOOSE AGAIN and therefore produce a state of NO SUFFERING.

You MUST demonstrate a body that is invulnerable, cannot be hurt, cannot be damaged, has no sickness, does not show any signs of attack, and PROVES that your brother and the whole world has done NOTHING to affect the Son of God. OTHERWISE... you WILL attack yourself, and you will suffer, by your own hand. No-one else will be doing it to you but yourself. This is the SECRET TO SALVATION! YOU ARE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF. And because you are - if you OWN IT - you can choose simply to NEVER AGAIN be sick or dead or suffer in any way. Claim your IMMORTALITY!

There is no power in all the world that does anything to you against your will, other than YOU. There is no cause in the world whatsoever to produce effects in you or your body that YOU do not put there yourself. Worldly causes are cover-up jobs for your mind to pretend its irresponsibility is someone else’s fault.

There is no form of sickness, even DEATH, that cannot be reversed, if the MIND decides to no longer believe in it. Whatever you believe about yourself, IT WILL SHOW UP. It must. Mind is cause. Form is the effect of believing in illusions. Your mind has power over ALL MATTER. "My self is ruler of the universe".

So realize this. While you have a body, your body ALWAYS EQUALS your state of mind. So long as you THINK you are a body, YOU WILL MAKE ONE. So long as you think you are separate from God, you will PRESENT A PICTURE of what you believe for all to see. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"!! But there can also be a totally transparent depiction of what’s going on inside of you, if you fully accept atonement.

If the body is showing up as sick, your mind *IS* sick. You ARE responsible for it. No-one else is. The world is not. The body is not. Having mastery over form REQUIRES extreme, absolute ownership and responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing, down to the atoms that make up the body. YOU are putting them there. If the body is not doing well, it’s because you keep attacking yourself. Period. Don’t let this induce guilt or worthlessness. Instead forgive yourself and choose again.

If you can recognize this correlation between mind and body, you will realize that *IF* you change your mind, THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW. It is guaranteed. It is a depiction of your "Self" as you see yourself. This is why when you shift into a miracle, you temporarily move into INVISIBILITY. "Miracles are temporary shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal." Invisibility (of form) correlates to having a mind which is CLEAR and FREE OF SEPARATIONS. You can see through it because it has become transparent and UNBLOCKED. This movement into formlessness heals the mind and thus the body MUST follow.

This also means, as Jesus has said, *IF* you get your mind into a state of perfect clarity and truth, and given that you are temporarily still projecting a body, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE because YOU ARE, it cannot BE sick for ANY reason, because you are not sick, and IT CANNOT DIE because you see yourself as immortal spirit. Or at least a glimpse of that. Jesus assures us there is a divine protection that the body will experience IF we will be purely vigilant for the truth. Your body CAN be indestructible, free of aging, weather, the need for food and water, and so on. "I am sustained by the love of God all through the day", goes to the extreme!

And He literally means this..... IT CANNOT be sick. Sickness is IMPOSSIBLE where guilt has been removed. Sickness CANNOT RETURN where guilt has been removed. A guiltless mind cannot produce a suffering body. And why would it. A suffering body is an attack on your brother and yourself, due to a belief the world is causing you. Sickness is NONSENSE. It is a portrayal of a victim who believes they are sinful. But everyone is free to choose. You can choose whatever you want, but you cannot escape the consequences of your decisions.

You are cause. This is a course in cause, not effect. Choose health by choosing to heal the mind of its misperception of itself, and it will automatically take care of projecting a healthy body in the short term. This is the same as saying to seek first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight.

Right now, living in a human body with an ego, your experience is that you are separate from God. As if you are somehow outside of God. As if you are living in exile in some kind of separate world that seems to exist in a dimension where God doesn't exist.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile"

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

"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. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts."

If you are not experiencing that you are in heaven, and are not with God, at home in reality, and instead find yourself in a body, it means your mind believes in this exile and sees itself as though it is "outside of heaven."

It's not really possible to be outside of God, but in the separation from God we had this idea and belief that we CAN exist without God, outside of heaven. This produced a sense of being in exile, which literally was a belief in existing "outside" of God in some external world, which in turn produced the entirety of spacetime and all its contents. As if a kind of world outside of heaven itself, set apart from it and designed to keep God on the other side of some kind of wall.

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

So now in your experience, there are certain things which belong to God, which are found only within God, and are a part of him, which you must therefore have difficulty accessing.

If God is on the other side of the wall, hidden in what seems to be an entirely different dimension of reality, beyond space and time in heaven, and if you consider yourself to not be squarely rooted and at home in God, then you're going to find it hard to experience the properties of God.

Some things ARE God, thus belonging to God, and there is no substitute for them, no other source, and no way to have them or experience them WITHOUT including God. That includes happiness, joy, love, peace, eternal life, power, certainty, fearlessness, wholeness, reality, identity etc. So if you are seeming to live in some kind of world "outside" of heaven, away from God, you are pretty much cut off from these things.

What that means is, you're going to have to find a way to move closer to God, including God, sharing with God God's nature and properties, if you want to have any of the things that can ONLY truly be found within God. It's like God is this whole other Kingdom that is outside of spacetime that you need to find a way to access, in order to gain access to love and happiness and peace etc. You have to, essentially, go there, if you want to have those things.

"Infinity is meaningless WITHOUT you, and YOU are meaningless without God. There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."

Before you entirely disembark and zap yourself out of spacetime completely, however, you can take steps to move closer to God, and thus to allow God to enter into and share your mind. It's possible to bring a taste of heaven to your earthly experience, such that God can be mostly in your mind, and mostly seen in everything you see.

What happens here is a kind of phasing in and out. The physical world is gradually phasing out, along with its bodies and objects, while the nonmaterial spirit world is gradually phasing into your awareness. The more you attune to God the more you tune out of the physical, including physical sight.

"This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So you start to see more of God, so to speak, and less of the world. The world becomes a thin transparent veil, turning invisible, as God's world become more and more visible. In terms of your perception, it will seem as though you are looking on what lightly remains of your perception of the physical world through more spiritual loving eyes, which of course renders that physicality with greater forgiveness and love.

"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

This is only possible because the physical is phasing out and love is taking over. Eventually the exchange results in the world disappearing from view entirely, replaced by the face of Christ, in which the world is forgotten and the veil that seems to separate you from God's dimension lifts and you find yourself eventually awakened in heaven.

To experience joy and happiness and love and peace, you have no option but to include God more and more in your mind and awareness. There is no way to have light without it, no way to see without him, no way to love without him. Nor will you be loving independently on your own, you can only love by sharing God's love. So as you love, it's not just you loving, it's you plus God loving, you extending his love. You can't even muster a "separate love".

Lesson 127 "There is no love but God's."

"Alone they are nothing. But in their joining is the Power of God."

"You are not frail, with God beside you. But WITHOUT Him, you are nothing." "Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."

Those who are angry about what other people have said or done, AGREE with what the person has said or done. I BET YOU DON'T LIKE TO HEAR THAT! lolol

This applies no matter the topic, whether it's being angry at politicians or angry at the government or angry at neighbors or coworkers or people of a certain religion or because of how certain other people are treating certain other people. It doesn't matter.

If you're angry at someone, YOU AGREE WITH THEM.

If you did not agree with them, you would maintain perfectly calm, perfectly poised. You would be unshaken. You would not move. You would have CERTAINTY. You would be confident. You wouldn't be moved in your viewpoint just because of what someone said or did. You would not lose your center. You would KNOW YOURSELF and anything going against that you're RECOGNIZE as false.

When you know yourself, you are acknowledging that you have not changed and you cannot BE changed, by anyone or anything. Another way of saying that is, you recognize you cannot be and are not a victim. You can't be influenced. You can't be damaged. You can't be vulnerable. And you can't be made to become pissed off at someone or something going on outside of you. But if you don't recognize that what's false is false, and you believe instead that it's TRUE, you WILL be upset by it, and it WILL disturb your peace, and it WILL be because you AGREE WITH IT. Whatever is true to you, you agree with, even if it is not really true.

He who gets wound up and angry and reacts really quickly in a rage obviously is deeply HURT by what someone says or does, but the truth is, this hurt is only experienced because the person has touched upon a hurt - a sensitivity or 'psychological bruise' that already exists in then. It triggers an old memory of when someone did this before. It brings up old feelings. It attacks the sense of ego self which is composed of guilt and made from beliefs, formed perhaps decades before, from previous hurtful experiences.

If someone says or does something and I become upset in any way, it's because I believe it's true. I might express that I don't WANT to believe it's true, and I may try to DENY that I believe it's true, and I may project ownership or responsibility for the belief into the attacking person, BUT... it's ALL MY OWN STUFF. If I am upset due to someone's expression, *I* have a problem, and I had that problem before that person even appeared. I don't want to ADMIT that I agree with them, but somewhere deep down inside, I am only upset because they remind me of what I think is true about myself.

Those who are angry and upset have the hardest time admitting that they actually, deep down, believe what the person is saying. And that's largely because anger is a very strong force of projection which hurls inner guilt outward and then attacks it to try to get rid of it. It's then extremely CONVENIENT to blame the whole thing on the person who seemed to trigger this response. But if I'm upset, it's because *I* BELIEVE* that what's happened is the TRUTH. I cannot be upset by what is false if I know it is false. Truth is STRENGTH.

So today, as I'm upset and angry about certain people and things that happened, I have to admit... I must believe they're telling the truth, somehow, in some way. Somewhere inside they've tapped into some old pain that I haven't healed. And in that way, they're actually trying to POINT IT OUT so that I will heal it. So then, for that service, I should be GRATEFUL to them for bringing this to my attention. But while I'm stuck in blame and "you made me upset" and "you did this to me"... I won't own up to the real truth here.... I actually deep down believe they're telling the truth, otherwise what would my reaction be?

I'D LAUGH MY HEAD OFF AT THE RIDICULOUSNESS!

If I KNEW their expression is false and I DON'T BELIEVE IT'S TRUE, I will stay in light and joy and just laugh and not perceive myself attacked or harmed in any way. Being aware of the truth reveals the ridiculous unbelievability of lies and illusions. If I forget to laugh, however, I will enter into self-attack and then blame it on everyone else, having first hurt myself with my own condemnation. If I've lost track of what is REALLY TRUE, and I think other stuff is true, I WILL be upset by it whenever someone says "this is true" and it resonates to what I secretly believe about myself. I MUST forgive all of my mistaken perceptions and allegiances to what is false if I am to regain inner peace.

So where are you at today? Did someone push your buttons? Why do you even have buttons? Who put the buttons there to begin with? When will you admit to believing in these buttons? And when will you be willing to let God heal them for you?

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God."

First of all, the use of "OR" here means there are two ways of saying this. A natural grand division is the same thing as a "projecting outward". Which is the same thing also as extension and creation. When God projected outward from Himself he Created "the world". This is the world of heaven, having nothing to do with the physical universe.

"That is why everything that He created is like Him."

So we know that everything God creates is LIKE Him. Like a copy. "Heaven and Earth are opposites in every way" - so we know God did not create Earth.

"Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

The clarification here is that what God is, internally, is "distinct" in a NATURAL way, from the "projecting out" (creating) that God performs. His CREATION, is "naturally divided" from Him. This reflects in the idea that God is the FATHER, and His Creation is HIS SON. He is Cause, His creation is Effect.

This is considered a NATURAL division. Because it is natural, it is not alien, it is not an attack, it is not ego, it is not separation, it is not a dream, it is not artificial, it is NATURAL and normal and healthy.

All of God's children (plural - many) inherit this same ability to create which is the ability to radiate outward from their being, to create things which are NATURALLY DIVIDED from themselves, in terms of the relationship of cause to effect. All children are CAUSE of their Creations, which are their effects.

The natural division between Father and Son tells us Father creates the Son, but the Son does not create the father. If there was no "division", the Son would indeed create the father. The Son is INCAPABLE of doing that, because He is the EFFECT of the Father, so He is "divided off" from being able to BE the "Cause of God'. But he Himself inherits Fatherhood abilities, meaning He can "father" (create) His own creations.

To create His own creations he MUST be given free will. God is freedom and God only creates that which is free. If the Father has even ONE Son, that son MUST have FREEDOM. A free will. Bestowing complete freedom upon the Son is basically a MIRACLE, because in a way it means the Son is DISTINCT in His own ability/independence/individuality to Will either WITH the father or to try to will against Him. FREEDOM gives Him that "right" or ability.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order."

There is nothing UNNATURAL about these divisions. Effect is not cause. However God creates so fully and so freely and gives so unconditionally that He gives ALL of His abilities to His Son, endowing Him with both FREEDOM and the ability to CREATE FREELY. As the quote says, this is all in one continuous LINE OF CREATION, in that, the SonS (plural) and THEIR creations (and the creations of their creations etc) are all one simultaneous timeless eternal creation. It has all always been.

That there are NATURAL DIVISIONS, particularly between cause and effect or Father and Son, doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything blocking the Son from being completely equal to and "one with" the Father. There is no "difference" that comes between them. But they are still distinct. They are as close to each other as close can be, to the point where they practically disappear into each other. But they are still divided! Like, they can HUG!

An UNNATURAL division, is what the course refers to as SEPARATION. An unnatural division is unhealthy and incorrect and is an error. It's an artificial division that isn't supposed to be inherent to the nature of Creation. It is a wall, a block, a barricade which attempts to cut off some portion of Creation and keep it in the dark. This is the ego's separations. Divisions in heaven do not keep anyone from SHARING with each other. Ego separations BLOCK SHARING. Every ILLUSION of multiplicity, every ego form of attack, every wall or block or unnatural separation, these are UNNATURAL. This is not the same thing as a NATURAL division.

Heaven has NATURAL divisions. There is a kind of hierarchy of cause and effect: God > Many Sons > Son's Creations > Creations of Son's Creations etc.

Even the idea of God having ONE Son suggests a hierarchy: God > Son. Yet the ego would say, noooooo... can't have heirarchies or any concept of separations or multitudes in Heaven. YES YOU CAN. And they are NATURAL, meaning they are not WRONG to be there, and they are not attacks, and they are not ego.

TEMPTATION

"What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? "

Illusions are not inherently real. However, there is a potential in illusions to be "tempted" to believe they are real. If someone is sane, they will recognize the illusion is just a trick and will not believe it. But the illusion contains this property of "trying to convince" you that there is a hidden, delusional truth, which you will "see" when and if you believe in it.

The world, is an illusion. It "tempts you" to believe that you are physical, a body, in a physical world, which seems real. But this illusion is only "potentially" taken as real, depending on your belief system and perception.

You are tempted by form to believe that sin and error are reality. You are tempted by the body to believe that you are limited and isolated. All the time, this world and everything in it is potentially a temptation. It tries to persuade you to believe its lies.

But it is then up to you, whether you buy into it and fall for the temptation, or whether you come to your senses and rise above it into sanity and truth, recognizing the world and body as lies, and not listening to these messages of temptation.

"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated."

""Let me not wander into temptation.""

"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. 2 It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die"

"When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above."

"The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved."

"Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. 4 Help him to go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way"

"Yet there will be temptations along the way the teacher of God has yet to travel, and he has need of reminding himself throughout the day of his protection."

"The purpose is to protect yourself from temptation throughout the day"

"Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back."

"And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams"

"I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. 5 I suffer only because of my belief in them."

"Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation."

"No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God's Name."

"The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with this shift in goals."

"As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless."

"And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."

""Lead us not into temptation" means "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.""

"If you are tempted to believe them true, remember that appearances can not withstand the truth these mighty words contain: 3 Salvation is my only function"

"When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception."

"Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently: 3 Light and joy and peace abide in you. 4 Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God."

"If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?""

"Perhaps you would be tempted to agree with the ego that it is far better to be sinful than mistaken."

"This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood."

"When you are tempted to deny Him remember that there are no other gods to place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace."

"And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes and change what you desire."

"When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did not die . 2 You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me."

"When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger."

"The PURPOSE OF THE WORLD you see IS TO OBSCURE your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. 3 It is the TEMPTATION TO ABANDON GOD and His Son BY TAKING ON A PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. 4 It is THIS THE BODY'S EYES LOOK UPON."

"NOTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE CAN BE ANYTHING BUT A FORM OF TEMPTATION, since this was THE PURPOSE OF THE BODY itself."

The thoughts that arise in your mind, have a cause. They are produced BY the mind as a result of thinking. They do not show up out of nowhere. Nor are they generated without intention, because "there are no neutral thoughts."

Ego thoughts are reactions, or effects, in response to a perceived external cause. They happen in a split mind in a state of dissociation. One part of the mind sees itself as causing the other part of the mind, and this produce effects. The effects are thoughts of judgement, reaction, threat and fear. These reactions also produce all the ego emotions.

If you believe there is a cause outside of yourself with the power to do something to you, you will have a "reaction". However you are reacting to your own perception that you are being threatened or caused against your will. The belief in this cause splits off part of the mind and pits it against the rest of you. And you can't believe in being caused without also believing there are effects.

The mind generates both the sense of being causal, and the sense of being affected by that cause. ie that you are "doing this to yourself". In the split mind, ie the ego, this dissociation leads to all reactions.

So for example if you perceive there is an external threat of some kind, or a person having power to affect you, your mind will not only believe in being caused, it will also believe in being affected. Cause and effect alway exist together. Your mind will manufacture what it believes should be the "effects", results or consequences, corresponding to the severity of the threat.

This is also because there is a hierarchy of illusions. If you believe there is a very big threat, you WILL have much bigger reaction. The intensity, size, seriousness, importance or value of the perceived danger, which is a belief in YOUR mind, produce a corresponding effect.

For example there was a time when my wife had cancer, and when this was diagnosed, and through the later surgery, I was stricken with intense fear thoughts. And they would not stop erupting. They were strong and persistent and were in direct response to "how serious" I believed the situation was.

It was interesting though that because of this intensity, I got to see first hand the way the hierarchy of illusions works. The ego, in effect, insists that you SHOULD react with a given amount of severity, based on how severe the cause is. Bigger problems call forth bigger reactions. More serious problems have stronger "temptation" and inspire much larger responses.

So I at least got to see that the only reason I was having such a big fear response, with my mind flooded with terribly fearful thoughts every few seconds, was because of this supposed hierarchy. I didn't HAVE to have such a big reaction, and I shouldn't have been having it based solely on the seriousness of the supposed situation. But there it was. Big perceived threats, produce big reactionary thoughts.

You can see in the course a trend whereby it's asking us to not only transcend the hierarchy, but also to stop being affected by external causes. It's moving us towards a reintegration of the dissociated parts of mind, and to stop attacking yourself. And thereby it's bringing about "peace of mind", calmness and quietness of thought, simply as a result of removing your BELIEF IN the hierarchy of illusions.

It would be denial to say that your mind can be peaceful while still having attack thoughts, while still having ego thoughts, while still being plagued by emotional reactions, or while you're still riddled with fear. There is no peace there. Peace arises from the ABSENCE of ego thoughts, having been placed with God-like thinking, which leads to only loving, peace-inducing experiences.

A mind which does not believe the hierarchy and is not tempted by external causation, does not HAVE these reactions. This is reiterated in the secret of salvation, ie "you would not react AT ALL to figures in a dream that you knew YOU were dreaming." By remembering its a dream and its coming from us, we step out of the "reaction mode". And if you can't react, you can't have reactionary thoughts or emotions. And this leads to the mind becoming quiet and undisturbed.

So really it is your mind that makes the ego thoughts. And it makes them both in the form of attack thoughts, and in the form of reactionary thoughts. Where there is attack there is cause, and where there is cause there is effect. YOU make the thoughts that keep flooding your mind with fear, based on false perceptions. Without false perceptions, you have no basis for CAUSING negative effects because you aren't thinking in an attacking way.

So it's not so much that you have to spend time trying to watch thoughts come and go, or try to ignore them, or deny them, or control them. It's more a matter of needing to heal your beliefs and undo the split in the mind, so that you don't PRODUCE all these attacking thoughts.

What this really points to is that, your mind creates its own suffering, your mind creates all symptoms, your mind creates all reactions, your mind puts in place all bodily states, and you are responsible for healing the split so that you don't MAKE these things in the first place.

In this world, "forgiveness is an earthly form of love". What that means is that REAL love is of Heaven, and on earth the best we can do is a REFLECTION of love projected into the mirror of the world. This reflection is heaven-LIKE, but is not heaven itself.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell" means that the mirror of the world can reflect an IMAGE of heaven or hell in it. Images are not the real thing, but they REPRESENT the real thing and point to it. They act as symbols, and ALL images are symbolic.

Forgiveness itself is therefore an 'image' or reflection of heaven, and therefore is SYMBOLIC OF HEAVEN. It is a representation of heaven within this world, and POINTS TO the real heaven that it symbolizes.

We can then say that, the state of forgiveness, atonement, true-perception, salvation, right-mindedness, miracle-mindedness, sanity, the face of christ, the real world etc..... this is all one SYMBOL of heaven. And being a symbol, it must be heaven LIKE.

To be heaven like is to be SIMILAR to how you are in heaven. Holy Relationships reflect our real relationships in heaven, in which you are in unconditional love with EVERY member of the sonship. Miracles reflect your interpersonal relations, in which you are united with your brother. And forgiveness corresponds to a harmless attitude, devoid of sin and attack.

So what we can simply say is, you are supposed to be heaven-like, while on the earth. So if being heaven like is to be IMMORTAL, then you are to be immortal-like while on the earth. In your real immortality you are invulnerable to suffering, nothing can affect you against your will, you cannot be hurt or made to be sick or dead, and you have permanent life. You must therefore REFLECT this symbolically on earth by demonstrating that you are invulnerable to the world.

This is why in "forgiveness" we try to take an approach that "I am not at the effect of the world" and "no one is doing this to me, I'm doing it to myself" and "I can be hurt by nothing" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression or make me sick" and all these other various forms of being CAUSE, NOT EFFECT.

The whole reason we're trying not to accuse others of sinning against us, is because in truth we cannot BE sinned against, because we are immortal. Other's can't be to blame for hurting you, because you cannot BE hurt. The world cannot be sinful or the cause of your suffering, because you CANNOT really suffer. No-one else can have power over you, because you are ALL POWERFUL. And not even sickness or death can "happen to you" because YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So it's not just that we're trying not to accuse others, it's that in truth we have absolutely no grounds for believing that we can even BE attacked or be caused against our will. We are immortal beings, and when we're getting into "something's wrong with me" or "you did this to me" we're lying to ourselves and pretending to be MORTAL. Only those who are mortal can be vulnerable, suffer, be attacked, be weakened, be made sick, or be caused to die.

Forgiveness therefore is a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY and is a state in which you are as close to your actual immortality as possible. It's a state of invulnerability, where even the body can no longer be sick or die, and where you are completely free from all attack. You do not attack yourself, and you have no belief in sin. You see sinlessness in yourself and in the world and in everyone, because immortal beings HAVE to be sinless. And immortality is innocence.

You can't BE hurt. You can't really suffer. You can't really BE sick. And the Son of God certainly can NEVER die. So what's the point with all this fake suffering and fake sickness and fake death? "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt" .... but you CAN'T be hurt. Even when you seem to hurt yourself it does NOTHING to your soul. You have NEVER BEEN HURT and you CANNOT BE HURT. Adopting that attitude is in alignment with your immortal soul.

"But the Face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God.

It is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. And so the Unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven."

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."

"But a RISEN Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God's forgiveness upon HIMSELF; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole."

"The "spiritual eye" is symbolic, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. It IS, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle, but NOT of revelation."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth."

"But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection IN you, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds it from awareness like a shield held up to obscure the sun."

"It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms"

"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the fear of awakening."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result."

"The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it."

"And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

"You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant."

"The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."

"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."

"Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they CALL to it, and bid it come to SAVE them from communication. "

"For death is seen as SAFETY, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God."

"Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God's Answer is its end."

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death."

"In its exaltation (the body), you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL? "

"Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction."

"What seems to be FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this IS blasphemy"

"Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. No one dies without their own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose."

"Would you not rather live than choose to die? Living is joy, but death can only weep. You see in death escape from what you made. But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. "

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you."

"Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God."

"Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: "Here lies a witness God is dead." And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so."

"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well."

"There is no death, for death is not Your Will."

"But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength."

"For death is not of the real world, in which everything is eternal."

"How can some forms of murder NOT mean death? Can an attack in ANY form be love? What FORM of condemnation is a blessing?"

"Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know what it means. They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; - denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT."

"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."

"If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes? Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may seem to be, a blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks through you to your brother?"

"Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. "

"For the wages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die?"

"Death is a human affirmation of a belief in fate."

"You but choose whether to go TOWARDS Heaven, or away to nowhere."

"Death cannot be escape"

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

A collection of quotes from A Course in Miracles.

"Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker nor of the ****miracle receiver****. However, as a creative act, the miracle ****need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind.**** But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness ****in someone else.****"

"All forms of not-Right-Mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement FOR YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places himself in the position to recognize that ****those who need to be healed are simply those who have NOT done so.****"

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind ****can only heal.**** By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he ****can undo the level confusion of others****. The message which he then ****gives to others**** is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from overevaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."

"Having offered love, only love can be received. It is in this that the teacher of God must trust. This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. The teacher of God is a miracle worker because ****he gives the gifts he has received****. Yet he must first accept them. He need do no more, nor is there more that he could do. By accepting healing ****he can give it.**** If he doubts this, let him remember Who gave the gift and Who received it. Thus is his doubt corrected."

"Yet love without trust is impossible, and doubt and trust cannot coexist. And hate must be the opposite of love, regardless of the form it takes. Doubt not the gift and it is impossible to doubt its result. This is the certainty that gives God's teachers the power to be miracle workers, for they have put their trust in Him."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation."

"They meet IN ORDER to abolish the difference. At the beginning, since we are still in time, they come together on the basis of inequality of ability and experience. The aim of the teacher is to ****give them more of what is temporarily his.**** This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) ****gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him****, at the same time gaining for himself."

"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and ****in his healing is his pupil healed with him****. The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition. His sins have been forgiven him, and he no longer condemns himself. How can he then condemn anyone? And ****who is there whom his forgiveness can fail to heal****?"

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, ****those who are sick do NOT love themselves****. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. ****If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick****. ****The task of the miracle-worker**** thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ****the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs****, because that light IS theirs."

"The miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites his own inherent abilities to deny ****and project with mine, and imposes them back on himself and others****. This establishes the total lack of threat anywhere. ****Together we can then work**** for the real time of peace, which is Eternal."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually ****extending it****, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its ****EFFECTS**** assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; ****he LETS HEALING BE****. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be ****for his patient****.

The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only ****LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION****. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, ****to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help****, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.

****As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM****, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK."

Let's clear this up.

For the entire time that you have a physical body with working eyeballs, you will physically see the physical world based on the laws of physics. The body functions biologically based on photons of light entering the retina etc and sending messages to the brain and mind.

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE NO MATTER HOW MUCH FORGIVENESS YOU DO, how many workbook lessons, or how much you've read. Your physical eyes will continue to report the same exact differences, conflicts, problems, wars, destruction, sickness and death. This will NOT change. If you point your eyeballs at the physical world, of which they are a part, they will SHOW YOU exactly the same PHYSICAL world.

Meanwhile, you are working on forgiveness, and on changing your mind in order to change your perception. But this is to do with your MIND in terms of what it believes. What it believes determines what it projects in terms of MEANING, and thus how it categorizes the true and the false, the real and the unreal. It puts everything into a category, and so as the body SENDS IT physical messages of physical sights, the mind INTERPRETS those signals.

It is then up to the mind to decide what to DO WITH those signals that are coming in from the physical eyes. Initially, realize that the body is LOCKED IN to false perception. It CANNOT SEE reality and it never will. The body can ONLY look upon illusions and GIVE them reality, regarding them as equally of the same material and nature as ITSELF, and therefore one with them, and thus regarding them as REAL.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

Consider also then that if your mind BELIEVES everything it is shown by the body's eyes, it will categorize all illusions as reality, which is "false perception". A failure to recognize that illusions are illusions, that dreams are dreams, and that the world is not real. Taking the body "at its word" is false perception and unconsciousness.

The mind therefore has to open up to another WAY of seeing, which is the spiritual eye, or the mind's eye. The mind can see directly without photons and does not rely on the body's eyeballs to do this. True vision can see anywhere and everywhere at any time without limit, even the other side of the universe in the past or future. The mind, as it begins to OPEN UP to reality, which requires transcending the physical world, starts to IGNORE the physical sight messages and tunes into another world.

As it does this, the mind is going to start categorizing everything the BODY claims is real, as unreal. It has to in order to awaken and move into true perception. Everything the body reports is a lie because the body is blind to reality. So the mind starts to open up to seeing without the body, and seeing beyond the body, and beyond form, and beyond the world, and beyond space and time. This means it is opening up to seeing light and reality, at the same time as DENYING AND CLOSING DOWN to the physical signals coming in from the body.

However, so long as you have a body, you will STILL CONTINUE to receive signals from the physical sensory equipment. You will STILL be shown images of a broken world, images of faulty bodies, images of war and death and sickness and suffering. The body CANNOT HELP IT but keep showing this to you all the time. As soon as you open your eyelids you're going to be shown this, every single day for as long as you have a body.

So the interesting thing is then that mind is changing but the body is not. Mind is still USING a body, at the same time as learning to see WITHOUT a body. And this means that the mind is going to have to deal with TWO CHANNELS OF INPUT at the same time, in parallel. The physical sight is being phased out, so to speak, while the spiritual sight is phased in, but until you reach total atonement and awakening to heaven's reality you're going to see BOTH AT ONCE. As Jesus confirms:

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

So this now means that you as mind are going to be getting inputs from a physical and FALSE sensory apparatus, which is going to KEEP remaining fixated on the PHYSICAL world for as long as it persists, while simultaneously it's going to get inputs from BEYOND the physical which the physical body CANNOT see. The mind is closing off to unreality and opening up to reality's at the same time. So you have a kind of DOUBLE VISION, at least for as long as the body persists.

If you think this is not true then you should consider the fact that you are STILL perfectly capable of reading every single workbook lesson no matter how many of them you've done or for how long. The words on the page have not changed, the color of the text has not changed, nothing about it has changed. It is PHYSICALLY THE SAME BOOK as when you started reading. This is because the physical sight has not changed. But your MIND'S SEEING HAS changed.

So what this means in worldly terms is, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you're going to STILL get input from the unreal physical world, claiming all kinds of things to be true which aren't, while at the same time opening up to a new reality BEYOND the physical world which the body can't even see.

This means that if you see a physical body with your physical eyes and your eyes report an image of that body which has a broken leg and skin cancer and bad hair and a limp and some blubber, you're going to KEEP ON SEEING THAT for as long as it's there physically, REGARLDESS of whether you are more spiritual or not. 10 years from now you will still look upon that same physical body and see the same physical symptoms. But what it MEANS to you will be different and what you make of it will be different, as well as your mind will be opening up to OTHER sights and sounds from beyond the world. Jesus again confirms twice:

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

They use PHYSICAL SIGHT to watch the dream figures suffer and die, BUT their MINDS ARE HEALED. They have done forgiveness work. Their mind is opening up to unlimited spiritual vision and seeing BEYOND physical bodies, but the physical body is STILL reporting the same shit as before. This is not going to change just because you're waking up.

So if you see someone with your physical eyes and they report a certain condition or state, that's because your physical eyes are still functioning true to their design. Just because your MIND is different and is seeing from a more inclusive loving vantage point does NOT mean that you will no longer see the same physical sights! It does not mean that graveyards are going to disappear, or that the wars will be gone, or that people aren't writhing in agony and screaming for help. They will still physically do this and your body will STILL physically report it. But your mind will INTERPRET it different because it will OVERLOOK it and look PAST it, beyond it to the light of truth.

So you see, you can't say that "if you see it it's' yours". And you can't say that if you see someone doing something you are judging them. And you can't say that just because you're seeing it your mind is not healed. That's all bullshit. That's a denial of the mechanisms of perception. Many people think that perception is ONE THING and that you change this ONE perceptual mechanism and EVERYTHING you see will just transform and shift away from suffering towards some kind of beautiful world where nothing ever dies. That's SORT of true in that the mind opens up vision to seeing the real world, but it's NOT true in the sense that this causes you to NOT SEE the physical world UNTIL THE VERY END.

That's because you're in a state of transition BETWEEN the two ways of seeing, which will continue for as long as you have a body, and until you see the face of christ, and forget the world entirely, as the veil of illusions lifts from your sight and you see ONLY with vision, and completely VANISH the body from your existence. ONLY THEN will you no longer see the physical, and only then do the physical signals stop bombarding your mind. UNTIL then, until you are DONE, you're going to have to continue dealing with FALSE MESSAGES coming to you from a false world, at the same time as tying to look past them psychologically.

So no, if you see bad physical stuff happening, it's NOT because you are projecting bad stuff. It's not because you are not healed or are guilty. It's NOT YOUR STUFF. Your stuff isn't physical, it's mental. Your baggage of stuff to be healed in your false perceptions, which you project ONTO THE PHYSICAL SIGNALS, is an added layer of meaning which you GIVE TO the signals coming from the physical world. It's how you INTERPRET them. You can read into them and put hate and guilt and sin onto them, or you can OVERLOOK them and diminish their power and see them as false and sinless and nothing.

If I see a person walking past with a broken leg, that's because their leg is broken physically and it will carry on being broken physically whether I'm in a good mood or not, whether I'm lining up with the holy spirit or not, and regardless of anything else I do. OTHER than to say that if I move towards the light I WILL extend healing and this will INFLUENCE the other person, and may indeed miraculously heal their broken leg, but that's a whole other story. If I have physical eyeballs I WILL SEE the physical world. And I will keep seeing it until my mind is 100% totally committed to seeing ONLY reality. That's why you can still find your way to the toilet!

This is the point at which the physical stops showing you pictures of impossible worlds:

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

Note then that spiritual sight only very "lightly" touches upon the physical "veil of illusions", the world, earth, as it LOOKS PAST it and beyond it to the light of heaven or the real world. It sort of lightly sees the forgiven world (to forgive is to overlook) as a result of not looking heavily AT it, and instead looking THROUGH it and past it. This makes the world gradually more transparent until eventually the veil of spacetime lifts entirely, revealing christ's face. ONLY THEN will you stop seeing the physical (forgiven OR unforgiven) world. And then you will use ONLY vision and see ONLY reality.

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

So can we please try to stop saying that everything you see is because of how you're seeing, and stop saying that if you see something you're judging, and stop saying that every single claim is a projection, and stop saying that seeing a broken body means your mind is not healed, and stop being CONFUSED about the fact that there are TWO PARALLEL CHANNELS OF INPUT coming into your mind. One of them is true, and one of them is false. And the false channel can and will show you earth EXACTLY AS BEFORE, until you no longer have a body to look at it with. And this has NO BEARING on how healed your mind is other than to say that only in TOTAL healing will you stop USING the body at all.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

The problem in your mind is that you have condemned yourself to be a sinner. You've accused and attacked yourself, claiming you are guilty. You cannot tolerate this guilt, so you want to make it go away, but your belief in the ego/sin is a desire to also keep it.

The ego then provides what seems like a solution. It suggests you can make the guilt go OUTSIDE of your mind, and the blame can then be pinned on someone who is completely separate from you. An external scapegoat will take the fall for you.

This of course requires that you identify yourself as separate from other people, typically on the basis of them being "a separate body". If you are body-identified, you will see yourself AS the body. So anything inside the body is you, and anything outside is not. This is how the body serves the purpose of a separation device.

The ego will say that if you push the guilt outside of you, and pin it on someone else, you will escape it. What it does NOT tell you is that this is impossible. You cannot take an idea or a thought or feeling or belief which is mind content, and make it exist OUTSIDE the mind itself. It has to stay in the mind, which is why "ideas leave not their source."

What happens is, you go into denial that the guilt is in you, and you deny that trying to make it go outside your mind is impossible. This forms a block to awareness. You then attempt what we call "projection", or the ego's use of projection, in which you try to displace the guilt beyond the outer limits of what you consider to be yourself.

Again, what the ego doesn't tell you is that this will not work, because you cannot make anything go outside your mind or your self. The whole world is inside of you. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." "Heaven and earth are both in your mind."

What you actually do is you split your mind into two compartments. You place the guilt into one compartment, and you IMAGINE that this compartment is OUTSIDE of the second compartment. The second compartment, inside the body, is considered to be the whole of yourself, or your whole mind.

So now what you're doing is you are actually increasing the belief in separation WITHIN your mind, are making a rift in your mind which hurts it, you are emphasizing separation within yourself, and you are dissociating from a part of your own mind. You now believe that part of your mind is NOT part of your mind, and is EXTERNAL to your mind. And you also believe this must be outside of the body.

So now it becomes easy to associate this guilt with anything external, whether it be the wrong weather, another human body, a group of people, some organization, an event, certain types of foods, belief systems other people have, body traits, or whatever. It's easy to believe the guilt BELONGS to them, because you believe the guilt is OUTSIDE your body - outside of yourself. It then MUST belong to someone else.

What you will then do is believe that your guilt is bound to the other person. You project it onto them, mixing them with it, as though it is an inherent part of what they are. A part of their sinfulness.

This is ESPECIALLY easy if the other person appears to make a mistake or do something wrong. It is certainly a blessing in disguise if they commit some kind of serious crime or sin. Because now you have a wonderful opportunity to seize their error, holding it against them as a sin, to AMPLIFY how guilty they are, on the apparent basis of what THEY did, as if to suggest they are guilty because of THEIR OWN sin.

This appears to exonerate you, because now you can point a finger at a "self-contained" guilty person and say, YOU are guilty, and I am not. While doing this, however, your mind secretly tries to ADD YOUR OWN guilt to what you think is theirs. You try to secretly slip your guilt into the situation while claiming it belongs to them, and is justified in being attributed to them. You give them YOUR guilt, and call it theirs.

The thing is, even while you do this, YOUR guilt IS NOT leaving your mind. You will, however, believe that it is outside of you and even see and experience it as if it is. In fact this dissociation can become very strong. You can become extremely convinced, and therefore perceive, that the guilt is entirely theirs and not in you at all. Look at what THEY are doing wrong! But this IS a state of tremendous self-deception.

What is really happening is your mind is PRETENDING that it has projected or displaced the guilt outside the borders of your self, it is convincing itself that it has succeeded in getting rid of it, it has convinced itself that the guilty party is NOT itself, that the guilt is NOT in the mind any more, and that YOU have been set free from it. This is all a lie, and is all a state of mental illness, because a mind AT WAR WITH ITSELF is insane.

When you are then attacking what seems to be the other guilty person for what you think is THEIR guilt, your mind IS in fact attacking ITSELF, WITHIN itself. It is attacking the portion of your mind that you have believed is "not a part of me", which YOU have attacked, causing a split in your mind, and the guilt that you think you're looking at IS STILL inside the limits of your mind. Your mind believes the guilty mind is SEPARATE, but it is STILL joined to your mind.

"It can be but myself I crucify." "You're doing this to yourself."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

So as you attack another in anger, attempting to make someone else - someone "not me" - seem guilty, you ARE in fact STILL ATTACKING YOURSELF, trying to make YOU NOT BE YOU. You only seem to be indirectly doing this because of the seeming separation IN your mind. You may think separation is now taking place BETWEEN brothers, ie between your separate body self and your brother's separate body self, but really it is taking place INSIDE OF YOU.

The guilt you see in them is STILL your guilt. The sin you are accusing them of you are still accusing yourself of, but are heavily in denial of that fact. The idea of guilt NEVER leaves your mind. You are SEEING your own guilt projected onto someone else. You BELIEVE if you can angrily attack them and find them to be extra guilty, then this will mean YOU are not guilty. But in fact it REINFORCES your own guilt.

This happens because not only did you start out with guilt from your OWN self attack, you have now believed that you have successfully attacked another, and justly, causing them to be hurt, which now induces even more guilt in you. And while you are busy BELIEVING that you are destroying your enemy, the enemy is actually part of your own mind, and your mind is destroying itself.

"Anger is never justified."

Each time that you become angry, you are projecting your guilt. Each time that you find ANYONE to be guilty of anything even slightly, you are trying to escape from YOUR guilt. Each time you find someone to be accused of anything, YOU NEED a scapegoat because YOU deep down believe you are guilty. This means you are running away from your guilt by trying to use DISSOCIATION to PRETEND that it is not inside of you.

The more you intensify your attack on another, the more you hate them, the more you seem to find them to be sinful, the more you want to separate from them, the more you think you cannot stand being around them and want nothing to do with them, the more murderous you become, the more YOUR MIND SPLITS. You THINK that you're finding someone else guilty but you are ONLY EVER finding yourself guilty.

In effect, the mechanism of denial, dissociation and projection, DOES NOT WORK. It does not heal you! The ego claims it will work every time, and you can convince yourself very profoundly that you are succeeding at doing this. But you ARE mistaken. The thought of guilt CANNOT leave your mind. It cannot exist outside the scope of a mind that thinks of it. And there IS nothing outside of mind, because mind is all-encompassing.

Therefore, everytime that you think you are successfully finding someone ELSE guilty, you ARE NOT succeeding in removing guilt from your mind. You are side-steppping and avoiding it, denying that you hate yourself. You are PRETENDING that it is not in you, by believing it is outside of you. And every attack you make upon it IN your brother, IS a direct attack UPON YOURSELF. And YOU DO therefore experience the consequences. The Golden Rule is always in effect.

This means every single time you try to get rid of your guilt this way, which really is an attempt to KEEP IT AND NOT HEAL IT, you magnify your guilt and run way from it. Your denial increases and you become ever more divided within yourself. You will sense yourself as being separated from your brothers, but even worse, you are separating WITHIN YOURSELF. This is self destruction.

Every time you accuse anyone of guilt, YOU ARE literally directly accusing a part of your mind of being guilty. You NEVER accuse anyone of their own sins, or their own guilt. You can't even really tell if anyone is guilty or not. You can only try to shove YOUR guilt onto them and accuse them of it. You ADD your guilt to their mistakes, turning them into sins.

You only EVER accuse anyone of YOUR sin and YOUR guilt. You try to MAKE others be guilty because of how guilty YOU feel. Which means you USE them as scapegoats so that YOU will convince yourself you are less guilty. Even if you're lying to yourself.

The ego does not want you ever looking within at the guilt that you think is there. It wants you believing its plan of "forgiveness to destroy" will work. Its plan is that if you will just place the guilt OUTSIDE yourself, someone ELSE can take the fall for it. But this literally is absolutely impossible. All you end up doing is making yourself worse off, increasing your belief in separation, and hurting yourself more.

Given that the ego's "magical solution" to the guilt is really an attempt to KEEP IT AND HIDE FROM IT, it simply DOES NOT actually make the guilt go away. It does not reduce it or heal it. You use denial to try to block it out of awareness, and you use dissociation to try to pretend it's not yours. But it remains in you, festering and unforgiven. Because it is always YOU that needs your forgiveness, because "all attack is self attack."

Your brother is NOT GUILTY. The guilt IS NOT THEIRS. YOU think you are guilty. You are in denial about it. YOU need to heal this guilt and actually undo it, because it is based on a lie. YOU are not guilty because sin is not real.

YOU don't NEED to project guilt because you are NOT a sinner. This is the forgiveness YOUR MIND needs in order to heal the separation. Because the separation is IN YOU. And it is in YOUR MIND that it needs to be healed.

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

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"But consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You PROJECT guilt to get rid of it, but you actually merely CONCEAL it."

"The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is ALWAYS to get rid of guilt. But, characteristically, it attempts to get rid of it FROM ITS VIEWPOINT ONLY. For much as the ego wants to RETAIN guilt, YOU find it intolerable."

"Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind."

"Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause."

"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that THERE IS NO GUILT IN GOD'S SON. And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness. For the IDEA of guilt brings a belief of condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by doing so, you cannot know that you are God's Son."

"Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can find and "love."

"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Would I accuse myself of doing this?

I will not lay this chain upon myself."

"Minds that are joined, AND RECOGNIZE THEY ARE, can feel no guilt. For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"See no-one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness UNTO YOURSELF. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God, lies the conviction of your OWN guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make YOU free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for ALL your brothers. For so you learn that IT IS TRUE FOR YOU. "

WORLD IS STILL HELL EVEN WITH FORGIVING PERCEPTION - YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE IT AS A FORGIVEN ILLUSION OF HELL - AND LOOK PAST IT TO HEAVEN.

In the following statements, Jesus talks of how even in a state of true perception, or christ vision, this world is still seen as containing hellish things happening. Not that they are regarded as real, and in fact they are dismissed as unreal. But this doesn’t mean things aren’t still going wrong in the world. There are still sick bodies seen, there is still suffering and death happening, bodies are still attacking each other, murders are still happening.

The point is, just because you forgive the world it doesn’t mean it turns into a place where nothing bad happens. Nor do you become blind to people’s suffering. The important thing isn’t whether or not the world has "improved" in its events and happenings and problems, the important thing is realizing NONE OF IT IS REAL. Those who are expecting to see "heaven on earth" with everyone getting along, are in for a long wait. True perception and forgiveness cannot show you that. Perception is an effect, not a cause.

We will learn to recognize this world is an illusion. We will learn to disregard what seems to be happening in the world. We won’t dress it up in wishful thinking that everyone suddenly is getting along just because you are waking up. True perception is accurate perception, not rose colored glasses. The world, Earth, always remains as it is. Shit still happens in it. People don’t suddenly all start loving each other. Earth, a world of forms of error, cannot be but hell. It is illusion, a dream of everything going wrong.

Your corrected mind must OVERLOOK this world. Forgiveness means not believing this world is really happening. The forms in the world are still going to be in conflict, competition and attack. You can’t stop that. But you CAN come to see that it is NOT TRUE. Everything the body’s eyes report is a lie. Your mind has to learn to disregard these images. To not believe them. To not see the sin and think it real. A forgiven world, however, cannot last, because forgiveness UNDOES IT.

You have to look PAST the world of sin with forgiving eyes and not see "real sin" in it. You must see it as meaning innocence instead. But this DOES NOT stop it from having totally shit things happening in it. You will still see sickness and death, but reinterpret it as JUST A DREAM. Not real. Not heaven. Nothing. At the same time, you are to look PAST IT, through it practically ignoring it, to a LIGHT which is FAR BEYOND IT.

The light is where Heaven is. The light is where love is. It is BEYOND the illusory veil of matter that coves your sight. Your task here is to SEE THE WORLD LESS, and SEE HEAVEN MORE. To tune OUT of the world, and tune INTO Heaven. The aim is to no longer see the world AT ALL, and to ONLY see Heaven. You cannot see both worlds. Sight of one denies the other. More Heaven, less world.

Eventually the world disappears into the nothingness from which it came. All that remains is Heaven, and Earth has left no trace at all in its going. It was always just a dream, always an illusion. It could never be heaven. There is no world. Only Heaven is real. The world is barely even a thin veil across your sight as you look BEYOND it to the face of Christ. It may well seem forgiven and lovely but it is not the direction of your FOCUS. Your eyes are on Heaven, not on the world, and that is why you OVERLOOK it, and that is why you give it NO REALITY, and that is why it looks devoid of attack. That "holy world" is essentially NO WORLD. Only God’s creation has reality.

In summary, corrected perception/Christ Vision shows you:

1) the physical world is a thin veil illusion regarded as UNREAL and ILLUSORY, which appears to be a "beautiful illusion", a forgiven world that is, nevertheless, FAKE. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the forgiven world IS 100% DREAM ILLUSION, and so once the healed mind recognizes it, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot keep the world AND SEE IT CORRECTLY. You cannot keep the world AND BE FORGIVING. You cannot keep the world and SEE GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

2) sight of something BEYOND the image of the world, beyond forms and bodies and worlds, a light of Christ. The face of Christ, which shines BEHIND the appearance of physical matter. Seen shining behind the transparent veil. Sight of THAT is what makes you happy. It is because you are looking PAST the illusory world TO reality - a world of light - that you are at peace. Not because the world itself becomes heaven. If you believe what the body keeps showing you, you will NOT SEE the face of Christ. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one (Earth) denies the other (Heaven). You have to choose one. Heaven is your home. It is the only sane choice. Earth is nothing, isn’t real, and doesn’t exist.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"...When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. 8 And so it is with healing. 9 The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.

M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

"It is impossible to see two worlds." (And there are two)

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. 5 Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 6 If you are physical, your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. 7 If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen . 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. "

"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. 2 Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. 3 It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. 4 Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. 5 What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. 6 The definition of reality is God's, not yours. 7 He created it, and He knows what it is. 8 You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion."

"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer."

"Son of God, be not content with nothing! 2 What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. 3 God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. 4 You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. 5 Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. 6 Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. 7 You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. 8 Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. 9 By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. 10 But it is not there . 11 And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself."

"The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. 2 Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. 3 Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. 4 And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. 5 Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. "

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? 8 He is invisible in such a world. 9 Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. 10 Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes."

"Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. "

"The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there."

"Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality."

"Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. 6 The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. 7 Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see."

The connection between denying illusions and working miracles...

"The miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites his own inherent abilities to deny and project with mine, and imposes them back on himself and others. This establishes the total lack of threat anywhere. Together we can then work for the real time of peace, which is Eternal."

The ego's kind of denial is the denial of God, the denial of truth and reality. It denies heaven and accepts hell.

The proper use of denial does the opposite, accepting God and denying hell. This means that denial itself is not necessarily negative or positive, but you HAVE to always deny something, because you also have to always accept something. Whatever you accept into your mind is reality to you, and whatever you deny is shut out of your mind.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you. It is, however, only the ACCEPTANCE which makes it real."

"Every illusion which you accept into your mind, BY JUDGING IT TO BE ATTAINABLE, removes your own sense of completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father."

Similarly we are to use projection as Jesus would use it, because projection itself is NOT inherently positive or negative.

"WHAT YOU PROJECT YOU BELIEVE. This is an immutable law of mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

The ego's use of projection is to attack or deny what's within, and project separation.

The proper use of projection is to accept and see what is within and project wholeness and innocence.

A miracle worker therefore is tasked with using denial and projection appropriately, ie constructively. To deny the denial of the truth.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." Miracle mindedness is a state in which the world of form - anything not of God - is fully denied. And heaven is fully accepted. And whatever you accept into your mind becomes your reality, while whatever you deny (properly) becomes invisible to you. To see the real world you must accept its truth, which is atonement. And this requires that you DENY the physical world - anything not of God.

"Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom IS. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving WHAT IS NOT OF GOD."

"Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God, is gone."

"Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

The whole course can be summed up fairly simply as.... accept only the Kingdom of God, and deny the world you made. Refuse to accept anything is true about the world, and do not deny God.

Denial is a powerful defense and tool which acts like a pivot around which your whole perception revolves. Deny reality and you make an illusory world real. Deny all the illusions of the world and heaven becomes real to you again. To accept the atonement is to deny the illusory world and be utterly unphased by the dream, denying it any power over you at all.

To remain in miracle mindedness you must be vigilant for the Kingdom - accepting that only the truth is true and nothing else is true. To accept only that which is of God, wholly and openly, and refuse to accept anything God did not create.

"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?"

"INDIRECT proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial, and without direction."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you ARE denying Him."

"But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively. Used negatively, it WILL be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of God" "Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

"Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone FOR YOU. REALITY CANNOT BE PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost awareness of ALL of it."

Yesterday I lay hands on my wife's cramping feet, I commanded the cramps to go, Holy Spirit flowed and the cramps left. There wasn't a whole lot of fanfare. It just happened and it was done.

Miracle.

I noticed afterwards that it had worked seemingly easier than in past attempts. Something about me had changed.

Previously, as I attempted miracles, I still had a strong belief in sickness being real. I saw its removal as "difficult", and felt that I was going up against a formidable opponent.

It reminded me of how when I first started to pray to God, that I would be in much more of a begging mode, much more a victim, and quite powerless. I'd be in tears and pleading and begging but it wouldn't bring about much of a result. This is because I was not orienting myself properly as an extender of God's miracles, but was trying have something done to me. That's victim consciousness, and God will not attack.

ACIM also tells us about the authority problem, which is our attempt to "be God" in separation from God, to overthrow God and to replace Him with a false self. The more that we try to do this, the more we give "power" to the ego, but paradoxically this is also giving AWAY our true power - the power of God. The stronger the ego seems to become, the weaker we become. Taking authority away from God takes real authority away from ourselves.

Similarly, the extent to which we believe that illusions are reality, such as that sickness is real, problems are real, or that we have powerful enemies, reveals just how weakened we are. If we believe that illusions have power over us, that they are the truth (and the truth cannot be changed), then this "disables" us from being effective miracle workers.

I had previously attempted to go up against what I perceived to be a real enemy, a real sickness, a real difficulty, and it was this fundamental belief that produced the wrong kind of perception - a perception which blocks miracles. If I'm perceiving that, let's say, 70% of the truth is in illusions, then I only believe in God's power 30% and see myself as incapable of overcoming the problem. I can rant and scream at it all I want but it won't budge.

I will also keep looking at the problem to see 'if' the miracle worked, I will check it, I will be in a mode of diagnosis (ego), and I will have a lot of doubt. Here I am using perception to receive signals from outside of me to tell me IF something happened, instead of knowing from WITHIN that it MUST happen. With a perception riddled with fear - which means that you believe illusions are real - you are not wielding very much authority over them.

In the past few weeks I've been going through quite a breakthrough in terms of recognizing that ALL sickness is unreal, that the entire physical world is an illusion, and really withdrawing a lot of belief from it. It has reframed everything for me and is putting things in their proper perspective. It was very difficult seeming to decide to not believe in sickness anymore, flying in the face of what the whole world believes.

Following this, however, I noticed as I attempted a miracle that I had a much more miracle-minded attitude. I was not about to take no for an answer, was not checking to see if something happened, I did not pause to decide whether to do it, I told the problem to go and I meant it, and a greater sense of authority expressed itself through me.

As such, when you change your mind and believe more strongly that God's truth is the truth, and that illusions really are NOTHING, you take on and share more of the REAL authority of God once more. You have power OVER illusions because you are much less deceived by them. This makes you more miracle minded because now you are more aligned with Holy Spirit's mindset, are more empowered by the truth, are much less deterred by the illusions of orders of difficulty, and you simply believe far less that the problem/sickness has more power than you do.

Ultimately this will mean that you gain such authority in Christ, such alignment with God, and such certainty that illusions are NOTHING to you, that you literally can brush them away like they meant nothing at all. That is the kind of power that Jesus demonstrated. That's what happens when you have aligned yourself with God's truth and no longer perceive incorrectly that illusions are actually even a formidable opponent. Recognizing them as nothing, not taking them seriously, not believing they are real and not GIVING THEM any power, strips them of all possible defenses and prevents them from preventing the miracle.

As we reclaim our birthright in sharing the True Authority of God, relinquishing our attempt to have ego authority - which is really weakness and powerlessness - and surrendering to the truth, provides us with automatic access to the miracle-minded awareness of God/Holy Spirit, and thereby facilitates miracles. Instead of difficult miracles seeming to become harder, they instead become easier the less you believe the problem is real. Nothing can stand in the way of the Son of God.

You have authority over all illusions because of what you are and because of what the truth is. That authority is POWER, and that power can effortlessly disappear all sickness, death and suffering. It can disappear the body, the world, and the universe. The power of God knows no limits.

Your relationships can turn from hate to holiness, if you will recognize that you have a common enemy.

Your relationship is not just you and the other person.

Your relationship is you, the other person, and the ego.

The two of you may seem to be in conflict, and you believe that there is no one else involved in this conflict. Just the two of you.

But there is always another third party involved in every conflict. The ego.

The ego is like this vicious little monster, sort of like how Christianity refers to the devil, which sits on the sidelines and attempts to COME BETWEEN people.

Its intentions are malicious and it tries to pit people against each other, to instigate fights and wars, and to get people to see each other as separate and different.

Since the ego is more or less invisible, people do not notice that it is part of the relationship. And since they do not realize that THEY have sided with the ego, they do not notice it standing out in contrast to who they are.

If you are in the middle of a fight, argument, conflict, war, tension, drama, toxic relationship etc, the two of you are being PLAYED by the ego.

It is helpful for you to both recognize and learn that you're not really upset with each other. You're upset because THE EGO is trying to make you against each other. IT is influencing you both. IT wants for you to attack each other and find each other guilty. IT wants you to be at war.

So now, in this 3-way relationship, recognize that there is an opportunity. The opportunity is for you and your enemy to decide to TEAM UP, against the ego.

It is only because of your mutual lack of RECOGNITION that the ego is involved at all, that you allow its influence to continue destroying your relationship.

Once you recognize the ego is a third party, now there comes a scenario where you have a new option. You can team up with your supposed enemy - the other person - by recognizing that you BOTH have a common, mutual enemy.

The ego is your common enemy, because it is attacking BOTH of you at the same time, it is pitting you both against each other, it is trying to SEPARATE you more, and is emphasizing all the ways that you are different from each other.

Its strategy is to split you apart and produce hatred. Really, to instigate murder. It wants you both dead, and does not CARE one iota who does it to whom. It would cheer you BOTH on as you attack each other, and would hope that you will destroy EACH OTHER.

This is its secret plan all along. As soon as you have started to fall for the ILLUSION that the ego is not involved, and that you really are an enemy of your brother or sister, you have actually bought into the EGO's TRICK that it wants you BOTH to fall for. You've bought into ITS plan for your mutual destruction.

It takes three to tango! It takes two to buy into the ego's conflict of separation. However, it takes a REUNION and therefore ONE in order to instigate a Holy Relationship.

When one person looks at the situation and realizes that the ego is a third party, and sees its ambitions to create war between you and your brother, you thus recognize the SHARED INTEREST that you and you brother have.

Your shared interest becomes that you are on each other's side and are in support of each other, because you recognize that each other is not really the enemy. The ego is. It is the ego mind that is really the culprit behind the conflict, and it is the ego mind that is trying to increase the flames of war between you.

When one person remembers this and recognizes that the ego is at play, and that you have fallen for its plot of separation, that *IT* is coming between you and your brother/sister, your UNWILLINGNESS to continue playing into ITS hands automatically disarms the conflict. Your perception of your brother changes from them being your "real enemy" to the ego being the "real enemy", and therefore your brother is now on your side.

If you will acknowledge that instead of you being right or the other person being right, you are BOTH losing out because the EGO is winning, and that IT wants you both to be separated, then you can JOIN with your brother and refuse to participate in the ego's game.

When you decide not to play the game, even if the other person is still playing the game, you cannot experience separation. You are having a holy relationship. Even if the other person is not aware of your perception of them as holy. And because it is holy, no real conflict can produce any real effects in the relationship. At least not to you. The other person may still be attacking themselves but your relationship to them is now forgiven.

If you can both join in holiness and return to ONENESS together, that is even more powerful. It is a decision to unite in saying no to the ego and yes to wholeness, yes to God and yes to peace. It is the end of war. It is first the end of the war for individual parts of the sonship and then it is the end of war for the entire sonship.

You don't have a beef with your enemies. The ego is using both of you. IT is the thing that you both need to be questioning together. Stop your fight. It's not about your brother at all.

The body is a separation device. It was made to section off and fence in a SMALL PORTION of mind, which seems then to find itself housed "inside" the body, while the larger portion of mind appears to be "separated off" or unconscious, outside the body. The sense of being isolated, separated, limited, partial, not whole, thus belongs to the "inside the body" experience, which is an experience of being only PART of yourself. To return to wholeness you have to thus transcend the body, erase the body, have no separation devices in the mind, and therefore collapse the gap between the outer and inner. The body symbolizes the split in the mind and once the split is erased the body is erased.

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

Since the body itself is a separation device BETWEEN parts of mind, designed to keep one part of mind sectioned off from the other part, it can only seem to EXIST at all while there is a sense of separation. If the mind is split, the split shows up as a body coming between "you" (within the body) and the rest of you (outside the body, in others). The body is thus a symbol of separation in the mind, and when the mind does not have separation in it there cannot be a body at all.

This is why God cannot enter a body, because that's like saying you can keep a separation device, something which sections off inner and outer, and keeps them apart. It's like saying the whole of God which is everywhere (within and without) can be stuffed inside a container which is less than everywhere, and all of God can thus be housed inside a box and be ABSENT from the outside. This is utterly impossible because God is unlimited and infinite and all encompassing.

Thus God, all of God, cannot enter a body or dwell in a body entirely. Nor can you, who find yourself to "be in a body" or rather, who have a split mind which shows up AS a body coming between you and the rest of you, join with God fully while maintaining a body. The body can only be there IF there is separation in the mind. If the mind has NO belief in separation it utterly not only transcends the body but ERASES the body. There can be no body at all without a belief in separation. Total wholeness wipes the body away completely. Meaning that to truly be whole you cannot be inside a body. And you therefore cannot fully MEET, join, be one with all of God, while there is a body present. You have to leave the realm of bodies entirely to be infinite and unlimited.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although ***what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.***"

This is similarly why you cannot be Christ in a body, IMO. Christ is similarly unlimited and whole and infinite. Just as is your soul. Your soul cannot enter a body either. "The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you who are life." Christ cannot directly in a first-person way be CONFINED in a body or sectioned off and found to be isolated to one place and not another. However, I believe ACIM is saying that you can "channel" Christ in a body, to some extent. You can be close to Christ and you can extend His love and miracles, but it's like he is working "through you" once removed, not directly.

I don't think Jesus was thus "Christ in a body" because if Christ could be in a body, fully, with no limitation at all, bodies could coexist with Christ and be his equal, and bodies would then have to exist in heaven as creations. Christ is unlimited, infinite, everywhere, and bigger than the universe. In ACIM Jesus lets us know that he "was a man who remembered his soul" and he remembered it in the atonement and ascension to heaven. And prior to that, he still had some trials and lessons, not least of which was the crucifixion. He BECAME identified fully with Christ, but not until getting out of here.

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body’s nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was."

Communication means sharing. Not sharing where one person hands over something to someone else, who now possesses that thing, but the first person doesn't. It means, you both have access to the same state at the same time concurrently. In other words, communication means Oneness.

When there is a breakdown in Oneness, where separations are introduced, it' like erecting walls that come between. Separate parts of mind - or individuals - now seem to be on either side of the wall, like the Berlin wall. This wall breaks communication. It makes it hard to share and join and connect.

Once communication has broken down, i.e. sharing has broken down, we get into a state where there is barely any real sharing. Separate individuals now seem cut off from each other with various forms of distance between them.

The physical world with all its illusions arises out of this breakdown in communication, resulting from separation and illusions of fragmentation and distance. "Spacetime" really means "distance from here."

When communication is diminished, it degrades and devolves into what we commonly think of as forms of communication. These forms of communication are severely strained because there is so much separation involved.

While you can write or speak to others, across a gap of separation there must be misinterpretation. Information will be lost, mis-perceived, and disagreed upon. When two people seem to be a little more eye-to-eye, communication may be elevated, or they may seem to share more.

But there is also an illusion of sharing. Prowess at using the ego's forms of communication doesn't necessarily mean there is openness to true sharing. There are excellent "communicators" in the world but they are not necessarily One with God, or experiencing the same exact identity and state of being as the One Son of God.

The body limits communication, and every way that we use it to express through its forms, are breakdowns in communication. Once in the body this way, unless you are so awakened that you are communicating from pure love, you will feel this urge to try to, or to have to, force others to see things the way you see them.

This happens because you know that there is a major difference between the way you perceive separately and the way they perceive separately. You have to make egoic efforts to force them to listen, and the ego then produces this fictional idea that ... if you could just get people to "get" what you are saying, if you could just get them to "see" your point of view, or if you could just shake the denial out of them to get them to agree with you wholeheartedly, THEN this would be communication. However, this is impossible to achieve.

This automatic compulsion to coerce others to see things your way, is simply because you are not both sharing the same direct experience and there is no Oneness. This means the other person will have to be changed in order for them to seem to share what you are experiencing, and this change can only be brought about through force, in defense of what you perceive as being the whole truth.

While there is a separation, there cannot be perfect communication. The ego will attempt to claim it is possible to KEEP the separation between you and others, to communicate only through its approved channels, and to nevertheless perfectly transfer what is in you to others, or to precisely get from others what is in them. This is impossible and will never work. The separation distorts the message and will always inhibit it.

True communication in ACIM means Oneness. When there is a revelation, God is communicating fully to you. When there is full awakening, you are then able to share in full communication. The Course speaks of how we are to use miracles to help us to "raise the level of communication". What this means is decreasing separation so that there can truly be real sharing - oneness.

"To be with a body is not communication."

"The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication."

"11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."

"Like any communication medium, the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver."

This also means that, in fact, the ego does not facilitate communication - it blocks it. It spins illusions of communication to try to bridge the gap of separation which it itself put in place, which is "special communication" (that's not an official course term but it could be). Illusions of successful communication, or the ways that you improve the ego's forms of communication, covers up and distorts real communication.

In truth then, nothing that the ego attempts to "share" goes anywhere. It's ultimate form of communication is attempted death, whereby the body is used as the ultimate weapon to try to prove that oneself is dead and therefore so are others. And yet, this has no effect on others. The more you enter into the ego the more cut off from others you become, and the effects of what you attempt to bring about cease all the more.

This is also why nothing real can be threatened. The ego cannot attack God. The more it attempts to attack God the less effective it is. The ego's attacks are withdrawals from God. The more it tries to bring about death, the more confined and separated it becomes, and this keeps all of its effects securely at a distance from God. The Kingdom of God cannot be assailed because the ego's forms of communication - "attack" - is actually an act of failing to will anything real.

"Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself and you are not whole."

"The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing."

"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love."

There are two worlds, because God created one world, and then you went and tried to make another world to oppose His Kingdom.

This second world is this universe, including the Earth. It is OPPOSITE in nature to God's Kingdom in EVERY way. And here is a key, CORE FACT in the A Course in Miracles metaphysics. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH OF THEM AT ONCE.

In order to see Earth, which includes bodies, and the world around you, you HAVE TO BE BLIND to Heaven. There is nothing so blinding as sight of form. To feast your eyes upon forms, objects, buildings, cars, houses, and bodies, you MUST have denied Heaven. And that means you believe sin is real, have made it real, and are now seeing it.

This is also why "to see a sinless body is impossible", because the ONLY way to see a body AT ALL is to believe in sin, which denies sight of Heaven and shows you the world you made.

Now, it should be fairly clear that there are NO EXCEPTIONS to this rule. You CANNOT see Heaven if you are seeing Earth. Jesus says that the WAY you see each one is so DIFFERENT, it requires an entirely different KIND of vision, and the two kinds of vision are completely incompatible. If you have one of the kinds of vision, it BLOCKS the other kind of vision.

This is a pivotal fact. Either you will see the Earth, OR you will see Heaven. But you will NOT EVER see both together. This is also why it is IMPOSSIBLE to merge Heaven and Earth and to have "heaven on earth", as if you are experiencing BOTH at the same time. You cannot. Their NATURE is completely opposite. The Earth's nature KEEPS IT APART from Heaven permanently. It OPPOSES Heaven and its three-dimensional space-time-dependent nature is completely incompatible with Heaven's laws.

So you have a choice to make. Either you want to see Earth, or you want to see Heaven. YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH.

There is, however, temporarily, a transitionary period, in which you are learning to look AWAY from the Earth, and towards Heaven. This is the process of learning to let go of the "false perception" body-based existence that YOU MADE, and learning the Holy Spirit's alternative dream, the re-interpretation of what you made, which BEGINS to reveal to you two important facts which are OPPOSITE to what you taught yourself:

1) Earth is NOT REAL, it's an illusion, and you are learning to look THROUGH it and PAST IT. That is what forgiveness means.

2) Heaven IS REAL, it's reality, and you are learning to see it BEYOND this world, BEHIND forms and objects, which is what it means "God is in everything I see". It is not talking about a final state of God being 100% in everything you see, it's talking about a transitionary state where you MOSTLY see God in everything you see IN SPITE OF everything the body looks at.

Once you have reached the maximum level of true perception in which the body's eyes STILL show you false perception, a world of sin and death, with people suffering and dying, but simultaneously see a light BEYOND it, to such an extent that all the illusions of the world FAIL to TEMPT you to believe they are REAL, the world - Earth - becomes nothing but a thin veil over the face of Christ. It becomes so literally thin that you can see through it, because you are transcending physical matter.

At that point, you are as ready as you CAN be in a dream, in a body, having a kind of double-vision, where the world has almost disappeared and you are almost entirely aware of Heaven. God then takes the final step.

In this final step, your experience of Earth existing ENDS. This is where you go 100%! This is where your sight of Heaven becomes TOTAL, and your blindness by form becomes 0%! You no longer see bodies, you no longer see the world, and there is no world. You are now IN HEAVEN. In reality. In truth. And in this truth the alternative world - Earth - has completely vanished.

You cannot have your cake and eat it. You either get to have Earth, or you get to have Heaven. "Heaven is a choice I must make". All your efforts to make Earth BE heaven is futile. It's like trying to turn something false, that will always be false, into something true. You CANNOT SUCCEED. To do so would make the world REAL, and destroy Heaven.

The physical aspect of what your body sees is supposed to be OVERLOOKED and no longer register as real. It seemed real to you when you had FALSE PERCEPTION. False perception means you are looking AT an illusion, IN an illusory way, thus a double illusion, in which you believe that the illusion "out there" (the world, Earth) is REAL, when in fact it is just an illusion. Your illusions ABOUT IT need correcting, so that you can stop believing that the illusion OUT THERE is reality.

In true perception you will come to recognize this world IS NOT REAL, and is an illusion, and you will have no further illusions ABOUT IT being reality. Teachers of God look upon the world and ARE NOT DECEIVED by what they see, because what they see is NOT REAL. The body's eyes continue to show you LIES, SINS, HATE, DEATH. It has no choice to see anything but this. And so you HAVE TO learn to stop believing what your body tells you is real. You have to overlook it. See PAST it with reason. Look BEYOND the veil to reality. Reality is NOT the Earth, Earth is a lie.

You cannot see two worlds. You cannot see Heaven while you are in a body. You can PERCEIVE a REFLECTION of Heaven AT THE SAME TIME as perceiving bodies still. THAT IS NOT HEAVEN. To see bodies is to see SIN. Bodies must go. Only when you are done with bodies, done with perception, and done with the illusory world, COMPLETELY, will you be willing to be IN HEAVEN with God where you belong.

And then, there is no world.

I was doing something and inquired of Holy Spirit, "Is it okay that I'm doing this?". The response was, "You're free."

This is always the response I get when questioning what I'm doing. Regardless of what I'm doing. Regardless of what anyone would think about what I'm doing. And regardless of any moral explanation for whether what I'm doing is right or wrong or good or bad.

You're free.

You're free because God gave you TOTAL freedom and you have free will to use as you see fit.

Where my mind went next was more interesting though. If I am free to do something that my judgement or beliefs might label as "wrong" in some way, and it's NOT wrong, this actually indicates that THERE IS NO SIN.

If you are free, and if everything you do is in total freedom, and everything you choose you are totally free TO choose, then there can never be ANY grounds for sin or guilt. Either you wanted to do it and did it, or you didn't. And you only did what you wanted and intended in full acceptance of it. There is never a scenario where "you shouldn't have chosen that" or "it wasn't okay to do that" or "you should've willed differently".

From God, there is no pressure, no judgement, no coercion, no condemnation, no persuasion, nothing. Because He already set you free in your creation. He does not revoke this freedom or add conditions to it. Which means WHATEVER you choose, you are free to choose. No matter what it is, no matter the consequences.

That includes murder and rape and war and attack of all kinds. If you so choose. Hitler was free to perform genocide. God did not stop him. Did you notice that?

This is not in ANY way to say that you are justified in doing these things, or that its wise, or recommended, or something a loving person would choose. Nor does it in any way suggest God condones murder and war. God's will is still that you, preferably, choose peace love and happiness. But it's still up to you whether you accept His will for you or not. Your free will gives YOU the freedom to decide whether you will accept it or deny it.

"God does not coerce." "Even God would not go against your will."

So beware getting into level confusion with this. But the point I mainly wanted to make is that, since you are completely FREE, there is nothing inherently "wrong with" anything you choose. All meaning is meaning you've given it. People are rapidly choosing death by the thousands on a daily basis, that's their choice. The key is that BECAUSE they are free, it CANNOT be a sin. They might be unwise or mistaken, but their freedom guarantees them sinlessness.

It could only be a sin if, somehow, God placed conditions on your freedom and had a set of rules about what you're "allowed" to do and what you're not. God would have to have lined up a whole segment of activities that are "not ok" or out of bounds compared to those that are sanctioned or ordained.

And if you step out of line, there'd have to be some kind of method by which God implements correction and punishment and slaps your wrists and strikes you down with a lightning bolt to keep you in line. Or worse, you'll live in fear of his judgementalism and wrath and the potential for being sent to hell and damnation for "misusing your freedom in unapproved ways."

God doesn't do that. And all of the belief and fear surrounding the "fear of God" or fearing punishment, is entirely an ego device to SUGGEST that you are NOT free, should not have exercised freedom, should not have made a decision, and have no right to freely choose whatever you want. It's a way for the EGO to keep you in line and treat you like a slave.

You are free. Without limit. Without conditions. You are unconditionally free because God is unconditionally free. He is not a judgement manipulative specially preferential God. He is not a judger or evaluator of what is and is not a sin.

This does however mean that

1) Whatever you DO choose, its your choice, and you will have to accept the consequences.

2)You can choose to live or die and nothing can oppose your decision.

3) Anything you do has NO grounds for guilt and going into guilt is a denial of your free will and ownership of decision.

4) You are responsible for everything you choose when you exercise your will, without exception.

5) You are not responsible for anything you did NOT choose, thus no additional punishment, guilt, sense of sin, unworthiness, shame, blame, or any kind of "shouldn't have willed it."

"The power of decision is my own."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"There is no sin."

There is no sin because its not possible to will something that "you shouldn't have", its not possible to will "in error", its not possible to cause anything to happen without your full agreement and acceptance of the consequences, and nothing can happen against your will.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no-one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"My Self is ruler of the universe." It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. "

"You should truly give as you have truly received. The Golden Rule can work effectively only on this basis. "

"...This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)"

The Golden Rule is simply based on the fact that God creates in his own likeness. The sons he create are all identical to each other and are identical in nature to God. Being identical is what "being one" means.

This means that what applies to one son, applies to all sons. And what applies to any son, also applies to God. The same rules apply equally to all of God's creations, who are all treated equally with unconditional love.

This sets up God's "law" - the Golden Rule - that quite literally, whatever applies to you, applies to others, at all times.

The Golden Rule is always in effect because it is always true. It is even in effect when you go into ego denial and pretend that it doesn't apply.

For example, everything to do with the ego is the denial of the Golden Rule, in which it asserts something different applies to you than applies to others. The ego is the idea of "being different", which is the same thing as specialness.

Being different is of the ego. Being identical is of the soul.

When something seems to apply to one and not another, this sets up the ego's murderous thought system. This means that you believe there is a separation between cause (God) and effect (Sons). Therefore you believe you can cause without experiencing effects, or that there is a separation between giving and receiving. That the Golden Rule does not apply.

This belief is murderous because it means you are attempting to cause someone (who is really your equal), to produce effects in them, while being separated off from those effects, thus "getting way with" murder. This is why "what is not love is murder."

The Golden Rule is always applying, no matter where you are. Even in the dream. Even as the ego attempts to *pretend* that the Golden Rule is not applying, it is applying. And it thus suffers the consequences, because DENIAL of the law does not circumvent it.

That means that, for example, if you attempt to treat a specific brother in a way that is different to others, you are in denial of the law, and MUST experience that how you treat them you are treating yourself. But you will pretend that you are able to treat them a certain way while escaping the consequences. Yet you will NOT escape the consequences.

It is not just a matter of IF you do unto others they will do unto you. Nor is it an optional matter of "treat others as you would have them treat you". Others may not seem to comply or reciprocate. The fact is, you cannot NOT do this. As you treat others, you ARE treating yourself. Directly.

Acknowledgement of the Golden Rule also acknowledges the secret to salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. However you try to see or treat others, you will treat yourself, and so you are hurting yourself when you try to hurt another. And anything they seemed to do to you, you must've done to yourself, because everything is shared equally.

Being in denial of the law does not cause you to escape the law. You can never be outside of the Golden Rule. It is God's law. It is firmly rooted in reality. If you pretend that it doesn't apply to you, it STILL will apply and then you will likely hurt yourself.

Trying to deny the law and act as if it isn't operating, you will do something to others that you think you can get away with, but instead indirectly hurt yourself. You may not realize that you hurt yourself, but you do. Trying to deny the law leads to "karma", or rather, self-inflicted attack. All attack is self attack.

The only way to be happy is to comply with the law. When you do this, the law is really on your side. It treats you well, because it recognizes that you deserve to be treated just as equally as everyone else. It recognizes your divine equality with all beings and that you deserve to be loved UNCONDITIONALLY and fully at all times.

When you operating in alignment with the Golden Rule you are perfectly safe, perfectly loved, perfectly empowered and free from all suffering. It is the recognition that you are as God created you and that all brothers are your perfect equals.

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad."

You will be glad to recognize that what applies to you applies to your brother. You will be glad to recognize that the TWO of you are identical, and that each of you is equally treated with the same love by God. And you will be glad to see that you both SHARE everything together and have been given EACH OTHER to share WITH each other, that you not be alone, because God does not will to be alone.

And in that identicality, you are "one" - of one kind - with each other, and so recognize and know your brother as yourself.

The Golden Rule is littered throughout A Course in Miracles. It's embedded into and lays the foundation for so many concepts and ways of relating to others. The way that as you treat your brother you treat yourself. Your use of your body to demonstrate to your brother what you think of him. The sharing of minds. Seeing your oneness in him. It's all based on this fundamental principle, to love your brother as yourself.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

You may be wondering how "the separation" was possible, and how we came to seem to be in the situation we're in. There IS an explanation, which Jesus has given in many forms.

The essence of it, is that God gave you TOTAL unlimited freedom when you were created.

"The latter required the endowment of man (Souls) by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."

This means God gave us all absolutely free will. Our will has TOTAL freedom. Now, here's the interesting part.

Because the will is totally free, it actually has the freedom, or potential, to try to use its own free will against even itself. It can actually try to "will not to will." It actually is free to even use its freedom to try to prevent its own freedom, if it so chooses. Doing so is self-defeating, but you CAN do this.

This is an inherent function of the mind and actually completely natural, because it's part of being totally free. God HAD to give you the freedom to potentially "mis-use" your will, otherwise you could not be free. He couldn't just lock you in to some kind of mandated use of it, you had to be free to use it as you saw fit.

The freedom God has given you INCLUDES the freedom even to deny God if you want to. It includes the freedom to resist him, to deny reality, to try to use free will to stop willing, the ability to try to create nothing, to use the will destructively, and to at least ATTEMPT to separate itself from its source.

Your mind can in fact go into a state of denial. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in terms of it being "not allowed by God." God had to GIVE YOU this ability in order to give you total freedom. He doesn't necessarily will for you that you USE the will in this way, ie non-constructively, but you CAN if you so choose.

When you do choose to use it in a self-defeating way, you are "mis-creating", in an attempt to use the will against itself. This is really an attempt not to create, or to cause nothing, or to be inept and inert, or to not extend. It's like a kind of resistance, which is also fear. An attempt to be UN-WILLING, or to NOT will what God wills. Indeed, to attempt to will AGAINST him, which is "the authority problem."

"Remember, we have already stated that denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive miscreation."

There is a fundamental truth that you cannot will against God's will. But, that does not mean you aren't free to TRY to. You are free to attempt it. When you do attempt it, you FAIL to change his will at all, and instead go into denial.

In the denial you BELIEVE that you have succeeded, but you haven't. Also when you are in this denial state, you are denying yourself, denying God, and denying reality. It's very important to realize however that denial does not CHANGE reality. It has no effect on the truth. Denial merely means to believe that something is not true, even though it still is true. It's a kind of rejection or refusal - an unwillingness - to accept what is true.

Your mind, as given by God, DOES HAVE the freedom and ability and power to go into a state of denial. This is BUILT IN to its fundamental freedom. It HAS to be able to potentially use its own freedom even against itself, otherwise it is not free. It is because of this "clause" if you will, that we could potentially elect to "go into the separation", ie to believe that we have become separate, even though we haven't. ie to go into denial.

"The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true."

Mind then is perfectly natural in its ability to try to deny its own creator if it so chooses. God has given it the freedom to use itself against itself. The fact is that it HAS DONE THIS, which is what we call "the separation" or the fall of man. Our minds HAVE elected to deny their own freedom, placing themselves into a state of imprisonment.

When mind uses its own free will to will AGAINST freedom, it induces a state of imprisonment. The will becomes imprisoned and the mind seems to go to sleep, or seems to become unable to will anything.

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

"If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

This has actually happened, without in any way leaving God or leaving God's laws or operating outside of your inherent nature. There is fundamentally nothing "wrong" with this as such, but it IS out of accord with God's will. It is an attempt to reject his will. All this can produce is a state of denial, because God's will itself cannot be opposed, but you can thus "believe" that you are opposing it. Even if it's just a belief, it DOES alter your mind when you believe it.

"Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind."

"God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it."

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

The main truth is that there is no real benefit to using freedom against freedom. The circular logic becomes obvious. For example, we're saying that it's possible to "will not to will". The more that you will not to will, the more you are using will, and obviously contradicting what you're claiming to accomplish. You therefore cannot will NOTHING, and have to will something. So instead you will a sense of EMPTINESS or a sort of "lack of creation."

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

"He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all."

So in fact what happened is we used our free will and our freedom of choice to elect to use the mind, mis-creatively, to try to "create nothing", and this produced a sort of empty creation, or a lack of creation - a lack of love's extension. In the mind this produced the hallucinated state of the lack of God, which is space-time and all its contents. Jesus refers to it as an empty screen onto which we then project meanings.

So long as the mind is unwilling and is resisting freedom and therefore is in denial, it is maintaining its belief in something opposite to God. That maintains 'the ego' and the illusion of a meaningless world. The world is meaningless because it is an "empty shell" which has no real content of its own, onto which we project images and meanings either thought false or true perception.

While it is true that mind cannot create a real separation, and you cannot leave God, and you cannot violate his reality or his laws, it is also true that the ability to deny IS within his laws and his reality. It is part of your rights as a created free-willed being.

God actually does not COERCE or shame you or guilt you or punish you for WANTING to use your freedom against itself. You ARE FREE to do so if you so choose. It's just that when you do so, you do bring suffering upon yourself and He does not will that you suffer.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

So God gently INVITES you to return back to willing constructively with him rather than destructively. You have to FREELY CHOOSE IT, and accept atonement because you want to, not because you are forced to. This is because your mind still has the power to exercise freedom - a power that you have never lost.

So being in the denial of God, is actually a possibility of reality. It is not PREFERRED, but it is possible. It is not what God wills for you, but he HAS given you your own will, so even though he does not make it possible for you to actually separate, he DOES allow you to BELIEVE that you have. And this has taken place. This is why Jesus says "the separation has occurred." We HAVE tried to deny God and we HAVE believed that we've become separate.

The problem then isn't REALLY denial. Denial is NOT a negative functionality. It is not inherently a bad thing. You actually can use denial positively and for protection. The proper use of denial actually denies illusions and supports the truth of reality. It is only the improper use of it which has led us to deny God and accept lies, instead of accepting God and denying lies.

"Because of your Father's love, you can NEVER forget Him. For no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can DENY it, but you CANNOT LOSE IT."

"You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it."

"But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively."

We have actually moved into a denial state, in the mind that God gave us, as part of the freedom he gave us, and this has TEMPORARILY produced the 'tiny mad idea' and the 'unholy instant'. It has led to the hallucination of spacetime - a belief in possibilities which aren't actually possible in truth. This has happened. But none of the things which seem to happen WITHIN this denial, have really happened.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

This ability for the mind try to elect to be what it is not, to assume an alien power it doesn't really have, or to enter a state that it can't really enter, IS the power of denial that all minds are naturally capable of, in reality or otherwise. If you use the mind against itself it attacks itself and produces insanity. And since denial is a rejection of or avoidance/hiding from reality, it is a form of unconsciousness or an attempt "not to know", which induces a sort of sleep, in which we dream of imaginary worlds.

You CAN deny God, that's not against his law. But when you do, you induce a nightmare of suffering.

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His."

"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

The world you "made up" does not really exist. It's a dream. The ability TO dream, is not made up. It is part of your natural freedom. God is not stopping you from choosing to go into denial, but he IS inviting you to come out of that denial when you are freely willing to do so, and therefore return to a happier state in alignment with his will. Denial is not an illusion, it PRODUCES illusions when misused.

So basically, "the separation", otherwise called "the attempt to deny the truth" has happened, the mind HAS exercised its free will to repress its own freedom, and this HAS induced a kind of sleep state in which the mind dreams of separation. The dream isn't valid at all. The DREAMING is a mind function and not to be discarded. It is simply something that you can choose or not choose. When you DON'T choose to dream, you instead choose to accept ultimate reality, and use the mind ONLY for constructive creative purposes.

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

Long story short, mind DOES have the potential and freedom to go into denial, and this is entirely within the laws of God. It's just that when we do this, we are not happy, and it induces fantasies of things that aren't really possible. God does not will that we suffer so he instead calls us to return to him, knowing that it's best to use our free will creatively rather than self-destructively.

"It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"Both the power and the strength of man's creative will must be understood, before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and abolished. Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation."

"Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your DENIAL of its reality arrests it in time, but not in Eternity."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial." "For fear IS a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied."

"The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition."

"Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."

Mind is free to deny itself, at any time. It has denied itself. That's why we're dreaming of exile. Its ability to do this is God-given. Its election TO do this is its own free choice. It HAS chosen to do this, and so it IS in a denial state. That is why there arose a NEED for atonement and God had to create the Holy Spirit to maintain a link to his children, guaranteeing that they can return to him when they are willing to do so.

We are not to be in the business of trying to "deny" that the mind can or has done this. It absolutely has done this. But it can choose again. It can choose to stop mis-creating and to instead create only the extension of God. It can choose to stop denying its own freedom and reclaim its inheritance. It can move out of its temporary state of resistance, into acceptance, out of fear into love. And at no point is God sitting there saying "denying me is against the law." He doesn't condone it, but he also doesn't force you not to choose it.

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

The ego is a belief that you are sinful and guilty. It really believes this is true. It believes in attack, that it has attacked, and that therefore it is sinful, is due for some punishment, and someone is going to deliver it.

When YOU, who are not the ego, are identifying yourself with it, and are confused in believing that what applies to IT applies to YOU, you will experience whatever applies to it.

So if someone comes along and attacks or targets "you", this will be an attack on the ego. The ego will believe it is real, and valid, and justified, and that it is the truth about you. The sin and the guilt that it believes in makes the attack real, and produces effects within itself. Thus it is vulnerable, and seems to suffer and feel hurt.

When YOU, who are not the ego, are identified with it, when it perceives attack, YOU will also experience what the ego is experiencing. Therefore you will perceive that YOU yourself are actually being attacked, because you are sinful and guilty. Your ego sin and guilt will fly up in your face, you will be upset, hurt, and perceive that you've been damaged. But you're only able to experience this because you are aligned with, attempting to be one with, the ego, and to share in its perspective. However, YOU are not the ego.

What YOU are, is a being, a mind, which is able to choose to either align itself with God, or pretend to align itself with an imaginary mind - the ego. But who you are, is not really the ego, and can choose to unalign itself from the ego and return to alignment with God.

When you do this, through forgiveness, it entails that you come to the awareness that sin is not real, which therefore means that you are not really guilty, and need not be afraid. Who you ARE, is not the ego collection of thoughts and beliefs that are composed from sin/guilt/fear. Instead, if sin is not real, then separation can't have really happened, the events that led to the guilt cannot have really happened, therefore the sin and guilt are invalid. They cannot apply to you, define you, represent you, describe you, or modify you to fit them.

If you can see that YOU do not have to be defined by the ego, and do not have to stay associated with its thought system, you can come to recognize that you are innocent. God's truth describes you are innocent, always loveable, already forgiven, and completely invulnerable to attack. It also gives you the recognition that the ego is nothing more than an illusion, because sin and guilt are illusions. They aren't real.

This means you now realize that you never really were guilty, never really can be guilty, and sin that could possibly ever prove your unworthiness cannot be true of you. You simply have not sinned. Therefore YOU are not made of sin, and you are not made of guilt. That's the same thing as saying, you do not really have an ego. And that also means, you therefore cannot be targeted or attacked in the way that the ego attacks itself through belief in attack.

It is not that you have to do anything special to the ego to defend yourself against it. It is not that you need a special barrier of protection. It is not that you need to constantly put in effort to maintain a certain kind of thought system in order to not slip up and allow attack to get you. Rather, when this all becomes clear, that you are not sinful at all and never really could be, and that God sees you as PERMANENTLY INNOCENT, your identity can no longer contain "ego".

So now, when someone comes along and they do some activities that you previously would've thought of as an attack, and reacted to, there won't be sin and guilt in you. You will know through experiential fact that you are permanent innocence, therefore any claims by anyone that you are sinful or guilty or unworthy or worthy of attack MUST be false. They simply cannot apply to you.

So when someone claims "you are guilty" in some way, what they're really saying is "you are made of guilt", and this is not true. So they're referring to someone by the name of "guilt", and it's not you, because obviously you're innocent. So they're not even talking to you. Your name is innocence, and you will only respond to confirmations of your innocence.

Any reference to a guilty person cannot be a reference to what you are, therefore it does not even REGISTER with "you" as being about "you", because it's not. Your identity is not what they are targeting. You suddenly realize that they are apparently targeting SOMEONE or SOMETHING, but it's certainly not YOU! And since nobody else is around, it is clearly obvious they are actually just having a spazz and attacking themselves, projecting their own guilt all over the place believing it applies to you. And there you are, invulnerable, bullets bouncing off left and right, because you are inaccessible to the idea of attack.

What becomes clear, simply through clarity alone, with no need to have any thoughts about it or interpretations or it or special treatment of it, is that... simply.... in all truth and clarity, when you are sane. ..... the ego simply is not real. Attack is not real. It cannot and does not do anything to you. It only ever seemed to do something to a sinful guilty self, which is no longer what you are. And never were.

The ego, when seen with True Perception and perfect clarity, is RECOGNIZED as being 100% illusion, 100% not the truth, 100% artificial and unreal. Therefore it is simply just clear, and obvious, that it does not apply to you. It can do nothing to what you are. What you ARE is perfect innocence, holiness, immortality, eternal life. You ARE as God created you. There is not a single illusion that can ever claim anything true about you and therefore can never apply to you. And knowing this, you have the peace of God.

Illusions cannot assail the Kingdom of heaven. The ego will never enter it. The kingdom is perfectly protected without any defenses by the sheer fact that all attack is not real and does not apply! It's just simply the truth. The truth is safe from all lies and all corruption. This is why you are forever immortal, forever safe, forever innocent, and if you will let go of your false sense of identity as "sinful, guilty, afraid", you will experience an invulnerability that you never thought was possible, and which is completely void of any trace of vulnerability or susceptibility.

You cannot be attacked because you are not attackable, because attack is not real and it does not apply to those who are innocent.

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, ***you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son***. ***You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes***, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. "

"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." ... ""Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching."

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) YOU accept, if ***only it can serve to punish him***. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. ******Death seems an easy price*****, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

"What you would **prove to him** you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but ***testifies to what you teach to him***. ***Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him.*** And ********in its healing****** can it *******offer him mute testimony to his innocence*******. It is THIS testimony that can speak ****with power greater than a thousand tongues****. For here is *******his forgiveness PROVED to him*******. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ****he will look on his forgiveness there****, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is ***the proof that he has NEVER sinned***; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, ****or ever had effects of any kind****. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*****. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

When someone comes along and says something to you which seems hurtful, and if you are affected by it, it is because somewhere inside you you've taken it seriously. That means that you believe there is some truth in it.

If you did not believe there was any truth in it, you would recognize that this person is just calling out for love, that they are mistaken, that they need healing and correction, and you would just respond with love and laughter. You would make light of it and not take it seriously or personally at all.

When people come along and provoke you in this way, they are actually attempting to help you, by pointing out places in yourself where you actually believe that something is wrong with you. If you didn't believe something is wrong with you, when people say these things to you you would not react at all. It would not move you or disturb your peace, or your confidence, or your certainty.

Clearly, if you are upset by what someone has said, it is because, sadly enough, deep down, you believed there is some truth to what they said. In other words, you've abandoned your certainty that you are wholly truth and love and light, and have entered into a lower estimation of yourself, which is in agreement with their evaluation of yourself. If it seems that they have so easily triggered you into a reaction of hurt and retaliation, then clearly you have too easily fallen into a belief that you're not good enough, and that you deserve this mis-treatment. And this will be marked with you viciously retorting that 'thats not true at all', in a very upset way, because some part of you actually does believe it's true. You say you don't want it, but you do.

Therefore, people come along and seem to hurt you but in fact, you could not be hurt if you did not agree to be hurt. And then you must in fact be hurting yourself, because the other person isn't the one who forces you to agree. That's your choice. You don't have to agree, you can hold firm in the truth, certain of what the truth about you is. But if you have any fear as to who you are, or any doubt as to your worth, or any undermining of the truth of you, then for sure, you're going to attract people to come along and poke and prod at your sore-spots to try to get to look at them to heal them. And you'll take these helpful provocations as unwanted attacks. ALL of your sense of attack, however, comes from yourself, and you attack yourself plenty enough without needing to claim that anyone else has added to or caused it.

So if someone has said something to me, something that is not true, and if I have a reaction to this, it must mean that I have an ego, which means that I believe I am not as God created me, and therefore I am the one who is not certain of my own integrity. And it is my own lack of certainty in myself that is being pointed out, and it is my own agreement with what they've said about me that sends me into a tailspin. But I have to realize that I really am responsible for this reaction. I am the one who believes this (and probably worse) about myself, it just *seems* like they put the hurt into me by seeming to be the one who attacked me. They did no such thing. All they did was raise to my awareness the pre-existing hurtful attitude about myself that was already inside me, which I put there, because it's what I think of myself.

People who are frequently easily upset and easily triggered and easily angered and easily offended, do not think well of themselves. People who are often reactionary and get extremely worked up when other people seem to say or do things that are unacceptable and 'clearly false', you know that those people are 'weak' in their loyalty to the truth, and have little faith in themselves. They don't realize who they really are, or how much God loves them, or what the truth is about them and others, otherwise they would be in a constant state of invulnerability and joy and peace.

This state of invulnerability is what we all deserve. We are all worthy of it. We are all good enough. None of us are sinners. We've done nothing wrong. All of us are equally innocent and divine. So if that's all we are certain of, we could not be harmed by anyone attempting to say otherwise. We would just laugh and not take it seriously. But if we do not believe and know and experience this truth, then yes, we will have a reaction of 'how dare you say that' and will feel hurt and have justification for blame, to disguise the fact that we ourselves actually are the ones who don't believe in ourselves. The other people just came along to show us that, to point it out, to make us be aware of our own pain, so that we could have an opportunity to choose again as to how we regard ourselves.

And it is our own self-attack that we experience as inner hurt, not an attack by another person. We are 100% responsible for everything we experience and feel. And before we attack others for how they seem to attack us, we need to really honestly take a look at how we are attacking our own self with our own beliefs in unworthiness, negativity, lack and so on. Why is it that we don't deserve absolute love all the time? Why is it that when such and such a person comes along to tell us that we suck, do we recoil in horror that WE ourselves actually believe this is true, and how dare they point it out?

"I am not upset for the reason I think." - ACIM

"Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

In A Course in Miracles, we are taught in many ways that we are all one. By this we mean, that God created an entire family, a sonship, comprising many individual beings, who simultaneously are individual and one. Each Son of God is all the Sons of God, as the One Son. "One brother is all brothers."

This means we have a kind of collective consciousness or "hive mind". The Christ Mind is this shared mind, which each individual mind created by God is merged and identified with. This means that anything in one mind, is also in another. Any form of healing is experienced by everyone. And everything you give or do affects everyone.

It also means you are not really an isolated, separated off stranger, who stands alone and has private personal experiences. This is why there are no private thoughts. The body is the idea that you are disconnected from everyone. But relationship re-establishes that you share and are joined, with the whole sonship. In fact you ARE the whole sonship. Part of you is in EVERY child of God.

In truth then, it is not possible for you to do or think or feel anything without it in some way influencing or being shared by THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Every attitude you have affects everyone. Every thought is heard by all. We are all plugged into a giant psychological web, sort of like a holographic internet. And everyone has access all the time to everything.

When Jesus accomplished the resurrection and ascension, he DID IN fact accomplish it for and with ALL of us. We could not be excluded from it, and all of us are a part of it. The atonement IS about sharing and is a collective relationship between an individual and THE WHOLE.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability."

When Jesus resurrected and ascended, a "part of" all of us MUST have done this as well. The part of Jesus that is IN you, which IS you, accomplished this. Jesus had to basically plug into and accept the parts of him that are in all of us, shared with and one with us, knowing us AS himself, in order to accept atonement fully. Therefore his awakening did in fact wake all of us up, to some degree. He plugged us ALL back into God.

Each individual mind in the collective has its own will. So what does that mean when someone chooses to rise into the light? It means everyone else must be pulled upward at least a little, even if they themselves are pulling the whole sonship down. Some light MUST enter their minds, because the light in Jesus's mind is in ALL minds.

When Jesus accomplished this, we were ALL illuminated and enlightened to some degree, and some part of us knows this. And each time YOU heal or resurrect or think well of yourself and others, you ARE resurrecting the whole sonship. Part of you IS Jesus, and IS already awake in heaven. And as each person chooses the atonement, it is being chosen on behalf of everyone.

"You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone. And you were with him then, as you are now."

"I ask for your forgiveness, for if YOU are guilty, so must I be. And if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were WITH me."

"A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware."

"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would share my healing with the world"

"I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct. That is what the Biblical statement "underneath are the Everlasting Arms" means. (Helen Schucman explanation: This means that He will backstop whenever human miracles will not suffice for atonement purposes. However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME." The reason why YOU come before me is because I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case YOU fail temporarily."

"It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son."

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."

"No-one is healed alone. This is the joyous song salvation sings to all who hear its Voice."

"I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal."

Sometimes it's very hard to forgive someone. You become fixated on what they did to you, or what they were supposed to do that they didn't do. And sometimes this might've been something that occurred over a very long period of time, such that you can't even imagine life without this grievance. You just can't see how you can forgive this person.

This way of perceiving someone is very hard to get past especially if the person is important or valuable to you. And especially if your involvement with them has been largely a 'special relationship', or a victim/victimizer role. When all your focus is on how they affected you, you become blocked and unconscious as if there is no other way of looking at this.

So there you are, your mind is fixated on this person, on what they did to hurt you, and you just can't seem to get past this experience. One thing you do need to do is allow yourself to FEEL the feelings that have arisen as a result of what seemed to happen. By not feeling it you are in profound denial. Never mind that you had anything to do with how you perceive the situation, but to even deny that you feel hurt at all is a whole other layer of denial on top of it. Pretending it didn't happen when your whole being is screaming that 'it did' is an attempt to protect yourself from it, to hide it in order to pretend it is healed. But it does not go away, and it will eat a hole in you until you acknowledge it.

So as you gather a little willingness to explore 'healing', you can begin to at first allow yourself to acknowledge more of yourself, of what you are, and of what you believe has happened to you. Let yourself feel. The feeling has to come up for release. Up and out. This isn't necessarily forgiveness, but it is a form of catharsis to release old stuck energies which do obscure your perception. It's hard to see someone with innocence or calm when you're really feeling angry and hurt. Acknowledging and feeling the feelings, by FEELING them, not describing them, is a step forward in your healing.

Once some of that is past, you have cleared the way to experience a new way of perceiving. You may already have experienced cognitive shifts as a result of releasing emotion, like clouds clearing away which expose the sun. But you need to go deeper. Because this whole dynamic of "they did this to me" leaves you a victim, and if you stay there, you are stuck. Almost all feelings besides LOVE arise from perceiving yourself unfairly treated, or outright hurt. Fears, doubts, anger, hurt, suffering, pain, embarrassment, abandonment, etc all arise from 'its happening to me'. You need to move past this way of looking at the situation. But this is where it's hard, because it requires some form of detachment or greater perspective.

This is where Holy Spirit comes in because you're now willing to change your mind/perception about what happened and potentially see it differently, even if you can't yet see how that's possible. Until you take that inward journey you won't discover the answers and clarity that you need. You must seek reunion with God by joining with Holy Spirit and asking for His Help to overlook the way you've been seeing.

Now, what you have to get past is the belief and perception that ALL of your upset is the direct result of, and put there by, the other person. That it's their fault. That they are the sole cause. That you did absolutely nothing to ask for it at any time. That's irresponsibility. You MUST take some responsibility, even if a little at first. You can't be free from the victim role if you are not responsible. So let yourself be a little willing, however small, to open up to the possibility that there might be another way to look at this. Maybe you participated somehow. Maybe you made a decision or chose a way of experiencing the situation, which resulted in the evidence of hurt that you're left with.

Maybe you choose to AGREE with what the person was doing. Maybe you choose to BELIEVE that you deserved the treatment they gave. Maybe you chose to change your own sense of who you are, based on what they seemed to demonstrate was true of you. Maybe at some point in between what they 'offered' and what you 'took' from what happened, there was a little interval of choice where you came to your OWN CONCLUSION about what this means. Maybe you therefore did this formation of a false belief to yourself, USING the situation by taking it personally. Your belief in it, your agreement with it, your perception that it is the truth having lost sight of the real truth about you, WAS the 'attack' that you perpetrated against yourself, regardless of what the person modeled for you.

Ultimately you're 100% responsible for choosing. You made up the belief you're left with, on your own. Maybe you didn't know any better. Maybe you were too young. Maybe you forgot you are unconditionally lovable. Maybe nobody told you and you lost track of who you really are. But if you're 100% responsible for AGREEING to this punishment, then you also have the POWER to "choose again". And you can do that at any time that you are willing to admit to choosing this belief, and being willing to SURRENDER it to Holy Spirit, because it is simply false.

But you can't tell a belief is false just by saying it is. You need to know what is true. You need to transfer your allegiance and faith. You need to therefore open up to a greater truth, perhaps reminding yourself of what is true of you, or how God views you, or what God thinks of this false belief, or how Holy Spirit sees you in His Light. Ultimately, to FORGIVE, you need to get `into` the light of the Holy Spirit, at least a little bit, so that it can "shed light" on your belief and SHOW YOU that it is false. False beliefs simply ARE false, and you only need to see them clearly to recognize this. It's not seeing them clearly that makes you trust them. In the light of forgiveness you can witness the obvious fact that what you thought was true of you, is completely untrue, and THEN you will be perfectly willing to let it go. You'll know it was a ridiculous, untrue belief, not in line with the Truth of God. Or in other words, you'll see the VALUE of the real truth about you, and the LACK of value of what is false, and therefore RECOGNIZE that what is false does not even apply to you.

It doesn't apply to you. Because you're innocent and holy and forgiven already. You're loved by God. You're safe. You're at peace. You're with Holy Spirit. You're whole and healed. That's the truth. This event never happened. The person never really did anything to you. You did this to yourself and now you can see that you don't want to keep doing so. So you surrender. You surrender the false sense that is MADE FROM this false belief.. this false identity that isn't a true description of you. It wasn't really who you are anyway.

Then you remember who you are as God's Innocent Child and receive HEALING.

They are two MECHANISMS for seeing, and they REPORT in two entirely different ways, and it's to you to decide WHICH OF THEM you are going to listen to. And you cannot listen to them both, fully, at once.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see."

"for they can see only illusions"

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception"

The body, has 100% permanent false perception. It is a fixed, PHYSICAL form of perception which CANNOT EVER see anything other than form, error and illusion.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body"

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all,"

"Vision adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either SEE, or not."

"Everyone sees only what he thinks he is."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

Christ vision, also, is a FIXED STATE. It is the spiritual eye. The spiritual eye CAN ONLY SEE THE LIGHT. Can only look upon the real world. It CANNOT SEE BODIES.

"the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled"

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

Let's be clear about this.

There are two worlds. The world of false perception which is the physical world of bodies and sin and forms and errors and illusions. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

There is also the REAL WORLD, where there are NO BUILDINGS, no streets, bodies, forms, errors, not even the sun.

These are two separate fixed STATES.

1) False perception - TOTAL ERROR.

2) True perception - TOTAL SENSE.

The body's form of perception - the *physical sight*, USES the body's physical eyeballs to see. "These eyes made not to see will never see" reality. They CANNOT in any way be adapted to SEE in any way OTHER than they were made to see. They will NEVER see the real world. They are fixated on hell, on the illusory world. Physical. This is a fixed state of false perception.

Christ vision is an entirely different KIND of perception, which DOES NOT rely on the body whatsoever, does not USE the body whatsoever, does not NEED the body's eyeballs, and can SEE WITHOUT A BODY. This vision LOOKS ONLY AT THE REAL WORLD - at the face of christ. It is FIXED, in a position of TRUE PERCEPTION.

Now, this flies in the face of common belief that you "transition your ONE perception" from false to true. False perception is an illusory hell. True perception is an illusory heaven. You however can choose WHICH FORM OF SEEING YOU USE. You can also TRADE OFF one for the other.

Using 60% christ vision causes you to use 40% body sight. Using 90% christ vision causes you to use 10% body sight. You CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.

So what actually happens is, your MIND is electing HOW MUCH TO BELIEVE in each of these TWO WAYS OF SEEING. Will it believe the body totally? Will it believe the spiritual eye totally? And how much? And as you believe one, you do NOT believe the other.

The spiritual eye is just as much a WAY OF SEEING as the physical eye is a way of seeing. Your MIND elects WHICH to pay attention to. And if you pay attention to one, it is because you have DENIED the other. You cannot FULLY use both at once. It's one or the other. You can't BOTH have physical sight AND christ vision operating FULLY at once.

"The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

So instead of thinking of your perception as being this SINGLE thing that you need to "shift" out of falseness into trueness, instead thinking there being TWO RADIO CHANNELS, you can TUNE INTO one, by TUNING OUT of the other. You can't listen to both. As you TUNE IN to christ vision's station, you begin to see the LIGHT that christ vision can see. As you tune out of that, into the body's sight, you begin to see the WORLD OF BODIES (which is the world of sin). And doing this BLOCKS your RECEPTION of the christ vision station. It blocks your sight.

You cannot EVER make the body see reality. You also cannot ever make christ vision see the body. YOU, as mind, have to choose WHICH of them you will see, and how much. And only when you choose to see christ vision FULLY, will you STOP SEEING THE PHYSICAL WORLD. "The world is forgotten". The VEIL of physical matter becomes transparent and disappears!

"Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

"For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father."

"Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son."

The physical world THUS VANISHES FROM YOUR MIND. You cease using the body entirely. You stop seeing physical matter. You stop interacting with the PHYSICAL world, which does NOT EXIST.

"Heaven is all that remains."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him.""

While ACIM, as a book, is a collection fo words, these words are twice removed from reality. They are symbols of symbols.

Jesus, who wrote the material, was not operating on a level of symbols upon symbols, or even a level of symbols. He is operating from a level of total awareness and experience of truth. He is in heaven, and wrote the course material from that perspective.

What you have to realize then is that the words in the book are just expressions from a higher state. They are a sort of translation. So if there is some kind of truth or principle and it's talked about in the book, it may be presented in several different ways, using various words. Because the words aren't the starting point of the truth.

For example Jesus touches on the topic of forgiveness hundreds of times, and many of those statements say practically the same thing. There are even some sentences which are worded almost identically. Yet they appear different in form just because they use different words.

It's important to realize that the words in the book are NOT the highest level of truth, or the origin of that truth. They are expressions OF truth, turned into symbolic form.

For example if Jesus is expert on the topic of forgiveness, he could write literally 1 million books solely on that topic, all using a plethora of words and coming at the same teaching from a variety of angles.

Although he might choose certain words to try to represent the subject matter, that doesn't mean the words chosen are doctrine or some kind of perfect representation. Because you have to remember that they are not only removed from reality, they are part of a strange ego-generated language and is trying to work within their confines so that the people who speak that language will be able to get some measure of coherent meaning from it.

Many of us begin learning the course from the bottom up, starting in the darkness and trying to find our way to the light. We have some pieces of the puzzle but not all, and based on various clues and consistencies we gradually piece together a clearer picture of what it's saying or means. And that can take a long time to sort out what it means without any contradictions or confusion.

Just because the course says something in one passage that doesn't mean that's the whole truth either. Because Jesus may say something in another passage which either clarifies it or seems to contradict it. This is because each set of words are jut one form or expression, and each expression may have nuances or implications or suggestions of meaning which, if taken too out of context or in isolation, may lead to false conclusions.

You can try to think that the words are the meaning, but this isn't always true, and quite often you'll see people quoting isolated passages as if they are the whole story. Since Jesus is coming from a singular whole truth, the course should be considered a kind of holographic projection of that, and that means there is fragmentation and differences and in some cases there may appear to be things which don't seem to add up.

Jesus has gone to great lengths to try to ensure that the course words are as unambiguous and consistent as possible, but the nature of the beast is that words are limiting and sometimes this adds some confusion.

It's important to gradually realize that beyond the words, and prior to the words, there is a state of truth and an entire logical system of metaphysics. For example the idea that the world was made as an opposite to reality. That's a simple metaphysical concept and you could put that into a million words to express it.

As you "see through" the words, read between the lines, and look to the deeper meaning, you're gradually going to find yourself moving beyond the words of the course entirely. Once you SEE the underlying metaphysical basis for what he's saying and why he's saying it, and therefore what his statement MUST mean regardless of their words, then you are really starting to see the "course beyond the course". The higher form of it.

In a way, this means that you have to "forgive the course", you have to overlook its forms and not be deceived by the appearance of its words. Just as much as anything else. It's easy to get hung up on trying to preserve the perfect words or read the earliest edition or whatever but that's all surface fluff. The real meaning behind it is way deeper than any of the words and any of the editions.

This is also why it's important to foster a personal relationship with Jesus and Holy Spirit and to get truth from the horse's mouth rather than getting lost in the book. Logically it makes more sense to speak to the author who is an expert, than to get lot in confusion based solely on some words on a page.

Once you grasp the logical concepts, they transcend the words. And then you can look at the words and you can see where Jesus is expressing FROM and what he's getting at and therefore, logically, what the words must mean. And this can be quite eye opening because then you'll start to compare and contrast the clearly logical meaning of the metaphysics against the English-languge expression or discussion "about" that metaphysics. And this begins to highlight the ways that they can at time be a little different in form. But the higher metaphysics is more accurate than the language-form of it.

One of the problems people have with the course is the sheer mass of words, the holographic scattering of subject matter, the seeming visiting and revisiting of topics, and the difficulty getting through the density of all that language to try to really get a clear view of what's behind it all. And what's behind it is actually very simple and organized and clean. What began as seemingly a huge collection of cryptic statements, few of which were believed or made sense, you end up with a massively stripped down and very simple foundation.

It takes a lot of sifting through the sheer weight of the course material to come to realize just how simple and logical the underlying metaphysics is. It's kind of like a sculpture where you have to continually chisel away at the rough details and the seeming differences until gradually a clear picture forms. And what them emerges is simple and beautiful and clear and well formed.

This is why it's important to learn not to get too hung up on what is written in the book. The form of the words can become a distraction away from the meaning. Some people get really hung up on what it says, taking words and phrases in isolation and thinking that they represent the whole meaning. This is because the ego believes that form IS meaning. The form of the course is not its meaning, however. Its meaning comes from where it CAME FROM, and the form it took in it expression is just a symbolic version of that.

There is a truth beyond words. There are structures and relationships between things that underly their English-language expressions. There is a metaphysics deeper than any page of the text. And as you move closer toward the deeper meaning you also more closer toward experiencing it. This is all part of the purification process. All part of undoing the seemingly elaborate complexities of the ego and replacing them with the sheer simplicity of God's truth.

The ego aligns with the physical world, and is completely backwards. It operates on the basis of how the physical works.

It says, if I give you something, I must lose it. We can't both have it. We could have a tug of war, or a compromise of lack, but we can't both have it at the same time.

This is completely backwards according to God's law. God says that if you give something you receive it because giving and receiving are one. So if I give something to you, there is no loss, and we both have all of it at the same time.

It then seems completely impossible to actually express God's law in this world on a physical level, because the physical laws themselves - which are laws of separation - say you cannot do it. That we can't both have the whole simultaneously.

However, a more advanced miracle worker can break the physical laws and demonstrate that giving and receiving are one. For example Jesus did this when he showed that he could multiply food and feed thousands of people. This violated the physical laws which said that if he would give the original bread and fish away, there would be none left to feed the crowd.

The ego believes entirely in physicality as being reality. It based its whole thought system on this model of separation. Objects which are kept apart by physical space (distance) and time (delay). Both of which are attempts to avoid the presence of God.

If for example in this world a person seems to die, their body is dead etc, the ego says that this evidence proves the person has been extinguished from existence. And if this is real, you should be horrified and upset. You should then experience loss and grief.

But the truth is that the person's spirit lives on in heaven and has eternal life, so there has not really been a death. And so the body isn't showing the truth. Spirit could demonstrate this fact for example by materializing another body, which is what Jesus did in his resurrection, and sometimes the angels do this also.

Similarly the ego believes that freedom means separation. In order to be free of something or someone it has to go away. You have to lose it. But in God's rules, you can have freedom and also have oneness shared with another at the same time. Being free doesn't mean you are separate whatsoever, it means you are also joined without strings attached. To the ego, freedom is imprisonment.

It then seems quite challenging for us to rise up out of the ego thought system - a system which aligns closely to how the physical world seems to work - and up into a higher path based on the laws of God. A state in which only the truth is true, and "I am under no laws but God's". A state from which the seeming laws of physical can be completely broken and ignored through miracles.

The higher state completely violates and reverses and ignores the physical order. It pays no attention to the seeming limitations of separateness, the illusion of objects and forms, the presentation of distance or time. Miracles pay no attention to what the physical says can or cannot happen.

"miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended"

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

In order to awaken to reality we have to move our mind into the higher order, into the higher mind and its higher thought system. This means aligning with God's laws and living by them. These are NON-PHYSICAL laws which run totally against the grain of the world.

And that means that you're adopting a belief system and perspective and relationship that is running totally contrary to the world. In fact the entire world's lower and backward thought system has to be totally reversed and denied.

This world, the physical world, space and time, Earth and bodies, operate completely opposite to how heaven functions. And we have to learn to wean ourselves off of its illusions and its ways, its nature and its limitations, and rise up to heaven in a celebration of joy and happiness that this world is completely false and does not apply to us.

We need to stop believing, perceiving, and functioning based on how the physical world operates. We need to function based on how God operates, and it is totally opposite to the physical world and all its ways. You are not of this world and never were.

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world."

"Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."

"To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely."

"Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's."

We do not want to LOOK AT the fact that there is a NEED for healing. We actually are in denial that something HAS gone wrong, and that healing is necessary. And instead we have covered it up with a belief that NOTHING is wrong, or little, and healing is NOT needed.

Jesus describes here for example that we are afraid to look at our inner altar to realize that it HAS been defiled, and that we DO need healing, because we're frightened of the idea that something has gone wrong. But by looking at this fact with the Holy Spirit and through atonement, you can see only the need for healing as a call for healing, and thus for the restoration of the altar.

"The reason why the real vision is obscured is because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the altar has BEEN defiled, this fact becomes doubly dangerous unless it IS perceived. This perception is totally non-threatening because of the Atonement. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

He talks elsewhere as well about how we do not want to ADMIT that we have BELIEVED that we are separate from God, and now find ourselves in a state which seems to embody and symbolize that separateness. That we DO believe we are NOT with God. And that we need to be willing to look at this horrifying truth in order to ALSO be willing to correct it.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

This runs contrary to what many people say and teach, that "the separation has not happened". This is false. THE separation is a term for the fall of man and the tiny mad idea, which is an actual thought we DID have and DID choose to believe in and tried to make real to ourselves. THAT happened, even if actual real separation is impossible. And now we find ourselves in a FALSE experience of a world in which we SEEM to be separate and believing it's real. THAT is happening. But it's not ultimate reality, in which real separation is impossible.

But we have to be willing to admit that this HAS occurred, that something HAS seemingly gone wrong, we HAVE mis-created an entire world, we HAVE identified with fake bodes, in order to also acknowledge that there IS a need for healing. People ARE calling out for love. Miracles ARE needed.

This is something that is coming to my awareness strongly at the moment, the great NEED that there is in the world, in EVERYONE, for healing and help. Only by admitting that this IS the situation we're in, can we be willing to BE helped, and to be OF help to others.

There is also a great blindness that many people have of not wanting to ADMIT that they are suffering. A great tolerance for pain. A great denial that anything is even wrong. That they are not happy. That they are sick and dying, or seeming to. This is partly because of the tremendous confusion and thought-system reversal which has interfered with our ability to RECOGNIZE what is actually happening - what situation we ARE in - what we HAVE done to ourselves, and the NEED we have for healing and correction.

In other words, no-one wants to admit that they DO believe they have tried to destroy themselves, others, and God, because looking at this would seem to imply guilt. But looking at it honestly without egoic reactions allows you to also see the call for Atonement, and the REASON why there is a great crusade to eradicate all lack of love - of God - everywhere.

For me, this recognition is starting to take the shape of feeling like I'm on a mission. The amount of atonement I have so far received is revealing a desire NOT to tolerate the "lack of love" (guilt, sickness, fear, death) in myself and others. To side only with God and his laws and truth. It's creating a compassion for the plight that ALL of God's separated children are finding themselves in, not just in ACIM circles but worldwide. The sheer EXTENT of the fall of man and the sheer extent of the world's insanity. ONLY by looking at this can you acknowledge just how much help IS needed, which then COMPELS you to be helpful.

"Only the sick NEED healing. The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."

"Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

"It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT unreal."

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

There is a fundamental split in the mind, which has produced essentially two systems of thought at once. There is heaven and there is earth, and there seems to be a separation between them. Jesus doesn't say that your whole mind has gone into the separation, or all of yourself. He says a PART of your mind has split off. Or rather, your whole mind sees itself as split into two parts. One of those parts is still in touch with knowledge and reality while the other part seems to see itself as separated off.

"But you have split your mind into what knows (level 1) and does not know (level 2) the truth."

"Your mind IS one with God's. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind."

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

Mind doesn't leave heaven just because it believes in hell. There is still "the rest of you" awaiting for this "part of you" which you think is "all of you" to reintegrate with it. There is more to you than just the little self that you think is in a body.

"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms. This is because the mind is split between the ego and the Soul, so that WHATEVER the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory."

So in truth you have a mind which is partly committed to God and partly not. This contradiction "is the ego", or takes the form of a separation or split, in which you seem to be in two minds or having two goals. One part of you knows, the other part is uncertain.

It's not just that there is one mind with a division in it, in which both sides of the division are equal. It's that there is mind being natural and mind be unnatural, or reality and its opposite being upheld in a single mind. So there are two sort of compartments where one part is unified with the soul and the other is in support of the ego, resulting in two systems of thought at once which are incompatible.

Typically while identified with the ego and body, you are aware only of the part of mind which is uncertain and does not know. But this is not the whole of your mind.

"Ego-illusions are QUITE specific, although they frequently change, and although the mind is naturally abstract, it became concrete voluntarily as soon as it split. However, only PART of it split, so only PART of it is concrete."

"The concrete part is the same part that believes in the ego, because the ego DEPENDS on the specific. It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

Notice how Jesus says only part of the mind became concrete/specific, while the rest of the mind remained abstract. In effect, the split is not just a division between levels it's also a movement into the idea of "split-ness" or separateness. Within the split off part of mind, that part of mind believes in an entire system of separations and limitations, while the "higher mind" does not.

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

"Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

So Jesus is saying that actually we have a higher part of mind, and a lower part of mind. The part of mind that is lower is only temporarily lower because it believes in something opposite to the higher. That lower part of mind is the part where "ego" seems to live, and where you are identifying as being ONLY the lower mind, out of touch with the soul. The little part of mind that seems to be in a body, which you THINK is all of you, is only a part of you. There is also a higher part which your blocks to awareness hide from you.

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"This little self is NOT your kingdom. Arched high above it, and surrounding it, with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to EVERY part."

In order to undo the split in the mind, the lower mind has to reintegrate with the higher mind, which is achieved by transcending the separation-based ego thought system and thinking like the higher mind. ie Mind needs to re-adopt a single functioning and be undivided in its will.

The lower part of mind needs to align with God's will and accept the rest of mind as part of itself, to reunite with the sonship, so that it can be whole. This will entail a kind of "expansion" of identity to include more than you thought you were before.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

"The part of mind where reason lies was dedicated, by your will in union with your Father's, to the UNDOING of insanity. Here was the Holy Spirit's purpose accepted and accomplished, both at once."

"While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth, your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing their allegiance between two kingdoms, and YOU are totally committed to neither."

I will share a forgiveness I just applied, to a milkshake.

This evening I was somewhat argumentative with my wife, and feeling guilty. We went to buy take-out dinner and went through the drive through of Culvers custard, where I tried to purchase a strawberry milkshake. We waited for our order, and I received what looked like said milkshake - it was at least pink, although I sensed it tasted a little unusual. At the time I let it slide and we drove home. Once I got home I found, for sure, it was not strawberry, but rather a 'strawberry-mango' combination. It tasted like a mix of strawberries and orange juice. I know right. So I was bummed. And I found Culvers guilty, and I blamed them, and I felt victimized.

So. Let's remember the contract I made. I had guilt in me about my wife. I chose to enter a contract with Culvers to be victimized, in exchange for being permitted to project my guilt onto them - guilt about a completely different subject. I was victimized by their nasty mango-infused flavor adjustment and given something "I did not ask for", I was an "innocent victim", unfairly treated, and righteously angry. In exchange, because this is part of the contract, they got to victimize me, attack me with a mistake, take away what I wanted, and generally upset me. It was a fair exchange.

So then, later in bed, I decided with Holy Spirit I would use this idea of a contract to end the contract and choose forgiveness instead.

I looked at the fact that I put my guilt onto Culvers and chose to participate in an arrangement where I found them guilty in exchange for being a victim ie permitted to project it onto them so that I could be relieved of my guilt (fake innocence), and they could victimize me in return. Even though I did not seem to want the victimization, I had to admit, I did agree to it. I agreed to the terms of the contract. I wanted to be victimized, therefore. I saw how I put my guilt onto them and blamed them, so now I had to take it back.

To get out of the contract you have to take back the projected guilt, BUT, this means that you can no longer appear to have 'fake innocence'. It means YOU have to be found guilty again, which is not very appealing. However, there is a chance that if you do this, you will be in the running for being able to access REAL innocence later. So I affirmed, Culvers is not guilty, it is not THEIR guilt I am seeing, it is MY guilt that I projected onto them. They we're just attacking me because I asked for it in exchange for guilt. I take back MY guilt that I put onto them, and I see them as innocent. They are innocent and have done nothing wrong, done nothing to me, and their mistake is forgiveable.

Thank you Culvers for participating amicably in the contract and serving me faithfully on the terms, and giving me the victimization I agreed to. I set you free. Thank you.

So now, I'm left holding the guilt. Its my guilt. Ok. Not fun. I feel it. I am guilty. I recognize this is the guilt about my wife that I wanted to get rid of. But now I am in a position to exercise the exit clause which says, if I am willing to go to the 'judge' (Holy Spirit) and take my case of guilt to Him and present it to Him, AND be willing to ACCEPT whatever His verdict is, there is a chance that I might be found innocent.

So this means I approach Holy Spirit. So I go up to Holy Spirit in my mind and I start to show Him all the 'evidence' of why I am guilty, all that I think I did, even the 'sin' that lies underneath it, and I offer it up. This requires that I be OPEN. I have to be OPEN to SHARE it with Him and show it to Him and let Him see it. It's kind of like being the prosecutor against yourself, showing all the evidence of what you did and admitting to it - but at least in an atmosphere that you are not at this point found guilty - the verdict is still undecided.

So I do that. I tell Him, Holy Spirit, I am guilty because I did all this stuff and said all this stuff and felt bad about it and it proves I'm not innocent. What do YOU think of this? How do YOU see this? What is YOUR verdict of me?

He said, in my mind, "not guilty". I then realized that I needed to ACCEPT His opinion, and that means I have to be pretty open minded because I have to actually be willing to SUSPEND my own belief in my own guilt IF He says that's what I am to do. I have to be open to go along with what He says. So I become willing to surrender the guilt, I ACCEPT THE ATONEMENT - ie I accept that I really AM innocent, and then...

My head starts to shake, my arms wiggle, my hands tremble. I mean, for real. This is the Holy Spirit working to remove the guilt. I offered it up. He healed it. Seemingly without doing anything. Then, I found myself noticing.... Myself starting to have this new FEELING.... "Am I really innocent"... Like.... Starting to sense a feeling of not being guilty, a feeling of it actually being possible that I am innocent. So I'm asking this only as a kind of exclamation of surprise, really. Holy Spirit says, "you are free".

Smiles all round. Contract abolished. True innocence reclaimed.

It seemed quite easy, actually!

This is possibly the most threatening and mind-blowing teaching in A Course in Miracles. There is in fact NOT a world here! It's not even a matter of who made the world, it's the even higher truth that it DOES NOT EXIST. Earth is in fact NOTHING.

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"

Everything that happened in the separation from God, involves a belief in something existing which does not exist, something being true which is false, something being real which is unreal.

For example, we made a separate self which seems to have free will to do as it pleases. However, this self is in fact the DENIAL of self, which is why it results in death. But it APPEARS to be the presence of a self. This is why it's an illusion - it seems to be showing you something which is not there, as if it is. It's supposed freedom of will is in fact an imprisoned will, which is not free, but SEEMS free.

Take a look at the body. "The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." The body SEEMS to picture "you", presenting an appearance and form, it seems to positively exist and move and do stuff. But, the body is NOT you, it is a replacement for you, and is only an image of what you THINK you are. What it SEEMS to be, is the opposite of what it actually is. The body is the ABSENCE OF YOU. And you do not look like your body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is the same thing with regards the difference between light and darkness. Darkness is not possible. Where there seems to be an absence of light, there must be an ILLUSION of darkness. If you believe the darkness is real, you are giving it false reality and are claiming it "is a something." But a shadow on a wall is not the PRESENCE of darkness, it is the absence of light. It appears to be a something, but is really the lack of a something.

It is also the same with regards to sin and error. Error or mistakes are just illusions of impossibilities, recognized as false. In their "true form" it is clear they cannot be true. But if you invest belief in them, are deceived and tempted by them, and buy into them, they turn into sin. And now it seems that they assert that something has REALLY happened, and something is REALLY possible, that isn't. So sin is really a lie, depicting stuff happening that CANNOT happen, as though it is really happening. It is deceptive.

The same applies to this world. This world is in fact NOTHING. But by believing in it and investing it with reality, it turns from an illusion of a something to an ACTUAL something. It seems to exist. It seems to host events and happenings. Things in it seem possible. But the world is impossible, and the things which happen are impossible, and sin is not real. The world was made to try to prove that sin and guilt are real.

"Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin."

So basically, we have a world that SEEMS to be here, which is made of sin, which testifies and proves that impossible things are possible, which hosts the idea of the death and murder of reality, and SEEMS to have real consequences. But it has none. And it does nothing. And it causes nothing. And it has no power. And it isn't really there at all.

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world does nothing to him."

"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."

The really deep thing to realize is this. The world is in fact, the ABSENCE OF EXISTENCE. It is the antithesis of heaven. It is the LACK OF HEAVEN. It is a HOLE, which we call the spacetime bubble, in which are housed impossibilities and unrealities. It is an hallucinated world, because it seems to be there to see, but isn't. You are projecting it and making it up as you go along.

The idea that there is no world isn't simply that the world "exists" and it has to be "undone". It's really the RECOGNITION that the world you thought was here, does not exist. And this doesn't mean there's a better view of it. It means the WHOLE THING IS GONE. It has no reality at all. No presence. No life.

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for there IS no world outside him."

Through unwillingness, we resisted God. We failed to create. We wanted not to shine. We tried to end eternal life. We wanted to stop reality. We opposed the Kingdom. We attacked will. We tried to deny our own existence. We blocked awareness. We tried to destroy. And ultimately this is all a matter of TRYING NOT TO EXIST.

In so doing, we seemed to make a world which SEEMS to exist, which is really actually the LACK OF A WORLD. It's like you took a part of heaven and DRAINED IT of all life. Held it back and prevented its extension. As though you could attack heaven and remove its presence. This world, which includes the Earth, is the ANTI-world. It is a mis-creation. It is empty and it is nothing.

We have GIVEN the world, the fake world, all manner of belief in trying to MAKE IT BE SIN, so that it is GIVEN reality, so that we can try to make it exist. It's our attempt to give it life and immortality. But we can't. We tried to make the world be a cause. We tried to make it have power. We gave our power to it to try to animate it. We tried to make it appear to be alive with "life forms", which are illusions of life. We tried to imagine it has a mind and alien will of its own. We tried to make ourselves subject to it and affected by it, to confirm its reality. We made bodies to sense it and to tell us that it is there.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

Quite simply, this world, this planet, this galaxy, all the stars, all bodies, all animals and "life forms", are NOTHING. They are life's ABSENCE. They are the LACK OF LIFE. They are something that is really NOT there, appearing to be there. Like an hallucination. A lack of light, appearing to be the presence of a real darkness. And to believe in it is to believe that evil is real, asserting that the world has power OVER heaven. That the world CAN CAUSE immortal beings to die. Believing this world is real is level confusion.

Our task in forgiveness, then, is not to find a way to give EXTRA reality to the world, but to recognize ITS UNREALITY, and see finally that it SO NOTHING, that it disappears and fades into nothingness. All it is is a veil of illusions, a block, hanging in front of the face of christ, pretending to exist. Our guilt makes it seem solid. Our fear gives it reality. Our belief in sin anchors it in our minds. But it is not there at all. It is an empty shell.

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist."

"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been."

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick."

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. "

"Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."

"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real"

"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.****"

"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."

"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different."

"We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven." "What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"***The world stands like a block*** before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just ***a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can ***last no longer than an instant***. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it ***cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as ***the world spins into nothingness*** from where it came."

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. How could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"

"What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions which remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."

"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly." "Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."

"All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it?" "There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well."

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."

"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""

"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."

"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time, in which the first mistake was made, and ALL of them within that ONE mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and ALL of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave Answer to IS answered, and IS gone."

"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."

"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."

In the separation from God we made what seems to be a world, opposite to God - space and time and bodies etc. But we're told this world is unreal. What does "unreal" mean? Because while we're told it's unreal we're also told we believe in it, and that by believing in it it becomes real to us.

Being unreal is a way to say it's not ultimately true and isn't how God creates. So in a sense, it is dream-like. But people DO have dreams, and the mind IS dreaming of a world of space and time. This dream can seem very real and solid and effectual to the dreamer.

As such even though the world is ultimately unreal, which would seem to write off anything that seems to happen in it, while we are still in it believing in it we do still have experience of it AS IF it were real. In fact we can make it extremely real to ourselves and have a horrible nightmare.

"anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

But nightmares do in fact seem very real and frightening and full of suffering and stress to the believer. To the believer, even if they are hallucinating, even if what they experence is total fantasy and not possible in God's laws, it nevertheless can seem VERY real and true to a mind that belives in it.

How do we overcome this nightmarish experience of a world in which everything suffers and dies? What is NEEDED? What is called for? If the problem is that the mind is believing in it and giving it power, then the mind has to withdraw that power and stop believing in it. And by not believing in it, the mind will ultimately stop seeing it.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

Here the course doesn't say that the remedy or approach we're supposed to take is to just write the world off with labels like "unreal, illusion, nothing, doesn't exist" ESPECIALLY when the mind IS honestly still believing in it and giving it reality. That's a form of denial. Instead it says we are to use RECOGNITION to realize that the world isn't real and isn't true, WHILE still in it. That's different from PRETENDING TO BE OUTSIDE IT.

A hallucinated world will disappear only when RECOGNIZED that it is a dream and not a reality. This is what "awareness of dreaming" is about. Awareness of dreaming isn't denial. It's in fact a state in which you are still asleep and dreaming, but you have the awareness of what you're doing.

We're not supposed to keep bypassing the world in an attempt to overcome or escape it. In fact, Jesus's remedy for us is to CHANGE PERCEPTION so that we will come to first see this world from a different vantage point. That does require us to "love the world" and to find peace in the world. Before we can leave it. As the course says:

"First you will dream of peace, then you will awaken to it."

If we try to skip the dream of peace, or the happy dream, or the forgiven world, and just try to jump from false perception to knowledge, we're doing a bypass.

"Knowledge 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. 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."

Those who use non-dual-seeming statements like "the world doesn't exist so it doen't matter what you do", "the body isn't real so don't bother healing it" etc... are trying to use truths from the level of KNOWLEDGE, to correct the problem. But Jesus says this will not really work. THE ONE CORRECTION for false perception is true perception. We can't skip having true perception. We have to find a way to forgive this world and everything in it first instead of trying to jump ahead to being what is only really experienced AFTER we complete the curriculum.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

Each of us has free will. Each of us has everything within us, given by God. No-one can add to what you are or to what is true of you. However, when you are denying your own perfection, a situation arises where you may seem to need guidance or teaching from others.

But the ultimate aim of this teaching isn't to give you something you don't have, it's to help you to find it within yourself, given that it's there already. Actually in the Psychotherapy pamphlet we're told that really psychotherapy is the only form of therapy, ie teaching. That any teacher is really a healer/therapist who should be helping you to heal from your self-induced amnesia.

But what often happens is that we become enamored with certain teachers, particularly in terms of personality worship. We grow dependent on them, look up to them, put them on a bedestal, and look to them to give you everything you lack. And when they do seem to give you things you think you lack, you think of them as a kind of savior. And you will then start to defend them rather blindly against any questioning of their integrity or truth.

What happens here is that when we lack total responsibility for what we are doing to ourselves, and for owning up to being CHRIST, we project this responsibility onto teachers. We more or less want them to be what we are insisting on not being. We want them to have all the answers, to do for us what we don't want to do ourselves, and to lead us out of the desert.

There is a high likelihood that, when it appears that someone else has stuff that you lack, or knows stuff you don't know, that you'll form a dependent relationship with them. You'll actually be forming a SPECIAL relationship with them. This means that you include them and allow them to give to you, or to get from them, at the same time as shutting others out and rejecting them.

It's a conditional relationship permitted only within the confines of your limitations. It's even possible to use a teacher to keep yourself in the dark, by finding someone who agrees with everything you say and never questions your mistakes. And so your specialized ego "likes" them and sees them as an ally, precicely because they really don't challenge or teach you anything you don't already believe. Using them as a way to prove yourself right isn't really an openness to learning.

These special relationships with teachers lead a lot of "followers" to become sheep, or blind cattle, the herd, simply following along and hanging off every word as if it's the whole truth. Not questioning anything and trying to just absorb whatever is expressed. This happens when a person stops thinking for themselves and places far too much responsibility into the hands of another.

Particularly if that other is quite intelligent and seems to know more than you, in that they can run circles around you and keep you bound to them because you lack the ability to see through their deceptions.

What is supposed to happen to move towards a holy relationship, is that you are supposed to become EQUAL with everyone. And that means you can't be under the thumb of a teacher, or bound to a specific individual, or worshipping the ground someone walks on, or just blindly believing everything someone says without any discernment of your own. You're not supposed to be a sheep, you're supposed to be a fully autonomous perfect being with no needs and dependent only on God. And if you're becoming defensive on behalf of some teacher you think is infallible, you've got a problem.

What I see is that these dynamics of idol worship and specialness mirror a lot of what happens in parent-child relationships. Whereby the parent takes on a role of "being parental", which often involves control and protection and manipulation and so on, and in many cases an obsession or "need" to forever maintain that role. The parent can identify with the role and see themselves as only that, instead of an equal.

And in turn, the child can often "be a child" for life, always under the parent's thumb, not seeing themselves as equal to the parent or having a holy relationship with them.

There's always tons of skewed dysfunctional relationship dynamics, where the child can't get out from under the weight of the parent's overbearing nature, and the parent doesn't want to stop being a parent. So that sets up a vicious cycle of being kept in the dark, disempowered, overpowered, and unequal.

The same thing happens with all kinds of teachers IF the teacher or the student develops a special relationship with them. If the teacher doesn't lift the student UP to their own level and SET THEM FREE of themselves, then they are not really teaching a whole lesson. If the student is addicted to the teacher and of remaining in their shadow and having a conditional exclusive relationship with them, they are trying to remain a child, treating the teachers as a parental figure.

You can see this happening a lot when people hang off every word a particular teacher says under some kind of assumption that everything they say is correct. Or people who seem to "resonate" with a certain person, and who "seems to make sense" to them, and so they don't see a need to question anything. People then form into camps and groups and little armies which fight silly wars about which one is right.

What any ACIM student should be doing is honoring their TOTAL FREEDOM, by recognizing that a guide should always respect their free will, and the fact that you were created perfect. This means recognizing that no other person can give you what God gave you in your creation. And any person can only at best ADVISE you and give you guidance or information, and you're not supposed to treat them like an idol to be worshipped or as some kind of God-like parental figure that you live in the shadow of. We are all supposed to be equals.

Addiction to teachers can particularly happen, I think, for people who perhaps struggle with the course a lot, and need someone else to help them. But if we are not careful we in fact give our power away to such people and blur the lines as to who is responsible for CHOOSING TO BELIEVE whether something is true or not. We are all supposed to discern and freely decide whether to accept or deny truths, not to just "feed off" someone who looks like a leader who seems to spoonfeed endless volumes of food to you.

Think for yourself. Question your teachers. Find out if IF something is true and WHY. Be willing to be mistaken. And be willing to recognize that any and all teachers may be mistaken as well. Only the Holy Spirit and the ascended ones truly know what the whole story is.

Please forgive me if this message isn't well formed because I think I am going to express something that is sort of 'new' to me and I am not well into it yet.

Love has been coming to me... the possibility of love... the possibility of being loving toward other people in general. Its a change in my attitude about others. Part of this seems to involve realizing that I've been doing all this healing and forgiveness work on 'myself' with... lets be honest... a somewhat selfish intention. I mean, even though it's a spiritual path and all that, it's always been about me healing myself, me forgiving for my own benefit, me applying the Course to get myself to feel better, etc. And now... this 'me' part doesn't seem as much the focus, or as important. And instead, I'm starting to let real LOVE come through me, and its starting to become about - sharing that love.

I'll also be honest in telling you that I generally have not really felt loving towards most people for a long time. Whether its a remnant of childhood suffering or a personality thing or whatever I've accepted, or maybe I've just been pretty normal/typical all this time and nobody could really expect more. ... but I'm finding now, there IS more. There is the possibility of not just being another one of many strangers that pass each other and barely acknowledge each other, but rather of actually LOVING PEOPLE.

Now, this is where it gets really fascinating for me at the moment. I've been finding that.. experimenting with. .. the idea that, if I attempt to be loving toward people instead of how I normally would be around them, it is significantly changing my perception. And I'm not talking about some lofty aim like 'see the christ in everyone' and I'm like 'what the fuck is christ?'... it's simply.. .just fricking love them.

Normally around most people, especially strangers, I will become guarded and shy and quiet really quickly. Its a defense mechanism thing, usually triggered by the slightest observation that there is something about the person that is unsafe/unloving. What I did not know, however, all this time, is that the unsafely and unloivingness that I see in people - the triggers - is actually the result of ME not looking at them WITH love. I've always been looking at people with... well, the ego... and seeing the ego reflected back. And now this idea is popping in, why not try instead to extend love and be loving toward them, and see how that feels

Well... when I decide to do this, which is usually after I notice that I just lapsed into zombie mode, something really unexpected happens. I don't feel afraid. It's like, all of the basis for my 'social anxiety' is because I perceive without love and therefore see a lack of love and I see it as an attack. So... if I CHOOSE to see WITH love, then I actually see ONLY love, and I don't even see any reason not to love. It's like, all of the 'reasons' for fear are just not even there. I can't detect them, they don't appear, they don't register. Somehow the love makes me feel safe and prevents me from even perceiving that I can be attacked. If I'm looking WITH love, then it shows me love. If I look with attack, I see attack. And I didn't realize how used I've become to seeing 'with attack' all of the time, such that I thought it was normal, and that people out there 'really are' threatening... when in fact, there is another way to experience it.

I always struggled with this. You have no idea. I mean, really high levels of anxiety around strangers, fear of judgement, unsafely, becoming 'spacey' and losing all focus, becoming avoidant, wanting to get the hell out of there, etc. It has taken a LOOOOOONG time to gradually sift through this all to realize that it is ME and MY attitude which SHOWS ME exactly what is IN ME, and I then think it is in the other people, and then I think that this proves WHY I should feel the way I feel. It JUSTIFIES it. Sure, I should be afraid because that person is judging me, or I should be anxious because that person is threatening me, etc... when instead, it was always that I'd projected MY self-attack onto them and was seeing it there.

And now, along comes love. And I mean... not special love of romantic love or whatever... like, real LOVE... love from GOD. Unconditional love. Spiritual love. And if I allow myself to stand in love and to choose to see other people WITH that love, what do I experience? Well... I feel completely safe. The anxiety has no foundation. And even if I'm feeling afraid or anxious, if I choose love, it instantly disappears. And even if people still are behaving in odd ways or looking at me funny or appearing to be rejective or whatever, if I am in a loving place, then I feel completely invulnerable to that, like, I know it can't do anything to me.

The big lesson here is this... and I'm still exploring this and only just STARTING to experiment with this in real situations.... the big lesson is that... when you extend God's love fully to your brother, and just choose to love them instead of any other attitude, ALL you will see is love and lovability and there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. So... this is the TRUTH! In truth, there is no reason for fear because in truth, in love, there is perfect safety. There simple IS no attack. There IS no cause for alarm. There IS no threat.

So this is my 'opening up'... the next phase... realizing that the theology and the thoughts and the figuring out and the Course processes etc are... themselves... just tools to open up the heart to love, and that it is THE LOVE that is actually what we need to BE and express. To love it. To be it. To extend it. To share it. Experientially. Actively. For real. Taking the love to the people. Taking the love and letting it love through me. Letting healing come through me. Letting life come through me. But not for some silly selfish 'oh this is my special spiritual path, don't mind me I'm just over here forgiving myself dutifully and staying separate from everyone'.

Love erases all fear. And of course.. the opposite of love is fear... without love, fear HAS to show up. Once love shows up, love is the LIGHT, and fear HAS to disappear. And it does. It does every time!

Reason to celebrate. Only love is real! And the truth isn't just facts and information and thinking... the truth is FELT.

And what's really surprising to me about God's love is... that... it is being freely offered to me right now without me having to really do anything to earn it... almost as though, I'm jumping right from being in the middle of a long drawn out spiritual path, to the end goal. Like. God loves me NOW... I can be loved NOW... It's very surprising. And it's got nothing to do with thinking about love. It's ACTUAL love. God is love. Not just an idea. Love love love love love love love.

We are responsible for creating this world, not God.

We are responsible for creating our bodies and everything that seems to happen here.

This entire universe would not exist AT ALL if it were not for Sons of God dreaming it.

Prior to this dreaming there was no universe here. This universe only does and only is what we imagine it to be and what we've made it to be.

We are the ones who manifest and materialize sick bodies. We are the ones who cause bodies to age and die. We are the ones who have invented everything that ever happens in this world.

However.

What happens very often in this world is that we get this idea... I want to be more at peace, I want to be happier, I want to be more spiritual, I want to not care so much about wars, etc.

But where do you go? How do you "get away from" this stuff? When it still seems real to you, when you are still in unconscious denial about putting it out there in the first place, what is your ego solution?

The only solution you have is to create a PRETEND HEAVEN in the midst of hell. To back yourself into a nice cozy little corner and pretend to yourself that you are happy and at peace.

The result of this is a kind of separation which occurs, between you and the world. A separation of causality. It's almost an attempt to disown what you made. It's also a disownership of the fact that YOU are putting this stuff out there.

So if your body is sick, and you decide, well, I'm going to be at peace with this. You are not. You are going to try to pretend that you're okay with it. Maybe to some degree feel more accepting about it. But if that sickness remains, something is not right in your head.

Or like, you are heading towards death, and because you think that this is inevitable and natural and there's nothing you can do about it (yah right), you start to prepare yourself for "accepting" the idea that it's going to happen.

Essentially what you are doing is trying to talk yourself into seeing ego bullshit illusions, appearing real, as if they are heavenly and acceptable. You're trying to pretend that it's totally okay with you if you are still sick and suffering, as a kind of coping mechanism. But these coping mechanisms are ego coping mechanism which not only do not work, they do not fix anything, they simply resign to tolerating suffering and keep the inevitable plan of death waiting in the wings.

Becoming at peace with bullshit manifestations, sicknesses which demonstrate your mind is warped, and death which demonstrates you do not believe in God, is not going to ultimately set you free from hell, nor is it capable of bringing you lasting peace.

There are profound numbers of people in this world who believe that this kind of "spiritual escape" within this "real" world is actually spirituality. It's like, if you can just skew your perception in just the right way, you can see it in such a way that it seems tolerable to you. This is all to do with the ego trying to become comfortable with, accepting of, and having no intention of undoing, the demonstration of attack that it wants to keep.

So you have entire religions who practice things like meditation and such in an attempt to transcend the bullshit, to get to a place of non-duality, where they are okay with "whatever happens". This falls short of waking up from the dream. It keeps you stuck in reincarnation. And it perpetuates death.

People will also believe that their mind is separate from their body and "I am not a body I am free", therefore concluding that I'm not supposed to be a body and the body is not my self and therefore I should kind of ignore whatever the body is doing. This is crap. This is denial. You are putting the body there, in whatever condition it shows up, on purpose, and for a reason. To then put it on a shelf and pretend that you are not the one who made it, not the one who maintains its sickness, and not the one who makes it die, is denial.

This world does not keep ticking over on its own. It is not self-propelled. It does not have a will or a mind of its own. It does not cause anything on its own. And it is nothing but an effect. That means somewhere someone is dreaming this world and making shit happen. On purpose. So there is something faulty about that person's belief system.

To demonstrate sickness is an attack. To demonstrate death is an attack. To demonstrate suffering of any kind is an attack. To have attack thoughts, ego thoughts, thoughts of enemies, thoughts of victimhood, or any kind of ego emotional reactions, is an attack.

These things ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO STAY. If you are waking up from this dream, then you are supposed to stop producing these "symptoms". You are meant to demonstrate that you TRULY BELIEVE in God's good nature, to such an extent, that you will ACT based on what you believe and SHOW everyone what the truth is. This is what demonstrations of miracles are for.

There are no angry thoughts in a loving mind. There are no ego thoughts in a loving mind. There is no sickness in the mind or body of an awakened master. There is no death for those who have chosen immortality, not at the bodily level or at the spirit level. Trying to tolerate these things, accept these things, put up with these things, make these things okay, justify these things, rationalize these things, or make these things out to "not matter because I am at peace" is a delusion, and symptomatic of a mind which still believes in separation from God.

NO ONE in their right mind would demonstrate that you can be hurt, that you are broken, that you can be sick, or that you can die. It is insanity to do so. These things are not something we're meant to escape from into some kind of mental state that appears to be okay with them happening. We are meant to not only realize they are illusions and not real, but to ALSO DISAPPEAR THEM. Illusions recognized MUST disappear, and that means, if they are sticking around when we're claiming to be enlightened, there is ego lurking somewhere.

Beware that the ego has an idea of heaven on earth which is not the same thing as heaven on earth, which is really a fake illusion of heaven on earth, in which you become comfortable or are seemingly not at war with people or you aren't having bad things happen right now or your mind seems relatively peaceful. You don't need to do mental gymnastics in order to be at peace. You simply need to be natural, God-given, the way God created you. It is effortless. And all else follows. Health, happiness, abundance, miracles.

"There is no death. The son of God is free." does not mean the Son of God is okay with the body dying. It means THERE IS NO DEATH because the Son of God does not choose to cause death, and therefore DEATH IS IMPOSSIBLE.

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD (and why many sons)

Understand omnipresence and you will understand how God created many sons.

The course appears here to contradict itself, saying there is only one son, and yet that there are many sons, in the same paragraph. But it is not contradictory...

"It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts."

Here it is further clarified that God has one son AND many sons (souls) all of whom make up the sonship....

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. "

-----------------

The question is, how it is possible for God to have one son AND many sons and for both facts to be true at the same time, without contradicting?

God is omnipresent. What does that mean? It means God is fully present everywhere. But let's draw some analogies to what the ego thinks that means, to show why it is not what the ego thinks it means.

A cloud .... may seem to be the same everywhere. Today here the sky is overcast and gray, as if one cloud. But there are particles of cloud "over there" which are not "over here". All of the particles are separated out and cut off from each other. It is an illusion of oneness, simply a gathering of many separate parts huddled together. This is not what omnipresence means.

A human body - may seem to be "one body", joined together with its arms and legs. But the arms are not the legs. The hands and feet are separate. A hand is not a foot or vice versa. All of the parts are separated out. They seem to share to some degree but there are clear separations between parts. What is in the hand is not in the foot. What is in the eye is not in the knee. This is an illusion of a "blob", or semi-oneness. A collection of parts again huddled together to make an illusion of a whole or sharing, but where there is no sharing at all. All of the body's cells and particles are separate. It is a collections of separate parts. This is ego.

Omnipresence is not like this. Omnipresence defies every single property of matter. It transcends space time. The laws of omnipresence totally ignore every single law of physicality and physical limitation.

In omnipresence, it is possible, for the entirety of God, to be entirely present in one location. This sounds reasonable to the ego so far. But what does not sound reasonable is this additional fact: While God is being fully and completely present in one location, showing up with all of his being and all of his attention in that location, He is ALSO SIMULTANEOUSLY fully showing up and fully present in another location. ALL of His presence and attention and being are in that other location AT THE SAME TIME.

To the ego, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It can only think in terms of finite amounts or volumes. To it, if God is fully present over here, there is nothing left to be present over there. Or rather, this is the idea of conditional love, in that there is only so much "amount" of love to go around, so if all the love is showing up in one place or given to one person, it must be exclusive, and there is no love left for anyone else. This is not what God is like.

God loves unconditionally. A part of unconditionality means that God can FULLY LOVE every single PART of existence. Without reservation. This does not mean He is spread thin, either. He has no limitation. It does not mean He has a really great big huge amount of love, like a 10 gallon container of water, and happens to be so much "bigger' than a row of glasses that he can fill all of them and have some left over. That's more ego logic. What really happens is, God puts ALL of Himself into every glass, to the point where there should to the ego be nothing left to put in another. And yet, there's God, fully present in the other glass. And all the rest equally. ALL OF HIM, IN ALL LOCATIONS, SIMULTANEOUSLY. This concept is completely alien to the ego.

If you can get a sense of this in your mind, it will help you to understand the metaphysics of God's creation, and will allow you to make sense of HOW it is possible that God has MANY SONS, and how all of them are also simultaneously one.

If God shares ALL of Himself, in order to create "the first son", the ego will then say, well, God just used up all of what he has, and now there is nothing left to share with any other son or to create again. But this is not true. God has not reduced whatsoever by sharing Himself. He has in fact increased. "Creation is increased only by sharing". AND, his omnipresent nature means He is perfectly capable of putting ALL of Himself into A BILLION SONS, without diminishing in any way, and without lacking anything, and without "running out" of Himself. Every single one of them has ALL of Him.

And here is the crucial point, as to why God creates MANY Sons and not just one...

When God shares all of Himself to create the first son, this in no way - due to his omnipresent nature - confines him or limits Him. He is able to be FULLY PRESENT and to create wholeness, EVERYWHERE, simultaneously. The creation of one son is merely the radiation of God in "one location", and... there are a lot of other locations! Other locations can simultaneously express all of God, to create a Son, in EVERY location. Simultaneously.

Here is an analogy.

A single point of light may seem to create a single photon. That photon is one created son. However, if the light source spans a large volume of space, such as a fluorescent tube, or an array of LED's, then it is capable of producing, simultaneously, an extraordinary number of photons i.e. creations. This is completely NATURAL to the nature of God, to simultaneously create MANY instances/wholes, because God is actually INFINITE in His ability to be present fully in every location. It is totally natural to God to create INFINITE SONS and to create each of them unlimited.

It is not natural for God, to claim that He can only therefore "create one son" and, be confined to that. That's as if to say, He uses all His creative juice, because the fullness of him is a limited "amount" (ego logic) and therefore if He puts all of Himself into ONE son, there is nothing left. BUT THERE IS. Not only is there something left, EVERYTHING IS LEFT. God has not reduced AT ALL. And as such, God goes on CREATING MULTIPLE SONS... perhaps INFINITE SONS.

That is his Omnipresent nature. To create many children, not just one. If there will be creation at all, given the massive expanse of God, and given that God will create in ALL locations simultaneously, and that He will give ALL of Himself in EVERY location, he will create WHOLE SONS in every single location.

Each son is a WHOLE, because ALL of the Father is shared with Him. Not just some parts. Not just a little bit of God. ALL of God is shared with every created soul. And every single soul has EVERYTHING, lacking nothing, because it does not lack ANY of God. The fullness of God is in every part of His Sonship. His entire creation thus contains many, many, many sons, each one of them is experiencing ALL OF GOD, simultaneously, and yet each one is therefore a WHOLE in and of itself. It must be, because God is a whole and can only create more wholes. Again, this makes NO SENSE to the ego's way of thinking, but it makes perfect sense holographically. The all is in every part and every part is a whole.

There is no "unnatural division" in this (ego separation). There is only "natural division".

The so-called "one son", aka Christ, is simply the entire "sum total" of all the individual free-willed Sons that God created. Yet it is more than just a sum of its parts. Again this is to do with holographic creation. Since ALL of God is in EVERY Son, adding up the number of Sons does not tell you what is there. The sum total of all Sons is not the totality. Since every sons SHARES ALL OF GOD, there is MORE to each Son than just "himself". He is SHARING GOD. So the Sonship, is more than the sum of its parts, because they are all sharing and extending a wholeness which is far bigger than any of them - the One Father.

To God, since he is IN all of the sons fully, shared with them, one with them, yet they are distinct, his experience of "all the sons" is simultaneous. As such he experiences the total as "one son" or "one unified experience". Another word for this one son is Christ. It is a sense of, every son sharing one parent. Of every son having ALL of God in them. That unity, that, connectedness, is "christ". But the christ is not just "one son", it is the immediate shared experience of the fact that ALL of God is in every son. Every son experiences and shares the whole of creation.

So it then is true to say, that each individual son, is in fact

1) A distinct son, a whole, containing the whole of God or made from the whole of God

and

2) Also intimately connected to and sharing God with every other son, as christ.

Therefore every son is christ. He is both "the whole sonship" AND "one son" simultaneously. The all, and the part, simultaneously.

Every creation of God also inherits God's omnipresent nature. Every single son, every being of light, every angel, every son of a son of a son, is OMNIPRESENT as well. It can be everywhere. And it can manifest multiple occurrences of images of an identity simultaneously, at any point in time or space, if needed. For example, angels are capable of being with MANY people simultaneously. This is only possible because they are omnipresent, otherwise they'd be jumping all over the place trying to keep up. This is true of them and it is also true of every Son.

Jesus is able to appear to MANY people individually, simultaneously, because he is EVERYWHERE, and is OMNIPRESENT, and is not limited in these finite ego-logical ways. Jesus can be FULLY present here with me right now, and be FULLY present with you right now wherever you are. This is NATURAL for all creations of God. This is part of our divine nature.

It is only this world of FORM and matter and time and objects and bodies, that APPEARS totally the opposite of this. In form, it is suggested that what is in one location IS NOT in any other location AT ALL. Matter also suggests that there *IS* no "all" in ANY of the parts. That all parts are separate, all parts are NOT JOINED, none of the parts are SHARING at all, and there is NO ONENESS. That was the POINT of making this universe of illusion, to be the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the nature of Heaven, God, and the Sonship.

Every single object in this world testifies that there is no God and that every son is separated. Every single body demonstrates this. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The planet itself, Earth, is a physical expression of the idea of separation, in which it is "OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY", because it does not demonstrate ANY omnipresence whatsoever. It does not appear to be a hologram (though it is), it does not show that the all is in any of the parts, no two parts share anything, there is no true joining, nothing overlaps, and basically every single physical particle of matter says "God is not here".

This is why this world is a bullshit lie, and no matter HOW you look at it or perceive it, its FORM is fundamentally in opposition to the nature of Heaven and God and the Sonship. It is NOT divine. It opposes divinity in every way. Every single particle of matter or energy is an expression of the idea of separation. Every subatomic particle. Every wave. Every quantum. However you deep you want to go, this universes is the OPPOSITE of omnipresence. And that was on purpose. The ego MADE THIS on purpose to try to create a picture of SHUTTING OUT GOD.

This is also the meaning of "this world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son". In every way, the separateness of matter is an attempt to claim that the son is CUT OFF from his father, because he no longer shares anything with the whole and no part contains ANY of God. That is an idea of the DEATH of God's Son, portrayed as physical particles which make up a demonstration of the Son being so completely devoid of God's presence that he must not be alive at all.

This is why we are not to make this world SPECIAL, or to worship it, or to want to keep it, or to try to have it somehow turn into heaven, or to put it on a pedestal, or to suggest God created it, or that it will be a permanent part of Creation. It CANNOT BE, because ALL that it is made of is this suggested idea of being UNLIKE HEAVEN. So there is no way that it can BECOME like heaven and still exist. Its entire NATURE is to be OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN. It exists AS "what God is not like". ... so it can't be IN what God is like and still exist. It cannot enter heaven or be part of it. This is why ... "THERE IS NO WORLD."

God's creation is one of holographic omnipresence. Every one of his MANY sons is a holographic omnipresent creation. Every single part of God's creation is the same everywhere and fully present in all parts. This is utterly IMPOSSIBLE to be expressed in form or matter, although any of God's children DOES have the ability to materialize illusory forms in any and MANY simultaneous locations if they choose to do so.

When you dream at night, your mind is perfectly capable of creating entire environments in great detail. These dreams are not real, and so are projections of ego thoughts from the mind, but at the time they seem like real places. Your mind is able to create oceans, streets, buildings, people, all manner of creatures and locations.

It's even able to embed an extraordinary variety of subtle feelings into the scene or ways of experiencing what's happening, such that it seems to mean something very specific to you, or so that you get a certain impression from it.

Your mind can create people and experiences which are a perfectly symbolic representation of any idea or feeling or experience it cares to make. It has at its disposal an absolutely unlimited number of variations in both appearance and meaning and emotional content. If you can imagine it, your mind can invent it.

As your mind projects such environments, it can also sometimes project you as a character in the environment in a third-person manner, or sometimes you can also experience it from a first-person perspective. You can manifest any kind of body. The body can also be changed into any form and express any kind of disease or situation regardless of any rules or laws whatsoever.

In your dreaming, objects can be transformed into other objects. You can pass through objects, you can fly, you can control things with your mind, you can communicate telepathically, you can have encounters with any kind of being imaginable, and you can teleport instantly to any location. There is practically nothing that's impossible.

All of this happens inside your mind. All of this is your mind "dreaming", which correlates to Jesus's definition of "projecting". The mind is literally projecting a three-dimensional movie scene down to the finest detail, complete with storyline and all manner of events and interactions. As such, this projection "creates perception".

So as you're in the dreaming state, your mind is literally projecting everything you then "see". So if it projects a beach and an ocean on a sunny day, this projecting manifests those things in full and then you witness them or "perceive" them. The projecting comes first. The perceiving comes second.

Now, in the physical world, you're tempted not to believe this same mechanism applies. You believe certainly that you perceive, and that you perceive what seems to be a world out there complete with people and places and events, but you don't for a moment think it possible that your own mind is projecting it. But it is.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of projection and many have come to interpret this to mean that you project ONTO something which is already out there. This is the result of not believing or recognizing that your mind actually makes the world appear in its entirety, or that this world is in fact just another dream. Yet Jesus tells us:

"...What you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."

However, because we do not recognize or believe that this "physical world" is just another dream environment, that our mind is perfectly powerful enough to create in the finest detail, we think that it must be really "out there" objectively, or that it came to be there from some other powerful cause.

The result of this unawareness as to how it truly comes into being, is the belief that when ACIM talks about projection it's talking about what your mind projects ONTO this pre-existing world. People will then work with their "forgiveness process" to take these projections back and undo them.

There is some validity to that step because even inside of the dream itself, there is a whole other layer of "personal projection" whereby individuals add an extra layer of projection and denial to everything they see in the world. They project extra guilt and sin onto others and onto the environment. So to take back those projections is a very helpful step in owning up to who and what you are.

However, that's not the only form of projection taking place here in this dream. The dream ITSELF is a projection. You could say, your personal projections are coming from your own private mind, as one Son in the Sonship. But the collective Sonship or Christ mind is also projecting this entire world. That's who the dreamer really is.

You can take back all your personal projections and come to a place of clarity or awakening, becoming aware of this world with a clear perception of it. This means your perceiving has been clarified. This is an awakening to true perception. But this does not mean that you have undone PROJECTION. Projection comes before perception because projection makes it possible to perceive.

Once perception is purified and is clear, which will produce an experience of being awake WITHIN the dream, able to perceive the dream clearly, there is then another stage where the projecting OF the dream needs to now be undone. Removing projections onto the dream is the reversal of perception, which is where most ACIM students focus, but we have to realize that the projection that made the "stuff" we are perceiving clearly is also an activity of the mind which needs to be undone.

Undoing the projecting of the world itself - yes the physical world - is the second layer of awakening. It means realizing that you are still dreaming this world, you are still manifesting objects and people and environments, and you are still inside of a dream. You are still subject to every law that the dreaming puts in place, because those laws are established in the projecting of the world. You may be fully awakened to be able to see the dream clearly, but now the dreaming itself needs to stop.

When you are projecting personal stuff onto the world, it's like having a dream within a dream. You are already inside a dream (which you think is a real world) and now proceed to dream within it. Just like a daydream. Your projections at the personal level therefore place your unconscious crap outside of your conscious separate self. But it still exists within the world. Taking all of that back and fully undoing it won't undo the world itself, because the world itself is being projected on a much greater scale by a much bigger mind - the collective Christ Mind.

For you to see a car or a house or a person or a tree means that these forms have been projected by the Christ mind. The Christ mind is unlimited in its power to dream of forms. It has invented an entire universe, just like your little personal mind invents fictional places and characters at night - stories which are entirely believable and which you experience as though completely real.

Therefore, if you are still perceiving at all, if you are still having perception of the presence of objects, forms, people, buildings etc, then this must mean there is STILL projection happening from a larger level of mind. The reversal/healing of that collective projection is the undoing of this entire so-called "world".

This is the level at which the Course addresses when it says "There is no world, this is the central theme the Course would attempt to teach." It literally means that this physical world and everything in it is a dream, a projection, which DOES NOT REALLY EXIST AT ALL, just like how our nighttime dreams do not really exist at all.

Literally, all physical forms are ILLUSIONS, i.e. dreams. They are not there at all. There is no truth to them, no reality to them, they are absolutely completely fictional in every way. The mind is making them up. And when this is fully recognized by the whole Sonship, this entire physical universe will be recognized as having never existed - i.e. it does not exist now, and it never will exist, and there simply is no world here.

This is also why the Course tells us that "at no time does the body really exist." Many students love to keep the body and make it special and explain how the body does exist or how it can be seen in the present moment or used for a holy purpose or whatever. Ultimately, factually, in Jesus's words, it DOES NOT EXIST. It is an illusion at most. It cannot exist in Eternity and it does not really exist at all.

Now, you can see perhaps that in the ACIM community there is a tremendous amount of confusion because of these two kind of "levels" in the making of illusions. The level of the personal individual conscious self and its seeming scope of influence or illusions, and the level of the collective shared mind of Christ which IS responsible for dreaming this entire universe.

For the most part, most students are fixated on and can only really relate to the experience of being a separate self in a separate body, the projections that their personal self makes onto the allegedly pre-existing world, and so their undoing process usually entails taking back projections that are placed onto other people, or changing your mind "about the world" instead of attempting to change the world itself.

This has produced a huge division in the Course community between those who believe the Course is telling us to find a personal sense of peace "in" the world, in spite of the world, in spite of sickness, in spite of death, and those who believe that this ultimately falls short of the whole truth and that the entire world itself is not there. The result is an attempt to be at peace with sickness, to keep the body and deny it through some kind of transcendence, and still results in death. This distortion of the Course then produces two camps.

The first camp basically sees themselves as a little individual body self, who has their own personal stories and projections. They do not consider the world to literally not exist, and cannot conceive of how they might have power over it. What they end up doing is focusing on undoing their personal stories and projections "onto" the world, or "onto" others, as though this is all that the Course is asking them to do.

They will refuse to believe anything beyond the scope of this, and will justify it with various quotes from the Course. Now, the thing is, they are not wrong. The Course DOES teach that at the LEVEL of the personal level, you need to take back projections from others, find peace in spite of what's happening, come to see God "in" the world because God is in your mind, work on changing how you look at the world rather than trying to change the world, never attempting to take the spirituality of the Course to others because it seems like a private process, and just generally everything which fits nice and tidily into this "box" of how the individual separate self perceives an objective world.

There are plenty of parts of the Course which tell us seemingly straight-out that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that this is the truth and will use this interpretation to justify not doing anything outside of this definition. The thing is, A Course in Miracles actually has multiple "levels" of truth, and this is not a contradiction. There are truths which apply on a certain level.

In terms of the personal self, we do indeed need to stop projecting shit onto other people and change how we "perceive" the world, to reach true perception or to have corrected perception. However, this isn't the end of the story. The people who see the Course as saying this, which is easy to do given that this actually is part of the process of complete awakening, will try to fit EVERYTHING the Course says into this box. And this also includes miracles.

To these believers in personal awakening inside the dream, they tend to justify that other things the Course says must fit inside the box of correcting perception, in order for there to seem to be consistency and integrity. And you can sort of find slightly skewed interpretations of what these other parts of the Course say to make them seem to "fit" into that box. And this is what has happened with miracles.

Such people will then explain that a miracle has got something to do with perception shifting, correcting perception, the process of waking up to true perception or is just another way of saying "changing your mind" about the world. This is understandable given that they see the Course as one whole consistent unit and don't realize that it's being presented on multiple levels, or that there are multiple levels of sleeping.

The Son of God, Christ, is the source of the dream of death - the dream of this entire physical universe. And within Christ, within that dream, there is a fragmentation of identity into the Sonship, which comprises many individuals, and each individual has their own separate seeming "private world" of misperceptions. But what they are mis-perceiving is the dream which a HIGHER LEVEL has dreamed, thinking it is a given and is real and is outside the scope of their conscious awareness. Indeed it is outside the scope of their identity, because it's coming from a level of much greater unified identity as Christ - the ONE Mind.

Therefore to try to explain what miracles are or what Christ is, these individuals will try to fit all of the Course's references to miracles and Christ into the same box of "what applies to individual Sons". And that's a mistake. This gives rise then to a complete stripping down of what Christ is, a stripping away of the POWER that must be present to dream an entire universe and make it seem physically real, and a complete diminishing of any concept of "real miracles" which have the power to do anything - including healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, or whatever.

Trying to fit all of that inside a "I am a separate Son, one of many" kind of box, to have it make sense TO that one limited identity or scope of awareness, completely glosses over what miracles are or and what Christ's power is. People will then have an awakening up to the level of the maximum scope of their INDIVIDUAL consciousness, i.e. an awareness of being one of many Sons of God, and will refer to that as being Christ or aware of the Christ in others. IT IS NOT. Not in ACIM's definition.

Christ is a mind so vast and powerful that it can dream entire planets, can create a whole universe - or multiple universes. It can put in place an absolutely countless number of particles of matter to form buildings and people and environments which people believe is SO real that it must really be a real world. Seeing the holiness of an individual Son in other individual Sons is not the same as seeing the face of Christ. It is definitely a state of mind of profound unity and oneness, but there is an entire other level to awareness which is vastly beyond this.

To reach this other level of awareness requires a complete transcendence not only of the personal ego self or personality but also moving beyond being a separate Son. It means being THE WHOLE SONSHIP as One. In this, there can no longer be a personality, or a separate mind, or separate thoughts, or reliance on a body. It is a very advanced state.

Such an experience is way beyond the personal body self or what the body self is capable of doing. The Christ Self is vastly powerful, unlimited in the truest sense, and can literally do anything because He is able to dream this entire world. To Him, this world is recognized as not being real at all, being something He Himself is dreaming in its entirety. It does not exist without His dreaming and has no inherent reality of its own. If it were not for Christ dreaming the world, this entire physical universe would disappear instantly.

At this level, which is what forms the second "camp" in the ACIM community, it is recognized that there is an entire level of truth in the Course way bigger and more expanded than the parts which apply to the individual self. At this level, we're talking about a mind and an identity which is truly One, singular, as God's One Son. This mind, this Self, is beyond all Higher Selves and includes them all.

Such a Christ mind is responsible for dreaming this entire physical universe and for therefore putting in place absolutely all of the things, objects, people and events which appear to exist here. Such a mind is so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do. Such a mind is transcendent of all bodies and forms, transcendent of all of the laws of the physical universe, and can completely override absolutely anything in an instant. This mind is extremely creative, is totally at-cause, and is not at the effect of ANYTHING in this world whatsoever.

Such a mind is completely invulnerable, literally immortal, unlimited in its power, able to manifest objects - in fact planets and solar systems - out of nothing, and for such a mind miracles of healing and manifestation at a "human level" is practically nothing. THIS is the level of mind which Jesus demonstrated, and it is this level of mind which is responsible for SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES.

You could therefore say, that the level of the personal self-awakening is a level of "natural miracles", and the level of awakening as CHRIST is a level of "super-natural miracles". It is very common that those in the first camp tend not to believe in super-natural miracles because they do not see the parts of the Course relating to or teaching about the Christ-level of mind. Instead they see the watered down, nice tidy little keep-it-in-a-box relating to the individual self interpretation of what miracles are. In other words, miracles are just little changes in perception experienced by an individual. It's not true.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles LITERALLY are super-natural miracles, as evidenced by practically every single thing that the Course ever says about their nature. When correctly understood OUTSIDE of the box of the closed-minded and still "a part of the dream" personal self, everything Jesus teaches about miracles points to their supernatural power, the Power of God, the ability to LITERALLY move mountains, to heal the sick, to undo all forms of disease and suffering, to undo death itself and produce resurrection.

There can be no complete resurrection without this supernatural level of awakening, because death is only fully overcome at the level of the Christ mind, not at the level of the awakened individual Higher Self. There are an increasing number of people waking up IN the dream and staying in the dream who do not exhibit any signs of supernatural miracles whatsoever, because their mind is only just now at the beginning of opening up to the Christ mind.

You will find that all of these people still go through DEATH, because they have not escaped the dream of death and have not fully awoken FROM the dream of death. The absence of miracles, the nature of which Jesus demonstrated, which He has told us in many ways we are perfectly capable of, is the first sign you will see that shows that awakening to the Higher Self or highest individual self is still short of a complete awakening.

The Course will make so much more sense when understood to contain more than one level. This doesn't mean we're dividing up the Course into imaginary levels as such. There ARE different levels because there are stages in separation. Christ, the One Son, is a very different level in terms of scope and power and capability and awareness and identity, compared to the level of one individual "son" in the Sonship. Awakening to the Sonship is profound and an extraordinary experience of waking up from the even littler self - the ego false self. But going from the ego little self to being one of many Sons is not the same thing as being ALL Sons with a single mind, wielding the Power of God to produce real miracles.

A Course in Miracles therefore IS literally teaching us that miracles - supernatural miracles - are not only possible but something that we can become capable of IF we are willing to go all the way to awakening in the dream and then awakening FROM the dream. We might be aware of who the dreamer is, but until we decide to BE that dreamer and realize the sheer power that we have as that dreamer, we will still be subject to all the laws that the dream puts in place, seemingly powerless to stop them or change them. And as such we will not see miracles.

It should be clear then, that the only reason we seem unable to change objects, heal the sick, manifest matter out of thin air, feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves of bread, to walk on water or raise the dead etc, is only because there is a LARGER MIND which is dreaming this world who has FAR more power than our little personal mind, and it is that larger mind which has implemented the physical world and its laws.

It is that larger mind that is sustaining the physical world and its laws. So if you want to be able to override that dream, you need to become aware of and access that larger mind, from which you will be able to demonstrate truly supernatural miracles. This is why in the dream, we seem so powerless, so unable to change hardly anything, to barely even have a shred of telekinesis, to be incapable of stopping aging or death, and to hardly have any power whatsoever over sickness or suffering. It's because the larger mind is very powerfully "holding" all of those things in place.

If we want to be able to gain access to the power to undo death and sickness and so on, we need to wake up ALL the way to the Christ mind, to the DREAMER, to become total causality. In that mind, in that awareness, and with that Identity of Authority over all illusions, we WILL then have the ability to do absolutely literally anything in this world.

Recognize then that Jesus does speak at different "levels" in the Course and not just all at one level. When He speaks of very high-level Christ-level things, these things cannot be properly applied or understood at the level of individual self. Trying to do so will lead to all manner of misunderstandings and disempowerment of your full potential.

Being able to recognize which level Jesus is speaking at - which level of awareness and identity - helps you to know what applies to the scope or context that you're referring to, and also helps you to make much more sense out of what Jesus is teaching. Without that, trying to smash everything into one little box will severely fall short of what A Course in Miracles is teaching, not to mention producing a lot of confusion and conflict.

The Christ mind is projecting the physical universe. It is a dream. It is not real and it does not exist. The single-son mind is within this dream, as an individual character, and that individual has its own dreaming that it projects onto the dream. Dreams within dreams. When that son wakes up and stops projecting onto the dream, He has "awoken" to an awareness of being One among many sons, and at this level it is possible for other Sons to still be sleeping. But THERE IS MORE beyond this.

The single Son in the sonship must now go further to become aware of the collective Single Identity as God's Holy Son - as Christ - an identity which has so much scope and power that it is capable of unlimited miracles. It is at this level that Jesus refers to when He says just about everything He says about miracles. For example, "miracles should be happening all the time". I could go into this much more deeply but that's for another article.

Realize then there are at least 2 stages in awakening, two levels, and that Jesus speaks to each level in the Course at different times. There are actually at least 3 levels because level 1 is the ego false self identity, level 2 is the Higher Self (one son of God in the Sonship) and level 3 is the Christ Self (the whole Sonship/Christ consciousness). There is actually a little more:

Level 5: Heaven/Spirit

Level 4: Christ/christ universe (creates all of the levels below this)

Level 3: Higher Self/higher universe (where most awakened people actually are)

Level 2: Holy Spirit/spiritual universe/astral plane

Level 1: Ego-self/physical world

The first awakening level typically takes people to level 2 then 3. This is a level where miracles aren't happening very much, but the potential is there. Level 4/Christ is where the demonstrations of Jesus correlate - extraordinarily mild-blowing miracles. And then there is Heaven - the home of Spirit. When Jesus speaks of Spirit He always talks of how it is already in a state of grace forever and nothing has happened to it whatsoever. That's the level of pure reality. Home in Heaven.

It should be apparent then that it is very common for ACIM students to try to relate everything the Course says to the level of "my separate self", within the context of being a body separate from others, and within the scope of "my mind" as in their own little separate conscious self, whose perceptions and projections onto a completely separate world make up the entire focus of their grasp of awakening.

They will then believe that once they experience "waking up", they're done. But they're not done. Where are the miracles? Where is the demonstration that you are dreaming the world and have total power over all illusions and forms? Where is the proof that there is no death? Where is the real resurrection and signs that show that you are immortal?

And yet this undoing of distortions of perception at the individual level only brings us to an awakening that reveals the full scope of our SEPARATE self within the Sonship, it doesn't bring us to awareness of being Christ. There is a whole other level of awakening which is vast and extraordinarily powerful, a single shared identity for whom supernatural miracles are effortless and continual.

I will finish with this final quote which I enjoy, and which is speaking of the level of Christ:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Wake up! Then wake up some more!

"Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through prayer, love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."

Ok so... we talk about GIVING something in a miracle - expressing love. But there is another half to this - the RECEIVING of love. We are actually all quite averse to RECEIVING FROM GOD because we denied that God is our father, threw away our inheritance, and tried NOT TO RECEIVE in the separation. And the only reason we are all so miserable and suffering is because we are not willing to RECEIVE AND EXTEND. God's gift is to simply "give what you have been given."

This is really about the higher level of prayer. In lower prayer, you see yourself or others as lacking and in need, and so you make the need real and then ask for its removal. You pray "God, please take this away" or "God, please help them stop being so whatever."

But these are requests based on a belief that something is wrong. And believing something is wrong with ANYONE is the same as believing they are guilty and dysfunctional. "God, please help my enemy stop being such an asshole." Or, "God, please help my team to win the match." Or, "God, that person is so defective, please heal them."

This isn't miracle working. Miracles operate at the much higher level of true prayer. Real prayer is not based on believing that something is wrong and then asking that it be fixed. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition that NOTHING is wrong, God has ALREADY GIVEN what is needed, and NOTHING is lacking.

This high state of prayer is a willingness to RECEIVE LOVE from God, to acknowledge he is the cause of you, that you have received effect from him, and is a reclaiming of your inheritance.

The ego would say, in order to give something you have to lose it, and so giving is not receiving, and if you give love you will use up your love and run out. That in order to heal another, you have to sacrifice and lose what you have, and they better be grateful for transferring their lack to you.

But in this there is no receiving and no inclusion in what is being received. The golden rule says what you give you receive and all you give is given to yourself. But it also means, you have to be willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD, in order to HAVE LOVE TO GIVE.

So you cannot work miracles without first receiving God for yourself, because you then have to EXTEND what you have received and GIVE GOD in order to perform a miracle for another. That means a recognition, acknowledgement, and gratitude, that God HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING ALREADY.

Everything was given you in your creation. It is your natural inheritance. You threw that inheritance away by denying it when you bought into the mad idea and adopted an authority problem. The authority problem has to be undone so that you recognize 1) God is your creator 2) You are not God's creator, and therefore 3) God has given something to you.

Recognizing that everything has been given to you should inspire natural gratitude to God, and where there is gratitude there is love. To THANK GOD for what God HAS ALREADY given, and is giving now, is to RECEIVE LOVE. And THAT is what the highest form of prayer really means.

It is more aligned with an experience of a COMMUNION with God in which you are sharing with God, receiving from God, and giving what you receive. It is your natural state. In this state, you are open to BOTH GIVE AND RECEIVE, not just to give.

In this state of what we're calling prayer you are not really asking for something that you DON'T have, or that another LACKS. You are looking to the light and recognizing IT IS THERE already, because God has put it there already. He has fore-given (given ahead of the need) in order to prevent a state of need.

So you be grateful to God and thank God for having already given perfect love to you, and you open to RECEIVE that love and LET yourself BE loved. And then you receive that love from God, which heals your mind in a way like nothing else can. And then you GIVE that love as a miracle.

Once you have love, expressing yourself is miraculous. Every way that you then express the love you have received and shared with God, is a way of EXTENDING and SHARING that love. God is given, and is allowed to extend THROUGH you to another. This also entails recognizing that the light and love that is IN another IS ALREADY THERE, and IS NOT MISSING.

You receive God within yourself, acknowledge and be grateful that God HAS GIVEN IT ALREADY, and so you are blessed with it. And then you recognize that it is ALREADY IN ANOTHER - seeing past all sense of lack and damage and brokenness and sickness as UNREAL and NOT TRUE, seeing past it (which is forgiveness - to overlook), to the light. To see the Holy Spirit IN THE OTHER ALREADY, because God ALREADY PUT IT THERE.

Then you continually extend God from the prayerful awareness of having been given God within you, as love and light and power, and you extend it (unconditionally give it with no strings attached) to the other who HAS IT, in order to amplify the awareness that it is ALREADY IN THEM. And so the light in them intensifies as you strengthen the idea of the Holy Spirit in them, and their mind becomes healed also.

The completed sequence then is simply: "A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God (received in prayer) through Me (extended by me) to all My Brothers (acknowledging they already have it also)." This is achieved through higher prayer, which is now a MEDIUM through which God is extended, in recognition of a pre-existing perfection that overrides any notion that something is wrong.

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."

"I give the miracles I have received." "God is but love, and therefore, so am I."

"However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception."

"Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."

Communication means sharing. Not sharing where one person hands over something to someone else, who now possesses that thing, but the first person doesn't. It means, you both have access to the same state at the same time concurrently. In other words, communication means Oneness.

When there is a breakdown in Oneness, where separations are introduced, it' like erecting walls that come between. Separate parts of mind - or individuals - now seem to be on either side of the wall, like the Berlin wall. This wall breaks communication. It makes it hard to share and join and connect.

Once communication has broken down, i.e. sharing has broken down, we get into a state where there is barely any real sharing. Separate individuals now seem cut off from each other with various forms of distance between them.

The physical world with all its illusions arises out of this breakdown in communication, resulting from separation and illusions of fragmentation and distance. "Spacetime" really means "distance from here."

When communication is diminished, it degrades and devolves into what we commonly think of as forms of communication. These forms of communication are severely strained because there is so much separation involved.

While you can write or speak to others, across a gap of separation there must be misinterpretation. Information will be lost, mis-perceived, and disagreed upon. When two people seem to be a little more eye-to-eye, communication may be elevated, or they may seem to share more.

But there is also an illusion of sharing. Prowess at using the ego's forms of communication doesn't necessarily mean there is openness to true sharing. There are excellent "communicators" in the world but they are not necessarily One with God, or experiencing the same exact identity and state of being as the One Son of God.

The body limits communication, and every way that we use it to express through its forms, are breakdowns in communication. Once in the body this way, unless you are so awakened that you are communicating from pure love, you will feel this urge to try to, or to have to, force others to see things the way you see them.

This happens because you know that there is a major difference between the way you perceive separately and the way they perceive separately. You have to make egoic efforts to force them to listen, and the ego then produces this fictional idea that ... if you could just get people to "get" what you are saying, if you could just get them to "see" your point of view, or if you could just shake the denial out of them to get them to agree with you wholeheartedly, THEN this would be communication. However, this is impossible to achieve.

This automatic compulsion to coerce others to see things your way, is simply because you are not both sharing the same direct experience and there is no Oneness. This means the other person will have to be changed in order for them to seem to share what you are experiencing, and this change can only be brought about through force, in defense of what you perceive as being the whole truth.

While there is a separation, there cannot be perfect communication. The ego will attempt to claim it is possible to KEEP the separation between you and others, to communicate only through its approved channels, and to nevertheless perfectly transfer what is in you to others, or to precisely get from others what is in them. This is impossible and will never work. The separation distorts the message and will always inhibit it.

True communication in ACIM means Oneness. When there is a revelation, God is communicating fully to you. When there is full awakening, you are then able to share in full communication. The Course speaks of how we are to use miracles to help us to "raise the level of communication". What this means is decreasing separation so that there can truly be real sharing - oneness.

"To be with a body is not communication."

"The whole aim of the miracle is to raise the level of communication."

"11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."

"Like any communication medium, the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver."

This also means that, in fact, the ego does not facilitate communication - it blocks it. It spins illusions of communication to try to bridge the gap of separation which it itself put in place, which is "special communication" (that's not an official course term but it could be). Illusions of successful communication, or the ways that you improve the ego's forms of communication, covers up and distorts real communication.

In truth then, nothing that the ego attempts to "share" goes anywhere. It's ultimate form of communication is attempted death, whereby the body is used as the ultimate weapon to try to prove that oneself is dead and therefore so are others. And yet, this has no effect on others. The more you enter into the ego the more cut off from others you become, and the effects of what you attempt to bring about cease all the more.

This is also why nothing real can be threatened. The ego cannot attack God. The more it attempts to attack God the less effective it is. The ego's attacks are withdrawals from God. The more it tries to bring about death, the more confined and separated it becomes, and this keeps all of its effects securely at a distance from God. The Kingdom of God cannot be assailed because the ego's forms of communication - "attack" - is actually an act of failing to will anything real.

"Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself and you are not whole."

"The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing."

"Nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love."

For many years I have thought that there are kind of 3 states. There is false perception, then true perception, then heaven. And this is kind of true, and some aspects of ACIM support this.

However, what there really is are just two states. Heaven and hell, reality and illusions. Life and death. Knowledge and Perception.When we think about true perception it's easy to think of it as a state in and of itself. But we need to remember we're talking about PERCEIVING. And that means it's much more to do with "looking at" something.

If you ask yourself, what does false perception LOOK AT, it really kind of looks AT itself. Because false perception IS an internalized, isolated, exclusive state, where perception feeds upon itself and is blinded by form. It does not really see anything, and it cannot see reality. It is selfish and self-deceptive. It's like an obsession with itself, a closed perception that does not see.

When you then look at what the course says about true perception, it's much more to do with NOT dwelling on itself. NOT dwelling on the body. Looking BEYOND illusion. Overlooking. Seeing past. And there is a great deal of evidence that it entails an ability to literally SEE reality. To see God, Christ, the Sonship, perfection, etc, which are IN heaven.

The more I look into it the more it makes sense. Perception is about "what you look at" or how you look at it. Yes you have states of mind - for example wrong mindendess (or closed mindedness) produces false perception. While open mindedness or miracle/right mindedness produces true perception. But from these seeming "states" or the states from which perception EMITS, perception itself LOOKS and is a form of vision. So it needs something to look AT. So let's say...

False perception LOOKS AT HELL.

True perception LOOKS AT HEAVEN.

While there seem to be two "states of mind" within dreaming, ie wrong-mindedness and right-mindedness, really when it comes to perception there is either "the inability to see reality' (per the body which cannot really see reality), and the vision of christ which can see christ. "Love looks upon love" etc.

If wrong mindedness CAUSES perceptual blindness and an inability to see PAST the illusions of falseness itself, right mindedness CAUSES vision and an ability to see PAST illusions. The only thing that is BEYOND illusions, is GODS KINGDOM.

This seems to in many cases line up with what the course says and in its wording, as to how "the real world" is a PERCEPTION OF THE KINGDOM. That the innocence can see God. That perception can even see "the real world" (heaven) under the holy spirit's guidance. That you can see the face of christ, who is in heaven. etc.

So again I come back to, false perception being like living in a prison cell inside a room with no windows. And true perception is like living in a glass greenhouse where you can see THROUGH the walls and see the outside environment (heaven). The PERCEPTION OF the real world - the perception OF heaven, using perception TO see, is still an illusion. "The real world still is but a dream"... BUT, it IS a perception ABOUT heaven - reality. And it is so close to true sight that it makes crossing over to reality easy. It's like window-shopping then going inside the store.

I don't really see anything that contradicts this model. In fact I see MORE contradictions in the model that true perception is "cut off from heaven" completely. As though, we're hiding inside a completely dark room the whole time with NO ACCESS whatsoever to reality, and only upon leaving the room AFTER true perception do we experience even a hint of God. This seems to fly in the face of so much of what the course says, about you bringing light to the world, a reflection of heaven on earth, how earth can reflect heaven's light, how the light of heaven can shine into the world, how love of God can shine into the world, etc. Heaven clearly LEAKS INTO the dream realm through its radiance. That's how you be the light of the world.

I am finding that this simpler model of "two states", heaven and hell, or reality and illusions, makes things a lot SIMPLER to deal with. We can just look to "what is true in reality" versus "illusions which are false". Or look to God's laws and the nature of the soul, versus the laws of the world and the nature of the ego. It's a much easier comparison, between opposites.

We can also then see that forgiveness really is about overlooking illusions entirely, looking BEYOND them, and there's nothing beyond them but reality. So forgiveness, ie atonement as acceptance of truth, is really about reaching out to heaven from WITHIN the dream. Sitting in the dream with goggles on, looking out beyond the walls of spacetime, to heaven... which is truly "the real world". A reality.

This also then makes more sense in terms of how the course says that God gave the real world to his son.... if the real world is a state in the middle of two other states, it would imply god created the real world to be a permanent creation, which it cannot be.

The quesiton then becomes much easier to think about. Are you aligning with God, or with ego? With life or with death? With light or darkness? With truth or lies? And as you APPRAOCH total alignment with truth you are still within the realm of perception, up until the end, when you cross over into heaven completely. This is akin to walking towards the transparent walls, then passing through the door into the reality of the kingdom beyond.

It's then not so much to do with trying to aim to enter a state of forgiveness or atonement, but that you want to become ABLE TO SEE REALITY, to see past this world to the Kingdom. This also reveals that "it its impossible to see two worlds" and "beyond this world there is a world I want" ties into wanting the Kingdom, or at least a perception of it, NOT some kind of pretend "in-between" state. An inbetween state has no meaning of its own and is logically unsupported. It means nothing other than to say it LOOKS AT one of two opposites. There is either the Kingdom or not the Kingdom, there is nothing else.

This may sound like a sweeping generalisation but it is true. It applies to EVERYONE. EVERY sick person has REJECTED health, love and God. They do NOT want healing.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

When a person is out of touch with God, and with love, they enter into fear. Fear and love are opposites. In the fear they are confused and are now afraid of love. This requires not recognising love AS love, and instead framing it as an enemy. So now love is perceived to be "unloving" and a threat. Which also means something unloving (death) begins to be "loved."

In this state the person has a backwards perception and a split mind. They see God as harmful and evil as helpful. They see fear as something to trust and they won't trust real help.

They might be complaining that they want to not suffer, but at the same time they want to suffer. They might be saying they want healing, but they push it away. They see help as dangerous, especially to their experience of being weakened and unsafe.

Love and healing are now viewed as poison and an attack, something to stay away from, something to reject. The fearful person is saying NO to God, denying love and reality. They literally believe however that they are saying YES to what they believe is true - their allies in the ego, in the body, in fear and suffering.

Sickness and its physical symptoms are now defences against the truth - against love and God - to keep them away. Because God is misperceived as the enemy. The mind is sick because it is attempting to deny mind, causing self repression and self attack. This shows up in the body as symbolic physical symptoms of sickness and death.

The fearful person thinks that by shielding themselves from love they will be better off. To get away from eternal life is seen as a way to live longer. To be distanced from wholeness is seen as a protection. They say they don't want to die, but they do.

This places all healers in a somewhat difficult situation. The patient is ALWAYS in a state of fear, suspicious of help, afraid of healing, wary of their defences being removed. They don't want you to do anything at all in case it increases their suffering, even if what you're offering is relief. The sick person is always saying "help me, but don't help me."

This can especially be seen for example in someone who has induced tremendous bodily pain. The body can be so painful, and the person so consumed and overwhelmed by the pain, that they begin to not want anyone to do anything in case it might make things worse. They will reject sources of relief and will be fearful of even physical remedies and medicines.

So now the challenge for the "therapist" or healer is that the people in need of help are always rejecting help. Deep down they want it, but in their mind they do not trust it. How do you get through to someone who thinks that everything you're offering is going to make them worse off? How do you talk to someone who has lost their mind and believes the opposite of what is true?

Essentially, all sick people do not want to be healed. If they did truly want wholeness and love sickness would be impossible for them. They have not sided with love, they have sided against it. So at the same time they're now starting to experience the unfortunate suffering that comes with the ego insanity, while secretly wanting it. They want it because it serves a purpose, to protect them from their enemy.

So the issue maybe isn't so much that the person is having symptoms and is insane, it's more a matter of them not being willing to be mistaken or to receive help. To let themselves be loved. They don't want love to enter because it seems to threaten their sense of ego-identified self, suggesting the thing they cling to would be taken from them.

It's like a scared animal, hiding in a corner in the dark, terrified of a person approaching, barking and making noises to keep them away, unwilling to trust and very tentative about allowing the person to help them. Even if the person could be offering food and water and healing and support.

This is the unfortunate situation we're faced with. Sick people want to be sick and do not entirely want help. But at the same time, part of them does. No-one in their right mind would want to suffer, but in insanity it becomes appealing. The mind has to somehow be changed, its perceptions reversed, and its belief system upended. The fear of God, of love, and of awakening, has to be undone and the whole thought system reversed.

I think this probably applies to all of us, whether we consider ourselves healed or sick, sane or insane, far gone or a work in progress. We're all resisting God and love to some degree, which means we're all in need to being "talked off the ledge" a bit. Everyone who denies God is choosing death and is suicidal to varying degrees.

The way out of course is with a little willingness, a willingness to be mistaken, to want a better way, to open up to a light and a truth bigger than what was believed before. A desire to become closer to God, to forgive, to let go of the fight and the war and the resistance. Something in the mind has to change if there is to be healing.

"He has asked for love, but only that he might give it to you. You do not love yourself."

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"Sometimes the illness has sufficiently great a hold over an individual's mind to render him inaccessible to Atonement. In this case, one may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the OUTSIDE is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-Right-Minded (or the sick) is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed to a straight and undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening."

"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."

1) Notice that it says if you project sin and guilt onto anyone, you WILL ALWAYS hurt yourself. 2) Notice that projecting guilt through attack REINFORCES your own belief in YOUR OWN SPLIT MIND. That's a serious problem because it means every time you attack anyone at all, your mind INCREASES its sense of separation and moves further away from God and from love.

3) Notice that the ego's PURPOSE of projecting guilt is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It accomplishes this EVERY single time that you attack someone. Because "the separation" is taking place between you AND your brothers, as well as between you and God.

The whole purpose of attack, is to use some kind of forcefulness to PUSH AWAY. This is literally an attempt to create "a rift" or "a gap" in between you and others. Some kind of footing that isn't equal, in which you are NOT seen as equal to your brother.

On unequal grounds, you can then claim to be superior, and you can also become cut-off from the seeming consequences of your attack. You go into DISSOCIATION. Because separation really IS a matter of becoming dis-associated from the part of yourself that IS your brother.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

You are ONE WITH your brother, meaning literally their own self is part of your own self. You SHARE an identity. When you attack them you are driving a wedge in between you which SPLITS your mind. Your mind encompasses you AND them. If you attack what seems to be "them only", in an attempt to claim that you are NOT THEM, you split that shared mind and separate it into two. One part you think you retain as yourself, and the other as your separate brother, who is now an enemy.

Doing this hurts your mind. Every time. Every time you attack, your mind splits and puts up a huge wall between you and everyone. In fact we can say it puts you into a self-imposed prison. It makes you anchor into your body and anchors him into his.

The stronger your attack, the more you want to be distanced from the person, the more "spacetime" you invent between you. The gap increases, and the trenches of hell widen. You disassociate from them and see them as very strongly "not me". The stronger this sense becomes that they are not your self, the more your mind is believing in the separation from God.

At its worst, your perception will be totally convinced that this other person is evil, an enemy, hated, you want them dead, you want nothing to do with them, you do not want to be associated with them in any way, you see them as nothing like you, you despise everything they do and say and think, you regard them as not even remotely on the same page or like you in any way, and see yourself as completely separate.

The only way you ever could accuse anyone of anything is if you were to believe that they are not yourself. Because otherwise you'd know that, if they ARE YOU, then attacking them directly attacks yourself. You would have a vested interest in ONLY being kind and loving toward them, otherwise you would literally be hurting yourself. But when you lose sight of the fact that you are joined as one, you start believing that you are NOT them, and this completely justifies all attack, because you think now you can attack WITHOUT BEING HURT.

This is a breakdown in cause and effect, symbolizing the separation between father and son. It's like saying, what applies to you does not apply to me - the golden rule is violated. And therefore what I cause towards you, I do not experience the effects of. I escape the effects because I am not included in you. So now I can attack you and get away with it - get away with murder. This is why Jesus says "What is not love is murder." A state in which it seems like one person wins and another loses.

The way out of the separation from God, literally, is also through the undoing of the separation between you and your brothers. If you keep attacking them you are attacking God AND YOURSELF. If you keep accusing anyone of sin, including yourself, you are choosing to be separate. You literally PUT yourself into a hellish nightmare state of misery and depression by expressing a rage of attack, which tries to enforce the idea that you do not share ANYTHING with anyone.

"Atonement is a lesson in sharing" because we have to open up and learn how to share our SELF with others. That means literally, to become one with the identity of another. To join minds. To share souls. To be one. If I am you and you are me then anything that is in my best interests is in your best interests and our interests are now shared. If you are me and I want to remain unharmed, I cannot attack either of us. If I go into attack I am merely sabotaging my own happiness.

No one can be happy who is in separation. Happiness is a unified state which must be shared openly with everyone. It is light because it is not blocked from shining by dark walls of hatred. To rise above the battlefield is actually to cross over the divide between you and others and therefore straddle both sides of the gap. To transcend the gap, go beyond the walls of the body, and unite with your brother, who is your self.

The rejoining of minds, the healing of the separation between brothers, and the undoing of the sense of exclusion, brings about the closing of the gap, the closing of space and time, and undoing of the world, and the disappearing of the universe.

"Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

When I think about how I used to practice forgiveness, it all seemed so mechanical. I didn't really understand what forgiveness was, even if some version of it was spelled out in various books. I didn't understand what part Holy Spirit played, or what to expect of Him. It seems to have taken a very long time to refine this.

At first, I understood forgiveness was about 'it hasn't really happened' and forgiving for what people have NOT done, and that this entailed some form of taking back projections and stopping scapegoating. I tried various people's techniques and so on for releasing what I'd taken back, and sometimes it seemed to work a bit, not often. Most of the struggle seemed to be remembering to even forgive at all, or how to do it.

Over time I adopted another method which I felt provided new insight into how this works, and that involved some fairly clear steps to take, including going into the feeling and finding out where it came from and seeing that I did it to myself and then trying to see out 'the truth' about me. And in some ways that seemed to be quite powerful. But it still was pretty much me doing this on my own.

If I would ask Holy Spirit to help me forgive, he would perhaps help me with insights or wording and so on. But still it seemed to all be about me changing my perception, finding the real cause, stopping believing things that weren't true, discerning what was true or false etc. And still Holy Spirit was sort of more of an advisor or guide.

More recently, however, I became willing to start to experiment with allowing Holy Spirit to come into me, Himself, and to do whatever he needed to do. It was kind of baby steps at first. Just exploring and learning to trust. I would invite Him into my 'body' and He would seem to move in me and do some energetic/emotional changes, if I was willing. Sometimes he would do this 'flush' thing where, once he has done some setup, excess emotions/fear/stress drain out of me. Or, he would lift this 'stuff' up from my feet all the way up to and out of my head.

While this was helpful to me I didn't know why other people weren't talking about this or doing this. I didn't know in what way it fit with ACIM, and yet I knew it was Holy Spirit doing this. He would say "surrender" or "relax" and I pretty much knew that right after that he was going to perform a healing of some kind. But like anything, in order to 'open up' to this stuff it requires willingness, trust, curiosity and the ability to listen, to ask questions and build a relationship.

More recently I gradually have received more clarity from various sources about forgiveness, what it is, what it does, and what other aspects of Holy Spirit's thought system I need to align with, such as taking responsibility, being unconditional, acceptance, etc. Michael Murray has a good handle on those 'tools' and the metaphysics behind it.

What came to me then was that instead of attempting this kind of mental-oriented process of forgiving through thought and perceptual adjustments, which is very head-oriented, I would begin to open up my heart to Holy Spirit and become willing to *receive* His healing. I think the turning point was when I realized that "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" really literally means that HE will do the correction, not just of my perception, but also of all the side effects, symptoms or consequences that came about as a result. And that includes things going on in my body, my emotions, and the world around me.

He began to literally 'cleanse' me of guilt and sin instead of me trying to wrap my head around them or see them from a different vantage point. I could talk myself into higher truth in an intellectual way, but here Holy Spirit was starting to stir in me and move through me and heal me. Preparing the way perhaps for working through me on behalf of others. This was something I desired and wanted to explore and open up to. Now when I forgive, I know that toward the end of it, and maybe even before I get done with 'my part', Holy Spirit is going to likely step in and do something. And I mean, DO something. Action.

As I explore this more, and open up to miracles, and make myself a channel of Holy Spirit's healing power, I am allowing my 'forgiveness' to be more a practice in, ultimately, receiving healing from God (mental/emotional/physical) rather than me trying to use my head to figure out how I'm innocent. It is more experiential. I want to *experience* God. I want to *experience* truth and not have it just be some mental exercise in discernment. And it's even more than that.

What about God? What about love? I feel a stirring that I want to spend the rest of my time simply focusing on .. how to be unconditionally loving, how to receive and extend God and His miracles, and how to just love love love love love. It's not mental. It's not intellectual. It's in the HEART. God is love. I want to be in the love with God. I want everything to be focused around and centered on love. And I want to be open to God being the one who heals my mind and emotions and body, and those of others too. I want to share in God's love and receive it, instead of thinking (with ego) I have to do all this work myself. Yes I need to still take some steps and have a willingness, but I realize more and more that 'waking up' isn't anywhere near as heart-felt a 'concept' as being reunited with God. Who wants to clinically wake up unless it's all about a grand reunion?

I want God to be in my practice of A Course in Miracles, and that has much less to do with the methodical mechanical forgiveness processes I used to think were 'the way to do it'. Maybe I needed them in order to realize they are unrefined or less effective than God's way. We are meant to open up to allow Holy Spirit to flow through us fully and openly, to direct us, to speak for us, to heal through us, and to be our mind. All this 'doing it on my own' stuff is very tiresome and unnecessary.

Thank you God for revealing the truth of your light and love experientially in my life and extending it all those I meet. As Jesus outlines in the beginning of the Text about miracles (in the unsanitized version):

"You should begin each day with the prayer 'Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."" - Jesus.

"WHAT IS NOT LOVE IS MURDER" - ACIM

Here's how this works.

A mind which is fully awake and aware, recognizes that it actually shares a mind with everyone. It is at one with them. It sees its own identity within others, and knows that they are part of itself.

A mind of oneness therefore recognizes that whatever applies to others directly applies to itself. It is aware enough to see that, because it is "in" others, if it were to attack others, it would be attacking itself. And because this is very obvious to the awake mind, it recognizes that such actions would be completely self-defeating, and so does not attack.

When the mind can see clearly that it is one with others, it will treat others only with love, because to do anything else would hurt its own self.

However, when the mind enters into a belief in separation, what it's doing is it's introducing an illusion of denial inbetween itself and others. This denial makes it seem as if other people do not have "shared interests" with itself, other people are different somehow, other people are disconnected from itself, and therefore what applies to them does not apply to itself. It does not recognize or see itself in others so does not believe that what applies to them applies to itself.

On these terms, the mind is now partly unaware that it is one with other minds, does not see itself in others, and does not recognize that to hurt others would hurt itself. It now seems plausible that there is an `option`, a possibility, to do something unto others that is not done unto itself.

Another way to put this is that a separation is introduced in-between cause and effect. The mind now believes it is capable of causing effects in others which are not caused in itself. It does not see that attempting to hurt others hurts itself, so it think it can "get away with" or be excluded from those effects.

The idea of being able to do something to others which does not directly affect yourself, is the idea of "getting away with murder." It means you can now seem to attack another without experiencing the consequences. This is attempted murder. The entire ego thought system is based on this, and absolutely everything that happens in the ego thought system is murderous!

The problem of the mind then is that even though it believes it is not one with other minds, and that it can get away with attacking/causing without being affected, it's actually not true that it gets away with it. In one way or another, the mind IS still attacking itself, and it is hurting itself when it tries to hurt others. The ego will claim this is not true, and that you can escape from the consequences, but it is in denial. If the mind attacks another, it itself will be attacked BY itself.

This then becomes the ego trap of believing that you can get away with projecting your sin onto others without having to deal with the consequences. It sets up the entire foundation of how you will deal with your sin/separation, by trying to make someone else receive the consequences of it, supposedly making you innocent or rather, letting you "get away with" your murderous intentions by having someone else be blamed for them. In this way, the ego creates a state of "fake innocence"... where you seem innocent because someone ELSE has taken the blame for your attack.

Therefore to the ego, innocence is murderous. To the ego, it is possible for the innocent to sin, and for the innocent to insanely destroy others without destroying itself. Can you imagine how ridiculous and twisted it is to believe that someone can be free of responsibility even though they're standing there with the murder weapon having just attacked their brother, believing they are completely free of all consequences? Within the dream, this is insanity, given they did not and will not escape the consequences. The cost of attack is the loss of their own identity.

When we say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", this does not really mean that other people are separate from you and you should just treat them well. This would mean that maybe, maybe not, they might treat you well in return. This is still a breakdown in cause and effect, leaving open the possibility that even if you treat others well, they may still attack you.

The real meaning of this is that, in the mind aware of its oneness, how it treats others IS how IT treats itself. Therefore it is in its own vested interest ("shared interest") to treat others as it DOES treat itself, because whatever it does to another it IS DOING to itself. This does not rely on others to decide whether or not to reciprocate, because if you treat others with love you WILL experience the effect of love. This is also the true meaning of "karma", not that separate causes will decide to attack you in retaliation, but that YOU attack yourself. All attack is self attack.

What is not love, is murder. Any belief in attack, any sin, any guilt, and anger, any argument, any belief that something applies to others and not you, any way you come between people, any sense of separation, any illusion of being innocent while secretly scapegoating your sin onto others, means you are being murderous. You are trying to "get away with" having sinned and to not suffer the consequences.

The fact is, you do not escape the consequences of sin. If you believe in it, it will destroy you. It's not possible for something to apply to someone else that you don't also believe applies to yourself. You never really get to be "right" and others wrong, because if you are right, you are wrong. You never get to "succeed" in the ego's terms, because that means you have failed. You never get to "win" the ego's game, because that means you have used separation and have lost.

The only way to end the murderousness is to return to love. That means removing the blocks to awareness which prevent you from being able to RECOGNIZE yourself in others, to be aware of your ONENESS with others, and to therefore KNOW that if you do even one tiny thing to hurt anyone, it's going to hurt you. That's a pretty big incentive to always remain loving, because to attack is to be attacked by yourself, and who in their right mind, a sane mind, would want to do that? There is no sense to it.

The fact that what is not love is murder should not be used by the ego right now to make you feel guilty, or to say, well, this means that I'm being murderous because I'm not awake yet, therefore I'm even more sinful. Don't let the ego use this information to accuse you even more than you already have. Simply recognize this is what's happening and continue with your forgiveness of yourself. Murder is not REAL, it is an illusion. There is no REAL attack or REAL separation. It is just a state of being mistaken and thinking that it's possible to accomplish murder and to get away with it, when in fact it's not possible, AND you cannot really hurt who you really are.

There is no murder in heaven. There is no murder in God's reality. Only love is real.

Fear has but one cause, not many. It is not caused by what you think it’s caused by. Every single fear in the world has one cause.

When you tried to sin, you may have believed you succeeded in creating real effects. Real irreversible damage. But you had an option. Either proceed forward to guilt, or go backwards to the reversal of sin. Guilt or forgiveness was the choice. Either sin is real and you are guilty, or sin is not real and you’re innocent.

Choosing not to forgive yourself, and choosing to keep your belief in sin, the only option is to condemn yourself to death. Go towards forgiveness and you’ll choose life, accepting that you deserve to be forgiven. Go towards guilt and you’ll choose death, accepting that you deserve to be punished for what you did.

This is where the core root of all fear comes in. You actually ACCEPT and AGREE that you SHOULD be punished, because you’re guilty. The punishment seems completely justified. Your own belief that you deserve punishment for being guilty then creates fear of that punishment. But it’s not a fear of being punished by others. Here’s the secret cause of all fear:

You are afraid of what you are going to do to yourself.

This fear arises solely because you, yourself, believe you deserve to be punished, in total agreement that you are guilty, and having accepted that "it is true" that you really sinned and are therefore guilty. It is your own belief about yourself. You actually "agree" that it not only makes sense, but is completely justified, and acceptable, that you be punished for this.

This is a big problem, because it is the continued development a death wish. It means you want to hurt yourself and you believe you should be hurt.

This is not only the source of all fear in the world, it is also the source of all victimhood. Because at this point, you actually welcome punishment. You actually position yourself so that you can be attacked. You actually make yourself powerless, and allow yourself to be abused. You actually hire people to come along and hurt you. And you actually make plans for being attacked justifiably.

Ultimately then you become afraid of the fact that YOU have it in for yourself. That YOU want you to be punished and to "atone" for your sin. And ultimately the only punishment you believe is justified and worthy of you, is death.

This is not anything to do with anyone else. It has nothing to do with what other people are going to do to you. It’s not even anything to do with the fear of HOW the punishment will come or of WHO will be the one to inflict it.

Typically however you will make your own death wish unconscious and project it and then obsess over this general anxiety about what "someone else" is going to "do to you" against your will. But while you are busy in conscious awareness making plans to avoid your attackers, unconsciously you are asking to be attacked.

If someone were to seem to then attack you would claim it was completely unjustified, because you have made your self-attack and death wish unconscious. You actually think you don’t want to suffer or be punished, nor deserve it. That’s what the facade of fake innocence is for - it covers up you guilty secret. Then you get to pretend you are justified in being angry when someone hurts you, as if you didn’t want it. But you did ask for it, and you did it yourself.

On the surface, consciously, you will experience this as being a victim, as if you are not asking for and do not want any kind of punishment at all. You’ll even run away from it and try to make yourself safe and avoid people and create an illusion of innocence and security, presenting yourself as harmless and that no-one should suspect you of guilt. But it’s only to cover up the underlying belief that you deserve to suffer and die because you believe you are guilty.

It’s pretty grim isn’t it. This is what every ego plans for its host.

But the fact is, you cannot be free of such suffering until you can admit that it is YOU who is trying to do something to yourself. So long as it *seems* as if someone else is the one punishing you, or its your job, or its the weather, or food you ate, or something environmental, or a group of people, whatever, these projections are designed to KEEP your unconscious self hatred hidden. The more you can disown it and project it and see it coming "from" anyone other than yourself, the more you can play the victim role and pretend you don’t want it.

Make no mistake. NO-ONE dies without their own consent. All attack is self attack. You are 100% responsible for what you are trying to do to yourself. You cannot suffer AT ALL if you do not choose to believe you are guilty or sinful. All of your projected causes of fear, which make it look like you’re afraid of what is going to "happen to you" without your will, it is a DECOY for what you secretly are planning to do to yourself.

You have to get to where you are willing to admit to this, if you want to be free of it. It’s you who believes you deserve to die, not the world, and not anyone else. YOU, need to forgive YOURSELF, for what you have not really done. YOU, need to let go of your belief that you really are guilty and deserve punishment, so that you will stop planning for your own suffering while building fake defenses against it.

No-one is attacking you against your will. The world is not causing you. Death cannot happen to you against your will. Remember that all attack is self attack and it is only your attempt to be at war with yourself that needs to be corrected. A belief in deserving punishment, or of being truly sinful or guilty, IS a belief in death and being deserving of death. It is, literally, a suicidal belief. All death is suicide.

Forgiveness is needed, of yourself, to recognize your innocence and to opt to NOT believe you sinned. You do NOT deserve to die, and you do NOT need to be punishing yourself. You DO deserve the love of God and you ARE innocent. All the rest is a mistaken ego belief.

All fear is the fear of yourself.

Here is how Jesus puts your self attack:

"Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven's peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness."

A selection of quites about the causes of physical sickness, from A Course in Miracles.

THE CAUSES OF BODILY (PHYSICAL) SICKNESS

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. 2 Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. 3 Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms."

"Sickness or "not-right-mindedness" is the result of level confusion"

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

"Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU."

"For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and MAKE it be a cause."

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total."

"What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting OFF and separating FROM?"

"This heals at all levels, because all sickness comes from confusing the levels."

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer."

"When a brother is sick it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore does not know he has it."

"For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength."

"Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God's Son on his Father's throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself. Only by His death can He be conquered by His Son."

"If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it."

"Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone."

"Sickness is but another name for sin."

"Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness."

"We said before that illness is a form of magic."

"The mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

"A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed."

"Damaged bodies are accusers."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception."

"You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it."

"It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

"Sickness is a decision. 2 It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. 3 It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. 4 Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? 2 Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth."

"Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt."

"Physical illness represents a belief in magic. "

"All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. 2 It is a loud, obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. 2 When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception."

"And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the sole cause of pain in any form."

"And you are free of dreams of pain because you let him be. 6 Unless you help him, you will suffer pain with him because that is your wish"

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. 2 No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. 3 No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. 4 And no one dies without his own consent"

"Let me not try to make another will, for it is senseless and will cause me pain."

"Yet can the mind deny that this is so, believing there are gaps in love where sin can enter, bringing pain instead of joy."

"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth?"

"When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

HOWEVER...

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness." ... "It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. 6 And that is cure indeed." "Peace be to you who have been cured in God"

The message here is CLEAR. The body is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SICK. Sickness of mind OR body is unnatural and unholy. Even death of the body is not supposed to occur. It demonstrates and proves that the person does not want to be awake and would rather be unconscious. Death is utterly unnatural and against God's will at mental and physical levels. All physical sickness is a demonstration of the presence of a false belief and an attempt to DENY HEALTH by denying God.

A Course in Miracles IS attempting to help us to see that YOU NEED NOT SUFFER IN ANY WAY, not even physically, and any presence of ANY kind of sickness CAN AND MUST be healed by miracles.

""I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me, because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You."

You are at the effect of absolutely nothing, except that you are forever an effect solely of God. Being an effect of God means God is the cause of everything you are. He decides what you are, He defines you, He creates you, He sustains you, and His will is constant and permanent and good.

Being an effect of God, however, doesn't mean you are ONLY an effect. Because you are so like God that you must inherit every attribute of Him. This includes the ability to CAUSE, and therefore to create. By God creating you, He has created you to BE A CREATOR. To be causal. And so you inherited His Power and can use it to create. You have done this, creating your own creations, co-created with Him and with everyone else.

It can be very powerful to focus on this. Contemplate the various ways in which you are in relationship to God. Ask yourself, if God is the cause of me, what does that mean? What does it imply? If it is true, and if nothing else is true, what does that mean? This can be very useful in clarifying your relationship with God, and the truth about you. Because only what God established as true about you can be truly true.

You are caused by God.

You have no say in what you are.

You cannot change yourself.

You are perfect because God is perfect.

You are holy and loving because God is holy and loving.

You cannot die because God cannot die.

You are sustained by God at all times.

You are permanent because God is permanently willing you.

You are welcomed and wanted by God, as what God wants.

You are exactly what God wanted you to be.

You have all power because you inherit all power from Him.

You can create like and with Him as a co-creator.

You only have what came from God.

You have nothing that God did not give you.

You have everything real because God shared it with you.

You are defined solely by His will and causation.

You can be affected by nothing but God.

You are eternal and immortal because He is.

You are constantly happy because He makes you happy.

You are a reflection of His love and nature.

You are so like Him that you share everything with Him.

You are never alone because God is in you.

You cannot be attacked because God is the only power.

You are forever safe from harm because God is harmless.

You cannot change what you are even if you try to.

Your salvation and safety are guaranteed.

Your inheritance is permanently given you.

You are what God has given and you give thanks for this.

You know God because He created you by knowing you.

You cannot be separate from Him.

You cannot be abandoned or rejected by Him.

You have freedom because He insists you be free.

You are immortal because He eternally broadcasts you.

You are forever maintained by Him in perfect condition.

Your health is guaranteed because He gives it to you.

You can never be sick or suffer because He can't.

You can't make yourself sin or be guilty.

You can never lose the innocence that He created you as.

You don't have to do anything to earn His love.

You can never sin because He makes it impossible.

You cannot transform yourself into and evil monster.

You have never changed yourself from His divine design.

You must be still totally as He created you.

You cannot be affected because of His permanence.

You are in constant joy because He created you with love.

You can never be alone because He created your brothers.

You will always be friended because He created Holy Spirit.

You will always be protected by His angels.

You can never die because He wills you live forever.

You can create worlds because He gave you that ability.

You are permanently miraculous and you are His miracle.

You are unlimited because He placed no limits on you.

You have constant peace because He keeps you safe.

You are loved forever by His Will.

You are strong because your strength is His strength.

You can see because He shines a light for you to see in.

You are beautiful because He creates you beautiful.

You share everything with everyone He creates.

You are harmless because He does not will you harm.

You can never be lost to Him, He knows where you are.

You are forever encompassed by His heavenly being.

You can never be distant from Him because He is in you.

You are all powerful because He shares His power with you.

You are real because He added you to His reality.

Your identity is defined by Him alone.

You are his Son/Daughter/Child because He created you.

You have nothing real that He did not create.

You have no faults or flaws because He created you perfect.

You lack nothing because He gave you everything.

You have no needs because He supplies all your needs.

You cannot be a body because He is not a body.

You are like God in every way because you are part of Him.

You are God's investment and you have His inheritance.

You are blessed because God has blessed you.

You are a priceless part of God's Kingdom.

You can never change or be changed or change yourself.

You are already divinely perfect and complete in every way.

You have nothing wrong with you and everything is right.

You are pure, clean and new because He creates you new.

You are immaculate and impeccable and magnificent.

You are a shining star in the heavenly Mind of God.

You are what comes from Him alone.

You can only be what he wants you to be.

You do not want to be anything other than He wills.

You have free will because divine creation is freely given.

You are free to be what God intended you to be.

You were not created capable of sin or attack.

You have never sinned or attacked or been attacked.

You cannot oppose His Will because you are His will.

You can only accept and be glad that you are as He desires.

You are forever God's effect and share His causality.

You can do what God can do.

You will always be a child of God, and not his sibling.

You are authored by God and you share His authority.

You are in awe of God because He spans your brothers.

You are a made of light because He is made of light.

You will always be loved by God and God loves you now.

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever."

Is the miracle just for you, or for you to give to others also?

Did Jesus only experience miracles for Himself, or did He also share them with others?

When Jesus performed a forgiveness process, do you think that He was applying it only His personal, separate self and his own separate mind? Did the rules of forgiveness only work within his inner experience, or did they overflow onto others?

I am discovering something which I think has been majorly overlooked by the ACIM community. I overlooked it because I always thought "I" was doing the Course, therefore "I" was the one who needed forgiveness, that "I" should claim atonement for my ego self, and that therefore "I" am the only one who is going to benefit from forgiveness and miracles.

But the ego cannot claim the atonement for itself. So THAT "I" cannot be the Self that we are claiming the atonement for. Therefore if that I isn't the identity who experiences atonement, it must be an atonement that extends beyond that I, right? It must go beyond the ego self, and therefore the miracle MUST be shared with others. We MUST be awakening to a shared identity, which is a shared mind (minds that are joined cannot be sick), which means that whatever process of forgiveness and miracles I am applying, it CANNOT just apply to my "self".

I'm suddenly starting to see all manner of understandings about forgiveness, which I had applied to my "separate-me", suddenly applying to others. And as I look further into the idea of working "healing miracles" for others, it is starting to become glaringly obvious that the process of applying forgiveness "for my self" can actually be applied FOR another person.

In other words, this isn't all about me me me forgive myself. As within so without. The "in here" mind in this body is not all of my mind. The world "out there" is not outside of my mind. The out-there world is actually inside my mind because my mind CONTAINS the world. Now, we're talking about at the level of CHRIST here, not just the level of personal Higher-Self mind. The One Son, not the sonship.

I do believe that in ACIM Jesus is teaching us from a level of Christ much of the time, and that the truth's he's trying to point us to are at the Christ level, not just level 2 or 3. At the Christ level, the entire world is the ego, the entire world is an illusion, and the entire world is within my mind. Therefore, "other people" are also in my mind, they are part of my dreaming, their illusion of sickness and death showing up in form are aspects of MY delusions, and therefore I CAN heal their sickness by healing my "self" - ie returning to the Christ identity - the shared collective Christ consciousness.

That means the Course isn't just about me remaining separate - an ego - studying the Course in isolation, doing it "to myself" or "for myself", ie, for my separate identity. In order for miracles to express through me to "others", the rules of miracles must apply equally to the "me" that thinks it is separate inside this body, AND the "me" that is showing up externally. It is all One.

For example, when you look at someone else's body and you see sickness. If you believe it is real (God created it), there is an illusion in "the mind" relating to misperceiving that sickness. You think that illusion is in the mind that's in your body. So you go about a forgiveness process to correct that illusion seemingly in "your mind", to adjust your "personal perception", but it now means you see the other person's sickness correctly as an illusion. This however still leaves an illusion out there. The person is still sick. And in God's truth, illusions are not real, so that person cannot really be sick. Their illusory sickness must go!

So there is an "application" of a forgiveness process that is meant to be applied to OTHERS. This is the proper functioning of the "procedure" of performing a healing miracle for your brother. When bringing in the Holy Spirit and fulfilling your role as "asking for what you want" through commands, and are believing the person must be healed (per God logic) regardless of what *appearances* show, this means overlooking and thus forgiving the appearance of sickness being real.

The forgiveness is occurring in my mind and I move into a place of forgiveness, where I am not making errors, and where I do not see errors as real. And at the same time, that alignment with God will activate the Holy Spirit to flow through you. If you then express that the person is not sick but healthy, their body MUST respond and change to a healthy body.

My willingness to overlook the illusion of sickness in another, yes it heals my own mind if I have delusions about it, but once my mind is free of that delusion, I am now in a position of authority and power. And I am also now joining in mind with the brother. And I also no longer support their sickness. Therefore, as the loving thing to do, I can dispel it.

So what I'm seeing is, much of ACIM is taught as a sort of self-help program, focused on your separate self with no way to apply it to your brother, that you cannot apply it to them without splitting your mind, that you can only forgive yourself etc... but, there is confusion about IDENTITY here. WHO is being forgiven and that that leads to, is quite different.

You are the light of the world. You are the salvation of the world. That isn't passive. That isn't like just being a shiny light on a mountain top. It has power. It dispels illusions, not just at the personal-self level but at the united sonship level. This is why some of Jesus's teaching actually relate to being the Christ, in which all of the illusion exists, and the ability to overcome absolutely all physical laws.

You can wake up to your higher self at level 3, and be at peace with this world. But that will not necessarily grant you walking on water. To do that, you need to become the Christ.

And for the Christ, there are no limits.

The one and only real thought system is the system of God's thinking in his mind in reality. There is really no other system of thought or function that makes sense or that is wholly sane.

If there were to be another system of thought, it would have to be completely different to God's system. So much so it would have to oppose and reject and deny and attack God's system in every way possible, in order to be different. "The world was made as an attack on God."

In the separation, we attempted to produce a second thought system. We wanted to think unlike God. We tried to oppose his will and to function in a way he did not design. We wanted to be opposite and different and dream of things that he would never think of.

What basically happened is, in our total freedom, we were able to use our freedom to try to stop being free. This is entirely within the laws of God. However, even though we're capable of trying to do this, what we find out is that it makes no sense to do it.

Trying to use will to will not to will anything, is obviously a circular logic. You need to use the very thing you are trying not to use, in order to try not to use it. At some point you'll realize that it's impossible to completely switch off will while still willing to be unwilling.

It should be obvious to us that even attempting to will against will is completely futile and pointless and cannot really produce any real effects. It's not that God prevents us from attempting this, only that when we do attempt it we are basically not making any sense. This causes us to produce what seems like a second system of thought which is based on insanity and self deception and denial.

This second system of thought, which we call the ego thought system, is a rejection of reality and truth. So it also rejects immortality and eternity and permanence and every attribute of God. This is what has produced the world of space and time and death and suffering, which are utterly impossible in God's reality.

So we invented, or tried to invent, a secondary system or way of thinking, which is referred to as a "lower order reality". It seems to have reality only in that we attempt to believe it is real, when it isn't. Or that we believe it is possible when it isn't. Or that we think it makes total sense when it doesn't. It is the ego thought system, and everything in it is contradictory and a lie.

These are the only two thought systems that are possible, and only one of them is ultimately possible. The second thought system is really an attempt to believe that something completely impossible is possible. Notions of living without God, of suffering, of mortality, or impermanence, are all impossible in God. Believing in them and trying to produce proof of them is self deception.

The only task then is the undoing of the second thought system entirely, which is the atonement. It is the cancelling out of the ego and the entire lower order reality, so that minds return to sanity and the acceptance of only God's thought system.

Only in God's system is it accepted as obvious that there is no point whatsoever in even attempting to oppose free will. Only in his light is it evident that when you try to use creation to not create, or to will nothingness, or to be something you can never be, you are trying to do something that you will never really do. And only in make-believe and wishful thinking could you ever believe that you are doing it.

To return your awareness to the one and only higher order reality, which is the only true and self-consistent reality, you first go through a phase of correction and purification. This means learning to admit that the false world is false, and that unreality is not possible. It's the process of exchanging the laws of spacetime for the laws of God. And of re-aligning yourself with the one and only truth.

At the pinnacle of this process, the mind is at the heights of consciousness and perception, which becomes inclusive and closely reflecting the way God thinks. It is still within the realm of illusions and unreality, but the system of thought is exposing itself to the light of heaven.

Eventually when this is complete, and a person is fully willing to accept that only thinking like God makes any sense, only his truth is true, only his laws are applicable, and nothing else is possible, atonement is fully accepted. In accepting it, the mind wakes up to the one thought system of God and the second thought system completely vanishes.

No-one can truly believe in both thought systems at once. That is why when you enter into belief in the lower order reality you become blinded to heaven. "You cannot behold the world and know God." "You cannot see two worlds." "The world you see must be denied because sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

Upon awakening to reality, that which seemed visible in the lower order becomes invisible to you. And that which seemed invisible in heaven becomes fully seen. Awareness returns as the knowledge of total reality returns to the mind, and the illusory world of contradictions disappears from sight.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

There was a situation in which something went wrong, but there wasn't any evidence whatsoever that the person involved caused it to happen. It seemed like there was no way they could've caused it. I noticed that as a result, I did not and could not project guilt onto that person. If I could find no grounds for believing that they were guilty somehow, I couldn't turn them into a scapegoat. I did not get angry at them at all.

I found that interesting, because it's not just that we automatically scapegoat someone when we perceive that they are the cause of a problem, we also DON'T scapegoat them when the "proof of sin" is missing.

Our ego reactions to stuff and whether or not we USE it for projection of guilt, seems to depend very much on what we perceive as happening and the fact that we BELIEVE what we see.

If there is evidence, externally, in terms of form, or bodies, or objects, or anything tangible that we can put our finger on, the ego can and will jump in and USE it for projection. It's almost like a trigger. The presence of this "sinful thing" in the environment is picked up on by the senses and the ego and it automatically reacts to it with an attack. BUT, if the stimuli is not there, it DOESN'T tend to do this.

This reveals just how much we can be so totally dependent upon what we're perceiving as "existing" or "happening" in the world. How much we're allowing the world and its states to DICTATE whether or not we are AFFECTED. That we can only seem to HAVE certain reactions when the world PRODUCES certain scenarios. And when it doesn't we don't seem to have these reactions.

Isn't it weird then that we not only get triggered and pushed into ego reactions when the external world SAYS WE SHOULD, we also fail to have any reaction at all when the world SAYS WE SHOULDN'T.

Solely because I could find no evidence "in the world" as to a certain person being the cause of sin, and was DEPENDING ON the world and LISTENING TO IT, therefore, I could not seem to get myself to be angry at them. There was nothing to latch onto. There was nothing to use. This doesn't mean, however, that I don't have an ego, or that my ego wouldn't scapegoat at the next opportunity. It's just that we seem to WAIT FOR the world to fuck up before we have a reaction to it, instead of being proactive.

This reveals how much we're at the EFFECT of the world, allowing it to tell us WHEN we should be upset, and WHEN we should be happy. It presents lulls in the storm and breaks in the conflict, during which we seem to NOT have reactions. Why don't we have reactions all the time? Why don't we constantly launch into massive fear responses? Because the hierarchy of illusions tells us it's NOT A BAD SITUATION. Just as much as the same hierarchy then goes on to tell us that such-and-such a situation IS worth being upset about and is very serious.

If for example a situation arises where something in the world seems terrible wrong, I WILL much more likely have a reaction. It may even induce a panic. And this reaction will be in proportion to the sense of severity or seriousness or importance or value of the problem. Bigger problems elicit a LOT more fear. Smaller problems elicit a lot LESS. The seeming LACK of problems produces an illusion of peace, in which I seem to think everything is going well. Until the next calamity, which the world certainly has in store in endless supply.

How do we get off this rollercoaster ride of always having reactions to the ups and downs of the world? Why CAN'T I scapegoat when there is no reason to, just as much as when there's a juicy opportunity to pounce on? Why when someone has clearly done nothing at all is it so hard to project guilt? And why when they seem to have done something awful is it so easy? Why do we RELY ON the world to INFORM US of what is true?

Recently quite a "serious thing" happened and I had a strong visceral reaction. In fact I pretty much went into an anxiety attack. This came out of nowhere, but it was in relation to "how serious" I thought the situation was. I bought into the hierarchy of illusions and had the appropriate amount of drama about it. Right on cue, just as the world says I should, and entirely reflective of what I believed to be the importance of the situation. It seemed unavoidable. It seemed AUTOMATIC and mindless. And there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop it once I'd bought into it.

But somehow there has to be a way to live that isn't DRIVEN by the world and its images, BASED ON its illusions and its forms, its happenings and its dangers. It has to be possible somehow to NOT BUY INTO the heirarchy and to not USE the world as a FORM OF TRUSTED PROOF about anything. Just because the world or the ego or the body says "this is really serious you should be very concerned", we have to find a way to NOT be "appropriately concerned". To not GET our truth FROM the world.

How about laughing at it instead? How about laughing in the face of death, or laughing when someone is hurt, or laughing when people are crying their eyes out? Like... how can we disconnect from the automatic chain-reaction of "world says you should feel this now"? Or rather, that my belief about what it MEANS and my judgement of what it IS, BASED ON ITS FORM, dictates what I believe is true and the consequences that will come from it.

It's me who has apparently decided what everything means, including good stuff, and including bad stuff. And all of these meanings should apparently be WRONG, ie a mistake. Because if there is really NO order of difficulty in miracles and the hierarchy of illusions is actually FLAT AND EQUAL, then it should make NO difference whatsoever what happens, it should not have ANY effect to change who I am or what I experience. Unless I am TRUSTING MY SENSES and basing my TRUTH on the world's current STATE.

That's where the real challenge comes in. Because now we're talking about practically IGNORING how situations look, IGNORING appearances, IGNORING meanings that I make up, IGNORING what the world would say is a very good or bad situation, IGNORING the body, IGNORING sickness, IGNORING terrible difficult tragic threatening dangers, and somehow transcending them so that peace and happiness become a CONSTANT. And getting my truth from ANOTHER WORLD.

How to get off the rollercoaster of death, that's the big question. How to not be affected by the world. How to not USE OR ALLOW the world or any events or happenings to influence me in ANY WAY, and to operate solely in a proactively DELIBERATE manner. How to be free of suffering forever, and how to never forget to laugh at the illusion of hell ever again. Nor GIVE MY POWER AWAY TO IT or allow it to have the power to TELL ME what I should be feeling.

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

Who am I?

What you are, is immortal spirit. You are capable of experiencing, because you have awareness, and you perceive reality. You share the Will of God.

The ego is an illusion. It is not capable of experiencing, it has no awareness of its own, it does not perceive and has no will of its own.

The ego is nothing more than a device, a tool, a machine, which if you choose, you can pick up and USE.

Since the ego is the opposite of who you are, it is impossible for you to use it while you are being yourself. To use it, you must block awareness of your true self.

Once you decide to associate yourself with the ego, it's like picking up a pair of dark-tinted sunglasses. As you put them on and perceive through them, they show you a dark world.

Yet, there you are, as innocent, shining, immortal spirit, wearing a pair of shades. With the glasses on, you can no longer see your illuminating brilliance because the dark glasses seem to filter your perception.

While wearing the ego, you will contribute your experiential awareness, your will and your power, and "bring it to life". You will extend yourself through it.

However, because it is a mechanism for distortion, you will experience a shift in perception from truth to lies, a darkening of your awareness, a loss of your real identity, and a shutting out of God.

In this state it will seem as though the ego is now who you are. Seeing through it, whatever it is designed to see, will become your perception. If it believes in being sinful, you will see yourself as sinful. If it believes in a guilty self that must die, you will believe that about yourself.

Your sense of Self - identity - is brought with you as you wear the ego, and your USE of it appears to modify your sense of self. Your take on an identity unlike your real identity and believe it is you.

Your belief in what the ego shows you causes you to forget who you are, you no longer recognize yourself or the truth, and you now perceive the truth of your very own real self as your enemy.

When the truth comes along to remind you of the fact that you can just drop the ego glasses and return to full awareness, you will resist it. You have chosen to take on the ego's perceptive mechanism, and believe that what it perceives is true reality.

You will see darkness in the truth which is not there, because the ego glasses show you a dark version of the world. And you will reject it and want to get away from it, because it will look frightening.

You will see it as saying that the ego self does not really exist, and you - aligned with the ego - will interpret this to mean that YOU do not exist. And you will defend against that by producing sickness.

Being in the ego you will defend the ego because you think that the ego is your self. You will side with it, protect it, reinforce it, and not want to let it go. You think that doing so is letting your self go. You are not really interested in protecting the ego, only in protecting your SELF, but you think that you and it are the same.

If you are believing you are the ego self, you will believe you're a sinful guilty self. That this is true of you. It's not, but while you are identified with the ego you'll agree with it.

ALL you need to do is to learn what is the difference between your REAL identity and the identity you have when you're wearing the ego filter. This is the difference between God's truth and the ego's truth.

The ego isn't anything. If you were to realize you are not it, and accept what you really are, taking off those sunglasses, you would easily and instantly see yourself correctly and know it to be true. The ego would have no defense against this.

It has no will of its own, no power of its own, no purpose of its own and no life of its own. It is borrowing yours for as long as you choose to keep using it. As soon as you drop it, it is a lifeless machine that is not even functioning. It definitely is not experiencing anything, because the ability to experience is coming from your immortal spirit.

This is why you need to learn to withdraw belief that everything about the ego is TRUTH, or REAL, because while you believe that, you will see your sense of Self as being tied to it. You'll believe that its perception is your perception. You'll see how it sees, and your identity will be its identity. And that will produce tremendous resistance to awakening. Not because YOU are resistant, but because your USE of it makes you confused.

Also when you've tied yourself to the ego thought system, if you start to try to become spiritual WITHOUT letting go of the ego, and WITHOUT undoing the belief that what IT sees is reality, you will produce a "spiritual ego". You will spiritualize the illusions the ego sees, will give them special value, and will polarize your experience.

You'll then believe that you're becoming more yourself or more spiritual, but if you're not letting go of USING and identifying with the ego, all you're doing is changing the ego from one state to another, it is NOT really becoming spiritual, and you are just spinning your wheels.

The ego cannot EVER become spiritual because it doesn't even have a life of its own. It does not exist as anything other than an illusory device for changing perception. That's all it does, like a pair of sunglasses. It is lifeless. No will, no life, no power, nothing.

YOU are the one who gives those properties TO it and tries to MAKE IT be your reality. Your MAKING of the ego is what seems to animate it and transform yourself into it. It has no power over what you are and is completely meaningless without you.

So you need to get past the spiritualization of the dream and the ego, which will show up ANYWHERE in your experience where you're both holding onto some ego and trying to be spiritual at the same time.

The ONLY true way to become spiritual is through the letting go, surrendering, relinquishing, and stoping using of the ego entirely. That is true awakening FROM it, not with it. It cannot awaken because it is not anything. A pair of sunglasses cannot wake up. But the person wearing the sunglasses can take them off and see the light of truth.

So really it all boils down to this. Just discerning who you are. Are you the real truth as God created it, OR, do you really believe that you ARE this ego identity which has no real life and is an idea of death? You cannot change your ego self into your spiritual self, but you can surrender your USE of the ego.

Using the ego is merely an act of not being true, not being honest, not being real, and not being who you are. It is dishonesty. It is denial. It is unconsciousness.

Nothing about the ego can STOP you from waking up. The sunglasses aren't glued to your head. YOU are entirely in the driver's seat, you are the one who is putting the filter over your vision, and you are the one who is trying to PUT power and will and life and reality INTO the ego. You are the one who is trying to MAKE IT your Self.

So you're doing it to yourself. And once you take the ego off your identity and stop BELIEVING that you are IT, by stopping believing that you are everything that is ITS truth (sinful, guilty, fearful, separate etc), that's all that's needed to return to the awareness of your true identity as God's Son.

What has happened to you while you wore sunglasses? Nothing. You just looked cool for a while. You take them off, you're still you. Nothing happened.

Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.

In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.

Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.

More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.

We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM

"I am as God Created me." - ACIM

"Only the truth is true." - ACIM

Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.

The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.

It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.

The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.

I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.

If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.

It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.

But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.

God knows.

God just is, like it or not.

God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.

We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.

Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.

The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.

This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)

This leads me to a different but related point.

I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?

Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM

I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.

"How can I help?"

Fear is a psychological tool which you use to put yourself into the role of victim, where you then see yourself as being affected by something separate from you.

You are powerful, strong, confident, certain, loving, aware, filled with truth.

However, when you disown these properties, you do so by creating a split in your mind. You use separation to try to separate yourself from these properties, to disown and push them away, and you literally give them TO something separate from you.

So you take all your power, all your certainty, all your inherent love, and you separate it from yourself and push it outwards onto someone else.

This now means that in your perception, you see yourself as lacking confidence, lacking power, lacking certainty, and that will be experienced as "being afraid". It is a state of powerlessness and weakness and a vulnerability to be affected by a power greater than what you seem to possess.

You seem to them possess less power than what is outside of yourself, because you have displaced your own power out there and see yourself as having "less". Therefore those outside of you seem to have "more".

It will seem then that you are afraid because those outside of you have more power than yourself, ie have power over you, and are capable of causing you or affected you in some way. They seem to have control over you, able to decide against your will what you will be or experience. And that's frightening. But it's not the cause of the fear. It's just how the fear is experienced once it's put in place.

Fear is always an act of deliberately disowning yourself and giving yourself away, which RESULTS IN you perceiving that what you've given away is now outside of yourself in someone else's hands. It then seems frightening that they can use this power against you, which creates this whole victimhood story about what they're doing "to you" and why you don't have the power to stop them. But that's a cover-up for the fact that you are using fear IN ORDER TO see them as victimizing you.

That power which you perceive as being in them and not in you, is your own power, which you have disowned. You've tried to set up other people as more powerful than you so that you can appear weak and afraid and in threat of attack. To choose to be afraid is to deliberately position yourself a a victim and to see yourself as in danger of dying. It is a choice to try to bring about your own death. That it seems later as though someone else is going to "cause" this death for you, is a total cover-up lie which you orchestrate in order to make it seem like YOU are not the one choosing it.

Death is an attempt to relinquish the power and ability to choose, to cover up the power of choice, to disown everything about yourself and to allow the external separate imaginary source of power to decide FOR you what is going to happen TO you. But all along this fearful CHOICE is still a choice. It just looks like it's a loss of choice or of having no choice at all.

If you are afraid, you absolutely DO have a choice and you absolutely ARE using your choice, in a mis-creative and self-destructive way. To be afraid does not call for pity. It calls for you to get honest and reclaim responsibility for the power that you keep trying to make out that others are taking from you against your will. It's YOUR power that YOU have GIVEN to them BY your will! You need to take it back.

You only experience fear when you have disowned yourself and are being irresponsible for who and what you are - when you are unwilling to fulfill the FUNCTION that God has given you to represent Him and to extend love and power. When you try to give this function away, other people will seem to wield this function over you against your will. Or in other words, when you attempt to not want to fulfill this function, this function will seem to fulfill itself in opposition to you, because you are in opposition to it.

To escape from fear will NEVER be successful so long as you continue to believe your own lie, that the power you're afraid of belongs to everyone other than YOU. That the power you see in someone else is not your own power. If the power you see projected onto others is not your own, and it has power over you, then you will believe it is inherent to them and that it is real or true that they own it. They have not stolen it, you've given it to them.

Having made this seem real to yourself, which means you trust it (fear is trusting the ego), you will think that the only way to be safe in the face of something scary is to become "just as scary" or intimidating or have some sense of fake power or aggression or anger, in order to go up against this formidable foe to overpower them. It thus becomes a fight against a fictional enemy. The suggestion to stand up for yourself or to assert yourself then becomes a really frightening challenge, because it means being at WAR.

Confrontations with real-seeming enemies are not really solutions to the problem. Sometimes this seems to be the only thing you can do to stop them from attacking you, but this is according to the ego's rules. The only reason a so-called "attacker" is showing up in your life is to show you that you keep giving your power away and that you've put your own power outside of yourself. The challenge is not to make the enemy real and fight with them to "win", but to recognize that the power that you think is in them is YOUR OWN, to own it, take it back, be responsible for it, and thus return to a state of certainty and a stillness of confidence, a clarity about your power which makes you unmoved and unmovable, and a clarity in which you realize it was YOU that you have made into an enemy.

You don't need to fight an opponent to gain equal power. You need to realize it's your own power and reclaim it, to stop perceiving yourself as a victim, to stop using fear to project "cause" (really blame for causing sin) onto others, and to therefore become invulnerable. There is no need for the invulnerable to defend themselves or to fight or be at war. They are immovable, unchangeable, invulnerable, and cannot be attacked. That's what you really need to get to. And that means stopping putting yourself into the psychological perceptive mode of seeing yourself disempowered while others seem to be more powerful.

Ultimately you are doing this to yourself because it is a part of your own mind which you are up against, it's a part of your own power that you're threatened by, and it's a part of your own Self that seems separate from you and having a will of its own. This is all happening inside your own mind and has nothing to do with anyone else out there. There is no-one else out there. This fear is all just your own self-attack. Fear is a defense against the truth. Fear is denial. And no-one who is afraid is "innocent" of causing things to go wrong. It's all chosen on purpose.

"Be not afraid", Jesus would say... not because there is a real reason to be afraid, but because being afraid isn't becoming of you - it's a choice to be weak when you could be powerful, and it's not your best move. It works against yourself and is a way of you hurting yourself. You don't need it.

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"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 that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

The world was made to die. It is hell. Bad shit happens, sooner or later. Everything breaks down, suffers, dies in the end. It's an insane world.

However.

When a whole shit ton of bad shite happens, and it keeps coming, at first it seems to attack all the defenses you made against its nature. All your safeties are called into question. All your values are turned upside down. Everything you held dear is threatened. All your expectations that the world can be a great place are shattered. All the bodies that you valued highly are threatened.

You don't realize it at the time but this is a transformation and it's leading somewhere quite useful.

Later when the dust settles, the world has left a very bad taste in your mouth. You think perhaps that you should heal from this by undoing everything that the world did to you, except that you start to notice something.

By turning to vengeance and brutality and cruelty and despair the world (ego) revealed its true nature. It shoved its deadliness in your face. It taunted you with its unfairness and harmfulness. It opened up a chasm of hell and all the voices of sin roared up in front of you. While temptation tried to lead you deeper still into its suffering dirge.

And so now, you got a really good look at the shit hole that it is. It stopped being so hidden and all its fucked-up shite just flew out in the open. And it was hell, but then you noticed.

This is how the world is. Not just "this time". Not just "because it has a grudge against you personally". It's how it ALWAYS is.

And through its destruction of your defenses against this fact, and though its deterioration of the ways this is usually hidden from view, you see the world now more squarely. It's more obvious that it simply, fundamentally, sucks ass. Because it was designed to.

And now a new awareness starts to dawn on you.

While you might've tried to escape from hell's onslaught and veer off into coping mechanisms and avoidance and denial, grasping desperately at the rose-tinted glasses in attempting to scrape together some kind of normality, all of this was brought into question.

And now instead of moving in the direction of trying to dress up the world again, to make it home again, to repair the breakdown, to create another illusion of safety in the midst of turmoil, you instead shift direction.

You notice that you've been doing this your whole life. Building up defenses against death. Believing the world can be a great place to be. Trying to assemble a home to shut out the brutality and attacks of the outside world. Forming special relationships and allegiances to defend against the enemies. All this hiding. All this defending. All this avoiding. It comes to a halt.

And now you realize it wasn't just that the world COULD be a great place, and you just weren't very good at making it one, it's actually that there's a much bigger thing going on here. The world is DESIGNED TO FAIL. Over and over again. It is HELL BENT on death and destruction. It WANTS to end and it wants to end you. This is is NATURE. But no-one told you that, and everyone taught you of its illusory virtues and hopeful outcomes and partial loveliness.

It wasn't you. It wasn't just your efforts and your denials. It's the world. It's not just something you did wrong that kept making things fail. All the times you hoped that things would be better. All the wishful thinking. It was all pointless given that the world, itself, was ALWAYS going to end in the dirt.

And now the disguise has been taken off. The world's bullshit has slapped your face rather too openly, and now you are no longer in the business of defending IT, or dressing IT up to be something pretty, or imagining that ITS nature is fundamentally good. No more trying to turn the world into heaven or expecting that it CAN be that.

There is now a willingness to recognize, to accept, this world just wants to die. And it's always dying. And everything in it dies. It's not you, it's not even personal. It's just how the world is. It's it's nature. Kill or be killed, and kill anyway. This whole planet is going to turn to dust someday, or the sun will explode and destroy it. That's a fact. This is the inevitability of the wages of sin, in a world driven by laws of death.

In a way, the world's onslaught has done you a favor. It's brought into question all your little home-making defenses and all your special values and things you liked about it. It's ripped your life apart and destroyed your idol worship. It's shown itself it be cruel, desperate, unfair, brutal, vicious and deadly. And it cares not. Because it can't do anything but make everything die.

So now you know. Your eyes have been opened. No more denial about this world being a pretty bundle of icecream and kittens. This is the recognition that the world IS hell. It's NOT your home. It's designed to make you suffer and all things in it are cruel and tempt sin and guilt.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. "

You had taught yourself that this world was your home. You taught yourself it could be heaven. You taught yourself things in it didn't have to die. You taught yourself you could avoid and resist and deny all you want, but eventually it still turns to shit, and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.

Form, flesh, appearances, bodies, animals, nature, planets, galaxies, it's all part of a system of death. Take the veil off. Lift away the lies. See through the temptation to believe otherwise. Undo the confusion, in which you thought this world was heaven. Reverse the lies, in which you thought there was truth and reality and holiness to something which is just a dream of nothingness. See the world for what it IS.

The world is just an illusion of a world, the hell you made, an opposite to life, and designed to do nothing but destroy God's son. There is no way out of it except through forgiveness. There are no roads made of its hellish substrate that lead out of it. Everything dies here. It's what it does. Spacetime makes sure of that.

Recognizing this is seeing through illusions, not being deceived and learning. While hell came to take the truth from you, all it ended up doing was exposing itself. And now that you've had a good hard look at its desperate sucky ness, you can see it's not the dressed-up doll you thought it was. And that's a good thing. You now recognize it's made to die, so you can stop trying to run away from this, or expect otherwise for its forms.

You can indeed certainly become miraculous and overthrow all this, demonstrating that all this can be changed BECAUSE its an illusion. You can show that you are under the laws of ANOTHER world. You can demonstrate this world's fundamental bullshit by reversing its bullshit. But the world is what it is. And it will end because it never really began.

Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel, or the "gift" that has come of this passage through darkness, is that you can now see, without the blinders on, what this world really is like. And seeing that sets you free, because only denial keeps you bound to the lies. And recognizing the world's nature gives you power over it. It is ONLY what it is, and nothing else. It is ONLY an illusion, not a reality. It is ONLY a dream of death, NOT real life. There is nothing in it worth having or that you want, because everything you really want and value is of God. And that lives in another world.

As a child of God, God has placed himself in you, as an extension of his mind, will and power. You don't really "have" anything "of your own", or exclusive to you, because everything God gives is given to everyone equally. But you do nevertheless have everything that God has given to you, just as everyone does. Which mean that you have inherited from him his mind, will and power.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

When this power is interpreted as belonging ONLY to you, then you are trying to have it for your own, excluding others, which cuts you off from God, and disables the power. When it is interpreted as belonging to everyone, and being FROM God, FOR you, and FOR everyone, it is regained and you become all powerful.

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

What this means is that in the "arrangement" of how you are "set up" in terms of relationship to God, function, and what you must give, God has placed himself in you, and now you have everything that is OF or from God, as yours, but only so long as you share it. And in order to have it you have to give it, and to share it it must be extended. And so now the love that is given to you from God, is given through you, by YOU participating in its extension, by expressing the love that is yours - which is also his.

So it's kind of like a "pay it forward" kind of thing, where God gives love and power and will and miracles to you, then you in turn pass on and give and share the love and power and miracles to others.

"Miracles are a universal blessing (for all) from God, through me (christ, sonship) to all my brothers."

God loves you. You love your brothers and your creations. Similarly...

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."

This means fairly simply that you need to "express God" ie to express love. Which is why "Miracles are expressions of love." Or as Jesus often says to me, "shine". Shine the light that is in you, give it, share it, express it, pass it on, so that you acknowlege that you have it. And thus by expressing it, it flows into you.

If you think you don't have love to express, because you don't love enough, or feel lacking or deprived, there is a simple fix. Start loving anyway, try to push the love out, feel it coming out of you, send it to someone, even if it's just a little bit.

You'll find that this "unclogs the pipes" and gets the juices flowing. As you do this, you actually start to RECEIVE more love, heaven comes to help you, and you start to get healed as well. As you give healing you are healed.

"I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

So in a sense, we are sort of "channels" for God. But being a channel for God doesn't entail strange trance states or going unconscious or having your body be possessed. You can remain fully aware and participatory, shining a light, joined with God, in which both of you shine together. This is part of the arrangement of you being a co-creator with God. You create in parallel, you love in parallel, you heal in parallel.

What is your function? Your function on earth is healing, and in heaven it's creating, and both are very similar. The healing function lines up and mirrors the creative function. You extend God's love and shine your light, a the light of the world, and your mind extends out and unites with other minds to bring about miracles. You share this function with the Holy Spirit while you're on earth, and you hare it with God when you're in heaven.

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service."

"Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded."

"About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for creation"

"Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His Creations naturally communicate WITH Him and communicate LIKE Him."

"The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."

"And so He has kept this Channel open to receive His communication to you, AND YOURS TO HIM."

"Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing, because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His Children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them, because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick."

"I repeat that I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my Atonement decisions, because my will is never out of accord with His."

"I have told you several times that I am in charge of the whole Atonement. This is ONLY because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through other men. My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail, because I will lend them MY strength as long as theirs is wanting."

"Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself.""

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous."

"While he is IN the body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of creativity. He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

This is an important point. When you are being forgiving, you do not continue to LOOK AT the thing that you were forgiving. Sight of it was the result of NOT forgiving.

Forgiveness is NOT ABOUT looking "at" bodies and at the world and regarding them as sinless and holy. This is not how forgiveness functions. Forgiveness does not make something real and then try to look past it, nor does it make something real and then attempt to endow it with qualities of love and perfection.

To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to keep looking AT the world in a loving way. To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to love the world and believe it is God's creation. To forgive does not mean that your SIGHT stops at the outside surface of material objects and still regards them as reality. I'm sorry but that is NOT forgiveness.

To forgive means to OVERLOOK. It means to SEE PAST. It means to NOT FIXATE ON. It means to NOT BE DECEIVED BY. It means to GIVE NO REALITY TO. It means to CANCEL illusions. It means to DIMINISH illusions in your sight so that you can see THROUGH THEM and PAST THEM to the truth (Christ) that was being hidden BY them.

The world stands like a block of sin before the face of Christ. So does all bodies. You have to OVERLOOK THEM if you want to see Christ in your brother. The Christ in him is BEYOND HIS BODY.

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light"

"And place no value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is."

You have to OVERLOOK PHYSICAL OBJECTS. Your sight, your spiritual sight, has to take the place of your body's vision (which lies to you and only looks at bodies). To be forgiving, to forgive your brother, and to forgive the world, does not mean you're still SEEING THE WORLD or seeing bodies. Nor does it mean you still see exactly the same stuff you saw before but with a sense of innocence and loveliness. You are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEING THIS WORLD.

Those of you who believe that God created this planet, are particularly apt to be mistaken about this. It is an error to say that your aim is to "love the world". Your love would dispel the world. "Eternity shines away the world." You cannot love what isn't really there. You can only love the reality and truth which is BEYOND the world. To want to keep the world and the bodies and keep SEEING them, and keep being BLINDED by sight of form, while trying to simultaneously reach a state of love and forgiveness, is IMPOSSIBLE. You have to let the world go. You are NOT being forgiving if you keep fixating on it.

All things in this world are the form of sin and error. You must learn to OVERLOOK these errors and see PAST them with reason. Only this way can you "see God in everything you see". It's not because you keep seeing the world AS God. You see God IN PLACE OF the world. Behind the world. He was hidden BY the world. That was why you made it, to shut him out. To forgive is to recognize that this illusory world IS NOT THERE, HAS NOT HAPPENED, AND DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. Only by looking PAST forms to the Christ BEYOND can you recognize God's Son.

When your mind stops at the outer surface of objects, you are blinded and the extension of your mind has been arrested. If you arrest the extension of the mind you foster separation and induce illness. It is unnatural to see this world and bad for your health. You need to see PAST its illusion in order for your mind to JOIN with the Christ that is hidden BEYOND the world and beyond bodies. It is the only way you can communicate and it is the only way you can love. Love shines PAST illusions and renders them unreal and irrelevant. The world is irrelevant. The body is irrelevant.

It's like in the Matrix movies... you have to learn to see the 'matrix code' instead of being deceived by illusions of a world that doesn't exist. Then you can get out of hell and get back to being in Heaven.

Only love is real and "love was never in the world". Love wants the world to end.

"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins..."

"...brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears"

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ"

"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances."

"By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth"

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

"You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions"

"For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."

"For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable"

"(body)... Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything."

"Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do"

"Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place."

"When you have looked upon each other with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you can not overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it?"

"In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"See him as guiltless as I look on you, and OVERLOOK the sins he THINKS he sees within himself. "

"Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality"

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body?"

"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. "

"To see a brother in ANOTHER body, SEPARATE from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little PART of him, and sacrifice the rest."

"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "

"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"

"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."

In ACIM terms, before the separation from God, we simply enjoyed what Jesus calls "awareness". This awareness is tightly tied into oneness and knowledge.

In awareness, you ARE that which you are aware of. There is nothing truly "separate" to observe that isn't already you. Since you ARE that which you are aware of, you have immediate and direct "knowledge" of it. Thus knowledge and awareness and oneness is all tied together.

Awareness also has power and love and creation in it. It can cause by will the creation of extensions to God's kingdom. It extends ITSELF as a co-creator, also extending God, to KNOW that which it creates. Just as God created US through directly KNOWING us.

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them."

In the separation, we attempted to reject all this. We rejected oneness and introduced separation. This now meant that we wanted something to "come between" ourselves and ourselves. Between us and God. Something which can be different over here than it is over there.

As a result, mind split and now formed what ACIM refers to as "consciousness". It's a separated state. The mind in this state is NOT creative, and does NOT have knowledge. Instead of being causal and powerful and one with everything, it is instead a state relying entirely on maintaining separation.

"Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." At the same time of course the sense of identity went from you being the whole, to you being only a part. And now in the egoic consciousness state of mind, the mind became UN-creative (mis-creative) and unwilling to be one with everything.

Mind's rejection of creation and knowledge was kind of like trying to make the mind empty, or to stop broadcasting (creating). So instead of extending and uniting and sharing, it became sort of passive and unwilling.

As a result, mind now regards itself as a sort of RECEIVER of inputs, signals, which come to it from something it regards as NOT part of itself. Not one with itself or known. As such there now develops ideas of space and time, of distance and delay, or separateness between self and brothers and God.

"Perception is a RESULT not a cause."

"Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know."

"Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong."

The perceiving "consciousness" state has now gone from being a powerful knowing creator-extender that is one with everything, to a disempowered passive state that doesn't know anything and sees everything as separate. Effectively it now sees itself as a victim or at the EFFECT OF things separate from itself.

Signals then enter the conscious mind either from without or within, and from the superconscious (God level) or subconscious (miracle level). Consciousness sort of RECEIVES these signals and thus PERCEIVES what it is TOLD exists. As though something outside of itself is making impressions upon it and giving it signals and telling it that stuff exists.

All of these signals in the perceiving mind are SENSED, in particular by the body. There is now a separation between self and other, so a separation between observer (who has awareness) and the observed. Because of the separation split between these two, it introduces the delay and distance of spacetime.

As such, every single physical object, all matter, space and time themselves, all human bodies, the planet Earth, the sun and moon etc, it's all ONLY a perceptual signal occurring in a state of separation. Separate things, being sensed by a separated mind, in a state in which the mind is not ONE with those things, and in which both the separated things AND the "separate observer" (ego) are illusions.

Both the ego mind (separated self) and the world it perceives (spacetime) depend entirely on maintaining separation and differences in order to maintain the mind split that leads to perception and consciousness. Without this "first split" in the mind, consciousness is not possible, perception is not possible, and separate objects are not possible.

This doesn't mean that the separate objects can be perceived "as one with" the observer. If the two are separate, perception is possible. If the two are one, perception is NOT possible and separation is NOT possible and OBJECTS are not possible. Matter is not possible, space and time are not possible, without a split mind.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

Thus if you are still perceiving, you are NOT knowing. Even true perception is NOT knowledge, not oneness, and not a healed mind. Thus you can seem to wake up to or attain very high states of CONSCIOUSNESS, in which you can perceive the "real world", BUT, this is not the same as the realm of total oneness which is heaven.

"Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light. But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

Waking up WITHIN consciousness, in a perceptual realm, is still a split-minded state of separation. Only when consciousness ENDS, the split is entirely healed, and separateness becomes impossible, does the mind return to TOTAL KNOWLEDGE, oneness, perception is impossible, and space and time are impossible. Without the split of consciousness, there is no world. And the mind must wake up FROM consciousness in order to return to the awareness of reality.

No more dreams, no more material objects with differences, no more bodies and planets, no more observers and observed things. Only a directly known realm of SPIRIT AND LIGHT, created by God to last forever.

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"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. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU."

"We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this."

"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."

So you have this part of your mind, which believes in ego ideas of attack, which is the same as sin. The ego in you believes that you CAN attack real things, even though "nothing real can be threatened." It also believes that not only can it attack God, but it HAS attacked God.

It's the part of you that believes, deceives, and is trying to convince yourself, that you are the ego. That you are not as God created you. And therefore that YOU can attack God, and that you have done so.

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

If you believe this, you will believe that you've sinned. This is what the "original sin" is all about. It's the authority problem, the notion you can cause your own cause. That you can cause God against His will, and therefore change him and destroy him.

It is utterly impossible that you're able to do this. God cannot ever be attacked because He is permanent and immortal. You cannot have attacked anything real, at any time. You have never sinned. Not only have you never sinned, sin is actually literally impossible.

The ego however believes that sin IS possible and HAS happened. So you have these two perspectives. The truth in you is asserting that you must still be sinless, but the lies in you are fighting against it and trying to insist you have done something awful. Something totally EXTREMELY awful, as to try to murder God. The ego even thinks it has succeeded.

The belief that you HAVE attacked God, produces a death wish. If you've attacked Him and hurt Him, then he would logically be in a position to be completely justified in revenge. And that now means that God is angry and attacking and threatening. This goes hand in hand with believing that you've attacked and threatened him through anger.

"Death wishes ... DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear."

"And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you."

"The ego wants YOU dead"

That being your "new truth", you will then believe that because sin has actually happened, you deserve to be punished. That you are guilty and should die to atone for it. Or that death will allow you to escape from God's wrath. Because now you see God as having vengeance, as having a very good reason to hate you and to want you dead. That your death is God's will.

You will also then see that by believing you attacked God and hurt him, he is not happy with you. That he cannot possibly love you any more. And therefore you find yourself unworthy and unlovable. And even moreso that you cannot go home. That you are expelled from Heaven and are not welcome there, nor do you ever want to go back there.

What this does is it sets you up for the belief in "death as inevitable." Because if you can't go back home to LIFE, then your ONLY choice is to head towards death. It means you can kind of "never live again". And so you crawl away with your tail between your legs, licking your wounds, condemning yourself for what you think you did, and trying to guarantee your own punishment. And to think this is only because you LISTENED to the ego and BELIEVED it's lies about you being sinful.

Thus you become suicidal because now you yourself believe you deserve punishment for sin, that it makes complete sense that you're guilty, that God would never forgive you, and that what you did is irreversible. It's not even that you think others will punish you for this crime, it's that you yourself believe you deserve to be punished, and you yourself begin to actually enact it upon yourself.

This then frightens you because now you are actually against yourself and are entering into self-harm and self-punishment. You are trying to make yourself dead to pay for what you did. So that now means that you've become suicidal. And your only seeming hope to take away from God all power and rights over you, is to head towards death as a doorway out. You reason that if you will die, you will be saved. And now although you fear it, death becomes salvation and is attractive to you as a solution.

This is literally how every single person chooses to CAUSE their own death, and why all death is suicide, and why "no one dies without their own consent." It's all because you don't think you deserve to live. The ego in you believes so strongly that sin exists, you CAN sin, and you HAVE sinned, that a whole cascade of logical conclusions follow on from it, condemning you to death as the ONLY remaining option.

The only way you will get out of this downward spiral into hell and self-destruction, is to move away from the ego's "version" of what is true, and embrace God's version of what is true. That means questioning the belief in sin, that sin is possible or that you're guilty of doing it. This means the undoing of guilt as well, and therefore also fear.

While the ego in you is screaming "I have sinned", the God in you is gently reminding you that "sin is impossible." While the ego is trying to condemn yourself to hell, God is reminding you that you can't attack anything real. While the ego in you believes and is committed to keeping guilt, and to project it, in order to keep the separation going, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you that you're not guilty because you have never sinned. Because sin is impossible. That everything the ego believes and asserts is a lie.

"You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake."

"Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged."

"You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images."

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

"The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable."

"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself."

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

This world we seem to be in, is not really a world. It is an illusion of a world, hallucinated by an insane mind, imagining that something impossible exists. It is a meaningless world. It is not good or bad, or evil or holy, or positive or negative, it is absolutely nothing at all.

What we call "the ego" then picks out certain parts of this singular illusion, and says that some parts of it are more alive than others, and other parts more dead. We GIVE it this meaning. We say, ok, this form and shape and behavior means death, and other forms and shapes and behaviors mean life.

And so we assign death to certain states or conditions. We say ok, there's decay and decomposition and damage and seeming lack of life or motion, so we're going to call this death. And when there is motion and vitality and symbols of aliveness, we're going to call this life.

This is literally what you made up. You decided some parts of the one illusion mean death just based purely on appearances. As Jesus says, life and death then seem like opposites in the SAME illusory world, made of ONE substance, and you then decided within that scope that "death ends life". Or that some of the illusions cause other illusions to change and lean towards the "dead state" that you gave the meaning of death to.

It's all made up. There is no part of the illusory world that is more alive OR dead than another part. A dead tree is not really any more dead than a living tree. A dead body in a grave decomposing is really not any different to an exuberant newborn baby smiling at its parents. Nor is a healthy dude at a gym any more alive than a seeming sickly old woman in a hospital. It's all the same stuff.

The ILLUSION is that they are NOT the same. That's the whole trick of it. The suggestion that some FORMS MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT to other forms. That their FORM IS their meaning, and their meaning sets them apart as not the same.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived."

"The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"Therefore, He (Holy Spirit) OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

In the big picture, ALL of the contents of the illusory world are EQUAL in the illusory nature, EQUALLY unreal, and EQUALLY nothing. There are NOT parts which are more alive, and there are NOT parts which are more dead. The body and the world are not alive, or dead. They are neither and nothing.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR."

What this means is the body as a meaningless illusion in a meaningless world, cannot HAVE any properties inherent to it. The world HAS no inherent meaning. When you USE it for an ego purpose, you actually distort the body and steer it towards unnatural states which produces what appears to be physical sickness and death. But as we just said even these states are illusions equal to the rest.

When the mind uses the body to bring the word of God, or the perspective of sanity in which the world is all one illusion, to those who lack this awareness, ie when we love and extend God, we stop distorting the world into states of difference, contrasts, conflicts and opposites, and this lifts away from the "body image" the signs of sickness and attack and conflict. Thus the body "resurrects" to what SYMBOLICALLY is a state of health and life. But even this is still not really life.

There is no death because it only seems to happen in a made-up world with made-up meaning based on made-up forms. A dead body is no more dead in truth than what we call a living body. They are totally the same illusion. One illusion of strange separate things, to which we've assigned arbitrary meaning based on nothing in particular.

WHEN the mind can recognize this, it is no longer participating in the hierarchy of illusions, recognizes both "life and death" as the same one illusion, and now has power over ALL states of matter. It has become miraculous because it sees no order of difficulty. It is no longer believed to be any harder or more difficult or strange or intense or chronic or stubborn to make one thing change into another thing.

Then it becomes EASY to change one state of matter into another, just as Jesus demonstrated materializing food and converting a branch into a snake and back, raising the dead and so on.

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED."

"You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed."

You become able to change material objects into any particular form, as part of your awakening to the fact that they are in fact ALL THE SAME. Overlooking their differences is forgiveness. Recognizing there is only ONE PROBLEM is forgiveness. Seeing the world as having no meaning of its own is overlooking illusions. Recognizing that a body IS NOT REALLY DEAD, and is no more dead than another living body, allows you to convert that body back to the living. Or at least to the symbolic illusion of living.

There are a number of stories in the book "The saints who raised the dead" which is a great read to hear about actual miracles. For example one saint visited a woman who was insane, and had attacked her children and killed them, and then was actually chopping them up and cooking them and eating them. And some of the parts had already been eaten. Totally greusome story yes. However, the saint arrived and, knowing none of these appearances were TRUE, performed a miracle and re-constructed the bodies of the children, putting all of the material back together into fully-formed, fully functioning, unharmed and seemingly totally alive and happy young kids again.

In another story, a man had died and was buried and had already been in the ground for several days starting to decompose. Surely this would mean that it was "too difficult" to resurrect the person to life. But a saint arrived and performed a miracle, recognizing that again the states and forms of matter meant nothing at all. And raised the body up out of the grave and recomposed it into a healthy living body, and the man walked away happily.

There are NO LIMITS on what your holiness can do because your holiness has the power of God in it, plus the awareness that this entire world is NOTHING, and so how can it be DIFFICULT to do anything? All forms CAN be changed precisely because they ARE illusions. Nothing here is permanent or fixed or beyond help. It is precisely because the world is NOT real that it CAN be changed by miracles.

"If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found."

You made death. You invented death. You decided it is death. You made it up, imagined it, labelled in, assigned it to certain forms, and tried to separate it out from other forms. It is not any of that. Death is no different than life in a world of singular illusion. Raising the dead should be effortless for someone who knows this deeply and uses it.

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

Sometimes, although we don't want anyone to suffer, and God does not will anyone suffer, ... .sometimes someone going through a "thing", a hardship, a suffering, is actually consentual and beneficial to the person.

There can be a great compulsion to stop it, solve it, take it away, make it better, avoid it, etc.... we are VERY avoidant of any threat to us. But in the big picture, these "trials" as they say are actually "lessons", which we've sort of agreed to go through in order to grow spiritually.

If we are in the business of just taking away everyone's troubles all the time, we might actually be denying them a tremendous opportunity for advancement.

How do we know that, perhaps a person becoming an alcoholic and hitting rock bottom could actually lead to them becoming a powerful advocate for healthy living and helping others to escape from it?

Or that, someone going through a horrible nightmarish experience of sickness might actually lead to new perspectives and opportunities and maybe even a new future career that ends up helping a lot of people? We have to be careful not to think always in such short-term aims, and look instead to what the purpose is in the LONG TERM plan of atonement.

Very often the things you go through give you a lot of wisdom and insight and personal experience, which "equips you" in a sense with perspectives and abilities and compassion for others who might go through something similar. And then you might find yourself using that to be helpful to them down the line.

You might for example have elected to be a really great therapist or something and, in order to do so, wanted to first-hand go through some horrible abuse situation which you had to experience and work through and heal, in order to find a way out, in order to become able to help others to find a way out. And without that, you might not have been able to be useful in that way, for the higher purposes of the atonement plan.

On an earthly level we often interpret any bad thing as bad and wrong and to make it stop. We insulate ourselves from problems and sufferings. We label all unpleasant things as unwanted. We try to make an idyllic life, comfortable and controlled, to shut out the chaos.

But in the big picture of the soul we come here to learn lessons, to grow, to advance towards God. The importance of returning to God in the long term, across even lifetimes, may be so significant that we would be willing to even go through hell and back if it meant we would find a way to rise above it when pushed to our limits.

A person might actually on a higher level be willing to go through tremendously difficult lessons because, in the big picture, they know what it is leading to. The potential for major spiritual growth. An opportunity to see the other side of a situation. The purpose of finding a different way to relate to others etc.

It's not like, God is there saying, you must suffer and I want you to go have a horrible disfigurement just so that you can learn, or some kind of cruel karmic punishment scenario. But because we have chosen to go away from God and into ego, we "need" lessons to help us to return to him. And that means we have beliefs that need undoing, and attitudes that need correction.

So we then find that the atonement plan is set up to use our "faults" and our unwillingness and our biases and blind spots and so on, as "lessons", which may appear at first like horrible trials and difficult challenges, in order to try to find a "better way". To find a way to make a better choice in that scenario so that in future we don't need to go through something like that. Or rather, that we stop making those kinds of forms of suffering because we've learned that they are ultimately not in our best interests.

So in general we can't be quick to judge whether something is a good thing or not. The most horrible looking through could well be very much consensual and very much asked for. If the soul knows that there is the POTENTIAL for massive growth and learning, it may in fact be WILLING on a deep level to suffer the most horrendous difficult challenges, because it knows that the payoff may be really really worth it.

So hats off to all you people who are and have gone through horrible states of hell and nightmares and abuses and victimhood and all manner of pain and misery. Because it may well indicate not that it was just some thing that "was not meant to happen" but rather, something that you consented to and were WILLING to experience because it would potentially have tremendous spiritual benefits.

No sane person in their right mind would want to choose any such trial or difficulty, but it's because we're NOT in our right minds that we DO choose these things, and the holy spirit REPURPOSES these things, in an effort to use them productively and constructively, to help us to make the best of it, so that it isn't all for nothing and a waste of time.

This is a more FORGIVING view of suffering, because it reframes it as potentially beneficial when used for a higher purpose. Instead of focusing on the thing itself through false perception, labelling it a dark and wrong and unwanted. We can USE anything for the purpose of becoming closer to God, and that's what all these "trials" are all about.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW139L19

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you." UrT31H2

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point." UrT2B69

"In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altars unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be." UrT31H3

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success." UrT18F1

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR." UrT31D3

Sometimes, we can use the truth to deny what we really believe. We can say, ok in theory I get it, there is no world, people are not bodies, death isn't real, sickness is a lie etc. It all makes sense. But, that doesn't mean we really really deep down believe it. If we really believed it we wouldn't be here in sick bodies trying to die.

So then the truth is that at this time, right now, we do believe in death and sickness and that people are bodies. We can bring in the truth as a concept that people are not bodies, and that which gets sick is not really a person, and if the body dies the person hasn't really died. But at the same time the mind is still actually believing that people are bodies that get sick and die, and that still generates suffering. I'm doing the course, but life still sucks, and this is why.

Given that we do believe all kinds of lies, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of illusions and falsehoods, as if they are real, we could be using these higher loftier truths, these theories, to hide from how we're doing right now. We could be hiding behind it and using it as a shield to cover up and deny and not look at and not recognize what we ACTUALLY believe right now. More of a spiritualised-ego wishful thinking, in love with the ideas but not living it.

I suppose that's some kind of a "bypass". We are giving lip service and partial belief to something higher, but are then using it to deceive ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe anything else. As if just by getting it intellectually that's going to undo all of our investment and belief and commitment to suffering and death. And doing a few lessons is going to fix it overnight. And just because I read some text it means I have no ego left.

There is in fact part of me still that does believe, for example, that my wife was a body, and that the body became horribly sick, so sick that it died completely, and now she is dead. That's an actual ongoing belief that I have, even if I strive towards higher truths that death is not real and she is still living in Spirit eternally. And that belief does still generate suffering.

Avoiding the fact that we do still believe in all kinds of ego bullshit, is a way to keep those beliefs protected. Covered over with a layer of garnish in the form of higher truths and platitudes. We keep telling ourselves we don't believe these things over and over again but deep down we still do.

And so the ego uses the truth to hide the lies, and keep them as sacred treasures. We can look and sound and seem all spiritual and as though we're clever at grasping metaphysics and are doing the lessons and all that to try to wake up. But it can easily be used by the ego, which is totally committed to the reality of death, to avoid admitting to what we DO believe. We're perfectly adept at using ACIM to add another layer of denial over everything the ego treasures in order to keep it going.

We do believe in suffering and death and sickness and pain and misery. We do believe Earth is reality and is God's cruel creation. We do believe that death is salvation and suffering is atonement. We do believe that guilt is justified and fear is totally rational. We do believe that we're not safe and that we are in constant danger. We do believe that the death of a body is an absolute loss of a part of reality that can never be regained.

We can't get past these beliefs if we aren't willing to at least admit that we do believe them. And we can't get past it by just going into denial and trying to take on a higher truth in order to COVER OVER those beliefs and pretend they're not there. A thorough investigation of what you DO believe in all honesty is required, to at least admit that you DO believe in it, in order to change your mind. Otherwise why would you bother.

This is also why Jesus says that we are supposed to admit that we DO believe the separation from God happened, that we DO believe we are a body, that we DO believe in things going wrong. But only so that we can THEN, in light of that, realize that we need and want to do something to correct it, and can properly undo those beliefs. If we just cover it up, Jesus refers it to a "misuse of denial".

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay." UrT2E50

So we do need to accept at least temporarily that we do not want anything to do with God. That we DO believe we are separate from God living apart from him devoid of him and that we do not want him. We hate God and want him dead. We have these beliefs. We find ourselves in spacetime in a human body pretending to be flesh and bones and believing this it is what we really are. We have to admit that this is our position if we want to get out of it. We can't get out of it by just hammering ourselves with theories and statements about what is true while keeping these beliefs going.

For me, I recently looked at this and recognised that I do in fact believe I am separate from God. And therefore, because of that, I need to now find a way to return to God. Almost like the very beginning of the journey, starting from scratch. It was as though I hadn't wanted to look at the fact that I did squarely believe in being separate, and had spent years avoiding that belief and pretending that I didn't believe it.

What keeps us from awakening and reality is the hidden desires we have to want nothing to do with it, and that has to be uncovered and relinquished. In effect, we don't get to God by just trying to go there, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that bind us to hell first. The ego commitment to death and the fact that you do want to die, has to be looked at. You want the opposite of God, which is why you're here in the first place. Just smothering that with shiny icing isn't going to make it go away.

Similarly in grief and loss I was not feeling happy, and had to admit that I was not happy, and that therefore because I wanted something else i wanted to be happy. And that was a stepping stone to seeking out that happiness, and realising that God is that happiness. I might not have done that if I would have kept pretending that I was happy. I didn't want to admit I was not happy because I thought that was "being more ego", but in fact it's merely admitting to how much ego I already believe in. I was trying to cover it over with denial and illusions of truth and fanciful ideas and lofty metaphysics.

We have to realise we're in the shitty stinky pig-pen if we want to realise that you're the prodigal son and want to go home. The way out of hell requires realising that you're in there in the first place. And the fact is that most of us in the world are so in denial that we don't even believe we're really suffering at all. Suffering has to be recognised AS suffering before you'll be willing to want something else. So long as it is kept hidden behind an illusion of the truth, you'll keep it going.

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you." God has given you freedom. This cannot be revoked. You are free to create, or to mis-create. God cannot oppose your will because it is part of his own freedom.

This means that you have to decide to go back to God, of your free will. You can't be forced, coerced, manipulated or made to do anything you don't want to. You have to willingly choose heaven again.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

"But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth"

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Does this mean that you can take forever? Does it mean that you can decide NEVER to return to God? Does it mean that you could stay in separation and never wake up?

Given that you have total freedom, it should mean that you can take as long as you please, and even to never return.

The thing is, that while God wills that you be free forever, he also wills that you be one with him forever. And here we have signs of a "natural limit" placed by God.

"Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose."

The way I read this, "will" always has an element of freedom to it, even when will is being USED to try to be unwilling. You cannot escape willingness. You will always have some willingness even if you are highly unwilling, which means that you will eventually will to be back with God.

"He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

God has also placed a limit on spacetime, ie the separation. It has been repurposed as a classroom to learn lessons, which involves consent. And we have all willed freely to participate. In effect, there is a guarantee that we will wake up eventually.

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die."

Another thing is that trying to be away from God is painful. It is a rejection of happiness and love and ease and joy. A rejection of health and wholeness. It is a state riddled with suffering. And eventually this is intolerable, especially when it becomes extreme.

The more extreme the separation, the more it hurts. The more you try to be evil, the worse your life gets, and the more you become insane. The harder you try not to exist, the more you repress and hate yourself. And it does not feel good. Some people have extreme tolerance levels but not unlimited.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way."

This is part of the fact that there is a safeguard built into free will. Basically, in order to fully will something, you have to be fully willing. If you become unwilling, ie try to use will to NOT will, you are arresting the will. This causes you to shut off access to your power to create, and you become "weaker".

Effectively, if you oppose God's will, you become powerless. If you deny your freedom, you imprison the will. It all gets automatically shut down because by choosing separation you're literally denying freedom and power.

""Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."" ... "If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The end result is that you cannot use will to attack will, or to attack or change God. Or to change the truth or anything real. When you try to, there is a lack of will, which shuts it down and causes nothing to happen. You might hallucinate that the nothing is something, but nothing is really created.

Also the Holy Spirit has been created to guarantee holographically that the whole is always in the part, and thus no matter how many times mind tries to split itself the whole of God is still there. You cannot leave eternity or really separate.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

So God has naturally caused a number of things all which guarantee you are not only protected and safe (immortal) and have not really done anything, but also has the side-effect that when you choose away from him you do not like it, and inevitably choose against it. It's almost like saying the impluse to return is built-into the attempt to leave. And you never did quite leave in the first place.

"I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

We could say then that, we are always free, and can choose when to return to God, but at the same time staying away from God is fundamentally unpleasant, and eventually you will seek to return.

Another aspect of this is that God is so certain and so powerful, and the Holy Spirit shares his infinite power, such that he CANNOT FAIL in helping us to return. In his repurposing of the world we made, he guarantees that we will return to heaven. There are no loopholes in God's plan for salvation.

The Holy Spirit has effectively already finished the job.

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose."

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself."

What are you being tempted to do? You're being tempted to identify yourself with the ego and with the body, to become blinded by illusions of form, to make hell real, and to move away from God. The temptation to deny the mind, forget heaven, lose yourself, reject God, buy into the ego's offerings, and gain the world of sin. To anchor you to the body and to death.

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

We might think of temptation like a kind of magnetism, attraction, or some kind of lying deceit, which in its evil ways seems to cast some kind of magical spell to draw you deeper into nightmares of hell and further from yourself and God.

When an illusion is recognized for what it is, it has no power at all to tempt you. But if you fail to recognize it, it begins to take on seeming reality and truth, it seems to have the power to assert itself or to fight against God's truth. And now it appears to incite further errors, to increase confusion, to deceive and distract, and to make it harder for you to stay above the battlefield.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt."

Since how you see ties into what you believe you are, as you move into guilt and ego you also move into body identification. Your perception narrows to focus on the bodies of others, and you fail to forgive ie overlook illusions. The world and its problems seem to become a living nightmare, filled with impossibilities and horrors and terrible dangers.

The whole world was made to tempt yourself away from God. To try to give you some kind of value or meaning, something you want, something other than God that you might be attracted to. You can only be attracted to hell when you are confused, believing that hell is heaven. Or when you are repulsed, believing that heaven is actually a hell that you do not want.

If you are falling into hell, you are falling into temptation. You're buying into it. You're becoming more and more deceived, and deceiving. You're choosing wrongly and making an error, which is why you're not at peace. And the body is right there to serve the un-repurposed function of making every problem seem real and frightening.

"Today's idea is merely another way of saying, "Let me not wander into temptation." The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son, taking on a physical appearance. It is this which the body's eyes look upon."

Since "all the world's roads lead to death", they are all like pointers pointing away from God and away from life. So if you listen to it, or fall for it, or are too confused and lost to stay out of it, you're going to head towards the physical, towards suffering and the illusion of death. The body was made to focus on this and to give it reality. So then by becoming bodily identified, you will fall for all manner of temptations, particularly leading to temptations of sex and drugs and other addictions as ways to make the body and its pain real.

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

Becoming tempted is really a way of saying that you are shifting your sense of identity to the ego and the body, are therefore seeing the world's problems as real, and now you are under attack with a threat of mortality. You can't escape the fear that mortality will strike, without escaping identification with the body. Believe you are a body and you will become imprisoned in its hell, and its narrow vision will show you only proof of sin everywhere.

"And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams, when Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear."

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell."

"What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real?"

"Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; - a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but KEEP their unreality obscure, and GIVE to them reality instead."

"Let us not let littleness lead God's Son into temptation."

"What is temptation but the WISH to stay in hell and misery? And what could this give rise to BUT an image of yourself that CAN be miserable, and remain in hell and torment?"

"Whatever form temptation seems to take, it ALWAYS but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not. And FROM that wish a concept rises, teaching you you ARE the thing you wish to be."

"Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing which you are not."

"All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not to believe the idea for today." (my salvation comes from me)

"The avoidance of magic is the avoidance of temptation. For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's."

"Yet each temptation to accept magic as true must be abandoned through his recognition not that it is fearful, not that it is sinful, not that it is dangerous, but merely that it is meaningless."

"Let nothing which relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world has anything you want to hold you back."

"When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you CAN see the battle from above."

"There is, however, a temptation to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. Nor is this always obvious. It can, in fact, be easily concealed beneath a wish to help. It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes."

"What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome which you do not want?"

"Remember ALL temptation is but this; a mad belief that God's insanity would make YOU sane, and GIVE you what you want. That either God OR you must LOSE to madness, because your aims can NOT be reconciled."

"Lead us not into temptation" means "guide us out of our own errors."

"Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

You are attacking victims with your false empathy. It's time for some honesty.

When you see someone as a victim, such as that they are sick, diseased, suffering, afraid, being victimized by someone else, are disabled, weak, helpless, vulnerable, at a loss, unhappy etc... you might take the position of caring, wanting to help them, saving them, being their hero, or wanting their suffering to stop.

The desire to want their suffering to stop can become very strong. It seems justified. It seems like you care a lot about what they're going through and want all this stuff to stop happening to them. It seems like you want to take it away and that you would if you could. But this is completely fake.

Every time you perceive someone as anything other than perfect love, it is an ego attack and you are using them as a scapegoat to get rid of your sin.

It can seem like your reaction to their victimhood is justified. It can seem like you really want to help them and take away their pain. However, what you're not admitting is that you have a secret benefit from seeing them this way, and you positioning yourself as their savior is actually a cover-up for how you are using them for your diabolical plan.

Even if you are coming across as caring and wanting them to stop suffering, you actually deep down want them to keep suffering. You want their pain to continue. You want to keep seeing them as a victim, and to keep pretending that you are their savior and not in any way someone who would be hurting them further. You would seem shocked and horrified at the suggestion that you are attacking them with your attempt at salvation.

Secretly, you have a belief that you sinned, and hold a lot of guilt to go along with it. You want to get rid of it and deny it's you who did it. Along comes a nice victim which someone or something else has set up to be in a state of suffering and punishment.

Fortunately for you, they are already appearing to be punished by causes outside of you, so you don't have any need to attack them overtly. You don't need to turn them into a victim because they are already being one. How convenient! Now all you have to do is take the opportunity of their victimhood to keep them being a victim, so that you can use them to scapegoat your sin.

Therefore instead of reacting with justified anger, as though they attacked you and you need to now establish them as the one who is wrong, you've already seen that they appear to be wrong already. So all that's left is to keep them in their suffering while making it look like you are here to save them from it.

Your perception of them as a victim IS an attack, but it seems to be an invisible attack because its effects are already implemented by circumstances. By making their EXISTING victimhood real, you get to appear as though you were not the one who did this to them, even though your AGREEING with it is just as much an attack - a veiled attack, which seems like it isn't even happening. You join in the attack by agreeing that they are a victim. Then you react instead with false empathy, a false attitude of caring and wanting them to be better.

Your desire to want them to be better, while still perceiving that their victimhood is real, is actually a choice to perceive them as wrong for being the way they are. You think they should not be being victimized, they should not be suffering, they should not be sick, that it's unfair that they've been mistreated, and you just want to "help" the poor fuckers get out of their situation.

But you don't. Your belief that they should NOT be being real victims is actually an attack. You're trying to deny them and get rid of them. You can't accept them the way they are. You will position yourself as the innocent hero who comes to save them, while secretly using them to prove that THEY are the one who is a sinner and not you.

Even though you might label a victim in such a way as to frame them as guiltless and sinless, as though innocent and not wanting their situation, by making their victimhood real and reacting to it with false empathy or false compassion, you are actually condemning them.

Your ego really wants them to stay being the one who is sick, to keep suffering, to maintain their diseases and their strife, because if they were to genuinely stop being a victim you wouldn't have a way to get rid of your unconscious sin and guilt.

So long as you can see them as a victim and pretend to care, you can enjoy a secret gladness that they are the one who is worse off and not you. "There but for the grace of God go I" - or rather, "I'm glad those fuckers are suffering because they must be guilty and not me." They are the one who must have sinned, in order to suffer, and you are clearly the one who didn't.

Even if you go to great lengths to help them and want to alleviate their situation, you're really doing so on false grounds. You do not recognize that they have attacked themselves. You do not recognize that they have chosen to suffer. You do not recognize that they want to be a victim. You don't see the ways that they are being vicious and attacking and using their ego illusions of victimhood to accuse others of sin. You do not see this because you do not want to admit to doing the same.

Eventually, someone who becomes very "helpful" in this way is actually an under-cover attacker. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A devil appearing as an angel. Helping disempowers. Helping takes away, it does not give. Becoming a fixer, and becoming addicted to fixing, simply indicates that you want other people to be broken as much as possible so that you can remain in denial about your own brokenness.

If they are the one who needs the help, it's not you. If they are the victim, it's not you. If there is something "wrong with them", then you get to look all innocent and have an illusion of being "loving". Your seemingly sincere wish to take away all their suffering and pain is actually making it real and adding to it.

YOU are causing them to suffer more. That's hard to look at and admit to. Your ego WANTS them to suffer so that you can use them and make yourself look innocent. Every time you move into false empathy and set yourself up with an ego reaction of "oh poor them, they're so sad", you are attacking them and keeping them imprisoned. You're not shining truth onto them or really helping them. Your "help" is actually HURT.

To be truly helpful can only mean that you apply forgiveness. Whatever their victimhood appears to be, IT IS NOT THAT, and something else is going on, both with you and with them. There must be a lot of denial involved and there must be a lot of self attack involved. Victims are not victims. They choose to make themselves appear to have stuff happen to them "unfairly", tragically, awfully, so that their ego can get away with murder. Your belief that their victimhood is justified and unfair is you getting away with murder as well.

Only through a correction of your perception, which is going to require you to own up to what you are using this person for, and admitting to the truth of WHY you want them to suffer, i.e. to keep your own self-attack hidden behind denial, will you then have any hope of helping YOU, OR them. You can release them from their prison by NOT agreeing with their victimhood and NOT seeing them as suffering needlessly and NOT believing the appearance of the story as to how things are happening against their will. Behind every victim is Christ pretending to suffer.

False empathy is deceit. It is not justified. It is an ego reaction. It is a tool to get rid of your own sin. It does not work, because it keeps your own sin intact and creates more. Only forgiveness of yourself will work.

The below quotes are from sections about true perception and how it works while still in a body.

It speaks of how the body's eyes STILL see what seems to be an "outside world" of differences, forms, bodies, places.

However, the mind is responsible for INTERPRETING, the messages which come in FROM the body's eyes. The body's eyes can ONLY look upon the physical world of form and never has real vision. The body's eyes cannot look past the world of forms and differences. So it is up to the mind to determine whether the "signals" coming to it are TRUE, or FALSE.

ONLY THE MIND PERCEIVES, not the eyes! Perception is not about what the body's eyes see AT ALL. The body's eyes just collect "data" and send it to the mind to evaluate. The body's eyes cannot ADJUST to anything. They cannot "see differently". They cannot change perception.

They can ONLY LOOK AT the world you made as hell. The physical form of the Earth. They cannot and do not INTERPRET what they see, because they were made to FIXATE ON FORM. They are neutral. They do not "see lovingly" nor do they "see hatefully" or fearfully.

A healed mind will put all such signals into a category of "false", *recognizing* that *everything* the body's eyes "see" is an ILLUSION. It recognizes they are ALL UNREAL.

The body's eyes at this point are still "seeing" the forms of the physical world. But the MIND, which is responsible for SEEING, is now seeing with forgiveness and recognizing that the physical world is ENTIRELY illusion. That every signal coming from the body is FALSE, and therefore totally unreal.

This is why in TRUE PERCEPTION, you STILL SEE the world, the bodies, the world events, all the same as before, but your MIND interprets the whole thing as FALSE, because it sees with the whole truth.

As stated below, reality is without size, shape, time or place and differences DO NOT exist in it. Heaven has no forms. And so in comparison to this, a mind aware of the truth knows that all forms, shapes, times and places are NOT reality. And so such a a mind perceives that the physical world of forms is NOT REAL.

Note it is also clear here that PERCEPTION is not about what the BODY'S EYES SEE, it is a function of the mind which either mistakenly interprets those "visual" signals and thinks that some of it is real, or correctly interprets those signals entirely as unreal. This is why you must not "believe your eyes" at all.

"M-8.3. Where do all these differences come from? 2 Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. 3 Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. 4 It is the mind that interprets the eyes' messages and gives them "meaning." 5 And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all.

What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. 7 Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. 8 The body's eyes will never see except through differences. 9 Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. 10 Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. 11 It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful."

"M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

Notice also that in terms of "projection makes perception", the quotes above state that the mind projects its hierarchy of values and preferences outward, THEN it sends the body's eyes to try to "see" that, the body now looks only at the FORM of the physical world, sends back signals of its physical nature, the mind is now FILTERING that signal through its belief system of values/hierarchy/preference, and only SELECTS what it wants to allow into awareness. This is described here:

"What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real....When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."

Remember that perception is a function of the MIND, not the eyes. So here, the mind is filtering through its perception, its interpretation of body signals, what it wants the signals to mean. It only allows into awareness, the root of the perceptual system, that which makes it through the filter.

Therefore if the mind has false perception ie false interpretation and projections of filtering beliefs in attack etc, it is now MIS-perceiving and hallucinating a distorted version of the visual signals it's getting from the eyes, and READING INTO them, and EXCLUDING what it does not want to look at, in order to make it SEEM as though it's seeing the reality it PREFERS. "Perception SELECTS and makes the world you see." But the "world you see" is happening in your MIND, in your perceptual interpretation function, regardless of the world that is "out there".

Here is some additional material:

"Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. 2 If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but not to see? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. 6 Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. 7 Nothing so blinding as perception of form. 8 For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."

"Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. 2 You can change form because it is not true. 3 It could not be reality because it can be changed. 4 Reason will tell you that if form is not reality it must be an illusion, and is not there to see. 5 And if you see it you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. 6 What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must perceive illusions as the truth. 7 Could it, then, recognize the truth?"

There is a divine order to your creation.

God is the primary source and creator. Without him nothing exists, not even you.

God created you. Just to be clear, that means everything that you are, everything that you have, everything you are capable of, came solely from God.

You did not receive any attributes from the environment, from food, from upbringing, from self-taught ideas. Nothing.

You have absolutely only what God decided that you have.

Your joy, your love, your life, your power, your creativity, your expression, your freedom, your peace, your unity, your sharing, your relationship, your being, was all given to you by God.

You did not put it there. You did not create it. You did not invent it. You have no ability to change it. You cannot control it. You cannot make it go away. It is rock-solid permanent and utterly beyond you.

Here is the second facet of this interesting scenario.

Since you only have what God wills that you have, and are only what he wills that you be, you have nothing else and can be nothing else.

And this means that you cannot obtain any other qualities, characteristics, abilities, skills, talents, natures, conditions, or anything else that did not come from God.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."

You essentially were created with a full plate. Fully complete. Lacking nothing. Completely perfect in all ways. So finished and so fully divine, that you were not created in a position of having to go out and hunt or find or assemble or build or do anything at all to become whole.

You therefore cannot add to yourself. Just as you cannot remove from yourself. What you are is a permanent light in heaven sustained by the thought of God forever. Fixed and absolute. Unchanging, unwavering, eternal.

This means that any belief you have that you have added to yourself, redefined yourself, invented yourself, have something not of God, have something you gave yourself, something you found on your own, something you are capable of that is "new", something you've changed about yourself, etc... these MUST all be illusions.

As you move into the separation idea, into ego, it is these "alterations", "adjustments", that you begin to believe in. It is accompanied by a sense of lack, or being incomplete from the outset. That somehow God did not give you *everything* already, and so there is something to add or find or collect or establish. Some progress to make.

And this will include the belief that you have something of your own, which God did NOT give you, which you think is yours and that you can have. You cannot truly have anything that God did not give you, however. So when you believe that you have something not of God, you have nothing. And when you reject what God has given you, you have nothing.

God gave you all of his love, mind, will, power, joy, peace, beauty, freedom, life, etc. When you believe that you have something that did not come from God, you are rejecting what He gave you, which is your natural inheritance. As host to God, you inherit all of God. If you throw it away, you have nothing. And there is nothing else.

So now if you think you have power, but it's not God's power, you are mistaken. You cannot have any power at all if you do not have God's power. Yet, if you accept what God has given you, you have all power. The power is yours, but it is not sourced by you. The power you have IS God himself, in you, since you host him.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

What you are, is more like a host or medium or relay-station or conduit or channel or re-expresser of God. You literally have nothing OTHER than what God has given and put into you. It is yours, truly, because it is fully given to you. And yet, at the same time, it is not an exclusive property of yours, nor did you make it, nor can you remove it.

Ego is the idea that you are or have something not of God. Something exclusive, special, unique, isolated, which is not shared with God. And typically not shared with anyone else. It's a possessive, selfish attitude. An attempt to hoard a piece of heaven for yourself alone. And this makes you alone. It's what makes you a "separated one".

If you try to own, grasp, possess, grab or steal away something shared, in an attempt to put a label on it and say it is yours ONLY, you lose it. Attachment is loss. Possession is emptiness. Try to own a piece of God and you lose everything. But share in it, and it is fully yours and fully everyone's.

Jesus says:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. ***I have nothing that does not come from God.*** The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

The problem then is only that you think you have something OTHER than or in addition to what God gave. And this must entail the belief that you DO NOT have what God gave. And its the belief in lacking what God gave, which causes you to be compelled to replace it with something else. Which will never work. You can only have what God gave you and the rest must be let go.

"I am still as God created me" also means "I am not what I made of myself."

You who are host to God, inherit everything real from God. And this is whole and complete and perfect. All of Him is in you forever. What seems to be "your" anything, is simultaneously HIS. "God is my strength". Your strength, which truly is yours, IS GOD. God, in you, is the sense of strength that you feel. It's literally like it is YOUR strength, to use, but it is ALSO His.

It's a very interesting relationship. God causes you. You are his effect. God being cause forces you to be also a cause. Now you are a co-creator. Not just a creator but a collaborator, because you can only create WITH him, using HIS power, which is shared with you.

It's like God has fully given all of himself to you, in your creation, establishing you as completely "having" everything, as if were fully yours, and yet at the same time, all that you have, is STILL HIS, and is still shared with him. That is your oneness. You are united with Him. You are a team.

You have nothing of your own. Yet you have everything, because God gave it to you. It's kind of like if it were "on loan". You have the use of it, but it's not yours exclusively. It still belongs to God. You're kind of renting it, permanently. And so you enjoy the benefit of it forever, but it's still technically His.

Thus you have the power of God in you. You are strong. You are immortal. Because God is in you. Because you are His extension. And you are free, yet you are joined. You are nothing without Him, but can share everything with Him. Either you share or you have nothing. But never can you have it all just for yourself. Nor do you source anything without Him.

When I think of it, it makes me think of the angels. They operate in service to God. They go where they are directed. They do what he wills them to do, in agreement with Him. They fulfill a function. They are joyfully glad to be what they are. They have no desire to improve themselves, nor do they need to. They give thanks to God for what they are in celebration and worship. And everyone's happy.

The "physical world", exists only IN false perception. This is why the body's eyes can see it. The body's eyes are rooted in false perception permanently.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Eyes perceive falsely"

The world is like a veil that hangs in front of the face of Christ to block your vision. It must be seen THROUGH and past, which is what it means to OVERLOOK it, which IS forgiveness.

When you overlook the world, and look to the light beyond all forms and bodies, the light of the real world, you will become UNABLE to see the world. At its peak, christ vision makes the veil become totally invisible, the world is utterly forgotten, and it disappears.

You only become able to see the physical world by LOWERING your "frequency" to one less loving, causing you to enter into illusions and start to allow them into your mind, making them real, causing you to "see them". Without false perception, you CANNOT SEE the false world. And you cannot see BOTH the false world and the true world in their simultaneous entirety.

"The world you see (the false world) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

In order TO see the real world, the TRUE world, you have to make the false world - Earth, FALSE, and not believe it's TRUE, otherwise you are making NO distinction between what is true and false and are CONFUSED (ego). Only by being clear about what is true and what is false, or what is good and what is evil, can you DISCERN with accurate (true) perception what is REAL and what is UNREAL.

The world that exists ONLY in false perception, DOES NOT exist in true perception. In true perception you see the real world, in which there ARE no streets, buildings, houses, shopping malls, street lights, not even night and day, and not even the sun and the earth.

If you want to see the face of christ, you have to LET GO OF this world. You have to access the spiritual eye and use christ vision. And you have to see PAST physical matter, IGNORING IT. Making it unreal to yourself. Recognizing it as false. Realizing it IS just an illusory world, not a real world. It is by recognizing that illusions ARE NOT REAL, that you transition from false to true perception. True perception recognizes what is real and what is illusion.

You cannot forgive the world and keep the world. "A world forgiven cannot last." You can ONLY forgive that which is an ILLUSION, and see through its illusory nature to the truth beyond it. Doing this makes the illusion DISAPPEAR. Forgiving the world UNDOES it, and makes it disappear. You cannot SEE IT when you see the face of Christ. Because then, the world is forgotten entirely.

In the following quotes, Jesus outlines clearly why you CANNOT see BOTH worlds at once, in full. And sight of one REQUIRES that you NOT SEE the other. You cannot therefore keep both heaven and Earth, you have to choose one or the other. And ONLY one of the two is real.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, ****where all the world must disappear**** and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"***The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it***, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when ***all things visible will have an end.***"

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and ***everything YOU see is perishable***. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive ***nothing ELSE***. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; ***the world forgotten***, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream"

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ***nothing more than just a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now ****it cannot fail to disappear****, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." ***This world you see MUST BE DENIED***, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ***YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.*** For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. ***The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER.***

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

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

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, ***simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight.*** The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute.'

Let's take a good hard look at something that very few people want to ever admit. Something dark and awful, but true.

Planet Earth, and the rest of this universe, were made in a thought of opposition to Heaven. This was an attempt to make hell real, by dreaming up a world that runs completely opposite to the beautiful divine nature of the Kingdom.

To do this, an opposite to life had to be invented - death, and the entire system of thought had to be based on not only the belief in this but the attempt to make it as real as possible. To bring it about. This alternative world was an attempted weapon to destroy the Kingdom and destroy God, if that were possible.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

Because of this, everything in this world runs contrary to life and is governed solely by the laws of death and destruction. The world is an attempt not to exist and to destroy the Son of God.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

The world wasn't made in order to have a place to live forever. Heaven is where you live forever. The world was made to kill you. Everything in it, even those things which seem to begin or are born, are automatically infused with death right from the outset.

Death, separation, limitation, spacetime, conflict, attack, are all built into every single part of the system. Even the most beautiful flower, the cutest puppy, the loveliest sunset, are made of the illusion of death. They take on forms whose appearance is designed to tempt you to believe they are desirable, valuable, wanted. But they are nothing but illusions, designed to distract and deceive you and keep you in hell.

The fact is, that everything in this universe dies sooner or later. It does not matter what it is, or how long it takes. Planets die. Galaxies die. People die. Animals die. All of it. Sooner or later, death is going to fully express itself, as the entropy and decay gradually erode whatever illusion of life there is. And as Jesus says, this world is "at best an illusion of life, at worst death", since it cannot be alive at all.

"There is no life outside of heaven."

Jesus asks that we take a good hard look at this, because we seem to be quite deceived and deluded in believing that the world can offer us something valuable. We are constantly tempted by its attractions and exciting adventures. It offers us toys and objects and pointless things to keep us entranced. But most of it, is attempts to convince us that avoiding death here is possible, if we will just put our faith in the ego a little while longer, until death arrives.

And so one of the biggest problems we have, is that we do not recognize this world is ENTIRELY made of death, or that ALL its roads lead to death, or that there is NO ESCAPE from this hell if you play by its rules. The idea of "living here" is ridiculous. It can never be experienced as a true home. And everything it does is a murderous attack on your happiness and wellbeing. The world eats you alive. And it is designed to do nothing but destroy you. At least, eventually, when it's done pretending to be your friend.

The problem we have is that in our deception and rose-tinted blind optimism, we keep believing that this world can be or do something that it can never be or do. We keep trying to turn it into heaven. We keep trying to wrap it up and dress it up to be what it's not. In a state of denial. One more flavor, one more combination, one more appearance, one more new distraction, one more toy, one more desirable temptation to lure you in. And by believing that you can achieve some kind of escape from death through this means, the world has deceived you for a while, and you think you like it here. Until it fails. Which it will.

Make no mistake. This world was designed to result in, lead to, culminate in, and guarantee, one thing only. The death of God and his son. It has no other ambition. It has no other direction. It will always enforce this ambition sooner or later. You might spend most of your life pretending that this is not the case, avoiding the inevitable, but regardless of your outlook the world is run by laws of death.

When you don't recognize the world's "nature", its complete failure to accomplish anything, its automatic built-in destruction, and its inability to be heaven, you enter into wishful thinking, delusions, denial, and start down a fairy-tail road of spiritualized egos and thinking that this time you'll win. If you play in the ego's sandpit you will die, by its rules, when it wants you to die.

Expecting the world to be something it's not, can only make you frustrated, and disappointed. You might hope that it can be something, that you can succeed, that you can have your cake, that you can win, that you can escape somehow, but sooner or later it comes crashing down, it turns out to be an empty promise, something you don't really want, and then it breaks, and it fails, and it dies again. Wanting it to be otherwise will only frustrate you. Not recognizing that this is the only way it can be, and letting go of the wish to have it be different, simply traps you in it more.

The world WILL disappoint you, if you try to build your house on its unstable rock. It WILL disappoint you if you forget for a moment that perfection is impossible here. It WILL disappoint you when you start to become attached to hopes and dreams which are later dashed against the rocks. And it WILL disappoint you when you thought that next toy you buy was going to be your salvation, only to discover it was the wrong one, or it broke, or it didn't quite do what you thought it would do.

Nothing really works in hell, it's all broken. How many times will you have to go through the same lesson of expecting it to not be hell, only for it to result in hell, before you you learn? And no this is not an attempt to make hell REAL, it is a reminder that hell IS AN ILLUSION, and to not fall for its tricks. Because hell's biggest weapon is to make itself seem like heaven, something you want, and somewhere you want to live forever.

"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."

We need to at least acknowledge this. We need to recognize it, see it, notice it. We need to realize this is its nature. The world is not a perfect living place. It's a place of destruction and conflict and incompletion and damage and problems and everything going wrong. It can't be any other way. All illusions have this nature built into them, because they lack the harmony, perfection and love of the Kingdom.

THE WORLD JUST SUCKS It simply does. It can't not suck. But by recognizing it inherently sucks, you can at least let go of the expectation of it not sucking. Which in fact is a truer perception, a more accurate way of looking at it. The world was made to be hell. If you can recognize that, you can be free of it. NOT recognizing illusions deceives you. And "Illusions recognized must disappear."

You are only trapped in it if you resist it, make it real, believe it's true, consider it heaven, or mistake it for God's creation. And you only keep holding onto it if you think you want it or it offers you something of value. But it cannot. Ever.

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world."

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

"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."

Jesus isn't being negative here. He isn't being judgement or closed-minded. He's not in ego. He's being very truthful and honest and sane. He's simply pointing out what the world's nature is, without flinching or looking away or being in denial about it. The world was made from the idea of death and everything in it is designed to fail and die and cease existing. That's just how it is. It can't be any other way.

Even in the happy dream, or the real world, the laws of the physical world still remain in effect. Trees still die in storms. Animals get eaten. Planets die in supernova explosions. Stars get swallowed in black holes. Your car rusts, your shoes wear out, your food rots, and people die. It's supposed to happen this way. It's not fate, but it is an illusion of fate, based on the idea of sin being real. The wages of sin is death, and everything in this world is designed to make death and sin real.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this."

When you "get excited" about something, there's a very high likelihood that you will enter into disappointment. Maybe it's a new car. Maybe you're going on a wonder vacation. Maybe it's a new pet or some new food you're trying. And maybe it will seem to you that these things are great and enjoyable and nothing to complain about. But then, maybe ignorance is bliss and you didn't notice the experience of HEAVEN that you did not have, while these falling-short substitutes came to drag you into hell.

I got a new car. Winter came. The snow and salt fucked up the interior. Oh well. I got a new fish tank. A fish died, plants died, it didn't go quite to plan. Oh well. I ordered items online, they came, they were the wrong items. Oh well. This is the kind of stuff that happens here. But if you expect it NOT to happen, you are expecting some kind of spiritualized salvation and external perfection, which is setting you up for total disappointment. The more you worship idols and seek for external saviors, the more you will be let down. And even your most valued teachers have their skeleton-full closets hidden away.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.*** Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

Even for a teacher of God, a highly healed and awakened individual, the world continues to SUCK AND DIE!

THE WORLD SIMPLY SUCKS ASS! It was designed that way. It will never not suck. Even if you are happy. Even if you are truly forgiving and loving. It will still keep doing what it does until it finally vanishes into nothingness. Waking up doesn't stop the world from killing 130,000 people a day. Waking up doesn't repair everyone's broken limbs. Waking up doesn't make waterfalls flow uphill or prevent planets from colliding. Stuff still keeps ticking over, per the laws of death, and there is no hope here.

This is essentially the crux of the matter. The belief that there is hope, faith, trust, in the ego and its death world. That it has a redeeming quality, some possibility of being heaven or home, and a chance of escape from God. It's this wishful thinking that just maybe, you can get away with murder, just maybe you can be God, and just maybe you can overthrow the Kingdom and prove the Son of God is dead. Or that this world can be perfect. But you can't. And you never will. So the whole endeavor is pointless.

There is no hope in the world. Hope is of God. There is only hop because the wrold is NOT real and its illusions of hell are fictional WHEN RECOGNIZED. If you want hope, you have to look beyond the world, and forget the world and all its twisted ways. We can but recognize the world's limitations and laugh at them. The world will end in laughter because it is a place of sorrow. In laughter we will shine it away because of its fundamentally unhappy nature. The world will never be your home. You do not belong in hell.

Is it not far saner to recognize and accept that no matter what you do in this world, its laws will steer it towards failure? Because if you expect the opposite, you will be disappointed, again and again and again. This does not mean there is no hope at all. Only that trying to find it where it is not, cannot work. God and His Kingdom are your only home and your only happiness.

"The thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural environment."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"There is no life outside of Heaven. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. 4 At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are but forms. 9 Their content is never true.

T-23.II.20. The laws of chaos govern all illusions. 2 Their forms conflict, making it seem quite possible to value some above the others. 3 Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos are the laws of order as do the others. 4 Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. 5 The seeming gentler forms of the attack are no less certain in their witnessing, or their results. 6 Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs that they imply, not for their form. 7 And lack of faith in love, in any form, attests to chaos as reality.

T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. 3 The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. 7 And where your thinking starts, there must it end.

T-23.II.22. Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. 2 For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. 3 And they will follow. 4 Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. 5 Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. 6 How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? 7 Quite easily. 8 How do you feel? 9 Is peace in your awareness? 10 Are you certain which way you go? 11 And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? 12 If not, you walk alone. 13 Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go."

"Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can NEVER be apart. No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

We need to realize that when Jesus talks about fear, he isn't talking about you suddenly having an increase in a sense of fright. Or a temporary worry. He's actually saying that the ENTIRE SEPARATION is a movement away from love, into a state of love's absence. That state is called fear.

But we need to also realize that Jesus says we have entered into seemingly many things, all of which are one illusion. This includes fear, sin, attack, guilt, death, suffering, sickness, murder, etc. Even the ego itself is nothing more than a fearful thought. It may seem to house all the many aspects or attributes of separation but it is also fear. It is insanity and guilt and fear and death and many other things all rolled into one.

When you are stressed out, you are afraid. When you are worried for someone's physical health, you are afraid. When you are concerned whether something will work out or not, you are afraid. When you are seeing yourself as victimized and attacked, you are afraid. When you have a sense that everything is going wrong and there is no hope, you are afraid.

When you are entering into that familiar and horrible state of "this is a nightmare", you are afraid. When you feel like you are dependent on the world and of something being a certain way, you are afraid. When you are taking illusions seriously you are afraid. When you think that someone "is really sick", you are afraid. The fear can seem to take on many forms and in many degrees and levels and most of the time you may not even realize it.

When Jesus says that fear comes from trusting in your own strength, he is reflecting on the fact that if you listen to the ego and focus on self-sufficiency without God, you will be afraid. Because this means you're separating off from God and thus are trying to distance yourself from him - in fear. In essence, separation from God, or separation from anything or anyone, is a state of fear. Just as it is also a state of guilt, and of sickness, and of death.

Jesus tells us that "all healing is the release from fear." This pertains to you in terms of you needing to be healed, and in terms of your miracle working for others. Where there is fear there is separation and seriousness, darkness and despair. When there is fear, there is no lightness or happiness or freedom. Fear binds you and imprisons you and makes you powerless. Fear is literally a rejection of love, or life, of health, of God, of everything.

This is why he casually has said that we have made a "detour into fear". The whole separation is a detour away from fearlessness into fear. This tells you then that when you get OUT of the fear, you will find happiness and joy, lightness and peace, health and wholeness. All "forms" of separation from God have to be undone and fear is a really big part of this. Teachers of God cannot be afraid. We should be fearless. This does not mean having a lot of arrogance or physical strength or competitiveness, it means you literally are not feeling fear or having reasons to be afraid.

Ultimately this is all wrapped up as simply the opposite of love. Fear is love's absence. Fear is God's absence. Fear thus becomes the "fear of God", seemingly, as if God is causing the fear. But in truth, the fear is being used to FRAME God as the cause of fear. To justify shrinking and withdrawing.

As Jesus says, if you are afraid, know that you have withdrawn from the light. If you are afraid, you are hiding from God. This is not because God in any way is a threat, but because you have to believe God is a threat in order to pretend that you don't love him.

When Jesus was in a body he would often say, "fear not". This quite literally is like saying "do not deny God" "do not be separate" "recognize you are safe" "choose love over fear" "do not attack" "choose not to die" etc.

"There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended."

"ALL illusions are of fear, and they CAN be of nothing else."

"The ego is quite literally a fearful thought."

"Faith is the OPPOSITE of fear, as much a part of love, as fear is of attack."

"And hate must be the opposite of love, regardless of the form it takes."

"There are no scraps of dreams. Each one contains the whole of fear, the opposite of love, (in all its ways), the hell that hides the memory of God, the crucifixion of His holy Son."

"Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"If perfect love casts out fear,

And if fear exists,

Then there is NOT perfect love.

But

Only perfect love really exists.

Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist."

"THE FEAR OF GOD, the final step in your dissociation."

"For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear."

"When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles which still remain between you and the holy peace of God."

"Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist. The fear of God is causeless. But His Love is Cause of everything beyond all fear, and thus forever real and always true."

"No-one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has ACCEPTED the Atonement, and learned illusions are not real. No-one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he could not have REACHED it unless his brother walked beside him. And no-one would dare to LOOK on it, without COMPLETE forgiveness of his brother in his heart. Stand you here a while, and tremble not. You will be ready."

"To look upon the fear of God DOES need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but NOT with fear. For only if you SHARE in it does it seem fearful."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God."

"The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness."

"The fear of God is fear of life, and NOT of death."

"The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he LEARNS his innocence."

"What seems to be the fear of God is really only the fear of YOUR OWN REALITY."

"The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just ONE error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him."

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

Since spirit obeys only God's laws, and Spirit is love, expressions of love (miracles) are expressions of the laws of spirit. Spirit is beyond the "nature" of the ego, and therefore miracles have a super-natural, spiritual origin. What you may not realize is that this entire world is constructed from the ego's fake laws of nature, even down to the subatomic physics.

The laws of the ego are invented by the ego. The dream, which is an effect of an "invisible" higher-level cause, does not contain any real causes. But it contains illusions of causes. These illusions of causes make it seem like one part of the same level causes effects in other parts of the same level. This is not true. All effects are orchestrated from a higher level, including the illusion that one thing causes another.

So when you study this fictional "world", and you see one object seeming to move and collide with another object to "cause" it to behave differently, this SEEMS like there is some kind of a law involved. Like the laws of physics, suggesting that actions have equal and opposite reactions.

The truth is that actions do NOT have equal and opposite reactions. Actions on this level are not actions. They are all reactions - effects, pretending to be actions. The action, and its effects, are both effects coming from an unseen dimension.

The ego has been very clever to disguise and hide God's nature and the laws of Spirit, by creating FORM, and nothing is so blinding as sight of form. The behavior and interaction of forms creates an illusion of cause and effect happening on this same level. And so on this level it appears that some things cause other things, and that this is "natural". It could not be further from natural.

What it really expresses is the fact that what is not love is murder, and every part of the ego thought system (of which this world is a part) is murderous. The ego thought system believes that what applies to one thing does not apply to another, therefore there are differences, therefore you can cause (attack) without being attacked (affected).

This is why so-called "causes" in this world seem to escape the effects they inflict on other things. It seems possible to throw a brick through a window without damaging the brick. But since what applies to the brick does not apply to the window, this is an illusion based on differences, and is an expression of a murderous idea. The brick "gets away with" (murders) the window because the so-called properties of the brick (the laws applying to it) are "different" to the properties and laws of the window. It is not "natural" to be murderous, and so this "law of nature" that the brick will break the window is NOT being governed by a natural law or the "laws of physics".

The truth about this universe/world/planet is that it is not run by laws of physics, there is no such thing as physics, and in fact it is run by the mind from a higher level. And it doesn't really exist because it is just a dream being projected and dreams are fictional. This is why "there is no world."

Since all true causality is in the mind, and all of the mind is "above" the level of this world and its effects, when the mind decides to exercise its ability to cause, it can "modify" the content of the dream, or rearrange it, in order to demonstrate and prove that it is NOT really governed by the ILLUSORY LAWS, but by the laws of spirit.

Since spirit is love and love's expressions are miracles, these "acts of love" demonstrating the true laws or "true nature" of existence, MUST DEFY AND BREAK the illusions of horizontal laws that the ego assumes are true.

If a child is playing with a train set and the train is traveling around the track "on rails", seemingly by itself, following physical laws, it can only go where the "laws" seem to tell it to go. However, if the child reaches down and picks up the train and positions it in a totally different section of track, all of those laws are completely defied. Indeed, another child may complain that "you're not supposed to do that" because it breaks the ILLUSION of the game they were playing at PRETENDING the train is going around the track on its own.

The mind of the dreamer is what dictates what shows up, where it shows up, how it shows up, and how it behaves. Any so-called "interactions" of objects are FAKE. The objects would completely pass through each other and occupy the same space if it were not for the MIND deciding to make it seem like they collide with each other and perform a cascade of so-called "reactions". There is no such thing as a real reaction. Spirit creates and extends, it does not react.

This whole world and everything in it was designed to conceal the nature of God and His laws, behind a smokescreen of fake laws and fake nature. To present an illusion that one thing depends on another or causes effects in another, thereby expressing the ego's insane idea of un-equal laws or finite laws which apply only some of the time to some objects. After all, not all objects are causing something to happen at all times, and even objects which are affected turn around and become causes soon after. Are they causes, or effects, or both, or neither?

Nothing in this world has the power to express the laws of Spirit on its own because "form" is the form of ERROR, and error is all about separation and powerlessness and fake causality. Miracles HAVE to express something which is BEYOND the nature of this world, in order for them to be miracles at all. It is not a miracle for a car to drive down a road. It is a miracle for the car to disappear and reappear 50 miles further along in a split second. It is not a miracle for a tree to catch on fire. It is a miracle for the tree to avoid being burned in the midst of a raging forest fire where everything around it was incinerated. Ego laws MUST be defied in order for it to be miraculous.

Miracles obey the laws of Spirit, not the laws of the ego. For a miracle to express, something which the ego APPEARED to establish as true is shown to be FALSE, and is demonstrated to be false, by completely defying and breaking and overriding the ego laws to produce effects which are outside those laws. This would include for example giving someone new eyeballs after they were born without any eyes. Or re-growing a missing limb. Or turning water into wine. Or walking on the top of the ocean without sinking.

If this nature-defying, thus super-natural element is missing from miracles, and if miracles in ACIM are not super-natural, then what are they? There is nothing super natural or ego defying or ego-law-breaking about shifting perception. There is nothing ego-law-breaking or capable of demonstrating that the laws don't apply, in correcting some thoughts. There is nothing that's going to change the direction the world spins when some old emotions are released. There's nothing particularly powerful about any of these efforts at purification. They are just clearing away belief in ego laws to make way for Spirit to express itself.

This is a simple logical premise deeply rooted in the Course. Heaven was all that existed, and WE MADE UP an opposite to Heaven. And that opposite is ALWAYS opposed to Heaven, totally UNLIKE Heaven in every way, and is the idea of HELL, no matter how you perceive it or look at it or think about it. An opposite to heaven DOES NOT EXIST. Therefore there is no world - Earth, as Heaven's OPPOSITE, does not exist.

Below are a selection of quotes, which all highlight that Earth and Heaven are OPPOSITE. They will NOT EVER BE "one thing", or the "same thing". Earth was made to OPPOSE the one possibility of Heaven in every way. "The world was made as an attack on God." In no way, at no time, will the Earth merge with Heaven. "Love, which is all encompassing, HAS NO OPPOSITE", and so the opposite to Heaven, which is Earth, shall simply disappear into the nothingness from which it came.

You are either "in heaven", without an opposite, or you are "in hell" (Earth) with an opposite. If you are in the Earth, Heaven must then HAVE an opposite, Earth is now hell, and there is no escape from duality.

Perception has nothing to do with that fact. Perceiving hell in a heavenly way is only a temporary state in order to prepare you for the reality that Heaven is the only reality and THERE IS NO WORLD. Earth, as Heaven's total opposite, CANNOT CONTINUE being "Earth" in any recognizable way, which is MADE OF OPPOSITION (which is attack), while also being "equated" with or identical to Heaven. Heaven HAS no opposite. Earth DOES NOT EXIST.

---------------

"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."

"Heaven remains your one ALTERNATIVE to this strange world YOU MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did NOT make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's sorry outcome WHICH IS HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

"FOR THIS WORLD IS THE OPPOSITE OF HEAVEN, being MADE TO BE ITS OPPOSITE, and everything here takes a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE of what is true. 7 In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union. 8 Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion."

"It applies to everything that God created, and ONLY what He created is real. It is beyond learning because it is BEYOND TIME AND PROCESS. It HAS NO OPPOSITE; no beginning and no end. It merely is."

"How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? 3 He thus denies himself, and contradicts what HAS NO OPPOSITE. 4 HE THINKS HE MADE A HELL OPPOSING HEAVEN, and believes that HE ABIDES IN what DOES NOT EXIST, while Heaven is the place he cannot find."

"From knowledge and perception respectively, two distinct thought systems arise which are OPPOSITE IN EVERY RESPECT. In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. The WORLD OF PERCEPTION, however, is MADE BY THE BELIEF IN OPPOSITES AND SEPARATE WILLS, in PERPETUAL CONFLICT with each other and with God. What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the WISHES of the perceiver. This leads to a WORLD OF ILLUSIONS, a world which needs constant defense precisely BECAUSE IT IS NOT REAL."

"In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are ALTERNATIVES to choose between. We think that all things have an OPPOSITE, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be HELL as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we THINK is real."

"CREATION KNOWS NO OPPOSITE. 2 But here is OPPOSITION part of being "real." 3 It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. 4 It is not really thus." (because hell doesn't exist)

"For truth is true, and NOTHING ELSE is true. 7 THERE IS NO OPPOSITE to choose instead. 8 There is no contradiction to the truth."

"IN DEATH ALONE ARE OPPOSITES resolved, for ending OPPOSITION is to die. 4 And thus salvation must be seen as death, for LIFE IS SEEN AS CONFLICT. 5 To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well."

"In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established WITHOUT OPPOSITE. 4 I am the holy home of God Himself. 5 I am the HEAVEN where His Love resides."

"Now the light has come: ITS OPPOSITE HAS GONE WITHOUT A TRACE. 9 Where evil was there now is holiness. 10 What is the ego? 11 What the evil was. 12 Where is the ego? 13 In an EVIL DREAM that but SEEMED REAL WHILE YOU WERE DREAMING IT."

"The OPPOSITE OF SEEING through the body's eyes is the vision of Christ, which reflects strength rather than weakness, unity rather than separation, and love rather than fear. The OPPOSITE OF HEARING through the body's ears is communication through the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, which abides in each of us."

"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. 5 They take a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE, pointing as clearly TO HEAVEN as the ego points to darkness and to death (earth)."

"What could you choose between but life or death, waking or sleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality? 2 There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because THE WORLD EQUATES THE BODY WITH THE SELF WHICH GOD CREATED. 3 Yet a thing can NEVER BE ITS OPPOSITE. 4 AND DEATH IS OPPOSITE TO PEACE, because it is the OPPOSITE OF LIFE."

"The perception of goodness is NOT knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to recognize a condition in which OPPOSITES DO NOT EXIST."

"The Thought of peace was given to God's Son the instant that HIS MIND HAD THOUGHT OF WAR. 2 There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given WITHOUT OPPOSITE, and merely was."

"From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. 2 The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, DREAMS ARE DONE, ETERNITY HAS ****SHINED AWAY THE WORLD**** , and ONLY HEAVEN NOW EXISTS AT ALL."

Worth repeating:

"There is NO LIFE OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state APART from Heaven LIFE IS ILLUSION. 4 At best it SEEMS LIKE LIFE; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is NOT LIFE, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 LIFE NOT IN HEAVEN IS IMPOSSIBLE, and what is not in Heaven is NOT ANYWHERE. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet PERCEIVED as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are BUT FORMS (life forms). 9 Their content is never true."

At first we believe physical sight is perception. And everything the body's eyes look upon is taken as real. And thus we learn that the world appears to be an inherently bad place. Regardless of trying to be optimistic or positive, bad shit happens frequently. And people seem to die.

Assuming that everything we see is real, we might not realize that there is a flexible component to perception. Our mind gets to actually decide what to "make of" the images that the physical eyes see. It categorizes them, projects meaning onto them, and decide what they are for.

This is because only the mind really sees, and it is looking upon the images the body shows to it of the world, as pictures of reflected photons bouncing off blockages. And the mind can decide what this means and what to project onto them, choosing what to see in them, God or ego.

What this means is the world you initially see is a combination of "the physical world" and the overlaid projected junk in your mind. The dirt on your lens. The baggage and self attack and sense of sin and guilt which you see in the world as if it's outside of you.

What you have to learn, is that what the world is, and the sense of it being a negative hellish place, are two different things. It's easy to hate the world, be angry at it, mistrust it, fear it, and want to escape it.

You can easily get into a mindset that if you will get away from "that bad place" through some spiritual means, you'll be better off. You can judge and demonize the world and decide it is a hell you want nothing to do with. But this isn't escape. It really is just making it real to yourself, which keeps you trapped.

The real solution is to develop true vision, which allows you to look upon whatever the world "is", without your projections of baggage. Without your distortions of meaning. Without your judgements. Without your sin and guilt seen in it.

But to do that, you have to in a way give "the world" the benefit of the doubt, or a kind of second chance. A possibility of redemption. Because somehow you have to be able to get to where you forgive the world, where you shine a light of love towards it, and where it no longer appears to threaten or upset you.

It may have taken a long time to build up resentment towards the world, which bound what the world is to a negative, false perception of the world. And in this confusion you thought the world was inherently a bad place. But now you have to be open to the idea that the world is not inherently bad. That there is another way to see it.

This entails the recognition that if you will change the component of your mind that gives meaning to the world, you actually can redefine what it means to you. Instead of meaning hell, or indicating sin, or proving guilt, or producing fear, the world can be seen in a much different light.

What the world IS, isn't what you see in false perception. That's the unforgiven world. That's Earth with your self hate and belief in sin projected onto it. It actually makes what the world IS appear to be a hellish place.

What the world IS, is nothing more than a simple thin veil of illusions injected in-between you and yourself, or you and Christ and God. Kind of like a wall, or as Jesus calls it "the granite block of sin." It takes on various forms of error, and depicts sin and attack and guilt. But without the meaning of "sinful", "attacking", "guilty" projected onto it, what's left?

The world is really just a thin illusory world, a whisp of smoke, a faint remnant of an idea of separation, and a strange area of nothingness pretending to be something. It does not have any meaning. This is why Jesus tells you that the world you see is a meaningless world which God did not create. It is devoid of meaning, in its false-viewed form, because love is the only real meaning.

As you forgive it, as you lift away guilt from yourself, as you have no sin to project onto it, as you recognize your own innocence, the dark heavy shadow of guilt which makes the world seem SOLID, is lifted away from it. Like a heavy curtain or a thick wall, it thins out and lightens. And eventually without any judgement upon it at all, it is recognized only as a light veil of illusions swirling around.

It is not positive, or negative. It is not alive, or dead. It is not really anything. The world, the veil, being illusions, is nothing at all. It is not loving, it is not holy. It is not even really there. And eventually when Christ Vision is fully accepted it vanishes completely.

Just prior to that, however, you reach "the forgiven world." A forgiven world is always an illusory world, because forgiveness overlooks illusions, not reality. It looks beyond bodies. It looks toward the light. So as you forgive the world you are learning to look past it to the light of the real world. And this causes the world to appear thinner and lighter and less burdened with guilt and the reality of sin.

It should over time look less and less sinful, less and less serious, less and less threatening, less and less solid even. Christ Vision is practically similar to having x-ray vision. It literally bypasses matter, as the spiritual eye can see anywhere and with no regard for distance or obstacles. It is not blinded by perception of form and its sight does not stop at physical surfaces. It is not deceived or blocked by what they appear to be. It sees through them.

As the world becomes forgiven, due to you forgiving yourself, what used to be "world + negativity", becomes "world + holiness". Your holiness or the meaning of love, is projected onto it. It is seen WITH love. This does not make it love, it is still nothing. And in fact this love causes it to disappear even more. But if you do see it still, just short of going home to God, it will appear beautiful and lovely in its sparkling forgiven state.

And so what once seemed like a world of inherent hell, reflecting hell and showing signs of attack and death everywhere, your view or perspective on it changes to one of spiritual love. And from that vantage point of true perception, there is no longer a belief in real sin projected onto it. And being made of sin, it is therefore recognized as fake sin, and not sin at all. The world is simply recognized as false, not sinful. And just as it is about to be seen as a perfect reflection of heaven, it disappears, revealing Christ.

And then you go home.

The course appears to say that christ vision (true perception) isn't simply a state in which you "do not see the world". It's a state in which you see the forgiven world - the physical world - the world of bodies still, but through christ's eyes. And at the same time, that this vision is so open and inclusive that it sees ALSO beyond the physical, it sees the real world.

I used to think the course was saying we had to simply "look past bodies" ie not see them at all in order to see christ in people. But here it is saying clearly that we are to use christ vision to still look upon the physical world, while also seeing past it.

Christ vision CAN still see bodies, events, happenings, and the whole world as the forgiven world. It is forgiven because it is overlooked or "looked past", to the light beyond, which christ vision does see, but it also still sees the world below. We see the world as a thin veil which we see mostly THROUGH to a light beyond, but still see the veil - until the final instant in which the veil lifts completely.

I think this tells us that essentially your goal isn't to try "not to see" bodies. As per the quote about how it's almost impossible to deny the body, and trying to do so is an unworthy form of denial. Instead, we are trying to find a way to see that is more inclusive and open that can see the light that is beyond the bodies while ALSO translating the bodies into the forgiven world.

I see this as a vision which goes out and acts sort of like an x-ray vision, which is causing the view of this world to become somewhat "transparent" like an x-ray of a body, where you can see through and beyond it to the light shining behind the x-ray, but this also allows you to see the x-ray image properly. Christ vision is fixated on the light beyond but INDIRECTLY still can see and INCLUDE the physical things in its sight, in a forgiven way.

Only at the very very end of the road might we perhaps completely overlook bodies and physicality to such an extent where the veil LIFTS entirely, we see the face of christ ONLY, and then return to heaven. At this final moment the world is forgotten entirely and not seen. We pierce the veil and go beyond. But this NOT going to happen until the very end of the road.

Before we get there, we definitely are meant to be using christ vision to see THIS world in a forgiven way. What this means is that christ vision INCLUDES EVERYTHING in sight, while strictly false-perception body-like perceptions see EXCLUSIVELY and ONLY see the physical, believing it to be real and all there is. Spiritual sight open up awareness to detect and see the subtler light "between the lines" and "beyond the forms", which physical-only sight cannot see.

"Christ's vision ...has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

For a long time I think I bought into the idea of an either/or exclusive approach to this, in which as some people say - if we see the body at all we're not being forgiving. But we're not supposed to not see the body at all until the very end. We are MEANT to see the body, and MEANT to see the forgiven world, THROUGH the eyes of Christ, BEFORE the world disappears from sight. Otherwise we're skipping ahead.

This means that seeing the christ in someone DOES NOT MEAN that we do not still see the body, only that the body is translated in its meaning as a part of the reflection of heaven WHILE also being past it to a light which is growing ever brighter. Seeing with Christ is an expanded more inclusive full-spectrum vision, while seeing through "eyes of fear" ie ego exclusive narrow vision shuts out some of the signal.

This alleviates the rather awkward and seemingly insurmountable "issue" of trying NOT to see bodies at all, or to see only beyond them while excluding them. I don't think Jesus is asking us to NOT see the physical world - until the final moment of ascension. he's asking us to see something ADDITIONAL permeating it and transcending it, in which the physical becomes like a thin veil - still seen but given much less emphasis and belief.

We don't need to be rushing to try to DENY the physical world from our sight. We need to be focusing on seeing it in a different way so that we can arrive at the FORGIVEN WORLD first, which is a more inclusive and whole way of perceiving, prior to the world disappearing from sight entirely.

Trying to "not see the body at all" is an unworthy and unnecessary form of denial, spiritually bypassing the required step of seeing the world forgiven "in another light" first. To just try to "not see bodies" isn't very effective. We need to learn that bodies aren't all there is to see, first, and the strengthen our seeing of the light beyond, AS bodies begin to fade out.

All the bodies ... that the body's eyes see .... are translated into a forgiven world ..... by christ vision ..... seeing the body in a different way.

"Christ's vision ... has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

And yet christ vision also overlooks and sees beyond the body, to a light beyond it, at the same time.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (yet it just got done saying christ's vision sees bodies differently). It beholds a light beyond the body (as well); an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation (does not dwell on making out that each separate object is truly separated). And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (all physical bodily things!), without the slightest fading of the light it sees (beyond those things)."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

"Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead."

"Christ's vision looks on everything with love (including this world). Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. The golden ASPECTS of reality, which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. (even in the physical)"

"Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never dies, but has been kept obscure. Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven (the physical world forgiven) that what God created perfect can be mirrored there."

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds (false and true perceptions), and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world (physical seen exclusively) into one made holy by forgiveness (forgiven world)."

"For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ's vision comes to me."

"Christ's vision looks through me today. His sight shows me all things forgiven and at peace, and offers this same vision to the world."

"Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees a world redeemed from every thought of sin (the forgiven world)."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place."

"Christ's vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it (still sees it) as nothing more than just a fragile veil (transparent), so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant (at the end). It is seen at last for only what it is (a veil of illusions). And now it cannot fail to disappear (AT the end when the physical is faded OUT and christ is faded IN), for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot (the veil lifts, you see ONLY christ, the physical world disappears), with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

False perception means you are looking at something in such a way that you do not recognize what it is.

If the thing you're looking at is false, your mind will think it's true.

If the thing you're looking at is true, your mind will think it's false.

Although it's called false perception, this can be misleading because it makes it sound like it only focuses on falseness. But being a "false" perception, it's really a state of mind that INVERTS EVERYTHING.

What is true is swapped with what is false. What is false is swapped with what is true. That's all part of "perceiving falsely." Perhaps it would be better to call it inaccurate perception or mistaken perception.

If the world itself were a reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem unreal. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

If the world itself were NOT reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem real. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

So being in false mistaken perception doesn't inherently tell you whether the world itself is real or not. It only tells you whether you are in a state of mis-perceiving or not. Whether your mind is distorting or not, inaccurate or not, or deceived or not.

However, Jesus does refer to false perception in contrast to true perception. Perception is "true", or correct and accurate, when it is lining up more closely with facts and isn't introducing mistakes. A truer perception becomes somewhat transparent and stops interfering with what's being perceived. It kind of gets out of the way and reveals something "as it is", rather than interpreted incorrectly.

Nevertheless, even a true perception does not tell you whether the thing you're looking at is true or false, real or unreal. In and of itself perception does not determine this. All a true perception does is it stops distorting vision and takes a direct undistorting look. Whatever is there, no matter whether it is real or unreal, will be seen more for "what it actually is."

But what something "actually is" does NOT inherently tells us whether the thing actually is true, or actually is false, in its own right. Seeing a world truly does not mean that you automatically are looking at a true world. You can see a false world truly as well. You can see a word of fiction truly, just as you can see a work of non-fiction truly. You can see a fake world just as accurately as you can see a real world.

So at no time does perception actually tell us in any way, WHETHER or not the world is INHERENTLY real. It does not tell us if the world is genuine. It doesn't tell us if it is God's creation. And it doesn't tell us whether the thing perceived is really there.

Part of this comes from the fact that "projection makes perception". This means that you in fact have to PROJECT something out first, in order to perceive it. And you can only perceive WHAT you project. And you perceive it because you believe in it, and WANT it to be there. You look within at what is inside of you, and you project it out, and perceive its projection, which REFLECTS back to you like a feedback loop and you perceive it. This is why Jesus says:

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Perception does not cause anything, it does not define whether what you perceive is real, it does not give us any facts, and it does not prove whether the world is real or unreal. All it shows us is WHAT WE ARE GIVING, and what we therefore are CHOOSING TO SEE. And we see whatever we WANT or wish to see, projected out, because WE PUT IT THERE to see.

The question then becomes, do you actually ever perceive "an objective world", in its own right, in its own nature, or do you ONLY perceive what you project ONTO it? And how is it that you can project something onto it in the first place?

If the world were, let's say, completely real and God created, it should not be possible to project ANYTHING onto it at all. It should not be possible to modify it, define it, shape it, interpret it, or in any way have anything to do with "what is there." God by his will has put a world there and it would then be our job to accept it as it is and know it and be one with it. It would not be possible to "project perception".

That it IS possible to project perception onto "this world", the world we recognize as Earth etc, tells you that this world cannot have any INHERENT MEANING of its own. It has to be able to reflect what you project, and it can only reflect it because it is neutral. It is neutral only because it is nothing, and being nothing it has no inherent truth of its own. How could you project false things onto it, OR true things onto it, if it had ITS OWN truth? Its own truth would fight with and block anything you tried to give it.

Perception therefore really hints at us to realize that "there is no world apart from what you wish." There is no world apart from what you give to the world. There is no objective world out there. What we're projecting onto is an emptiness and an illusion, not a reality. What we're perceiving things IN is a mirror. We only see what we put there, otherwise there would be nothing TO see.

Note that perception is feedback, and it is a feedback from what was projected out.. True perception is less distorting that false perception, and could potentially become more transparent, to where it could "see past" what is projected to the underlying inherent nature of the world. To see it for what is actually there. But if there isn't something real actually there, true perception should also reveal that the world is unreal.

We need to realize that true perception does not mean that you see "the truth" as if it is the objective truth. It means that you are seeing in a "true way", such that WHATEVER you see won't be distorted. You are projecting an idea of love which makes the least amount of distortion or misinterpretation.

Seeing truly is only accurate vision, which DOES NOT IN ANY WAY indicate whether WHAT you look upon with it is, in and of itself, actually true or false. True perception can just as easily look upon a FALSE WORLD, and recognize "the truth that" it is a false world. True perception is not "blindness" to what is false, and we must not confuse WHAT is seen with HOW it is seen. You can look truthfully upon and lie and recognize it is a lie, just as much as you can look truthfully upon something that is inherently true in and of itself. True perception DOES NOT tell us whether the world is really there or not!

You can see that perception really has absolutely nothing to do with establishing whether or not this world exists, whether God created it, whether what you see is true and real, or what the inherent nature of the world is. Even if you see love in it, even if you see reality in it, even if you see God reflected in it, it STILL does not prove that the world is objectively real. Beyond what you GIVE to the world, or what you MAKE OF it, you have literally NO IDEA whether the world is really there or not.

True perception can potentially show you "what is there", but it doesn't of itself tell you what "it is." True perception is just as capable of showing you that THE WORLD IS FALSE.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in."

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it."