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.

There really are only two states. Wholeness, which means sharing everything, and separateness, which means being excluded from the rest in selfishness.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

The whole practice of ACIM is simply the transition between the state of separation and the state of being joined together.

In the separated state, people believe the are only a small part of what exists, limited and cut off from the rest. Particularly the body seems to prove this, in that anything outside the body seems to be nothing to do with you. And by "being" a body you identify yourself as exclusively imprisoned inside of it, kept apart from everyone else.

In the shared state, you are the whole of everything, sharing everything with everyone fully. Everyone has everything simultaneously. We are all one. Like a collective consciousness or hive mind. A unified holographic experience where anything that applies to you applies to the whole. Everyone is included, nothing is left out, and anything you do or give you also receive.

So when Jesus is talking about forming a better relationship with your brothers, in which if you do something to them you are affected, he's simply reiterating that what you give you receive. It's simply the idea that you need to remember your true identity as the whole, and realize the implication of this.

If you are the whole, then anything you do to any part you also do it to yourself. Anything you give you receive it as well. Anything you cause, you experience the effects. Other people are a part of the whole with you, so any way that you relate to them you also relate to yourself.

It also extends to the transition between false and true perception. False perception is a focusing on separateness and exclusion, making things out to be not joined and not part of a whole. True perception is nothing more than a state of recognizing that the whole is in all the parts and every part contains the whole. That every mind contains every mind. That each brother is all brothers.

This leads to a sense of identity that transitions from being a separated-off self, which typically identifies with and as a body as a "separation device", different and unique, to sharing a singular nature with everyone in a single shared identification as christ. Christ is just another name for the shared aspect of the sonship, the sense that we are all one and are each other.

"Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair."

So all your practice really needs to be, to "do the course" and awaken, is to transition your sense of who and what you are from being exclusively "only you", to including everyone and everything in what you are. To think of yourself as the whole, and not just a part. That you are an individual soul, but your soul is shared with others. To reclaim the part of you that shares, so that you relinquish selfishness without a loss of self.

To exclaim, "I am the whole", and to remember you are the whole, puts your mind in a position where you properly acknowledge the golden rule. Anything you do, anything you say, anything you express, anything you think or feel, teaches all the universe. Anything at all that comes from you also comes toward you. Giving and receiving are one. You give to the whole, as the whole. You receive the whole as a result. You are included in everything.

This simple idea that you are included in everything, is the undoing of separation. Separation means exclusion. If you are included in everything, you will have shared interests. That means that anything you do to another you do to yourself, and therefore it's in your own interest to treat others with love so that you will treat yourself will love. If you don't treat others with love, you will treat yourself with a lack of love, and will make yourself suffer. You will have done it to yourself.

The simple "secret of salvation" then, and the whole key to being saved from all suffering, sickness and death, is in this simple recognition that you are the whole of the sonship. You are the whole Kingdom of God. It's not just some place you go to and hang out in as an individually created being, it's literally who and what you are. You are the entire environment. You are a part of and hosted within the being if God. He is your home, and you are one with the whole of him and with everything he created. The kingdom of heaven is you.

By being the whole, whatever you claim applies to another applies to you. Recognizing you are the whole, you will only want to give to another what you would want to receive for yourself. If you have given something sinful to another then you've made yourself sinful, because you are included in the recipients. Every psychological email you send out is carbon-copied to you. You must learn to share with everyone, love everyone, and know everyone as your self.

Your whole motivation shifts from selfish interests to the good of all. Your application of self becomes universal and unconditional instead of limited or conditional. Your loving becomes unconditional, your relationships become unlimited, your response becomes singular and consistent, your mind becomes unified, you no longer register orders of difficulty or hierarchies of illusion, and your whole approach to anyone and anything is to know and love it as yourself. Knowing your brother as yourself is the way to know God.

When Jesus tells you that if you do something to another to you will do it to yourself, or that you're doing it all to yourself, he isn't saying that you're doing it exclusively to yourself. He's saying that you, as the whole, are doing it to the whole, and you are included in the whole. The secret of salvation is that you are doing it to yourself - AS THE WHOLE, and because you are the whole.

Everything you do is done to everyone. Inclusion is the law of God. It also means that if you change, you are also changing other people, which is why you are able to affect the minds of your brothers towards sickness or health. Your miracles resurrect them and give them what they have denied themselves, simply because your mind IS their mind.

"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."

"Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother IS to know God."

"Giving and receiving are one."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone."

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven" "The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"All that I give is given to myself."

"As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God."

"It will be GIVEN you to see your brother's worth, when all you WANT for him is peace. And what you want for HIM, you will receive."

"Asking for EVERYTHING, you will RECEIVE it."

"You had everything when you were created just as everyone did."

"You WILL receive the message you give, because it is the message you WANT."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

All that I do I do unto myself.

If I attack, I suffer. But if I

forgive, salvation will be given me."

"The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"I (myself) will be healed as I let him teach me to heal (others)."

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

"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."

"Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers."

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

"So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him."

"And by his healing IS his brother healed. Let THIS be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and NOT apart."

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health."

"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."

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."

"The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark."

"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."

Jesus says: "I am the teacher of the ego."

He also says "The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Now, consider this. Your mind is either in a state of sanity or a state of mental illness. When mentally ill, YOUR MIND is "being selfish". It believes in specialness. But when that SAME mind chooses not to be selfish, that mind returns to sanity. The selfishness itself is gone, and the mind remains.

So if the ego is the idea of selfishness, the ego is also the idea of or a label for "the illness" that seems to be occurring when YOU are mentally ill. It is perhaps far more accurate, then, to consider "the ego" to be more of an ATTITUDE, than a THING.

We should not think of the ego even as "the ego", because there is great temptation to label it as a "something" that "is not me" and to then seek to identify with Spirit in an effort to "dis-identify" from "the ego". There is some positive benefit to that "positive separation", but this implies the ego is a distinct something that exists separately from you. This results from putting the ego in a box and not realizing it is coming FROM your mind, and part of your mind is being thrown out in that same box.

The ego is not "separate from you", it has to live within your mind because ideas leave not their source. "The ego" is your bad attitude. It is better to think of it as "your egotism" than "an ego". Or similarly as Jesus says, it is YOU BEING SELFISH. And being not-selfish does not erase your self, nor does it require you to "separate from" the mind that was being selfish. The mind itself is not the problem, its attitude is the problem, and there is temptation to throw out the mind right along with the egotism.

Someone or something needs to learn. Someone or something is taking the course, learning the lessons, pursuing a curriculum. Who or what is learning? In a sense, the self - you, your mind, is the one learning. And this mind is learning "not to be egotistical". So its egotism is coming under scrutiny and it's having to learn to adopt a more loving attitude.

When the mind is believing things which are false, it is believing "in the ego", but moreso, is "believing in something false". This doesn't mean there is now an entirely separate ego "entity" that has come into existence. Or even really what we can label as a "false self".

Your self never becomes false, it is permanently in the sight of God, holy forever. What becomes false is your relationship with reality through the mind and YOUR attempt to block it. And that's more a matter of YOUR attitude and YOUR attempt to change reality into something else. It's still entirely within the realm of your will and your power of decision, as to whether and when you take the curriculum and learn your lessons.

It is YOU that is being educated, and while you are mistaken, you are "being an ego". ie you are ATTEMPTING to be ego. In pure purest most logical condition, "the ego" is really another word for "non existence". It's the logical opposite of existence, reality, truth, life and God. But such an idea literally does no exist, it is nothingness. You cannot go there, you cannot be it. So even in our egotism we HAVE NOT become "a non-existent self", or purely real death. It's literally impossible.

Our egotism is merely the ATTEMPT to, and failure to be, separate. It's our desire and belief and wishful thinking to be something we are not, but in such a way that can never succeed. You can't destroy yourself, and the only way to be purely ego would be to not exist. We attempt to get as close to that as possible, in death, but even that doesn't do it. We can't get outside the bubble of God's all encompassing love.

So what is an ego? It's not really anything. There are just some people who are confused. There are just some people whose minds have taught themselves things which aren't true, and whose minds need correction. And so those minds, although being egotistical and selfish, and seeming to therefore exhibit signs of "the ego", are really just minds in a state of denial and being mistaken. And mistaken minds can be corrected and healed.

So that means our egotism can be healed. Our mistakenness can be forgiven. We can be taught. Our "egoic selves", really a mind having an egocentric attitude, can be adjusted so that the egocentricity is "undone", the distortions of the mind untangled, and the mind restored to a state of accord and wholeness. This essentially means in a way that "our egotism can be converted to holiness".

"Ego", more as a label for "being egotistical", can be undone. And "our ego" is kind of "transformed" along the way BACK to the state of a holy mind that it was in previously. It can become untwisted and untangled. Corrected and healed. Not because the illness is changed into reality, not because the egotism ITSELF is maintained and becomes holy, but because the egotism or illness is just a label for the temporary states we APPEAR to get into when we're mistaken.

If I have mental illness, the illness could be called "ego". But when my mind is healed of the illness, it's not that "the illness" is still an illness but in a healed configuration. The illness is gone, the illusion of egoic stuff is gone, and the mind that "had" the illness is restored to sanity. As "the ego evolves" out of sin into innocence, the ego is simultaneously undone and transcended. IT doesn't become holy as such, we let it go. But "the ego" was always OUR mind's attitude, and our mind is what becomes transformed.

We could try to put all of the ego stuff into a box and label it "the ego" and then try to recognize that our self is really our soul and not the ego. This is sort of true. But this can be a form of bypass because the only thing maintaining the ego is the mind. There is some mind MIXED IN with the egotism.

The mind is "having" an ego, just as it has mental illness but is NOT the mental illness. Mind is not the ego but HAS egotism. When "separating" ourselves off from "the ego", we could risk trying to separate ourselves off from the mind that HAS the ego, causing a further split in the mind. And so this can be another form of disassociation, and another way that "the ego" tries to remove the ego.

This is also why we are responsible for all our choices, all our suffering, and all our mistakes. They are not real sins, but it IS us that is mistaken, not "the ego". Our mistakenness IS just another word for "the ego". Our false beliefs may seem to gather together to form "a sense of separate self" but this is of course an illusion. It can seem like you are letting go of "that self", but the mind that was producing "that self" is not let go. It is healed.

The world plays into this in the same way. The world is a symptom of the presence of mental illness in the mind. "The world is false perception". When the mind is healed, it no longer produces the world of separation. While producing the world, the mind thinks the world exists and it seems to be "a thing", with a label.

But the "healing of the world" or "saving the world" really means saving the mind that was producing the world, from its own selfish egocentricity, so that its dream is a happier dream. The world then appears to transform from hell to a reflection of heaven. Or as Jesus says, it is "translated". And the holy spirit is the "great reinterpreter" of it. A mind that is corrected and healed does not make hell and does not make ego errors, and in this view there "is no ego" because the egotism is gone.

So is Jesus teaching the ego? In a sense yes. He is teaching the mind that is trying to be an ego, that it is not really an ego but a holy mind. The ego, the mistakes, are not taught. They are corrected. Because true learning is correction and undoing, just as to atone is to undo. To truly atone or fix the ego problem, the ego must be undone, meaning the egotism must end, meaning the mind is freed from believing it is "an ego." Thus is "the ego" undone and the condition of the mind changed back to ego-free holiness.

Can the ego wake up? No, because it can't maintain what makes it ego at the same time as experiencing awakening. But the mind can wake up FROM the ego, or rather, FROM attempting to be egocentric. As "your egotism" or "the part of mind trying to be separate" learns not to be separate, the mind that was being ego DOES wake up, but it does not take the egotism with it. It wakes up BECAUSE "the ego" is left behind, ie by recognizing there is no ego within it. We do not "separate from" the ego. We erase it from ourselves so that there is nothing to separate from.

Ultimately there is no ego, and the Holy Spirit knows this. His is the mind that reminds us of our true condition of holiness. The recognition that we are sane and whole and true. And in that holiness there is no selfishness, specialness, or egoic attitude. Only an attitude of love and forgiveness. And a loving forgiving mind is ego-free.

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

What you believe is true, you will believe is true of you, and therefore defines what you are. You become one with whatever you believe is true. If you believe and trust God's truth, you will identify with your soul/spirit. If you believe and trust the ego, the body and the world, you will believe you are these things.

In order to identify with spirit, you have to believe that spirit's qualities are true of you. And you also have to believe that the ego/body/world's properties are NOT a part of what you are. Therefore, all of the ego reactions, upset emotions, hurts, angers, fears, guilts, shames, losses, loneliness, desperation, angst etc must all be a part of something which you are NOT.

Your sense of what I am and what is my self, my identity, has to be separated out from all the things that are not of God. You have to tell yourself that you're not the body, nor are you the ego reactions or emotions or thoughts. Whatever the ego is, as nebulous and hidden as it seems to be, only the ego can actually suffer, only the ego can be guilty, and only the ego can seem to die.

You have to tell yourself that these things are not a part of yourself. You as immortal spirit cannot suffer, cannot be upset, cannot be unhappy, cannot be sick or dead, cannot be afraid or guilty, cannot have loss or grief, cannot be threatened or damaged, cannot sin or be evil, and can have no part of the body or the world.

Jesus tells us that he has nothing that does not come from God, and that this is the only difference between us. Because we believe we have and are something that does not come from God. We think we are bodies and egos and the world. We think we are upsets and stress and turmoil. We think it is us that is having and experiencing and being these things. But it isn't a part of who we really are, all of these upsets are an illusion.

How can you be upset when you are immortal and perfect? How can you have loss and grief when you have everything? How can you have suffering of any kind when you are invulnerable and eternal? You have to identify with being that which is perfect forever, flawless and immortal and unassailable, strong and innocent and powerful.

Your whole sense of self - of what am I, what is true of me, has to filter out and reject any experience or thought or feeling that is not in line with God's creation.

You remain as God created you. You are perfect spirit. You are holy and pure. There is no ego in you, no body in you, no earth in you. You are not of this world. You are of God, and anything not of God is not you.

"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."

"Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"Identity in Christ is fully recognized as set forever, beyond all change and incorruptible."

"There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly."

"You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you."

"Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"I will identify with what I think is refuge and security."

"Try to identify with the part of your mind where stillness and peace reign forever."

"Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself."

"To identify with the ego is to attack yourself, and MAKE YOURSELF POOR."

"It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

"The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego."

"Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."

"My true Identity abides in You."

"Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us."

"The Son of God is my Identity."

"Father, my thanks to You for what I am; for keeping my identity untouched and sinless in the midst of all the thoughts of sin my foolish mind made up."

"Let me remember You created me. Let me remember my Identity."

"Deny your own identity and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought which mocks creation and which laughs at God. Deny your own identity and you assail the universe alone, without a friend, a tiny particle of dust against the legions of your enemies. Deny your own identity and look on evil, sin and death, and watch despair snatch from your fingers every scrap of hope, leaving you nothing but the wish to die."

"Identity in Christ is fully recognized as set forever, beyond all change and incorruptible."

"Identity in dreams is meaningless BECAUSE the dreamer and the dream are one."

"Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Christ is but my Self."

"Thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for my Identity."

"What could we seek but our Identity?"

"Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity."

"But we have listened to Your Voice, and learned exactly what to do to be restored to Heaven and our true Identity."

"My true identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious and great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It to give it light."

"In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in Which all Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one."

"Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself."

"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided."

"And we have already learned that this identity is shared."

"Your goal is to find out who you are, having denied your identity by attacking creation and its Creator."

"By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is."

"For self-condemnation is a decision about identity, and no-one doubts what he believes he is."

"Here you understand the Word, the Name Which God has given you; the One Identity Which all things share; the one acknowledgment of what is true."

"There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly." "Again, how simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true identity."

"But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs about your Identity, Which God alone established in reality."

"Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing."

"Remember if you SHARE an evil dream, you will believe you ARE the dream you share. And, fearing it, you will not WANT to know your own identity, because you think that IT is fearful."

"Those who have joined their brothers HAVE detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. "

"Do you not WANT to know your own identity?"

"Remember always that your identity is shared, and that its sharing IS its reality."

"Be confident that you have never lost your identity and the extension which maintains it in wholeness and peace."

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity"

You could sum everything up as simply .... stop being a victim.

The question is, how far do you have to take this? The answer is, ALL THE WAY. The question then is, is it possible to not be a victim AT ALL? And the answer, is YES!

That means taking it EXTREMELY all the way. No exceptions.

In NO WAY can you be attacked, affected, influenced, coerced, hurt, damaged, made to feel something, caused - by anything in this entire world.

You must become literally IMMORTAL. Otherwise you can be affected, attacked, destroyed, which WOULD make you a victim.

Either you can be immortal, or you HAVE TO be a victim. Either one or the other has to be true, they can't both be true. Which will you accept? Eternal victimhood or eternal life?

But ACIM is calling for the END OF ALL SUFFERING FOREVER. And this requires you to completely give up EVERY illusion of victimization, EVERY belief in external causes, and even the belief that you can be changed at all.

You CANNOT change. You are permanent. You CANNOT be a victim. You are all powerful. That is the message. Identify with that which is immortal and unchangeable and you are safe and at home in God, forever out of reach of suffering and death.

"You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"I am not the victim of the world I see."

"Today we are continuing to develop the theme of cause and effect. You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see."

"How can I be the victim of a world which can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up insane wishes, and walk into the sunlight at last."

Everyone identifies with a thought system.

Every thought system centers around, defines, reflects, what you are.

If it is the thought system of God, God's truth becomes the definition of what you are.

If it is the thought system of ego, the ego's truth becomes the definition of what you are.

As such your sense of self changes from being a son of God, to being a son of ego. Or rather, from being your real self, to being the ego itself.

To change your mind about yourself requires re-identifying with your true self, and the way to do that requires you to re-identify with God's thought system.

In this way God's truth about you becomes the definition of what you are within that thought system.

You are either anchored in heaven or hell. When anchored in heaven you see yourself as divine. When anchored in hell you see yourself as the devil.

But you cannot ever really be the devil or the ego or the thought system of death because only God's system is actually true, and the ego's is false.

To transition away from the ego's system you have to recognize it as false and accept that God's system holds the only truth. As such the ego's truth about you is false and is recognised as not applying to you, because God's truth is the truth of you.

Whatever truth you align with is whatever thought system you align with, and thus produces whatever sense of yourself you have.

Identify with your divinity as Christ, the son of God, an immortal soul, the entire kingdom of heaven, and you are home and one with yourself and in your true environment and nature.

Identify with separation and death and impossibilities and you are alien to yourself and exiled in hell and at war with yourself.

Ultimately none of this has any affect on who you really are, only on your willingness to accept what you really are. Because accepting God's truth is accepting the only truth there is. And everything else is denial.

Therefore you can either accept that you are Christ or you can try to live in denial, but denial will take on the form of death and not life. So if you want to live, you must accept yourself as Christ.

"This is because everyone identifies himself WITH his thought system, and EVERY thought system centers on WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE." UrT6G2

If I find anyone to be "wrong" in ANY WAY, for ANY reason, I am scapegoating.

It doesn't even matter what the reasons are. Even if the reasons are valid.

If someone is making a wrong decision... if I identify they are wrong to make that decision, I am scapegoating.

If someone is behaving a certain way, and I identify it as a wrong behavior in any way, I am scapegoating.

If someone is being egotistical or selfish or arrogant or whatever, and if I identify that they are wrong to be this way, that THEY are clearly "the one who is wrong", I am scapegoating.

It's a very subtle trap to fall into. ACIM refers to it as the "obstacles to peace" which your BROTHER puts in front of you. ie, HIS assertions of error, HIS mistakes, HIS sins, HIS lacks, HIS false beliefs acting out. .... presented to you, as temptations.

If you agree with this wrongfulness, if you identify it as wrong, or they are guilty of anything, YOU must be getting a benefit from it.This is tough to admit to because it pretty much encompasses EVERYTHING PEOPLE DO without exception.

If they are wrong for ANY of it.... you are scapegoating.It doesn't matter what it is. There are no exceptions or special categories. If you are finding them to be wrong, mistaken, guilty, sinful, incorrect, you ARE in a scapegoating mode. You ARE projecting your own sin and guilt.

Which means that, every single time you think someone is doing something wrong, even "if they are" ... even if "its obvious" that it's ENTIRELY their fault, and ESPECIALLY then, you MUST be involved in a scapegoating mechanism.

Since "you but accuse your brother of your own sins", what that means is that WHATEVER you accuse your brother of, and EVERY TIME that you accuse him, YOU ARE scapegoating. Without exception.

It doesn't matter the severity of their acts, it doesn't matter how mistaken they are, how many times they do it, whether it's important or not. If you find it to be wrong, you are scapegoating and are trying to get rid of some of your own guilt.

And every single time that you scapegoat, you are attempting to get rid of guilt that is in YOUR mind that YOU put there. You are USING the person's "temptation" of "doing something wrong" as an OPPORTUNITY, to compound THEIR mistake, by adding yours TO it, to DISGUISE your mistake and mix it in with theirs, so that it is lost in their mistake and associated with them.

It's like saying, well, this person was already sinning, so I thought I'd just throw some of my sin onto the pile with them so that no-one would notice there was some of my sin mixed in there. Then I can get away with it and be the innocent one. Then they get to be the fall guy.

Every .... single.... time..... Every.... single.... person..... Every..... single.... judgement....... is scapegoating.

Finding ANYONE to be wrong, guilty, sinful, or even in error, means you are trying to project your own guilt and sin. Even if the other person seems to be VERY sinful. Even if they are evil. You still are using them.

Because the only truth is that you and your brother are totally innocent at all times. So anything else is a mistake.

We can think of the body as a prison cell, and the ego as a prison guard and prisoner.

"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."

This wall of flesh, is what we call the body, but it is really the idea of SEPARATION, as a "separation device", just like a prison cell, designed to keep you isolated and cut off from others. The body keeps you IN, and keeps them OUT. It fences in actually a PART of your mind, and fences OUT the rest of your mind.

Now the thing is, what is your RELATIONSHIP to the prison body? If you identify with being separate, special, selfish, alone, cut off, abandoned, lost, lonely, in darkness, hiding from God, small/little, weak/frail, having no relationship, sharing nothing, etc... then you IDENTIFY WITH the prison cell.

When you identify WITH the separation device, you believe you ARE DEFINED BY the separation device. That its truth becomes your truth. And now that means you BELIEVE IN what the prison cell implies about you. And this forms "the ego", or the sense of "who and what I am", as defined BY the separation device.

If you see the body as hemming you in, keeping you separate from others, separating you off, causing you etc, then this imprisoned part of mind sees itself as IN the prison, and this produces a sense of identification WITH the prison (a bodily identity), which is what we generally call THE EGO. A sense of... who and what am I, if it's true that I am defined by this separation device.

This buying-into the body identity PRODUCES the sense of ego self. If it is true that you are a separate body, then it's true that you are unwhole and unholy. If it's true that you are disconnected from the whole by the body, then you are alone. All of this "I am separate" identification produces a sense of a "separated self." A self that WAS whole, which has BECOME separated, only because it sees itself as IN a body.

"This thing you made (the body) to serve your guilt, stands between you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but you do not IDENTIFY with them. You SEE yourself as locked in a separate prison, remote and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You HATE the prison (body) that you made, and would destroy it. Yet you would NOT escape from it, leaving it unharmed, WITHOUT your guilt upon it. But only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; The place you set aside to house your hatred is NOT a prison, but an ILLUSION OF YOURSELF."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."

"Listen to what the ego says, and see what it DIRECTS you see, and it is sure that you will see YOURSELF as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You WILL experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body. "

"The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death."

"Our upside-down perception has been ruinous to our peace of mind. We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from our awareness by the body's limitations."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."

Each of us has an identity. God gave us an identity in and as part of Christ or the Sonship, which we share. But in the separation from God, we denied who we were and sought an identity that wasn't shared. That meant denying our mutual identity, placing us in a state of not being certain of who we are. Another way of saying that is that we became afraid of who we are.

Then we started trying to make an identity that would replace the identity we lost. We were out of touch with reality. So we started trying to assemble an identity from various illusions, and from things which are not really who or what we are. In particular we tried to identify with something isolated and alone, that you could call "only yours", rather than sharing an identity with others.

This included identifying with our bodies, believing that our body is our self. To do this our mind has to literally "attach" itself to "mix itself with" the body, trying to become "one" with it. As if to blur the lines between what is the body and what is our self. So that there is only one seeming self, not two. By trying to identify with a body, we're trying to hide our real identity and forget it, so that all that remains is the body self.

If I bind my definition of who and what I am, or what is true of me, to the body, then I am saying I AM a body. And then everything about the body I take personally as if it speaks of and defines me. Maybe I'll feel positive about my body for various reasons, due to how it looks or what it is capable of. Or maybe I'll feel negative about it based on it being ugly or defective. But both are still identifications with the body.

We can also shift to identifying with the mind, or with thoughts. When we have thoughts we can get a sense of an artificial sense of self, mixed in with the thinking. The mind can chatter away with its noise and the more it talks the more you mistake the talking for the person doing the talking. As if the sound of thought is the presence of someone. As if the thoughts are a self. And now you've identified with thinking, perhaps with intelligence or intellect, with memory or accumulation of knowledge.

You can also identify with social standing, your social background, class, race, gender, how much money you have, where your family seems to rank in terms of some social hierarchy, whether you are upper-class or lower, living in wealth or in poverty etc. You can also identify with failing to have much of a worthwhile identity in any of these areas, perhaps with a poor body and poor finances and poor living conditions, seeing yourself as identified as a helpless victim.

I think we can also identify with objects, with animals and pets, with places, with homes and cars etc. We can identify with our children, and literally feel as though what happens to them happens to us. As though they are a part of us, to such an extent that when they suffer we suffer, or we take everything that happens to them as a personal attack. This can lead to the identity of being a father or mother, someone who wants to keep that identity and not let it go, and who cannot deal with the empty nest.

These are all confused senses of who and what you are. And we're all looking for ourselves because think we lost ourselves. We sense that we are uncertain, thus afraid, of who and what we really are - or don't want to know. We don't remember our identity. It's like we have an amnesia. Whether it be an amnesia imposed by birth through crossing the barrier of dimensions and entering a body prison, or the illusion that every time you're born you start from scratch to build an identity.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable." "The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So the big question really is, who are you? What are you? Are you the son of God as He created you? Or have you become something else? Do you want to be something else? Are you a body? Are you a relationship, or a child that you possess, or an object you own? Are you a social status or a financial position? Are you your job, or your role as a parent? Are you made of the guilt and fear and sin that you feel? Are you your thoughts and your thinking? Are you the intellect? Are you awareness? Do you have a soul?

Finding out who you really are, knowing yourself, is what Jesus says is the entire point of this course. It's about remembering and waking up to the recognition that you are still exactly the same identity that God created you to be forever. You are still Christ, you are still a soul, still part of the sonship, still perfect. Still a spiritual being. And your real identity is shared with all the other Sons of God.

So our whole process here is just sorting out, what are we experiencing as being our identity, who or what have we identified with or latched onto, what is it that we think is our self, and where have we put that? What have we tried to become "one with", other than God? What have we wrapped ourselves around in trying to portray ourselves as something God did not create?

If I think I am my body or my thoughts and have actually bound myself to them such that I seem to experience them "as me", then I am in need of correction. I am out of touch with who I really am and am believing I am something I am not. This means I lack awareness or awakening, or am unconscious. These mis-identifiations with things we are not, are blocks to awareness.

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. 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. "

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness HAS no limits, because its being is in Infinity."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"They are reflections both of your own proper identification WITH your brothers, and of your own awareness that YOUR identification IS maintained by extension."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One."

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be."

"As long as your identification vacillates, (and B's is weak) you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you."

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. "

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. "

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm."

The body was made to separate you out from the whole and make you seem like you are DIFFERENT to "others".

If you believe that this "difference" represents your IDENTITY, you are confining yourself to a physical object.

If you also believe that the different appearances of others is "their identity", that it is true of them, and who they are, you are NOT seeing the whole of them. Especially if, having made their APPEARANCE OF DIFFERENCES real, you HAVE attacked them, and yourself.

This does not mean, that you look at a person's body and try to overlook it to some kind of small little self that's hiding inside of it. You are too accustomed to seeing littleness.

You have to realize that you are THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE, and so is your brother.

This also means then that if you're not identifying with YOUR body, it's because you recognize that any of the "differences" or "forms" of the body, how it's showing up, MUST be illusions.

Forgiveness, literally does entail, the OVERLOOKING of differences. Overlooking ALL FORMS and bodies and believing that God's Children ARE bodies.

So that means, while you are doing your "forgiveness processes", you need to ultimately get to a mindset that literally is able to in a sense, "ignore" the body or at least not FIXATE on it, but rather look PAST it and not be BLOCKED by it. And the same is true for how you view your brothers.

That means, literally, that since you are an expansive being of light who is larger than this entire universe, which cannot POSSIBLY be housed by a finite form, in order to RECOGNIZE YOURSELF you have to STOP seeing yourself AS being this physical object you call a body.

Seeing your BODY and thinking it is YOUR SELF and that you *recognize yourself* when you see it, or that you shape in and change it and dress it up in order to change YOURSELF or your self image, you are FAILING to recognize yourself and are actually replacing yourself with an illusion.

"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED. It does not limit you, merely because YOU would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot CONTAIN you. You go where you would be; GAINING, NOT losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the LACK of awareness of the body, and of the questioning WHETHER OR NOT ALL THIS IS POSSIBLE. It IS possible, BECAUSE YOU WANT IT."

The picture I get coming to me is of Jesus who completely, totally, did not believe He was his body. He knew he was PROJECTING IT, but he did not regard it as HIMSELF, nor did He see it as limiting who He is, or SEPARATING HIM OFF from others. This really means that in order not to identify with YOUR body, you have to also not identify OTHER bodies as capable of "confining identity" either. That means not believing in ANY bodies, and therefore reclaiming a sense of the expansiveness of what you really are.

The more that you identify AS or with the body, you are confining yourself to it. When you create sickness, you do so in order TO BIND yourself to the body even more, to make you dwell on it, focus on it, pay attention to it, and escape from THE MIND, so that you can think of yourself as intensely experiencing or being SUBJECT TO *this* form. Doing this is nothing short of attempting to kill the Son of God, by associating his SELF with a physical object, and thus BINDING him to it, and therefore making it possible that through attacking IT, HE is attacked and killed. EVERY DEATH DEMONSTRATES THIS BELIEF.

You are WHOLE, not some little form of a human. You are not little, you are magnificent. When you RESTRICT yourself to "one body", you are trying to kill yourself AND you are trying to separate yourself off from being joined to OTHER MINDS. This act INDUCES sickness and is the sole cause of all sickness, suffering and death. Death doesn't happen "because you are a body". Death happens because you BELIEVE you are a body.

The separation from God is otherwise described as dissociation, or as I like to spell it - dis-association.

We were associated with our soul, as God created it, in heaven's reality. We believed it was our self, our identity.

The separation from God was an act of trying to dis-identify from the soul, or to deny reality, ie no longer "associate with" spirit.

This dis-association, trying not to be what we are, produced a counter-attempt to associate WITH ... something that we are not.

As such, when all forms arose from projection, our minds attempted to associate WITH forms, of any kind. To associate with anything not of God, anything outside of heaven, anything which would keep you away from associating with your real self.

So then you attempt to associate with, bind with, identify with, be as, or become one with, anything other than what you really are.

This sort of ... holding on process, of associating with false things - the holding on itself, the identifying, the sense or belief that the thing is your self ... is what we call THE EGO.

It's a mind which had previously identified and associated with spirit, which is temporarily stretching itself to try to reject spirit and bind to something not of God, something other than what is true.

So as mind tries to believe you are something you're not, it forms a "sense of self" as though "you are" things opposite to God. And that sense of self we might call ego.

It's a misplaced artificial false sense of self, a collection of parts and pieces, a disjointed incomplete and unstable attempt to be one with a wide range of unreal stuff.

You can identify with thoughts, emotion, mind, body, the world, objects, relationships, other people, events, roles you play, victimhood, war, etc. Anything at all so long as it's not what you really are.

"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 ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son."

"Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. "

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be. "

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because, when you attack, you MUST have forgotten what you are."

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."

Basically, you simply just need to remember who you are, as God created you. To "know" your SELF again.

Jesus: "I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

"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"

Not knowing your self, or who and what you are, you believe you are something else. And this belief that something is true of you which isn't, is the ego. It's a false self that you invented to disguise your real self. And so the ONLY problem really is one of. .. what is your identity? Or rather, what do you identify with or as.

Are you spirit, or are you an ego/body? Becoming identified with your spirit is the goal. And this requires recognizing that you are not the "sense of self" that identifying with the ego brings, which is really based on belief and denial of knowledge, not knowledge. Just as "to sense is not to know."

The question is simply, who or what are you? What is true of you? Or more to the point, will you identify WITH and AS a fiction of specialness and exclusion, or will you identify WITH and AS the Christ-soul that God created you as... .which is an identity shared with all the other Christ-souls that are God's equal children.

Ego is merely a belief in being an isolated separated self which does not share with and is different to other selves. While the soul is the knowledge that you were created equal to all beings and that you share everything with them.

The way Jesus describes your self, in fact, is that you cannot know your self alone, or in isolation, because your self's "nature" is that it is SHARED WITH OTHER SELVES who exist as individuals simultaneously. And only by accepting your oneness with them as brothers can you fully embrace "your self".

Ego is the idea of rejecting oneness with your brothers. "Miracles unite you with your brother." So your self, as A son of God, cannot be a SINGLE son of God, it has to be an EQUAL son of God with other sons of God. And KNOWING that is knowing the fullness of your real identity.

"Ego is the idea of selfishness. Soul is the idea of self-fullness."

Jesus clarifies:

"***The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is Know thyself.*** There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. **The ego tries to find them in yourself**, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that ***if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself*** because that is NOT what you are.

Whenever you are ***with a brother you are learning what you are***, because you are teaching what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher you are following. He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him, because it is your responsibility to yourself. ***Give him his place in the Kingdom, and you will have yours.*** ***The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourselves alone.***

We have first clung to the body in an attempt to create a division between inner and outer.

The purpose of the body wasn't so much to identify yourself with the body, but to hide behind and inside of it.

Yet the body is seen as the mode of escape from that which you believe you are not.

Everything outside the body seems to represent what is no longer inside of you, which is the whole of God.

Our belief in being threatened by what is outside causes us to cling ever tighter to the body, making it sicker and in more pain in an effort to focus on it more intensely than ever.

Death of the body is a protest to be left alone to die, so that attackers will no longer bother you.

We reason the more real we can make the body seem to us the more we can identify it as ourself, keeping what is outside of it at bay. If we are the body, then the Son of God goes down when the body goes down.

The body is a withdrawal from wholeness. It is an intentional limitation and a separation between inner and outer self. It is a movement away from life and an attempt to stop living.

To be a body is to be a tiny interval of space, rather than the whole of space. And to be in the now, is to be in a tiny interval of time rather than eternity.

You are hiding in your body. But you are not a body, you are free.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. ***There is nothing else to learn.*** Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself."

Jesus defines the course's ultimate goals in different ways, but a very significant angle is that we're trying to remember who we really are. We're trying to tune back into our real identity, to stop believing things are true of us which aren't, and wake up to our real self - a shared identity in Christ.

In the separation we denied who we really are, and pretended to be something we're not. This confused us greatly. Whatever you believe is true, you will believe must be true of you. As your sense of truth and reality shifted from heaven to hell, your whole sense of who and what you are went with it. Including a sense of "where" you are.

As your idea of truth shifted towards spacetime, toward bodies and the ego, it seemed as if your whole sense of self was flung out of heaven and transported into bodies. Having asserted "bodies are true", you believed they were true of you, which placed you in them.

All the things of spacetime, including the world and all bodies and the ego, are not of God. They are not created, or real. Since they are governed by time, they always change and are fickle, so they never have any sense of permanent identity. Even the notion that you are one of the things suggests you will die because your self is irrevocably changed against your will.

We have come to identify with the ego and the body because we think they are the truth. We've confused the truth with false things. Part of sorting out what is true and false is figuring out what category these things belong to. But at the same time, it's going to mean sorting out what category your identity belongs to. As your sense of truth changes, so must your identification with what's true.

The question then is, are you an aspect of a dream? Are you an artificial fake image of a body? Are you a fictional evil selfish ego? And by extension, anything that these things seem to do or experience or feel or think, must surely be NOT a part of your real self, if these things are not part of reality.

By saying you are not a body you're saying you are spirit. Your whole sense of "who and what I am" shifts away from the physical towards something spiritual. This HAS to entail an actual experiential sense of being something of spirit. The feeling of "this is my self" or "this is what I am". This locking-in of identity and self and home and a sense of where you belong, has to become anchored to your soul. So that you actually believe and recognize that you ARE a spirit being. So that you can SEE yourself.

To gain an understanding of what your real self's true nature is, and therefore what you should be trying to tune INTO, and to grasp what things are illusions which you should be tuning OUT of, you need a good sense of the nature of reality. God created you as a permanent, unchangeable, immortal, invulnerable, perfect, loving, powerful, happy being of light. That is what you must come to believe is your actual nature.

God did not create the world or the body, or the ego. He did not create suffering or sickness or death. He did not create unhappy feelings, sad emotions, grief or loss. He did not create sin or guilt or fear. He did not create any kind of suffering, any kind of selfishness, or any kind of specialness. So all of these things cannot be a part of the spirit-being that you are. They cannot truly be a part of your identity.

When you are believing that these false things are TRUE or real, you will identify with them. Anything you GIVE truth to you are trying to be ONE with. You embrace it and accept it and identify WITH it. You resonate with it and agree with it and want it for your own. You see your own reflection in it, and you merge with it. Therefore if you merge with illusory evil ego things, you start to become them.

This leads to experiences such as "I am suffering" "I am feeling unhappy" "I am sick" "I am having a broken body" "I am angry" "I am grieving" etc. And in this experience you will have become ONE with the ego so much that you will believe all of these experiences are literally YOU. That you are having them, you are the one feeling them, you are the one being victimized, and you are the one suffering. But this is because you've merged yourself WITH the ego and the body and have identified them AS you.

"if you are to RETAIN guilt, as the ego insists, YOU CANNOT BE YOU. Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind."

"The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

What we have to realize then is that when we're in an "I am suffering" perspective, it is the EGO that is suffering. Because "only the ego can experience guilt." Only a weak frail unwanted miserable false self can possibly experience hell. Only the ego vantage point can make everything into hell. If you are therefore feeling like "I AM [fill in the ego attribute]", you have made yourself one with the ego and have taken it as your own identity. You are clinging to it to save you.

So then we have to realize that we are NOT this. We are not the sufferer. We are not the dream content. We are not the body. We are not the world. We are not that which feels guilt. We are not capable of grief and loss. We have to remember all of the true attributes of Christ and recognize that we ARE those things. We have to become ONE with Christ again, to merge with Christ and claim ownership of being Christ, unite with Christ, accept that everything true of Christ is purely true, and that it is true of us.

If God's truth is the only truth, then our immortal invulnerable self cannot POSSIBLY ever suffer in any way. Any sense of unhappiness, unworthiness, pain, despair, loss, fear, guilt, shame etc must NOT be a part of us. We cannot experience it from a vantage point of being perfect. It must be part of a dream, part of a fiction, part of the ego thought system. You cannot FEEL it if you are NOT that. It cannot BE there if it is unreal.

So now we have to sort out, who am I? What am I? What is true? What is true of ME? What is my real self? What is the nature of the soul that God created me to be as a son of God, as a part of Christ and as heaven? What is the only truth about me that I will accept as the definition of myself? What will I identify WITH which is real and true and permanent? And am I willing to let go of the ego, disconnect FROM it, separate it out from what I believe is part of myself, stop trusting it, stop using it, and stop being it?

Who are you really? You are the perfect child of God which God created to live forever. There is no darkness in you. There is no evil in you. There is no sin or guilt in you. There is no basis for you to fear or suffer. There is no possibility you can ever be sick or die. And nothing can ever attack or hurt you. You cannot BE hurt and you cannot FEEL unhappy. Only a false artificial self could be such things. Only a fictional self could suffer. Only a fake self could have attributes which are not of God.

You tried to reinvent yourself in the separation. You tried to be your own creator. You wanted to be different to how you were created. You wanted to redefine what is true and decide what you are, to make of yourself whatever you wanted to be. Anything except God-like. And so you have spent all this time making yourself into a body, turning yourself into the anti-christ, and trying to be dead. That is not who or what you are. It is not POSSIBLE.

"Now is our Source remembered, and Therein we find our true Identity at last. Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin." "Father, You know my true Identity. Reveal It now to me who am Your Son, that I may waken to the truth in You, and know that Heaven is restored to me."

"Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity."

"But we have listened to Your Voice, and learned exactly what to do to be restored to Heaven and our true Identity."

"My true identity is so secure, so lofty, sinless, glorious and great, wholly beneficent and free from guilt, that Heaven looks to It to give it light. It lights the world as well. It is the gift my Father gave me, and the one as well I give the world. There is no gift but This that can be either given or received. This is reality, and only This. This is illusion's end. It is the Truth."

"Again, how simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true identity. It is this that we will celebrate today."

"We sing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do."

"For he who can accept his true identity is truly saved."

Ego is identification with form. That means, first believing in separation, so that there can be different things, and thus forms. And then attempting to be ONE WITH those things, so that they become associated with what you ARE, as part of you.

This begins with the denial of self, which is also the denial of God. We place within ourselves a belief that we are LACKING self in some way. That we are not enough, that we have been diminished, that we have experienced a loss of self.

We attack and hide from and distort our view of ourselves and thus believe we are a wretched wicked evil monster, sorely lacking and impoverished and powerless and lost.

“Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost.”

The belief that you lack in some way, produces a sense of being “not enough”, and that something is missing. Therefore you Are lacking and “in need.” This in turn produces a compulsion driven by a NEED to get what you are missing. What you are missing is ENOUGH SELF, or wholeness.

But with the belief that you are not enough of a self - or unwholesome/unholy, at the root, this belief is not questioning. Instead we accept it as true, see ourselves as lacking love and identity, become very much “in need”, and then feel compelled to fill those needs. By not knowing who we really are, and seeing ourselves as empty of self - as if nothing at all - we then start to try to DEVELOP a self - to get a self.

This produces DESIRE, which is “wanting to get” what you do not have. The more the ego sees itself as lacking, the more it wants to get, and thus the greater its desire. It’s a kind of psychological mechanism where we’re trying to rectify a problem - a lack of self - by trying to get it from somewhere, to alleviate the feeling of dis-satisfaction, not being enough, not having enough etc. This can become desperation.

This intense wanting turns into seeking. We will seek to find self or identity or value anywhere other than where it really is. It really is buried underneath the belief that we are LACKING in some way - sinful, guilty, diminished. But the ego mindset doesn’t want to question the denial of self, it wants to keep that in place. Effectively, the ego mindset then WANTS to LACK self, AND wants to gain self, at the same time. And thus it can never reach a point of satisfaction.

From the strong drive to “find yourself”, and driven by the sense of lack of self, you feel a compulsion for MORE. You need more, of everything. You need to gain. You need to make up for what you seem to be lacking. You need to fill the gaping hole of emptiness within. And so this produces GREED and SELFISHNESS, because we now seek to get more and more and more to try to satisfy the emptiness. Even though we don’t really want to satisfy because we want to deny self.

The way by which we then attempt to GAIN SELF, or to get MORE SELF, is to IDENTIFY WITH form. To identify with separate things. Things which we think are valuable or important. Things which differentiate and make us unique. Things which, by way of association, rubs off on us favorably and gives us a sense of being MORE than we were. The ego thus identifies WITH OBJECTS, with bodies, with thoughts and feelings, with the mind, in an attempt to increase its sense of existence - of being a self.

We thus literally identify with a country, a culture, a body, a relationship partner, their body, valued treasures, objects and toys, buildings and land and vehicles, money, sex, and all kinds of things. We identify with them by trying to ATTACH SELF to them, to in a sense posses them, by trying to equate the object with our sense of self, to suggest “this thing is the SAME as me” or “I am the same as this thing.” It’s an attempt to find ONENESS WITH FORM, ie oneness with separateness, which is impossible.

Ego is amplified by an increase in a sense of “setting it apart” from the whole, by which it reasons that it if can become a more significant SEPARATE thing, it is more established and exists more and thus has more identity - more self. It in a way wants to be the whole, such as to be the OWNER of the world, but it also thwarts this fundamentally by its belief that it MUST be less than whole in order to seem to “be something.”

Psychological ownership, psychological possession, psychological attachment, identification, trying to be one with form, trying to gain more self, forming a self image, trying to enhance the self, trying to improve the self, trying to make the things that ego is identified with be in themselves better so that it rubs off on us and we can take credit for it, are all the SAME method of trying to BECOME something we are NOT, in an effort to become a real self that “we are.”

Since all temporal things, all different things, all forms, all objects, all thoughts and feelings, are transient and temporary, they fundamentally do not last. The ego knows this in a way, and is constantly in a state of dissatisfaction that it not only never has enough, it aways feels a compulsion to become MORE SELF. This is due to the deep belief in having NO SELF, which it MUST maintain in order to seem to be relevant.

But temporary things come and go, and so the ego then experiences a sense of LOSS. It now loses the things it wants, as those treasured things leave its existence. Whether it be a person’s body that dies, or some family member falls ill, or a possession becomes broken, or some toy is lost, or money is wasted, or whatever, there is a disappointment.

But it’s not simply a matter of feeling that something valuable has gone away, it actually it is much more selfish than that. Loss is driven by the recognition that the things which you were IDENTIFIED WITH have gone away, and therefore PART OF YOUR SELF has gone away. Through the loss of idols and favorites and possessions and things we have owned and become attached to, even things with sentimental value, the ego is not upset about the THING being gone - it’s upset about ITS SELF being gone.

And so loss is really experienced by the ego as a reminder of the loss or lack of self, a reminder of the inner emptiness that was there before the compulsion to ”seek and do not find.” It is a triggering of the sense that you have lost YOUR SELF, and now you are diminished, and now you are lacking, and now you have less, and now you are not enough.

This produces what we call a feeling of loss or grief, but it’s not REALLY a grief over the loss of some valuable thing or person or place, it’s a much more selfish upset that what you wanted from your neediness has been lost and so your very IDENTITY has been lost. And then you are sad because it is YOU that has died again. Ultimately all sense of loss over external things are just reflections of the inner sense of the loss of a real self, driven by self denial.

What needs to take place to undo all of this madness, this impossible seeking for something that does not exist anywhere except underneath the self denial, is to undo the self denial. To stop denying that you are a fully created and WHOLE self, that God created, and that you are still the whole of that self.

It requires a shift in IDENTIFICATION, in which your sense of “what am I” stops being attached to and possessing of things like the body and thoughts and feelings and objects, and instead recognizes self to be one with the spirit - the soul, the Christ holy self. But not only that, but the identification with and as the WHOLE KINGDOM OF GOD, in which identity is SHARED and whole and one, because it is NOT based on separation or lack.

And this will require what will seem to be the dismantling of the false sense of self, rooted deeply in lack and imperfection and the absence of identity - an insecure and impossibly unhappy and deprived self. This self is BASED ON self denial, so the denial has to be lifted and the mind has to re-identify with spirit. Fundamentally this requires the recognition that your real self is NOT lost, nothing has happened to it, it can never be changed, and you are still as God created you to be forever. You are Christ, not anti-Christ.

When there is no self-denial, there is no lack of self, and so there is no neediness, and thus no wanting, and thus no desire, and thus no seeking externally, and thus no drive to get or to attach or own or possess, and thus no attempt to ADD MORE SELF to yourself in an effort to BUILD a self to overcome the shortcomings of the one you hate.

Self hate and self denial and self attack and self destruction all have to end, as you open up to accept and recognize the real self that you really are. Without the belief in being anything other than God created you to be - and which in truth you STILL ARE, there is no basis for the ego whatsoever, and so it cannot exist. This ends with the return to simply knowing yourself as you really are in reality - the whole of yourself which needs nothing.

We continually look for meaning outside of ourselves. We look for salvation outside of ourselves. We look for ourselves outside of ourselves. We look for love outside of ourselves. We look for happiness outside of ourselves.

And we do not find it.

Because it is not outside of ourselves.

And yet we are very very very used to having these thought processes where we start to hunt around for explanations, to find reasons and meanings, to justify things, to rationalize why something is right or wrong, all trying to lend some kind of credibility to the external world.

We're trying to bring a sense of "reality" or "truth" to what is actually an illusion that doesn't really exist.

We're looking in all the wrong places for meaning, and love, and salvation, and happiness. But we're so used to doing this that over and over again we'll just keep going through these same processes of trying to figure things out, trying to understand the world, trying to explain why stuff happens, trying to identify external causes, etc. None of it is true.

Nothing in the world is true. The world is not truth. Only God's Creation is truth. Everything you see in FORM is not true, no matter whether it looks like totally right or totally wrong, or completely convincing or not. Even things in the physical world which seem like proof or the best more reliable evidence is NOT created by God and it is NOT THE TRUTH.

So you'll keep looking out there, searching and not finding, trying to discover truth where it does not exist. Trying to identify why bad stuff is happening. Trying to justify why its better to do one thing or another. NONE OF THEM ARE THE ANSWER.

No matter how the physical world of form looks, no matter what it contains, no matter whether it appears favorable or unfavorable, regardless of whether it is glaring you in the face with "hard evidence", EVEN THAT is not the truth.

Even if you come up with a medical diagnosis which accurately seems to explain someone's sickness, EVEN THAT is not the truth. It's the ego's truth, and its a partial truth at best. Because nothing in the world is a CAUSE of anything.

God is the only Cause, and you as Son of God are equal Cause. And you are NOT at the effect of this world IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER. Which means, there is absolutely nothing in this world which causes anything, no matter how it looks, and if it looks otherwise, IT IS AN ILLUSION.

"I am not at the effect of the world I see." - ACIM

Means... there are literally zero causes in the world. Zero answers. Zero explanations. Zero objective truths. Zero proof. Zero evidence.

God, and I as One with Him, are the only cause that is real.

"Perhaps there is a fear of failure and shame associated with a sense of inadequacy."

"As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others."

If there is some way that you are found, or find yourself to be, not equal, it will induce a sense of inadequacy. This is based on a perceive lack of value or worth. And this in turn will induce a feeling of shame and unworthiness.

Whatever is considered the ideal, or the optimum or best way to be, if you do not "measure up", or you are evaluated to be less than or lacking, this inadequacy will present shameful feelings. As if you are lacking something.

Ultimately if you look at the body, the body was made on purpose to limit you, confine you, define you as very restricted, with only a small handful of abilities. It can only move so fast, perform so good, look so attractive, etc. If you identify with a body, you fundamentally identify with being inadequate. Which produces automatic shame.

So anyone who has identified with a body is automatically grandfathered in to feeling a sense of shame and unworthiness. Because no body, no matter how great it seems to be, is free of limitations. And every body was made from the idea of imperfection and is inehrently inadequate.

It doesn't therefore matter how beautiful you make it look, how much muscle you build, how tall and hansom it is, how fair and lovely, it can never fully represent your perfection. It can never be "good enough". So if you think of it as your self, and you take personally anything about it, you are doomed to find yourself not good enough.No-one who believes they are a body can be satisfied with their "self image". Even those who believe their body is god-like and fantastic, must at some level suspect their flawed and limited nature. Any amount of body identification is going to condemn you as less than whole and less than perfect.

Sometimes also the things that bodies do, or the we use them for, fall far short of perfection. And that means that almost everything we do with them is prone to result in a judgement of inadequacy. It doesn't even matter if you try to be proud of it or pleased with it or amazed by its greatness, these are all forms of denial of the inherent limitation and lack that the body represents.

There is also a fear of failure that automatically must be present for anyone who considers themselves a body. Since it is recognized how limited you are, that you do not know how to do something, or be guaranteed to do it perfectly, it presents an inherent recognition that it WILL fail to some degree. And this induces fear. So the inadequate and the shameful are afraid of failure, knowing that they ARE a failure, having identified with failure.

The only way to transcend inadequacy and be fully released from shame, is to embrace your REAL perfection, which is your spirit. To be spirit identified is to overcome all limitation and thus all inability, insufficiency and incapability. There can be no grounds for shame in owning up to being immortal and divine.

"This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable. ""Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in Love's presence, for it could not respond at all. You would HAVE to abandon its guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response pattern you NEED."

"But the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy."

"God is the strength in which I trust. Now try to slip past all concerns related to your own sense of inadequacy."

Our main problem in separating from God is simply not recognizing what is true. "Enlightenment is but a recognition".

If we were to recognize accurately what is true, and what is false, without any distortion, we would attain enlightenment. This recognition is the pure sanity of our right mindedness.

A mind which is so correct in its recognition of truth, practically KNOWS it, which is how true perception paves the way for knowledge. Our problem then is that we DON'T recognize what is true, or how it is opposite to what is false. In the separation we simply swapped the true and the false. We gave all manner of true properties to that which is false, and all manner of false properties to that which is true. This produced immense confusion.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

In a state of confusion, you do NOT recognize reality or truth. You believe that things which are true are not true, and things which are false are true. You give reality to illusions, believe in lies, and mistake hell for heaven.

This reversal is so great that it leads to the belief that death is life, hell is heaven, suffering is healing, punishment is atonement, and God is evil.

Everyone naturally gravitates towards whatever they believe is true, and tries to avoid what they believe is false. In fact Jesus in the course says that you cannot SEE what you believe is false, and you can only see what you believe in a true.

"All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would judge reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized."

This presents a problem, because it means you end up choosing something which is NOT what it appear to be. You think it will save you, but it hurts you. This manifests particularly in using sickness as a defense against the truth.

We first fail to recognize that God's truth is true. We believe it is false and evil and wrong. We don't want it. Then we believe that its opposite will save and protect us. That we want whatever IS true, even though the things we think are true are false.

Then we choose false things, to move away from true things, but believing they're helping us. Sickness is an attempt to defend your life and perpetuate your truth, to save you from the attack of "what is false" - God - but what is false has been mis-identified.

So you end up choosing suffering, under the belief that it is helping you. You choose sickness in an attempt to save your life.

This happens only because you do not RECOGNIZE what is really true and what is false. You are confused, and so you make a poor decision. You then end up hurting yourself because you are confused.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself"

What the course then tells us is we have to sort out and correctly identify things which are true, and things which are false. To identify what is OF GOD, and what is not. What is real, and what is unreal. This includes sorting out what is really life, and what is death, and what is health and what is suffering.

"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."

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

"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."

We actually don't recognize that suffering IS suffering. We don't realize we are feeling guilty and afraid. We can even be angry without actually recognizing it as anger. In denial, we'll even believe that our sickness is saving us, and so we want to keep it.

Our task is to become clear about what IS true and what IS false. To properly "categorize" stuff. To put the things of God into the "true and real" category, and the stuff of this world of ego and death into the "untrue and not real" category. The illusions of Earth belong in the not-real category.

"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."

In true perception then, which is close to enlightenent, we are doing two things. We are correctly recognizing that illusions ARE illusions and death is NOT real and there is no real sin and Earth doesn't really exist. AND, we are recognizing heaven and the face of christ and the real world and reality, shining beyond the illusory world.

Once we actually can distinguish that suffering IS suffering, and attack IS attack, and death IS death, rather than confusing them for something else, we will recognize not to choose them. Anything we associate with what is false, we will choose away from. Whatever we associate with truth, we will gravitate towards.

In order to choose heaven and not hell, we have to first learn that hell IS hell, and not heaven. We have to stop confusing Earth for heaven, or mistaking an unreal world for a real one. We have to deprogram ourselves and become clear about what really is true and what isn't.

"the necessary distinction between the true and the false."

"But HIS function is to distinguish ONLY between the false and the true, REPLACING the false WITH the true."

"His Voice WILL teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and lead you out of the confusion YOU have made."

"Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice."

"Only by learning what fear IS, can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible, and the false from the true."

"This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other."

"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."

Miracles, then, are states of mind in which the real truth is recognized as the ONLY truth, and nothing ELSE is believed to be true. All errors are correctly identified as false, untrue, unreal, and nothing. All reality is acknowledged and welcomes as ACTUALLY real and true and meaningful.

When all truth is "separated out" from what is false, you will cease to make confused mistaken choice, will stop choosing death and sickness and suffering, and will be ready to choose heaven.

The false world (Earth) is false and does not exist. The true world (Heaven) is true and is all that exists. Truth is everything, the false is nothing. Correctly recognizing God allows you to recognize who you are. In remembering your true nature, you are ready to identify with your soul, and as Christ.

I recently had to struggle through a period of intense emotional release, coupled with a lot of crying. It was triggered seemingly by father's day, inducing a grieving period and sense of loss, but it seemed to also move into some release relating to childhood abuse.

With such heavy feelings I became quite caught up in it, lost and immersed in ego. Also during this period I lost sight of the course teachings and of forgiveness. I felt too overwhelmed and upset to want to add more ego-challenging stress in the form of extra course stuff.

It also then became very annoying and frustrating that there was so much emotion, and that it wasn't stopping. I was forced to rest a lot. But it started to make me question, why do I keep having to have so much emotion coming out? Is there really a benefit to crying and releasing it? Is crying a part of my real self's healing or is it just some aspect of the ego and the body?

When I considered that I've had hundreds if not thousands of cries in recent years, and that I tend to throw myself into it, I also couldn't fathom how there could be so much to feel through. Why did things from 40 years ago keep coming up? Why did it require so many releases in order to make such slow progress? Was this really necessary and important in my spiritual path? Yes the crying does seem to move me past hurts and on to deeper stuff but is it really necessary?

I also recently started to consider the idea in ACIM of there being two levels of mind, higher and lower. Real thoughts shared with God produce the creation of spirit, and unreal thoughts shared with the ego produce intellect and physicality. So that made me start to realize, there are higher and lower parts to my mind.

I think this is a kind of turning point of "there must be a better way" because I'm also now starting to step back from the lower mind more often. I'm asking myself, is this feeling or perspective really a part of me as a higher-self, or is it coming up from the depths of a lower ego self? Even to the extent, are these hurt emotions, emotional pain and loss and grief and so on, really coming from or about "me" or is it part of the ego? Is it perhaps the ego that cries and is constantly upset?

Today perhaps for the first time, with a continued oozing out of further emotions, I started to assert the idea at the end of my rope, that "these feelings are not mine." Who and what I am seems to somehow be stepping back from or dis-associating from them. This seems pretty radical to suggest that any upset feeling is not really a part of me, is not mine, and is not part of my identity. It makes me realize I have been identifying with these things for a very long time.

The ego is pretty relentless in its morbid suffering. The body, if it holds certain emotional pain or energies in itself, certainly is also a repository of suffering and pain. It seems to me that every single little upset about anything ever is somehow stored somewhere and has to seemingly be released. But I'm also realizing that who and what I am does not have to be consumed by it, lost in it, playing along with it.

I don't know if this is some kind of attempted denial or repression, but it seems that there is some part of my sense of who and what I am which is detaching from these "lower" experiences and is identifying with something higher and lighter. All pain and misery, all upset, all grief and loss, all sense of shame or guilt, all fears, all hurt and suffering, surely cannot be a part of who or what I am as God created me. There can't be unhappy feelings in God's son. They cannot be real.

As I sit here and I still am having waves of emotion wanting to erupt and release, there's also some part of me now that feels stronger, and does not want to lose myself in it, or have it at all. When emotions become strong and overtake the mind, it can really become immersive and it starts to feel like "I" am the one who is feeling it and is hurt by it. I become centered in it. The emotions seem to describe me. I believe this is identifying with them, and thus with the ego.

As I remember that my identity or self is not these feelings, I immediately feel a deflating effect. The ego is always attempting to inflate things into a huge drama of intensity, especially at the emotional level. I think that identifying with the emotions and feeling like I'm the one who they are a part of, or am "the one" who is hurt, is all part of being lost in the ego.

I recall also some things which Eckhart Tolle has said about "the pain body", which is the ego's emotional body of pain and suffering. He said that this emotional pain body remains dormant a lot but sometimes it erupts into awareness and attempts to flood the mind with negative thoughts and memories of the past, trying to get the mind to identify with it and lose consciousness. I'm asking myself now if all and every single upsetting feeling "from the past" is really this pain body erupting and the ego trying to use my dependency on, and identification with feelings, as a way to keep me bound to it.

It seems weird to say, because what I'm really saying is that suddenly it seems that all my "lower" emotions are not really true of me. All hurt feelings are not really about me as God created me. All emotions that erupt from the bottomless pit of despair are not a part of my self. How can they be if God created me perfect and permanently happy? How can any kind of unhappiness or loss or shame or guilt or anything else be a part of my identity or my experience?

I feel like I've been battling with this emotion-monster for decades now. Years upon years of crying about the past. With the recent intolerability and obnoxiousness of it, it just became too much to a kind of breaking point, and now I feel like I'm snapping out of it. Like I"m done with it. I don't want to feel this crap anymore as though it's something I have to go through, or can't stop, or have no power over, or am destined to feel. It's not God's will for me. And it seems like all of it is a part of illusion.

As I look at it now, and as feelings threaten to "come up" again and flood my experience, I watch as they just emerge out of nowhere, from below, and seem to want to tempt me to believe that I am the one who is upset. But if I recall that I not these feelings, then somehow it seems fairly easy to "stay out of it". And that stepping back also deflates them and seems to cause them to simmer down again.

I think this is another thing that I have just been doing to myself over time. There is some drive in my psyche/personality to just hurl myself into full exposure to any and all emotions. But by identifying with them and believing they relate to me, or are part of me, having no boundaries with them, I have only been burying myself in them and feeling sorry for myself like a victim. Not to mention how much it consumes me and pulls me far away from higher thoughts.

I see Jesus in the course telling me to have more vigilance to protect the higher mind and to have more vigilance against the lower mind. The lower mind is run by the ego and wants to just turn everything into a life-or-death separation drama. I don't want to be a part of that anymore.

While at first I thought my whole self was the lower mind, and the higher mind was much higher, I now see that I'm moving up into the higher mind and the lower self is indeed below me. The ego wants us to identify with it and believe that all its perceptions of suffering are our own. That we are the body and its pains. That we are the suffering self. That's now who or what we are. The pool of misery doesn't seem to have an end. It seems the only thing to do with the desert is to leave.

The truth must be, then, that any unhappy feeling cannot be a part of my real self, cannot be true, cannot be real, and cannot be happening. My real self cannot be upset, cannot suffer loss, and cannot be hurt. It is extraordinary to think that I have lived as "a person" who seems to have suffered and felt hurt and upset so many times, and that not once has this suffering been true. But this is what ACIM is telling me. Only the thoughts and feelings that I share with God are real, and all the rest is ego noise, one of its many forms of the opposite to love.

"You hate it (the body), yet you think it IS your self, and that, WITHOUT it, would your self be lost."

"The ego is also in your mind, because you have ACCEPTED it there. ITS evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does NOT love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of EVERYTHING it perceives, because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best, and viciousness at worst."

"the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that BELIEVES in it, and gives existence TO it. Yet it is ALSO your mind that has the power to DENY its existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey it sets you IS."

"The ego is quite literally a fearful thought."

"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."

"The ego is expert ONLY in confusion. It does not understand ANYTHING ELSE. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and TOTALLY CONFUSING."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"Jung was right indeed in insisting that the ego is NOT the self, and that the self should be regarded as an achievement."

"To identify with the ego is to attack yourself, and MAKE YOURSELF POOR. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego FEELS DEPRIVED. What he EXPERIENCES is then depression or anger, but what he DID is to exchange his self-love for self-hate, MAKING HIM AFRAID OF HIMSELF. He does NOT realize this. Even if he is fully aware of ANXIETY, he does NOT perceive its source AS HIS OWN EGO IDENTIFICATION, and he ALWAYS tries to handle it by making some sort of insane "arrangement" with the world."

"This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE."

"That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It does not exist."

"All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things should HAPPEN to the Son of God, WITHOUT his will."

"The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness."

"For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

"Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions"

"Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. "

"who is sinless cannot suffer pain"

"The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer."

"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 cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer."

"The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe."

"You have enslaved the world with all your fears, with doubts and miseries, your pain and tears, and all your sorrows press upon it, and keep it a prisoner to your beliefs."

"And God Himself shall wipe away all tears."

"Be not afraid of Love. For It alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dreams of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His."

"Repeat God's Name and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace. The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world."

"And He would have all tears be wiped away, with none remaining yet unshed, and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. For God has willed that laughter should replace each one, and that His Son be free again."

"Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's JOINED with His."

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

All bodies are different. Even the bodies of identical twins. No two are alike. No two share the same molecules. They can be similar, but more often than not they'll be different in a multitude of ways.

The whole world seems to thrive on the differences between bodies. And then we all tend to compare our body to the bodies of others. As if we are our bodies, and as if having certain body attributes defines whether we're good enough or lovable or correct or fit in.

But all bodies were fundamentally born from the idea of inequality, difference and conflict. They might appear to be of the same species, as if sharing common characteristics, but within that framework there is great variety. Even the wings of butterflies are not all identical. Not every fish has quite the same scales. And no two voices are quite the same.

Sometimes, those who are body-identitied then try to adjust to this fact by making out that the body is special for being different. It's unique and unalike, standing out from the crowd. And then we exalt them for certain noticeable abilities and features.

But the fact is that in order to have something in this world, you have to lack something else. In order to define yourself as one thing, you have to exlude other things. You can't have or be everything on a physical level. You must be deprived in order to gain. You must lose in order to win. And you must sacrifice in order to measure up.

There are great movements towards trying to get bodies to be considered equal. Equal rights for each gender. Equal rights or sexual persuasions. Equal rights for ethnicity or skin color. As if to say, everyone who is a body is the same. But bodies are never the same. No two are exactly the same, and never will be. They can't be. To be what they are they have to lack what the others have.

This means that no-one can ever be in a position to have everything as a body. No body can be perfect. No body has it all. Some might seem to turn out more lucky or favorable than others. Some are uglier, some more aesthetic. Some are larger, smaller, taller, thinner. Some may be fundamentally more artistic, more athletic, quicker to move, clumsier, better shaped, more manly or womanly, better able to think or analyze, more emotional etc.

So then it comes down to the fact that all bodies are really just pieces of equipment. Because people are not bodies and minds are not bodies. So each of us has this chunk of equipment strapped onto us which we express through and use. But the particular configuration or "features" of the equipment will determine what the body can seem to do.

I will not ever have the low bassy voice of Barry White. I will not ever have female parts. I will not ever have the genetically blessed muscle definitions of Arnold. I will not ever have Betty Davis's eyes. My legs won't look like that of an olympic runner. My fingers aren't ever going to be nimble enough to play Spanish guitar music. My face isn't ever going to look like a rugged lumberjack. And there is just no way my bum is ever going to look big in this.

These are just simply the facts of what kind of equipment I am using. And for some people there are significant defects. People with disabilities, limbs missing, motor control problems, defects of skin, wonky eyes, a propensity for deadly farts, and hopelessly crooked teeth. That's just what the body has, and shows us what the body also does not have.

Both of which go to defining what it seems to be capable of. If you identify with your body you are doomed to enter into a realm of comparison and low self esteem and dissatisfaction and dysmorphia and food disorders and judgement and all manner of concern. Jealousy and envy and hatred and anger and sadness and all sorts of stuff can arise from this. Because if the body's limitations are considered the truth of you, then the fact is that EVERYONE is limited in one way or another, and no-one in the whole world will ever have physical perfection.

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."

"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. 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. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind."

ALL bodies are lacking and all bodies are defective and all bodies are limited and all bodies are special. They're supposed to be. They were made in an effort to limit you and act as a decoy and disguise for your inner perfection. They were meant to separate you off and confine you and act like a prison wall. And they were designed to be a representation of what you are NOT like.

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

Some bodies thus seem to have talents or abilities that others do not, or aptitudes or intelligences or particular quirks that others lack. Some seem to be born blessed and others cursed. Some have wonderful voices and others sound like a freight train. Some are beautifully symmetrical and others are like a lopsided lump of lard. These are just the way bodies are. They are greatly varied and unalike and unfamiliar and unequal and unnatural.

Some will take advantage of the particular traits of their particular body to try to maximize its capabilities. And this usually means certain aptitudes in certain areas. Some become brain surgeons while totally sucking at singing. Others become pop stars but completely suck at relationships. Some become athletes but can't dance to save their lives. And others just get dealt a bad hand of shit and crap and deformity and bullshit. Then we have to sort of make the best of it, or just hate ourselves.

We can't look to the body for perfection because perfection means wholeness. Bodies are limited and varied and none of them have everything, so none of them are whole. They are fundamentally lacking. Not one of them can fully or accurately represent who and what you are. None of them look like you. And none of them can picture what you really look like.

"For what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

If you identify with or AS your body, or your body's attributes or abilities, or the roles you assign it or the labels you give it, you are mis-identifying yourself and do not know who and what you are. This narrows you and confines you and shuts you in a prison and places major limitations on you. It distorts and shuts down your awareness, diminishes your mind, and deranges your mind.

In fact, Jesus tells us that if we conceive of ourselves as a body in any way, even slightly, we are in fact attacking what we are. Given that we are perfect whole spirit lacking nothing and sharing everything, when we identify with or as a body we are literally putting limits on ourselves. And this is an attack on ourselves, which produces symptoms of sickness, which then manifest in the body. So now the body becomes sick if you believe you are your body, because you're shutting down your unlimited life.

"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."

"Any relationship in which the body enters is based, NOT on love, but on idolatry."

"The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. It is the will that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in which It is denied. The ego is the "proof" that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true."

"God created love, NOT idolatry. ALL forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds, who are too divided to know that Creation SHARES power, and NEVER usurps it."

"The power to heal is now his Father's gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth."

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's CONDEMNATION. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept APART from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return."

Jesus in fact is saying here that the body, designed to be a device for separation, becomes a way to NOT RELATE TO ANYONE, by being cut off and limited physically behind a wall of flesh. If you identify with it, make it your self, see it as defining you, accept its limitations as true of you, associate or align with it, dwell on it, focus on it, make it an obstacle, or in any way allow it to come between you and others to any degree, then you are entering into the separation and into death.

"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. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"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." There is a way to work through the body and to use it for a higher purpose, but this doesn't change what the body IS. It doesn't make it become whole or holy. It doesn't lift away its nature or stop it from being a confining limited mechanism. In truth, the Holy Spirit's repurposing of the body in fact renders the body FUNCTIONLESS and MEANINGLESS.

"Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning."

"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."

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. 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 body is supposed to become UNNECESSARY to you. Un-needed, and cast off. Adding nothing to you. Giving you no abilities. Not defining you or limiting you or getting in your way. Nor does it remain and succeed in doing this, because the body has to go in order for you to experience unlimitedness. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"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."

"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."

The body must be transcended, then let go completely. You must surmount it and go beyond it.

"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."

"Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the only basis 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."

"Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is ALWAYS directed against God. For the ego would have you see Him, AND HIM ALONE, as guilty, leaving the Sonship OPEN to attack, and unprotected from it."

If you look, when you are angry or frustrated or even slightly annoyed with someone, while the feeling may be one of "anger", the process is really an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and the purpose is to displace your own guilt onto them. When you look at it as "trying to make them guilty", it's exactly that and only that.

Any attempt to point a finger of blame and say, "you are wrong" or "you did it" or "you shouldn't have done it" or "it was you" etc... is really an attempt to try to force the person to BE guilty, trying to cause guilt in them, trying to enforce guilt upon them and turn them INTO a guilty party. It's therefore a form of attack and a denial of free will.

When you get done being angry with someone you'll notice you were trying to make them guilty. You wanted them to be intensely identified as the sinner. You wanted to be right about this. And you wanted them to admit to their sinfulness. It's like a demand, and "love makes no demands."

What this shows you is that whenever we are angry, we are attacking, and are actively trying to hurt someone through guilt-inducing force. We are trying to convert them into the guilty party and are justifying it and backing it up with all our "reasons why" they actually are guilty.

So that means being angry at someone is not a neutral activity, or an unharmful activity, or a loving activity. It is actually an outright attack for purposes of displacing your own guilt onto another. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

In the anger it will always seem like you have amazingly justified reasons as to why you should be angry, because it's very clear why the person IS guilty. They DID seem to do something. They DID make a mistake. They DID hurt you. They DID move your cheese. They WERE abusive. They DID steal from you, or whatever. At least on the level of form.

This gives you a free pass of righteousness. This "righteous anger" is an excuse for making it okay to attack a person. The "justified outrage" passes for some kind of "right" that you have, because the occurrence is so obviously awful, inhumane, unjustified, un-asked for, vicious and the various other forms of what we'd identify as sinful based on appearances. But there is NO forgiveness in that view.

This means if we're not being forgiving we're not being loving, and you can't be loving or forgiving while you are being angry. This is because in the anger you are being unloving and unforgiving toward yourself, have accused yourself of sin and are now attempting to project that onto someone else, taking this wonderful opportunity they presented as a low-hanging fruit that you can easily attach your guilt to.

If someone does actually mess up, if they do attack, if they do something "wrong", this makes it extremely easy for your ego to pounce on them. Because now they've presented you with what seems to be an "actual sin". This makes it easy for you because you don't even have to invent a sin for them, they did it all by themselves. And now you can take this chance to push YOUR sin onto them by NOT forgiving them for theirs. It's a free pass.

There is no such thing as justification for anger. As ACIM says, "Anger is never justified". The justifications are lies, the appearance of sin happening is blindness and judgmental, the feeling of righteousness or deserving is completely unforgiving and a form of attack. Only by overlooking what your brother did can you be forgiving to him and to yourself.

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you thought your brother did has not OCCURRED."

"In this view are all your sins forgiven."

There are two worlds. The Kingdom of God, which really exists, and the world we made to oppose the Kingdom as an assertion of death and non-existence.

The Kingdom of God is a permanent, real world. It is Creation, in which everything is alive and has eternal life. All is immortal, perfect, loving and at peace. Nothing can ever happen to this world or anything in it, except through the joyful extension of God's will to create and share and celebrate.

The world we made, was made as an opposite to the Kingdom. It is encapsulated by spacetime and takes on the form of everything material, physical, energetic etc. All of it is an illusion, a dream, an imagined world, where strange things seem to happen and impossibilities seem possible.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in EVERY way."

The simple but seemingly difficult challenge for us, is to put all of our attention, belief, trust, identity and intimacy into the hands of the Kingdom, and NOT into the hands of the world we made. To overlook the world we made and look past it with Christ Vision TO the Kingdom is our goal.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

"Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is: "Be vigilant ONLY for God and HIS Kingdom."

"This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF. The ego speaks AGAINST His Creation, and therefore DOES engender doubt. You cannot go BEYOND belief UNTIL you believe wholly."

"Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION. Truth is WITHOUT illusions, and therefore WITHIN the Kingdom. Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."

"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, death."

This seems difficult because it's asking us no less than to identify as being something beyond all bodies, to recognize others as not bodies at all, to find nothing in the world we made that we value or want, to recognize the world has nothing to offer, to let go of all delusions about the world being real, to fall for absolutely no temptations to believe otherwise, and to completely transition to identifying and recognizing ourselves as ONLY spirit.

We are OF another world. We seem to be IN this world. But we need to become absolutely clear that there is no world here. This doesn't seem to be easy and in fact seems difficult given the sheer extent of how much we believe in, react to, identify with, and are convinced by the illusory world presented to us. But it IS our final goal, in the atonement, to completely peel ourselves away from this fake world and all it seems to offer or suggest, and put our hearts entirely into the hands of God.

"God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes."

This means we have to literally wean off the world. We have to want the Kingdom with all our willingness and hearts and minds. We have to recognize that immortality is the only truth and mortality is a completely powerless fiction. That only God's truth, as His Living Kingdom, is true and real and acceptable and attractive. We must believe strongly and fully in the reality of God's creation and our immortality, and disbelieve and overlook all suggestion to the contrary.

To do this we have to learn also that we are not a physical body, nor is anyone else a physical body. We have been very confused that people are their bodies, and when things happen to bodies we recoil and react as if the person is affected. This only means we are confused in thinking these immortal beings are susceptible to suffering. Bodies must be overlooked. The world must be overcome. We must attune to the spirit world and return to it through truth and sanity and recognition.

Only the Kingdom of God really exists. Only the Holy Trinity is real. Only the creations of light are real. There is no world here.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

ACIM's simple teaching: "This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

Do you believe this fully and deeply, that only God's truth is true? Maybe in theory, to an extent. But that's not what matters. What matters is if you REALLY believe it deep down.

We're simply being asked to ONLY believe God's truth, the truth of heaven and reality, and to disregard all lies and falsehoods. That's all. But we have to be CONVINCED and deeply fully believing that God' truth is true, AND that we want it.

The entire "process" of waking up entails just sorting out the true from the false. Reason being that we've mixed them together and are confused and lost. We have to clearly identify what the truth IS, and we have to in contrast recognize what things are false. And then we have to be willing to believe ONLY the true things.

This is likely to be met with ALL your resistance, because the fact is that EVERY single belief you have that is false has to be brought into question, and had to be recognised as NOT true, and you do NOT WANT to do that. You think the opposite is false and want nothing to do with it, unwilling to even entertain its possibility. You literally will have to give up everything you think you know and be very open to being extremely mistaken.

There really is nothing more to it than that. We identify what is REALLY true in God's terms, we contrast it against what is OPPOSITE, we recognize that they can't BOTH be true, we reject the FALSE in favour of what is TRUE, and accept the truth - which is atonement. The Holy Spirit helps us in this sorting out:

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."

"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."

"You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid, and what to seek."

"The contrast between what is true, and what is not, is PERFECTLY apparent, yet you do NOT see it. The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that ALL THIS IS NOT TRUE."

"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. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false."

"Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are One Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is true."

God's Son is huge. Infinite, unlimited, eternal, omnipresent. He is everywhere at all times and beyond. There is no edge to His being and no limits to His Self.

Think of the Son of God like a huge canvas or giant blanket spanning the entire universe and beyond. Written all over this blanket it the word "Self".

Then, if you were to cover up your vision and narrow down your perception so that you only see one little piece of the blanket, obviously you're not going to be aware of the entire blanket. So you might now only be seeing a little tiny bit of the corner of the letter "E". Then, because your awareness stops at the edges of this little confined space, you will think, this is all that there is to my Self, this is the limit of who I am. And you will also think, that the full scope of this Self is the whole of you, and therefore you are whole.

Now, within that little limited sense of Self, it could be a very clear vision of that limited Self or it could be covered over with lots of false beliefs and a false sense of identity - the ego. You could then work to undo this ego and when it disappears it would reveal the full scope of your Self, WITHIN the confines of what seems to be your identity, ie within the limited scope of one body or one self. This is like a fully realized individual Self. This is "waking up in the dream" but still being confined by it.

But this Self isn't as large as or as aware of the entire scope of the huge blanket of Self that spans the whole universe. It does not experience all of time and space at once. It still sees limited objects and is limited by what the body can do and where it can go. It does not identify Self as the entire universe and beyond and is not experiencing that. It is the fullest experience of a limited self that's possible, within the scope of being an individual son in the sonship.

But there is more. There is more Self outside of the bounds of what you think is yourself. So like, if you are in a body, and are confined to what the body can do or where it can show up, everything outside the body you will regard as not yourself. But what if, the very edges of your sense of identity suddenly expanded out past the body and you became aware of the entire universe all at once? What if you suddenly were aware that you were everyone all at once, and all of the plants and animals and planets and stars? And then what if even beyond that, you knew that you were a single whole immensely unlimited Self - Christ - the Son of God - who is dreaming this whole universe into being?

That's quite a shift, away from being one of many selves, to being the only One Self. It means you are the entire sonship combined. It means the universe is inside of yourself, being a thought in your mind. This is the state of the Christ Self, and experiencing it constantly is what is required in order to realize it and identify with it. Or in other words, your sense of identity must grow way beyond what your perception shows you (all perception is limited) and must correlate to a FULL awareness of ALL that really does exist. Perfect complete awareness of God and His Creation.

What we might not realize has happened, is that Christ split Himself up into many many individual pieces, and each of those pieces has become an individual "soul", and each soul has found its way into a separate body. And each soul in each body now thinks that it is the whole of "Self". You can become fully aware of your individual Self as one of many Sons in the sonship, which awakens you inside the dream, but it doesn't put you in the awareness of being the one who is literally directly making the universe. You actually have to lift away the boundaries of your identity to a really huge degree in order to become larger than the universe itself, aware that you made it, identified as its dreamer and as God's One Son. This is what Jesus has accomplished.

We are all these little pieces of mind believing they are wholly independent, individual and autonomous. There is Self outside the extreme limits of the edges of our awareness. There is Self beyond the body. There is Self which spans the entire universe. There is Self so vast and endless that it knows no ends of any kind. It is a shared collective consciousness which becomes a singular consciousness and eventually is the end of consciousness, replaced with awareness of the whole of what is.

"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. Would you be this if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this: Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell and hold your brothers there." - ACIM

I've been getting hints for a while, that there is a disconnect between inner and outer states, or between how I experience the world and what the world does. That it's possible to remain in a state of happiness or love, in spite of what's happening externally. That my inner condition doesn't depend on the outer condition.

The question came up, what if I could just remain happy regardless of what happens? What if how I feel isn't actually tied to the world or events or people? If I were to be happy while something was happening, I probably wouldn't care so much about it. It isn't an issue of what happens, but of how I experience it internally.

So there's the external happenings, and then there's the internal experience of it. What that also tells me is that who and what I am, isn't part of the physical level. It isn't the body or an emotion or an event or a reaction. It's actually possible to step away from the external stuff and sit above it, out of reach of suffering.

In truth then there aren't actually any causes of suffering in the world. There is nothing outside of me that can bring oppression. It really is only my mind that can affect my experience. And if I so choose, I can in fact elect to be in a state of happiness and safety which the world can do NOTHING about. Just as the course says, the world cannot give you peace, OR take it away.

It's kind of like saying, when you're in a good mood, nothing can bother you. You just float above it and are much less affected. When you are happier and stronger in light and life and love, you laugh in the face of death.

The simple secret of salvation then is that you cannot suffer unless you make yourself suffer. You can't suffer unless you step down from your throne of love, in which you share God's strength and power, and see yourself as a victim in some way. As soon as you choose to go into a fear state, the whole world starts to seem like it is out to get you, unsettling you, topping you off balance, making you lose your center.

So I started thinking about.. well, if I could just remain in a state of inner happiness, love, peace etc, it would not matter what happens outside me. It wouldn't even matter if everything was falling apart and going wrong. I would just remain happy and laugh about it. Whether I am happy or not should not depend at all on the world or other people. It depends entirely on my state of mind. And "the world was made that problems could not be escaped. Seek not escape from problems here", so it's really how I use and see the world that offers me escape from it.

As Jesus says, if we identify with love, we will feel safe, and will enter into the protection of God. If we tune to love, our mind will become whole and happy and healthy and our body will follow suit. Love is the single main ingredient of all miracle working, as expressions of love, which is also the power of God. If you are close to love then what you are literally moves away from the bodily level into the mind/spirit, above the battleground and out of reach of threat. Because you are not of this world.

I think we've been so used to living in fear, being out of touch with safety, that we just assume the whole world is unsafe. Everything is seen as a threat or attack, then we become defensive and try to make ourselves safe. But it doesn't work. And then we're insecure and feeling vulnerable and attackable, weak and victimized, offended and upset. Then we get really lost in this idea that I'm afraid or upset because of the world.

The only reason I am ever afraid or upset is because I've gone into fear in my mind, having rejected love in my mind, and this is an attack upon myself by myself. And now I look out through fearful sight and this taints everything I see. It now seems like because I am unsafe, everything in the world is reminding me of that unsafely. Everything becomes a threat because my mind is in a state of threat. Everyone becomes an enemy because I have become enemy to myself.

The key is that it's not them that's the problem. They're not the cause of my fear or upset. They're not doing anything to me. They're not putting the fear in me, threatening me, attacking me, or victimizing me. I only think they are because I'm confused and am not realizing that I'm doing all that to myself. Either I identify with love and feel totally safe and SEE safety everywhere, or I identify with fear/ego and see reasons to be afraid everywhere I look.

As Jesus says, "you can escape the world you see by giving up attack thoughts", ie "your attack thoughts are attacking your invulnerability." "You can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts." "It can be but myself I crucify" etc. We do stuff to ourselves and then it flavors everything we see. The problem isn't out there, it's in our minds. It's in our minds before we even project and make perceptions. It's in our identification. Either we are identifying with the body and with the idea of a fearful fake self, or we're identifying with spirit and with strength and safety and invulnerability.

As a man thinketh. Here Jesus tells you that if you want the world to not appear to be frightening, you need to change YOUR MIND, so that you PROJECT safety from a loving mind, and then perceive it as a result. This isn't a statement about not changing the world, only that you can only make the world appear to be safe as a side-effect of choosing safety in your mind FIRST, and then projecting it. This will change how you interpret the world that's perceived, once projected from an inner state. The inner state comes first. Choose love and you are safe. And you are safe because you are body and cannot be attacked.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, and NOT a cause."

"Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze."

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision? And AFTER vision, who is there who COULD refuse what MUST come after? Think but an instant just on this. YOU can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And NEVER need you think that there IS something else for you to see."

"There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet YOU can give it, as it was given YOU. And AS you give it, it shines forth to call you FROM the world, and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love WHICH YOU HAVE GIVEN IT. And here will everything remind you of your Father and his holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought WITH you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude, because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs, in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them."

"What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. 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."

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."

In heaven we are one with God, with each other and with our shared self in Christ. We are everything.

In the separation, our egotism is an attempt to become one with something not God, and less than everything.

Things that are not God, are generally not whole, and tend to be very limited, such as physical forms, objects, places, other people's bodies, the planet, etc.

It can also be ego thoughts which are thought-forms, limited thoughts, attack thoughts etc.

The attempt to become one with these things is the attempt to give them the properties of God. Such as to think of these things are what you want, valuable, meaningful, life, reality, truth.

We even want "self" or identity to become one with these things to try to turn them INTO an identity. To make our self BE one of these things.

Mind is unlimited, expansive, infinite, and whole. It is everywhere. Your real self is the same. When you try to identify with things which are not unlimited, you narrow your mind, and make it sick. It's like putting it into a prison and stopping it from functioning fully.

We literally try to "attach to" things which are not God, by trying to merge with them, to be one with them, to literally make them a part of ourselves.

Attachment, identification, oneness, it is all the same thing. You can become identified with your car, if you value it and give it reality. Your attempt to merge with it, love it, want it, value it, see it as truth, judge its importance etc, is you trying to become it.

So that whatever its qualities are, they reflect upon you and define you and become part of you. Then you can say that you are better and more important and more valuable because of the car you have that is part of you.

The same can apply to food, to places, to your house, your money, your job, your role as mother or father, your role as victim or victimiser, your egoic thoughts, your fantasies, your body, the whole planet even. You can literally try to be one with the planet which is an attempt to make it a part of yourself.

The ego takes a lot of credit for being something that it is not, or for you having something that you did not create. Such as to steal away a part of heaven and call it your own, or to say that the qualities you have which are God-given did not come from God.

Similarly it takes on credit for and vain reflection for things which are not yourself, such as that you are a better person if you have a flashy house, or your hair is improved, or you have the nicer clothes, or whatever. It thinks of these things as defining itself and as part of itself, one with it, its identity.

This is why it's important to unravel all the fake selves that you're making, all the attempts you make to be one with things which are not one, all the false identifies that you fabricate by trying to "wear" parts of the world like clothing, and then thinking that your clothing changes your self image.

And it's important to then realize that you need to re-identify with your real soul self, in heaven, as Christ. The son of God. Which means, simply, being one with it, merging with it, seeing it as true and valuable and real and meaningful and wanting it. Taking it on as the definition of what you are, and regarding it as you. Just as the ego does with illusions.

It should be clear that the ego is insane in what it does, because essentially it is trying to find oneness or wholeness... with things which are not one or whole. This is a contradiction. You can't be whole and complete by being something limited and small, like a body or an object.

The ego really wants to narrow down oneness and wholeness while pretending to want oneness and wholeness wholeheartedly, because it is two-faced and a lie. It wants the impossible. You can't really be one with anything other than God, and you can't really be anything other than what God created you to be.

"The world you see (with the physical eyes, earth, bodies physicality, spacetime) is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must SACRIFICE the other part to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would LOSE its own identity, and BY their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact." UrT26B1

"Let me remember I am one with God." UrW124

For sure, I used to believe in bodies. I believed people were their bodies. I believed if their bodies were sick or hurt, the person was in danger. I believed that bringing miracles to change their body into health was a noble cause.

In miracle working I believed the body was real, and that the body had to be attacked with the truth in order to correct it. I actually thought being intense or angry at the problem would make it go away. This never worked at all and probably made things worse.

I didn't realize that I was tempted by the idea that bodies are real at all. And once you believe they are real, you identify with your own, and identify others with theirs. And now you are on a slippery slope to trying to fight against death, without undoing the belief that bodies are real.

You find yourself trying to enforce or preserve or increase health and safety, in a world where you believe that it can be threatened and diminished. And now you're some kind of fighter against your own deception. Trying to heal and attack at the same time, as an unhealed healer.

While we believe bodies are real, or bodies are people, we can't work true miracles. To reinforce a belief in the reality of sickness is incompatible with its undoing. Only by recognizing that living and dead bodies are ONE illusion taking on irrelevant deceptive forms, and only by believing there is NO hierarchy to them, can there be NO ORDER of difficulty in miracles.

Only by recognizing that people are NOT bodies, can you heal their bodies. Only by recognizing that the forms of sickness are NOT true, can you undo and change the forms permanently. Only by realizing that the form is a deception, distracting you away from the real problem in the mind, can you address the underlying problem and cause.

When no form of objects is believed, and no state of bodies are thought to be different, and no appearances seem true, and no conditions of the body are thought to be more or less important or valuable or difficult or permanent, they are all treated the same way. One solution to one problem. One response to all illusions.

And in that singularity, that wholeness, that union of mind, which sees the wholeness, your mind is ready to bestow blessings of love and power which defy all forms and transcend all difficulties and are equally as effortless in application to ALL forms of suffering.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

"When you maintain that there MUST be order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would WITHHOLD from truth."

"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY, by giving some of it to one teacher, and some to another."

"Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing."

"Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless."

"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient."

"This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same."

"To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES."

"Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other."

"In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?"

"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."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same. Each is a gentle WINNING OVER, from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love."

"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."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness."

"He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them."

"It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with CLEAR-CUT PRIORITY FOR VIGILANCE."

"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."

"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations."

"Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

There is conditional healing, and unconditional healing.

The ego's healing is conditional healing. It says that all problems are different, and so diagnosis is needed to analyze and properly identify the cause - from many possible causes - and that doing so will inform us what needs to be done to produce healing.

The trouble with this is that it makes sickness real, making it irreversible, then comes up with an explanation for it which does nothing more than justify why it is real, making it even more irreversible, and then is practically powerless to cure it. The ego then only has special magical solutions which mostly do not work, and which definitely do not cure. The ego does not REALLY want you to heal, and its efforts to both diagnose and "treat" sickness are actually efforts to MAKE YOU SICK. This kind of healing is not really a healing solution AT ALL!

God's healing is unconditional. God does not need to figure out which of many causes has produced a problem. He knows that trying to do this would make the problem real. He also knows that there cannot BE multiple causes, because He is the ONLY cause of what is real. He also knows that finding one of multiple answers, and prescribing one of many possible remedies, would only partially assist in its removal.

He instead holds firm in the knowledge that healing is permanent because healing is truth. He simply further expresses and extends His Power to demonstrate that it is true, through the miracle. He simply CURES the problem, showing that it is not a problem at all. He does not wait on diagnosis, He does not adjust his response based on the hierarchy of problems or the apparent difficulty. One problem, on solution. BAM! Gone.

You may notice that all the times you refer to someone, you refer to their body almost exclusively. You barely have a notion of the person that doesn't in some way involve their body. You might even be surprised to learn that you almost EXCLUSIVELY relate to someone's body.

"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."

In ACIM, a special relationship is a relationship with a body. So that means that in all the ways you interact with, refer to people as, and focus on the body of another, you are in specialness. "The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY. And, if you VALUE it, you must also VALUE THE BODY. And what you value, you WILL keep. The special relationship is a device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

A body is not a person. There is much more to people than meets the eye.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

When you think of this, you may realize that you have barely spent any time at all actually relating to the spirit of a person - to their real self. The light-being that is their soul. That's who you have a holy relationship with - your actual brother/sister in christ, the mind-soul that is beyond the body.

And how do mind-souls communicate except THROUGH mind and soul? Not through the body.

"Minds need not bodies to communicate."

"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."

Which means in order to have a holy relationship with someone you have to communicate with them, join with them, share with them, relate with them, and recognize them, USING YOUR MIND, TO THEIR MIND. This involves the mind being used as the spiritual eye to see their reality beyond the body. ie in your mind's eye.

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

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man."

If you want to perceive a "creation of God" ie a brother, you have to use the spiritual eye, not the physical eyes.

You need to develop a relationship of and awareness of your brother using your mind, as they exist on another level. The true spirit of them, the immortal holy self of them, which is their real identity in Christ. To see christ in someone has to be done beyond the beyond and not WITH the body. Their body is not christ.

"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."

You need therefore to learn to approach and interact with others on a MIND level, through spiritual sight, in which you communicate with and offer healing to them at the spiritual level. That is where the light is. That's where you ARE the light of the world, and where the light of your mind which you SEE WITH can LOOK INTO and shine into another's mind, offering it light to see.

Then, knowing the person at the spiritual level, you will properly frame their body as NOT THEM, and as nothing but a disguise covering them up. And then you will also recognize any physical state or sickness is not the truth about them, because what they are is not a body.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 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."

In order to uphold the truth and immortality of another you have to know yourself, so that you will know your brother. If you know yourself as immortal you will recognize that any trace of mortality is an illusion. And this will properly frame your brother's suffering as an illusion, not as true of them. And this will help you to stop focusing on their body or taking it to be who they are.

By not identifying with your own mind, or as a body, and identifying with your immortal spirit, the nature of which is nothing like the body, you will also identify OTHERS as not their bodies, and see them as immortal spirit. It is this sharing of light in the truth of SHARED CHRIST IDENTITY, that envelops your brother in your light and resurrects them.

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. "

"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." - Jesus

"If the mind can heal the body but the body can't heal the mind then the mind must be stronger than the body."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"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." (or a body).

-------------------------

If the mind is stronger than the body then the body must be caused by the mind. And as Jesus said about his resurrection, He materialized another body with HIS MIND, in order to demonstrate that the mind that MADE a body ("the body of jesus") can make another, since form is an illusion. That means ALL BODIES are made by the mind, not by the world.

What we can controversially conclude here, is this:

God is your only Creator, not anything in the world.

Your earth parent's bodies did not create your body.

Your body was not the result of sperm and egg.

Your body as a baby did not manifest as a result of biological laws, it manifested as a result of the MIND.

The mother's womb is a symbol not a cause.

Bodies cannot make bodies. They have no causal power at all. How can effect make an effect?

The mind that made the body, also made the world, and therefore the world did not make the body.

Your body was NEVER made by the world or anything in the world, because there are NO CAUSES in the world.

"It (the world) is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

Effects are not causes. On the level of this world, causes and effect seem horizontal/linear and this is 100% an illusion. The only true cause is vertical, as demonstrated in the vertical perception which brings about miracles, through the proper order of the LEVELS, which means the higher level of MIND causes the lower level of FORM.

"Mind over matter" is ALWAYS the case for any form that shows up. The mind is the ONLY CAUSE of stuff (bodies, world, objects etc) being made.

So even if it SEEMS like your body is a thing ("as no time does the body exist AT ALL"), or has a history, or is ruled by biological laws, or is the effect of the world, or caused by parents, or put there by SOMEONE ELSE, you're basically claiming that you are automatically at the effect of the world you see and are a victim. Being born BY or FROM the dream, as a body that the dream MAKES "for you", is victimhood. It is a lie.

This is because the ego set up the body-making ILLUSION, the illusory causes of bodies coming about, to make it SEEM as though the world creates the body. This is 100% the reversal of true cause which is that body comes from within not without, and the world has NO CAUSAL POWER at all. To suggest part of the world itself can "create life" is the most opposing illusion, opposing the fact that only God/souls create life, and there is NO LIFE OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN. The ego deliberately has made this ILLUSION of "being born to parents" in order to cover up the causality of the mind or the true source of the body, which is the dreaming mind.

YOUR MIND MAKES THE BODY AT ALL TIMES, from "inception" to death.

When you acknowledge that your mind or some kind of mind is making your body, you will also realize that the body is not something you "attach to" or "identify with" or "put on as a costume" or "incarnate into" like it's something that exists ON ITS OWN independently from you. Like it's some kind of thing in its own right, which happened to .. .just show up magically with no-one being the cause of it?

Instead, recognize that when your mind believes YOU are made of ego illusions, ego illusions will SHOW UP, i.e. materialize, as an image seeming like a solid body in the mind. When your mind has no illusions or ego in it, it will cease to materialize a body, because it does not identify itself AS being made of ego stuff. Therefore the body disappears and you become "invisible" to this world. A clear mind produces invisibility i.e. no form.

Unless we are willing to take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for making the body be what it is, for making it show up, for MAKING IT period, we will see it as a separate "thing" and that WILL keep us stuck in this ego illusion. It cannot be let go by disassociating from it or separating from it.

That means you're actually performing an unworthy form of denial, by trying to keep the body and detach yourself from it. That's an act of premature death. The mind that is making the body, if it attempts to then pretend it is not making it, is simply in denial. The only way to leave the dream is by DISAPPEARING IT, by no longer identifying AS ego. And your mind will then make it vanish.

"You are not a body" does not mean, make a body and pretend you didn't make it.

From lesson 48: "There is nothing to fear."

"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength. The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear."

You would think that trusting yourself and depending on you own strength more would make you somehow more confident. You’d think that if you can just be braver or more stoic or aggressive or assertive, maybe you can be unafraid. Or that if you come across as powerful, others will not intimidate you.

But there is a metaphysical basis for what happens here. When you trust your own *separate* strength, you are actually putting distance between yourself and strength. God is strength. Innocence is strength. Being separate is a belief in not being with God, and not being innocent. So as you move into separation and into "your own" separated self, you move away from the inherent nature of God’s creation, away from divine protection.

This makes you weaker, lacking, uncertain, filled with doubt, afraid of punishment for the sin of being separate, guilty for rejecting God’s help, and thoroughly limits what you can do. No-one can be separate from God and live.

Anyone who has struggled in life can probably tell you that when you are trying to do everything on your own, it sucks bad. Trying to overcome problems and deal with stress and manage everything and to be some kind of separate superhero, absent of God’s help, has its major limits. Trying to "go solo" is suicide.

The more you do it, the more you *seem* to become some kind of heroic savior, or successful achiever, or person of pride, or someone who has conquered the world. You come across on the surface as invincible. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more that you try to become the ego’s version of invincibility, the more you will become vulnerable, fragile, paranoid, empty, weak and sick. Being the hero of the dream is a trap. This is why heroes die.

True strength is only possible when you share with God. True resilience, invulnerability, power, confidence, certainty, immovability and permanence can only be found by allowing God to be the one who supplies your every need. Without God, you are without life. Without God, you are alone and you now have to defend yourself against an entire world you see as willing against you. Without God there is weakness and death. You cannot live without God.

So if you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you are depending too heavily on "your own" strength. It’s strange to think that you are feeling afraid because you are believing that you are powerful. Or that you are afraid because you think you are tough. Or you are afraid because you believe you can do anything and everything and don’t need any help. Or you are afraid because you see yourself as not needing any help. But this is precisely the backwards effects which the ego produces, pretending it is going to help you to be more distinctly separate, when all it does is hurt you more.

If you are afraid, it means you are not trusting God right now. It means you are listening to the ego and are fantasizing about how powerful you are. Trying to be powerful without God makes you powerless. To have power over others against their will strips you of your power and turns you into a vulnerable victim. If you are afraid, you need to let go of trying to do this all on your own. The more you try, the more you will fail. Seek and do not find.

It is not necessary to do everything on your own. Nor is it a matter of being a separate hero and having Holy Spirit back you up or having mighty companions to support you and surround you. I used to do that more, trying to retain my separate will and have Holy Spirit as a kind of servant to do my bidding and make my separate problems go away.

It’s more a matter of surrendering control of what you think is "your life", which you are trying to will independently of God, and give your life back to God. Make room for Him to help you. Let Him share it with you. Let Him solve the problems and carry the burden. Let Him look after others for you. Allow the freedom of not having to carry the whole world on your shoulders. It’s too big for anyone to do so in isolation.

Share your life with God and you gain the power of God. Paradoxically, allowing Him to live through you will allow you to live forever. Letting Him take over and direct you specifically, and being willing to listen and learn and do, to follow direction, will be far better for you than the outcomes you are trying to manipulate into being. Controlling your will and making it oppose God’s is not ever going to work in your favor.

God has a plan. God knows how to fix stuff. God knows what everyone needs, including you. Let Him lead the way and there will be no fear. Trust Him, and all your worries will vanish.

"To the extent to which you identify with the ego's self, you will identify with the ego's strategy, and so you will become afraid of the power of your mind."

Ask Jesus what to do! Learn to ask Him more than you ask yourself. So often I am considering what to do or not do, relying on my own self to know and be able ego decide. Jesus says, "ask!"

"Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear."

In the physical world, there are bodies, which are fake people.

In the spiritual world, there are souls, which are real people.

The two never really meet and should not be confused with each other. All mixing and confusion between the two in which the two levels are trying to be combined, is the state of mental illness, ego and body-identification.

The soul never really truly incarnates or becomes a body. The body never enters heaven. We have to UNLEARN that souls/minds are bodies, or that they are even in bodies.

The only thing that appears to happen is that the MIND of the soul temporarily imagines bodies and tries to identify with them, dreaming of spacetime and a material world, believing in it and trying to become one with it. But it can't succeed because it's impossible to leave the spirit world or to truly separate.

We're not really incarnate, we are not bodies, and we never will be.

"The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

"He Who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees Himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore He is limitless."

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet."

"This MUST be true, if there is no communication AT ALL between the ego and the Holy Spirit."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there."

The really big problem we have isn't so much to do with the characteristics of the ego. The big problem that we've confused who we are with it. Our sense of 'self' has become caught up in it. Our identity has been redefined by it. We actually believe that IT is who we are.

This is where we run into all manner of problems, and again, not even touching on the ego's death wish or all of its lies and deceptions, just the mere FACT of you having 'attached your self' to the ego presents major issues.

So just to clarify, there is YOU, and then there are two thought systems. There is the entire ego and its thought system, and then there is Holy Spirit and His thought system. YOU are either identified with and absorbed in one or the other. You, as the 'decision maker', float back and forth between them, but spend most of your time in ego land.

So who 'you' are, is really actually a combination of TWO things, your 'self', and either God or the ego. When you are identified with the ego, you THINK that you are 'one identity', but in fact you are two identities. You+ego. It's either that, or you+God. In God you actually can become ONE, but with the ego, you are always still separate and split and confused about who you really are, because you can't be fully one with the ego.

The problem now is, that you will try to become more spiritual. Now this alone leads to hellish problems. You will be holding on tight to the ego, while at the same time, attempting to become spiritual or to move in the direction of spirit. This is a major issue because your sense of identity is still very tied to the ego, so any efforts you make you 'stop being ego', will be experienced by the 'you' that is identified with the ego, as 'you attacking yourself'. The part of you tied to it will resist the truth, will not want to wake up, will retaliate and attempt to protect itself from the truth that the other part of you is exposing yourself to, and you will terrorize yourself!

What this also leads to is another major issue. Attempting to become spiritual WITHOUT dis-identifying from the ego, will cause you to attempt to bring the ego along WITH you in that transformation. You will try to make IT be more spiritual, because you think it is who you are. You'll attempt to transform the ego self, to pull the ego self into a new kind of thought system that it completely rejects and is incompatible with. It will resist strongly and it will not be able to stay there. So while you stay identified with the ego, you will constantly be pulled back into the ego after any endeavor to reach the light of truth. You will open up a little bit to truth, then the ego will act like a bungie cord, pulling you back down to its 'level' of consciousness.

So basically you have a major identity crisis. Who you think you are is so attached to the ego and its thoughts, that whenever you try to wake up, you think that you're being attacked. And really you are. If you are going to hold onto the ego while simultaneously trying to become more truthful/honest, you are going to SUFFER. You will spiritualize the ego. You will experience constant ego 'rebounds', which really is the ego-attached you pulling YOURSELF back to the ego that you trust, as if it is yourself. 'You', who think you are the ego, do NOT want to wake up, because the ego doesn't, and cannot.

This is basically the issue of what you are experiencing on 'level 1', which is the ego's level. Your identification WITH everything happening on level 1 ie ego thought system, attaches you to it. If you want to get OUT of the ego's thought system, and get to level 2 (Holy Spirit), it is going to be IMPOSSIBLE for you to make any lasting progress unless you are willing to LET GO OF THE EGO. Transforming the ego will not work because it cannot be turned into holiness. Leaping high in the air trying to grab the fruits of truth will only gravitate you crashing back to the ground again. The ego can't come with you to heaven.

So to really make progress here, you are going to have to realize, at some point, you have to stop all of your efforts to make your ego-identified self be spiritual. You, who YOU REALLY are, is already capable of 'being spiritual' IF you will attach to the Holy Spirit. You only need to let go of the ego's 'hand' and hold the Holy Spirit's 'hand', and hey-presto, you will SHARE the thought system of spirituality. You will enter into it. You will experience it. And your sharing of it will identify you with it and make it yours - not exclusively yours but still yours.

In essence you 'need do nothing' in order to qualify for entry to the 'spiritual universe'. YOU, who you really are, cannot change, because YOU are immortal spirit. You, as immortal spirit, have gotten lost in thinking you and the ego are the same self. That is all. You only need to be willing to SURRENDER the ego, let go of the ego, dis-identify from the ego, drop the ego, stop believing you are the ego, and remember who you really are (in Holy Spirit's mind), and you're done. All you're doing is getting divorced from the ego and marrying Holy Spirit, and along with that your whole sense of 'self' will change, away from the confusion of 'I am a separate ego' to 'I am shared immortal holy spirit'.

So really, YOU do not change at all. You just leave and surrender a mind that you thought was you, realizing YOU continue on without it and that you are NOT it, and enter into (return to) a mind based on God's mind where you have a whole different identity to associate with. This has little to do with who or what you 'are', and more to do with 'who you are with'. When you are with the ego, you think you're it. When you're with God, you tune into your real identity as His Creation.

You are free to leave the ego at any time. Nothing is keeping you in it but your decision to stay. There is another option and the ego is not your Self.

When you are in this world, it seems that who and what you are, is of this world. That you are a body.

When you are in heaven, who and what you are, is of heaven. You are spirit/mind without a body. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

The two worlds are completely opposite. You cannot be one while being the other. You cannot live in one while living in the other. You cannot be aware of one while being aware of the other. Which you side with is your choice.

"Every decision you make is made for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you AWARENESS of what you decided FOR."

Either you are located within and made from, heaven. Or you are located within and made from hell. You are either spirit or matter. This is all there is to choose between.

Generally speaking, if you are not in any way spiritual, you will completely identify with being in this world, being a body, being mortal matter. You will confine yourself to your body and believe it is your self. And everything you do will revolve around trying to protect your fragile life and ward off inevitable death.

The idea is that, to be spiritual, you must identify as spirit. And that simply means, that while you are here having your body, you learn that you are IN and OF and FROM another world.

Everything which is true of heaven, must become your truth. All the laws of God must become the only laws you abide by. Your immortal eternal nature must be your only reality. Your invulnerability and power and fearless love must be your entire experience.

And this also means, on the flipside, that anything NOT of heaven MUST be denied. It is opposite to your heavenly nature. Bodies, planets, galaxies, space, time, limitations, all forms of suffering, even death, have to be completely denied. You must not accept them as true of yourself, or what you are made of.

This entails recognizing that this entire world is not reality. It is a dream. And everything in it is merely a dream. And none of it means anything. And none of it is valuable in any way. This world must be regarded as literally nothing, if you are to gain everything of the Kingdom.

"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 this world has nothing to give."

You cannot have it both ways. Ultimately to completely return to communion with God you MUST fully and completely and willingly embrace your entire true reality in heaven. You must wake up to what is actually real. And you must wake up FROM this dream world, leaving it behind to vanish.

While you are working your way TOWARD the goal of BEING ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, of knowing yourself, you will find your experience of THIS world changing. Your perception of it will change. The light of heaven will begin shining through you to illuminate your day. And you will become more loving. But this does not change any facts about what this world is or what is real

.Reaching what we call "the real world" or the "forgiven world" is just a stepping stone along the way home. It really ultimately is not important. You will pass THROUGH it, just before you enter heaven's gates. But not for a second will you look back longingly upon it or want for it to remain, when you wake up to the glory of the Kingdom.

It really is very simple in the big picture. Vigilance for the Kingdom must become your total attention. You must accept only what God has established as true, and reject everything out of accord with it. You must not believe anything the world says or suggests or demonstrates as true. You must assert the power and life of the Kingdom so that you can demonstrate resurrection and overcome death itself.

Either you are mortal or immortal. Either you accept your immortality or you deny it and pretend to die. Your choice. Nothing in the world can stop you or do ANYTHING to you. You are absolutely invulnerable permanent perfection forever. This world has nothing on you and adds nothing to you. And you cannot keep it if you are to know God. And why would you want to keep nothingness?

"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. But 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, and 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."

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.

I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. But God did not will the destruction of His Creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you for yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom it has no power."

I seem to be operating through a male body in this lifetime. It has a certain appearance. A certain shape. It functions in a given way and has certain seeming abilities and inabilities. There are appendages and shapes and features which other bodies don't seem to have. It seems to have a physical gender. It seems to have needs. When it looks upon itself in the mirror using its own eyes it sees an image of what it seems to be.

But this body is not who I am. I am not a male, or a humanoid. I do not really have arms and legs or a head. This strange creature I inhabit is not my self. It is but one of many possible iterations of bodies, all of which are distinctly different, and none of which are an accurate representation of my soul. None of them, not even this one, depicts who I really am.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

Your face is not how you look, any more than the face of another person's body is how they look. The face is a disguise designed to present a picture of what appears to be a "person", or someone looking, or someone speaking. But this face is just an instrument, a device, a facade, like the outside of a building. It actually hides the invisible self which cannot be seen with the body's eyes. This face is merely an arrangement of bones and flesh and muscles and sensory organs operating in a certain, very specific way.

What you are as a permanent, perfect creation of God, cannot possibly bend to become the shape of a particular body. In one lifetime you might show up as a woman, in another as a man, and in another as a woman again. Shapes and features of different sizes and proportions and colors and behaviors. None of these conform precisely to the true nature of what you are, and not one of them is wholly a perfect depiction of yourself.

In fact, because the core of you is so perfect and formless, every single body that you could ever utilize cannot come close to or even touch upon your true nature. Every one of them is distanced from your identity and set apart from or is external to your soul's true nature. They are all strange pictures of persons, who are not really persons, portraying physicalized images of artificial identity, as temporary substitutes for who and what you are.

When you identify with or as this body, believing it is completely yourself, there must be quite a jump of the gap between your true nature and the nature of this strange image. You must distort yourself, confine yourself, mangle yourself, in order to consider yourself to BE IT. You must be not yourself, in the most extreme way, in order to regard it as who and what you are. Are you at toe? Are you a buttock? Are you teeth? Do you chop off parts of yourself when you get a haircut? Do you shed yourself? Are you constantly changing? You are not these things. And trying to identify as these things, alone, must induce mental illness simply because these things are so unlike you.

There was a gospel of Judas which was discovered, I think it was part of the dead sea scrolls. I watched this on tv some years ago... in which, for one thing, Judas was properly recognized as being the one who was closest to Jesus and most believing him, which is why the authorities later depicted him as the worst traitor, to slander him. And in this gospel there were accounts that Jesus had already accomplished such spirit identification that he was able to transfigure in and out of different bodies. Sometimes appearing as a woman, sometimes as a child, or an old man, depending on what form was suitable to meet with particular people.

I don't find this to be improbable or impossible. Some of the great masters of the East have acquired similar abilities, dissolving the body and turning into a ball of light which then flies over the land and then rematerializes as a body later. Clearly when one has total clarity about what one is, and has power over the body and all forms, this kind of thing becomes easy and possible.

We are not bodies. We are spirit beings. And we do not need bodies in order to exist. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." You do not need a body to be with God, or to be yourself. "God did not create the body." and so it is not a natural part of you or your inheritance. We must learn to correctly recognize that even the body we have right now, is not our identity. I am not a 6-foot caucasian male in his 40's. This is just the particular picture that my mind is projecting or that I chose to show up as or "incarnate into". In my last life, I was probably a woman.

In order to love yourself and to love everyone equally you cannot be offended by, putt of by, judging of, preferring, or being biased in any way about particular types of bodies. Fat or thin, large or small, tall or short, gay or straight, masculine or feminine, hairy or bald, ugly or beautiful, it should not matter, because these are all just clothing. Just flesh suits which our real selves are temporarily using. And no matter how a particular body appears, it is not the person.

Holding the body against them is like accusing them of sin. You must learn to look beyond your body and theirs, to recognize that deep within, there is a shining light, a perfect soul, just the same as yours, and all the children of God are perfectly identical and equal in Christ.

The ego mind plays ALL of the roles in the dream simultaneously.

It is all of the characters at once, even if those characters seem to be completely against each other, or working together. It is like a puppeteer with billions of hands, pulling all the strings at once.

It is the person victimizing someone and also the person being victimized.

It is the hero coming to rescue the homeless personstuck in the river and also the homeless person stuck in the river.

It is the man shouting at some woman across the street, and also the woman being shouted at.

It is the person cutting you off in traffic, and you being cut off in traffic.

It is the person skapegoating another and attacking them as well as the person being skapegoated and attacked.

It is the politician you like and the politician you don't like.

It is your favorite team and their arch rivals.

Is is the person in the relationship who is angry and right and the other person in the relationship who is also angry and right.

But there is another mind, a non-ego mind. The mind of the Holy Spirit, which overlooks these artificial roles and the need for them. It does not identify with any of the sides being taken or any of the attacks, which ultimately are attacks upon the attacker. Whatever one person does that they think they do to another, they do to themselves. Whatever the ego mind thinks it escapes, it condemns itself with. And whoever is your enemy, is yourself.

Only if you can recognize that you are ALL of these people, in Oneness, can you truly take the responsibility to step out of ALL ego roles and disguises and be a consistent, authentic self. You can't play the game if you see that all of the pieces are set up as self attacks. There is nothing to gain. Holy Spirit sees through the costumes and the dramas and the pretense that one person is not another. He knows we are all one.

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.

While it may seem like the ego is the idea of an individual self, some kind of artificial self, this isn't really an accurate way to frame it. The ego is actually the idea of NOT having a self.

In heaven God created your soul which is your real self. It is a fully created being. It is an individual being, at least in the sense that it has its own mind and free will, but it ALSO SHARES with everyone else, and so is also one.

"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."

"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 because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

In the separation, the willingness to share was denied, producing a state of selfishness. "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness." Selfishness is an attempt to withdraw from sharing, to not want to be be one with the rest.

In what we might describe as "making an ego", the truth is that we didn't really make an ego. We HID the soul. And we did this by denying the soul. This repression of self was an act of TRYING NOT TO EXIST. It was an attempt not to will anything at all.

In attempting not to exist, which is really an attempt to murder God's son, you tried to have en existence in which you didn't really exist. It was one thing to have the idea of existing "apart from God", but the real truth is that you were attempting NOT to exist at all. To be the total opposite of eternal life, which is death.

The ego then isn't really a self, or an individual. It is the idea of NOT SELF. It is really an ILLUSION of a self, seeming to be like a self, but this illusion is actually a deception. It isn't really the presence of something, it is actually the ABSENCE of self. It is a lack of self.

It lacks wholeness, it lacks real identity, it lacks truth and sanity, it lacks will power, and it lacks life. What it SEEMS to be, it is not. It appears to be a thing, but it is really a no-thing. It is an anti-self, and Jesus sometimes refers to it as the anti-christ. The lack of christ. A LACK OF "everything that exists" is obviously not the PRESENCE of anything at all.

So the ego is this upside-down idea of "a separate self" that you made. But secretly, when recognized, this illusion of a self existing is really actually an attempt to make something that DOES NOT exist. And it's not really there at all. That's the illusion of it. There is not really an ego.

When you identify with "the ego" and try to believe that it exists or that it is a self, or it is your own self, you are really identifying with nothingness. You are trying to reject your true existence as a soul and are trying to seemingly "take on" a new self.

As if you can line up the soul and the ego side-by-side and pick between them. But the ego isn't alongside the soul in this way, because it doesn't have any existence. So you're really identifying with a fictional nothingness that isn't really there, while believing it is really something.

If we correctly identify that the ego is a LACK OF SELF, and is an attempt NOT to exist, which is an effort to die or to cause the death of God's son, then we need to also recognize that the ego is NOT really an individual. Nor is it really the idea of individuality. It is the idea of separation from sharing an identity in christ. It's the idea of NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. As if you don't even exist at all.

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

When the ego is undone, so to speak, we're not REALLY talking about undoing something that exists. We're talking about recognizing that is never was anything at all. That there IS no ego. That it is NOT your self. And it was never really a self. We're talking about shifting from identifying as "I don't exist" to "I do exist." From identifying with nothingness while pretending it's everything, to identifying with everything and recognizing that the ego is nothing. Your soul IS everything.

So really it's all upside down. And a lot of people have believed this idea that the ego IS a self, and IS a real individual. And that therefore, we have to get rid of this self, and therefore get rid of individuality in order to be spiritual. But this then leads to the false conclusion that you HAVE NO SELF. Or that individuality is a bad thing. Thus has individuality received a bad wrap, and people keep thinking that there are no individuals in heaven. The truth is there are no real individuals on earth, and heaven is full of them!

The separation from God therefore was never really an issue about individuality. It was never really about BECOMING an individual. You had an individual self BEFORE the separation even happened, it's just that your individual self was so SHARED with others that it was also one with them. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God." "You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." Remember that "God who encompasses all being

nevertheless CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS who HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy." That is normal, that is natural. It's OKAY to have an individual self, provided it shares and is not selfish. The ego is all about specialness and selfishness. Getting rid of the specialness and selfishness doesn't have to get rid of YOU. Especially when the specialness and selfishness was an attempt to get rid of you in the first place.

As you awaken, as you come to know yourself, as you return to being as God created you to be forever, as you acknowledge your brothers ACTUALLY PERMANENTLY EXIST along with you in reality, and therefore that you DO HAVE real relationships, and that everything belongs to everyone, the sense of "I am a real ego" is replaced with "I don't have an ego". But not having an ego doesn't mean YOU don't exist.

The end of an illusion of a self, an illusion of who you are not, of what you are not, of NOT existing, and NOT having a self, is the re-dawning on your awareness of your REAL SELF which has always existed and always will exist. A recognition of your individuality AND your shared nature. A reclaiming of your real identity in christ. And awakening to remembering that you are the soul God created to live forever.

"The Name of Jesus is the Name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

Your ego is the denial of the Self that God created. Its foundation is the belief that you do not have a Self - that you are not the whole. It represents your attack upon your SELF, in an attempt to destroy yourself, which is why the ego wants you dead.

Being rooted in limitation and separation, it is a sense of self that depends on being separate from other selves. It has to reject other selves in order to seem to exist. And so you have to make an ego for yourself AND for others in order to distinguish that you have one.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable."

Your ego is obviously in a state of contradiction, because its goal is to be a full self, but it simultaneously hates the full self and denies it. It requires that it lacks something that others have, and has something that others lack, in order to be different and unique and stand out. It is made of relative differences, because it is not absolute. This is why it can never be satisfied or achieve its goal. But that doesn't mean it won't try, so long as "seek and do not find" is its guiding rule.

So the ego is the search for your self, where your mind is trying to find the self that it is denying. It refuses to stop denying self and actually find self, and wants to always be in a state of not knowing what it is. It will search intently to try to increase its awareness of self, to have more and more sense of self, of existing, but without ever questioning the original denial of self.

In order to increase the sense of self, this partial, limited, finite, less than whole, small self, has to constantly build itself up, bolster itself, increase its sense of identity, reinforce itself, validate itself, prove itself, get recognition, and generally increase the attention it gets.

Your ego does not care how it does this, only that it does this. It doesn't care if it means identifying negatively about yourself, being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, being a victim, because these all still have the hidden payoff that it validates the EXISTENCE of the ego. If you are suffering, you must exist.

Your ego will wear any kind of clothing including negative unhappy hurtful senses of identity, if it means you still at least exist in some way. A hurt, damaged, suffering, sick, lonely, unhappy self is still a separate self. Just as much as a separate self that seems happier and more successful and rich and famous.

This is because the ego's fundamental drive is to become more self. To exist more. It doesn't care how it does it. It wants something separate to identify with. It wants to be validated as existing at all. It wants attention, even if it is highly negative attention, or positive attention, so long as it is the attention that it wants to be the centre of.

It wants to be noticed, even if that means being a victim, being abused, being attacked, being threatened. It doesn't care, so long as someone somewhere is validating its existence. And even wanting to AVOID attention is another way to stand apart and be different, to be secretly noticed as avoidant and hiding and ashamed.

As Jesus says in the course the ego also loves the idea of analysing the ego, even if the goal seems to be to try to undo the ego and figure out its functioning so that you can rise above it. Because by thus focusing on the ego and its workings you are STILL validating it and giving it attention. It loves to be talked about regardless of what is said about it.

The overall theme here is that the egos tools can take many different forms, but its fundamental PURPOSE or USE OF those tools is always towards its singular aim of making itself exist more. It could even come up with the thought and emotion, "I'm suffering so badly, it hurts", as though it does not want this. But you might not notice the secret underlying assertion here: *I* am a suffering self that exists, and *I* am having real hurt, therefore I must exist.

It always revolves around a sense of "me". But this sense of me is a limited identity. Since it lacks self and lacks existence, your ego needs to "get more self" from somewhere. It seeks for others to confirm its existence, it seeks to be superior to others so that it can be more right and have more truth, it seeks to be inferior to others so that it can wallow in its real suffering and be a suffering self, and it even seeks to pretend to be indifferent so as to be a neutral self that sits on a fence.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

Always in whatever way the ego expresses, it always is with the PURPOSE of finding a way to bolster the sense of existing. And usually this purpose is hidden and not overtly stated. There is a kind of indirect payoff. While ego is busy putting attack thoughts in your mind, you might not realize that the REASON WHY its putting them there is so that it can get more mind-power to use to reinforce itself, or that it is busy adding to its stockpile of labels and definitions of itself.

When you are angry at someone for example, hurling guilt and pretending that you're innocent, you may not realize the subtler hidden purpose of WHO it is that is angry. WHO is benefiting from the game - it's the ego. If you are an angry self, you are still a self. If you can increase the sense of separation with another person by dissociating from them and wanting nothing to do with them, wanting them to stop existing, it intensifies the sense of being separate from them, which in turn increases the sense of existing as a separate self.

It's always very helpful to ask yourself, "how is my ego benefiting from this?" With any emotions, any reactions, and projections, any attack thoughts, anything that is not peace and love, you should ask yourself how this is benefiting the existence of your ego. And you will likely see that there is always some kind of payoff, some way that it benefits "you", some way that you get something out of it. If nothing else, that it simply confirms that you as ego exist.

Another of the egos big tools is to be right. When you are trying to be right, it's because you believe you are guilty and wrong, and are trying to project that onto someone else, so that someone else can be wrong and you can pretend to be right. It may seem at first that the benefit here is that someone else gets to be the guilty one. But that's not the real goal. The real goal is to increase the sense of separation between you and others, which splits your mind, intensifies the sense of being "not them", and thereby intensifies the sense of "being me."

Another of its devices is being judgemental. It may seem at first that the payoff in judging is that you're finding something wrong with someone else, perhaps to be superior to them, or to confirm how you are inferior to them. But the real secret payoff is that if you are superior you are "more than", and "more real" and "more true." And this increases the sense of existing. And being inferior to others or less than or insecure, even if unpleasant, still increases the sense of being something - existing. And all the labels you pile on are just more definitions for what you are.

Another big tool is grievances. If you are bearing a grudge it means you are holding onto the past, which means you are pulling your self away from the present. The present is where your real self has presence, and exists, so the ego does not want anything to do with it. It wants to maintain unhealed unresolved ties to the past so that it can be anchored in it. It needs the past in order to have grudges and grievances that it can keep blaming other people for, so that it can keep projecting and separating and reinforcing itself. Without grievances there can be no way to distinguish that you are separate from others, and so can't exist as an ego.

So it's not just about scapegoating, or being a negative or positive victim, or being at the effect of the world, or people attacking you, or you projecting guilt, or disowning of responsibility, or trying to identify with idols, or becoming a body, or whatever else. The CORE motivation of the entire ego thought system, the GOAL, is to keep being a separate self and REPLACE (kill off) the Self that God created. To keep reinforcing ego, building it, armouring it, defending it, intensifying it, having pride in it, decorating it, increasing it through any means possible.

This is all rooted in the core belief that you are not as God created you. And by denying the self God created, you seem to believe you lack self. That you lack love, power, identity, causal will. And it is these beliefs - these blocks to the awareness of love's (Self's) presence - these denials, that you lack all these things, that really needs to be undone.

Undoing these things doesn't directly attack the ego, and trying to get rid of ego by demonising or attacking it will just be more ego attacking itself to make itself exist more. You can't undo it by using ego tactics to fight it. You have to surrender it.

You undo it by basically withdrawing belief from it, not listening to it, noticing how you're adding to it, being willing to be mistaken, but even moreso by looking at the beliefs you have about NOT being a self, about being unwhole or unholy, about how you lack and are in need, how you don't have love, how you've lost something, how you've been diminished, and this general theme of "something is wrong with me." Your "self attack" has to stop.

Without these faults, these lacks, these needs, this wanting, this self denial and self attack, there can be no guilt and no ego. And the way to undo self attack is through the secret of salvation, in which you recognize you're doing it to yourself and you stop doing it because you want a better way. And that is the path of forgiveness - to undo ego by questioning its foundation. By accepting that you are still as God created you, lacking nothing, needing nothing, ending victimhood, reclaiming power and responsibility for what you are, and opening up to your real identity as the Christ self - the whole holy self, which is based on oneness not separation.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."

"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."

"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

"I and my Father are One." "I am as God Created me" "Let me remember I am one with God." "Let me remember God created me."

Last night I had an interesting experience. I was focusing on love and God and feeling His presence. I somehow managed to become "high" enough with love, that I formed some kind of connection with God. Like a bridge. And in this connection it suddenly occurred to me that I am LIKE God, in that I was filled with love and God is also filled with love.

In seeing this it become very joyfully obvious that I am just LIKE my father. We have the same NATURE. And because of this likeness, I felt a very real sense of BEING HIS SON, due to the fact that I am "just like Him". It implied instantly that I must have come from Him, because both of us were exactly alike. It was so obvious. It was the first time that I ever felt this dynamic of recognition that I MUST be His Son because I am the same as His nature. Almost as if to say I look like Him, if He had an image.

I also realized that this only was possible because of the presence of love in me, at a significant enough level, to be able to equate with God like this. And I could also see that previously the lack or absence of love had been too strong to be able to see this. It is no wonder that I feared God or thought God was not like me or was not love, because I was too distanced from His nature to really recognize that we have something in common.

This also made me realize how much I do not really know who or what I am, because only when I identify as love am I really being what I really am. At other times when the love is not in my awareness I literally have lost touch with who I am and who God is and seem separate from and unlike Him.

I enjoyed the experience of "being just like God" for a while, even if it was only a slight hint of what's to come. It was enough to be able to sense that, because I am so alike God, I MUST BE HIS.

We are immortal beings. But we keep trying to prove that we're not.That's what all the activities of the world are about. All the sickness and suffering. All the death. All the guilt and fear. It's all people trying to disprove their immortality.

Being immortal you cannot be attacked, upset, unhappy, sick, dead, suffer in any way. You can't be guilty or afraid.

We came to this world attempting to die. Except that we can't. So how did we try to pull it off? We invented bodies, fake identities, which we pretend to be. And then we attack them and make them suffer, to try to prove it is we who are suffering. And to do that we identify with them and forget who we are.

The question is, why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep trying to make bad things happen? Why do we keep inflicting suffeirng on ourselves? Why do we keep choosing sickness and pain? Why do we keep trying to destroy ourselves?

It's a bit insane in and of itself, but even moreso when you realize that it really cannot work. What is immortal cannot be attacked or die. So... the whole exercise is futile and cannot work. You'd have to be in denial to think it could.

That's the main problem. We're in denial because we are DENYING that we are immortal. And we keep pretending that we're not alive forever.We might then think that we are struggling against attack, against externally inflicted suffering, against contracting sickness from the environment, against other people.... but all of that is a decoy and not the cause of any of it. It's us trying to prove we can die.

"Swear not to die, you holy son of God"

"You are immortal and you cannot die"

How can an immortal being even seem to die, given they cannot? They have to themselves fake their own death. They have to pretend to suffer. They have to make bad things seem to happen to try to justify it. But all of it's just a lie, a performance, a cover-up.

When you just accept the sanity that you are already immortal and perfect and there is no point to the world, you'll wake up to the eternal life God gave you and which you can never lose.

"They die till you accept your own Eternal Life."

"IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt,"

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

The ego... what we call ego, is just insanity in our minds. The only reason we keep identifying with/as it and listening to it and trying to be it, is because we do not RECOGNIZE that it is insane. We believe it is the sane truth. We believe in being egotistical, but we don't realize that's what we're doing. We think it's something else, and are deceived.

You cannot fight against the ego because fighting is itself egoic. But you can rise out of it when you simply recognize you no longer WANT IT. And all that requires is that you recognize it for what it is - that it IS insane.

If you do not realize it is insane, you'll believe it makes total sense and will side with it and want to support it. Because everyone always sides with whatever they see as true on any level. But the egos falseness - or rather, the fact that it is part of an insane system, once recognised as insane, reveals how it does NOT make sense, and then you can no longer regard it as true.

To get out of the ego, or dis-identify from it, then, all you really have to do is realize its nature - that it is so contradictory it makes no sense. To see the truth about it, rather than seeing what it says about the truth. Kind of like the hidden facts being revealed, a liar finally shown to be telling lies out in the open, a "culprit" if you will finally unmasked.

You won't support it or be it or side with it or want it or love it or regard it as your SELF, if you can step out of the insanity long enough to be in SANITY, or to "see", in the light, so that the full picture of its nature is revealed. You'll just realize this cannot be true, and it cannot be you, and you'll just drop support for it.

You'll no longer believe it or buy into its lies because you've finally seen the truth, and will never trust the bullshit again. Then it's game over for the ego, which never really existed to begin with. No one can WANT madness if they recognize it AS madness, because everyone ALWAYS wants the truth. It's only when truth is misplaced and misperceived and associated with un-true things that we get into trouble.

"NO-ONE wants madness, nor does anyone cling to his madness if he sees that this is what it IS. What PROTECTS madness is the belief THAT IT IS TRUE. It is the FUNCTION of insanity to TAKE THE PLACE of truth. It must be seen AS truth, to be believed. And, if it IS the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, COMPLETELY turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, IS the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free." UrT23C15

The ego only attacks itself. When it targets a person, and it refers to some kind of identity that is the recipient of its attack, that identity is always comprised of egoic properties.

When it says "you are....", it's referring to some guilty person. When it tries to attack "you", it's attacking a sinful you.

It is actually addressing itself within its own thought system. It never actually addresses God or innocence.

It never says, "you perfectly innocent so and so". Innocence is never really its target. It cannot even conceive of innocence.

That means, the ego attacking itself can only affect YOU if you have changed your identity into an ego identity. If you believe you are made of sin and guilt and fear, then when the ego directs something at you, it will be directing it at that false, sinful self. It's really screaming at itself.

If you are not identified with the ego when the ego attacks itself, you will not experience any effects. You will recognize it is not about YOU, because you are not the guilty target that it is addressing. It's talking about someone else. If you are innocent and sinless, then it literally never even mentions your name. Your "name" is the identity you have and what you are made of. If you are not made from ego, then the ego cannot even address you.

So when you are out of the ego, and someone tries to attack, the only way you will take it personally is if you perceive they are actually addressing YOU, and the only way that's possible is for you to identify with IT. So again, the ego attacks only itself.

This is also why the ego's attacks have absolutely no effect on the innocent and immortal Spirit of God, or His Son, or His Creation. This is why nothing real can be threatened.

When you buy into the ego (believe in it) and think it is yourself, you are giving the ego "permission" to attack "you". It now has access to you, and when it attacks, it will seem to hurt you. Just by your being in the ego thought system gives it access. It can only attack itself so the only way to attack you is for you to be identified with it.

In other words, if you believe in "real sin", that you are really sinful, then you have identified that you are a part of the ego thought system. And now because of your "sin", it warrants punishment, and now the ego can seem to attack you. This is exactly the same as the Christian belief that if you sin, this gives the "devil" permission to attack you and possess you. If you align with the ego, you are "opening the door" and authorizing punishment by the ego/devil.

This is how the belief in real sin automatically grants the ego access to punish you. The way out is to not believe that your identity contains real sin. You are innocent. And you are free. And therefore you have nothing to worry about because the innocent are invulnerable to the ego.

Only ego can only attack itself. It cannot attack what is not inside of itself.

If you are outside of the ego, you cannot be attacked. You are immortal and invulnerable.

If you identify with ego, labeling your sense of self as being "made of" something ego .... sin, guilt, fear, sickness, unworthiness, etc... then you can be attacked. Because THAT illusion can be attacked, because it IS attack.

The ego can only attack that which is PART OF its thought system. It is like a dog which runs wild in a yard, barking and screaming, threatening to bite, but the yard is fenced in, and so long as you are not inside the fence, the dog can do nothing.

Identifying with/as something illusory, ie ego, you put yourself inside the yard. Now your "self" is inside the realm of the ego's thought system. And it will attack you, because all illusions are thoughts of war. The ego is a mindset of self-attack, inner conflict, a war with yourself.

The Kingdom of God is outside of the realm of the ego, or rather, the ego is nowhere that God's Creation is. The Kingdom of God therefore cannot be attacked. The mind of the ego cannot enter Heaven. As soon as it approaches the light it is dispelled and dissolved.

Darkness cannot exist where there is light. And the ego "self" cannot be taken into the light, or into heaven. Trying to do so will merely make it either resist or pretend that it is becoming spiritual. Darkness has no effect on light, but the belief that darkness can hide light is part of the ego's insanity.

So if you want to be immortal, all you need to do is recognize your identity has nothing to do with ego, is not made of ego in any way, has no illusions in it, and is outside of the ego thought system. Then you cannot be touched.

There is then NOTHING the ego can do to attack you or hurt you, to make you sick, to make you die, to make you suffer in any way. You are utterly OUT OF REACH. You cannot be sick or die and you do not depend whatsoever on the ego's forms of supply or sustaining of life. You are sustained by the love of God. The love of God doesn't just warm your heart amidst a dreary world, it POWERS YOU and PROTECTS YOU.

What is innocent and sinless cannot be sinned against. Perfect invulnerability is not only possible is the ONLY real possibility.

Immortality is permanent and real. Mortality is a lie. Immortality is not an exception, it is perfectly natural. Mortality is UNNATURAL.

The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.

You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.

Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.

The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.

Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.

It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.

To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?

When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.

Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.

The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.

In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.

You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.

It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

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.

As you look at someone's body, you think this is them. It's not. Look more closely. Notice how the body itself is a kind of externalized appearance of solidity, which blinds you. The person is "inside" the body behind the physical appearance. Look at how their spirit or mind is within the body, and the body covers it up. You cannot seemingly SEE the spirit.

Think also about how you yourself, in your own body, have a difference experience on the "inside" of your body than other people seem to "see" in the outside. And when you look in the mirror there is a disconnect between how the body looks and your sense of identity - particularly if you are not heavily identified with your body. Who you are on the inside can be quite different to how you appear physically.

So then recognize this is true of others as well. Who they are is not the body that you see at first glance. It's far too easy to be blinded by sight of form and to fixate on the physical body of a person thinking that IS the person. The physical body of another was MADE TO BLOCK SIGHT. To prevent you from seeing your brother BEHIND the body's form. Bodies are separation devices, designed to imprison souls in order to identify them as locked up inside images of differences and illusions.

If you can particularly regard someone's "inner self" or "the person" distinct from the body, it is quite interesting what happens to your perception. Not identifying THEIR body "as them", but rather looking past it to the person "behind" or "within" it, and see that inner person, you overlook the body. And suddenly it becomes quite funny how everything you thought was true about the person was actually a statement about the state of their BODY.

So if their body seems to be sick or has problems and you have regarded these things as "part of the person", you have been deceived. When you look past the illusory appearances of physicality, and try to look at the inner person, you may transcend the body and suddenly realize that all of the body's states and characteristics are NOT the person.

Therefore the body is NOT a representative of the person directly, but rather a once-removed picture of their inner condition. Seeing the inner condition allows you to recognize this, and then it becomes quite hilarious, especially if you had bought into their physical differences or disabilities previously. It also shows you the body then in its proper perspective, that it isn' the person but merely an outward picture, and therefore its state or condition DOES NOT MATTER ie has no truth to it, therefore you can easily NOT BELIEVE IN IT and work miracles to heal the person, disregarding the body's appearance as meaning anything at all.

This false non-duality idea of "you don't have a self" is not part of ACIM itself and is only something that people have projected onto it in attempting to mis-understand it.

You DO have a self, a PERMANENT soul, which God created. There is a you in Heaven. God loves YOU and always will.

Being in ego, it really means an attempt to DENY yourself, to NOT BE yourself. The ego and the body are images of what you THINK you are, which are attempts to cover up what you REALLY are. What you really are is a permanent spirit being, a soul, a Son of God, which God created with eternal life.

We are permanently brothers in creation. In reality, God created many children and we are all equal. Every one of us has an individuality.

"God who encompasses all being NEVERTHELESS created separate beings who have everything INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy."

Believing that "you will end" in the atonement is really the ego's fear. The EGO will end, and the ego is not you. In fact the ego is NOT the idea of a self. It is an ILLUSION of a self, APPEARING to be a self, but is EXACTLY OPPOSITE TO THAT. It is the idea of the END OF YOU. It is the anti-christ. Which is why it leads to death.

It's the idea that YOUR SELF, which God gave you, has "become separated from" other selves. That you've been ostracized from the family. Rejected. Abandoned. Alone. It is this "separation from" the rest of God's Kingdom that is being healed in the atonement, so that you can RETURN TO being in UNITY WITH all other created beings. To return home to reunite with your brothers and with God.

The ego fears its end because the Holy Spirit proves IT does not exist. Atonement is the end of the ego. But YOU are not the ego. It's ONLY because you - your real self - has tried to IDENTIFY WITH the ego self, the "not me" fake self, that you think YOU will go down with it. You will not. In fact your sense of self is going to expand to it FULLNESS.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The Soul is the idea of self-fullness."

When you are FULLY YOUR SELF, you will be as God created you. When you are not being fully yourself, it's because you are rejecting some parts of existence by trying to be selfish, and simply put selfishness is what the ego is. An attempt to isolate and exclude. It is ONLY the isolation and exclusivity which ends, NOT your self. You BECAME a "separated one", but you do not have to remain a separated one. You can become rejoined with the family. "God's family".

Your real self is permanent and real. "I am not an illusion but a reality." You are a son of God, and so am I, and we will live forever in God's being as brothers."

The nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body.

Mind is inclusive and expansive. It is everywhere and is shared by everyone. Everyone is one in mind. Mind is collective and joined. It reaches out and extends and creates. It knows no limits and isn't confined to any location. It is endless and immortal. Your mind is shared with other people's minds and they're all joined together.

Body is exclusive and restrictive. It is only in one place at a time and is not shared by anyone. One body is separated off from another body and kept apart by space and time. Bodies are singular and not joined, and they never can join. Bodies cannot create or extend themselves. They are limitations and are limited. The body is mortal and finite. The body is not shared with anyone else's body and all bodies are separate.

"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. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

The strange predicament that you have is that you seem to have both a mind and a body. This can go one of two ways. If you narrow your mind, move towards selfishness, believe in separation, exclude or isolate, imprison yourself or others, have an attacking attitude, move away from wholeness, deny your immortality, or in any way reject God, you are attempting to turn your mind INTO a body. To exclude and isolate and separate it off.

You're trying to separate yourself off and achieve the goals of the body. If you are trying not to share, to be selfish, to hoard, to possess or own, to be unlike, to be different and special, then you are forming a sense of self that is no longer infinite and unlimited. It forms a sense of self that is very reduced and isolated, excluded and cut off from others. And that is going to make you picture yourself AS a "body" - a limited self. And this produces the body.

This is body-identification. It's you aligning yourself with the idea of being a prisoner, isolated to a small speck of existence and kept away from everyone else. This happens when your mind is believing in what the body suggests is true, sees itself AS a body, and shares the "truth" of the body. By believing you are body-like, that your mind is physical, you are in a state of level confusion and delusion. The mind is trying to be forced into a tiny little container to limit it and shut out the wholeness of God.

"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. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is."

"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."

Mind cannot function properly when you do this. Mind's natural state of completely expansive and infinite. It is shared and is everywhere at once. It has no limits and there is nothing it cannot do. But if you try to identify your sense of self as limited and mortal and restricted and partial and taking sides and being cut off from relationship and so on, you are trying to force the mind to be like a body. This is very unnatural for the mind. It does not belong in a little vessel of death.

The problem then is that on the one hand, you seem to have a body temporarily, and live in a world of separation. The physical world is entirely based on separation ideas. Thoughts of "here and not there". Thoughts of "this and not that". Thoughts of distance (space) and the past (time). Where even the presence of bodies can at times be rare and unusual. Where no two things are alike and nothing can really share anything.

So if you live a "life" as a body, in a body-oriented world, thinking in separate terms of "me not you", isolated and alone, not sharing minds or joining beyond the limits of the prison walls, then you are being limited "by" the body. Or rather you are choosing to use the body as a template for limitation so that the mind can see itself as a prisoner of spacetime.

It may then seem that in the world of bodies there is a certain "nature", that it's totally natural and normal for "body people" to live a certain kind of selfish lifestyle, where the body is the hero of the dream and the central figure, where everything revolves around one's own body and not others, where your whole experience is one of loneliness and isolation and wariness of other bodies. But this seems natural and normal and commonplace because "everybody" seems to be experiencing the same problems.

But this is wholly UNNATURAL for the mind. The mind is not designed to function as separate. It is not designed to NOT share. It is not designed for selfishness or limitation, for being locked into one place and not another, to be capable of only doing what the physical body can seem to do, or to have no powers or abilities that transcend the body's limits. Mind is not comfortable when it is limited to the body.

"To be without the body is to be in your natural state."

So you've got mind which is totally infinite and unlimited and shared and whole, trying to be forced to live in a a little tiny body which is finite and limited and unshared and unwhole. It's a very awkward situation. Now you seem to have to drag the body around to do a very limited amount of stuff, as if your mind has no power beyond it.

The challenge then becomes, while you're having a body, how do you transcend the body? How do you let mind return to being its natural expanded state? How do you let mind be free and not "a body", to not identify as a body, or see itself as limited BY the body? How do you get the mind to reach out and join and share with someone, in such a way that it HAS to DEFY the body? That it has to work AGAINST and DENY the body in order to be true to itself? The mind can only be natural when it is not allowing the body to limit it at all.

You can't achieve any kind of spirituality on a physical level. Bodies cannot join. The atoms will not allow it. Atomic forces will keep the two lumps separate. There is no oneness of bodies ever. Bodies do not communicate. Bodies do not share. Bodies testify to the ego's mantra of "I am separate and alone". They are prison-houses designed to separate off.

At best the body can be transcended and its limitations no longer limit the mind. But to do this the mind has to learn that it is NOT a body. It also has to realize therefore that the body is false and has no power OVER it, to cause it to be limited. This essentially means the body has to be recognized as NOTHING, and as MEANINGLESS. Either the mind is real or the body is real, and it cannot be both.

But really it means the mind must stop regarding itself as BODY-LIKE, must dis-identify FROM the body, and must extend outward, join, share, and experience oneness. It must unite with everyone and resume its natural function of equality and sharing and wholeness and love. It can only do this by not regarding itself as having any limitations, by not believing the body at all, and by not being tempted by anything in the world of bodies. To not believe it is finite or limited or mortal or alone.

So your mind has to decide whether to regard itself AS A MIND, or AS A BODY. It has to choose one or the other. Either it is unlimited or limited, either it is immortal or mortal. Either it is locked into a specific space and time or it is endless and eternal and everywhere. Either it shares with everyone or it is alone.

This is why waking up can seem so difficult, because you're living in an entire world of separateness while trying to NOT be separate. Trying to share and join and love, which has to BYPASS the body. Trying to have a vision which does not DEPEND on the body for sight, because the body CAN NEVER see reality. To be identified with spirit and not with flesh. To be in the world but not of it, and not LIKE it. To be opposite to the NATURE of the world, to the nature of the body, and to the nature of space and time. To be under only the laws of God, and not the laws of the physical.

It is therefore very awkward for us to have bodies, because they function totally opposite to how our mind functions. Their nature is totally unlike the mind's nature. They get in the way. They are obstacles which keep wanting to testify to truths which are completely false, and keep wanting to follow pathways toward death which are contrary to the mind's goal of life. The body's ways HAVE to be denied at some point through the proper use of denial, if mind is to be allowed to relax and be true to itself.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." "Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and ****separate minds are seen as bodies****, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality."

"To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 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."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS. You meet at a mistake; - an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an ILLUSION of yourself you SHARE with it. And yet, illusions cannot join. They ARE the same, and they are nothing."

"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."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

"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."

"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."

When your idea of TRUTH is aligned with what God's truth is, you will resurrect. When your idea of TRUTH is aligned with the ego's idea of what truth is (death, opposite of life), it induces death.

Whatever your idea of truth is, you identify with it, think it is your self, will protect it, defend it, want it, believe in it, have faith in it, see it as real and love it above all else. It doesn't matter whether it is actually true or not in the bigger picture.

It's good when your idea of truth matches God's truth because this actually brings you closer to life and to health and happiness.

But when your idea of truth is mistaken and you believe something is true which is not, you will STILL defend it to the death, and take sides against life. This will result in you becoming sick and disconnected from life, and eventually to die.

This happens because you are choosing death (the belief that what is false is true) but are believing you are choosing life, because you are confused about what is true and what is false. The ego always tells you that if you choose its thought system you are choosing the truth. But when you actually listen to it and choose it, you are choosing to believe lies. And this will tempt you away from God and towards death. You will then experience unexpected consequences and suffering, because the ego's advice does not work and results in the opposite of what it claims.

When you are insane and delusional like this, believing that something is true that isn't, you will be heavily in denial and unwilling to accept the real truth. You will become unaware that you are hurting yourself and making yourself suffer with your defense of lies. You'll think you are saving your life by defending yourself against God's truth, which you now perceive as false and opposite and an enemy.

If you want to experience life and not death, you must choose to align your idea of TRUTH with God's truth, in recognition that only the truth is true. It is your choice which voice you listen to. Either you choose life by choosing to believe God's truth, or you choose death by choosing to believe ego's truth. Either way it is CHOSEN.

"No one dies without their own consent." "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." Secret of salvation - you're doing this to yourself. There are no limits on mind other than that it cannot serve two masters - you must choose, whether you place your faith in death, or whether to place your faith in life. Faith in God is believing God and trusting God and accepting God's will. This literally resurrects you from the dead (fake death) and restores you to awareness of your immortality. Not even death can prevail against a Son of God who has commended his spirit into God's hands.

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.

While your physical body is clearly anchored in THIS world, your true self is clearly anchored in ANOTHER world. Your soul, your holy self, is entirely LOCATED in God's Kingdom.

"The soul never leaves the sight of God."

The only transition you make is between being BODY (physical) identified, which is the same as believing "I am in the physical realm", or being spirit (soul) identified, which is the same as "I am in God's Kingdom now".

But you cannot think of yourself as a soul if you think of yourself as anchored at the physical level. If YOU are IN THIS WORLD, you cannot be in the Kingdom. Your body is here, but your SELF is not.

The course becomes more clear and obviously telling us this, if you notice how it asks us to BE the way that God created us.

We're not asked to merely stay entirely OUTSIDE of the Kingdom until the last second where we pass through the pearly gates. We're asked to APPROACH the Kingdom, while in a body, and to RELOCATE our mind INSIDE the Kingdom as far as possible, PRIOR to the final awakening.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile" tells you that you ARE IN GOD, and being in God is your safety. The course also tells you the Son of God cannot be happy anywhere in the world UNLESS he knows he is with God. To be WITH God is really to be located IN HEAVEN.

If you think of Heaven as a place beyond this world, which it is, or if you think in terms of "two levels" where Heaven is above and Earth is below, which is accurate, there is temptation to TRAP yourself in this world. You think your body is here, and therefore your self is here. This is body identification.

What we're asked to really do is to lift our mind/self up out of the body, identify with our spirit/soul which is not even in a body, shift our mind into the service of the soul, LOCATE ourselves in God, EXPERIENCE intimacy and love with God, return to ONENESS with Creation, and to do all this as far as possible WHILE we're still having a body.

It's easy to think of Heaven as on the other side of a dimensional division, or a boundary of separation, the gap, which holds heaven and earth apart. But this tempts us to believe we are not IN heaven UNTIL God takes the last step. This is inappropriate. In order to BECOME more loving, at peace, happy, joyful, powerful, under no laws but God's, returning to your true nature, etc you HAVE to start moving INTO heaven, into your spiritual identity, right from the start.

In fact, the only way to lift up OUT of false perception ("the world is false perception") is to move back towards God, re-enter the truth, position yourself IN the light, CENTER yourself in God, locate yourself IN heaven, be surrounded with divinity, and therefore be practically 100% aware of Heaven's presence, even if you are temporarily still in a body.

You are an immortal being, and you cannot die. But this does not mean you're going to be mortal UNTIL God takes you home. Instead, the course is asking you to RECLAIM YOUR IMMORTAL NATURE NOW, live out from that nature while you're here, demonstrate you are under God's laws only while you're here, BE the miraculousness of the soul HERE, and therefore heal the body and repurpose it into a symbol of eternal life.

He's asking us to return to our HEAVENLY NATURE, as fully as possible, in order to become "ready" to take that final 1% step to undo the last threads of the illusion of death and accept the atonement. The atonement is love and light, so to approach it you have to enter into the realm of love and light almost fully immersed. But you WILL NOT BE WILLING to accept the atonement without a HUGE amount of PREPARTION before hand, leading up to it. "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

We cannot even be loving, in this world, unless we are willing to be closer to God while we're here. We can't be the light of the world unless our mind is plugged into spirit and we are literally radiating holiness and light into the world. We cannot perform miracles unless we're going to tap into the unlimited miraculous power of God WHILE we're here. To be miracle minded is to be aligned with and IN the mindset and thought system of heaven itself.

Perhaps we can frame it this way. The physical world is false perception, the lower battlefield of unconsciousness and death. ANY attempt to even START to awaken, to become more spiritual rather than unconscious, requires us to begin re-identifying with spirit. This is why Jesus says:

"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."

In pain, we are in the darkness of making the world real and experiencing it as a living hell. If we want to be happier and so on, we're going to have to APPROACH THE LIGHT. This will entail shifting your sense of WHERE you are, from hell to heaven.

The journey begins as you emerge from the painful state and START to move towards God. And this means you are slightly releasing your identification with the body and physicality, and are beginning to open up a spiritual sight which is the eyes of Christ - and Christ is IN heaven.

So even if our body is here in this world, our mind/self/identity must go through a journey BACK to heaven, even from the beginning of the awakening process, such that we should be thinking of ourselves AS WE ARE IN HEAVEN, in order to live out from that truth.

We can't BE loving people if we are not coming FROM LOVE. Love IS GOD. And in this way we are bringing the laws and the love of ANOTHER world TO THIS WORLD. And in order to have a holier relationship with others, while here, we must start relating HOW WE RELATE IN HEAVEN. Holy Relationship mirrors heaven's relationships. Or in other words, we must relate here how we would treat each other IN GOD, as if we ARE in God right now.

We then shine the light of heaven THROUGH the body. We extend love from ANOTHER world through the body. We bring the Holy Spirit's healing TO the world. We atune to our IMMORTAL NATURE while still in a body, thus forcing the body to DEPICT a symbolic representation of eternal life WHILE HERE. You cannot do that if you think of yourself as IN or OF this world.

You must BRING another world TO this world. You must BE AS YOU ARE IN HEAVEN, while visiting hell. You then operate under MIRACULOUS laws, which break the laws of this world while you're here.

This is why it's important to start now to identify yourself AS your soul, to begin operating AS IMMORTAL, to extend God's love here, to shine Heaven's light into the darkness, and to be as close as possible to how God created you BEFORE you get to heaven.

"But 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."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. 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 thing it realize about perception is this. The physical body itself has a form of sight. It can only see differences. Its sight is based on the reflection of photons of light, which seem to illuminate the surface of objects. This light enters the biological eyeballs and passes ”images” or sensory impressions on to the mind.

The physical body is actually permanently locked into FALSE perception. ”The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.” It CANNOT SEE reality. Which in turn means EVERYTHING IT CAN SEE IS NOT REAL! What it is looking at is therefore NOT reality. Physical objects, photonic images, differences of form, shapes and sizes, colors and brightnesses, is not reality. These is ALL a part of false perception. “The world is false perception.”

It is not really seeing. It is in fact blindness. “Nothing so blinding as perception of form.” Since the body cannot see through or beyond physical surfaces, its seeing is in fact BLOCKED by objects. Objects blind it from seeing what is beyond. And therefore physical sight pretends to be seeing, but is in fact a lack of seeing.

These messages which the body seems to receive from the outside world, transmit into the mind, and the mind is sitting there EVALUATING THE MEANING of the messages. The mind is flexible in its beliefs, and can choose. It can decide what is true, and therefore what something MEANS.

The mind takes the ”physical images” provided by the body senses, and decides what they MEAN. It has perceptions ”about” the images, or projected ONTO the images. In a sense you could say the mind projects stuff ONTO the world or has perceptions ABOUT the world. But it’s really about the sensory signals being interpreted internally, once the body has received them.

The mind can decide whether these images represent the truth, or whether they are false. It can decide whether to believe in them or deny them. It can choose whether to regard them as real or as illusions. It can project sin and guilt ONTO these images and USE these images to mean attack, just as it can also project innocence and love ONTO these images which re-frames them as harmless. “I have given everything all the meaning it has for me.”

In and of themselves, the images actually have NO MEANING. They come from a world which itself HAS NO MEANING. This is why the course describes it as “a meaningless world”, and one which God DID NOT CREATE. The physical world is not merely meaningless ONLY when viewed in false perception, as if meaningful when perceived truly. It is in fact NEVER inherently meaningful. Meaning can be PROJECTED ONTO it, but in and of itself it is literally nothing. “The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it.”

So what actually happens is, the physical body provides a FIXED state of FALSE perception. And everything it sees is what we typically refer to as “the world” or planet Earth. Bodies, trees, houses, buildings, streets, the sky etc. Differences, changes, transitions, growth, decay, etc. This is all false perception and CAN ONLY been seen IN and WITH false perception.

Then at the same time, the MIND is sitting there INTERPRETING the physical signals. So the mind can ALIGN or IDENTIFY with the body, with physicality, and make the world seem real to it. When it does this, the MIND is now having false perception OF a false world - a false interpretation of a false image, at the same time as the physical body having false perception. They are in seeming agreement.

So what the falsely perceiving mind sees as coming from the body, it regards as TOTALLY REAL, because it is tempted anad DECEIVED BY the illusion. It totally agrees with and accepts it as true. That is what false perception means - not recognizing that an illusion is unreal. Just as true perception recognizes the world IS an illusion and not reality.

The mind can also move into a totally opposite state of TRUE perception, which is accurate perception. In this state, the BODY is actually STILL insisting on sending signals of physical unreality to the mind for interpretation. But the mind is not DECEIVED BY their falseness or their forms and appearances. Instead, the mind puts ALL of these physical signals into ONE category - THEY ARE ALL UNREAL. This is because it RECOGNIZES WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE, and is not deceived into thinking the physical world is reality. It recognizes these images ARE ILLUSIONS.

It regards them as UN real because it does not AGREE with or align or identify with the physical. It has identified with spirit, which is NON-physical and OPPOSITE to the physical world. Being fulled on the side of reality, everything unreal is now clearly and obviously unreal. And that means everything FALSE is ”truly seen” as false. As it is. And since the body can ONLY see falsely, and everything it sees IS FALSE, the sane mind now recognizes that the physical world is NOT REAL. Or even really there at all.

The body is trying to tell the mind that there is a world of differences and forms and attack and death ”out there”, BUT the mind is not BUYING INTO it at all. It does not fall for THE ILLUSION. It is not tempted. It RECOGNIZES what the physical really IS, which is that it is NOT TRUE. “The one you made is false.” It’s a false world which ONLY exists WITHIN false perception.

So now you’ve got FALSE signals of FALSE perception coming in from the body, and you’ve got a mind looking AT and USING these signals for a certain purpose. And its goal is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the physical. So it does not believe in, accept, have faith in, nor is it deceived BY, anything the body is seeing. It’s a strange state, almost a paradox, where something UNREAL is recognized as an illusory physical world, while at the same time the mind is in a state of truth. “The world you see must be denied.”

True perception, christ vision, the spiritual eye, does not depend on, use, or rely upon, the physical sight mechanism. It is actually direct mind seeing. But this mind seeing does not SEE the physical world, because it regards it as FALSE, and what is false is shut out from awareness. This is why “It is impossible to see both worlds.” Either you see the false physical world AS IF it is real and true, or you see beyond it to reality. The mind’s eye also does not utilize physical photons for seeing, which is why in effect it cannot see the physical world. “Forgiveness sees it not.” It‘s sight is not based in space or time or distance or measure.

Truly, “To forgive is to OVERLOOK” and overlooking means ”forgetting to see”, or not seeing. You cannot look AT what you forgive. Looking AT it is unforgiveness. You look PAST it and fail to see it. That is what overlooking means. This is why “A world forgiven cannot last.” You cannot forgive the physical and still see the physical. When the mind is sane and healed, it categorizes ALL physical materials, worlds, energies, SPACE TIME, as entirely UNREAL. And this is the recognition of illusions which causes them to DISAPPEAR. And why “there is no world.”

The physical body is an illusion and sees ONLY illusions, in an agreein-with-illusions manner, which makes them seem real. “Only the body makes the world seem real.” All things physical are illusory and unreal. They are blindness. The blind body can only look upon the blind world, which was made to HIDE REALITY from your sight. “The world is drawn like a vail across the face of christ, but it can last no longer than an instant.” Only by recognizing that ALL body signals are FALSE AND UNREAL, can your spiritual eye rest upon the face of Christ, making you ready to return to God, ending perception forever.

From lesson 261...

"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. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside? "

"The body will not stay. Yet this he sees as double safety. For the Son of God's impermanence is "proof" his fences work, and do the task his mind assigns to them. For if his oneness still remained untouched, who could attack and who could be attacked? Who could be victor? Who could be his prey? Who could be victim? Who the murderer? And if he did not die, what "proof" is there that God's eternal Son can be destroyed?

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"The body is a dream. Like other dreams it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose that the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for."

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Changing the purpose of the body DOES NOT mean looking at it as a separate thing and skewing your vision to pretend it looks healthier than it is! It means, LITERALLY, CHANGING THE BODY to DEMONSTRATE that it is not sick!

Some people believe it's our job to change how we perceive the body, that we are to dis-identify from it, and so in a way separate from it. Some also believe we are to focus on healing the mind, not the body. Some also believe the course is not teaching us about healing the body. And some also believe we'll be able to wake up from dreaming without changing the body at all, or healing its sickness, or making it impossible for it to die.

But if this is true, if the body is just some "thing" that exists, that we identify with or not, or make ourselves separate from, or which is not part of our mind, then this raises a question:

WHO PUT THE BODY THERE IF NOT YOUR MIND?

Or additionally, what it is that causes the body to be sick and die if not YOUR MIND?

You have to then answer this question without resorting to jumping to a different level or using an intellectual bypass. The question can only have a couple of possible answers:

1) God made the bodies and we're just changing how we see them, and have to accept them as sick and dead.

2) It was us who made the bodies.

That there are no bodies, bodies are illusions, bodies don't exist, or whatever else along those lines is NOT a valid answer to this question at this point.

Someone HAS to be responsible for the body that is showing up, regardless of whether it's an illusion. SOMEONE is making it appear. SOMEONE is putting it there. Even if it's not really there.

So who is it?

If it's not you who is making the body show up, then it's God's fault. Yet the course says, "Love did not create the body". And God is love, so God didn't put the body there.

And if you are supposed to disconnect yourself from or separate from the body in some way, to go "only into mind", or to IGNORE its sickness or its death, WHO STILL is putting that body there? WHO or WHAT is making it sick? WHO is making it die?

It has no bearing on whether you are at peace or not or what your mind is doing in this scenario. Somehow, someone, or something, must be responsible for making a sick and broken body show up.

We know it's not God. And if you're claiming it's not YOU because you are not a body, you're shifting levels mid-logic. If you are the mind "only" and "not the body", and God didn't make the body, who is CONTINUING to maintain the body? Someone is! Someone is continuing to make the body appear and walk around the planet with sickness showing up in it, and supposedly you're off on cloud9 having a happy time ... so WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

What you cannot escape here is simple fact, that IT IS YOU who are making the body appear. Even if it's an illusion, it is YOU who are dreaming it. The world is not putting it there. God is not putting it there. There is no other cause in the world because there is NO cause in the world. The body didn't show up on its own. Nor did it show up because of your parents.

Your body right now, with which you are contemplating typing a response, or which you are using to read these words, is being put there BY YOU. And as such, you are 100% responsible for everything it showing up as. No-one else is responsible for it.

That means, in conclusion, SINCE YOU are the one who is making your body appear, YOU HAVE EVERY ABILITY to make an entire body appear! Out of nowhere! With the power of your mind only. You ARE DOING IT right now! You've been doing it for years!

So that means, if you are able to project a body, which appears to have a certain condition or state of health, what's to stop you from projecting a body which is in perfect health, has no sickness, and is not suffering, and cannot die?

YOU are putting the sickness into the body. It's your responsibility. The sickness can ONLY stay in the body IF you keep putting it there. If you are trying to get your mind into a place where it thinks of itself as "I am not the body" but the body is still showing up, what does that tell you? YOU STILL believe you are a body. You're not being honest. The body can only appear IF YOU make it appear. The body can only "stay sick" if YOU keep projecting a sick body (from a sick mind).

So there isn't any way to avoid this. You are the one who made your body. You are the one making it right now. That means your mind is pretty powerful at manifesting a human being. And more besides. So why would this ever mean, that you don't have the ability to make it show up as healed, or that you have to put up with suffering, or that you cannot remove sickness, or that you are supposed to become peaceful "in spite of death"? You will never be able to be at peace in spite of death because if death "happens to you" you will see yourself as a victim.

Healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. That's how it works. No-one else is responsible for your state of being, and nothing in the world causes your body to be sick or keeps it sick. No-one but YOU makes the body appear AT ALL. No-one but YOU has the free will choice to make it show up as a symbol of sinlessness.

No-one has to suffer and no-one has to keep sickness or to try to find ways to "work around it" or "live with it" or "tolerate it" or "transcend it". JUST REMOVE THE SICKNESS!!!

That's what miracles are for!

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."

You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.

AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.

Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."

"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."

"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

When I read in the course that anger is an attempt to make someone guilty, I didn't at first relate to it. I had to stop and look at what happens, what I'm doing, when I get angry toward someone.

And that didn't typically happen all that often, but when it did I noticed it was true, what I was basically doing was trying to reinforce "how guilty" someone was. I was trying to MAKE them be guilty.

In anger there's this attempt to amplify the "guiltiness" of someone. And it's not even really tied to what they appeared to do or the severity of it. We could just be going to town raging at them way beyond what anything calls for. Probably convinced that whatever "sin" they committed is the REASON WHY the anger is justified.

But then the second insight is that in order to make someone BECOME guilty, we actually have to put guilt ONTO them. A guilt that they do not have initially. Where does that guilt come from? We actually provide it ourselves, and hurl it towards them through projection.

So then we see that anger is really "what it feels like" when you are hurling guilt. The whole intensity of it, the enforcement of it, the sense of righteousness, the pushing and forcing, it's all designed to "hurl" and "transmit" guilt onto the person.

But then this also gives rise to a third insight, that if we are hurling guilt at people, and it's not their guilt, then we must be reaching inside of ourselves and finding some guilt there, in order to have something to hurl. So that means... drumroll... we're really the ones that we think are guilty.

In addition this means that the "reasons why" we claim we're being justified in anger are false - it's not because of what someone else did, we're angry because of what we believe WE did. We are accusing them of our own sin and guilt, so that we can try to make ourselves feel better and deflect attention away from the darkness within. This is why anger is never justified and you are never upset for the reason you think.

So if we're the guilty ones, it basically means we're angry at ourselves and have attacked ourselves first. And if we hadn't done this, if we hadn't manufactured a whole stockpile of guilt, we'd have nothing to hurl at other people. We wouldn't be able to FIND other people to be guilty of anything.

This then leads to the fourth insight, that if we were to undo all of our guilt within ourselves, we would never have to even lift a finger to try to find others innocent. We'd automatically be innocent within, and would look out from this innocence upon others and find them innocent also. We'd never be angry, never project blame, and would just be happy all the time.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." UrW5

"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." UrT15H10

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." URT10G1

An "appearance" is another term for something physical. It's what you see when you take the physical form at face value. You look at what it appears to be on the surface, on the face of it, without any seeming interpretation.

"There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

When mind denies itself and denies God's reality, it tries to become one with a body. To become one with separation. It narrows itself and confines itself and aligns itself with the body. The closer it becomes to being "body like", the less difference there seems to be between them.

Eventually this lack of difference makes the body seem like an ally, as in "the ego's chosen home", a friend of sorts, and something you can "identify" with (agree with), because it seems to agree with your mind. The mind is then confused with the body and the two seem to become one. In this ***illusion of oneness***, the body's sight is believed completely to be total fact.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Actually, without a difference between mind and body, you will enter a state where it seems you are not even interpreting at all. Where the physical world is total fact. Where everything is physical proof. Where the form something takes is entirely what it means. And where there is no sense of questioning or a bigger picture or a different vantage point. Everything seems to be "exactly as it is".

In false perception, the mind trusts the body's senses and this produces an experience of being "convinced", that what you see happening really is happening. In fact, you move toward a state of "obviousness", where everything physical seems to "obviously" be there, doing what it's doing, irrefutable and undeniable. The more you are in false perception the more the physical world seems to be totally real to you.

The mind gets into a state of being so body-aligned that it is no longer questioning what the body senses. Everything physical becomes total reality. Everything that "happens" becomes actual life and real events. And without any difference between mind and body, other bodies and their activities are taken as absolute and irreversible, having all the qualities of God.

So our minds, by believing IN separation, actually get into a state of what SEEMS to be ***"no separation"*** between mind and body, where all sense of you interpreting anything is lost. There is a seemingly unified experience, a oneness with the world at the physical level, everything looks obvious and real, and you take everything to be exactly what it appears to be.

In this state you also form a "story", because now the story of what bodies are doing, what events transpire etc, is all taken to be actual real fact. If someone's body acts out, or someone attacks, or there's a conflict, or any kind of thing you don't agree with, it is taken as being totally real. Like they REALLY DID DO it, provable in a court of law. And then you will automatically and naturally and logically hold it against them, justified by the fact of it happening.

Holding something against someone happens as a result of the mind binding with the body and believing that physicality is true. It does not question or doubt the physical "reality", so if someone does something offensive it is now a SIN. And this sin has physical proof right in front of your eyes. And your eyesight cannot deny it sees it. And this sin is irreversible, unhealable, unfixable, and the person has definitely messed up in a way that is so actual that it has the property of permanence.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

You will then find yourself accusing the person, justifiably, of having done some terrible thing, all on the basis of what things look like at the physical level only. You did this, and you didn't do that, and that's the fact of it. And you used to be like this, and now you're like that, and I don't like you like this anymore. And how dare you treat me this way, and why are you doing this to me etc. Why is your BODY doing this to me.

This of course gives rise to an experience in which you are a helpless victim. In which you seem to have no say, no influence, no interpretation or way out of anything. Because what happens physically is factual reality. So now there is real physical threat and danger, people really are physically attacking, and there are physical things wrong with "you".

This is all blindness. This is the state of perceiving falsely and being body-identified, mind seeing itself as a body, total unforgiveness, unconsciousness, special-relationship, ego identification, and self destruction. There is no "gap" between mind and body, so everything that happens seems to happen to you, hurting you and upsetting you.

"The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

So "appearances" really are form, ie physical form. They are how stuff looks when you don't question its reality. It's how the physical world appears to you, or what it seems to mean, when you are totally invested in it. All meaning seems to be taken from how the external world tells you it is, as though you are not giving anything any meaning. Whatever happens seems to be the only truth. If someone kills your cat, they sure as heck actually did do that, and the cat is in fact really dead to prove the sin.

In such a state, we have been tempted by form and have "fallen for" the temptation. We've believed that people are bodies, that we are having relationships with bodies, that the physical world is the only reality, that there is no other mind besides the body, that God doesn't exist, and your self is a physical object. In this state you are not aware of reality, but you THINK you are, and because you're so convinced the physical world is WHERE the reality is, you do not question it.

To get out of this requires the questioning of appearances. The questioning of the PHYSICAL. This is why Jesus in the course introduces ideas such as that you give everything all the meaning it has, that you are projecting something, that you are influencing what happens, that your thoughts are involved and are attacking you, that you need to dis-identify from the physical body, that the physical world is an illusion not to be believed, and that all the events are nothing. To not even believe what the body tells you.

Without this rising up above "the battlefield", you will just live a life of hell, of blame and accusation, or suffering and selfishness, of specialness and deprivation, or mis-treatment and attack, unfairness and regret and remorse and resentment.

Only by questioning the physical world can your mind begin to see that it is NOT one with the body. And that because mind and body are different, they DISAGREE. And therefore what the body shows you is not to be believed. And you are now starting to step outside the "story" of your little body life and seek for a higher life.

If you were to describe someone's life based purely on what appears to be happening at the physical level, that is false perception. Only when you begin to look for a larger purpose or meaning, an influence of mind over matter, a choice and a freedom of will, a way by which someone might be responsible for making the world be the way it is, and an identity beyond the physical, only then are you properly recognizing that there IS a separation between mind and body. And that mind does not HAVE TO believe in the separation.

The gap of separation was COVERED OVER by your attempt to be one with the body. It seemed to disappear entirely underneath your mind's identification with the physical. Trying to be one with the body and make the physical real HIDES the fact that the world is separate from God and is not heaven. Only by beginning to recognize that you are NOT a body, can you recognize that there IS a separation between mind and body, and the two are not the same. Nor is the world a part of God.

Then you will seek for a higher oneness, a oneness with something NOT physical, a oneness with God and with a true reality. And the whole transition towards that is the awakening process. Waking up from the dream of hell and death and suffering and murder. Only then are you being forgiving, and seeing a forgiven world, because the world must be seen in another light in order to overlook its illusions of form.And only through the forgiveness state can you be free from deception permanently.

"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 which 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 body is very much the opposite of your reality as an immortal being. Your real self can never be changed, attacked, hurt or destroyed. But the body is defenseless, exposed and vulnerable, capable of destruction and utterly unsafe in a dangerous world.

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

Having lived your life in a body, you've had to deal with all kinds of vulnerabilities. And this has taught you that you are a target for destruction. Weak, susceptible, fragile, attackable and unsafe. That you can be destroyed and should take great care to avoid all possible threats. Wary of every passing car, frightened of every stranger, upset by the mere presence of something moving.

The body has endured suffering, pain, breakage, malfunction and damage. It has been influenced by the weather and the environment. It has been attacked and hurt, bullied and hit, poked and prodded, maybe even assaulted surgically. Maybe the body has been mutilated, perhaps parts of it are missing, perhaps it is ugly and deformed and lacking, and maybe it was never whole to begin with.

Because of this, and because you believe you are your body, you must have thought this about yourself. You believed you'd lost parts of yourself, that you were under attack, that you have to be constantly vigilant when crossing roads and stepping on cracks and turning corners just in case it is your day to die - hoping to alert you early that you might avoid more suffering. You've put considerable effort into securing your body, making a home for it, protecting it with walls upon walls and layers upon layers, trying to shield it from your enemies.

All of this has told you that you are weak and fragile, vulnerable and attackable, defenseless and exposed. It has caused you to feel frightened and threatened all the time. It has given you constant anxiety and nervousness, constant stress and concern. You never feel fully safe anywhere, you are always on alert and wary of the next biting teeth or hammering nails or sharp pointy objects, trying constantly to avoid the body's death.

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful."

This can have done nothing but undermine your peace of mind, your sense of safety, your confidence and your happiness. Having to be constantly on the lookout for danger like some kind of animal in dangerous territory. You avoid the places you don't like to go, you avoid the people who bother you, you steer clear of the brand names you don't trust, and you only expose yourself with select few. And you reason that better the devil you know than the ones you don't.

This all comes about by confusing your identity with the body, believing you are a body, that you are body-like or of a physical nature. It comes with the territory. You cannot believe you are a physical body without being afraid of death, because you know the body can die. You cannot believe the body is your self, without being traumatized when you clip your nails or cut your hair. If you are a body, you are literally as susceptible and vulnerable as the body is, even if you take measures to defend yourself or ward off attackers.

It is not possible to believe you are a body and to feel confident. It is not possible to believe you are a body and be sane. It is not possible to believe you are a body and have real relationships with anyone, because the body literally cuts you off from them. It is not possible to believe you are a body and feel a sense of true safety and peace, or happiness and love. "the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

The body is separate in a separated world. It stands apart and alone. By the mere fact that it does not share with others, separate by space and time, it is lonely and isolated. Believing you are a body brings with it a fundamental loneliness and sense of exclusion, of conflict and disagreement, and even constant war. Bodies can never be equal because they rely on inequality and difference to make them distinct. And so there is no peace available when bodies are your truth.

Believing you are a body deceives you and sets you up for failure. It guarantees death and sickness and ensures a breakdown in communication. Being a body means putting a death sentence on your head and limiting yourself to a small span of time, riddled with obstacles and difficulties and suffering. If you are a body you cannot be a mind, or an idea, or a thought of God. You are parentless and orphaned and alone.

The body is essentially a blasphemy against God, because it suggests things about you which cannot be true in reality. You are actually an immortal, permanent, absolute, unchangeable, endless being, given eternal life and incapable of ever being hurt in any way. If you believe you are a body, you do not believe in yourself. If you believe you are a body, you are shutting yourself off from who you are in reality, and are guaranteeing suffering.

Your real self is immortal, it cannot be hurt or attacked, it cannot be affected or altered, it is utterly invulnerable, it is impervious and unassailable. It cannot be attacked or threatened, it cannot be hurt or made to be sick, it cannot be poisoned or traumatized, and it cannot die. Your real self is permanently happy, constantly joyful, and utterly at peace. Its peace can never be disturbed because nothing can ever threaten it, just as it is always free from all fear and anxiety because it knows that it is perfectly safe from all harm.

To identify with who you really are as God created you is to escape from the torment of being a body. It is to free you from all potential for suffering, attack, sickness and death. Identifying with your spirit/soul lifts you out of hell and into heaven. It lifts you away from danger and out of harm's way. It gives you real protection and permanent peace. It guarantees you are sinless and guiltless, incapable of being evil, unable to attack or be attacked, harmless and unharmed forever.

Only by not being a body can you be as God created you, because God did not create bodies. Only by not being a body can you laugh in the face of death and overcome the world. It is the body that becomes a target for attack and destruction, and not your real self. Your real self is beyond the world and beyond space and time and beyond the laws of physics. It is not of this world because you were created in another world, in the Kingdom of God, where everything is eternal.

"You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go."

Your eternal self can never suffer pain, can never be hurt by another, can never be upset or offended, can have no reason to ever be afraid, can never have its peace disturbed, can never become sick or suffer, can never experience pain, can never malfunction or break down or degrade, can never become old or tired, can never lose anything, and can never die. Surely you would rather identify with your real self and be free from hell forever, than to regard yourself as a lump of flesh and bones stalking the earth like a zombie waiting to finish dying.

Only by associating yourself with the properties of immortality can you be set free from the mortal body and all its limitations. Only by identifying as permanent and unchangeable can you have no grounds for upset. Only by recognizing you can never be changed can you free yourself from the blame and tyranny of other people's actions. Only by knowing yourself as the eternal life God gave you can you utterly disregard anything the world seems to do or cause.

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body."

"But I am not a body. What am I?"

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body."

"But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 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."

HOW DO YOU BE TRULY HELPFUL?

ACIM: "I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,

because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal."

1. "I am here only to be truly helpful"... ONLY to be truly helpful, meaning I do not have other agenda and am not attempting to let my ego control things. What is truly helpful other than the Will of God, which you share and act upon. You can be truly helpful if you are forgiving, aligned with Holy Spirit. Then you will have the clarity with which to identify a call for love when you see one, knowing that the only truly helpful response to it is love in return.

2. "I am here to represent Him Who sent me."... You are to be a representative of Christ. By representation, that means that you share His authority and power and are able to speak in His name, similar to how the Holy Spirit is a devoted Voice for God. You can speak on His behalf, or rather, have Him speak through you. He will inspire you and move you and you will be a conduit for His expression of loving miracles.

3. "I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me"... And so by aligning your mind with His, the two become One, His thoughts become your thoughts, and His perspective becomes your perspective. He will either speak directly through your body or will inspire you supernaturally what to say. You need not worry because you are trusting Him 100% to guide you and He knows the way and what to do. You let Him decide everything for you and are glad to extend God's love.

4. "I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me."... Truly committed and trusting Holy Spirit, you would have no basis for fear and would be in supreme confidence, relaxed, empowered and certain. He will orchestrate all events and encounters and send the appropriate people to you or you to them. Knowing that He goes there with you, and in awareness of His presence, gives you no reason for fear. This means you have developed trust and depend on God for everything. Having surrendered your personal agenda, you are content to do your Father's business.

5. "I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal"... miracles are for you and for everyone. You will heal (yourself) and heal others at the same time. Healing means resurrection. It means restoration and correction. It means the blessing of forgiveness. And it means the demonstration of God's truth. As you allow Him to teach you and work through you, you will learn what healing is and you will experience it yourself. As you heal yourself, you become able to heal others. It is the privilege of the forgive to forgive and the healed to heal. Accepting miracles for yourself gives you the willingness to provide them to others.

A light way to look at things and a dark way. It is similar to how, from above the clouds, the sun shines on everything, and yet beneath the clouds, everything looks dark and threatening.

Looking back toward the light with obstacles in the way, creates the impression of threat and danger and doom and gloom. When the clouds are there, the light seems obscured and it feels like you've got walls keeping you from it. It seems like you're trapped in a prison and that everything is against you.

Looking toward the light from a position of being separated from the light, by the clouds, creates the ego. The ego is an attempt to turn around and look back at God and find him blocked from vision as if he doesn't exist. And when the clouds are heavy, it will feel as if God doesn't exist, as if there is no light.

Shifting back into alignment with the source of light, means getting "above the battlefield", through and beyond the clouds, past the illusion of separateness and self importance, and turning around 180-degrees so that you too are a part of the light that shines outward. You need to become a sunbeam, of sorts, extending love outward.

Looking up to the sun with clouds between you is akin to the ego looking inside at itself. The ego wants to catch a glimpse of itself as if it really exists as a separate identity. What you are 'is', and you can't identify it as something separate from you. Yet when you're "under the weather" and trying to wrestle with upsets and darkness you keep trying to look 'at' yourself, similar to how you keep trying to look back at the sun. You don't really need to look at yourself or to look at the source of light, you need to BE IT.

Changing your vantage point changes your perspective. If your vantage point is rooted in your ego then your ego will do the looking and it will look toward the clouds and tell you the clouds are real and that you're separate from God. This will of course be frightening and horrifying. And it's not true, but it will seem true, and you will feel stuck.

Changing your vantage point to that of Holy Spirit (the sun) changes everything. It changes how everything looks to you and what it means. Your light shines ONTO everything you see illuminating it and revealing its beauty and happiness. It helps you to see clearly and fully. It helps you to not be deceived by the strange shadows that play out on the landscape when you are "in the dark". And it helps you to remember there is ALWAYS another way, ALWAYS a better way than any ego viewpoint.

And you need to be reminded... the light of God is always present and always available and always true and always powerful, and no amount of ego or darkness or horror will EVER obliterate it or shut it out or make it permanently lost. EVER. The light is always stronger than the darkness because the darkness is weakness. The light is always there. It is sanity. It is reason. It is truth. Sooner or later you have to admit to it and allow it and accept it and be it. You can prolong suffering but you cannot make it permanent. The light is calling to you to join it and to laugh at the silliness of the ego's mistakes.

God loves you.

Ego is simply the idea that I am less than the whole (while also trying to be more than God). That I am not one with all. I am reduced and limited, lacking in some way, special in other ways due to what I seem to have that other lacking partial people don't seem to have, but nevertheless deprived and only ever partially satisfied.

It's what we might call a narrow mind, a mind which has narrowed itself down and confined itself. It does this by trying to be one with things which are not the whole. To put itself into little fragmented prisons.

Trying to be one with a body, or a thought, or the mind, or a feeling, or a role, or a culture, or a country, or a car, or a relationship etc. Trying to become something, as a redefinition of what we are as the whole. Trying to become a hole, and to have holes, as something unholy.

Our whole sense of who and what we are becomes confused with this sense of being things which are limited and lacking. We literally think we are items of clothing, and a fleshy ugly body, and a house, and anything else we care to associate ourselves with or glean credit for.

The main impetus of awakening is simply moving the sense of identify back towards the whole again, or what the course calls reintegration. The re-integrating, uniting, becoming one with, the lost parts of ourselves that we have rejected and called other or enemy. The rest of the sonship, the rest of the Kingdom, the rest of God.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. NOT through destruction, NOT through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace will join you there, simply because YOU have been willing to let go the limits YOU have placed on love, and JOINED it where it is, and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace." UrT18G16

"The purpose of this course is integration. I told you that you will not be able to use it right until you have taken it. As long as your identification vacillates, you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you." UrT1B16B

"What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?" UrT5D11

"True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration." UrT1B32B

"You should split yourself off from error, but only in defense of integration." UrT2B27

"Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation. The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator." UrT6C1

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is not enough, because it is communication FROM God. But it is not enough until it is shared. " UrT4H20

"The part of your thought which you have given TO the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay." UrT5H12

Every time I see a body, I am tempted to believe I'm seeing a person. The person seems separate from me, they are not me at all, their body belongs exclusively to them, it's not my body, we are not in any way connected to each other. What applies to them does not apply to me at all.

That is the horrendous lie that bodies present to us. The temptation that your brother, who in truth is literally one with and a part of your self, is somehow cut off from you. On the basis of assuming that people are "not me", we then proceed with an entire culture and way of relating that revolves around "I am separate from you."

Ultimately this boils down to a question of, are you living by God's law of the Golden Rule, or are you denying it and trying to break God's law? First let's be clear that the Golden Rule is not some optional thing, it's fundamental to the nature of reality and all creations. We are all one with each other, part of each other, joined together and sharing, like a collective consciousness hive mind. In that arrangement we are still individual beings but we also share everything.

Within that thought system of sharing, overlap and oneness, the natural way to relate to someone is to regard them as YOURSELF. They are thus your brother, an equal, as perfect and whole as you, and literally part of yourself. This produces shared interests and an automatic motivation to ONLY treat them with love so that you are directly treating yourself - the part of you that's in them - with love. Everything belongs to everyone, everyone has everything, and everything is mutual.

In the ego's rendition, the body is a separation device. And make no mistake that the body literally symbolically CUTS YOU OFF from the hive mind. It represents the idea of being separate, disconnected, not sharing, not joined, not a part of anyone else, and completely alone. It is absolutely the opposite of the true nature of our collective sonship and brotherhood, and is totally unnatural.

This means that if you are in a body being identified with a body, believing bodies are separate people, you are literally LOOKING AT the denial of the laws of God. You are looking at the opposite of the golden rule, manifested as images of forms walking around, testifying that separation is real. The body ITSELF is nothing less than a demonstration of the idea of being completely separate.

"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"

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

Therefore just the mere sight of a body is enough to tempt you into the belief that God's law has been broken, the Golden Rule does not apply to anyone, and you are NOT in any way sharing anything with your brothers. You don't even have to act or relate to people or treat people a certain way for God's law to be broken by the mere appearance of the body.

Therefore, as the course is teaching, if you see a body, you are seeing WITH specialness, with selfishness, and thus with the ego. And the result is false perception, which fixates on physical form and makes bodies real to you. Upon seeing this, you have already believed in separation, and now the body is lit up and appears to you as a separation device, anchoring and fixing your brother into a prison within space and time, and cutting you off from them.

As soon as you are relating on a basis of "I am not you", ie your body is separate from my body, and I see you AS a body, and regard myself as my body, and we are NOT each other, we are in a state of special relationship. And that literally means we are at war. We have withdrawn the shared part of ourselves from each other and have gone to our separate corners, ready to fight.

We are at war merely by the very fact that we are identifying who and what we are with a device for separation, and have therefore believed that we ARE separate, and therefore are different, and thus not equals, and thus competitors.

Any time that I associate anything at all exclusively with a body, whether it be my own or that of another, I am in the ego and at war. I am having a special relationship, taking sides, judging, projecting guilt, attacking, accusing, and trying to destroy. Just by seeing a body and regarding it as the anchor and prison wall which is surrounding and sectioning off you or another, you are taking sides.

Once you've taken sides, you will not be able to help but relate to the other person AS a body, ie as a separated off, exclusive, isolated, distinctly separate being. One with whom you are NOT sharing, are not one, and they are NOT seen OR recognized as being a part of yourself. The entire vision of recognition and enlightenment which would show you that your brother IS part of you, is obscured by the body.

"the BODY of the other, ALREADY a severely limited perception of him"

"For sin is the IDEA you are alone, and separated OFF from what is whole."

Then you will proceed to go to war. You will find it effortless to accuse someone of being, doing, having, making, causing something, which ONLY they are doing, and you are not. You will now be into the realm of "getting away with murder", because it now seems that what applies to the other does NOT apply to you. What applies to what their body is doing, is not what your body is doing. Their separated-off will is now disconnected from your own, and you are not sharing or cooperating or willing in accord. Therefore you are against each other.

The loss of the awareness that you are one with your brother has devastating consequences. As soon as you have slipped away from unity ie holy relationship even slightly, you've pulled away from being joined to the other and have identified yourself as exclusive. That exclusivity is selfish and special, and will manifest as a body, which will show up in the mind to testify HOW you are separated off from the other. The body literally symbolizes your separateness.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

By believing that you are not your brother, you are not a part of him and he is not a part of you, you cannot help but see yourself and your brother as separated off by a body. This identifies both of you with your bodies, and holds you apart from each other like inmates in separate prison cells. This is a breakdown in communication and an attack on love. It is a lack of relationship and a disconnect from each other.

It doesn't matter if the other person is someone you are allegedly married to, a spouse or partner, a lover, a sibling or child or parent, some stranger or neighbor, a boss or remote stranger, any time that we are unaware of our oneness with each other we have moved inside an entirely separate thought system of separation, in which the ONLY culture is "me not you".

Nor will you be able to sufficiently repair the relationship and bring it to a state of holiness WITHOUT questioning whether or not you and your brother are a body. The belief that they ARE their body, automatically cuts them off from you, and your believing this is HOW you imprison them.

"The special relationship is a device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

"For the ego would limit everyone TO a body for ITS purposes, and, while you think it HAS a purpose, you will choose to utilize the means by which IT tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

No matter what you think your relationship is, regardless of how close or intimate you seem to be with another body-person, you are NOT intimate if you are not one. You are also not happily married if you are married to a body. Nor are you head over heels in love if what you're in love with is a body. To love a body is to separate yourself from the other person, to NOT SEE them, and to keep them at arm's length, pun intended.

If you want to overcome the conflict, the war, the fighting, the disagreements, the arguments, the special hate, the special love, the lack of communication and connection, your only choice is to transcend bodies. You have to get your mind out of the separation-oriented culture and resume an entirely opposite culture based on the Golden Rule. You have to learn that you ARE part of the other person, neither of you is separated off BY a body, and the bodies are not even there. You have to see yourself INCLUDED in them as you look upon them, and NOT look to their bodies to identify them.

If you are heavily into the association that the person IS their body, and you've bound their identity to it, and every time you see the body you think that's them, you have a lot of work to do. And it could take some considerable time to undo all the ways that you've taught yourself to separate people off, bind them to physical objects, identify them by those objects, and therefore stay separate from them.

The ego culture of exclusivity and separateness is completely opposite to God's natural culture of sharing and unity. Bodies cannot and will not ever depict or accomplish God's culture. They have to be bypassed and transcended and overlooked. Your whole sense of who and what you are has to expand to INCLUDE others. And then how you relate to them, WHO you are defending, WHAT you are relating with and to, radically changes.

"Minds need not bodies to communicate."

"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."

If you have relationship issues which, guaranteed, every body-to-body relationship HAS, the real problem is THE BODY. Allowing, supporting, and facilitating the use of the body as a separation device, anchoring people TO bodies, is the whole foundation of your relationship woes. Nor can you overcome those woes and KEEP the body. You have to be willing to stop identifying people with bodies, including yourself, and including your "loved ones."

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

Any time that you fall for the trap of believing "that person is not me", because you've seen their body and have witnessed to the belief that their body IS SEPARATE FROM YOU, you have gone into the ego culture of separation and war. Any time that you do not recognize your brother as yourself, you will fall into a special relationship. Any time that you can see PAST the bodies, and identify the person with a SHARED IDENTITY in Christ, which is part of your own identity as Christ, you have moved into holiness and union.

"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."

"***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."

If you want to perform miracles, you have to transcend the entire mindset, thought system and culture of "separate me versus them". You have to join minds with the other so that your mind can share its light with the other mind and heal it. You cannot save or be saved without doing this, and bodies will always interfere with this.

If you pay any attention to the body AT ALL, you are looking at and emphasizing the separation. The body is separation's symbol. It is the wall around the mind that keeps it separated off from other minds. As long as you are having relationships WITH BODIES, you are not having real relationships with your brothers as God created them.

"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."

"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."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their FIXED POSITION here."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY. And, if you VALUE it, you must also VALUE THE BODY."

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"And BOTH of you stand there before Him now, to let HIM draw aside the veil that SEEMS to keep you separate and apart."

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects."

Jesus says in the course several times that we have a "sole responsibility". This responsibility is to accept the atonement. And this is usually attached to "for ourselves."

I think this has become one of the most selfishly misinterpreted teachings.

When Jesus mentions this, he ALSO mentions afterwards that once you have accepted atonement, you will now GIVE IT TO OTHERS. Which is not a selfish act. Nor is it exclusive. Nor does it mean you sitting there in isolation having accepted atonement CUT OFF from others, or unable to share it, or unwilling to heal others.

I also think that when he speaks of it being our sole responsibility, he is saying that because we have FREE WILL. Therefore, as the owner of the free will, I have to personally WILL to accept the atonement, and no-one can do this for me. So the responsibility lies SOLELY with me. I have to be willing. That's why it is the ONLY responsibility that lands squarely and solely on MY shoulders and not others. Because I have to exercise my free will. As Jesus says, "no one comes to the atonement except willingly."

Similarly, we have to realize that you cannot RECEIVE atonement WITHOUT giving it, because "atonement is a lesson in sharing." It means that you are aligning yourself with the golden rule and are now identify with your brothers and sharing with them. That in turn means that their interests are now shared with yours and it is your DUTY to fulfill the great crusade to HELP THEM AND HEAL THEM.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

I think Jesus is pretty clear that he never intended these statements about "sole responsibility" to be interpreted in such a selfish manner, where people THINK it means "I just accept it for myself in isolation and to hell with everyone else." The reason we accept it is SO THAT we become PART OF the atonement (plan) and now have a PROFESSION of atonement, which we do all the time, which involves GIVING TO OTHERS. Solely accept the atonement for yourself SO THAT you can share it!

Jesus's intention was NEVER to suggest that people are to accept atonement for themselves and then HOARD IT and NOT SHARE IT and NOT HELP ANYONE ELSE. In fact, we can interpret it to mean.... I accept atonement for myself because it is my sole responsibility to put myself into a position WHERE I can help others through a service of miracles!

"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."

"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, then the responsibility for what is atoned FOR CANNOT be yours."

"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."

Before the ego existed, you had a self, created by God. Just as everyone did. In the separation, you denied your self. The denial of self, was an attempt to destroy your self. But you had to have something to identify with. So you shifted your sense of "what am I" away from your soul, towards an ego that you invented.

The ego is really the idea of the denial of life, of God, and of your soul. It is the attempt to eradicate you, which is why all its efforts lead to death. While the ego seems to be a self, it really is a lack of self. It is the absence of you and the rejection of mind. It masquerades as a self, when in fact it is the opposite of having a self.

Having identified with it, when people talk about oneness and non-duality you might feel frightened, as if it means that YOU are going to end. So long as you are identified with your ego, which is a false and second self, you will interpret any movement towards God as threatening.

The ego does not understand union or oneness and interprets it as death. This is also why you have ego rebounds and feel afraid and offended when you try to move into the truth. It's not really that YOU are under threat, it's that the ego is. But having identified WITH it and believing it to be what you are, you interpret ITS fear as your own.

So then the idea of returning to oneness, seems threatening to your ego, because your ego indeed cannot exist in oneness. And if you think that your ego is your self, YOU WILL not want to wake up. It will seem to threaten you. Especially the idea that the ego does not exist at all, is taken by the ego as an attack, and YOU will experience this as an attack upon your very existence. But only IF you believe the ego is your self.

The truth is that when the ego is undone, this happens as a result of YOU dis-identifying with it. Or to put it another way, you reintegrate yourself, identifying with your soul/spirit, reclaiming your mind, and dis-associating from the ego. This means you stop believing that the ego is your self, or that you even have an ego. Once you can recognize that your self, and your ego, are two different things, you are no longer threatened by the idea of undoing it.

A return to heaven is not really a return to no self. In fact, the ego is the state of no self. It is the state of self denial. It is a denial of life and a denial of existence and of identity in Christ. Returning to heaven is a REUNION with your real self, a re-identifying as a soul or Son of God in the Sonship, and a reclaiming of your true nature. You actually are returning to HAVING a self. That's why this is all about RESURRECTION.

The self God created you to be is permanent and will always exist in reality. Your Holy Self is God-given and cannot ever be destroyed. It's only your identification or sense of "who am I" that has become confused. Shifting your "who am I" from the non-existent ego to the permanent soul, can be nothing but reassuring and authentic.

Some people interpret the course to mean there is either a oneness or a duality, either God alone or many egos. And that undoing egos results in God being alone again. But this is not sufficient or accurate. God created you as a real living being, and it is you IDENTIFYING WITH ego that produces the ego and the separation, NOT the creation of an individual identity. You were an individual (who also shared everything) before this all happened.

Returning to God is not the annihilation of your individuality, it is the reclaiming of your individuality. The ego is NOT individuality, it is the rejection of having any real identity at all.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

Attack actually means withdrawal. The Kingdom of God cannot be attacked. When you try to attack, you withdraw away from what you are attacking.

It's funny how all of the ego's illusions always look like one thing but are actually totally the opposite.

In the ego, free will looks like being tremendously independent and having great breadth of choice, but in truth the ego's free will is actually an imprisoned will and all its choices are attempts to isolate and be limited. The ego is the imprisoner of will.

When you attempt to attack a brother, you withdraw away from him and isolate. Therefore your attack cannot access the reality of what He is. Only in sharing of love can you actually "connect" with your brother's real self, because his real self is made of love and can only be accessed through love.

It's the same with God. If you try to attack God or oppose His will, instead of actually being ABLE to cause some kind of change in him, you instead withdraw away from him. It seems to be experienced by you as if it's a positive outward expression of attack away from yourself, but in truth it is a withdrawal away from the perceived enemy and a failure to attack at all.

Attack cannot have any real effects. You cannot really sin. You cannot attack anything real. Nothing real can be threatened. This is why God and His Kingdom are totally beyond the reach of the ego.

Similarly with power, when you are empowered you automatically must be aligned with love because love is strength and only by being aligned with love can you access the Power of God. If you try to use God's power to attack, you automatically lose that power and become weak.

In the ego, whenever there is an attack trying to be perpetrated, it is in fact a lack of attack. It is a failure to cause. It is an attempt to stop causing. It is the opposite of causal power. It's like a fearful dog barking its head off in hopes that the threat will go away, making it look like it is attacking when in fact it is terrified and will run away at the slightest advance.

This means literally you literally CANNOT ATTACK ANYTHING REAL. You cannot attack your brother, you cannot attack God, and you cannot attack yourself. This is why your innocence is guaranteed. Any time you try to attack you automatically place yourself under arrest. When you try to attack, you arrest the extension of your mind, which produces sickness. When you attack, you create illusions of being hurt.

When you try to attack your brother, you arrest your mind and attack yourself. This causes you to withdraw away from your brother into your body. It makes you isolate yourself and identify yourself with a physical form in a specific location in space. You are supposed to be everywhere in your omnipresence but attack puts you in prison. You imprison yourself by not loving yourself and others.

Joining minds with others through expressions of love (miracles) heals the separation, releases you from prison, ceases attack and allows you to gain access to sharing with others again and with God. Only through love can you connect with loving brothers. Attack is a breakdown in communication and it attacks communication itself, causing the attacking effort itself to be attacked. This is because all ego efforts to attack are self attack.

God is absolutely protected from the ego and all its ways. It cannot even approach God because its attempts to approach are actually running away. Every time it lurches forward with a spear, it recoils in terror. Nothing real can be threatened because the ego can only attack the ego and reality does not attack reality. Nothing unreal can threaten anything real, and nothing unreal exists.

"That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to DO, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I know what to do. Only then will your MIND will to follow me."

"Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are deciding against healing, and your veto of my will FOR you MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless our wills are joined you CANNOT be healed."

"Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION."

"My will cannot overcome yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal."

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. 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."

"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we are alike. 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. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom?"

"Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God’s Sons are equal in will."

"Join then with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons."

"By offering freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is."

"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him."

"Alone we can do nothing, but TOGTHER our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts."

"By NOT BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established in ours and as ours. This will is invincible because it is undivided. "

"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."

"Glory be to the union of God and His Holy Sons, because all glory lies IN them because they ARE united."

"The miracles WE do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting with His Will FOR us. When you unite with me, you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in yourself."

"I bring His Peace back to all His Children, because I received it of Him for us all."

"The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one He taught me IS yours."

"We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together."

In the Course, Jesus talks about zombies!!

He says, "let the dead bury the dead".

People in the world in bodies are pretty much the "living dead". Also...

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven, on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."

"Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain and finally to die."

Being in a body at all, unless your mind is awake and you're about to get outta here, is a state of death. We might think that the physical world is "life", but it's really death. Or at the very least, it is stages of death and preparation for death.

Those whose mind is not with Heaven have chosen to believe in death to some degree, and therefore are identifying themselves as something which is made of death - the ego's idea of living.

This is why all objects and materials and plants and animals and humans and planets and stars all "die" in this universe, because they're already dying because they are FUNDEMANTALLY made of death (separation).

Physical birth IS actually the beginning of DEATH and is NOT the beginning of life. What changes is not alive and cannot be life at all.

So all those people out there, as bodies, and maybe "you" as a body also, are zombies. The living dead.

This is why RESURRECTION makes sense as a RETURN to life. The final resurrection is the complete exit from the "dream of death" (by TRUTH not death), but along the way as you are awakening to truth you are also COMING BACK TO LIFE.

This is why "raising the dead" is not just a matter of restoring life to what seems to be a corpse, which IS entirely possible, but it ALSO means the raising of all those who are in the process of dying, who are unconsciously dreaming, who identify themselves with "things that die", and who are not really fully alive.

Life is ONLY eternal life. Life is not partial living or partial death or fluctuations in-between. God is life and is the giver of life. Not physical forms, but life as Immortal Spirit. The Christ. Son of God. Your Real Self. That is living with God in the living Heaven. This world is not that, although it may come to REFLECT a vision of heaven prior to returning TO heaven.

Resurrection is the raising of the dead back to eternal life and the complete exiting of identification with or limitation by anything which is not of God - i.e. any kind of body. This applies to "dead bodies" as much as it applies to "living bodies", ALL of which are dead.

Life is forever.

If it were true that the dead could not be raised, this would HAVE to mean that those who have gone into unconsciousness and separation and denial and are therefore choosing death, could not be recovered. Those who have fallen asleep into a dream world could not be saved. And those who are the "living dead" walking around believing they are ACIM students could not possibly INCREASE their aliveness.

If it is true that you CAN resurrect, that you CAN awaken from this deadly dream, and that you CAN return to Life, then one way or another, death MUST be reversible. Each time you forgive and claim the atonement, you ARE returning to life and ARE RESURRECTING.

Either resurrection is possible and permanent, or death is possible and permanent. Either death has power over God's Son, or there is potential for God's Son to return to life.

Failing to believe that raising the dead is POSSIBLE, MUST be a belief that resurrection is IMPOSSIBLE. And if you do not believe in resurrection, you do not believe in forgiveness or the undoing of the ego. If you are an ACIM student, you SHOULD believe that raising the dead is entirely possible, otherwise there is no hope for you to return to God.

Only Eternal Life with God is reality.

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

I think this runs somewhat against the expectations of many ACIM students, but at the physical and personality level we are all considerably different. No two bodies are identical. There are many many sub-types of human bodies, brains, nervous systems, outlooks, orientations, races, gender identities, etc. We are not all the same in terms of human bodies, never were, and never will be. Everything physical is, at best, similar, but not equal.

When there comes to be a social "norm" where we think there's a normal way to be, a normal type of person, a normal interaction style, a normal behaviour, a normal way to process information etc, it becomes a way to create a "closet". People start to feel ashamed for being different, ashamed for having difficulties matching up to the expected behaviour.

An obvious example is in the case of gay/queer people whereby, quite literally their bodies and brains are different. A gay person does not have the "wiring" to produce experiences of excitation and attraction to members of the opposite sex, or at least this "ability" is altered and in a different ratio. A trans-sexual person may have a wildly different sense of gender identity compared to their physical biology. There is science to confirm that gay people have different pheromones, different brain structures, different chemistry.

Another example is in terms of the differences between extroverted and introverted people, or those who are highly sensitive compared to those who are not. The extroverted people find release and stress-processing through social connection and external ways to work through things. This totally does not work for an introverted person who needs to go within, withdraw, process deeply and reflect. When either of these become an expected "norm" the other group becomes ashamed and repressed.

It's far better that we realize that on the physical and personality level, the human level, and to a degree in the mind as well since it is influenced by the brain wiring, that we are a collection of highly discordant, highly differentiated "persons". There is not a norm, there is not a standard, there is not a one-size-fits all, there is not a "we are all one" on this level. There is no such thing as physical oneness or physical equality. The idea of making the human race have a "physical oneness" must be completely destroyed. Oneness only works in the mind, not the body, and trying to make it work for bodies is insane and backwards.

I've been working with ACIM for over 20 years now and have gone through a lot of healing and transformation. But in spite of this, my body is still largely wired the same way it was years ago. It is still highly sensitive and introverted, my nervous system is still wired to process deeply rather than broadly, I still need down time to catch up with the processing, I still at times am shy and finding it harder to push out expressions and open up emotionally. These are physical traits rooted in how my brain is structured, regardless of my spiritual aspirations at the mind level. I work in abstracts and symbols and metaphors and subtle nuances, which is not true of most people.

You'll notice that as people work on spiritual awakening their body stays much the same. It may heal, it may seem more alive, it may seem healthier or younger, but it still has its accent, it still moves with similar mannerisms, there's still the same collection of language, there's the same eyes and mouth, the same height, the same weight, the same muscles and sense of motion. These things aren't really going to change because they're part of the body. Waking up more doesn't suddenly turn your body into a spiritual thing because it can't be that. It's a body, not a spirit.

Trying to expect bodies to be more spiritual is a spiritualisation of the physical, which is a form of level confusion. The physical can't be spiritual because it is not spirit. Trying to expect human physical persons to shed the wiring and uniqueness and differences that are hardwired into their physical makeup is highly unrealistic. Trying to act spiritual or look spiritual or trying to get the body to stop having its quirks is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

I would say that to some degree I have become more understanding of, at peace with, and perhaps a bit more masterful of working WITH the limitations of my physicality, but I wouldn't say that the physical has stopped being the way it always was. My mind has changed and that perhaps means that I now operate the body differently, but it still largely looks similar, moves similar, processes information similarly as before. I still have high sensitivity and am easily overwhelmed with too much input. I still fart and pee and shit and sleep and all that.

I see sometimes that people expect that they're going to turn into a butterfly or something as they work on their spiritual path. Doing workbook lessons for example doing meditations, starts to seem like it's going to cause a persons perception to change so much that they become non-physical. And in other words, that they won't be able to function on the physical level anymore. And yet, there they are, using the same physical body and the same eyes and the same brain to physically perceive the same book which still looks exactly the same with the same physical pages as before. The physical stuff barely changes at all.

So I think it would be healthy for us to acknowledge that we each are working with a distinct, specific, limited, quirky, and DIFFERENT type of physical body to everyone else. And this physical body brings with it unique challenges, unique wiring, unique preferences, unique pros and cons, unique talents and limitations. We're NOT all the same on this level. And it's okay to sort of embrace the way that you are different, the kind of body device you are having to work with, and it's okay to treat "your self" with kindness and acknowledgement even if it does not work for other people.

If your body has needs, if your brain has needs, if certain types of interactions or relationships or environments or people or whatever don't work for you, that's fine. It's likely to do with how your body is wired. Yes you can change some things psychologically but the body itself cannot actually ever be whole, cannot be spiritual, cannot be like as swiss army knife, cannot do all things in all ways with all people and all situations, and does not have every ability that everyone else has.

Letting "yourself" off the hook for it to be okay to be NOT like other people, to have your own path, to go your own way, to do things in your own style, to have your own needs and boundaries, to dislike some things that other people like, to not want to participate in certain things that other people tout as ideal, is totally fine. Most of these "preferences" are totally rooted in how the physical body is made up and how the brain is connected, how the personality is structured and what that makes you feel comfortable with (or not).

We're all working on transcending these limits and things but we shouldn't be in denial that the body has its own very unique persuasion which is not very likely to completely match anyone else on the planet. I like most spiritual people want to 'become' or remember being the perfect soul that God created, my true self, my real self, but I highly highly doubt that this is going to change the nature, shape, color, style, orientation, workings, mannerisms, cycles, or character of my physical body in any significant way.

The body is an encounter suit. It's not you, but it IS a major limit and it does have major differences to other bodies. We can't pretend that's not true at this level. We're trying to rise above it and not identify with it and not use that to keep us from God, but at the same time we also don't want to get into people-pleasing and trying to fit into something that we are not comfortable with. It's okay to be different while you're working on trying to become "all the same" and "one" with everyone in spirit.

I've yet to see a single awakening person whose speaking voice suddenly sounds like it's a whole other person. Same accent, same intonations, same pacing, same emphasis, everything. That's not going to change anytime soon. We are not bodies, but bodies ARE bodies.

For me I am going to just be DIFFERENT, and NOT the same, until I can find a way to transcend the LEVEL of differences and be truly equal in mind and spirit. And I do not expect my body will ever suddenly turn into a rainbow, will not tolerate expectations to fit in with any body-oriented category, and will stick out like a sore thumb until the soreness is healed in my mind.

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct" UrM5A1

"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently, Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them as you were before." UrW155L1

"The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness." UrT1C12

"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. " UrM9A6

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"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. 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. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you." UrT18I1

"The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs." UrT15H12

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

"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 world in which we think we live, is nothing but a dream. But we're so used to being in it, that we refer to it as real. We think it has real buildings, real people, real cars and real trees. We think we are eating real food, having real sickness, working at real jobs, and that bodies really die.

To align ourselves with the truth, however, we need to properly identify what this world is. This world is UNREAL. It's a hallucinated dream happening in the mind of someone who doesn't want to accept reality. Reality is the Kingdom of God, beyond space and time. The contents of this world are false.

"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."

"And what you seem to WAKE to, is but another FORM of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

Jesus is pretty blatant here, saying that even when you wake up from sleeping at night, you are STILL dreaming. This world which you think is real and is your real life, is STILL a dream. It has the same content because it's made of the same illusions, it just differs in its forms. It's so elaborate, so detailed, so seemingly separate, and so seemingly huge, that you don't suspect it's not even real.

We should properly identify then that this world IS a dream, it is UNREAL, and it is FALSE. It has no truth, because its contents are invalid. It is a false world because it opposes heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." It is not created by God, so it can't really exist. It's more like a strange realm of illusions and dreams, images and fantasies, whisps of deceptive smoke and mirrors, in which figures come and go as if by magic.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

"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."

Mind went into a sleep state, it dreamed of time (and space), it made up events which don't really exist anywhere, with consequences that have no real effect, with changes that are completely substanceless, and which will merely disappear into nothingness when we wake up to reality.

This means that, everything in this world is NOT a "real" anything. So all the things we think are real, need to be re-labelled as not real. For example, sickness is not REAL sickness. I don't mean that a person is pretending to be sick, in the context that there IS a real sickness that they're mimicking. But that ALL "actual" sickness is NOT real.

Cancer is not real cancer, it's fake cancer. Brain damage is not real brain damage, because "the body is a dream." Broken limbs are not real breaks, because the limbs are fictional. The graveyards are all fake and all the funerals are meaningless. Nothing is ever really dying because it can't, it just changes from one illusion to another, and it's just a neutral nothingness. Every kind of sickness or suffering is an illusion and NOT A REAL ONE. And there is no counterpart as a REAL sickness or suffering of any kind.

None of these things can exist in reality. In heaven there is no sickness or suffering, no attack or death, nothing goes wrong, there are no problems, there's no job to work at or house to maintain, there's no stores to buy crap at or streets for cars that break down. There isn't even a real sun.

"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."

So in this world, when you look at anything, you should really be recognizing that it is a DREAM OF something. A sick broken body is not a REAL sick broken body, it's a fake body pretending to be sick. A dead body is not a REALLY dead body, it's a DREAM IMAGE of a dead body pretending to look like it's dead. It's no different than a living one because they're both totally fake. Their forms different but they don't really mean anything different.

This also why there is really no death, because all of these things which we think "die" are just dreams. Reality cannot die because it cannot be threatened. They're figments of the mind. They're just images and holograms floating around in a fictional environment. This is why ACIM also teaches that the body cannot really die, OR live, because it is nothing. It is meaningless.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"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."

"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. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"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. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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 we need to learn as teachers of God, is to recognize and be aware that we're literally hanging out inside a giant DREAM right now. This world ISN'T real. Spacetime isn't real. Physical matter isn't real. Objects and bodies aren't real. Your body isn't a REAL body. There are no such things as real bodies. Your sickness isn't a REAL sickness. There is no such thing as a real sickness. Your sins aren't real either, because there is no such thing as REAL sin.

It's a complete reframing of this whole "reality", this whole experiential realm of mind or system of thought. To realize that since it is opposite to reality, it is UNreality, and is just a dream. We try to GIVE it reality to MAKE it real, but we only do this BECAUSE it's not real. We want to believe in it and value it, only because it HAS no value of its own. It's a meaningless world, made of nothing, an illusion of nothing appearing to be something. A tiny mad idea.

To recognize the world for what it IS, you have to categorize its ENTIRE CONTENTS as unreal. Everything the body can see with its physical sight has to be recognized as NOT REAL, and NOT TRUE, and NOT ACTUAL.

"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. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

So we should get our mind into the habit of regard the things of this world as DREAMS. As fiction. Properly labelling them as artificial fake things. If your partner has a physical sickness in their body, they DO NOT have a REAL sickness in a REAL body. It's an illusion of sickness in an illusory body.

You wake up in the morning and brush your dream teeth and eat your dream breakfast and drive to your dream job, you do your dream work and drive your dream car home and eat your dream supper. Then you go to dream sleep in your dream bed and pretend to dream within a dream.

It's precisely BY recognizing that a sick body does not have a REAL sickness, that all power is stripped from the sickness and it is recognized as nothing. This is part of the healing approach of a miracle worker. When sickness is realized to be FICTION, it holds no weight and has no power and is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear" and what is recognized as nothing must vanish. You weaken and withdraw power from the sickness by regarding it as NOT REAL SICKNESS. Real sickness does not exist anywhere, just the illusion of sickness pretending to be sickness. It is empty.

"Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone. YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No OTHER cause it has, nor ever will."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life."

One of the major problems we have is that while in ego, we're in a state of confusion. And that means we've lost sight of what is true and real. This then leads to confusing things which are false with things that are true, and not really knowing what is what. In such a state, it is hard to recognize anything for what it really is.

The problem is that not recognizing stuff makes it harder to identify if you are doing something wrong or need to take action to correct it. In denial, it's hard to even realize for example that you are upset, afraid, guilty, angry, harboring grievances, judging someone else. We might be doing all these things but simply not recognize them as these things. It's like we have swapped around all the labels. This can even make you choose suffering and death by mistake, thinking they are salvation.

Years ago I was harboring a lot of anger and yet at the same time was so in denial of this that, even sitting on top of a volcano about to burst, I would have told you I was not angry at all. Similarly I was in states of tremendous fear and anxiety and yet was so "used to it", to blinded by it, that I did not think I was afraid. I simply could not recognize it for what it was, and thought it was just normal or something else. And when you get used to living with something you think can never be undone you just assume it's a permanent truth.

When I judge, I do not always recognize that it is judgement. I do stuff that I think does not seem like judgement, but it is. I may be having a grievance about something but may not actually think to myself, this is a grievance, and it doesn't seem to be what you might categorize as a grievance. Fear can take on many forms and turn into anger, and you might not even realize you are afraid because you feel angry, yet behind the anger there is fear.

It's hard to correct things when you don't even really discern what it is you are doing. You might not even think you have a problem at all. You might be convinced that someone else is the one who is wrong. I mean, regardless of the fact that you may be projecting blame, you might literally not even realize that you are doing something. You can be unconscious of the fact that you are attacking yourself and totally believe that other people are out to get you.

So it all really boils down to a simple lack of recognition, of clear discernment. Being able to tell, this thing is this, and that thing is that. That God's truth is actually true, and that ego's truth is actually false. Trying to "sort out" which is which is almost our entire effort in waking up. If we could simply "learn" to be clear about what stuff is, what we are doing, what effects it is producing, and making awakened decisions about what we want, we would not produce "un-asked for" consequences, undesired suffering, or buy into make-believe problems.

We may be asked to see Christ in our brothers, but how can we do that when we have absolutely no clue what Christ is, how to be it, or how to perceive like Him? We might be asked to forgive, but then we barely can even grasp what forgiveness is or how it's supposed to work. We are digging around in the dark trying to find our way to the light, when all the while the light is what we need to find our way.

Really we're just a bit confused. We're having some trouble remembering what is true and real about ourselves, others and the world around us. We're mistaken. And we do not even recognize that we are mistaken. Which can result in just staying asleep in a confused state believing you're totally normal. But once we do recognize we're mistaken we can learn to accept what now becomes an obvious fact. We have an aha moment, a eureka. What seems confusing becomes clear to you. And once you recognize the truth, you are enlightened.

"Forgive them father for they know not what they do."

"Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all."

You can create an illusion of being responsible, by positioning yourself as being angry and upset about what other people are doing. You can make yourself seem like you are responsible by standing up for people's rights or agreeing with the ways that certain people are very wrong.

This paints a picture of you as a hero and savior and as someone who does not believe in mis-treatment and so on, but is also hipocritical and irresponsible given it gives you opportunity to accuse and condemn and judge.

You can seem like a very responsible, caring person who is deeply upset by the hurtful things people do, that your fellow man is mis-treated by society or that certain politicians are trying to destroy the world. But this is all a fake responsibility.

You are not responsible unless you are being responsible for yourself and for what you are doing to yourself, for the ways that you are using others by scapegoating them, the ways that you judge and condemn and project your own hidden guilt, and are owning up to being Christ. Owning up to what you have been doing to yourself and passing off as what other people are doing. That's real responsibility.

You don't win any points for finding other people guilty or being outraged or angry or placing the blame somewhere. That's selective judgement. Selective blame. Some set of people get to be very very wrong while other people get to be very very right. It's a huge trap and it's hugely dishonest.

This always happens when you believe the world is real and you want to find a way to be more spiritual or innocent or pure or good or to uphold some high standard or ideal or higher ground. But there is no higher ground in an illusory world, it is all insane. The higher ground is beyond this world and recognizes that this world is not spiritual and it cannot be spiritualized by your ego.

What you may not realize is that your ego is split and by making some aspects of this world good and worthy and acceptable and other parts wrong and bad and unacceptable, you've fallen for the ego's primary trap of believing that SEPARATION is real. Separation between good people and bad people, between the righteous and the unworthy.

It doesn't matter which side you are on. It doesn't matter if you identify mostly with being goodie two-shoes, or some kind of dark evil monster. Both of them are false because they are both states of un-wholeness and exclusivity. They are both a lie from your ego. And those being all "good" and nice and so on are just as "evil" as the evil ones. They believe in separation and segragation, often even more than the rest of the crowd, and yet will constantly spout off about how segragation and conditional love are unfair or unwelcome.

You can't be right by judging judgers, or hating haters, or attacking attackers, or being angry at angry people, or hurting the hurtful. That's the ego's motto of an eye for an eye. There is absolutely no holiness there whatsoever. It's a fake holiness, a holier-than-thou attitude, a pretense that you are innocent when in fact you are just as guilty because you BELIEVE in guilt.

You can believe in guilt and accuse people of being guilty and believe that you're being pure and innocent by finding them guilty, but all this means is you believe strongly in guilt. You try to not appear to be THE ONE who is guilty, but you cannot HAVE a belief in guilt in your mind at the same time as a belief in holiness. And whatever you believe you will BE.

Rules cannot apply to other people separately from how they apply to you. Judgements cannot be given to others without judging yourself. You can't find someone else guilty without you believing that you are guilty. The righteous will go down in their own flames.

"Would you rather be right or happy?" - ACIM

Being happy can only come by not finding ANYONE guilty. Because other people ARE YOU. What applies to them applies to you. This is fundamentally different than seeing yourself as a SEPARATE person. Separation is attack, not holiness. So are you really escaping your own attack?

When I used to do ACIM, it was always about me being here on Earth trying to forgive stuff. People were across from me in bodies, as bodies. I was a body. The focus was on me being here anchored in a body trying to somehow get closer to reality.

But then there was a big change and turning point, namely that my wife left her body and wend to heaven. But this was by no means the end of our interactions together, and instead she became a kind of anchor in heaven.

Since then my focus has noticeably shifted in how I deal with the course. I see it as telling me that I should be locating myself as IN heaven, and not of this world. Even if my body seems to be here, I should regard myself as with God. Physically on earth, mentally in heaven.

I see this also as relating to the topic of 'who I am really'. I am not a body, I am free. Well, where am I if I'm not a body - I'm in heaven. If I am Christ, where is Christ? Not on Earth. Christ IS heaven. If I am immortal spirit and recognize and identify myself as spirit, where is spirit? It's not on earth, it's in heaven, as heaven.

So for me now the focus has shifted quite a bit in terms of how I am 'oriented'. I am becoming increasingly more 'centered' in heaven, identifying as part of heaven, while my body continues to seem to exist on Earth.

I liken it to what it would be like if I was an angel in heaven, and came to Earth for a visit but was still entirely of the same nature and mindset that I was in heaven. Still believing I am with God, still in the light, still a spirit being, not confused about who or what I am. In the world, but not of it.

I think this is important because we need to realize we are not Earth people, we are not bodies or humans, we are not anchored here. Just because bodies are here it gives a flavour of ... everything I do is from the perspective of being here. But this isn't the proper perspective. To get above the battlefield mind has to see itself as NOT in a body, NOT outside the Kingdom, NOT separate from God.

I focus now much more on affirming and recognising who I really am - immortal spirit, where I really am - in heaven with God, how I really am - perfectly innocent and invulnerable. Lifting up and away from all the sense of the bullshit of the world, all the ideas of "something is going wrong", all the illusions of suffering and of being even someone or something that can suffer. Uncovering my true self.

We need to be above the world, looking down, not looking up from below. Believing we are firmly WITHIN God, not outside of God.

"You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost."

"That is why we made no distinction before between HAVING the Kingdom of God and BEING the Kingdom of God."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"To be IN the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention ON it."

"The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone."

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"You who ARE the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you ARE reality."

Effectively the "sonship" or Kingdom God created, is really a kind of "collective consciousness". Yes it's not what ACIM would officially refer to as consciousness, having nothing to do with perception etc, but we do SHARE mind. There is this one mind which houses many minds. It's similar to the Borg on Star Trek in that sense. Everyone is plugged into everyone, and indeed also acts "as one" in a giant collaborative way.

This also means that you are not just some separate chunk of the collective. Whereby other people are separate chunks, as if there are then wires connecting you together. But moreso you actually are everywhere and in everyone. And your brother IS part of you literally. You share your actual self with their self so fully they are basically one, yet two. You really are the whole collective, and are also part of it. The whole, and the part, as in a hologram.

What we call ego or separation, is what you get when you take someone who is part of AND all of this collective, and you try to "fence them off". To isolate them in a little prison with a wall around it, so that you can sort of say, this collective unit is now divorced from the collective, disconnected from the "hive mind", isn't sharing anything, can't "hear" the thoughts of the other brothers any more, and has now become "alone" or orphaned.

This self which was, and still is, part of the whole, sees itself as lacking the sense of relationship and sharing that unites it with the "rest" of the collective, which is also the rest of itself. And so it is kind of like a split off part of the whole, which was part of the whole, but has forgotten that it was whole. So now it sees itself as only a part, and only partial. Such a sense of identity is alone and lonely, isolated and like on a desert island, cut off and unable to relate or share.

To "undo the ego" is really a matter of reintegrating the rest of yourself, which means plugging yourself back into the whole sonship, to share everything with everyone, to have real relationship with all equally. That is really just a matter of taking away the separations - the walls - that seemed to imprison that part of the mind, so that that part of the mind is able to reconnect and integrate with the whole again.

We're not here in the business of exterminating parts of mind, we're actually in the business of setting them free from imprisonment. An imprisoned mind acts like an ego because it has limited itself. But when that same mind lets go its sense of selfishness, specialness, or exclusivity, it expands to return to the whole mind. This isn't really a destruction of your self, it's just a removal of the sense of separation which gave you a false sense of being small and limited.

In that sense, the part of your mind that believes it is an ego, lifts itself away from the "egotism" that imprisons it, the walls are transcended, the sense of self expands to be more inclusive, you become more than "just yourself", and all of this sense of isolation, loneliness, abandonment, fear, hiding, darkness, being trapped, being lost, etc, all that stuff goes, because the mind opens up to freedom and joining again.

You are returning to the family of God. The chains that bind you and keep you in a hellish prison are what need to be undone, not your "self". But while you live in the chains, you will see yourself as small and selfish because of what the chains imply about you. If you identify with the prison you become the prisoner. But you are more than the prison, you are only imprisoned by it if you give it the power to do so. The ego is a prison cell, not a self. It's like a trap that you've become stuck in, and all you need is to be set free.

While you have an ego, you will actually defend it and protect it. You will be afraid of the truth because the truth shows that the ego is not real, and if you believe you are the ego, that means you are not real. That would of course be frightening.

It's not so much that our ego resists waking up. It can't wake up. It's just a machine, a structure made of illusions. But WE resist waking up because we're identified with the ego. We interpret the truth through it, ask it what its interpretation of the truth is, and take the truth's "attack" on it personally.

If for example you are identified with the ego and the truth tells you that the world is an illusion, or that your body is an illusion, you - identified with ego - will take that personally. You'll think that it means you are an illusion. Obviously that's confused but you also think it's real, so you'll see the truth as an attack on your very existence.

This is why it can be so difficult to accept the truth and wake up. Our ties to the ego make us believe the illusion is real and that we are the illusion. IF that were true, it's totally understandable that you wouldn't want to let go of your self.

This can be why, when you open up to some truth, letting the light in, you will on the one hand welcome courageously but on the other hand react to it like it's come to destroy you. You will have an ego rebound and feel upset and angry and scared, as though you're being threatened.

Often when I am in a flow or a upswing of inspiration, teaching, writing etc... I am opening up to new truths and expanding my awareness, but at the same time, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I start to have a lot of emotions come up for release. And if I push too hard, I will actually start to feel afraid and guilty. This is the parts of me still attached to the ego which do not understand or accept the truth, and perceive it as meaning all kinds of wrong conclusions. I've found particularly that when I talk about unconscious guilt it can produce a lot of fear because my ego interprets it to mean the guilt is real and therefore I should be afraid.

Exposing yourself to the truth can therefore produce all kinds of reactions, including sickness. Sickness defends against the truth, because you think the truth has come to attack the ego. So basically if you're closely attached to and identified with the ego, the truth will seem very threatening and you will likely produce a lot of sickness in an attempt to protect your sense of "self". It's just self-preservation. The only distortion is that your sense of identity is misplaced so you're taking things personally that do not really apply to who you really are. They apply to the ego, but not you.

Sometimes then I have to take a break from "too much input" and from pushing myself into so much truth at once. But I think over time my rebounds have in general become less intense now. I can talk about the truth for longer before my sense of reality feels the pressure and starts to retaliate. I guess that's good, it means that I am not as ego-identified as I used to be, or that I've woken up some.

Jesus also talks about how when we are at first taking responsibility for everything, we may take it to be a major attack, because to the ego-identified self it implies we must be very guilty. But over time, as we dis-identify with the false self, we don't take it as personally, or to mean that we are guilty as much. Over time it becomes easier to take responsibility knowing that it does not imply you are guilty, as you start to "separate" yourself from the ego's interpretation of it.

Starting to grasp how I have chosen everything I am experiencing, has been blowing my mind and expanding my awareness, but also scaring my ego identification some. Time to relax a bit.

If you're like me, you probably regard your "self", whatever sense of self you have as "me", this self that seems to perceive and have emotions, as being NOT the ego. And you probably regard the ego as something tucked away in a dark corner that surfaces once in a while, something that you don't think of as "being" all the time. Surely your general day-to-day "self", that you refer to as "me", is not the ego?

But what if the entire sense of who you've regarded yourself as this whole time, who you call by your name, including all your emotions and egoic thoughts, all sense of a self that can suffer in any way, IS the ego? And what if that is not real, and your entire sense of being this self that suffers and feels unhappy and can be hurt is not really the real you?

Jesus hints that our personalities are superficial...

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct."

In truth we're supposed to be experiencing a state of immortality and perfection where we are permanently happy, unaffected, invulnerable, incapable of suffering in any way. Our real self cannot suffer or die, or cannot suffer loss, cannot grieve, cannot be upset, cannot be unhappy or lacking peace in any way.

ACIM tells tells us that "Happiness must be constant" and "God's will for me is perfect happiness" and "Reality is a constant state" and "Immortality is a constant state." If your happiness is meant to be constant, how is it possible that you EVER experience unhappiness? It also tells us that we cannot really suffer, and whatever is experiencing the suffering cannot be my self. As if we have a sort of imposter self, a second self, that we've identified with as who we are, but isn't who we really are.

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing."

"The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you."

"I am in the likeness of my creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die." Also lesson 248 says "Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind."

Șo if "I" seem to be having upsets of any kind, unhappiness, sadness, loss, grief, guilt, shame, fear, anger, anything that isn't constant permanent joy, that "stuff" cannot really be a part of my real self. My real self cannot suffer and cannot be unhappy. My real self cannot experience any kind of loss or deprivation or guilt or anything less than perfection.

So if that's true, then what is this self that seems to suffer? And I don't mean some remote hidden ego, I mean the very self, out in the open every day, that you think of as "you" this whole time. On a daily basis, going through life reacting to things, having upset emotions, feeling horrible about stuff, being unhappy, perceiving threats, etc. It's way more out in the open and much closer to "you" than you might have realised. You're being it every single day.

This "you" that you're being, this you that suffers and is unhappy and has grief and anger and so on, that experiences any kind of suffering, THAT is ego (being identified with ego). Or more accurately, who you are has identified WITH a "suffering self", and you see yourself AS IT, as a self that suffers. A self that can feel hurt, a self that has pain, a self that grieves losses, a self that can be in fear or guilt. When "you" suffer, ego is suffering, and YOU are believing IT is who and what you are, as if it is YOUR suffering.

Somehow there has been a mixup, where you currently find yourself "constantly" experiencing various problems and reactions and upset feelings, thinking that these feelings are a part of yourself, that it's even POSSIBLE for you to have such feelings.

How can an immortal perfect loving constantly joyful being ever have even the slightest unhappiness as a part of themselves? They can't. So it then begs the question, this "self" that seems to suffer, which is the combination of your mind plus a false identification WITH ego/body/suffering, can it really be who and what you are? Is this suffering self really you? Can YOU really suffer at all?

This you that you've been all your life and think of as normal, that has emotional reactions and instability and fears and guilts. Can this possibly be a part of yourself as God created you? Jesus says that you cannot suffer and you cannot die. He says you cannot be unhappy and you cannot experience loss. How if you are experiencing loss and are unhappy, is that really YOU that is experiencing it? Or are you experiencing a false sense of self identity, bound to some kind of egoic construct, that sees "itself" (yourself) as even capable of suffering?

If I am having grief and loss for example it feels like "I" am grieving, and I have the feelings, and I feel unhappy, and I have the emotions and I have the cries and I am the one who has had a loss. But this can't be true. My mind can't bring an "end" to the loss by trying to "get over it" as an ego-identified self, but it can dis-identify from that which believes in loss, and that indeed will end it.

So if there is a feeling of loss, it has to be false, and it cannot be a part of myself. If I feel like, or experience it like, "I" am the one who IS IN the loss, HAVING the loss, then I have identified with something that can't be a part of myself in truth. My real self cannot ever lose anything, because nothing real can be threatened.

In such a suffering situation it means my so-called "ego" is not tucked away hidden from sight in the background, it's something I am actively BINDING to and see myself as IN, like I'm wearing it, and have identified WITH it, as if I am trying to be ONE WITH IT, living out from it every second of every day.

And that puts it right in front of my face and even closer than that. It's lurking in plain sight in the very sense of false "self", in the sense of "I am suffering". That it's ME that is suffering. That's my identification with something false. God-given mind, believing falsely.

That's pretty eye opening because no longer does it mean that the ego is some background figure that rears its head occasionally. Even if it is, identifying WITH AND AS it, trying to BE an ego, binds me to it and makes me experience life as though I am suffering. I am the one who is feeling, I am the one who is upset. Only ego can be upset, and if I am UNITING with ego I will be upset as though it's my own upset. And that leads to unconsciousness - spiritual sleep.

So if we ask ourselves, who or what am I, and if there is a feeling of upset, can this feeling of upset really be a PART of me? Can it be mine? Can it possibly be me that is really suffering, if it's impossible for my constant divine self to suffer, ever? If who I really am can NEVER suffer in any way, how can I BE something that suffers, and how can the suffering be truly mine?

It then frames your egoic emotion reactions, yours stresses, as not really yours. How can these upset feelings be yours? Yes you are identified and "one with" the ego self that suffers and who sees itself as capable of suffering through its false narrow perception, but this is a false association. IT's suffering cannot be YOUR suffering unless your sense of identity is confused with it. We don't just have a little ego in the back of our minds, we are actively holding onto it and trying to BE it and regard it as us!

So now it brings into question, whether we should be distancing ourselves from, detaching from, whatever seems to be suffering, and from suffering itself. If we have upset feelings in any way, perhaps we need to be telling ourselves, these feelings are NOT a part of me, I cannot suffer, and therefore I cannot be having these feelings. I'm not having these feelings. And we must have chosen to have them if we've put them there.

That seems pretty radical, to just regard all upset emotions and sickness and suffering as impossible and not a part of you.

"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."

If we are meant to be fully identified with and as immortal spirit, then we need to shift our identification away from this "suffering self". We can't BE a self that suffers if we are permanently holy. We can't be a self that is vulnerable and attackable, or frightenable, or capable of being guilty, or of experiencing loss and grief. Whoever or whatever is having that stuff, it can't be me or mine. And if it's there and I'm immersed in it so much that I feel like "its mine", I am unconscious and have identified with ego, and have forgotten who I am.

And that really brings into question, who are you really? Perhaps you are being FAR more ego than you thought. Perhaps every single day you are immersed in egotism and suffering and unhappiness. Perhaps your whole sense of identity is lost and wrapped up in living AS an egoic entity, seeing yourself as having emotions that are impossible in reality, as having forms of suffering that cannot affect your soul.

Perhaps you are much more ego-identified than you ever thought possible, and perhaps your whole sense of self, of who and what you are, is much more out of touch with your real self than you thoughts. Perhaps your real self is on some whole other level or dimension, and perhaps this self you're being every day is the self that is the "not me that lurks in the dark corner". To your real self, made of light, your everyday suffering self IS trying to be an ego. Who you have become, is not who you are.

Are we ready to identify fully with spirit, stop seeing ourselves as capable of suffering, bringing into question ALL ego emotions and reactions, and even questioning whether we are the self that we thought we were all this time? What if you are not you, and you are not being yourself right now, and you don't even know who you are?

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself."

Something I'm finding quite clarifying, is recognizing that there are 3 levels in the course, not 2.

The first level "level 1" is the Kingdom, ultimate reality, God.

The second level is the separated state of MIND, not a physical state, a level of ego insanity within the tiny mad idea, a thought system of separation, but largely composed of beliefs and thoughts. This is where the ego lives, the egoic fragmented mind.

The third level is the physical world, spacetime, planet Earth, human bodies etc. This was projected out FROM the 2nd level by the ego. We did not want the fearful content of the separated mind so we denied it and projected it. This produces a SYMBOLIC world which symbolises the egoic thought system level 2 in every way. Level 3 became a way to "house" and "defend" the egoic content of level 2 and HIDE it.

When you then read the course and it talks about things to do with symbols and the body being a symbol of fear and a symbol of the ego and so on, it becomes easier to follow when you assign the mental egoic content to level 2, and the physical aspect to level 3. The fear, the guilt, the insanity, that's all on level 2.

Then it also becomes easier to say that, our attitude about level 3 physicality is largely driven by the level 2 ego mindset, but its on that level 2 that we can make corrections and healing, and this results in a higher perception of level 3 physicality.

The important thing I think is to decouple or separate out the physical from the ego. The physical is its own level of symbolism and separation. It symbolises the insanity of the ego mind. But we have to be careful not to BIND it to the ego in level 2 otherwise we start thinking that the physical is inherently sinful or death is bad or having other negative attitudes about physical things beyond their own nature, which is unforgiving.

But we then want to be able to see that same physical symbol through a higher quality of mind. If we detach all of the ego, sin, guilt, fear, etc from the physical level, it becomes easier to see the physical as more neutral and to then consider seeing it FROM a different level 2 mindset.

I think this also helps because we need to be realising that we need to dis-identify from everything on level 3. ie we've tried to take the mind from level 2 and merge it with level 3. We can step back fro level 3 physicality and not confuse the two levels of mind and body. Level 2 can become the 'right mind' rather than 'wrong minded', and then perception will shift from false to true.

To switch out the content of level 2 for the Holy Spirit's thought system, or to line it up with that at least, to symbolise heaven, we enter the state of forgiveness and then can perceive the physical level 3 as the forgiven world.

"The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees (level 2, below level 3), and SEEMS to be the whole foundation on which the world is based (level 3 based on/symbolizing level 2). Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place (in level 2), so that the world (physical level 3) could RISE from it, and keep IT hidden (level 3 hides level 2 ego). Its SHADOW (from level 2) rises to the surface (level 3), enough to hold its most external manifestations (level 3) in darkness (level 2 projected onto level 3), and to bring despair and loneliness (level 2 ego content) to it (level 3 physical), and keep it joyless. But its INTENSITY is veiled by its heavy coverings (level 3 matter), and kept APART (separate levels) from what was made to keep it hidden (level 3 hides level 2)." UrT18J6

"The body (level 3 physical) cannot see this, for the body (level 3) AROSE from this (level 2) for its protection (to hide level 2), which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes (physical level 3) will NEVER look on it (level 2). Yet they will SEE what it (level 2 projecting onto level 3) dictates. The body (level 3) will remain guilt's (level 2's) messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion (level 2 content) which seems to make it (level 3 matter) heavy and opaque (solid-seeming physical matter on level 3), impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system (symbolic of level 2). Its (level 3's) thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it (level 2 purified of ego). And then you see it as a fragile veil (level 3 is the veil), before the light."

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

We are in a state of denial where we are attacking reality. We are blocking truth, we do not want to see what is really there to see, we're trying to hide from God, we don't want to own up to being who we really are, we're trying to bind ourselves to something we're not, and we see ourselves as separate from what is real.

When Jesus talks about vision, he's talking about your willingness to see reality. When we say "above all else I want to see", we're saying that above all else, we're willing to pierce through illusions and walls and denials and take a good hard look at what is actually there. This is also what the course calls "reality contact" .Physical sight cannot see it, so we need to open the mind.

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it."

For example, God right now knows you exactly as you really are. He is aware of your perfect permanent innocence. But you are not. You are blocking your awareness of the truth about yourself. You do not know yourself as you really are, because you do not want to. You think things about yourself which you prefer, but which are not true. God therefore knows you better than you know yourself right now, and your job is to come to know what is really true of you again.

Similarly the acceptance of the atonement is really the acceptance of what is actually true. It's a willingness to see everything as it is, to recognize what it is, and therefore to no longer be deceived. It means no longer being in denial and no longer resisting the truth. We quite literally are hiding from reality, trying to identify with bodies in order to keep ourselves away from God.

It's like we're protesting against reality. We're fighting with it, we don't want it, we constantly attack it, and want to be separate from it. So we're out of touch with reality, which means we are confused and lost. It means we do not recognize what is real or not real, true or false, and are mistaken. This also means we are temporarily insane.

The desire to SEE, is the desire to KNOW, and the desire to BE. To see the real world is to be open and inclusive enough that you want to directly experience what actually is real. You can only experience this by not attacking reality, not separating from God, and not denying your soul. We basically are part of a rebellion, which began in the fall of man, and is ongoing. An ancient war against the truth.

If we are "the resistance" against the truth, which is also sickness and death, then we have to lay down our arms and put away our sharp-edged toys and be willing to be exposed to God again. To be open to sharing, to union and to oneness. If we want to be awake we're going to have to be willing to take the blindfold off and open the spiritual eye.

To see closer to reality will show us the real world, and the unreal world of Earth will be forgiven. In "reality" it will only be seen for what it is, before it fades away into nothingness. The closer we come to intimate contact with reality, the more we will see the light of the real world, and see God's reflection in the Earth.

Full reality exposure will reveal God to you, and your true self as Christ will reveal itself as Christ's face finally appears. And then you are ready to penetrate through the gates of heaven into total immersion and communion with all that is. To be in reality is to be in heaven.

"Every adjustment is therefore a DISTORTION, and calls upon defenses to uphold it AGAINST reality."

"For what could house this mad idea AGAINST reality, but for an instant?"

"WILLING AGAINST reality, though impossible, can be MADE into a very persistent goal, EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT WANT IT. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be?"

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY. You cannot love PARTS of reality, and understand what love MEANS."

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."

God's omnipresence doesn't mean that He is located at each location in SPACE. Space itself is a lie. It's an illusion of separation. It's easy to believe God is some great big huge thing so vast that he covers the whole universe, and so, your little spot on planet Earth is... a hair on his knee.

God isn't like that. It's not that PART of God is in one place, while another PART of God is in another. God defies spacetime.

All of God is over here. And, all of God is over there.

There is no compromise in this. It's not that the parts of God over here can't also be over there. It's not that most of Him is over here, with leftover parts over there. This would be true of objects in this world, but it's not true of God. God is not limited in a finite way.

This is what makes God's nature a little difficult to get your head around, because it defies all laws of space and time, separation of locations, boundaries, limits, etc.

The entire 'personality' of God is over here, in this location, fully present, completely fully located there with no lack or limitation or partiality. And to the ego that means, there is no God left to be anywhere else. But God defies the ego. God is ALSO over there, fully, completely, totally present, ALL of Him is over there, as well as over here. Simultaneously.

God transcends spacetime limits. If you were to think of Him in terms of space, you'd have to imagine an extraordinary warping of space, the likes of which you might only conceive of happening in a wormhole or black hole perhaps, there space itself becomes distorted, or two locations share the same space or overlap.

God's foundation of omnipresence is the root reality behind all things. In the "separation from God", we introduced the idea that SOME of what was "over here" was perhaps "not over there". Or that only PART of reality is present. Or that what is in one location, is missing from another location. THAT is what the ego thought system is based on - the OPPOSITE of omnipresence. The idea that there is limitation, lack, an inability to share, isolation, confinement, exclusion, partiality, loss of wholeness, locality and so on.

Particles of matter, including formations as the human body, are merely ideas of this breakdown in omnipresence. They are "localizations" which EXCLUDE what is outside in order to define something exclusive to the inside. "A little fence the Son of God has surrounding himself with" (paraphrase).

The body is an attempt to REJECT a vast majority of what exists, while simultaneously taking EXCLUSIVE possession of one little tiny part - which is the idea of specialness. And this is also why "special relationships" revolve around the body and keeping the body real. The body "disconnects" you from sharing the whole. It asserts that only a tiny PART of yourself is here, while the rest of you is forgotten. Or that there are special things here which are not present anywhere else - uniqueness. And it is this uniqueness that the ego loves to worship. Something that makes you seem DIFFERENT, something about your self that no-one else has. Something that SEPARATES YOU OUT.

This is why the body is always fundamentally a device for separation, even in its most spiritualized form of being used by the mind to try to extend love in the world. The body must go, because it is the "concentration" of "omnipresent-space" which attempts to SHUT OUT the whole in order to focus on the part. The whole (God) and the part (Son/soul) has to be fully united in omnipresence in order that they SHARE fully everything everywhere with each other. Separation from God is merely the attempt to separate part from whole and identify yourself as partial. This is why it has only affected a PART of your mind.

This is also why there cannot be a body of ANY KIND in omnipresent reality, because this would isolate and separate us from each other. We would not be able to SHARE, because bodies are devices that PREVENT sharing.

The unique thing we need to realize, is that while we are very used to living in ISOLATION, trapped in a body, fenced off and kept apart from the rest, this is HIGHLY UNNATURAL. In our natural state, WE ARE EVERYWHERE, we share ALL of creation, WE ARE OMNIPRESENT LIKE GOD. This follows also the law of God which is the Golden Rule. You are IN your brother. Your brother is IN you. God is in everyone. We are all everywhere.

This is why miracles unite you with your brother, and restore the omnipresent reality. You don't merely join or connect or 'touch', your MERGE and OVERLAP and SHARE SPACE. You exist in the same exact location as everyone else, sharing infinity forever.

"****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."

When you accuse someone of something you are splitting your mind. Splitting your mind isn't exactly a healthy thing to do. It means dissociation and denial and mental illness. Not to mention a profound loss of identity.

The fundamental fact is that you and other people ARE ONE. You are a PART OF other people. We are all joined together. We are all connected and SHARE everything. Part of you IS other people. You are in them. They are part of you. We are a collective in unison. "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

To appropriately relate to others, knowing that they ARE YOU as well as themselves, is to acknowledge that they are part of yourself. How you treat what appears to be "them", is the SAME as how you are treating yourself directly, because part of you is in them.

When you begin to SEPARATE OFF the other person, putting a fence around them and believing they are NOT PART OF YOU, that they are not yourself, not in your mind, not one with you, you are excluding A PART OF YOURSELF from yourself.

Part of you lives in other people. If you like, think of it as though part of you is in all the other bodies besides your own. When you single someone out and attack "them", in order to turn "them as you" into "only them without you", you are SPLITTING yourself.

Your mind splits because it has to dissociate or not-associate with the SELF that is IN your brother/neighbor. It is sectioning off a part of itself and calling it "not me", while labelling the other part of it as "me". That's one mind, split into two minds, at war with itself, attacking itself from the inside.

This is what happens when you accuse, attack, condemn, judge, find guilty, make sinful, or in any way reject anyone for any reason. You cannot do anything to other people WITHOUT doing it to yourself.

Anything that is done to them, IS done to you. And by your own hand. This means if you attack anyone for any reason, you are literally attacking yourself. You hurt yourself when you hurt others. You cannot escape from these consequences. This is the golden rule. It is the law of God.

If you identify anyone as "not me", sectioning them off as not SHARED with you, as not one with you, you are literally doing something unnatural to your mind. Your mind in its NATURAL condition is not isolated to your own body, nor is it exclusive to you. Mind HAS TO BE SHARED. All real mind is shared by everyone. You inherit and share the mind of God. Everyone shares the christ mind.

To identify that someone is not part of you, is to say they are not part of christ, and are not sharing existence with you. It's like you exclude them. And then you think in this separation that it is only THEM that you are targeting. This is where the ego is coming in and giving you an illusion. It will seem as though, if the other person is NOT YOU, then you CAN attack them WITHOUT experiencing consequences.

Another way to put that is trying to get away with murder. To cause without being part of the effects. To give without receiving. To attack while remaining safe. To judge as guilty while remaining innocent. As soon as there is this split in the mind, the mind starts believing this "ego message" that what applies to others DOES NOT apply to you. And now there is a rift, with the two of you on seemingly different levels, experiencing different things.

The world would say, in physical terms, that this is PRECICELY what is natural and normal. That you can, for example, on a physical level, damage the body of another person WITHOUT damaging your own. This is because bodies are separation devices and are designed to facilitate this illusion. They play along with it and make it seem POSSIBLE that you can attack without being attacked. Everything in spacetime does this because the whole system is a lie.

If you think you can cause without being affected, you have bought into the illusion of physical form. Bodies now testify that you can get away with murder, that you can in fact sin, because you can now attack another against their will without receiving any consequences. And if this were the truth of absolute reality, separation would be real.

It is because the physical world is rooted HEAVILY in separation that all physical objects testify to murder. This is their nature, to portray the son of God as attacked and split apart, to portray the sonship as broken and fragmented, to make it seem like one brother is NOT all brothers, that each is isolated and confined to their bodily prisons, and nothing ever applies equally to anyone. This is a PHYSICAL rejection of the Golden Rule, an attempt to break the law of God.

The fact is, however, that God's laws CANNOT BE broken. You can accept them, or you can deny them, but you cannot stop them from functioning. The golden rule ALWAYS applies at ALL levels at ALL times. This means even when you THINK you are doing something without receiving consequences, you are deceiving yourself. You cannot attack WITHOUT being attacked. You cannot judge WITHOUT being judged. And you cannot destroy without destroying yourself.

Your body might SEEM to get away with it, but YOUR MIND DOES NOT! And if your mind splits in this way, thinking it has isolated the effects to ANOTHER person, not yourself, your mind IS STILL in a state of self-attack, and IT WILL take this out on your own body, making you suffer and sick! You do NOT escape the consequences!

You are ALWAYS ONE with others. They are ALWAYS part of your self. We all share identity in christ. We are all part of God's collective family. When you single anyone out and label them and isolate them and exclude them, when you point a finger and say "this applies ONLY to you", you are in denial. You're denying that you are literally HURTING YOURSELF by splitting yourself off from the PART OF YOU which IS your brother. Other people are LITERALLY YOU.

This is the truth and the nature of reality. This is God's law. No one ever escapes this fact. Mind can only function naturally when it is being SHARED by everyone. It is only healthy when it is embracing WHOLENESS. It is only alive when it is being GIVEN AND RECEIVED equally.

When you disturb this by trying to force part of it to exclude another part, which you do through the ego's use of projection - blaming "others" who are "not you" for whatever reason, you are not only in denial, you are driving a huge divide between the you that is "here" and the you that is "there". This is like cutting yourself in half.

Seeing yourself as "only" one half of the mind, which is split off from the other half, correlates also to identifying with your body. The body now seems to symbolize the split mind, whereby one half of your split self is "in your body" and the other part which is "not you" is "in another person's body". Your body seems to be you, and their body seems to be them, and the two have NO relationship. Attacking anyone for any reason on any level therefore CONFINES YOU to the body prison and SEPARATES YOU OFF from relationship. "Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME."

No one is exempt from this consequence. Attack anyone and you are attacked. Try to hurt anyone and you are trying to hurt the entire sonship. Try to attack another but not yourself, and you will STILL hurt your mind. Pretend that just because your body got away with murder without experiencing the consequences, does not mean your MIND got away with it. Illusions can always seem to defy God's laws, but YOU are under no laws but God's.

Stop hurting yourself. Stop hurting everyone. Be us. That means that YOUR INTERESTS are the SAME as your brother's, thus your interests are shared, because you recognize that your brother IS part of your self. Therefore, how you treat them, you are also treating yourself. So you have a vested INTEREST in treating them well, otherwise you will treat yourself poorly. So now YOUR needs and your brother's needs are ONE. Acknowledging this is what it means to be a teacher of God. You MUST love your brother otherwise you will fail to love yourself.

"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."

"Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so will you behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness of others."

"The Holy Spirit is in BOTH your minds, and He IS One, because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself."

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's. Once he has done that his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God, even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God."

When your mind is whole, you are in your right mind, and not in two minds. Being in two minds is what happens when your mind is split in half. What happens in the state of split mindedness is quite interesting.

It's not merely that you split off a part of your mind. As you introduce a split, ie a belief in separation, you lose sight of wholeness completely. What then happens is you actually form TWO artificial identities, and neither one of them is the whole of you. It's almost like having two egos or personalities, and both are fake.

One of these identities, let's call it the persona, is retained in awareness as more of a conscious self. This self is the part of your mind that is steering away from darkness and sin and tries to be "good". It uses denial of "the rest of you" in order to hide its sense of sin and guilt in the darkness. It blocks it out of awareness through this denial, which is attack, which buries it and projects it.

The part of your mind which has also split - the other 50% of you - becomes a dumping ground for sin and guilt, hidden behind denial and repressed. You project this dark shit outward through disassociation, to try to disown it. It's part of further trying to disown part of your mind that your persona-self thinks is evil. Recognize the persona appears good but ultimately is judgmental and wants to destroy the sinful self.

So the "goody two shoes" part of your mind which is always trying to focus on a fake sense of idealism, positivity, looking good, saving face, being popular, seeming to be perfect etc, actually has a murderous attitude towards the other part of your mind. It basically sections off this other part of your mind, hates it, judges it, and shoves everything it does not "approve of" onto it. That includes sin and guilt, so now this "shadow self" is formed and relegated to death.

So in your mind, if your mind is split, you have this conscious persona self and this much less conscious shadow self. The shadow self is kept in the dark because, as Jesus says in the course, if you were to bring these two selves in close contact with each other they could not long remain separate.

The persona self fears the shadow self and tries to constantly judge and attack in on order to keep its distance, to maintain its own sense of autonomy. The persona sees itself as what the course calls "the face of innocence", aka the victim. And it views ithe shadow portion as a victimizer, or an enemy, which it wants nothing to do with and pushes away. This pushing away produces separation, disowning and projection onto others and the world, to try to "attach" the sin to something other than your own mind or sense of self. As the course says, separation means disassociation, or coming "between".

But we have to realize here that being split minded does not mean you are being the whole of your real self while you're in your persona self, or that your real self is under attack by the shadow self or its projections. Instead, recognize that the persona self is only a partial ego self, and it not whole, and it is not real, and it is not you. It's an artificial sense of identity formed from illusions of preference and avoidance, illusions of innocence and pretending to be perfect.

So as you consider how to forgive and take back projections and so on, you have to also realize that the "you" that is trying not to judge or project, is actually part of the judgement. It's part of the split mindedness. That persona self, wants as best it can to be completely free from the repressed shadow crap. So beware that as IT tries to take back projections, it is really not that interested in UNDOING the sense of sin, to begin with, because it needs it in order to maintain the split. And note that this persona self is "trying to wake up and be more spiritual" - the spiritual ego, and it can't - you have to wake up FROM it.

Without the split in the mind, without maintaining a sense of separation, both the shadow self and the persona self cannot exist. They rely on keeping the war going. The inner conflict has to be perpetuated, denial and blocks to awareness have to be maintained, otherwise it blows up the whole dynamic of you having a split minded relationship with another part of yourself.

For example in terms of victims and victimizers, usually the shadow crap is projected and seen as an external victimizer, while the innocent victim role is assigned to your persona self ie conscious self. But in order to "heal" this situation, it's not enough to just "take back the victimizing". It's not enough to simply own that you are the one attacking yourself from the outside in, or that you are vicariously using others to do this. The victimizer is only one HALF of the problem.

The victim role is also part of the split, and being a victim has to go as well. You can't maintain this ideal of "getting rid of attackers" while keeping the "innocent victim" intact. So what that's going to have to mean is, if you want to wake up, is that you're going to have to not only dis-identify from the victimizer, but also from being a victim. You have to recognize that your mind - the larger container of this drama - is actually playing both sides. Your mind is being both a victim and a victimizer of itself. And NEITHER of those roles is your real identity.

When you can bring both of these parts of your mind into awareness and see them together, AND then recognize that you are the ONE MIND who is pulling all the strings and making the victimizer victimize "you", plus making the victim "be a victim", you can no longer maintain the ILUSION that they are separate identities. When you own that you are both of them, you will own that you cannot be EITHER of them. It's been a lie, all along, that either of these two identities were you.

You were pretending they were DIFFERENT to each other, by means of splitting off some attributes to assign to one and some to another, to maek them seem to be opposites. But the opposition is entirely a deception and in truth, the two identities are not really opposite at all. They are both being run by one "larger" mind - your real self - who temporarily is the actor behind the scenes who has lost sight of itself while pretending to be having a multiple-personality disorder.

Because we so heavily identify with the conscious persona and not with unconscious hidden projected stuff, largely because we are not aware of it, you "as the conscious self" might think that you merely need to deal with the harmful attackers outside of you who are making your life miserable. But it's not just them. It's also you, in denial, with rose-tinted glasses, pretending to be special and perfect, who are also part of the murderous dynamic of sectioning off parts of yourself and relegating them to hell. So that sense of identity also has to be brought into question.

You are not a victim, or a victimizer. You are not the persona or the shadow. You being the persona is not you being the whole of yourself, even though this split off part of a sunbeam thinks it's the whole sun. You are bigger than both. Which means your sense of identity has to let go of these illusory selves and expand to a larger reality. As Jesus says in the course, as you awaken your sense of self expands. Because what you are really waking up from is being stuck inside little boxes and compartments, walled off from each other as if you have multiple selves that live in isolation.

Your enemy is yourself. The perpetrator is you. The victim is you. The fake innocence is just a "face" you put on to hide the pain and maintain the shadows. To take back your projection means only to reel in the projection of the shadow content, the sin and guilt, to try to bring it closer to its source. But it must also meet with your persona and cause the two of them to cancel each other out. You are larger than both aspects of the split mind, because you are the whole of mind. And only whole-mindedness, without the split condition, is a state of sanity.

The ego is always about taking sides, emphasizing differences, being special, having enemies, being offended, being at war with something. But what is this "opponent", except MORE EGO? It takes both sides of every conflict, it does not care who wins or loses. It does not care who is the victim and who is the victimizer. It is both, in a state of self attack. It doesn't even care if you live or die because it knows that someone will die, when you play its games.

So you have to realize that your "conscious ego self" is really only PART OF the problem and your sense of having a spiritualized ego is just as much part of the problem as the projected sin. Being holier than thou goes hand in hand with becoming highly judgmental and condemning other parts of yourself as unworthy and defective. If you feel unworthy it's because your conscious self believes it is superior. Inferiority and superiority go hand in hand.

The conscious ego self cannot wake up. Much of its efforts are to make its life better by continuing to repressed, reject, accuse, condemn, project, disown and kill off anything resembling "unacceptable and unlovable". And yet all the while, judging you are unlovable from the outside so that it is never satisfied with trying to make you more perfect through self mutilation. The ego is in two minds. It is not in its right mind. And it is not your mind. There is more to you than any of these roles or fantasies or illusions of being one thing and not another. You are everything.

If you are immortal, you cannot suffer. You cannot be hurt, damaged, offended, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, lacking joy, unloved, abused, made sick, killed, harmed, bruised, wounded, angered, nothing. You can only be immortal.

So what does that mean, in light of what seems to be "you suffering"? Even "your suffering" cannot be truly happening to you. YOU cannot be suffering. Your immortal self CANNOT be experiencing suffering. You cannot suffer. So who is suffering?

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

So when you seem to be suffering, let's say you feel hurt because someone called you a "stinky fart face", can it really be that you ACTUALLY are hurt? And if you FEEL hurt by this, is this "you feeling hurt" actually really happening? Even if you feel it, even if it seems "it applies to me", even if it seems it was targeted "at you", even if its "highly personal and reminds me of the time I kept farting in church", CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that YOUR IMMORTAL SELF is actually experiencing this or believing it?

It must be that even when under attack, "you" that feels attacked is some kind of fictional construct. It can't REALLY be your immortal self that is attacked. Your immortal self cannot be sad or upset or feeling betrayed or victimized. It's impossible for your real self to feel anything but joy and love and happiness. So when you have an "I feel hurt" moment, even if it involves HEAVY emotions, and terrible pain, and totally seems to be all about YOU and how you feel... CAN IT BE?

It cannot ever be really your true identity that is suffering. Even if you seem to "hurt yourself", you are not hurting yourself. You can't BE hurt. So who or what are you hurting? If you even decide to kill yourself, YOU cannot be killed. So what is dying?

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

WHO or what is being killed? Sure enough it is the body that is involved. But in addition, how is it that there seems to be a sensation that it's YOU that is going down with the ship? WHO or what is under attack? Is this taking place IN YOUR MIND?

Is it possible, that when there is a sensation of hurt or upset feeling or guilt etc, that the feeling ITSELF brings with it a kind of illusion or "sense of" "self"? Could it be that when you are feeling guilty, and you feel like a target, and it feels like everyone can see you and knows you are there, and you are "self conscious" in public, and you want to hide from everyone because you feel like they KNOW your inner guilty secret.... is it perhaps that the guilt ITSELF brings a sense of "centric identity"? Is not anything other than love, a sense of selfishness, and thus a sense of ego?

Some years ago some stuff happened and I had a large amount of guilt because of it. And because of this guilt, I felt ashamed and took it with me everywhere I went. And I felt constantly threatened. Anywhere especially in public, which I avoided, it felt like I had a target on my back, that EVERYONE knew that I was guilty, and they could see this guilty self, and MY experience of this guilty self was a feeling of being very "self conscious". Nervous about what I AM. Feeling like I am "evil" or "bad". Feeling certain that I AM THE GUILT. And that everyone was pointing a finger at me.

It would then happen that if people would attack me, or call me names, or accuse me or whatever, I would feel like "this guilty self" is vulnerable AND attackable. If they would accuse me of something, they were accusing THIS guilty self of it, and IT was self conscious, and IT felt attackable and vulnerable, and IT believed that it deserved punishment and that IT was the ACTUAL target of what people were putting out there. So when they called me by name, and then hurled an abuse, this "guilty self" felt like it was ABOUT IT, personally, and that they were directly addressing this guilty self.

But then after a time and much healing, this guilt was gone. And then I noticed that when these same people were being the same way they seemed to be before, it clearly did not appear to be ABOUT ME, and it was not targeting "that self", that guilty self, that was in me before. And that guilty self and its sense of being "self conscious" ie in fear, was not there to "receive" the attack. It did not exist, so they could not AIM their attack AT it. And so "I", my identity, which was no longer bound up with the guilt, saw myself as NOT being the target of their expressions. And so I felt invulnerable and could now recognize that they were attacking themselves. What happened to the sense of SELF that was present IN THE GUILT?

See, whatever you make TRUE of you you will believe is WHAT YOU ARE, and in effect WHO you are. So if you believe of yourself, "I am guilty", you will believe this DEFINES you. And now you ARE guilt. And this guilt has components of ego in it. And ego is selfish. Ego is a kind of "self centeredness", a self-important self-interest.

If the absence of separation means that there is pervasive light everywhere throughout the universe, then ego is a massive CONDENSING of that, down to a point, such as a star, so that all you are now left with is masses of darkness and a tiny CENTER of a point of light. And this "all that's left" little concentration of "self" now seems to be separated off and small and weak and vulnerable. That littleness is the sense of EGO, and it is experienced like a focus on yourself alone, in isolation.

Everything about ego is about becoming small, little, contracted, compressed, diminished, weakened, self-focused, self-centered, selfish, self-attacking, self-important, self aggrandizing, delusions of grandeur, etc. This condensing produces a kind of "sense" of "me", distinguished from the rest, broken off and separate. This sense of self is "self conscious" ie made of CONCERN for self and FEAR of its own weakness and littleness. The "self conscious" self is in fear and looks out frightened of the world that threatens it. The more EGO you have, the more ego stuff you have, baggage, dark feelings, guilts and hurts, the MORE you feel self centered and like this stuff "is a self". A sense of "separated me", cut off from the rest and not sharing.

It brings with it a kind of "focal point", a contracted little fearful corner of the mind, and the more this little corner withdraws and hides and tries to be even smaller and weaker, the MORE the sense of artificial "self" increases. Because the amount of selfishness is going up, the amount of self importance is going up, the amount of superiority/inferiority complex is going up, and this all produces what SEEMS LIKE a sense of "there is something here", "I am something", "I am all these feelings", "I am these thoughts". You become identified with FORM.

The whole egotism, the attitude, inherently has this bunching up, crunching together, condensing, tightening, contracting kind of thing about it, and this SENSE of this happening FEELS like the formation of a hot-spot in the mind that seems like "where something is, moreso than the rest", or "self interest". A sense of an island within the mind. A "self".

When the guilt goes, when the self attack goes, when the sin is gone, the egotism is gone, and all this tightened contracted littleness "dissipates" and stops being so focused, and without the focus on a tiny little huddled-in-a-corner-hiding sense of identity and truth, that sense of being "separated off" and "a separate identity" goes with it. It just disappears. But that isn't the end of YOU, because your sense of self EXPANDS and moves towards the UNLIMITED, universal, endless holy christ self that you really are.

So who is it that suffers? Who is it that can BE hurt and FEEL vulnerable? It is not your immortal christ self. It is not the real you. But it can seem to be a SENSE of "you" because part of your mind gets caught up in the contraction and withdrawal into "a center", into a little prison, a bodily identity, an identification with locality in space-time. And the more ego-stuff you have in your mind, the more intensely that your mind forms into a huddle of tightly-held-onto stuff, creating an IMPRESSION of you being kind of snagged or caught up on this collection of ego material. And being localized around a "point" it makes you feel like you are this little separated off dot of identity.

It is kind of like.... the suffering, ITSELF, suffers. Just as how fear is self-fulfilling. The guilt ITSELF brings with it a feeling of separate self. Any ego emotions, be it anger or sadness or grief or loss or lack or abandonment or unworthiness or sinfulness or fear or whatever, all brings with it SELFISHNESS, which is isolation and contraction and that attempt to GET AWAY FROM everything else, producing an increasing sense that you are "this something" in the middle of the ocean of mind. And this "sense of self" always feels vulnerable and threatened and unsafe. But this sense of self is PART OF the ego material that's in the mind, and without it your mind DOES NOT experience being a target.

Without the guilt, you cannot feel this. Without the unworthiness or loathing, you cannot feel this. Your mind is elastic and sort of snaps-back into its expanded, non-localized state, spread out evenly and smoothly instead of tightened and restricted and limited. When the guilt goes, YOU stop feeling like "you" are susceptible and attackable. You stop feeling like YOU are guilty. And that sense of "contracted self" goes.

Your sense of identity stops being "caught up in" the "truth" that the guilt expresses. Because if you believe "I AM guilty" then this will set you up to experience that you AND the guilt ARE ONE. And now you ARE guilt. And in the guilt is your "self", your identity. And you will not want to let it go if you believe that letting it go will be the loss of who and what you are. So there is a kind of addiction to the ego materials and an unwillingness to see YOUR SELF as being something NOT associated with, or identified with, the ego materials. e.g. with the guilt. "I am guilty" will feel like you are MADE OF guilt. That it is fundamentally your nature.

So who is suffering? Who is hurt? Who is it that is having loss? Who is sad? Who is unworthy? Who is afraid? THOSE THINGS, combined with your mind, produce a sense of identity, or identification WITH those things, that makes YOU feel and perceive that it is YOU that is those things. That they APPLY to you. Because you think they are PART of your makeup. But it is those things themselves that bring with them the sense of artificial SELF, that is the ego, the selfish self-centered self, the hoarding possessing self, the playing small self. And without YOUR CONSENT, without your BELIEF, that these things are true of you, that sense of little self cannot remain. Because true self is expansive and infinite.

You seem to suffer because you identify WITH and AS ego stuff. Which temporarily makes you believe YOU are being attacked and YOU are the guilty one suffering. But it is really "the ego", the non-existent fictional self, the selfishenss, that is the guilty one. IT feels like IT is guilty, made of guilt. And when you WITHDRAW your allegiance from THE GUILT, that sense of "its about me" goes with it. And then you recognize that your REAL self, your immortal self, was NEVER guilty. It CANNOT BE guilty. And your immortal self doesn't have that sense of self-consciousness, self-concern, self-importance and selfishness.

You can think you are suffering, but you aren't. In a way, it is the ego that is suffering. Ego = suffering. You can think you are "the little self that suffers", but it is NOT really you. Your mind can get CAUGHT IN the trap of the ego viewpoints, which bring with them a sense of self-focus and self-worship and vulnerability, but you are not ever really those things. It is the ego that suffers because the ego IS suffering. It is the ego that has guilt because the ego IS guilt. Without guilt there is no ego. Without a bodily identity there is no body. Without sin there is no world of sin. And without death there is no world.

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

So when you feel like "I am guilty" or "I am anything" other than as God created you, know that you are lost in the ego and are feeling ego stuff and ego stuff feels this way and the sense of artificial "me", self importance, being self-absorbed, selfish, comes with that territory. And it is that vulnerable, sensitive false self that seems to be the target of the suffering, NOT your immortal self. And once you dis-identify from that EGOTISM, the whole ego thought system, you let go of these false accusations and the falsely accused goes with it. And all that is left is your immortal spirit. Your true identity in God which can never be attacked.

There is a non-duality model which is frequently projected on ACIM's teachings. It suggests that in truth there is only "one", and that in the separation from God many individuals were formed. This however is very unlike what ACIM actually says when you go read it.

ACIM's teaching is that God created many individual beings - souls - who also share everything simultaneously. This comprises the sonship, which is a permanent family of living beings who each have their own self and yet share identity through the Christ mind, creating as one. Individuality was given to each soul/mind and therefore everyone has a real self. It is not a "blob" of one being sitting there all alone. It is a community.

In the separation from God, it was not an event where individuality was invented. It was an event where pre-existing individuals tried to be selfish. They didn't want to share everything with everyone, so they tried to separate themselves off. They became selfish, hoarding, possessive, owning, isolating, exclusive, special and rejecting of others.

The separation then was a breakdown in communication or a disruption of the family unit of the sonship. It's where some individuals became "the separated ones", by freely choosing individually to not share with others. It was like an attempt to rebel against the family and go off on their own as prodigal sons. But there is nothing about being a prodigal son that deletes you from existence when you return home.

What actually happened in the separation was you attempted to reject your wholeness and your self and your family. You tried to stop sharing with your permanent brothers. You wanted some special favor from God, which he would give you alone and not anyone else. It was simply an attitudinal problem, one of selfishness, and not an issue of trying to be an individual."The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Selfishness is an attitude. You can have a person who is an individual who shares, and you can have the same person who adopts a selfish attitude. Just because you're being selfish doesn't mean you suddenly invent an individuality.

In the separation, in denying our shared identity and family coherence, we actually tried to deny that we had a self. The ego is the idea of self denial, repression, hiding and withdrawal. It was an attempt to reject your self and to not be a self. In fact the ego idea even takes it so far as to try to eradicate your self entirely, which is why it is so murderous and always has the goal of the death of the sons of God in mind.

In death the ego reports that it is triumphant in erasing your self and removing your individuality. It is in death that you stop being an individual or having a self at all. Death is the attempt to destroy who and what you really are. And death is not about the production of an individual life, it's about ending it.

This also means that when you go in the opposite direction towards heaven, towards eternal life, you are moving away from the lack of individuality, towards individuality. Towards having a self. It's a movement back towards the family of God and towards the sonship and your equal brothers. It's a reintegration of self and a return to wholeness. It's a reclaiming of your identity and a recognizing that you do exist as an individual being. As a soul.

Jesus also states in the course that as you awaken, your sense of self actually expands, becoming more full and complete. This doesn't mean you are simply returning to one big blob in the sky, it means you are returning to being yourself. And the goal of the course is to "know thyself."

So in fact the traditional models of individuality are upside down. Especially in some eastern traditions which suggests that reality is no-self while illusion is self. This is completely backwards. The fact is that when you decide to try to reject your self, to deny your soul, you bring illusions of separation into your mind. Blocks and walls and grievances and attack thoughts etc enter the mind to try to cut down, isolate, narrow, limit, confine and section off who and what you are from the rest.

These walls and limits seem to form a restricted or reduced sense of self, surrounded with pictures of bodies and things that are too small to encompass what you really are, so that you'll believe that you are not the magnitude or scope of your unlimited self. And as you "identify with" these things, such as with the body, you believe that you are something small and little and cut off and separate. And this "bodily identity" in your mind forms a sense of who and what you are, which is a false sense of identity. But really it's a false IDENTIFICATION WITH something, not the invention of identity itself.

Those who are deceived, believe that this false sense of identity is their self. Such as believing you are your body. And it is this false sense of self which ends when you wake up to reality. It is this sense of being separated off and not sharing and not being whole, that ends. Which means you actually return to a greater fullness of self, more expansive and inclusive. You actually become full of self. You identity WITH your spiritual self and DIS-IDENTIFY from the false body."The soul is the idea of self fullness."

But self here does not mean selfishness, or an isolated self. It means a self that shares all of itself with other selves, in unity and oneness, as in having a real open and full relationship with all other individual beings in reality. God included.

So you have to then realize that ego is actually the attempted denial of your self and the denial of individuality. It's the attempt to suggest you do not exist and do not have any self and are dead. And just because this denial of self shows up as the seeming "presence" of an artificial identity, it does not mean that you have created an individuality. It's actually an ILLUSION OF an individual, which is ACTUALLY NOT an individual. Because remember the ego is always deceptive, being an illusion.

Your ego is really the absence of self, the absence of individuality, the suppression of personality, the denial of wholeness, and the rejection of being as God created you. The illusion of a separated off, selfish self, is undone as you awaken. This does not mean that your individuality is thrown out with the bathwater. What it means is that your individuality opens back up to sharing with the rest of your God-given family. It is actually a return to having a self. It is self acknowledgement, acceptance and awareness.

So when you have people teaching that ACIM is non-duality, or that you have no real self, or that you do not exist, or that you're supposed to deny yourself, or that your entire identity is going to just disappear someday, they are teaching absolute bullshit. They are teaching you that you do not exist, which is an ego teaching. It is an improper use of denial.

You're supposed to deny the DENIAL OF self, not deny that you have a self. You are to deny the ego, which is an illusion of a self, but which is actually the attempt to not have a self. You are to deny that you do not have a self. That is how you return to what you really are as a self in heaven. As an individual being which God created to share with others and co-create with Him.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."When you project these non-duality teachings onto ACIM and you start to claim that the path to enlightenment is self repression or self denial or "you don't exist" and trying to be so neutral and passive as if you don't even have a self at all, that is actually SELF DESTRUCTION, which is completely in accord with the ego. It is the ego attempting to be spiritual, in fact. The absolute pinnacle of the spiritualized ego is to deny that you exist, in the name of being spiritual and growing in size. It is arrogant and narcissistic and a mistake.

This is why ACIM's teaching is not the same as the teachings that people keep projecting onto it. It is not a non-duality teaching and it is NOT about trying to get rid of yourself. Remember you were created by God to HAVE a self in the first place. Your self is divine and holy and perfect. You also have equal brothers who are divine and holy and perfect, created by God as well. And you share everything with everyone always. That produces a perfect harmony of souls in the sonship who have and share everything with each other, as the family of God.

That is what is written in ACIM and that is what it teaches. That you had a self before the ego came along, and you will have a self again when the ego is erased. This is not a course in self destruction or repression of the sonship or the depressing argument of trying to not exist. You should not deny your soul, or you are denying reality. This is a course in awakening to who and what you are as created by God, as one of many of his beloved children in heaven.

All anti-individuality sentiment is therefore destructive and death-worshipping and depressing and a rejection of God's will. Ego does not mean or equate to individuality. It equates only to an ATTITUDE which an individual has that runs contrary to the sharing nature of the sonship. Removing the attitude problem does not have to entail you destroying yourself. You are in fact supposed to embrace yourself and your freedom and thank God that you have been given life to share with others forever.

If ACIM is to be believed, and interpreted correctly, it is literally saying that this world is the OPPOSITE of what's real. And therefore it is completely unlike the nature of God's Kingdom. Indeed, unlike your real self.

"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."

"earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"This is the world of time, where all things end."

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

This presents a major challenge, because if the world is completely opposite to reality, truth, nature and eternal life, then every single thing in it is going to be doing things which are completely against who and what you are, against God's nature and will.

The Holy Spirit is now a spokesperson for the true nature of God's reality, and our own, and is here with us to help us to become heaven-like instead of earth-like. All of his motivation points towards eternal life rather than towards the world of mortality.

"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" "Nothing the world believes is true."

But if you'll think on this it's pretty crazy the contrast. Here we are in a world which seems very tangible and immense, and yet Jesus is saying that every single thing in it is opposite, upside-down, and backwards, from what is true. And that the body was made to deceive us into believing it is real. "The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

It would be much seemingly easier to just live a life in this world acting the way bodies act, interacting with objects, not questioning anything. Just taking everything to be verbatim as-it-is and not deceptive at all. Believing everything you see and hear.

Jesus's message is far more radical though, because if what he says is true, then fundamentally the entirety of space and time and all their contents, including all planets and galaxies, are completely false, unreal and untrue. "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."

So now on a daily basis, you have this task of literally questioning everything in the world, trying to recognize the world is an illusion, trying not to be deceived by everything the body shows you, trying not to identify with the body as your self, and basically denying and rejecting everything in spacetime.

That can seem very unnatural perhaps, to suggest you have to deny that the world is of God, and then deny everything about it, but Jesus does appear to be telling us to do this. That the only way out of suffering, sickness, misery and death, is to cancel out the entire seeming universe and believe none of it. That's a pretty tall order.

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

Nevertheless, it's clear that this is what Jesus is instructing us to do. To exchange the belief that this world is founded on reality, for a recognition that it is nothing but a dream. A fiction of a world which is hallucinated and not really there at all. Nor does it comprise anything real or permanent or of God.

"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?"

The world is nothing. Not something, but nothing at all. It's not there. It's a pretend world, hiding the Kingdom of God. And there is nothing in the world worth keeping as a substitute for the real thing.

"Yet its nothingness IS your salvation"

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

"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 choose to be afraid.

I project the fear outward and identify targets that are causing the fear.

The existence of these targets 'explains why' I am afraid.

Explaining why I'm afraid justifies and proves why I am afraid, and gives it extra weight, making it real.

I then say, oh my, I'm afraid, I don't want those targets to attack me. But this is a two-faced ego lie.

I want to see them attacking me because it justifies keeping my fear. I want them to make me afraid. And until I stop identifying them as the cause or 'reason for' the fear, I will just stay afraid.

The truth is, there is a secret reason for the fear which has nothing to do with who or what it is projected onto. They are not the cause of it. They are not the ones who are creating it or making it happen.

I am secretly making it happen by trying to defend myself from God. My secret wish is to be separate from God and to deny that God exists. My secret wish is a suicidal death-wish in which I want death in place of Life. That's the whole reason why I'm in a body - to escape from God.

So every time I become afraid of 'something', that's not really what I'm afraid of or why I'm in fear. I'm in fear because I am conveniently using them as a scapegoat for why I NEED to be afraid. I want to NEED fear because I NEED fear to separate me from God and fulfill my hidden agenda.

The people or events or objects or body functions that are 'making me afraid' are very conveniently HELPING me to reject God. Thank you, fears, for helping me to stay separate and choose death, exactly as I wanted.

See, underneath the farce of projected fear, there is a death wish. And that death wish wouldn't be there if I did not WANT it. I wanted it because it was my CHOICE. I CHOSE that I wanted the opposite of God and did not want Life. It was a decision I made. So the only reason I am now afraid is because I want to be because it's helping to support my underlying death wish.

Can I be afraid if I get honest and own up to using fear to cover up MY deliberate attempt to be dead? Can I believe that other people are causing the fear if I get honest and own up to the fact that I want them to help me justify keeping the fear, so that I can shut out love and be autonomous?

I have to admit that fear is a choice, just as death is a choice. And it's ME that is doing it TO MYSELF. This is the key to salvation.

I can decide I do not like what I have chosen for myself and admit that I chose it - it was not created by anyone else or anything else - and nothing else is keeping it in place other than my secret wish for death. Do I like the results? Do I want it? Shall I keep it? Is it working out? Am I enjoying the results? Probably not.

Maybe it's time I admit that I chose mistakedly and it was a poor choice, and that I want something better. Maybe I'll admit that it is pointless to deny God because it doesn't make God go away, and being without Him is always going to be a less enjoyable experience. I can be stubborn about it or I can give up trying to be dead and ACCEPT LIFE instead.

We do have this choice. We make this life-or-death decision every single time we choose ego over God.

The good news then, is, since we were the ones choosing death and fear, we can choose again and choose not to be dead. Yes, death is a CHOICE. If I choose to accept LIFE then I will permit eternal life to lift me up and sustain me forever. There is nothing 'the ego' can do to prevent this because the ego is nothing more than my insane mistaken choice to try to reject God.

So what's it going to be today? Life or death? You choose.

I'll give you a hint. Death actually isn't death, it's just a dream of death, which is just denial. It doensn't actually do anything to the Real You. YOU can't die. So trying to do so is a waste of time.

Give up. Surrender. Choose God again and be happy.

It's important to realize that the Kingdom of God cannot be even remotely encroached upon. What you are in reality, it utterly BEYOND the reach of the ego and death and all forms of attack. Nothing illusory can even TOUCH what you are.

You live in a realm of light which is far beyond the world of Earth and beyond anywhere that any kind of illusion can exist. It is so protected and so intensely powerful that not a single speck of unreality can even approach it.

This is why you are safe in God. This is why you cannot be hurt. This is why your immortality is permanent. This is why you cannot be changed or redefined or affected by the world. This is why nothing in this world has any power over you. This is why you are invulnerable and cannot be attacked, made to be sick, or die.

You are not of this world. You are from and in another world. You are heaven's child, safe in the womb of God, utterly unexposed to hell, and completely distant from every little scrap of attack this world can muster.

It's not even a matter of two distinct worlds butting up against each other, of or them making contact, overlapping, sharing something, or the "outside surface" of heaven being accessible to the realm of the ego. They do NOT meet. And they do NOT communicate. And illusion cannot even get close to the children of God.

"The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from It an instant. It belongs to you. By It you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with It, and everything is one with you because It left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and Everlasting Life shine in your mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you."

With this in mind, you can get a sense of the fact that this whole world is like a surface "layer" or coating covering over reality, like an old crust, which has broken away and is floating by itself. And you are deeper than this. Your are within and beyond and above.

You are not made of anything of this world. No part of the physical body is your self, or yours, nor does it make contact with what you are. Not one single physical object has ever touched your soul. Not one sexual act or hug or high-five or physical smile has ever in fact influenced your spirit in any way.

What you are cannot be changed, cannot be affected, cannot be hurt, cannot be attacked, cannot be damaged, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be blown around by the wind, cannot suffer in any way, cannot lose anything, cannot have anything taken from it, and cannot be encroached upon.

What you are is utterly safe from the world, beyond the world, above the world. So far beyond that the world doesn't even really know your real self exists. So high in heaven that you are more than a trillion light years from the slightest particle of matter. And so embedded in God's heart that you not one beam of real light can ever fail to shine on you and keep you safe.

The reality of the Kingdom is a SAFE PLACE TO BE. And nothing can hurt you there. It is your sacred space. It is perfectly protected forever by God Himself, and identifying with BEING THERE NOW you are safe from all danger. You cannot be hurt because you are immortal, and this God guarantees forever. "It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed."

"Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable." "Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators, but your Soul and YOUR Creator will ALWAYS be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"The Father keeps what HE created safe. YOU cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, BECAUSE it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator." "Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet."

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

"Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are."

"Against our united strength, the ego CANNOT prevail."

"The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God, and any totality MUST include God. Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit"

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The ego CANNOT prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never occurred."

"The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them."

"The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One."

"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."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality. God's glory and His Son's BELONG to you in truth. They HAVE no opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves."

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"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 his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ. For the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence that He protects, and Whose Power protects HIM."

"The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond."

"Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it."

"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."

"There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"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."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die."

"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."

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe."

"I am safe today because there is no will but God's."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."

"Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light which blesses and which heals. At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

"Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care."

"Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection."

"How simply and how easily does time slip by for the teacher of God who has accepted His protection!"

"God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions."

"Concentrate on the holiness which they imply about you; on the unfailing companionship which is yours; on the complete protection that surrounds you."

"The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever."

"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."

"The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"God's Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father's protection and CANNOT fear. His Father's love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing."

"When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable."

"And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real."

"Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind which nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God."

"Now he has learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things."

"NOTHING can come BETWEEN what God has joined, and what the Holy Spirit sees as one."

"Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid."

"Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you."

"Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's."

"Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything."

"When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He CANNOT answer, because NOTHING can hurt you and SO YOU ARE ASKING FOR NOTHING."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

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

"Communication here is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain, because nothing discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore LIKE Him. That IS its reality, and nothing CAN assail it."

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son"

"The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are NOT protecting their egos, so that nothing CAN hurt them."

"You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him."

"NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure."

"In my defenselessness my safety lies."

"Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

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

"He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering."

"Safety is the COMPLETE RELINQUISHMENT OF ATTACK. No compromise is possible in this."

"Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last."

"It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise, that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source?"

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?"

"For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"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." "But you cannot be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY safety."

"You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed."

"Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself."

"The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."

"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. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. "

"It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world?"

"How better could your OWN mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk BEYOND the world of darkness into light?"

"The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe."

"You will not remember change and shift in Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me. "

"Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world can NOT destroy."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE."

"Neither justice nor injustice exists in Heaven, for error is impossible and correction meaningless."

"For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source."

"There is no change in Heaven, because THERE IS NO CHANGE IN GOD."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality."

We speak of the separation from God. But the separation is also a separation from the sonship, which means a separation not only from others, but also from the part of you which is shared with them.

Before the separation we were all one, joined together and sharing everything. We even shared our identity and our souls. We overlapped and everything belonged to everyone.

But then in the separation, we went into an isolation mode, where we saw our own self as not shared with others, as not extending to include them, and had a sense of a "gap" or rift of distance (space) form in-between us.

This then led to the production of bodies symbolizing this separateness, in which we enter a state of solitude. Or to put it another way, solitary confinement. By seeing that other people are not a part of myself, I saw myself as exclusively "only me", and therefore disconnected from everyone.

That's a very lonely state to be in, in which we see ourselves as the only inhabitant or our little prison body, and everyone else seems kept apart from us physically. Jesus refers to this state as one of solitude, in which we basically tried to stop sharing anything with anyone. We also can really think of this as the ego, because it's this way of changing your sense of identity to identify with a body and believe that you are a lonesome person.

The truth is then, that if your IDENTITY does not include others, you ARE alone. And since separation is selfish, you ARE being selfish if you think ONLY of what seems to be your own self. You must expand your sense of identity to encompass and include all others, recognizing them as PART OF YOU.

Only when you can experience that others ARE part of your own self can you have a vested interest in developing shared interests. If you ARE others, then what benefits you benefits them equally. This means opening up to being more than JUST you.

This isn't really an attempt to throw away your self. The sense of egocentricity only comes from having a sense of identity that doesn't share with anyone. It's a temporary side effect or symptom. I think we can say the ego is a symptom of the separation, and without separateness from others there is no egotism.

Instead we are to open up to join, to reunite, with others. To let them into us. To see our own self IN them. To recognize them AS ourselves. And to share everything with them equally. This doesn't mean getting rid of myself, it means ADDING ON all the other selves that I CUT OFF in the separation. It means GAINING a much more expanded sense of self, which INCLUDES everyone as part of you.

When you are more than just yourself, you have made room for the interests of others in your life. When your own separate self stops being "all important", when you stop depending on your own strength, when you put aside making all your own decisions, and when you let go of trying to be in control of everything, you make room for others, and for God.

I can only make room for God if I make room IN MY SELF to include others and to include God as part of me. I literally am you and you literally are me. ONLY when identity is SHARED, is there true holy relationship. Only when I am US, am I devoid of the selfishness of the ego.

"Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend."

"We do not go alone. And we give thanks that in our solitude a Friend has come to speak the saving Word of God to us. And thanks to you for listening to Him."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself."

"But those who KNOW that they are all the same, need not salvation. And each one FINDS his Savior, when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless."

"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."

"The body HAS no purpose of itself, and MUST be solitary."

"I made up the prison in which I see myself."

"Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own."

"It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are NOT alone, and willing to remember it. Take no thought FOR YOURSELF, for no thought you hold IS for yourself. "

"If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are NOT alone."

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!

Trying to "wake up" from this world can seem like a total denial and bypass.

We're told that the world, neutral in itself, is formed from ideas opposite to God's nature. Ideas of suffering and destruction, of sickness and death, of conflict and incompatibility.

So then if we are to move our minds out of this opposite state into God's nature, we in some way have to be "denying" the nature of the world.

Or in other words, we have to come to believe that the nature of the world is not the nature of God. But this can be a sticking point.

If we just say, the world is opposite to God, we're going to start dissociating, separating, trying to get away from it, escaping from it, we're going to attack it and pretend it's not there, which is an improper use of denial.

Jesus says Earth can reflect heaven or hell. What he wants us for us to find a way to make it reflect heaven. And that the world itself is neutral. He doesn't really want us "denying that it's there", he wants us to reintepret it.

"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."

Notice how he says true denial doesn't CONCEAL the thing. It's not about trying to not see it or to make it go away. It's about changing from what angle you see it, seeing it in a different light, giving it a different meaning or interpretation. It "corrects" HOW we see it, or from what vantage point, rather than WHETHER we see it. We're correcting the mind used to see WITH, which changes how we perceive the world.

There's a lot of high-level stuff in the course that sounds like it's denying the existence of the world. Indeed the world is nothing. But for our therapy we're not really supposed to deny its existence. We're meant to USE IT, for a different purpose. To see IN it, something we weren't seeing before.

For example we're told that we are not a body, we are free. This could make you think that you're meant to tell yourself bodies don't exist and it's not there. But it's really saying, while you still have a body, learn to be in it but not of it, to see it but not identify with it.

It's too easy to use the ego's basic device of "separation", as a spiritual tool, which produces the bypass. To try to make stuff go away. To try to get rid of things. That's actually murderous. To attack stuff with the course. To throw quotes at it. To try to avoid and hide from it. That's not really a healthy approach because it's using separation to try to destroy in the name of spirituality. Hurling a "there is no world" at the world BEFORE you really believe it is an attempt to kill it off.

Which reminds me of an early workbook lesson where Jesus says we're trying to "join with what we see" instead of separating from it. And another, where we're said that "God is in everything I see, because God is in my mind." Or "God is in that wastepaper basket". That isn't "denying" the basket or the world, as such, it's saying you can learn to see something inclusive, something MORE THAN just the form.

A higher vision is more inclusive, a lower vision is more exclusive. The body's eyes are exclusive and see ONLY form. Higher vision sees form AND more than form. It's not another of these either/or scenarios. You should be seeing BOTH, the world and the light beyond the world.

"(Christ vision) And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

We're not really striving for the world to "go away" at this point. That may happen at the very end when the veil lifts. But until then we have to get to the forgiven world. You can't see the world as forgiven if you're not seeing the world at all. So becoming blind to the world is obviously not the recommended path.

We're not trying to use the level of knowledge, heaven, to make the level of the world go away. We're not really supposed to be using level 1 to attack level 2. We're meant to be staying WITHIN level 2 and changing our mind about it, while we're still in it. Changing our subjective view of it, rather than trying to use level 1 as a weapon to discard it.

We need to see "in a different way." If it is possible to see peace IN this world, then seeing that peace doesn't require you to NOT see the world. And indeed you should be finding the happy dream, BEFORE you stop dreaming entirely.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

God created a perfect kingdom, in which we are created as perfect beings. We have perfect minds, we are perfectly innocent, we have perfect relationships, we are perfectly safe and happy, we are perfectly loving and sharing, we are immortal and can never suffer or have any problems, it's all good. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG!

But then there was this strange separation event where we had an idea of denying all this. So now we deny reality, we avoid it, we hide from it, we attack it, we don't want it, we try to be something else, we try to value opposite things, we try to make a world nothing like it to live in, we fake everything, we block out awareness of even our own self, we deny that God has created us, we bury our head in the sand and repeat mantras of death over and over to try to keep us away from God.

The situation we're in then does not call for us to try to make or create that which is perfect. We're not asked to hit ourselves over the head with affirmations trying to enforce or cause or make ourselves be more perfect. We're not asked to infuse ourselves with innocence or hammer sinlessness into ourselves or stretch ourselves out to be more inclusive. God has already done all this. God has already given a perfect system, a perfect environment, a perfect life with perfect relationships. WE ARE ALREADY ONE!

The issue is that we're blocking it all. We're saying we don't want it. So the solution is to remove the blocks and stop denying it. And that is all. Many approaches to dealing with the 'issue' is that we start trying to reinvent ourselves, we try to take our ego self into a more real place, we try to transform our sense of what we are. But we're not really asked to do that. God has already established a perfect life for us. We just need to uncover it.

So really it's much more about melting back into an acceptance of what is already true, letting go of things that are false, remembering who we really are, re-identifying with our real self that God already created perfect, opening up to the natural shared state of joined minds, stopping denying God's reality, and removing any blocks which are stopping us from being aware ... that everything in heaven is already perfect and doesn't need any fixing.

This is a very different approach of waking up from a dream, waking up TO a pre-existing ready-made perfect reality, rather than trying to 'convert' our fake world, fake self, fake reality, into something better. Our job is not really to re-create ourselves, to re-invent ourselves, or to cause ourselves to be innocent or perfect. That's God's job. God's will has already been done perfectly. We have to let him be the one that defines us and establishes our perfection and sets us up in a system where we have perfect relationships forever.

Our job is more to do with simply uncovering the truth, revealing what's already there, tuning into reality, accepting the truth/atonement, going back into the light, leaving the desert, becoming aware again of the perfect kingdom that God has created for us in which we live forever in total happiness and effortlessness. We're not builders of ourselves, nor are we really making a better version of ourselves. We're just letting go of those efforts and allowing what already is - to be. Awakening an ancient memory of heaven.

You don't have to become more of anything. God's done the work. You just need to reclaim your inheritance. This is why enlightenment is merely a recognition of what is already true, and is not a change at all. The only actual purpose of LEARNING, is to learn that you do not need to learn anything!

Key words: Uncover, reveal, remember, rediscover, accept, open up to, reintegrate, access, tap into, tune into, allow, re-identify, re-awaken, recognize, know, receive, unveil, return to, wake up to.

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"God's Law of Creation, in perfect form, does NOT involve the USE of truth to convince His sons OF truth. The EXTENSION of truth, which IS the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of WHAT TRUTH IS. This is your INHERITANCE, and requires no learning at all."

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home."

"Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth."

"All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else."

"Your task is NOT to seek for love, but merely to seek and FIND all of the barriers WITHIN YOURSELF that you have built AGAINST it."

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.

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!

The seeming battle going on is really between what is true and what is false.

What is true is Holy Spirit's reality. It is all based on truth. Truth means, it is actually real. Factual reality. Perfect honesty and clarity. A truth that is so permanent and absolute that nobody can change it, because God put it in place.

Down below this, in the battlefield, aka 'level 1' or the ego world or the physical universe, it's all about not-truth. Another word for that is 'false'.

In falsety, there is no actual reality, no facts, and nothing is really happening. In falsety, there is only lies, deception, illusion, deceit and distraction away from truth. This 'level' of the ego is a withdrawal away from God and away from truth, attempting to be its opposite.

So down here in the ego's world we're commonly dealing with illusions, lies and deceptions. We're lost in separation, duality, unreality. Things seem to happen which aren't really happening. Problems seem to appear out of nowhere which aren't even really problems. Our vision becomes fixated on form/matter - "the form of error", since all of it is error - untruth, falsety.

So now really your entire 'spiritual path' can be summarized quite succinctly by saying, it is the transition from false to true. It is your movement away from what is false, which means everything ego, and toward truth, which is everything Holy Spirit/God.

The truth shall set you free, as in, if you access the truth you are accessing a plane of freedom. Truth is an experiential freedom. A state of being. You do not so much need to learn to accept what is false, but only to accept that it IS false, and therefore accept that "only the truth is true".

And so this takes a lot of 'sorting out' of what is actually true and what is not true. You do not get to decide what is true. This is what the Course means by "you cannot establish the curriculum". The curriculum is the subject of truth which you need to learn. You do not get to define what the truth is, that's God's job. You only get to learn it, or to decide "when you take it".

And as you're sorting out, you're mostly going to be dealing with the ego in terms of its mess and its idea of how to wake up, which is to shift around between different forms of falsety masquerading as 'more true'. It will try to become spiritual. It will try to wake up. It will try to access the truth. But it cannot. Ego cannot be truth. Ego = that which is not true. So the problem is that we are attached to the ego mindset - to the false, and we want to KEEP it by holding onto it, and take it into a state where truth exists. It cannot go there. It does not exist anywhere in truth. There is no falsety in the truth.

So it's not that we need to change - ie the ego cannot truly change from being ego. That which is false is always false. Sorry ego, you are not allowed in Heaven. But that means, YOU, what you really are, which is not the ego, but the 'decision maker', needs to decide whether to stay with the ego in ego-land, or leave the ego and go to the 'Holy Land' (in your mind, sorry Isreal but you're just a lump of dirt).

So when 'we' are trying to access the truth or wake up to the truth, to reality, 'we' think that 'we' are going to be able to take whatever it is that 'we' think 'we' are, to the truth. But this 'we' comprises the real you PLUS the ego you. Two identities, not one, but pretending to be one. And this is the main mistake we all make, trying to drag the ego along for the ride. Its sole purpose as 'the false' is to drag us away from truth, and that is all it can ever do. We need to 'separate from it' and change hands, and go be with Holy Spirit instead.

It's good to attach to and identify with Holy Spirit. Notice though that 'you' don't really get to have a separate existence. Either you're immersed in the ego's thought system or you are immersed in Holy Spirit's thought system. And each thought system has its own thoughts. Holy Spirit's thoughts come from God. So that means, either you are going to be filled with ego thoughts or God's thoughts. There are no thoughts that are 'yours' separately - that's an ego lie.

Anyway, rambling on a bit. Wake up to truth ;-) It's good for you.

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

The secret to salvation is that "we are doing this only to ourselves". This means taking full responsibility for everything we experience, all of our feelings, all of our reactions. It means owning everything about who and what we really are in truth, being in truth, being whole, surrendering all ego, and stopping all victimhood. This is the goal, the atonement, the awakening. So we're all working on moving towards this.

Now, as you work on realizing that you only do things to yourself, sooner or later this idea will pop into your mind as well - that other people are only doing things to themselves. And this also means, they are not doing anything to you, which helps you with clarifying the fact that you are not a victim either.

But the reason why this is difficult to 'get', is because of the way things appear when someone else 'attacks you'. But as we'll see... even the idea of 'attacks you' is completely false and is a mistake in our own perception of ourselves. It's part of us not admitting that we only do things to ourselves, and therefore we cannot be attacked.

So let's take for example some person you know who appears to be attacking or upset in any way. This person has an ego. Because of the ego, they have separation in their mind. The separation means they have a split mind, or they are "in two minds". When someone goes from having one whole unified mind to having two minds, something very weird happens.

The person retains one part of their own mind and thinks of it as the acceptable part, which they identify with, and think is all of who they are. Even though they have this whole other part to their mind which they deny. The part they keep is what we call the persona. Then, a profound denial and separation and unconsciousness is happening in between this part of their mind and the rest of their mind. They use denial to repress the rest of themselves and to relegate the rest of themselves to unconsciousness, hatred, darkness, and everything that seems to be 'not who they are'. They disassociate from this other part of their mind and think of it as 'not me'. This is what's called the 'shadow'.

Now, where is mind? Mind is supposed to be everywhere, inside and out, and is supposed to be the same everywhere, and it's also supposed to be whole and unified. That means that what is outside of you is also inside of you and is the same in all areas. This is what it means when the Course says "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" i.e. the same experience is out there and in here and its all one joined-together oneness.

So when the ego splits the mind like this, the part it seems to keep becomes our own body and our persona, and the part it rejects (which is still part of that person), becomes the shadow and the projection of that. So everything seemingly 'outside' the person's body houses everything the person believes they are 'not', and everything inside their body houses the part of their mind they think they 'are'. And because of this intense repression of the 'what I am not' part, it *SEEMS* in a very distracting apparent way, that a) only what is inside the person's body is the whole of the person and there are no other parts, and b) everything outside the person has nothing to do with what person.

Of course this is not true at all. But this is how it shows up. People are walking around in two minds, one inside the body and one projected outside and disowned/denied. And, here is a law or rule, which applies all of the time no matter what kind of mind you have: You are always in a relationship with yourself. This is always true, no matter how you see yourself, and it also is part of the truth that you only do things to yourself.

So a person with a whole mind is always in a relationship to themselves as a whole mind and sees wholeness everywhere. A person with a split mind/ego is still always in a relationship to themselves, but it shows up as two parts - the inner/me and the outer/other. People only ever talk to themselves! People only ever relate with themselves! People only ever interact with themselves! People only ever see themselves! This is true at all times no matter how aware the person is.

Now this is where we get lost. We get lost when WE have an ego split mind ourselves. Only when you have a mind that is WHOLE, can you recognize when there is a split mind and can identify that both parts of the split are part of ONE mind. If your mind is not whole, and is split, then you are too unconscious to recognize or see this. And the result of that, is that you will believe in a separation between what is inside the person and what is outside. And that means, when someone comes along expressing 'split mind' in your general direction, you will fall for the appearance that the 'outside parts' of their relationship with themselves are in fact NOT anything to do with that person, and are to do with you. You will take that to be personal, and about you, instead of about them. And so will begin your experience of being a VICTIM.

You will be a victim whenever you do not remember that you can only do things to yourself, and that other people can only do things to themselves. You will be a victim when your own mind is split and therefore you perceive other people's splits as 'real', and take the split-off part of what other people are doing to themselves and believe that it applies to or does something to you. The other person's disassociation from this part of their mind makes it APPEAR that they do not own and are not identified with it, and therefore it really MUST be about you.

So when someone comes along being an asshole to themselves ;-) and they come up to you, and they call you an asshole, here's what's going on.

They are having a relationship with themselves and to their own mind in its entirety, so they are calling themselves an asshole. They are seeing a reflection back in a mirror of their own self attack. They have projected their separation/split mind onto the outside environment, which randomly happens to include you, and now they are attacking their own projected externalized part of their own mind using words. And because they believe that they are NOT this other part of their mind, they will 'frame' the attack in such a way as to believe they are not attacking themselves, but instead that YOU are the one they are attacking. Like, "hey Paul, you asshole". No, the person is not talking to me. They're talking to themselves.

If a person has an ego, they do not see you. If a person has a split mind, they cannot recognize your wholeness. If a person has a split mind, they are having a hallucinatory experience in a private reality that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and are projecting their split outward, and it's getting confused with what's out there, and so the person thinks that YOU have something to do with the hate they SEE, but the hate they SEE is their own hate toward themselves, which they are USING in order to maintain their split mind.

Hate and fear are tools and devices which create the illusion of disassociation and disownership and irresponsibility for the content of guilt in that person's mind. So if someone has an ego, they do not love you and they do not recognize love in you and they literally do not SEE you clearly. They do not recognize you as love, because they do not recognize themselves as love, because their mind is not whole. Love is wholeness. And if they were to have a whole mind, they would see you with wholeness and also recognize not only themselves as love but recognize you as love as well, regardless of your ego, and would see that the two of you are ONE.

So we get lost in this a LOT. I know I do. This is the main issue that keeps us being a victimized. The ego split in our own mind makes us buy into the ego splits in other people's minds. We keep taking personally expressions that other people are making, in a split mind state, toward themselves, which they project outward and make 'other'-oriented. It's still all about that person. It's still them attacking and doing this to themselves. It's still them accusing you of THEIR sins. And so other people never really accuse you of YOUR sins. And so other people are never really talking about YOU when they attack you or call you names. It's not about you.

This is really important to remember and to hone this skill of seeing with wholeness and recognizing the split minds of others and how it manifests as expressions of attack on 'otherness' (i.e. you) when in fact that person is really just at war with themselves. It's NOT about you. It's not you that they are really attacking. You have to learn to overlook the appearance of this. The form it takes, the words they use, the direction they aim it in, it's all part of their delusion.

So if someone is telling you they don't love you in some way, it's not true. They'r not even telling you that they don't love you. They are telling themselves that they don't love themselves. That's all. They're in a private world. They don't know what they're doing. Taking it personally and thinking that it is about you is a major error that YOU are making because YOU have a split mind that needs healing. Your own split is what causes you to be upset and hurt by other people's blind, impersonal attacks. So if there's someone in your life somewhere that seems to not like you or is your enemy... they don't like themselves. They are their own enemy. And no matter how it looks on the surface or how they express it, and no matter how much they seem to make it about 'you', it is NOT ABOUT YOU.

Remember the secret to salvation - you are doing this to yourself, and they are doing this to themselves.

If other people only do stuff to themselves, and if you only do stuff to yourself, and if nobody ever does anything to anyone else, then you are invulnerable, right?

When someone seems to do something to someone else, they are actually going into withdrawal, not attack. What looks like attack to us is a recoil. It's a withdrawal away from oneness. It's taking steps back away from love. It's hiding. Attack is hiding is the dark. Attack does not exist in the light. So nobody actually has any effect on anyone else. This is how God is unaffected by our attempted attacks as well. God doesn't even need to defend Himself because any kind of attack is a RETREAT away from love even if it takes on a form that LOOKS LIKE it's a forward attack. Attack is always a contraction away from love. So if you are love, you know that attack is always a form of avoidance. And that is complete truth, metaphysically and experientially, and it's built into reality.

So quite literally, you ARE invulnerable, and immortal, and cannot be attacked by anyone else, and have never been attacked by anyone else. You can only attack yourself and play with illusions of stories of how you attacked them or how they attacked you. None of that story is true whatsoever. We are all PERMANENTLY INVULNERABLE, and we are all completely, totally, wholly INCAPABLE of actually attacking anyone.

Nothing can assail the Kingdom of God. Nothing real can be threatened.

Since you are OF God, being FROM God, you are exactly LIKE God. You cannot BE like anything else because you are not of or from anything else. You are not OF this world, or OF the body, or OF your parent's bodies. You are not FROM this world. You are not of or from the ego. You have been given BY God because you are a part of him. And anything he has not given you is nothing.

Your real identity must therefore be a part of God as well, aligned with Christ and shared with all your brothers. What you are can ONLY be of God. It cannot include anything else because only the truth is true. Anything you made, anything you invented, including the ego, the body, suffering, sickness, death, despair, unhappiness, depression, lack or loss or grief, fear or guilt, cannot be a part of what you are. It therefore cannot exist.

Anything which is not OF or FROM God, must be denied and rejected. It must be filtered out and forgiven. It must be handed over and let go. Anything in you which God did not put there, must be exhumed and purified away. All the barriers you built against love must be removed, because they are barriers against your real self, suggesting that you have and want something not of God.

"This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error."

"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."

"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 affect you in any way."

As Jesus states here, if you want SANITY, then you MUST deny anything AND everything which is not of God. This is in the extreme. It means you have to deny the ego and the body and the world and all forms of suffering. To deny them is to withdraw value and belief and truth and reality from them. It is to dis-identify with them, recognizing them as NOT of God, and therefore that they cannot possibly be a part of you or your experience.

You have to take this ALL the way, because enlightenment is the recognition that only that which is of God exists, and nothing else has ANY power over you. Nor does it really exist at all. Enlightenment IS sanity. It is the end of false perception. It is forgiveness. Anything not created by God has to be thrown out. Anything not of God is impossible. Anything he did not create or give has no truth, no reality, no meaning, and no existence. It cannot therefore be WHAT you are.

You cannot be your emotions, your upsets, your unhappiness, your losses, your pain, your physical sickness, your death, your stresses, your thoughts, your body, the bodies of others, or part of the world. God did not create the world so you cannot be OF the world, or IN the world, or FROM the world. You are from another world. Your real self is IN HEAVEN WITH GOD. That is where you must anchor your whole sense of who and what you are. You are not ANYTHING that you made.

"Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom IS. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving WHAT IS NOT OF GOD."

"That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit IS in you in a very literal sense. It is the voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again."

"Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality."

"Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completeness, unity and peace. You cannot lose the gifts your Father gave. You do not want to be another self. You have no function that is not of God. Forgive yourself the one you think you made. Forgiveness and salvation are the same. Forgive what you have made, and you are saved."

"Failure is of the ego, NOT of God. "

"Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of the ATTACK on God. This is a totally meaningless concept EXCEPT to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the belief from which ALL guilt really stems."

"We therefore are embarking on an organized, well-structured, and carefully planned program, aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything you do NOT want. HE knows what to DO with it. You do NOT know how to use what He knows. Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God, is gone. But you must reveal it to YOURSELF in perfect willingness, for otherwise His knowledge remains useless TO you."

"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more are any of the RESULTS of your condemnation."

"God is the ONLY Cause, and guilt is NOT of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind."

"NOTHING you made has ANY power over you, unless you still would be APART from your Creator, and with a will OPPOSED to His."

"I am still as God created me."

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

One of the major hurdles in the separation, is that it has actually made yourself distant to yourself. There are blockages, barriers, obstacles, obstructions, walls, that have entered as the "split" in the mind, seeming to come in between "you" and your real self. And now you seem to be split off and apart and you do not know who you are anymore. And who you think you are is not who you are.

Since your real self is invisible to you, and the body cannot see it, and it's hidden behind the belief that illusions are real, and this in turn projects as a seemingly solid world that hangs as a veil in between you and everyone, including your real self and God, it really makes it hard to be in touch with the big-picture you.

For example, we should focus on what your real self is like. We should identify your immortal nature, the fact you ARE NOT sick, the fact you ARE NOT insane, the fact you CANNOT die, the fact YOU ARE NOT UNHAPPY, and the fact that you are completely perfect and whole. That is actually true of your real self right now, and always has been, but it is hidden from your awareness.

The mind, in its split state, is in a state of disassociation. And the part that seems like your current conscious self is kind of in the dark about who you even really are. This poses a problem because it now implies that you are not responsible for the state you are in. And it becomes much harder to compare the state you're in to the state you REALLY are in.

If you could SEE your immortal self, things would be so much easier. You would see obviously and easily, that your real self is totally unharmed, perfect, invulnerable, has absolutely no signs of sickness or death, is totally joyful and happy all the time, cannot be attacked, and is still the same as God created it. If you could even just GLIMPSE that for a second it would be enlightening.

If you COULD see that, or even conceive of it, it then would help you to put everything in perspective. You'd recognize that given your real self is TOTALLY HEALTHY, you would instantly recognize that any belief you have in sickness, any suggestion that you are sick, any notion of sickness existing, any damage that seems to be showing up, any mental illness, would all be immediately INVALIDATED. It would be shown to be patently FALSE AND UNTRUE. Because here is your real self, shining and bright and clean and new, and completely perfect. And all support for sickness would be removed, causing it to vanish instantly.

This also brings with it extreme responsibility. Because it now becomes clear that, given your real self is immortal, ANY suggestion on your part that you are mortal, vulnerable, hurt, damaged, sick, unhappy, upset, attacked, threatened, in fear, guilty, sinful, suffering in any way, MUST all be a total lie. It MUST be a way that you are faking it and lying about who and what you are. Just even one little glimpse of the truth about yourself would show you that. And then you would never be able to see these thing in the same way again.

In light of the fact that your holy self IS PERFECT NOW, and in light of the fact that your holy self IS YOU, and your mind is its mind, it really is "something you are doing to yourself" when it comes to any form of suffering. This is why the secret of salvation says you are doing this all to yourself. You are making your sickness, you are making your unhappiness, you are claiming your own suffering, you are punishing yourself, you are self destructive, you are the one trying to make yourself die, and you have given yourself sickness. And all of it is an attempt to PROVE that you ARE NOT who you really are.

The aim of these things, of course, is to KEEP you in the dark and keep your real self HIDDEN. So that you are not aware of the FACT, that what YOU ACTUALLY ARE, IS an immortal spirit being. The FACT that THERE IS NO SUFFERING in you, YOU ARE NOT SICK, and you can NEVER die. The PURPOSE of all the efforts to believe otherwise, is to BLOCK awareness of the FACT that there is nothing wrong with you. To disown your immortality and hide from it, to pretend it's not true of you. That is nothing less than dishonest and unauthentic. It is denial.

How you think of other people works along similar lines. Since you can't seem to see them (unless you have strongly developed christ vision), it makes it hard for you to SEE their real self, the SEE their holiness, their harmlessness, their immortality. Yet it is by acknowledging, recognizing, seeing their immortal self that you become able to heal them. You can see this FOR them, even if they in their own mind are in denial of who and what they are. Even if they are convinced they are sick and suffering, YOU can deny this and know the truth that they cannot be this.

In one way or another, either through direct experience or through concepts, it's very helpful to keep the perspective that your immortal self, and the immortal selves of others, is the ONLY truth about us. And any efforts to suggest otherwise cannot be true. And the closer you can get to experiencing and expressing FROM that truth, the more you can be helpful to those who do not know themselves. You can remember them FOR them, and thus help them to remember they are immortal.

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. "

As we dive deeply into what it means to be an immortal being, something suddenly becomes clear. If we are indeed invulnerable, inpenetrable, eternal, incapable of even being changed, or affected in any way.... then how is it possible that there can be any kind of suffering that is a PART of us?

If we are this PURE LIFE, which is so alive it is completely devoid of all traces of attack and sickness and death, unable to be even modified in any way, completely permanent and absolute, how can it BECOME anything? How can any kind of suffering be something we have in us, or are made of?

Surely this means that if there does seem to be some kind of suffering - an upset feeling, some loss, some guilt, a fear, a sickness, anything at all which is a form of destruction, it cannot be INSIDE of what we are. It can't be modifying the inherent nature and substance of what we are. So it has to be somehow separate or "outside".

If there is for example a feeling of unhappiness, we can't really accurately say "I am unhappy." Because this means I have become unhappiness. I have changed, and so I am not unchangeable, and I have transformed, and I have modified what I am and how I feel - no longer permanently happy, no longer joyful and at peace, but disturbed and upset and defective in some way.

This points to the idea that we IDENTIFY WITH things which cannot be a part of us, and tend to include them in our definition of me, myself, I, what I am, what I have, what I feel, what I experience. As though to say we ARE these things, that they are a part of us. But they can't be.

The ego on the other hand is a sense of confusion in identity, in which our mind has moved away from being PURE LIFE and has gone off the rails. It's believing that there are now qualities and substances and contents to our self that God did not put there. That we have changed and turned into something less than whole, less than pure, less than perfect.

So the ego then has this sort of view of BEING ONE WITH things which are not of God. Being one with illusions, with pain and misery, with sickness and death, with suffering, with the body etc. It regards them as part of itself and tries to wear them - not just like a separate piece of clothing, but like... to be so merged with it that it thinks of it like it is its SELF. That you ARE a body.

The ego view is this smushing together of mind and form, where identity becomes tangled up in the things which are not of God. So now we start to feel like "I feel upset" and "I am in pain" and "I am guilty" and so on. But this can't be true. We cannot BE these things in truth if we are immortal beings. They can't be a PART of our self, included in ourself, part of our nature or condition. They have to be separate things, outside of us, not even "ours" really.

If we then look when ego is flaring up and there is all manner of upset and hurt and emotions and pian coming out, we should do something which seems to most humans would be insane and unhealthy - to separate ourselves from it. To say, I am not suffering, I am not upset, I am not weak, I am not in pain, I am not having this happen to me, I am not these sensations, I am not these thoughts.

Because all of these forms of suffering cannot actually BE - they are not ways of being - they are just illusions and dreams. What we are as immortal beings cannot suffer, cannot have loss, cannot die. What we are cannot even really be unhappy - which is a form of death. We can't have guilt in us because that's like saying there's something wrong with perfection. And we can't in fact really have anything be a part of us that God didn't put there.

So we have to sort out, and be careful, with how we are identifying WITH things that are not of God, even the way we feel and think. As an immortal being you DO NOT have upset feelings. If there seem to be upset feelings, it is ego, and it is driven by a mistaken belief about yourself being not like God. There is no pain in God and none in me. There is no unhappiness in God and none in me.

"Whatever suffers is not part of me." W248

"Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind. What dies was never living in reality, and did but mock the truth about myself. Now I disown self-concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God. Now am I ready to accept him back as God created him, and as he is." UrW248

"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." UrW152

"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You." UrW235L2

"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." UrW84L2 "I am the holy Son of God Himself.

I cannot suffer; cannot be in pain;

I cannot lose, nor can I fail to do

All that salvation asks." UrW191L7

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am." UrW58L5

"I cannot be guilty because I am a Son of God." UrW46L6

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. 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. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?" UrW135L9

You can think of it like this. The body itself is the idea of sin. Without sin, there is no body. It is not possible to remove the sin from the body and keep the body. The body IS sin. It only "exists" when there is distance (spacetime) from God. This is why Jesus makes the following statements.

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For ***sin*** (the body) is never present."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible."

"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 (the body) 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."

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

Now, you can try to repurpose the body, you can look at it with forgiveness, and you can heal it. But at no point does the body ever become PURE. It cannot be innocent because it DEPENDS on sin for its existence. Even when Jesus speaks of the body "being holy", he means it is given a holy purpose. The body can never be truly holy, because holiness would eradicate it. "To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego." Jesus is quite clear in that statement that it is IMPOSSIBLE to see a body, at the same time as seeing total sinlessness. If there were total sinlessness, the body would have to disappear. It is literally the idea of the LACK of innocence, and was made as a movement AWAY from God. If you see the body, your ARE in a state of specialness.

He is also clear that if you forgive the body for what it is, it is recognized as neutral and not FULL of sin. Nor is it a REAL sin. But neither it is SINLESS. It is not devoid of sin because it IS sin. It's the very idea of sin itself, of separation.

Where there is sin, there is a body. If you see a body, you are seeing sin. Even if you perceive the body with forgiveness, the body is still not a POSITIVE creation, it is neutral and is an illusion of sin.

When Jesus affirms "there is no sin", he is also affirming that there is no body. Similarly, since the world of bodies IS the world of sin, WITHOUT sin there IS NO WORLD OF BODIES. And as he further says, sin is never present, and the body never exists in the present moment. In the present, there ARE no bodies.

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

Bodies only show up when the mind is slightly removed from the present, avoidant of God, in denial, mistaken, or trying to identify with something other than the soul. If you are in the state of heaven, it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be there.

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."

"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*** (the idea of sin) ***it could not remain where separation is impossible.*** ***Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not***."

Jesus is literally saying there that a fully forgiving mind does NOT see bodies - or ANYTHING physical. The body does not exist in the light. The body IS the darkness, or the idea of the absence of the light. It is like a shadow which entirely depends on the light being blocked in order to SEEM to exist. And yet when the light shines, there can be no darkness, and the body does not exist in the light. "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."

This does NOT mean that it sees the bodies in a unifying way, or a oneness underlying them. It does not see the bodies AT ALL in any way. There are no innocent bodies. Either you are in innocence and not seeing bodies, or you are seeing them because you are guilty. This is also why you cannot see the christ in your brother when you look at his body.

"nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother."

"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. ***Before this light the body disappears***, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light. The darkness cannot CHOOSE that it remain. The coming of the light MEANS ***it is gone***."

"Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon."

"The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not."

The body is only temporarily being repurposed as a device to help us to render the body unnecessary, so that we can go beyond the body to the truth of what we really are. Entities which have absolutely no need for bodies whatsoever.

"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."

"To be without the body is to be in our natural state."

"THE BODY DOES NOT INTRUDE UPON IT. Any relationship in which the body enters is based, NOT on love, but on idolatry."

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"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."

Attempting to take your self closer to the truth in any way, will be met with ego resistance.

The ego itself is nothing, just a "way of looking" which is the opposite to seeing the truth. It distorts everything and makes everything seem the opposite to what it is. It inverts reality. It changes God into death/evil/murderous. It sees Holy Spirit as an enemy. It sees the truth as a threat. And it does not want anything to do with this idea of "waking up and not having an ego."

The ego by itself doesn’t do anything. The problem is that YOU have taken it on AS IF it is your own Self. You regard IT as the same thing as your identity.

What that does is it causes you to perceive WITH it, through it’s eyes. You then will see things the way the ego sees them.

So if you are "tied to" an ego identity which wants absolutely nothing to do with truth, cannot exist in the truth, and sees the truth as proof that it does not exist, then "YOU" will become very threatened by approaching the truth.

If for example the truth says, there is no sin, and the ego believe that sin is real and true, and therefore sin is your *identity*, to your sense of self this will SEEM to say "I do not exist."

Regardless of the fact that you may have sided with an insane ego, you do not RECOGNIZE it is insane. You think it makes perfect sense. It seems logical, sensible, rational. You will also want to defend it as though to do so is defending "your" life, because you think it is you. Therefore it makes sense to you to AVOID the truth at all costs.

The ego sees the truth as attack, vengeance, evil, warring, deadly, hateful, loss, non-existence, etc. If you identify with the ego, you will also see the truth as meaning this.

So then, you will attempt to reach out to the truth, to become closer to God, to go into the light, but because part of you is STILL holding onto the ego and is using it to perceive, that part of you seeing with the ego will think you’re trying to kill yourself.

No-one in their "right mind" would go against what seems sensible and true, and expose themselves to what must be the END of themselves. The truth is the end of the ego, and if you believe it, it means it’s the end of your self. Approaching the truth WITH the ego, pulling it along with you, is nothing short of you SCARING THE CRAP out of yourself by exposing yourself to your worst enemy, complete with no defenses.

This is the sole cause of all ego rebounds and resistance - the mis-perception that welcoming the truth is welcoming your own death. No-one wants to do this. IT seems sensible to protect yourself and defend yourself against this. In spite of your best efforts to "become more spiritual" by opening up to the light of truth, or to love, the rest of you - still perceiving the opposite to the truth, will fear out when you try to do it.

What can even happen is your ego self will create DEFENSES AGAINST THE TRUTH, which it thinks are *needed* in order to protect your "self". Or to put it another way, you who are identified with the ego, interpret the truth as your mortal enemy, and do not want it, are threatened by it and want to "naturally" defend yourself. In the name of preserving your own life, you will erect DEFENSES psychologically.

The only ego defense is *separation*, attempting to create a gap or sense of "distance" between yourself and the threat. Implementing this is an attempt to shut out the truth, by implementing a BLOCK. The purpose of this block is to block your awareness of the threat, because if you are not aware of it, to you this is practically the same experience as though it does not exist. You use DENIAL to hide the perceived danger from yourself, so you can enter an *illusion of safety*. This illusion of safety, this block, made of guilt, shows up as SICKNESS. Sickness is a defense against the truth.

The purpose of sickness then is to defend you against what you think is going to hurt you. But to implement it, you actually HURT YOURSELF. It should be obvious why this is insane. Perceiving your best interests through the filter of the ego is insane, because it shows you the *opposite* of what will actually help you. What would really help you, and what is the UNDOING of sickness, is to correctly perceive WITHOUT the ego, that the truth is NOT a threat or hurtful, is FOR you not against you, is welcome, you want it, and it does NOT mean you will not exist.

When you can perceive correctly that you are not being threatened by the truth, you will UNDO the NEED for the defense, and this will make the sickness *disappear*. Literally. All symptoms will be dropped, because you have no further need for them. Sickness is always serving the PURPOSE of being a defense to keep you safe, even though it does the opposite. Without its purpose, it will not exist because you will withdraw your belief from it.

Essentially, approaching the truth is going to make your ego-identified self threatened. It will want to defend itself and it will be horrified, offended, upset and scared of the truth. This can lead people to BECOME SICK by doing the course. It can also cause peoples lives to turn upside down, as reactions to the misinterpretation of the truth.

Gradually the way to undo this is the development of trust and coming to perceive correctly WITHOUT the ego’s interpretation. This will naturally lead to a WILLINGNESS to accept the atonement, and accept God’s truth as true. And then you will have no resistance whatsoever. It is only your beliefs to the contrary that try to defend you against the truth.

So each time you have an ego rebound, don’t belittle yourself or judge yourself as failing to do the course right. I used to think I was making big mistakes when I had rebounds, like I was guilty for having them. But I had to learn to be gentle and acknowledge what they were saying, recognizing it was a part of my SELF that was afraid and offended by the truth I was opening up to. It’s perfectly okay to take a BREAK from pushing yourself towards the truth, to let your ego settle down a bit, and integrate what you’ve learned so that you can move forward with more willingness and less fear.

What did you do?! Did you hurt someone? Did you steal something? Did you break it and cover it up? Did you destroy a relationship? Did you deceive and lie? Did you commit a secret crime? What was it? Come on, own up. You really did something bad and evil didn't you? Something you want no-one to ever know about?

Ok well..... you didn't do it.

So long as you believe that IT HAPPENED, in some kind of "reality", in a real world, that you REALLY did it, you will not be able to forgive yourself. It doesn't matter how much you reframe it, cathart it, think about it, process it, heal it, work on it. There will always be this "core" thread that seems to keep it tied to you. Something that prevents you from COMPLETELY letting it go. You just can't seem to forgive yourself all the way.

This happens because the belief that YOU DID IT, is the core of sin. It is the absolute ROOT which is anchoring it in your mind. The memory of you doing it, the experience of it, the feelings surrounding it, the sense that "that happened".

It doesn't matter how much you hack at it with your amazing spiritual tools and healing devices. It WILL NOT go away so long as you believe, fundamentally, that "you did it." It doesn't matter how loving you attempt to be, or how much you try to forgive yourself "for doing it". If you believe and accept "I DID THAT" .... you MUST find yourself sinful.

Psychologically it simply is impossible to be forgiven for something that you BELIEVE IN. Your belief in it keeps it anchored in your mind. It means you WANT it, and so your mind holds onto it. The only way you can be free of it, to truly let it go, and feel RELIEVED, is to recognize IT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

The only context in which you DID NOT DO what you believe you did do, deep down, is where this world is NOT REAL. Only if this world is a DREAM, a fiction, in which fantasies play out, and in which NOTHING REAL IS THREATENED, can it be possible that you DIDN'T REALLY DO what you think you did. And only in this context can you BE forgiven.

Your innocence can only logically and psychologically remain pure IF you DID NOT do it. If you did it, you are a sinner. If you did not do it, you are innocent. This is all your mind understands. But the only way that you could NOT have done it, is if your actions were IN A DREAM, and NOT in reality. If you only did it in dreaming, then nothing real has been harmed. If what you did took place NOT IN HEAVEN, but in some kind of fictional world, then your real innocence has NOT been changed. You just IMAGINED that you sinned.

This is the crux of the matter. Do you believe it was a real sin taking place IN REALITY, or was it a FAKE SIN taking place in a FAKE WORLD? If it took place in a fake world, then you DID NOT sin, and sin is NOT POSSIBLE. "There is no sin." This is what sets you free. This is ATONEMENT. Accepting the truth that "I am still as God created me", you have not changed, "God has not changed his mind about me", and your innocence is STILL undefiled.

You are innocent because YOU DID NOT DO what you think you did. You were mistaken. You mistakenly believed you did something wrong, when all it was is a fantasy in an UNREAL world. Nothing real has been hurt. You have not done anything to God. You have NEVER hurt another soul. No one else has EVER done anything to you. No one has ever died or suffered in truth. None of "what you did" took place in the reality of God, and he knows IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO SIN in his kingdom.

God did not create you capable of really sinning, or attacking, or hurting, or damaging, or stealing, or betraying, or breaking, or doing anything at all to destroy any kind of perfection. You CANNOT SIN. You have not sinned, ever. You never will sin. This is the view of forgiveness. This is the only light in which you can recognize YOU ARE forgiven, by yourself, because it's the recognition that YOU DID NOT SIN in any real way.

This world is just a dream. You did not do what you think you did. Even your "physical actions" WERE FAKE. Even the PROOF that you caused something to happen IS FAKE. Even the "lasting effects" ARE FAKE. Even your memory of DOING it is fake. It has NOT happened in reality. Nothing real can be threatened or destroyed or hurt. You have never hurt anyone. You DID NOT DO what you think you did. You are innocent and holy and forgiven.

Only in this light can you recognize that you are FREE FROM the feeling of guilt and sin because it has NO TIES TO YOU, because you HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING in God's reality. What happens in dreams stays in dreams, and only in dreaming did you ever seem to do anything wrong. Dreams mean nothing. They have no real consequences upon anything real. You have NEVER sinned and you never will. Stop crucifying yourself.

"God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless."

"There is no sin. Creation is unchanged."

"Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?"

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin."

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin."

"The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful. ERRORS He will correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within, and see the sin you THINK is there."

"Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart." "

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify.""

"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father."

"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin?"

The themes in these quotes about hell include that GUILT is hell, and also fear. Also that we made hell, as an opposite to heaven. AND that we then believed that hell WAS heaven, and that heaven was hell. If you want out of hell, you HAVE to get rid of your guilt and fear. You also have to forgive God of your belief that he is evil, and forgive the world of your belief that it is heaven.

"If guilt is hell, what is its opposite?"

"But do you believe that guilt is hell?"

"And what you see is hell, for fear IS hell."

"The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is hell?"

"Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed."

"For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience."

"They DO believe that Heaven is hell, and ARE afraid of love."

"It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice."

"And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace, even in the death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven?"

"The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it."

"The ego teaches that hell is IN THE FUTURE, for this is what ALL its teaching is directed to. HELL IS ITS GOAL."

"For it tells him hell is HERE, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion." "But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES."

"The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to BRING HELL HERE, but ALWAYS as a foretaste of the future. For no-one who considers himself as DESERVING hell, can believe that punishment will end in peace."

"Hell is only what the ego has made OF THE PRESENT. The BELIEF in hell is what PREVENTS you from UNDERSTANDING the present, because YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT."

""My unloving thoughts about ____ are keeping me in hell."

"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."

"Through your ATTACK, believe He hates you, thinking Heaven must be hell."

"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?"

"for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be your home."

"The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape"

"Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell."

"As long as any mind remains possessed of evil dreams the thought of hell is real."

"They call upon a vengeful god, and it is he who seems to answer them. Hell cannot be asked for another, and then escaped by him who asks for this. Only those who are in hell can ask for hell."

"It would thus destroy you here, and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. While it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell."

"For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience."

"And it is essential to the preservation of the ego, that you believe this specialness is NOT hell, but HEAVEN."

"The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable."

"For NEITHER will recognize that HE HAS ASKED FOR HELL, and so he will NOT interfere with the ego's ILLUSION of Heaven, which it offered him TO INTERFERE WITH HEAVEN."

"The appeal of hell lies ONLY in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in EVERY special relationship, for only the deprived COULD value specialness. "

"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."

"Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven. You know it is not so. You can not want this for yourself. There is a point beyond which illusions cannot go. Suffering is not happiness, and it is happiness you really want."

"Perceived through the ego's eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell."

"If you would sacrifice the truth, they stay in hell."

"Yet it merely stood for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? "

"The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. "

"UNTIL you choose Heaven, you ARE in hell and misery."

"And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

"we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

"And not one sin you see in him but keeps you BOTH in hell."

"As the projection of guilt upon him would send him to hell"

There is the me that seems to be 'in here' in the body, who I believe is innocent and did not ask for this sorry treatment.

Then there is the me that seems to be 'out there' which somehow is in someone else's body, and therefore I believe it is not me at all, and that self is attacking the self that I think remains as me, within.

What's really going on is that both the me out there and the me in here are two parts of my one mind. My mind, itself, is at war with itself. This is the ego split-mind, based in duality and separation. It is two-faced.

The me that is in-here, my persona self, is the part of me that wants to retain and keep something, rejecting everything else.

The me that is 'out there', my shadow self, is the projected (but still within my own mind, since ideas leave not their source) part of me that I do not want. Therefore that self seems to be separated off behind a wall of disassociation.

I perceive that projected shadow self as "not me" and that I want nothing to do with it. I don't identify with it and I believe it is someone else. It is what I do not want. I see it as 'my' enemy, but really I am seeing it with my persona who loves to isolate the 'good bits' to my 'in here' self, and keep the 'bad bits' relegated to the 'out there' self.

I project my shadow self onto other people and since I believe that this shadow self is 'not me', not my persona-me, I believe that it must belong to other people. I believe it must be a part of them. I believe THEY must be the ones who are attacking me, they are the ones who are offensive, they are the ones who are my enemy.

The stronger becomes this sense of 'separation' between the in-here me and the out-there me, ie me vs 'other selves', which I experience hallucinatorily as other people, the stronger and deeper that rift becomes and the more 'I' am at war with those enemy selves, the more I disassociate my identity from that shadow self - the part of me that I hate and reject. And it seems I am now an enemy of that other person, but they are really me - I am an enemy of myself.

While this disassociation is in place, it will seem to me that the other self that is 'out there', which houses everything that is wrong and ugly and unwanted and guilty and evil and deadly, has nothing to do with me at all. I will want to get away from it, reject it, escape it, and run from its threat. I don't want to accept that it is a part of myself.

But what I must do if I want healing, is I must recognize that all of the projected guilt/sin/attack that I see as 'not myself', or as 'someone else's stuff', ALL of it is mine. That content is part of and inside of my own mind. See, I think my mind is only inside my body and that my mind stops at the edges of my body. It doesn't. My mind 'in here', as it perceives what is 'out there', and as it thinks about stuff 'out there', is actually out there as well. And it's not possible for my mind to perceive that there even IS an 'out there' without my mind being in some way out there too. And everything I experience, even the out there stuff, is really encapsulated by my whole mind, like a container. My body, other people's bodies. It's me.

So if I want to heal, I'm going to have to realize that in all cases where I think someone else is wrong or at fault, I am just conveniently disassociating from MY OWN self-attack, which I am seeing as 'not me' because I don't want it, and I've seen it overlaid on top of 'people' out there. It's nothing to do with them. They are ALL INNOCENT. There is not really anything out there. It's all my own mind, parts of my mind, that I don't want to look at.

To heal, I am going to have to look at this content that I think is in other people, and I'm going to have to take back responsibility for it. I'm going to have to take back the 'power' that I think it has over me, which is really my own power within my own mind. And I'm going to have to admit that the stuff I want to get rid of, that is stuff within my mind not outside of it. There is no outside to my mind! It's all inside me. And I need to therefore heal the rift between the persona-me, in here, which only wants to keep the good stuff, and the shadow me that I project, which is seemingly out there and that I do not want to accept.

I can't accept the shadow stuff or the persona stuff while they remain separate. While separate, there is war. I have to realize they are BOTH ME and cease the belief in the *SEPARATION* that is between them. That is the key. I am doing this to myself because I am both parts of my mind, the inner and the outer. I am the enemy I perceive. I need to forgive myself and undo this rift, this split mind, between what is approved-of in me and what is not approved of in me.

It is keeping these parts of my own mind held apart and separate that brings on all sickness, all conflict, all war, all upset, and death. Reclaiming ownership of the entire scenario, the inner and the outer, they become one. I see them both as me operating two personalities that are against each other, and yet both of them are within me. Therefore.... I am something else. I am not either of them. I am awareness. I am the personality. I am the one mind.

Wholeness. Peace.

In the separation from God, all that’s happened is we’ve gone into denial about what is true. We’ve tried to change the truth into somethiing false, and vice versa. We’re just a bit confused about what IS true and what is false.

Unfortuantely this also includes our sense of identity. We’re in denial of who we are in truth. This has resulted in trying to be something we are not, to replace our identity. Our sense of "self" has become identified WITH something that is not our self, and we now believe that "the truth about us" is that we are a body, rather than a spirit/mind.

Whatever you believe is true, you believe is your self. It’s where you see "reality", value, and meaning. You will also "naturally" defend and protect whatever you believe is true, because your investment of belief in it means you equate it with valuable reality - and thus with your "self". Anything which seems to contradict this truth, is taken as opposite to your identity, and is perceived as an enemy or "false".

The problem here is, since you will defend whatever you think is true of your identity, or what you are identified with, you will inadvertently protect "truth" and "self" even if it’s not really the truth or really yourself. Once you’ve come to believe you are your body, you will see IT as your SELF, and seek to protect it.

Defending a "truth" that is not really true, means you will side with something even if it is not in your best interests. In this way, identifying with the body means you are siding with what is false, which means you will defend, protect, reinforce and bring about death, because death is the opposite of truth/life. You will do this believing you are "saving your life" or as self-defense.

This is also why "sickness is a defense against the truth." In sickness you mis-perceive the truth as something false or an attack on your false-identified self, and you will then "defend" that false self against the truth because you misperceive it as an attacker.

You then think the sickness is defending you and protecting you and saving your life. Even though you’ll later perceive the sickness as unwanted or unchosen, this is only because you are unconscious of the desire to keep your "self" safe, and undoing the sickness will seem to threaten your safety if you maintain a false sense of self.

Another thing that happens is, since you see your identity as "body" or ego (or world), when "you" try to awaken from the dream, you try to pull your "self" into the light. You become willing to open up to some real truth. But because you are "bound" or united with the body/ego/false self, you simultaneously try to pull "it" into the truth. This is an attempt to "spiritualize the ego", by keeping your false identification while making it "appear more spiritual". From "its" perspective, you are trying to destroy it by bringing it into contact with a truth that proves its unreality. That part of your mind sees this attempt as a threat to your "self".

It’s kind of like trying to remain an ego-identified self, while simultaneously trying not to be. The truth is experienced as an attack on your self and now that part of you feels attacked, threatened, ignored, mis-treated and offended, as though you have betrayed yourself and hurt yourself. That part of you will then retaliate with hurt, justified anger, fear and reactions. This accounts for all "ego rebounds". Part of you wants the truth, part of you does not.

So as you go through purification, awakening, spiritual studies, trying to commune with God, or opening up to the Holy Spirit, part of you is honestly going to say "no, I don’t want that". It’s not so much the "ego" that says this. It’s YOU saying it, because of your allegiance to the ego. Or it’s your body-identified self protesting because your efforts to become spiritual are seen by "it" as an attack on "you". It’s all just you reacting to yourself.

Awakening to the truth, accepting the atonement, enlightenment as a recognition, returning to God, remembering your real identity as God’s Son, becoming aware that you are as God created you etc, basically entails "letting go" of your "holding onto" false lies and untruths - things which are not true of you - things which are not real - the body etc. As you let go of those things, you hold onto or identify WITH things which are real and true - your immortal spirit.

It’s kind of like, there are two things you can join with, or think of as your "self". Either the truth, or illusions. Either reality, or the ego. Either spirit, or the body. Either mind, or matter. "You", can choose WHERE to place your allegiance. Your mind, which is the mechanism of decision and the home of free will, can either place itself under Authority of free spirit, or under tyrannical rule of dictatorship and imprisonment. This determines whether mind is identified with spirit or with illusions, and thus how you "see your self".

For a time it will seem like giving up ego is going to destroy you. But being "in the ego" WAS a denial of your true self. It was a substitute identity. YOU do not end, your identification merely shifts from one thought system to another. You "leave" the ego world, and enter the spirit world. Either of the two thought systems "host" you.

Eventually you will realize and recognize that "only the truth is true", nothing that was untrue of you was true, what you thought was your self was not your self, you have given up nothing to gain everything, you have returned to your true identity as God’s son, and remembered God’s true nature. It is merely a recognition of what has always really been true.

You are still as God created you. You are not a body, you are free.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so?"

The truth is that there is nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with you, there is nothing wrong with anyone. All of creation which God created in and as heaven is still absolutely perfect, untouched, unchanged. The so-called separation from God has absolutely no effect on it.;

"So VERY long ago, for such a tiny interval of time that not one note in Heaven's song was missed."

The REALITY is, the TRUTH is, that we are all in fact, in our Christly spirit self, absolutely the same as we have always been. Nothing has happened to us, nothing has changed us, and we have not changed ourselves into something else. This has always been true, it is true now, and it will always be true.

So what's with all this suffering? What's with this world of bodies, of events and disasters, or wars and fighting, of pain and sickness? It must not be true. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real has ever been threatened. This unreal world is not a threat to God's kingdom.

"Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

The truth is that this world is entirely an illusion. Everything that seems to happen here is false, untrue, a lie. Nothing the world believes is true. No events mean anything. The changes that seem to happen are empty and powerless. Nothing in the world does anything to you.

"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."

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

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

Everything that this world depicts is not true, and is having no effect. The world has no power over what is real or what you are. Little specks of dust gather on the ground, pushed there by the wind and forces beyond their control, and they lie there motionless and easily displaced because they have no power to cause anything. A world of dust has no power because it is not of God.

The happy news is that, in fact, you have a self right now which is actually perfect and whole, it's totally devoid of sickness and pain, it has no disturbance or irritation or inflammation, it is utterly beyond all attack and damage, it has never been hurt and cannot be destroyed in any way. It can't even change slightly.

This is actually a fact. A hard fact. This self exists right now, perfect as ever. The ONLY thing that seems to be coming between 'you' and your awareness of this existing fact, this present truth, is that you are hiding from it. You are in denial. You are pretending it's not true and are covering your eyes.

"Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

Why is enlightenment a recognition? Because the truth already exists and is always perfect. All you have to do is be AWARE of it and ACCEPT it. You aren' putting it in place, you aren't fixing it, you aren't doing anything to it at all. You just need to look at it and realize it's there. Your real perfect unharmed immaculate self is sitting there right now waiting for "you" to identify with it.

"Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator, and shines with His glory."

"At God's altar, Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in YOU."

So in truth, the truth that you are already Christ is very reassuring. It means you are safe in God, it means nothing in the world can hurt you, it means you can never die, it means you're not sick, it means you must always be happy, it means you are already at peace, it means nothing that happens in the world has any effect on you, and it means there's nothing to be afraid of.

"It is sin's unreality which makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received."

"And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief."

By accepting the REALITY of what you are, what you ACTUALLY are right now, hidden behind your layers of denial and blindness and unwillingness to admit to it, is a truth so safe and sure and certain that it is a deep RELIEF to accept it and recognize it. It's completely reassuring to realize that YOU ARE SAFE IN GOD. And you always have been, far from all suffering and all danger.

"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."

This is why forgiveness leads to happiness and a sense of peace. It is based on your immortality. It reminds you that nothing can happen to you, that you are protected by God, that your sinlessness is guaranteed, that you have never become guilty, and that you cannot change. It reminds you of your stability, your certainty, your centeredness. It restores to your awareness your true identity and lets you be true to yourself. And ultimately it leads to knowing thyself as God created you - which brings the happy revelation that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more."

"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."

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"

In the separation from God, each of us has condemned ourselves. We've accused ourselves of sin, and condemned ourselves to suffer. We want ourselves to be punished, murdered, and destroyed. Ultimately this is a death wish, in which we have become suicidal because we don't believe we deserve to live or to be loved by God. You might be thinking, suicidal? I'm not suicidal. Well think again.

At the same time as trying to destroy yourself to prove you don't exist in God, your true self is utterly sinless, guiltless, innocent, holy and pure. You have never sinned or hurt or commit a crime or broke a law. You have never done anything to anyone, and no-one has ever attacked you. You are immortal and eternal and endless and permanent. And no harm can come to you because God himself protects you.

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you"

The problem is, there is a seeming "gap" between what is really true of you, and what you currently BELIEVE. And if you are not in touch with your utter immaculate sinlessness, then some part of you DOES believe you are condemned to hell. God isn't doing this condemnation, nor are your brothers.

It's all an inside job of your own self attack. It is your self destruction. And this is suicidal. Even though death isn't real, this needs to be undone because the belief in your non-existence keeps you from being happy.

Looking at what you are doing to yourself is not pretty. If you are not accepting your sinlessness, it means you are believing you are sinful. It means you don't love yourself. It means you actively attack yourself and are trying to destroy yourself. Such as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." It means you don't really like yourself, yet alone love yourself with the love of God.

So now if you think about it in terms of the "relationship" that you have "with yourself", as if you could relate to yourself like a third party, how do you really feel about yourself? What is your honest current attitude towards yourself? If it's not one of total unconditional perfect love, then it isn't a very healthy relationship.

If there is a belief in being sinful, or evil, or a monster, or unworthy, or not good enough, or you resent yourself, or are angry at yourself, or keep judging yourself, or see yourself as weak, or hurt yourself emotionally or physically, or keep being abusive towards yourself, there are all signs of a breakdown in relationship.

And what that ultimately means is that you have not forgiven yourself. You're in this relationship with someone that you don't want to be with. And that is going to split your mind and hurt your mind. If you don't love yourself and embrace yourself with acceptance then how can you possibly relate to yourself at all?

Think of yourself as in the shoes of a person that you don't like in a similar way. If you don't like that person you don't want to be near them. You don't want to give them things. You don't want to share with them or spend time with them. You don't want them to exist. You don't care if they get hurt or suffer. You want them to suffer. And you may even feel so bitter towards them that you wish they were dead. Is that the relationship you are having with YOURSELF?

You have to look deep within yourself with much honesty to find this out. And it's probably going to be somewhat painful or even scary. You may not actually even realize or recognize that you have it in for yourself, or want yourself to suffer, because you may be so used to a general level of background destructiveness that you think it's totally normal. You might not have even seen how much you hate yourself.

"You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO."

"You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it."

"You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy."

"And why do you attack them anywhere except you hate yourself?"

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love."

"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. "

So you have to look at this stuff. And typically you need a strong contrast in order to recognize it. Get in touch with what it means to be sinless. That your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Get a feel for total pure innocence and the complete absence of all attack, even slight annoyances. And then in that light, look at how you feel about yourself.

Do you still feel like attacking? Do you still feel a need or requirement to judge and blame? Do you condemn others to hide your self condemnation? Are you constantly fighting with people? Do you feel unhappy most of the time? If you have any of the "symptoms" of the ego, which is anything not of God, then certainly there is room for improvement in your relationship with yourself.

First you need to recognize that you even DO hate yourself, before you can be willing to take steps to heal that relationship. And you can't see that unless you have some kind of higher truth about you to compare it to. Your utter pure sinlessness in God, your immortal innocence, the guarantee of eternal life, can act as a contrast and at reality-tester to find out just how you really do feel about yourself. And once you find that out, you have healing work to be done upon yourself. You need correction and forgiveness. You need to FORGIVE YOURSELF, in order to recognize you are sinless and free.

"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God."

"You who believe you have condemned the Son of God"

"But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned."

"And unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion."

"Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find."

"If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice."

"Guilt is ALWAYS in your OWN mind, WHICH HAS CONDEMNED ITSELF. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot BE undone."

"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES."

"It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self."

"Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death."

"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

You don't need to die. You need to forgive yourself.

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.

It used to seem as though fear was automatic. We were taught it was a natural response, part of how the primitive brain works, understandable given certain threats, and so on.

But gradually I'm seeing more and more the secret to salvation, "you are doing this to yourself", that we in fact have a choice in whether to be afraid or not.

Not only that, but we in fact are the cause of our own fear. The mistaken things that we do with our mind and perception bring about fearful perceptions. They seem as if caused by something outside of us over which we have no control. But the secret is, we in fact are having everything to do with creating this fear.

We do get to choose whether to perceive things in such a way that it produces fear, or not. It hinges entirely around whether it seems true that there is an external cause, power, mind, or will ... a threat, which we ourselves believe is really there, which seems to them loom over us with a magical ability to make us be at its effect without being able to stop it.

The entire basis for all fear lies in this reversal of cause and effect. We are all meant to naturally be the cause of everything, and any effects we produce we recognize as coming from us. But the instant that this is reversed and it *seems* as though the effect out there has some ability to cause, and therefore we are no longer a cause but an effect, this immediately produces fear.

Who would not be afraid if they perceived that there is a separate will, an alien will, which has the power to do something to you, and being separate from your own causal power, can in fact produce effects in you that you do not want?

This is the entire foundation for being "able to die" without your apparent consent, where it seems that a separate will chooses for you the effects you will experience. As if the world, or time, or bodies, or events, or foods, or whatever, have the power to make you dead if they so choose. Yet no-one dies without their own consent, and this is entirely a fear-based belief system, not based in truth or reality.

Just the simple belief that this external power exists *at all* forms the basis of fear. If there IS a separate will, then that automatically means there is something it can do to you which you do not choose yourself. Fear is absolutely guaranteed in that scenario, because now there is a possibility of something happening to you, making you a victim.

The mere perception of this belief system, that causes are outside of you, will make you afraid. And the entire time that you are mis-perceiving this way, you will be in fear.

There will be no escape from this fear no matter what you do, until your perceptual error is fixed. So long as you keep choosing to see yourself as a victim, as being threatened, attacked, caused, affected, by *anything*, you will live in fear.

And this fear will seem completely justified, and will even make sense to you, and seem to have a totally valid basis. You'll agree, that you *should* be afraid, because of what that external cause has the power to do to you. Even if it's not actively doing anything to you at all, your mere belief in its power is a state of fear.

What actually then is it that you are afraid of, is not the things which seem to have the power, it's the mere belief that they have the power at all. And the fact is, it's not even the power belonging to anyone else, or anything in the world. The power only *seems* to be out there, separate from you, because in your own mind you have a split mind - a belief in separation - which has sectioned off YOUR OWN POWER and makes it seem like it is separate from you.

So now the threat you think is outside of you, or the causality, the will, the power, to make stuff happen... its YOUR OWN WILL! It's part of you. Having a split mind splits your will and pits your will against itself. This is what the separation is all about, being at war with yourself. Inner conflict. And all inner conflict produces guaranteed fear.

Fear then, is the experience of what it feels like, to believe in separation. It IS the separation. The entire dream of separation is a dream of fear, and it's also the same thing as death. If there is separation in your mind, your will will be separated from itself, and will seem to act against itself, threatening itself, and thereby threating you. The separation is a belief in self condemnation, that you sinned, and threatening yourself with this sin is what makes you afraid.

You then will experience the "cause" as separate from you, because this split off part of your will has been disassociated from your sense of identity - you think it's not even part of your own mind or self. And then you'll overlay it on top of other people and external circumstances and think that those things are causing the fear. And if they are, if they are truly separate, then there is nothing you can do about it. If the causality belongs to other people or events, it's outside of your ability to do anything about it at all. This produces the classic justified victimhood perception - victim consciousness.

But there is everything you can do about it. All of this stuff is not happening outside of your mind. The threat - the "external will", is not outside of your mind. Ideas leave not their source. You have to recognize the threat is YOU threatening yourself. What you think is a separate cause out there scaring you, is part of yourself. It's your own disowned causal power. You've given your power away. You've separated yourself from your power and will. And now you think it is acting against you.

So the secret to salvation is this, you absolutely are doing ALL of this to yourself. And that means, absolutely every cause of fear is resulting from something YOU are choosing. And the choice you are making is to believe in separation, within your mind, which makes your mind experience itself as split, and produces fear. If you therefore stop choosing to believe separation is real, and stop being divided against yourself, and take back all of your own power recognizing it AS your own and not the possession of someone you tried to make responsible for it, you will have finally absolutely NO basis for being afraid ever again.

There is no cause of fear other than yourself. Therefore you can be free of it.

All sickness and all death are the symptoms of a belief in fear. Fear is the opposite to love. Death is also therefore the opposite to love/life and therefore death is a symptom of fear. And since you made all fear, you can abolish it by healing the separation in your own mind - the separation from yourself.

And as Jesus say, "you made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both". This is literally true. You made the basis for all sickness and death - the dream of fear - the belief in separation - and there is NO OTHER CAUSE. Therefore if you take back that power and re-identify wholly with wholeness and spirit (Holy Spirit), you MUST be free not only of fear, but also of all symptoms of sickness, and also death.

Forever.

"Although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives."

Notice how this implies that forgiveness is a RESULT OF LOVING, rather than that the forgiveness 'does' something on its own.

Forgiveness is often taught to be some mechanical process or series of mental actions that attempt to undo ego activities. But these are in fact still largely a part of the ego's framework.

It is in fact the LOVE OF GOD that produces a healed and FORGIVING mind and perception.

The healing of the mind's distortions is difficult to bring about through techniques, reciting affirmations, applying logic and so on. Slowly you might be able to change some belief but this is really an attempt to do it yourself without God.

Seldom do I hear people saying or teaching that forgiveness means love, but "forgiveness is an earthly form of love." And ACIM is quite clear that GOD'S LOVE is the BASIS of forgiveness. Only when God's love is in your awareness are you BEING forgiving.

I've been finding that if I allow myself to RECEIVE God's love, acknowledge it, and then be grateful for what God has given, there is a rapid shift in mood away from fear and misery toward happiness and strength. It is a FELT experience, as the effect of allowing LOVE to enter.

This love of God literally shines away the darkness. This is its power. This is how it HEALS the mind. This means allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfil his healing function. And it means allowing him to LOVE YOU and FORGIVE YOU FOR YOU. To actually do something to you to change you, and thus for you to receive it.

This isn't then about "you doing forgiveness" or "practicing forgiveness" its more about you allowing God and the Holy Spirit to operate on you FOR you, and in turn THROUGH you. The course even says that you do not know how to perform miracles and you do not understand them. But the Holy Spirit does.

God's love is what you are, what you are made of, and how you function correctly. It is not YOU that puts it in place, makes it what it is, operates it, causes it to be, or decides how it should function. You have NO CLUE what love actually is or how it works. It is a property of God's infinite intelligence and nature.

In order therefore to return to a healed state of mind you have to let your mind open up to what GOD HAS GIVEN ALREADY, which is then re-received as your inheritance and you merge back into it. As the course says, we seek to remove the BLOCKS to this love, but we do not seek to IMPLEMENT this love.

Too much forgiveness work focuses on trying to basically "self help" yourself into a better state. That is not the course's teaching at all. God has already done everything, and atonement means love, and your real self is love. This love is already there. You just have to have a willingness to receive it, feel it, identify with it, and realise that it is WHAT YOU ARE.

This is why Jesus goes on about the vision of christ, the eyes of christ, that only christ forgives, miracles come from christ's vision, and so on ... this Christ is YOU AS LOVE IN GOD, your real self. And salvation comes from that one self. It is what you need to get back into and align with it and take on as your FELT experience. Without the presence of love you are NOT forgiving. It is the love ITSELF that PRODUCES a forgiving attitude.

Ultimately, ONLY the love itself can contain the necessary "remedy" for fear and separation and ego and death. The love is the end result of the problem having been UNDONE. It CAUSES the undoing. It REPLACES fear with love. It replaces darkness with light.

"1.) Know first this is fear.

2.) Fear arises from lack of love.

3.) ****The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.****

4.) Perfect love IS the Atonement."

The ONLY remedy - for a lack of love (sin, fear, guilt, death, sickness, egotism etc) ... is PERFECT LOVE. LOVE IS the thing that CAUSES you to adopt a forgiving attitude and perception. The EYES of love SHOW you innocence and perfection. Without that love, you see with the ego's eyes of fear and are unforgiving.

God bestows a universal blessing of a miracle upon you and you receive it and it heals your mind. God knows how to do that. It's not your recitations and quotes and judgements and techniques that produce this change. You can't put in place what God has already put in place - thats not your function. Acceptance and surrendering to what is already true is your function. Admitting to the love that is in you and is you as part of God.

If you are not IN that love you won't be able to "act as if" you are. Nor will you be able to BE forgiving. Forgiveness isn't some learnt skill, it's a natural expression of God's nature through you. It's what happens and how you relate when you have the love of God in your awareness, in recognition that you are that love and that you share it with him.

"Although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear."

"God is the love in which I forgive."

"Each lily of forgiveness offers the world the silent miracle of love."

"Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here..."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It's the reflection of God's love on earth."

"As forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness..."

"This is the world the love of God reveals."

Our egos counsel us to separate ourselves off from others. That means identifying solely with your own body, and not with or beyond the bodies of others. It also means seeing yourself as completely cut off from others. No-one else is allowed to occupy the same space as you. You share nothing with anyone. You are isolated, imprisoned and alone inside your body.

The ego the tells you that because you are separate, it makes total sense to suggest you can attack someone and remain separate from the attack. That anything you express, anything you do, will not hurt you but will hurt someone else. Anything you give, is not given to you. Anything you hurl at another, you do not share in. Any way that someone else is wrong, is in no way associated with you. And you are completely dis-associated from everyone.

In its rage and hatred, the ego has you trying to emphasize the separation between you and others as much as possible. To want nothing to do with another person is the ideal mechanism for increasing the separation. Wanting to be distanced from them, pushing them away, destroying them, and making sure all guilt and sin is loaded onto their plate alone, is its whole ambition. This increases the sense of being separate and guarantees that you escape all the consequences of their sinfulness.

As a strategy this seems to all make sense. On the fundamental premise that you are ONLY you and you share nothing with anyone else, it's obvious that you have a great opportunity. You can easily blame someone without being blamed, hurt someone without being hurt, shovel all your guilt into someone's hands and absolve yourself of it, and generally identify your "self" as "not them." This is the egos entire approach to everything. Separate and be saved.

But what the ego will also be careful not to tell you is that in order to be separate, you must also lose something. Having attacked everything other than separation, it hates all the things that you stand to lose by your attacks, and believes they are not worth having. But there is a long list of very worthwhile valuable things that you DO lose when you regard yourself as "not one with them."

You lose all sense of love, all relationship, all communication, all safety and trust, all peace of mind, all freedom, all sharing, all inheritance from God, all power, all life, all holiness and all happiness. It goes flying out the window as soon as you try to be special by making yourself separate from others.

As soon as you try to stop sharing, you become selfish. This selfishness is an attempt to gain something exclusively for yourself, but has the side effect of excluding you from what others have. You seem to gain, AND lose, at the same time. And everything you lose in your special separated state is everything worth having. You have to convince yourself that it's not even there, or valuable, or worth having at all, in order to justify being so separate, barren, bereft and empty.

In the effort to have everything exclusively for yourself, in your selfish egotism, all you end up doing is having nothing. In grasping to hold onto things they completely slip through your fingers. Possessiveness leads to lack and sacrifice. All efforts to make something yours alone makes it no-ones. This is the cost of being separate.

So when you are being separate and are scapegoating and projecting sin and guilt onto others, trying to have it not apply to you, to exclude yourself from, recall also what you are giving up. You lose whenever you think you win. You sacrifice whenever you think you gain an advantage. You become empty whenever you shut someone out. And you become not yourself, whenever your sense of identity is not shared with everyone.

The question then becomes, is it worth it? You have to first recognize that you are being separate. Secondly you have to recognize that this separation has a major cost. Thirdly you have to value the things that you've lost as a result of being separate. And fourth you have to want to regain them. Only in the awareness that separation brings with it a whole host of deprivation, suffering, unhappiness and lack of peace, will you have an incentive to turn away from it.

You are not solely gaining when you separate. You are not getting off scott free. You are not winning without losing. You are not acquiring everything and sacrificing nothing. You are not surviving while others are dying. You are not escaping consequences. You are not becoming more free or more happy or better off. And you certainly are not feeling good in any real way.

The ego doesn't want you looking at the COST of being separate because it doesn't want you being aware that you're missing out on anything. It doesn't want you thinking that there are any downsides to being separate. It doesn't want you being aware that when you project guilt in anger you are still attacking yourself. It doesn't want you to realize that by isolating yourself and being exclusive you are leaving yourself out of the greatest party that ever happened. Nor does it want you remembering that deep down inside you want to be reunited with everyone in love.

Your real identity is shared with everyone in and as christ. Your real experience is to have everything at the same time as everyone else has everything. God's generosity is the guarantee that everything belongs to everyone, and everyone IS everyone. You are literally one with and a part of and shared entirely with every other child of God. And accepting this is the acceptance of atonement. You are not just you. You are all of us. And you are never alone.

Lately I'm getting the impression from the course, that we have two levels of mind. We have a lower mind and a higher mind.

Before the separation we only had the 'higher' mind, but then we produced a second-order reality or thought system.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

"The calm being of God's Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind which the ego rules."

So now we have this "split mind", where the majority of mind is actually still perfectly in line with spirit, but the other part of mind has the ego running rampant in it.

This "lower mind" is, if I understand it right, the mindset that we're in almost all the time. It's the mind of the upset self. The mind in which we have egoic thoughts, fear thoughts, angry thoughts, emotional reactions, perceptions of threat, and so on.

We also need to be honest and careful to realize that the lower mind is not "lower than my everyday self", it usually IS our everyday self. And we're operating almost exclusively in it in everything we do.

So we're actually hanging out in the lower mind almost all the time. And that's why we need to learn to train the main and have vigilance, to be careful with our thoughts and to try to elevate our quality and level of thinking. To get our minds out of the gutter, so to speak.

What that tells me is I need to be watchful for ego oriented thoughts. These are artificial thoughts and ideas which usually are laden with fear, attack, accusation, guilt and so on. Often they revolve around the past.

"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

So if it's true that I'm having ego thoughts all day long, and am often in states of upset and emotional reaction etc, then obviously I'm down in the lower mind. It the mindset of ego and separation and selfishness and unsafely and suffering.

To get out of it we have to first even recognize that we're in it, and there there is another level of mind we could access instead. We have to recognize our thoughts are ego thoughts, meaningless thoughts, thoughts of attack and unforgiveness, and realize that just merely having these thoughts is why we are upset.

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

So now we have to get into monitoring thought, and actually being aware of when we're entertaining ego thoughts. Identify the thoughts as having ego content in them. And then ask yourself, do I even need to have this thought?

We also should be aware that the Holy Spirit is in our mind and spans the parts of mind to keep them joined. And he also is fully aware of the higher mind and its truth. So we need to turn to him for help by giving him our lower-mind thoughts so that he can convert them into higher-mind miracles.

"Give Him (Holy Spirit) your thoughts (ego thoughts), and He will give them back as miracles (higher thoughts)."

You see, when you have a thought you tend to go along with it and just get lost in it. You think about whatever it seems you're thinking about without looking at the thought ITSELF. You don't question whether you should even be having the thought, you just have it and buy into its story.

Instead we need to be more careful to ask whether even having the thought at all is necessary, and if we did not have these ego thoughts at all maybe we would not be upset all the time. And recognize that having these kinds of thoughts is why we are constantly stressed out.

I choose not to have these thoughts. I can have other thoughts, higher thoughts. These thoughts are coming from my ego and my unforgiving beliefs. I can have higher thoughts with God, aligned with his will, which means that I can have thoughts based on love and peace and happiness and sharing. I don't have to have these lower ego thoughts.

So we need to get out of this lower mind and into the higher mind. "The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

"While I am not attacking your egos, I AM working with your higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, (just as your ego does with your lower mind.)"

"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been willing to exert to protect your higher mind."

So right now because of the split mind and the separation we really do in fact have "two minds" in a way, and one of them is ruled by the ego's laws temporarily. That mind has to choose any from the egos laws and back towards God's laws. We have to get out of the ego thinking and think with and like God.

"What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." "This mind is the Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. It teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and behave like me as a result."

That means one way or another, these ego thoughts have to be managed, monitored, stopped if necessary or reversed, not identified with, and open up to the possibility that you don't even have to think this way. And thinking this way is the cause of all you problems.

This idea, that should always ask "what is it for", is a fairly popular ACIM teaching. And it's useful to remember this. But I struggled to relate to this wording as if, the answer was obscure and unknown. We might find it easier if we ask, "what is my purpose in using this?" ie, WHY am I using this, what is the GOAL I am trying to achieve, what am I using his FOR? What purpose have I given to it? Why did I choose this on purpose?

And this is also tied into recognizing that EVERYTHING has a purpose. Whether it be God creating you for the purpose of joy and extension of the Kingdom, or you choosing to suffer for the purpose of escaping from sin. Sickness similarly always has a purpose, a reason why you are sick, a decision you made as to how you would USE sickness to ACHIEVE something. What is it for? Why did you choose it? How does it serve you? What are you getting out of it? What is its FUNCTION? Everything has a function even in dreams. Even fear, guilt, sin, sickness and death.

Once we can identify what was the true initial inspirational purpose for something, we can see WHY we chose it and made it happen, what we WANTED to achieve. Why we are using it this way. THEN, there is now a opportunity to make another choice, to GIVE the thing as NEW purpose, the Holy Spirit's purpose, to USE IT differently as a way to recognize that you made a choice and want to choose again, or that you would rather USE this thing to reflect truth and healing and acknowledgement of reality, rather than use it to deceive yourself further.

This re-purposing of the world, of all events, all feelings, all perceptions, all experiences, allows you to use what YOU made for purposes of attack, for purposes of forgiveness. When you decide, I will no longer make this ON PUPROSE for THAT PURPOSE that I originally made it for, admitting that you were doing this for some kind of personal gain, you can now decide not to continue with this purpose, which now gives the thing the purpose of release and freedom. You can now "use it" differently, see it differently, and let go of the ego purpose you were using it for before.

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve. Here, YOU are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and One with Him. This is the state of true creation, found, not within time, but in eternity. To no-one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not 'til you go PAST learning to the Given; not 'til you make again a holy home for YOUR creations is it understood."

"Who can resolve the senseless conflicts which a dream presents? What could the resolution mean in truth? What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this that will DETERMINE the outcome. In the ego's procedure, this is reversed. The SITUATION becomes the determiner of the outcome, WHICH CAN BE ANYTHING. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it. It IS aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no POSITIVE goal at all.

Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it has ALREADY HAPPENED. Then you look BACK at it, and try to piece together what it MUST have meant. AND YOU WILL BE WRONG. Not only is your judgment IN THE PAST, but you have no idea what SHOULD have happened. No goal was set, with which to bring the means IN LINE. And now, the only judgment LEFT to make is whether or not the ego LIKES it; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome, SET IN ADVANCE, makes understanding doubtful, and evaluation impossible.

The value of deciding, in advance, what you WANT to happen, is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to MAKE it happen. You will therefore make every effort to OVERLOOK what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that THIS approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's SORTING OUT of truth and falsity. The "true" becomes what can be used to MEET the goal. The "false" becomes the useless FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW. The situation now HAS meaning, but only because the goal has MADE it meaningful.

The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome MUST be peace. And this is quite APART from what the outcome IS. For, if peace is the CONDITION of truth and sanity, and CANNOT be WITHOUT them, where peace is, they MUST be. Truth comes of itself. If you experience PEACE, it is because the truth HAS come to you. And you WILL see the outcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. And you will RECOGNIZE the outcome, BECAUSE you are at peace. Here, again, you see the OPPOSITE of the ego's way of looking. For the EGO believes the situation BRINGS the experience. The Holy Spirit knows the situation IS as the goal determines it, and is experienced ACCORDING to the goal."

In the separation from God, we basically denied God and tried to reject him. We tried to will against his will, reject his fatherhood, block awareness of his love, and hide in the darkness. We did not want God to love us, and wanted to hide our love for him.

This means that now, in our separated ego state, we are actually in a position where we are not allowing ourselves to be aware of God. Or to put it another way, we're trying to shut him out of our mind.

This means ultimately that we're trying NOT to be loved, to block and limit love, and are trying to resist being loved or loveable. We have to suppress our love and lovability in order to shut God out, because God himself IS love.

Before the separation, and in our creation, God gave ALL of himself, all of his immense unlimited unconditional love to us, and loved us with an endless deep love. We received this love and ARE this love. We are created as entirely lovable to God, loved BY God, and we are THE love of God.

In the separation, in the authority problem, we tried to deny this love and therefore also this lovability. But now we find ourselves feeling empty, lacking love, unlovable, unworthy, not good enough, and feeling that we don't love ourselves.

The thing is, that we can't love ourselves WITHOUT including God in that love, and that means that any willingness to love ourselves will have to also be a willingness to LET GOD love us as well. It means being willing to RECEIVE LOVE.

The problem we have is that we basically have stopped letting ourselves RECEIVE, and have placed great emphasis on giving without receiving, which is sacrifice. We don't love ourselves in isolation, and can't love ourselves while trying to be separate from God.

The secret then is that in order to feel loved and loving, you HAVE to let God love you. You have to let God in, into your mind, into your awareness. You have to be willing to allow yourself to RECEIVE LOVE from God, acknowledge that God has already GIVEN total love to you, and have gratitude that it has been given so that you can give it back as well.

You can't feel loved unless you share and flow love. You can't flow love unless God is its source. You can only share the love of God. You can only feel loved if you let God love you and are willing to extend it to others. You can't find love in isolation or exclusion, nor can you find a love in yourself that you can love yourself with that is other than God's love.

This is why when you try to love yourself you fail, because you cannot create love out of nothing. You have to get it from God. There is no love other than God's love, so you have to let God in and let him love you in order to feel love. And when you do... .... you feel loved and safe and happy and strong, and have love to give.

"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."

"For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them. Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within."

"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. "

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

"I am sustained by the Love of God."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence."

"I am surrounded by the Love of God."

"I feel the Love of God within me now."

"If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love."

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received."

"You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves."

"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's."

"Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."

"If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied."

"But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you. YOU do not love what you have made, and what you have made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His Souls, because of the hatred you have for the Self you have made."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

Whatever you see in something, if you think it is inherently offensive, it is not. The offensiveness is in your own mind, and you put it there.

That can be hard to accept because it means that you've been used to this idea of an objective reality outside of yourself all this time. A reality which has its own inherent qualities and which reports them to you as though they are distinct from your perception.

What it implies now is that what you're experiencing as reality, is in fact a hallucination that's part of your own mind's malfunctioning, that you literally are inventing everything that bothers you, that you are doing all that to yourself.

This implies also that there is no fixed reality out in the world, and therefore there is no inherent truth based on form. You literally give everything the meaning that it has for you.

ACIM lesson #2, right at the start: "I have given everything I see…all the meaning that it has for me."

This means that you are basically inventing every single justification that you think is truth, or that you think is based on objective facts outside of you. It means that, if you want to, and when it suits you, you MAKE UP everything that you think is true.

If you are in favor of something, you will make up reasons why it is a good idea, to support it and lend weight to your conviction that it is somehow inherently right. And if you are against something, you will make up reasons why it is a bad idea, in order to continue to support your belief that the reality outside of you is fixed and has nothing to do with your experience of it.

It can be perhaps alarming to discover that you are literally making everything up as you go along, and that all the things you thought were factual or true are really just your rationalizations. You decide what stuff means. You lend it credibility and pretend that this credibility comes from outside of you.

You think that other people's opinions, authority, certifications, education, experience, or even physical evidence, are all ways in which the world has an inherent truth. You have come to depend on this notion that you are not experiencing the results of your own made up subjective fantasy, but that everything that's going on is happening "on its own" without your input. And because you do not see the ways that you contribute to it or indeed create it, you do not accept that IT HAS NO TRUTH.

This leaves you in a kind of limbo like state where you're kind of just hanging there with no sense of what the truth outside you is anymore. If you're making up all the meaning, and quite literally the entirety of humanity is totally making up the meaning of everything in society as it goes along, then really there IS no inherent meaning outside of your mind.

This means the world is basically either neutral or insane, and that, based on the ego, it CANNOT make sense. There cannot be truth to it, and since it is a mental hallucination, it is nothing better than a chaotic illusion. Trying to "understand it" is an attempt to discover that it has an inherent meaning of its own, separate from your mind. We are very addicted and conditioned to continually look for meaning outside of ourselves, in the world, in order to disown true meaning (God/Self).

This is what happens when you try to figure things out, diagnose sickness, analyze situations, look for what is really happening, try to find proof, explain the background of something, try to identify causes, look for rational explanations or depend on the opinions of other people's authority. This is you attempting to turn an illusion into a reality, trying to convince yourself that you are NOT the one who has given it all the meaning it has, or that it is not just some blank canvas onto which you've projected an entirely fantastical world.

What this means for your mind and your sense of reality is that you cannot continue to claim that there is an objective world out there, and nor does that world have its own meaning at all. It is in fact a meaningless world, and this meaningless world cannot be understood unless you transcend it.

ACIM lessons 10 through 14:

"10 My thoughts do not mean anything."

"11 My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

"12 I am upset because I see a meaningless world.

"13 A meaningless world engenders fear."

"14 God did not create a meaningless world."

If the world is meaningless, and God did not create it (thus it is not objective reality), then this shows you that every meaning you see in it is made up but your thoughts, which are themselves meaningless and contain "pretend meanings". These pretend meanings attempt to give meaning to a world which has none.

What you may be afraid to admit is that it is not possible to find truth in any way shape or form in the world, because the world is not real. And that means your mind, your sense of reality, has been believing that it's had nothing to do with what you perceive all this time. When in fact it is the sole inventor of all the meanings that you think the world has.

Everything supposedly "out there" is neutral and therefore if you think something is good or bad or right or wrong or acceptable or unacceptable it is ONLY because you're making up a truth which you try to turn into reality and try to justify to yourself as being objective. It is not. It is subjective hallucination. So if there's no truth out there, it leaves you sort of hanging as to how to deal with reality.

It is as though you create your own reality, which is a popular new-age concept, which also leads on to manipulating the world. But this really is denying the fact that you do not create reality. You are creating UNREALITY. But it's a step closer to realizing that what you are experiencing is coming from you, and therefore what you perceive is not necessarily objectively real.

You're dreaming, and only God creates reality!

This is why in your awakening journey you then have to go through the process of recognizing the part that your mind plays in inventing meaning, how it distorts perception, how you contribute to what shows up outside of you, how you use it, how completely subjective you're being, and how everything that you thought was objectively real is in fact not real at all.

As you do this you will gradually realize more and more that there IS an objective reality, it's just not "out there" as a physical world, and instead it is within, in your Oneness with God. Formless, timeless, spaceless, ageless. The ONE and only meaning. A meaning that has not been fragmented into a billion conflicts. A meaning which hasn't been artificially attributed to an illusion. A meaning which ACTUALLY IS MEANINGFUL to you - that you can feel in your heart, in your very being.

God is true meaning. God is the one and only meaning. All else is meaningless.

In terms of cause and effect, God who is cause created us as his effect, yet shared his causal ability with us, making us also able to cause. We are an effect of God, but we are also a co-creator and cause of our own creations.

God is cause. We are cause. And nothing can alter what we are or make us an effect, other than God, because we are sustained by God's constant will. We are affected by nothing, having been given eternal life, maintained forever by God himself.

The idea of the separation from God, introduced the idea of a breakdown in cause and effect. That means, a breakdown in the relationship between God and his creation/son. It suggests that causes are separate from their effects.

This also produced the belief that you are not caused by God. And also that you can cause God - which is the authority problem - a denial of the causal power of authorship. And therefore that you can cause what God created, thus changing what God created. And since you were a creation of God's, it began the belief that you could change yourself and redefine yourself, plus make-up a new father.

In this process, your recognition of being a creator was denied, you disowned God as cause and thus disowned causation, and began to see yourself as not causal. You began to see yourself as an effect, or affected by, or changed by. You began to believe thigns could happen to you against God's will and against your will. As the course says...

"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."

In other words, you began to see yourself as at the effect of something other than God, and other than yourself, as though that which has been created (or dreamed/mis-created) has turned around and has begun to create, cause, define and affect what you are.

This introduces level confusion, as well as the reversal of the true and the false, and the reversal of cause and effect. You now see yourself as an effect and not a cause, and you deny causing anything. This means you are trying to "be affected", and to portray yourself as something that can be affected, so that you can change yourself into what you wish to be.

This produced the body, which is a sort of outside picture of the idea of a self that can be at the effect of its environment, a self that can be an effect and not a cause, with no power to cause at all, and acted upon by the world. This body presents the "face of innocence", which hides the idea that you're trying to be a victim, ie trying to be affected, by the world.

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world."

So now there is this artificial you, which looks like a body, and which is "acted upon" by the world, in which the arrows or direction of causation begins out there somewhere, external and beyond the body and the self/mind, and comes in and acts upon the body/self/mind and causes it to change. Causes it to be affected. And thus the face of innocence, the surface of the body, becomes the canvas on which "effects" are painted to make it seem like you are caused by an alien will outside yourself.

Another way to put this is that, as soon as cause and effect were reversed, you introduced the idea of being "affectable" rather than immortal, that you could change and be changed. And this was the beginning of being a victim. And this is also exactly the beginning of the ego thought system.

To be a victim is to be ego. To be a victim is to be at the effect. To be a victim is to be an effect, not a cause. Victimhood is the denial and refusal to admit to being the cause. Victimhood is irresponsibility and a complete displacement of the responsibility for causing anything, portraying itself as helpless and powerless and at the mercy of anyone and anything.

And this shows up as the face of innocence - the innocent victim that seems not to ask for attack but is still attacked and can then justify anger and revenge. A self that won't take responsibility for causing anything, in an attempt to disown responsibility for sinning against God. To deny and disown all responsibility is to displace and project it onto others and the world, so that the guilty self can pretend to be exonerated.

If you are an effect, you are an ego. If you are an effect, you are a victim. If you are an effect, cause and effect have been reversed. This effectively means that if you swap cause and effect back around and claim total responsibility for being the cause of everything you experience, then you can no longer be a victim, and that also means you can no longer be an ego.

Ego is made of effects. It can only exist as a victim. It requires powerlessness and a disowning of causal power. It must see itself as deprived and lacking and less than whole. It cannot survive when you are powerful, it cannot survive when you are responsible, it cannot survive when you are the cause of everything. It depends on you remaining a powerless victim, and depends on cause and effect staying reversed. To be responsible is to own and know yourself as God created you!

Backwards peception or false perception is another name for ego and another name for being at the effect of the world. Backwards perception is the reversal of cause and effect, in which you are always affected by something seemingly against your will, while secretly choosing it. True perception is the restoration of cause and effect into their proper sequence, in which you are now the cause and the dreamer and a victim of nothing, totally invulnerable, incapable of suffering or blame.

So you can see that to put it simply, with the authority problem which is the breakdown and reversal of cause and effect, as soon as you begin to identify with/as being an effect/affected/victimized, as soon as you give away your power, as soon as you regard yourself as not the cause of what you experience, you are producing an egoic thought system and are losing your mind.

To reclaim total responsibility for the power of God and for causation and creative authorship and being absolutely incapable of being caused by anything but God, denying the power of anything not of God any power to affect or hurt you, which is the proper use of denial, you simply need to own up to being the immortal victimless powerful causer and chooser of what you experience. If nothing can happen to you, you cannot be an ego. If you are purely causal, you are the immortal son 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. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

All this time, I and most of us have been seeking the truth from the bottom up. That means, we find ourselves in the midst of the illusion, lost and confused, scrambling in the dark, trying to find our way to the light.

But everything about the darkness has been lying to us, painting a picture the opposite of the truth. The darkness makes it appear that we have become sinners, or fallen from grace, or changed into a limited confused person, or have developed an ego and changed our identity. This is not true.

As you move "upward" closer to the truth, you will gradually open up to greater awareness and insight into the nature of the truth. And gradually you will start to "take root" in the truth. Another way to put it is you "attach" to the truth or identify with it more, having un-attached from ego lies. Jesus once said to me "you are growing stronger in the truth". So as we undo the lies and the ego, the darkness starts to clear and we can see more clearly and accurately.

At some point you start to get this sense that the ego has been lying all this time, and in fact, not only have you not really been changed into a sinful corrupt evil being, but the person you were before the separation is actually still your true nature.

So now we flip things around. If you look at the truth from the top down, we put Heaven first as the only real truth and everything else is a lie. If you can recognize that you were created perfect from the outset, you are incapable of sin, nothing has gone wrong, you have not left God, you are permanent, you can't change yourself from God's intention, your real self has not changed at all, etc.... then you'll start to get this picture... .that actually you literally ARE still as God created you, and everything else the ego says is just an attempt to COVER IT OVER with a bunch of lies and denial.

So this is quite a different focus. Acknowledging that inside of you, even if it's buried, you literally ARE already innocent, holy, awake, with God, in heaven, having eternal life, unaffected and unchanged, sinless and guiltless, already free of every ego illusion, and nothing has happened to you. And this is true NOW, and it has ALWAYS BEEN TRUE.

So now you start to put things into their proper perspective. If it's true that you are STILL as God created you, and you are PERMANENTLY as God created you, then everything else cannot be true of you. It can't be true that you have changed, or fallen from grace, or sinned, or become a different identity, or that you have removed your light, or lost yourself, or become corrupted or damaged, or anything else the ego makes up.

Not only have you ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED PERFECTION because God created you perfect to begin with, and you are incapable of changing God's Will, but this also means then that the "spiritual goal" of trying to become enlightened is, itself, unnecessary really, because you already ARE PERFECT LIGHT right now. Anything else which suggests otherwise, must be an illusion or a lie.

So it's like, you were created 100% perfect and whole and complete by God, so utterly perfect that you could not possibly be improved upon or added to. And that self is PERMANENT. It does not go to sleep, it does not really dream or enter a dream, it does not go insane, it does not sin and it does not become affected by anything. Only a TINY PART of that self seems to have dreamed and seems to have entered the dream temporarily, but really it hasn't.

So all this other stuff, the ego stories, the notion that you stopped being perfect and are not this limited, weak, fearful ego self stuck in a body, not sure how to get home or if it's even possible, not even remembering what Home IS or how to get there, forgetting who you are and not even sure if you exist, all this stuff is actually just designed to BLOCK OUT the truth that is ALREADY present, your divine immortal self, which is already DONE, TOTALLY DONE, with any need for awakening, because it is not asleep in the first place.

To think that anything can have happened to you is a lie. To think that you can have changed into someone you are not is a lie. To think that you actually turned into a body is a lie. To think that you are sick or suffering is a lie. To think that you can die is a lie. To think that you replaced what God made with something else is a lie. To think that you changed God's mind or will is a lie. None of this has happened. This entire world we're in is a lie. The human race is a lie. This planet is a lie. ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL. Only the creations of light are real.

So all this while, you think that you are just this little self who is struggling to get to God for the first time.. welll... it's not the first time. You've ALWAYS been with God and can't leave God. So is it the fact that you are away from God and need to go home that you're trying to accomplish, or is it the fact that you actually have NOT left God and the suggestion that you have is, itself, a lie that needs to be undone?

All you need to do here is REMOVE AND UNDO layers of lies and denials which are fictional which are layered ON TOP OF your perfect immortal self, your divine permanent unchangeable self, which is ALREADY PERFECT, in order to reveal and expose your real self once again. Enlightenment is a recognition of who you already are in God, not a change into something you weren't before. The ego has lied to tell you that you changed in the first place and must change again to become what you are not. Which is impossible.

You're already with God. It's a done deal. You can't not be perfect. But like Jesus said, He has nothing that does not come from God - ie He is fully as God created Him to be and has not tried to change that into something else, to deny it or to cover it up. All that we're doing is still coming up with a story about how we have changed God's creation into something else and now have a huge pile of stuff to "do" to fix it. But really we need do nothing but accept what is already true. It is already fixed. "Let me recognize that my problems have already been solved".

We simply need to remove the layers of denial and lies and hiding and avoidance and accept what is already true. This is what it means to accept the atonement. To ACCEPT that God's truth is true. It has nothing to do with accepting life's circumstances or accepting the world or accepting events or whatever else. They don't exist. It's only to do with being vigilant for God's kingdom ONLY and accepting NOTHING ELSE into your mind, because what you accept into your mind becomes real to you. So if you only accept that God's Creation is truth, then you will stop making illusions real and return to full awareness of who you are.

You are not in the business of making yourself. You are not in the business of establishing yourself. You are not in the business of transforming yourself. You are not in the business of producing a perfect self. GOD ALREADY DID IT. You are only in the business of UN-LEARNING the lies you told yourself so that you can admit the truth and become aware again that you already, and still, are perfect as God created you, and it has not changed, and it will never change.

If you believe you are part of a dream, made of dream stuff, you can be attacked. If you recognize yourself as the dreamer of the dream, outside the dream like the container in which the dream is taking place - the mind - then you cannot be attacked.

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement 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."

The dream of death, space and time, the world of sin, is all taking place in thought. If you identify WITH this thought, you shift your sense of "who and what I am" away from "that which thinks" to "the thought itself". Away from mind to the dream.

To do this requires that you deny what you are. To deny your soul. Doing this invents perception, and doing it a lot pushes you towards false perception. Here, you believe that since you are a dream, or part of a dream, or made of dream-stuff, the dream ITSELF must be your creator.

This now begins the process of believing that you are at the effect of the world. If you are identified with or as something IN the dream, then you are now vulnerable to anything that seems to take place in the dream. And anything that happens to dream stuff, you will believe is happening to you.

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

By confusing your SELF, with dream figures, ie by believing you are a body, and by extension actually believing that you ARE THIS WORLD ("The world is perception"), you position yourself at the EFFECT of the dream, and introduce all manner of suffering into your experience.

If your identity is something OUTSIDE OF space and time, something BEYOND the body, something more encompassing than the dream world itself... if you are the MIND that is dreaming it, or even better, the soul that is using the mind to dream it, then you are FAR BEYOND the reaches of the dream itself.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile"

"The Kingdom of God is perfectly protected. Nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against a son of God who commends his spirit into the hands of God."

"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."

Believing that you ARE a part of the dream, lands you directly onto the battlefield. The dream is the battlefield. If you are a body, and "the body is a dream", then you will believe that you are fundamentally unsafe, because the body is exposed and susceptible and attackable and limited, in the midst of a harsh and hostile world full of danger.

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering and intense fear of loss. The separated ones have invented many "cures" for what they believe to be "the ills of the world." But the one thing they do not do is to question the reality of the problem. Yet its effects cannot be cured because it is not real."

Anyone believing they are a body cannot truly feel safe. They must live in fear. To believe you ARE a body requires that you believe you ARE the dream. And to believe you ARE the dream requires you to believe you are at the EFFECT of the dream or dreamer. That you are defined by it. And that means the dream is the cause of you. And being able to cause you with an alien will is an instant threat to your peace.

It can never be, that you can say, "Look at me, I'm a man, I am fearless". And it can never be, that you can say, "Look at me, I am a fierce and powerful woman". By identifying AS a body or a gender identity, or the attributes of the flesh, or the size and shape of its form, or its abilities, you are literally positioning yourself as a target for attack. And this belief in attack is inherent to seeing yourself AS a portion of a dream, and it is your own mind that is doing the attacking because it believes in being affected.

You cannot be "an invulnerable man" or "a bullet-proof woman". But you can be an immortal spirit, a soul, a child of God, who temporarily utilizes the dream body for a higher purpose, and therefore infuses it with life and protection. But this is a miraculous supernatural act, in which a power NOT OF THIS WORLD, from outside the dream (holy spirit), is used to OVERRIDE the physical laws of the dream.

It all hinges around the simple question of identity. Who or what are you? What are you identified WITH and AS? What is your NATURE? Are you made of illusions? Are you a reality? Are you something in space and time? Are you eternal and timeless? And this really boils down to the question or, where did you GET your identity from? Where did your TRUEST NATURE come from?

The answer to that comes down to, who is your father? Or who created you? What is your source? How did you come to exist? Because in that question lies all the facts about THEIR nature, and WHAT they could do in your creation, and WHAT you INHERITED from them. And if the ego is your daddy, then you are a mortal temporary limited fictional character in a spacetime of hell. But if God is your daddy, then you are immortal and permanent and can never be affected by dreams.

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds, which are misusing their own power."

"We said before that YOU are the will of God. His will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional because it is what you are."

"All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you."

"In his complete identification with the Christ, the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him, Jesus became what all of you must be."

"Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us."

"The Son of God is my identity."

"Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Christ is but my Self."

"The step I take today, my Father, is my sure release from idle dreams of sin. Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity."

"You I choose, and my Identity along with You. Your Son would be Himself, and know You as his Father and Creator and his Love."

"Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. And we have already learned that this identity is shared."

"The idea for today presents a very different view of yourself. By establishing your Source it establishes your Identity, and it describes you as you must really be in truth."

"His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity."

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death."

"Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS."

"But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality."

"I am not an illusion but a reality."

Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

The purpose of sickness is to make you and the body seem to be "one".

The ultimate goal of sickness, which is "death", is the attempt to fully unite who you really are with the body, so that when the body is destroyed, it is claimed that "you" are destroyed.

The whole point of this happening is our attempt to destroy the Son of God - Christ, by associating His identity with something which CAN appear to be attacked, like tying a metal ball to His ankle and throwing Him in the ocean.

Sickness therefore is the way that we attempt to destroy ourselves, to try to prove that we are not God's Son. The closer that we can get to achieving this, the more it would seem we have become "the ego" - a fully separate self, which is symbolized by the BODY. If we are the body, and if the body is destroyed, then we would seem to be destroyed along with it. This is the illusion of death.

Forms of sickness vary, but pain in particular is a good example. Pain screams for your attention, day and night. It blasts your awareness with such a loud signal in the body that all of your waking moments are consumed with it. It is a particularly effective way to associate you with the body, because it leaves very little room for ignoring it.

Similarly, other "severe" diseases and so-called accidents can produce such intense long-term suffering such that the body is thoroughly identified with, and believed to be the Self. When the body is challenging you constantly with reminders about how sick you are, how disabled you are, how suffering you are, and how much pain you are in on many levels, it acts as a device for shutting out God. And it can lead to hopelessness, and eventually to death.

In the ego's glorious moment of triumph, it *seems* to achieve the death of the Son of God, through destruction of the body. The body can ONLY be destroyed IF the Son of God has fully granted permission for this to occur, i.e. has done it to Himself, and therefore has chosen to die. (Or at least to seem to, because He is immortal.)

Sickness then is only there as a way to bind you to the body, so that you will seem to be pulled away from God. God is the truth, and sickness puts distance between you and God. Therefore, "sickness is a defense against the truth" because it seems to allow you to escape "into" the body, in effort to find a way to move closer to death, because death is seen as the opposite of Life. Life is God, so death is an escape from God.

If the only purpose of sickness, in defense against truth, is to SEPARATE YOU from God through intimacy with the body, then the HEALING of sickness MUST entail a movement TOWARDS God and away from "body reality". The person must dis-identify from the body, and recognize that they are not physical.

Another way to express this, is that you must realize that the truth of who and what you are is not "form". The only way this can be true, is IF form itself is NOT truth. While the body and its experiences remain true or real to you, you will believe that YOU are those truths. That you are physical and that you can be hurt.

Withdrawal of "reality" from the body, and therefore from all form, is the path to healing sickness and death. In other words, withdrawing a sense of truth from what is actually an ILLUSION, and placing that sense of truth back where it belongs, aligned with the REAL TRUTH which is of God.

If you believe that the body is ever "really sick", or that what you're witnessing is a "real sickness", or that something is "really happening" to you or others, as evidenced by all of the signs and sensations of suffering, then you will be stuck. You must shift your perception to recognize that what you're SEEING is actually an ILLUSION OF SICKNESS. It is not real sickness, because there is no such thing.

What you're seeing, what you're experiencing, as sickness, is actually just an ILLUSORY IMAGE which is PRETENDING to be sickness. It is not really there. It is not really happening. No matter how it appears, no matter the severity or mildness, no matter the form or how long it's been present, it cannot be reality. Otherwise YOU will become the sickness, and the body, and you will die.

Either God's truth is the truth, or the ILLUSION is the truth.

Either God's truth is real, or sickness is real.

Either God's truth is the only truth, or the body has truth to it.

God did not create the body because the body is not real.

Learn then that when you perceive sickness, IF there is a measure of reality to your experience of what you're perceiving, you are MISTAKEN, and you are actually seeing an illusion, but are thinking that it is reality. You have GIVEN truth to it "I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me". Because you GAVE it truth, you can withdraw the truth from it. To do this you have to PLACE the truth somewhere else, and recognize where it really is. Shift the truth to be God's truth, and the truth will be removed from the sickness.

The truth is true and nothing else is true. The body is not the truth. Sickness is not the truth.

Work on this until you can literally look at the sickness and NOT BELIEVE IT. Recognize it is an ILLUSION. It's like a three-dimensional fake hologram being projected by a Spirit that is floating around in space pretending to be physical. It is not a REAL sickness, it is make-believe!

When you can look at sickness as NOT REAL, you will find yourself feeling HAPPY. You will be happy because you are not making errors, you are being forgiving, you are not falling for the illusion (it's a mind trick!), and you're not buying into it. You will find yourself smiling as you affirm and see "this is not real".

Recognizing that illusions are not real, lifts FEAR from you, because fear is a reaction to perceiving a real illusion. You could only be afraid IF what you see is really happening and IF what you see was not designed by God. Only real illusions can frighten! If illusions are NOT real, they cannot frighten. But you must BELIEVE that they are not reality. You're seeing something that isn't really there, it isn't really happening, and it is quite literally.... NOTHING.

Sickness is nothing. Death is nothing.

This "collapsing" of the illusion, this stripping it of its illusory reality, this taking away of belief in it, this withdrawing of the conviction that it is true and therefore suffering with reactions, is all part of forgiveness. Overlooking the error. Overlooking sin. Overlooking an illusion that you always thought was reality, but is in fact smoke and mirrors.

Your body's eyes will show you sickness. But your MIND's EYE will show you the truth - that the sickness is an illusion. The mind then is shining a light of truth - God's truth - and this has POWER to disperse and undo and correct what appears to be the sickness. IT MUST GO! Jesus has said, "illusions that are understood to BE illusions MUST disappear".

When someone is upset, it isn't real.

When someone is sick and suffering terribly, it isn't real.

When war is happening, it isn't real.

When someone is dying, it isn't real.

If this stuff were real, we would HAVE to be very upset! We would have an extremely hard time not being upset by this, because our mind is actually convinced that it's reality and will react to it with fear and suffering.

But imagine that these things are NOT real? This is just a dream, an illusion. You could see these things and NOT BELIEVE THEM, and LAUGH!!!!!!!!!

Too radical? Too ridiculously crazily outside the box of normal thinking? Too wild to be true?

This world is not your home.

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and its content is not true."

First let's be clear that all true properties belong to God. God's reality entails what is real, permanent, certain, true, exists, is happening, is powerful, has will, causes, with real effects (creation), is eternal and immortal.

The separation from God was an attempt to conceive of an opposite to God's reality. It ultimately produced what appears to be an entire world. In light of the fact that God's reality is real, this second world we made as its OPPOSITE is unreal. It inherently has the properties of the opposite of God's properties.

The world we made is unreal, temporary, uncertain, false, it doesn't exist, nothing in it really happens, it is powerless, has no will of its own, causes nothing, has no real effect, is not eternal, and everything in it is mortal. It is an illusion of a world because it is not a reality of a world.

"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."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"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."

So now we have these two seeming worlds. One is completely real, one is completely unreal. One holds all the truth, one is utterly false. One is permanent and powerful, the other is temporary and powerless.

The unreal world, which is the world of bodies, is a mistake. It presents ideas that are not possible. It is not possible for example for anything real to die or be threatened, but in the unreal world it seems things can die and be threatened. In reality everything is immortal, yet in the unreal world everything has mortality. In reality everything is unlimited, and in unreality everything is limited.

The unreal world is actually an idea of what is not possible, founded on a "mad idea". God's reality holds all possibility. The opposite of possibility is impossibility. The unreal world seems to show things happening which are not possible in God. In God nothing can die, so leaves falling from trees and flowers dying and bodies dying is not really possible.

The unreal world presents pictures of impossibilities all the time. Everything in it is impossible because the world itself is the idea of impossibility. The world "is not" - which is why ultimately "there is no world."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

Now. In ADDITION to the reality of God, and the unreal world, there is also a matter of BELIEF, resulting in an act of projection UPON these worlds. There is something that happens in the mind in terms of belief. Mind can choose to be fully aware and accepting of the sane fact that ONLY God's truth is true - that only heaven's reality is real. OR, it can go into a state of denial.

When the mind is in denial, it flips everything around. It takes ALL the properties of God's reality, and assigns it to the unreal world. It then takes all the properties of the unreal world and assigns is to God's reality. This produces total confusion and insanity. It is insane because you've lost track of what is really real and what isn't, and can no longer distinguish between them, making you lost and confused - ie mistaken.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

In a state where the attributes of God are assigned to its opposite, you are confused and insane. This puts you into what we call "false perception". In false perception, everything about God is assigned to the unreal world, and vice versa. The ramification of that, is that a simple MISTAKEN world, an IMPOSSIBLE world, begins to take on properties of actual reality. This interprets mistakes as SIN, because sin mean "a real error that can't be undone because it's real."

So now, the unreal world is considered to be real, have permanent qualities, to be eternal, to depict the truth, to house all possibilities, to have a will of its own, to be meaningful, to be heaven, to be life, to be really existing and really happening. In this mode, you have "made illusions real", ie have "made the world real", because you have GIVEN it reality. You are assigned reality's properties to it. You BELIEVE it's real.

There is also a flipside to this. All the properties of UNreality are now assigned to God's reality. God is now considered to be false, non-existence, lacking will power, not happening, being totally unreal, having no life, being mortal and dead, being impossible, being insane, and making no sense. God is considered to be nothing, is rejected as untrue, and relegated to oblivion.

When mind is in this state, this is where the world is experienced like a nightmare. Given that an unreal world is very UNNATURAL and disturbing, if it is REAL then you'll experience it as a horror show. This is what is happening when you see problems arise and you feel like you cannot do anything to change them. The reason they seem unchangeable, is because you've assigned properties of permanence, existence, happening and reality to them. This in a sense "locks them in". ONLY illusions can be forgiven or undone or changed, and not whatever is regarded as real.

If it is true that this world is REAL, then everything in it is permanent, fixed, unchangeable, irreversible, absolute, total, certain, and eternal. Because these were all attributes of God's reality before the confusion. Given that you believe this about the world, you CANNOT bring yourself to conceive of how you can possibly do anything about anything. Everything will seem like some horrible fate, some pointless hopeless disaster, some kind of cruel unchangeable unhealable trauma, that just happens by its own will leaving you a helpless victim.

In this state of false perception you will also completely forget about God's reality. It will seem like it does not exist. Mind will shut down. Any sense of being above the battlefield, stepping back, detaching, being able to wield supernatural miracles, anything to do with healing or correcting problems genuinely will go out the window. Your mind will fixate on THIS world, the unreal world, as if it is THE ONLY REALITY, and all that exists is happening before your body's eyes. Everything it sees is now real to you and you are powerless over it. If an unnatural, "evil", impossible world of conflict and disaster is REAL, you MUST suffer without escape, and death is now the wages of sin. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

This is the state that produces all despair and suffering, all sense of the "irreversibility of sin", all notions that what happens cannot be undone, that sickness is progressive, that death is inevitable, that your fate is set in stone and you have absolutely no say in what happens. This is the state of being a victim, with the world doing everything in its power to simply be horrifying and traumatic, throwing up unsolvable problems all over the place every single day.

So the world in the state of false perception is a COMBINATION of .... 1) an unreal world of mistakes and impossibilities, and 2) the properties of reality being confused with and assigned to it. You MAKE the world seem real by GIVING it properties of reality, and this converts all illusions of sin into what seems like REAL sin.

Once illusory events, which really cannot be happening, are UNITED or "made one with" properties of reality, everything that happens will appears to be a sin. The whole hierarchy of illusions will demand specific responses, reactions and effects. You'll feel compelled to just go along for the ride and have every single reaction that the world says you should be having. And anything anyone does that appears in any way wrong will be regarded as a REAL SIN. An unforgiveable act, and you will NOT be able to forgive it because you believe it is REAL, and therefore permanent.

"The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, NOT to establish them as real, and THEN forgive them."

"Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it"

What the world IS, in terms of it being an UNREAL world, an ILLUSION of a world in which nothing is true, is distinct from your interpretation of that world - ie what it means to you. If you GIVE the world reality, then you BIND reality WITH illusions and the result is a nightmare of inescapable sin and irreversible suffering. If the world is REAL, nothing in it can be undone, because reality is permanent and can never end.

But your way out of this hell of suffering is simply then to change your mind. This is NOTHING more than a change in the PREMISE of the world. It's a shift from "the world is real" to "the world is not real." Every single attribute of reality and God that you have mistakenly given to the world, you have to TAKE BACK from it.

You have to dis-identify everything God created from the world, and RE-IDENTIFY it with spirit. This is the same as shifting from body-identification to spirit-identification. What is TRUE AND REAL about you has to be re-identified with what God created, requiring your IDENTITY to transition from a limited body to an unlimited soul.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP."

You have ASSIGNED power to the unreal world. That's why it seems to have power over you. You can and must TAKE BACK that power, and assign it back to God/spirit/soul where it belongs. This is the only real change of mind. It's a change of belief. It's a restoration of your acceptance of, and recognition of, WHAT REALLY IS TRUE. Or of what really is REAL.

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

"Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

Our task in "applying forgiveness" then is nothing more or less than properly assigning the properties of reality to GOD's reality, and the properties of unreality to the unreal world. To undo the confusion between the two. To become very clear only God's stuff is real, and all the illusory stuff is not. That only God's world is TRUE, and the world you made out of illusions IS FALSE.

"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."

The unreality of this world has to be recognized. This is what "true perception" means. It is accurate perception, or the ability to recognize accurately WITHOUT confusion, what the world "actually is". Or in a sense, to see "the truth of" or "the reality of" this world. When you see the reality of an UNREAL world, ie the truth that IT IS unreal, you are seeing it for what it "actually is". Yet an unreal world isn't "actually" anything, because IT IS unreal. Recognizing this recognizes IT IS NOTHING AT ALL.

To then transition from being heavily absorbed, confused, lost, and threatened by, a mistakenly mis-assigned property ... where you've given the world or something in it - some body or event or thing - properties of God, you need to go through some kind of purification or process to revert your mind back to the truth. To return to sanity. We call this sort of "applying the principle of forgiveness", or trying to "atone".

"To atone is to undo." What we are undoing is our CONFUSION about what the world is and is not, and what God is and is not. BOTH the truth AND what is false have to be fully and clearly distinguished and recognized, and NOT confused with each other.

"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." By correctly identifying all properties of God WITH God, and taking them AWAY from the world - or undoing their mis-association with the world, your mind returns to sanity.

"Sin is insanity", meaning that when you combine the insanity of confusion about what is real, WITH an unreal world, you turn a mistaken world into a sinful world. You make sin seem real when you are insane, but when you return to sanity sin converts back to a mistake - or what Jesus calls an error. The world is simply an error, not a truth.

To forgive then, we simply need to undo, reverse, cancel out, heal, purify, and correct, the mistaken beliefs that we have about what the world's nature is. We need to remind ourselves, maybe we need to talk ourselves into it, maybe we need help and healing from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, maybe we need affirmations or reminders or cue cards or whatever it is. We need to LIFT AWAY from the world all the properties of reality which we gave away TO it, and give them back to God. The ACIM workbook is designed to facilitate this correction, e.g.:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that disaster (specify) so it is not real."

"God did not create that illness (specify with name of person) and so it is not real."

This could simply be in the form of you telling yourself, "this world is not real, it is just a dream." "This is an illusion of a world, not a reality." "Nothing is really happening here." "No-one has sinned because it did not take place in reality." "Nothing is held against anyone because it's a dream and is not true." "People are not really bodies." "My identity is not a body." "The world is urneal." "Only God is real." "Only heaven's reality is my reality." etc. Whatever form it takes.

All that needs to happen is the proper re-categorization of everything in the world. To put the world itself into the "unreal, non-existing, not-happening, not permanent, entirely undoable and nothing" bucket. And at the same time, putting heaven back into the "really does exist and has reality and is the only reality" bucket.

"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."

To forgive then is simply to RECOGNIZE what is true and what isn't. To get the mind back into a state where it has been deprogrammed of the LIES that appears as real sins. Nothing in the world is real. Nothing in the world is causing anything. Nothing in the world is happening. Nothing in the world is permanent. Nothing in the world is changeless. Nothing in the world is true. "Nothing the world believes is true."

"There is no sin" because "real sin" requires the combination of an unreal illusion, incorrectly mixed with "a sense of reality." When you withdraw the sense of "it is real" from the "sinful act", it is no longer a REAL sin. It is only a mistake, an error, a forgiveable nothingness which hasn't even really occurred.

"Forgiveness recognizes what what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

This LITERALLY means that anything you think ever happened in this world, HAS NOT OCCURRED. It has not occurred FOR REAL, because it is taking place in an UNREALITY, in a dream, which is NOT real, and nothing real happens in a dream. Dreams by definition are fantasies and hallucinations. Everything in them is false. No events in the history of planet Earth have ever occurred. Accepting this is to accept atonement, in which only the truth of God is true, and the world is false.

"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."

"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. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

In the beginning of the ACIM Workbook, we're instructed to look around the room and tell ourselves, indiscriminately, that this thing we're looking at doesn't mean anything. And we're asked not to be selective in what we apply it to, applying it to everything equally. This EQUALIZING is what's important.

I'm finding that this basic idea is core to the process of mind training in order to awaken from this world. Basically, our minds have become very used to fragmenting everything into separate boxes, with separate labels.

We become blinded by perception of form, and we take the form of something to determine its meaning. Yet we've given it all the meaning it has. Differences and shifts and changes all seem to stand out as separate and exclusive. One thing is not another etc. And before you know it we have 1000 different responses to 1000 different things and never are we simple unconditional.

But the mind is not supposed to be in this kind of viewpoint, with a massive complicated hierarchy of illusions, with multiple different reactions and responses, treating one thing differently to another, adapting and changing based on circumstances etc. These are all unnatural for the mind which must be unconditionally constant in order to be healthy.

As we peruse the room and identify that one different seeming object is really to be treated no differently than another, we're beginning the process of collapsing the hierarchy of illusions, undoing the belief in separation, dispelling the illusion that one thing is NOT the same as another, and are gradually reprogramming the mind to be less conditional.

For me a huge way this has recently come to light is in the idea of the death of a body. On the physical level the ego world says that a body has been utterly destroyed and irreversibly erased from existence. But on the spiritual level the person still persists in eternal life. And they can't both be true.

Given that God would never allow one of his immortal creations to ever be destroyed, and there is no power greater than God's to overthrow his will, death is an absolute lie. The body's demise means absolutely nothing. It does not mean a person is dead, it does not mean God's son is destroyed, and it does not imply anything. Death is ultimately meaningless.

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

So then if you look at this closely and see that death cannot have a meaning, it causes nothing and has no effect, it is completely meaningless. And this then means that it doesn't MEAN anything DIFFERENT to a living body. And both of those bodies do not really mean anything.

"Nothing I see means anything."

It's in this erasing of the MEANING of separation, whereby you isolate something and give it a different unique meaning compared to something else, that the mind begins to split and fragment. Believing in separation plays out as believing the seeming messages we get from separate different objects.

It's as though the whole of physical unreality is screaming constantly to tell you that this one thing IS NOT another thing, this thing is NOT the same, this thing has unique properties, this one's red and that one's green, this one's bigger, that one's smaller etc. All constantly tempting you to believe that EVERYTHING is separate. And this couldn't be more OPPOSITE to how the mind is supposed to function.

When we see objects meaning something unique we are deceived by illusion, blinded by form, deceived by temptation, lost in a dream, and find our mind to be imprisoned. When we EQUALIZE forms and give them the SAME meaning, recognizing they have NO meaning of their own, that's when mind is entering a state of unconditionality, which means love.

"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."

So then we look at a body that seems dead and we do not assign it any meaning. And we look at bodies which seem alive and we do not assign them any meaning. And we recognize that both types of bodies are not really different in their meaning, or in what they are. They are both illusions, both unreal, both in ONE category.

Consider then that the mind in this state is a very cohesive whole unified mind. It's not a mind that goes putting labels on everything, putting things in separate boxes, emphasizing differences, or thinking of the things of the physical world as unique.

It's a mind that has ONE state, one feeling, one undivided will, one power, one wholeness, one unconditional action. It treats everyone and everything with the same singular completely still peaceful loving relationship. It responds to everything in the same way, and sees no "orders of difficulty".

Such a mind is not deceived by forms. Such a mind does not really pay any special attention to things which seem different, more important, less important, more serious, less serious. It has learned to see that both living and dead bodies are the same one illusion, the same one lie.

On a way then, the waking mind is finding a way to be whole and unmoved by the world, always constant and honest, always peaceful and loving. It doesn't buy into any temptations, it doesn't fall for the appearance of something seeming easier or harder, bigger or heavier. It finds a way to transcend all differences. And it really is about psychological transcendence. Completely disregarding the appearance of any differences of form whatsoever.

Such a mind isn't finding a way to see that the forms are ONE, or that God is the forms. It isn't finding oneness in them as such. It's transcending them toward the oneness that is behind and beyond them, a oneness that the forms don't even touch or influence in any way.

Because mind becomes whole and unified and loving and disregards differences, it sees in a sense a "reflection of heaven" - a unified transcendental perception - looking upon the physical separate objects still but NOT believing them, NOT falling for their forms, NOT blinded, NOT regarding them as truly different or true at all. But seeing them with a unified mind can't help but see unity IN PLACE of the differences, reflected there.

Cars are still separately driving down separate roads. Bodies are still separately walking down separate streets. Dogs are still barking at separate cats. But the healed mind is not deceived by how any of these things look. The healed mind becomes transcendental of all separate forms, all separate labels, all separate distinctions and differences.

So really in the start of the Workbook we're basically in at the deep end, starting off running, because we're already practicing this simple idea - getting the mind to wean off interacting with the world from a complicated chaotic jumble of vantage points, and shifting toward a singular vantage point which pays no attention to form whatsoever.

Its an odd idea really. Adopting a state of mind which is centered on a singular oneness, and unchanging wholeness, an unconditional love, rather than being 1000 separate things to 1000 separate people. Just being you, knowing thyself, unmoved and unchanged and unaffected. Simple and unified. Ignoring all separations and divisons. Having no belief in the false illusion of the material world at all. A wholeness of mind from another world.

"And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God?"

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"Would you transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father?"

"Communion comes with peace, and peace MUST transcend the body."

"Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind."

"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."

In the separation, we entered a state of mind opposite to God. THEN we projected this state of mind outward, trying to hide from it. This produced the world of spacetime.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it***, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"***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."

This means that the world is actually once removed from the state of mind of the separation. It is a second stage in separation. The first dream is of being separate, and was then projected as a second shadow dream of a physical universe.

This in turn implies that all things physical are a decoy, a kind of "effect" being projected from a hidden mental state. Therefore, anything physical is not a cause, nor is it capable of sinning, or of doing anything. It is a symbol of something hidden.

The whole world is an illusion of a world, an image, projected from a sick mind. It is being put there by an unseen process. It is not the world that needs to be forgiven and corrected. Or to put it another way, we must forgive the world in the sense that it has not done what we think it is responsible for. It is "following orders."

As purely an effect, the world cannot decide for itself, or choose what happens. It is the mind that is orchestrating every dream, every circumstance, all events and encounters. Behind the physical world its a state of mind which needs to be healed. It is the circle of fear. It is not seen by the body's eyes or by perception. It is prior to projection, and without projection there is no perception.

This is what we might call unconscious guilt, or at least a hidden and more direct sense of attack and sin. Its projected form, the physical world, was made to hide its viciousness.

"You would be willing to look upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT IT SAVES YOU FROM LOVE. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have protected it (producing the physical world), because you do not WANT the separation healed, and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures it (the underlying belief in separation obscures God), your love for your Father would IMPEL you to answer His call, and leap into Heaven."

The world is a symbol of what it has been projected from. Just as the body is a symbol of the ego. It is not an end in itself. This whole world, this universe, is not an end, but a secondary expression from another state of mind. It represents that state of mind, an outward picture projected from an inward condition.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. "

The whole point of forgiveness then is to recognize that the world is once-removed from what is causing it, and what it causing it is in the mind. Therefore, cause, mind, will, and power, have to be brought back into the mind and recognized as being there. This is where the answer and the healing is. To take back your projection really means to take back the physical world.

Nothing physical is sinful, because it isn't the SOURCE of what it is doing. It is a projected image. It's where the world is coming FROM that is where you'll find the sin. The world was made to disguise the internal sin, to make it look like sin is externalized. That's why "the world of bodies is the world of sin." But it is really a projection of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

To lift the belief in sin away from the world, to see "the forgiven world", simply means recognizing that all of spacetime is not the cause of itself. It is coming from somewhere in the mind. Anything it does is a second-hand projected form of what is projecting it. Being solely AN EFFECT of an internal belief, it can't be held accountable for anything. The belief in sin is internal, and not perceived out there.

This is why the world really has no meaning of its own. Why it's a meaningless world. Why it's neutral. Why it can act like a mirror to reflect internal ideas of sin, or internal ideas of love. Because it is really nothing but a screen onto which we project stuff. It is an externalization of what's inside us. To blame it for anything, or to even look to it to identify "what to heal", is to misplace what is causing it. The world is a SYMPTOM AND SIDE EFFECT of the belief in separation. The belief in separation is the real problem, and the only problem.

If "all my problems have been solved", it is because the world is NOT the problem. The underlying secret sins and hidden hates are the problem. The unforgiven grievances. The attack thoughts. The belief in sin and death. The idea of separation. All the mental content which projects as the body and the world. Those are the problem that needs healing. The physical world will reflect whatever internal changes we make.

This is why sickness is a projected form of guilt. The inside becomes the outside. This is why death can only happen if the mind chooses it. This is why the mind has power over the body, and why miracles can resurrect and heal it. This is why changing your mind about the world changes the whole world. You're really changing your mind about yourself and God, and this results in a different projection.

First we will project a world of sin and death. Then, changing our internal material, we will project a world of harmlessness and peace and love. And then we will so fully extend our projecting in line with God's will that we will simply resume the full extension of heaven. And in total extension there is no denial or dissociation or "ego projection" or disowning. And so the projected world, which came from the tiny mad idea projected outward, will simply cease to have a source. And without a cause in the mind, without the idea of death, it will simply cease to be made.

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

The world, the physical world, BEGAN IN a dream. A secret hidden dream of sin and ideas of attack and death. Without this IN the mind, the world has no cause to PROJECT it. It came from nothingness and must return to nothingness.

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.

Various things seem to happen in the world. Sometimes seemingly happy things, sometimes tragic. Sometimes things seem to be going well, sometimes they fuck up. There are dramas. There's emotion. People seem to be well, others seem to be dying. There is a whole lot of "material" to react to, respond to, deal with, manage, etc.

It all seems plausible and true. It seems to have reality. It seems like it's something to be taken seriously. We seem to have to care about certain outcomes. It seems like there's real problems and real solutions. But this is all within the context of "the world is real".

IF the world is real, it makes sense that we should be taking things seriously. We should be caring, paying attention, reacting, dealing with issues, trying to control things, etc. This all seems "valid". It seems justified. It even seems to make sense. If someone is struggling with something it seems like there are certain courses of action. If there is a problem that seems serious, it seems you should be quite upset about it.

But here is the thing. This is all based on the assumption that the world is real. And that's a big assumption. It's a framework or a basis. A logical premise. It's a starting point on which to derive all these conclusions, evaluations, judgements, strategies etc. But what if the world isn't real?

What if the the world is in fact just a dream? You see, if the world is a dream, this changes the ENTIRE context of everything that seems to be happening. If it's a dream, nothing is really happening here. If it's a dream, even if it seems like some person just died, they didn't really die. If it's a dream, sickness is also an illusion and is completely fake. If it's a dream, everything that occurs is just some made up fantasy.

"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 substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In a dream world, it's as though there are just scenarios, situations, scenes, fictions and stories, which come and go fairly randomly. They don't actually have any particular rhyme or reason or meaning. Over here is the scene of a person at work. Over there is the scene of a person battling with disease. Over here is another person waking up in the morning. Over there is another person tying their shoes on a subway train. Just strange little vignettes of activity, drama and story.

If it's a dream, none of these things are really happening. The dream reframes the entire and every episode as not being what it seems to be. Are we to keep taking it seriously when something shows up that seems serious? Or should we laugh at yet another strange episode of dreaming in which we seem to be experiencing strange events and people?

Yes, if its real, then we probably should react to it. But if it is ONLY a dream, this lifts away ALL of the reasons and rationale for taking it seriously, believing it means anything, reacting to it as if it's posing real threats, buying into its illusions. And don't think the illusions aren't extraordinarily creative and well made. They are designed to deceive and tempt you and distract you and disarm you. But even a scenario of a person standing there trying to destroy you, it laughable in the context that it's ONLY a scene within a dream and you are not the body nor can you be attacked.

If you could observe the world, from outside of it, from outside the dream, it would be a radical change in perspective. What you once thought was being really threatened is now recognized as nothing but some illusion pretending to threaten an illusion. Nothing REAL can be threatened. You'd know that the whole world is one big fake fairytale. There aren't really any bodies, there's no real sickness, no real death, on real war, no tears or upsets or problems. It's all made up.

And changing your frame of reference, your point of perspective on this world, is how you forgive and develop true perception. Learning to see from a vantage point of the truth about the world, that it IS a dream, rather than the perspective that it's really happening and worth being alarmed about. False perception shows you the world as if it's NOT a dream, but a terribly real-seeming nightmare with tragic events and threat and danger. In such a world there is no safety, if you have identified with the dream figure.

This is why it's very vital to dis-identify from the body. Not just because bodies are distracting and act as anchors to bring down the Son of God, but because they are INSIDE the dream. They are part of it. They are just characters and costumes. So you, who are dreaming the world from OUTSIDE of the world, if you start to believe you are one of the characters in the dream, a body, you're going to lose sight of yourself, lose track of the truth, and believe that the world is happening to YOU because YOU are now believing you're a body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured".

Becoming spirit identified merely means the same thing as recognizing this is just a dream. It means remembering who and what you are, which is, that you are the dreamer of the dream, NOT the contents of the dream. You are not the body or the house or the family or the children or the job or the role-play. You are outside the dream bubble. Outside of spacetime, in heaven. In the awake world, the reality of the Kingdom. Attaching your "self" to "world stuff" just makes you believe you're under attack from a dangerous world where everything is chaotic and destructive.

Jesus's approach to the world is to learn to recognize that it IS only a dream. And being a dream, it should not be taken seriously. It should not be afforded any kind of reality or truth. Any kind of "it's really occurring". Any kind of artificial meaning or implication. In fact, he tells us that this is the secret of salvation. If we would recognize it's JUST a dream, we should be laughing at every part of it, realizing that it's complete fiction. Like some movie on a screen.

"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 Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

"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."

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

The separation from God, we did a big switcheroo. We swapped everything true for everything false, and vice versa. That makes our mind insane, because it means we no longer recognize what anything actually is.

To our insane mind, we see everything opposite to what it is, because the mind is trying to oppose reality.

God is regarded as evil, the Holy Spirit as an enemy, heaven as hell, eternal life as death.

Similarly evil is regarded as benevolence, death is thought to be life, suffering is atonement, and sickness is a way to exist longer.

The mind in this insane twisted state is very confused.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING." UrT7J9

If you can imagine then, if you believed that God is murderous and an enemy, and you tried to go towards God, your "egoic" insane mind would see this as a dangerous encounter. It would become threatened and adversarial, it would try to fight against it and go into fear. Just as you as a 'sane' person would go into fear if you thought an evil enemy were coming closer to attack you.

God obviously isn't actually attacking or evil or murderous, but the ego does perceive him that way. And so it makes "total sense" to the egoic insane mind that, for the sake of preserving existence and "sanity", you should stay away from God.

As you - your mind - starts trying to wake up from the insanity and move towards God, you're going to find that the insanity itself will interpret reality incorrectly. It will perceive that you're moving towards your death, moving towards evil, moving towards the very thing you fear and do not want. As if you're going in the wrong direction.

If you were to lurch closer to God all of a sudden, and saw his beauty and loveliness, your egoic mind would quickly project sin and guilt onto it, and become deeply suspicious that nothing can possibly be that lovely and be real. And it might thus read into it that God is actually a deceiver and the beauty is some kind of insane trick or a trap. And then it would go into fear as a defense.

Obviously this is where "sickness is a defense against the truth" comes in, because the insane mind reasons that in order to be safer, more alive, exist longer, and be protected, it must move AWAY from the threatening God (truth) it perceives. It does this by inducing more separation, reasoning that it makes total sense to get away from the vile enemy.

"Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them." UrW136L3

What the insane mind doesn't realize is that while it BELIEVES that it is moving away from evil, it is moving toward it. While it believes it is moving away from death (as God), it is moving further toward actual death, because God is really life. Inducing more separation induces all forms of illness, suffering and death, but in the name of self preservation.

So in fact we don't actually recognize suffering as suffering. We don't believe that pain is actually a bad thing. We don't think that sickness is terrible. And we even want to cozy up with death, as though it will protect us from God.

The course is trying to get us to reverse our entire thought system so that we begin to RECOGNIZE that evil is evil, suffering is suffering, pain is something you do not want, false things are false, etc... so that you realize in your sanity that it makes no sense to choose them. You would drop all of this misery in an instant if you actually realised that it IS misery and not love.

This is the state we're in. We're backwards and lost, not recognizing true things as true, or false things as false. We believe a whole host of awful stuff like pain, suffering, sickness, death, is actually "good stuff that we want more of". And we will happily choose it and side with it and protect it, believing it is saving us from a fate worse than death.

Each time we try awaken from this and move toward actual eternal life, toward God or reality or truth, the insanity in the mind is going to be suspicious of it, misinterpret it, read into it, and resist it. All based on a misperception of it. In effect, it may seem like you're trying to drag the ego kicking and screaming toward its demise - at least that's how it sees it.

The ego though can't enter a state of sanity because it's really just a label for being insane. It can't "exist" in the light of truth or in God. It requires the denial of God and it requires separateness rather than oneness. You, as the soul/mind, have to find a way to step out of the insanity and dis-associate, dis-identify, from being the insane person, and shift your allegiance to being the sanity of spirit. Or as the course calls it, reason.

You can be sure though that if you go too fast, your insane egoic tendencies will kick in and become frightened by the truth. It will resist and kick and scream. It will find ways to avoid it and deny it and not want it. It will feel offended and threatened by it. Because it does not understand what it's really going toward.

What then could seem like a passage down a dark tunnel into hell, to the ego, could actually be the stairway to heaven. But you have to be gentle with yourself. As the course says, time keeps gentle pace with you. The Holy Spirit gently plans events to help lead you to eternal life. You have a curriculum to go through piece by piece, when you are ready, as you are willing, and not before.

You don't have to rush or go fast, or try to skip steps, or race to the end. This is supposed to be a gentle awakening process, moving first into a happier dream and then onward.

If you try to expose your ego-identified ie insane mind to the sanity of God when it isn't ready, it will just be frightened by it. So go easy on yourself. This is where it becomes 'ok' in the short term, to carry on with your insane ego-serving human nonsense. So go grab some more ice cream and binge watch some favourite shows for a while, because you're probably not going to be waking up quite yet.

"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." UrT2C9

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it." UrM29A2

A collection of quotes speaking to our need to go within, look within, and find heaven within ourselves. Searching externally is sickness. Searching within is peace. God put peace inside of you, and you now need to go within to find it again. The ego has taken you away from and outside of yourself. You now need to uncover the inner altar where you are joined with God.

"Forgiveness sweeps away distortions, and opens the hidden altar to the truth. Its lilies shine into the mind, and call it to return and look within, to find what it has vainly sought without. For here, and only here, is peace of mind restored, for this the dwelling-place of God Himself."

"Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart."

"Sit quietly and close your eyes. The light within you is sufficient. It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you. Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within."

"When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within."

"The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces WITH you your mad journey OUTSIDE yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within."

"As long as you believe that guilt is justified in ANY way, in ANYONE, WHATEVER he may do, you will not look within, where you would ALWAYS find Atonement."

"When he has looked within, and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him."

"In shining peace within you, is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. Look THROUGH the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look PAST darkness, to the holy place where you will see the light."

"You who have ALWAYS loved your Father can have no fear, for ANY reason, to look within, and see your holiness."

"All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is OUTSIDE of you to be complete and happy."

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

"And all this will they understand, because they looked within, and saw, beyond the darkness, the Christ in them, and RECOGNIZED Him."

"Home of the Holy Spirit, and at home in God alone, does Christ remain at peace, within the Heaven of your holy mind."

"Your Father wills you hear His Word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today."

"Let the light of holiness and truth light up my mind, and let me see the innocence within."

"I am Your Son, forever just as You created me, for the Great Rays remain forever still and undisturbed within me."

"We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him."

"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?"

"And meaning ALWAYS looks within, to find itself. And THEN looks out. ALL meaning that you give the world outside, must thus reflect the sight you saw WITHIN."

"How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself."

"When you are ready; you will find it there, within your mind and waiting to be found."

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify."

"Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the whole world."

"If Heaven is within why would you seek for idols which would make of Heaven less"

"Seek Him within you Who is Christ in you, the Son of God"

"I will not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought in. But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself."

"with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God"

"We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within."

"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."

"Then seek this function deep within your mind, for it is there, awaiting but your choice."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing."

"Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within?"

"Your task is NOT to seek for love, but merely to seek and FIND all of the barriers WITHIN YOURSELF that you have built AGAINST it."

"The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you."

"As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself."

"Today we ask of God the gift He has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged."

"You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost."

"In order to see, one must recognize that light is within, not without. You do not see outside yourself. Nor is the equipment for seeing outside you."

"Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. He will be there. And you can reach Him now."

"And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One."

"You do not know how to look within yourself, for you DO NOT BELIEVE YOUR HOME IS THERE. Yet the Holy Spirit knows it FOR you, and He will guide you TO your home, because that is His Mission."

"The Atonement can only be accepted within you."

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity."

"Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain."

"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "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."

"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."

Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."

So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.

The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.

This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.

When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.

Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.

"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.

"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."

So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.

The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. "

"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."

"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."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.

"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."

"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."

So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.

If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.

This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.

"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."

The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies which lead separate lives and go their separate ways."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real."

On the one hand, it seems that people are not the same. That is, if you look at their bodies, their seemingly different personalities, they're all quite different. That's what we think makes everyone unique. But there is really no equality on this level. This is the level of differences, of disagreement, of conflict. Just the mere fact that two bodies are not alike is war.

We then look to higher morals and try to treat everyone the same, with some kind of unconditional love or equality of rights. That someone who is a certain race or sexual persuasion or gender etc might be treated in the same way as any other person. But the fact is that in order to lift up out of the realm of differences into the realm of equality, you HAVE to transcend the body.

We can't be saying that, on the one hand, we are bodies that are for sure all different, while on the other hand trying to find some kind of moral equality, or equal rights, democracy, or whatever. These higher ideals MUST transcend the very fact of the body's variation. It must in fact overlook and defy the very things that make the bodies stand out as unlike each other.

This is why for example if we are to be kind to people who have bodies that seem overweight, then we have to really be looking past the overweightness. And we can't honestly do that if we're looking at the body still, trying to make the body special or sacred or holy or more important or equally important or anything else is really a kind of denial.

You cannot find equality at the physical level. Physical things are NOT equal and never will be. So when we start talking about treating a person of a certain "type" in a fair and equal way to other bodies of other types, we're really trying to have our cake and eat it.

To keep the bodies and identify people as separate objects, while simultaneously deciding that they all deserve the same rights. But this is impossible. The separate and the same cannot be reconciled, nor can the different and the equal. But isn't variety and difference and uniqueness a wonderful celebration of individuality? No it's not.

So then we set about this confused mixture of trying to make all the special separate bodies special in their own ways, exalting them, having marches to support them, rallying to get certain kinds of bodies the same rights as other kinds, but all still entirely focused on bodies and identifying people with physically different objects. And there is simply a total inherent tug of war in that, you cannot be maintaining belief in separate things while claiming to be a proponent of equalism.

The ONLY way that makes any sense and which can produce TRUE unconditionality, is to entirely transcend ALL conditions, all differences, all forms, all shapes and sizes and colors, and every definition of a person as a physical object. You can't keep being a man or a woman and claim to be interested in equal rights. The ONLY way there is equality between the two genders is for them to NOT be two genders. For gender to not matter at all, you can't KEEP gender on the table. You have to look past it.

This means the only way to find any sense of unconditoinality towards anyone, you MUST not regard them as a physical body in any way, to any degree. You cannot make their body extra special, or put the bodies alongside each other and say they are all the same - which is a lie, and you cannot make out that certain bodies are deserving of what other bodies have. That's total insanity.

Only if we are NOT bodies is there equality. Only if we are all identical in every way, created by the same one creator, in the same design, with the same will, sharing the same mind, sharing the same everything together, united singularly under one purpose and one function, can there be equality. This is why there is only true equality in heaven, where the differences of separation and form and conflict and war do not exist.

You CAN "embody" that reality here, to an extent, which is what forgiveness is about. It's about living like you are in heaven while you're on earth, seeing with loving eyes instead of the physical eyes, and using the mind as primal cause instead of the body. And to do that you cannot put any emphasis on the body whatsoever.

You cannot be confused that people are their bodies because this fundamentally denies their soul. You cannot say that somoene is a certain shape or form because now you're separating them out which is in fact an attack. To say that anyone is a body is an attempt to bring them down, to isolate, to condemn, and to accuse of sin. You can't be doing that if you are interested in equality and unconditionality.

Bodies are utterly incompatible with love. They are utterly incompatible with treating everyone the same. The only way to treat everyone the same is to NOT treat them like they are a body, or have a body, or that their body means anything whatsoever. The body is NOTHING. It has no real value or meaning and isn't even real.

To regard a person as a body is to believe a fantasy about them and to NOT see them. Bodies are disguises, a form of camouflage, which people who want to hide from God wear to pretend they are physical objects. You won't find any true sense of trust or meaning or purpose or function or value or reality by regarding people as human bodies, or by trying to reconcile their utter incompatibilities by pretending they're all the same.

Bodies will never be the same, every single one of them is unlike the rest. And if you believe people are their bodies, you are literally denying them equality. Gay bodies, straight bodies, male bodies, female bodies, trans bodies, autistic bodies, tall bodies, skinny bodies, large bodies, short bodies, they are NOT the same, and they are NOT TRUE OF ANYONE.

"While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious."

"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"Communication MUST have been restored to those that join, for this they COULD not do through bodies."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

God who is the first cause, can only give what he has. All he has is himself. He can give his own nature and extend himself. He cannot add anything which he did not have before he gave it. He cannot add anything of a nature unlike his own. Nor can his creations give anything OTHER THAN God.

If God is love, then God can give love. If God is permanence, then God can give permanence. If God is happy, then God can give happiness. But if God is not death, God cannot give death. If God is not separation, God cannot give separation. If God is not a body, God cannot give a body.

All that God can create is created in his own likeness. He cannot even conceive of anything unlike himself. He has to operate within the laws of the very reality of his own nature. He cannot break his own laws or operate outside of them. All that comes from him has to be entirely like him.

When God creates something all it can do is inherit God. God gives all of himself to it and so it has everything that God has. This is an act of sharing. Any creation must have all the qualities of God.

Since God is a creator, or extender of self-nature, so too must his creations be extenders of their own God-given nature. This means that all creations are REQUIRED to be able to GIVE what they have inherited. They must be able to create fully, and anything they create must have ALL the properties of their creator, including the ability to create in his likeness.

It is not possible for creation to occur whereby what is created is only PARTLY like its creator. Nor can a creation only inherit SOME of its creator's nature. It has to be FULLY GIVEN otherwise it is not fully created. Therefore any child of God can and must create creations, which are themselves AS FULLY CAPABLE OF CREATING as God is. And they CAN ONLY CREATE WHOLENESS.

The nature and attributes of God are therefore inherited and passed down through the generations of creation from father to son to grandson, and the grandson is JUST AS CAPABLE AS GOD and FULLY LIKE HIM still. But similarly, his grandson CANNOT CREATE anything UNLIKE God. And God is not a planet.

Now, when you look at planet Earth, this perfect extension DOES NOT HAPPEN. "Creation is impossible in this world." On Earth, that which seems to exist or which seems to be made or created, unfortunately NEVER inherits ALL of its creator's potential or nature. At best it inherits only SOME of its parents attributes. And as a result, most of the things that exist in this world CANNOT CREATE LIKE THEIR CREATOR. This produces a kind of "dead end" where "created things" cannot create anything at all.

For example, there is no way to claim that a car is capable of creating its own lineage of cars. It is ridiculous to suggest that a house can beget houses, or that a planet gives birth to planets exactly like themselves. Even when you look to objects which are somewhat more organic or reproductive, you still see a LACK OF TRANSFER of the full attributes of the parent to the child.

For example even humans are NOT able to create PERFECT MIRROR IMAGES of themselves in their chidren. Not only do children come from TWO different parents, the child as a single body cannot look FULLY like BOTH of them. It is impossible. Nor does any child inherit ALL of the attributes of the parent. In fact most children are biased toward being more like one parent than another, and no child is an exact mirror image of anyone. This is why all bodies are different and not equal.

This is because physical objects, matter, energy, this world, planet Earth, this galaxy and universe, are NOT A CREATION. They do not exhibit the LAW OF EXTENSION. They CANNOT PASS ON the fullness of the attributes of their creator. This alone also tells you that this world was NOT MADE BY a WHOLE-MINDED creator. It was made by someone who only partially created, or who wanted to not create fully, and who "created" WITHOUT GOD.

This world cannot have come from God. Quite literally, if a potato exists and is real, then God is a potato. But God can't be a potato. Because there are also chickens. And For a chicken to be real and exist, its creator has to be a chicken. God can't be a chicken and a potato because they are different. God has ONE NATURE, not two. And expecially not billions of natures, all of which contradict each other. God is not contradictory.

The more glaringly obvious and simple argument that God did not create this world is simply that IT IS NOT ABLE TO DO THE SAME. It cannot create in its total likeness. It cannot pass on all its attributes to a creation. Its creations DO NOT inherit all of its qualities. And no body, planet, chicken or potato, has ANY ability to CREATE A MIRROR IMAGE OF GOD. Nor are any of them actually LIKE God AT ALL.

It doesn't matter how you frame it. It doesn't matter how you perceive it. It doesn't matter what forgiveness you do. It doesn't matter how much you love or it choose to see a reflection of God in it. It STILL IS NOT like him. It STILL IS NOT A CO-CREATOR. Every child of God has to be a co-creator with God and create in his EXACT likeness. This world simply can never do that. It cannot extend itself at all because it is not really a creation.

This is why "only the creations of light are real." The creations of light produce creations of light. All such creations are perfectly like God. All of them exhibit all of God's qualities - permanence, immortality, perfection, invulnerability, innocence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotency, happiness, love, eternal life etc. Every single creation of God has ALL of this. Anything which does not have ALL of this is NOT a creation of God.

I'm sorry but when was the last time you saw a fire hydrant that was loving and creative? When was the last time that you put aside your ego perceptions and saw with the eyes of christ and found that fire hydrants suddenly had offspring? When did you last witness a car giving rise to a continual line of creation of more cars? When did you last see a house which got up and testified to being EXACTLY LIKE GOD, meaning that God is a house? These ideas are nonsense.

Regardless of how you see, regardless of how much ego you do or do not have, regardless of what you believe, nothing will ever change the fact that anything you can identify as an object LACKS the ability to EXTEND FULLY. No amount of spiritual awakening will change this fact. Nothing will ever stop the world from being a dead end. It is MADE, not created, in an unwilling attempt to NOT CREATE, which is why it takes on forms which CANNOT create.

Even the reflection of God seen in the world, even the face of Christ, even the real world, even the forgiven world, is never going to change the fact that the WORLD YOU MADE IS FALSE. It is false because it is NOT LIKE the truth. Even when you shine the truth onto it is it still not the truth. Even seen with perfect vision, it is STILL not able to operate like God. No human body will ever produce an exact replica of itself.

"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. 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. But 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, and 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."

Christianity makes sense. It makes logical sense. The structure of its metaphysics is consistent, albeit mistaken. But here's a secret... everyone who has an ego believes the Christian doctrine, because it's really a doctrine base on the ego's thought system and the ego made it.

For example, it depends on the idea that this world is real, that you do real things in this world, and that if you do the "wrong" real things then that's a sin.

This basis alone is enough for all of the rest of it to spring forth consistently.

For example, if this world is real and sin is real, then you will start trying to identify what is a sin and what isn't. You'll separate out "good and bad". This immediately produces the notion of good and evil. Some things are considered not sins so they are good, and other things are considered sins so they are evil.

Just the mere of act of existing in a dualistic right/wrong world where real stuff happens and some of is it not right, automatically implies that evil exists. Therefore the doctrine now becomes that you should choose only the good stuff and reject the bad stuff.

This actually isn't really just a Christian perspective. It's really the belief of the EGO, and anyone who has a persona and shadow is participating in the battle of good vs evil. If you believe that some aspects of this world are good and some are not, or that some behaviors are good and some are not, you are believing in a separation between good and evil. It means the good stuff is being spiritualized, is being made special, is given extra value, and is seen as acceptable. The bad stuff is seen as unspiritual, valueless, and unacceptable.

So it's not just Christianity that believes in this dynamic. Anyone with an ego believes in this dynamic, even members of other religions if they believe this world is real and that some of the things in it are more spiritual than others.

This goes on to imply that in order to be spiritual, you must only do the good acceptable things, you must keep your behavior in-line, and you must not "sin". If you do sinful things, you will be guilty of sin and be justified in being punished. It would then only seem "right" to punish the sin and condemn the sinner.

This leads to the idea of God, or the interpretation of God, as someone who judges whether you've been sinful or not, and how he then decides based on that whether you are worthy of heaven/love, or whether you need to be punished in hell. So automatically it creates the belief in heaven and hell as the extremes of sin vs not sin.

Anyone who believes that sins are real, Christian or otherwise, actually does believe in heaven vs hell, and good vs evil. They must, because believing in real sin automatically implies these things. Its a package deal.

So if now God is only going to approve of you if you are "good" and do not do the things which are considered sins, and if God's disapproval is going to land you in hell and punishment, it gives you a pretty good motivation to be "good". So then you focus on that, believing that the more good you become the less evil you become. Makes sense right?

This also then implies that if you DO sin, then you need some kind of special pardon if you're going to be seen as acceptable. Therefore you will need to be forgiven by God or Jesus, and if they decide not to forgive you but to condemn you, then you're on your way to hell. This produces such a huge amount of fear relating to whether you are going to be acceptable or not, whether you can be forgiven, and even the possibility of going to a "real hell" is already a nightmare.

To believe that sin is real automatically leads to believing that hell is real. If sin is evil then obviously sinning produces evil and, you know, there's a "place" where evil then seems to exist, and we call that hell. This belief in real sin produces therefore the belief in "real hell", and just believing that hell is real, alone, is enough to frighten the pants off you. It is not so much that the church itself attempts to use this idea to scare you into conformity and control, although that might've happened to some degree.

The ego doesn't need the church to accomplish this. Anyone who believes sin is real will automatically haunt themselves with this belief that a "real evil" could not only attack and threaten and tempt them, but that they themselves could therefore be vulnerable or susceptible to becoming part of that evil, and wind up in hell, suffering and being damned from love forever. Nasty business. All it takes is an ego.

Also then if God is in a position of having to judge between sinners and the innocent, that now turns God into a judger and and a conditional lover. He will only love IF you behave yourself, and if you don't, He will be the one to send you to hell. The amount of fear produced by reacting to this notion, alone, is horrifying, not to mention that it implies that God is fickle and incapable of unconditional love, and so cannot be trusted.

The idea that you might not be accepted or loved, is deeply upsetting. IF God were like this, which he would HAVE to be if sin and evil are real, you're going to be clinging to the edge of your seat until "judgement day" hoping that you've got some chance in hell of not being sent into the pit.

Again this is not just a Christian viewpoint, to be fair, it is the viewpoint that underlies EVERYONE who has an ego. Almost everyone on the planet has bought into this entire thought system as a complete package. Believe in even just one PART of it and you must automatically believe in the rest of it, because it all ties together perfectly logically and leads to all of the other implications.

If you are a A Course in Miracles student, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist or whatever, or an Atheist, if you believe the physical world is real and that it contains good and bad, YOU DO BELIEVE IN HELL, SIN, A JUDGEMENTAL GOD, SACRIFICE, THREAT OF DAMNATION, SUFFERING AND DEATH. If you think you don't, and you have an ego, you're in denial.

In order for you NOT to believe any of this thought system, or any of the parts of it, there MUST be a decision on your part not to believe at least one PART of it. For example, if you were to believe that sin is not real, this AUTOMATICALLY IMPLIES that the entire rest of the ego thought system, the entire rest of "christianity", is false.

If sin is not real, there is no good and bad or right and wrong, things appearing to happen are just illusions, God is unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental, there is no real evil, there in no hell, and you are One with God in Heaven forever. And that's all an automatic logical conclusion that is part of the package deal you get when you believe that sin is not real.

You could also say, I do not believe the world is real. That too will put a pin in the entire ego thought system based on good vs evil, and will completely undermine every part of it. If the world is not real and God did not create it then there is also no real evil and no sin or death and no hell to speak of, and nothing that seems to happen here can prove that you are sinful or guilty, therefore you are already eternally forgiven.

So it's really down to the thought system, and its logical consistency. The ego's thought system is responsible for creating Christianity, it is responsible for creating all political parties, it is responsible for creating all wars and conflicts, it is responsible for creating all belief in sin and evil and hell, it is responsible for all suffering, all sickness, and all death, regardless of what form the belief system seems to take or how it's structured or what side you're on.

What A Course in Miracles is trying to teach is that the entire ego thought system and ALL of its contents, IS NOT TRUE. And that means, since truth=reality, it is not REAL. This doesn't throw Jesus Christ out the window, in fact, because Jesus wrote ACIM and He is teaching us through it the "correction" of not only Christianity's interpretation of reality, but also the entire ego's, which includes far more. It's trying to show us the way out, the truth and the light, and the correct interpretation of what is happening here.

It's teaching us that the world is not real, sin is not real, sickness is not real, death is not real, it's all an ego illusion. God is unconditionally loving, forgiveness is universal and permanent, and only love is real.

Here’s what I‘ve learned from ACIM and recent experiences.

1. The body does not really exist at all, except as a temporary projected 3D image coming from the mind. It is an illusion. It has no mind, soul, will, power, or causality.

2. When the mind believes in separation and goes into ‘ego’, it regards its identity as an illusion and materializes an illusory self image, which shows up as the form of a body - a device for separation. It then confuses its identity with the body and becomes unaware that it is making it show up. Even tough the mind is projecting the body, and continues doing so unconsciously, it now believes it IS the body. (The body needs no healing for it cannot make itself sick, but a mind that believes it is a body is sick indeed.)

3. When the mind believes it is the body it’s projecting, and starts reading ACIM talking about how you are not a body, and since the mind in this state is unaware it is projecting the body, it takes this to mean 1) the body exists separate from the mind, 2) the mind isn’t putting it there, and 3) therefore I must "detach" from and transcend everything to do with the body and go into my mind. "Seek not to change the world", "I am not a body I am free" etc is all geared toward DIS-IDENTIFYING with the body. Remembering that you are NOT the 3D image you are projecting.

4. Since mind in that state is unaware it’s projecting the body, it tends to think this means "body and mind are separate", and "I must change my perception OF the body, and the world, and this is all I CAN do", as though the body and the world exist ON THEIR OWN (separate from your mind), and not because of your mind. So the mind sets about divorcing itself from the body and trying to shift away from it. This is accompanied by the belief that you must learn to accept the body and the world "as it is", in whatever state it is in, and do NOTHING to try to change it. This justifies never performing miracles, and not being responsible for having power over sickness and death.

5. As mind takes notice of all the teachings which speak of changing your perception OF the body and the world, in order to transition your IDENTITY back to mind/cause, you will start to experience increasing AWARENESS that you are causal. Level confusion and cause-effect are corrected. You realize more and more that mind causes everything, including the state of the body and the world. You have to now question the prior belief that you just "ignore" the world and go home, and realize now that it is coming from you.

6. The previously unconscious projective power of the mind, which is making the body show up, starts to become unavoidable and conscious. To be not a victim does not just mean transcending a sick body and letting it die, it now means acknowledging the second piece of the puzzle that you were not aware of before: your body is coming FROM your mind, at all times. While it’s still true that you must learn to NOT BE THE BODY, you must now take charge of what it is and the form it takes, what it represents, what it symbolizes, what it teaches and what it demonstrates. Because the body is now starting to become TRANSPARENT, meaning it is becoming a window into the mind, rather than a cover over the mind.

7. You realize eventually that even though "you are not the body" is a huge central teaching of the course, and you’re supposed to recognize yourself as not being affected BY it, that inevitably leads to a causal relationship where you are the CAUSE OF IT, rather than it being the cause of you. There is no middle ground of "body doesn’t cause me but it exists on its own." The body MUST have a causer. Someone is making it show up. YOU ARE!

8. This is the deeper KEY to the mind-body relationship that few ACIM students are willing to see or accept. It’s not just about changing your perception OF things, it’s about realizing YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF THEM. "Projection makes perception" doesn’t just mean that you project ONTO what is there. It means you LITERALLY PUT STUFF OUT THERE and THEN perceive what you put there and interpret your perception! "There is no world apart from what you wish" "The world IS perception". You also have power over your projections - you are a creator. And when you exercise that power, miracles happen. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this." It’s not JUST about dis-identifying with the body, the world and external causes. It’s ALSO about realizing YOU ARE THE DREAMER, and if you weren’t dreaming, there WOULDN’T EVEN BE A WORLD TO PERCEIVE! "There is no world."

9. This leads to having to admit that there is a CONNECTION between your mind and your body. It is not merely something to transcend or separate from or leave behind. There is a direct line of causality coming from the mind to MATERIALIZE the body. MInd is the projector. And this is the TIE that "unconscious projectors" deny even exists - a reason why your body is under the authority of your mind, why it symbolizes and represents your state of mental health, and why "sick bodies are accusers". Your body is an image you hold up to represent what your MIND believes is true of you and others. Your body is an image IN YOUR MIND, that your mind is fully responsible for.

10. This ultimately MUST lead to the resurrection state, in which the mind FULLY IDENTIFIES WITH SPIRIT. This doesn’t mean it just separates from, denies, drops dead, or leaves behind the body. How can the body STAY showing up WITHOUT a mind to project it? It cannot lay on the ground looking dead WITHOUT a mind putting it there AND MAINTAINING IT. "The mind being sane, heals the body." And when the mind is fully sane, and is done with dreaming, it will STOP DREAMING THE BODY. It will stop projecting one. The body DISAPPEARS, literally! When the mind regards its identity as SPIRIT, it becomes empty of all illusions, and does not hold a picture of an illusory body in place. The body becomes *transparent*, its image fades, and it CEASES TO EXIST becaue the light shines it away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." This is the only way out of the dream, not through death or sickness or old age!

"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision that is responsible for the body’s condition."

"The mind that made the body can make another."

"At no time does the body exist."

This is the central teaching of the course. It is simply the principle that MIND is the CAUSE of everything - your body and your world. It has power OVER everything it projects. It chooses WHAT will appear out there, and then perceives it. It PUTS OBJECTS THERE. It materializes matter. "Your mind has the power to create worlds." There IS NO WORLD other than the one YOU ARE PROJECTING. It’s NOT just about you projecting ONTO stuff, onto the world, onto people, or onto your body. You are the one who puts that stuff there in the first place! This is the responsibility we all have to own up to. "Your brother thinks he made the world with you."

The world is a fluid, flexible, non-fixed liquid pool of mental possibilities and illusions. MINDS are dreaming it into being. Bodies are showing up because body-identified minds, which are sick, are trying to manifest illusions and make them seem real. None of this is really here. We’re just collaborating in a grand dream. The world is NOT OBJECTIVELY REAL and nor is the body.

I summary, your task is to:

1) Dis-identify from being a body and realize you are immortal spirit and causality is in your mind.

2) Remember that your mind is MAKING your body show up and the state or health of your body REFLECTS your mental health.

3) Recognize your body is an illusion that YOU were believing in, and without your belief it CANNOT EXIST. Thus you reach resurrection, your illusion of death disappears, and you return to what you alway were - pure spirit in heaven.

The "secret of salvation" is simply the recognition that, if you are suffering in any way, you must have done it to yourself. No-one else could have done it to you, because you are immortal and invulnerable.

Paired with this realization is the recognition that, therefore, the world and its inhabitants cannot have been the cause of anything you are experiencing. So if you are upset, you must've done it yourself. But let's go even deeper with this. The real truth behind the secret of salvation, is that you are a permanently immortal being that can never change. You have been created to last forever and to never waver or be different. It is impossible for anything to happen to you in truth, whether seemingly caused by another person or the world or even yourself.

If you are truly immortal, no-one and nothing can affect you. There are no causes that can have power over you. There are no forces or wills that can oppose you or act upon you. There is nothing anywhere that can change you even slightly. Nothing can redefine you or manipulate you or force you into a different state. Nothing can upset you or disturb you or make you sick or dead.

The secret of salvation suggests that if you are seeming to suffer in any way, it can't be that anyone or anything ELSE other than yourself is to blame. YOU must have done this to yourself. But it is also true that in reality, even you do not really have the power to destroy yourself in any way. You cannot change what God created you to be. But you can BELIEVE that you have.

So if you are suffering, you must have entered into a mistaken BELIEF, that you have stopped being as God created you, you have forgotten who you really are, you have lost touch with your immortality, and are now suggesting that you are MORTAL. And in this mindset of mortality, you are now having FANTASIES about causes of distorted mental states in which you seem to suffer. You inflict suffering upon yourself and your body while pretending it is caused by something else.

The purpose of the secret of salvation therefore isn't just to point out that all suffering is self inflicted, but to point you BEYOND the suffering to the fact that you are an immortal being. The ultimate "secret" behind the secret of salvation, is that you HAVE NOT changed, you ARE NOT suffering, you ARE NOT sick, and you CANNOT die.

Any states in which you seem to suffer must be an illusion. Any forms of sickness must be a fantasy in the mind. Any bodily ailments or states must be fictional. Any unhappiness or disturbed peace or stress or nightmares must be of your own making. But even these, even all forms of suffering and destruction cannot ACTUALLY affect who you really are. They must be dreams and fantasies of mortality and of impossibilities.

What God has put together, no man can put asunder. In other words, since God has GIVEN you eternal life in your creation, you are endlessly perfect and cannot be "put asunder" ie destroyed. Not even you can destroy yourself, although you can believe that you are by CONFUSING yourself with something that is NOT yourself and trying make it look destroyed.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

Recognize clearly that this says you ARE NOT sick. If you seem to be sick, the sickness cannot be true, and it cannot exist. It only appears to exist because you believe in it and are maintaining it with your mind, doing it to "yourself". And your identification with the body makes it appear to be YOU who is sick. But you are immortal and can NEVER be sick. Even underneath the sickness you are unharmed.

So we are to not only recognize "you are doing it to yourself", we are to STOP doing it to ourselves and move into KNOWING ourselves. Moving out of "I am mortal and I can suffer" into "I am immortal and I cannot suffer." Our whole problem is that we keep trying to be mortal, we keep trying to die, we keep trying to be sick, we keep trying to attack ourselves and play at being victims.

"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. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

Jesus is literally saying that we as immortal beings are playing a game of death. Pretending to die, pretending to suffer, to be weak, to be unhappy, to be lost and attacked, to be hurt, to be temporary and destructible, to be offended and upset, to be vulnerable and threatenable, and to be anything less than permanently invulnerable. We are pretending to be mortal beings. And all of our blame of people and the world is just a cover-up for our suicidal ambitions.

We must choose eternal life again in order to stop pretending to be something that can suffer and die. To fully live is to live without suffering, sickness, fear or death. To live completely is to life forever. And to do this we must reclaim our immortality and stop pretending to be mortals.

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

This is our only issue. We are immortal beings pretending to be mortal. We need to identify clearly the many forms that "mortality" takes. The belief in death is also "I am upset by that person", and "they did this to me", and "I am sick", and "i am unhappy", and "there is reason to be afraid", and "my body is damaged", and "I cannot forgive them", and so on. Everything in the world is a form of death and the belief in death. And we need to learn to stop playing these games, stop participating in these activities, stop believing in these roles, and stop using them to try to prove that we are destructible.

If you want to not die, to never suffer pain, to never be sick, to never be unhappy, to never have your peace disturbed, to never be afraid or threatened, to never lose or grieve or feel guilty, then you need to enter into FORGIVENESS, which is the acknowledgement that you are still as God created you, there is no sin, there is no attack, nothing real can be threatened, and you are still eternal.

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more."

If you're seeing bodies, your vision is blinded by sight of form.

Christ's vision LOOKS PAST bodies to the truth and does not see physical forms.

"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."

"Christ's vision has one law. 2 It DOES NOT LOOK UPON THE BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 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. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"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. His Voice seems distant and difficult to hear because the ego, which speaks for the little, separated self, seems to be much louder. This is actually reversed. The Holy Spirit speaks with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming appeal. No one who does not choose to identify with the body could possibly be deaf to His messages of release and hope, nor could he fail to accept joyously the vision of Christ in glad exchange for his MISERABLE PICTURE OF HIMSELF."

"Christ's vision is the HOLY SPIRIT'S GIFT, GOD'S ALTERNATIVE to the ILLUSION of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death (seeing the physical world which is made of sin and death). It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which THIS WORLD IS BASED. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable."

"Learning MUST LEAD BEYOND THE BODY to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it."

"The body cannot be looked upon EXCEPT THROUGH JUDGEMENT. 2 To SEE THE BODY is the sign that you LACK VISION, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose."

"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."

"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."

"BEYOND THE BODY, beyond the sun and stars, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light"

"The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent FAR BEYOND THE BODY, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace"

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out BEYOND THE BODY, to let you and your brother be joined."

"Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship BEYOND THE BODY? 10 Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"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."

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the DARKNESS, not the light."

"Here is a WORLD established THAT IS SICK, and this THE WORLD THE BODY'S EYES PERCEIVE."

"It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him AS A BODY. 2 Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of HOLINESS? 3 For holiness is merely the result of letting THE EFFECTS OF SIN BE LIFTED (body veil disappears), so what was always true is recognized. 4 ****TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE****, for HOLINESS IS POSITIVE AND THE BODY IS MERELY NEUTRAL. 5 It is not sinful, but NEITHER IS IT SINLESS. 6 AS NOTHING, WHICH IT IS, THE BODY CANNOT MEANINGFULLY BE INVESTED WITH ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST OR OF THE EGO. 7 Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. 8 And both must be undone for purposes of truth."

"WHO SEES A BROTHER'S BODY HAS LAID A JUDGEMENT ON HIM, AND SEES HIM NOT. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; HE DOES NOT SEE HIM AT ALL. 3 In the darkness of sin he is INVISIBLE. 4 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. 5 Here are illusions and reality kept separated. 6 Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. 7 And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED AS A BODY, in unholy relationships with other bodies, SERVING THE CAUSE OF SIN an instant before he dies."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" 2 Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" 3 And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. 4 Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. 5 THE MEANS IS VISION. 6 For what the SEEING (with christ vision) look upon (overlooking bodies to something beyond) is sinless. 7 No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. 8 And WHAT HE SEES HE DID NOT MAKE (heaven), for it was GIVEN HIM TO SEE (by God), as was the vision that made his seeing possible."

"You believe that what your PHYSICAL EYES CANNOT SEE does not exist."

"Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK THE BODY, as it will surely do"

"For FAITHLESSNESS is the perception of a brother AS A BODY"

"IT DOES NOT LOOK UPON A BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created."

"Perception is a FUNCTION OF THE BODY, and therefore represents A LIMIT ON AWARENESS. Perception sees *THROUGH* THE BODY'S EYES and hears through the body's ears. It evokes the limited responses which the BODY makes."

"If you are SIN, YOU ARE A BODY, for the mind acts not."

"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. 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. Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS, ***AND OF HIS BODY***."

"(sin) The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet REASON SEES THROUGH IT easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes. "

"EVERYTHING that the BODY'S EYES can see is a MISTAKE, an ERROR in perception"

"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."

"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. "

There is a statement in A Course in Miracles which describes how God thinks. This is a very important statement because it gives us a strong idea of the workings of God's mind. And let's not forget that GOD IS REALITY, so how God functions is how reality functions...

"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."

Notice that it says there are PARTS in God's mind. EACH of those parts, which are therefore MANY parts, contains the WHOLE. God thinks of "whole parts". God has many thoughts in his mind, in reality, which produce many parts, each of which contains the same ONE whole.

When you ponder what kind of relationships are going on between these parts, you may realize that this is THE SAME as the holographic principle. The principle states that there is a whole, and the whole also has parts, and the whole is in every part, and every part contains or IS the whole, and therefore every part is whole.

If you read up a bit on how true holograms work, and I don't mean hollywood's "projected images" which are NOT holograms, you find the same thing happening. In a holographic image, such as those on your credit cards, EACH PART of the image actually contains THE WHOLE image. All of the information is crammed into each speck of the picture. Every part is whole.

That is very different to how things usually work in the world. Usually a part of something does NOT contain the whole. Usually parts are only PART OF the whole, are limited, finite, and lacking some of the information. For example an apple lacks the qualities of a banana. Apples don't contain bananas parts, nor do bananas contain apple parts. But it's not like that in God.

In reality, according to ACIM, God's mind is unlike spacetime. God's mind HAS parts which DO contain the whole. EACH PART IS the whole. Notice that it does not say that there "are no parts" in God. It quite explicitly says that the whole of God is in EVERY PART. And therefore there are many parts in God. Yes, that means multiplicity, and no, that does not mean the same as duality.

There is a key difference between many whole parts in God, and duality. In duality, each of the parts is NOT the whole, and each of the parts does NOT contain the whole. The parts are all different and separate. They do not SHARE anything. Parts which do not share is duality, or illusion. But this does not mean that you have to get rid of parts, in general, in order to find the opposite of duality.

The opposite of "parts which do not share anything", is actually "parts which share everything." The TRUE opposite of duality, is not non-duality, it is a holographic system in which EVERYTHING IS SHARED by the parts.

To put it into other words, God is the whole, and God also contains parts, because God has a mind which has thoughts. God has many thoughts, not just one. Each of these thoughts is a part of God's mind. Each of these thoughts is alive, and is a thought of life, and is in fact a living being. Each thought is a thought of WHOLENESS, because God is whole and can only think in whole terms, so EVERY thought contains the whole of God.

Therefore, as God thinks a thought, a WHOLE BEING comes into existence, which is a PART OF God, AND which shares the whole of God. "I am forever host to God." Sharing the whole of God is what "your inheritance" means. Each part of God inherits the whole of God. Each part of God, each thought of God, is A SON OF GOD - a soul. Or one of God's creations.

"God created His Sons (plural in reality) 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 because they were created neither partially nor in part."

Notice how ACIM states clearly that God has many thoughts: "the extensions (plural)" "ALL His Thoughts (pural)". This is a fact of reality. God has many thoughts. There is a multiplicity of thoughts in God and this is completely natural and real.

Notice how ACIM also states that all of his thoughts (his parts), EACH of his parts, "are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other". EACH son of God, each thought of God, is WHOLE WITHIN ITSELF, AND it shares the whole with the other sons of God. There is one whole - God - which is shared FULLY, by each and every thought of God. All of them are united (whole, one) within themselves as WHOLE BEINGS, AND are united (whole, one) across their RELATIONSHIPS with each other as a SONSHIP.

Notice how ACIM also states that each of these many thought-creations are not created "in part", or "partially". They are fully created. Which causes them to be, in effect, "fully standalone whole beings". In effect, "separate beings". I know people don't like the word separation but, it does not always mean ego. If there are separate beings (thoughts of God) which are THE WHOLE, simultaneously "many and one", their separateness is there at the same time as their unity. And THAT is what most people find hard to get their head around.

This is where most ACIM students fall flat on their faces attempting to understand how it can be possible that something can be separate AND one at the same time. It is not possible on Earth, for example, so we are not used to this idea. When two objects are separate, they are not one. When you join them together, they become one, and are no longer two. So we think that nothing can be one AND two at the same time. This has become HOW WE THINK. But it is NOT how God thinks. And thinking that God thinks (that reality functions) in this way is an error.

God does NOT think in terms of "either this or that" or "this is not that" or "it can be this or that but not both". Those are ego thoughts based in a separation thought system. They are ideas of parts which do not share anything. They are ideas of a lack of unity and oneness. They are selfish egoic unsharing ideas. And they also lead to a majorly false conclusion, that you would have to get rid of the many in order to have the one. That oneness means "not two" and "non-dual" and "not many". That is completely false.

It's false because God's mind does not function in the same way that spacetime functions. God's mind does NOT follow laws of separation of objects. God DOES have many thoughts, DOES contain many parts, AND STILL maintains oneness at the same time. That's what's so hard for many people to get their heads around, to understand it logically and to make sense of it.

It will not make sense when you think of it in normal logical terms. It will not make sense when you try to ask yourself, "is it this, or that?" It will not make sense when you demand that everything within God has to put be into one box, or another box, and that nothing can span the boxes. It will also not make sense when you demand that it's not POSSIBLE for there to be one AND many at the same time, or have an ASSUMPTION that reality HAS to be "only one thing" in order to have oneness.

This is why many parts of ACIM seem to be "contradictions", when considered using normal egoic logic. It becomes apparent that they are NOT CONTRADICTIONS when you consider them in terms of the holgoraphic principle. Because the holographic principle allows there to be MANY AND ONE at the same time, through sharing of the same whole, which DEFIES the contradiction. And btw the proper term for this relationship is MIRACULOUSNESS, which is the true nature of God.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is."

"Each Soul knows God completely (each part is the whole). This IS the miraculous power of the Soul (holographic relationship = miraculous). The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking (separation-based logic), in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This statement for example contains two major claims. 1) That God has only one son, and 2) That God knows ALL of his sons - meaning there are many of them. And since they are his sons, they are his direct creations, and MUST therefore exist in reality together. It goes on to reinforce that "they are not less", meaning there is more than one.

So now YOUR mind is going to look at this, and it's going to look at it WITH SEPARATION (alienating thinking). You're going to think in terms of, "it has to be either this, or that, and it can't be both". You will PROJECT SEPARATION onto it. You don't realize you do this because you do it all the time and have not questioning how you think, and have not realized that you are NOT thinking like God, and that your insistence on separating everything is corrupting reality.

So what you'll end up doing is you're going to try to SEPARATE OUT the two parts in the statement. You will identify that "God has one son", and you'll put that in one separate box, which does not SHARE with anything else. And then you will identify the idea "God has many sons", which you will put into a second SEPARATE box. THEN you will reason WITH THE EGO, that they can't both be true. That it has to either be one or many. That the two boxes do not share anything.

The conclusion that you'll come to, which will seem to make sense to you, based on how you think, is that EITHER God has one son OR many sons. And you will probably steer towards the "one son" because you see it as larger or more encompassing. Then you will side with HALF OF THE TRUTH, and HALF of ACIM's statements of fact, and claim that God only has one Son, and will go look and find quotes abut God having only one son, which you'll think backs up this idea. It's true, but it's not the whole story.

The truth is that in a holographic system, there is many AND one, that BOTH parts are true, that God does indeed only have one son, BUT, at the same time, that one son IS MANY sons. And their manyness coexists with their oneness. Without any ego in a PRE-SEPARATION STATE. This is because they SHARE EVERYTHING and overlap. Each son HOSTS all of God. Each son HAS everything. The many sons of God ARE the one son of God. They all make up the sonship. God experiences them as individual wholes AND as one whole son.

Note that there is no "exclusion" in this. Reality runs on laws of inclusion. Being the one son does NOT stop the many sons from being many. And being many sons does NOT imply they they are not one. In a holographic system the rules are very different. It is OKAY AND NATURAL for "many parts" to exist, provided they are ALSO THE WHOLE. It is the sharing of the wholeness that is the true ACIM definition of "oneness", NOT a "count of one to the exclusion of many".

This is largely why A Course in Miracles is NOT a non-duality teaching. Or to put it more accurately, non-duality only touches on HALF the story, identifying that there is a oneness, but with complete disregard for the many. Thus it focuses on only the wholeness of the hologram and not its parts. You can just as easily pull up many quotes about God's MANY creations, children, beings, individuals, minds etc, all of which are JUST AS VALID AND EQUAL as the quotes about the one son, AND are on the same level.

One of the very unfortunate things which happens when people cannot understand that God's reality is holographic and not linear, is that they cannot accept "the many" as being part of and coexisting with "the one". So they instead see the many as a separation idea, and separation in general becomes taboo. To remove all separation becomes a goal, EVEN IF it means destroying all of God's creations in the process. Driving everything toward "oneness only" EXCLUDES creation and is blind to reality's nature.

And then the only way to logically seem to RESOLVE the conflict, to undo the contradiction in the statements, is to relegate the many to the realm of the ego, wihch people think is the only place that manyness can exist. This does "make perfect sense" when you think in EGO TERMS, using separation-based logical reasoning, but it DOES NOT make sense in holographic terms. In holographic terms, it is a total mangling of A Course in Miracles, taking the perfectly valid whole parts of God's creation, his many whole children, and shoving them into a box with the ego, to try to get rid of them. This is a horrible BANDAID, and it turns FACTS INTO METAPHORS and REALITIES INTO ILLUSIONS.

This all leads to non-sense notions, which SEEM LIKE logical sense, that 1) there is only one son of God, 2) this one son must have split apart to form many, 3) the many sons is an ego illusion and not part of reality, 4) there is no-one else to have a relationship with, 5) when you wake up everyone is awake so you should selfishly focus on your own atonement etc.. Notice any popularly held beliefs here? Commonly distributed ideas of what ACIM is saying? Non-duality based interpretations handed down from teacher to teacher all making the same logical error?

This has literally become an entire MISREPRESENTATION of A Course in Miracles, taught by very prominent teachers the world over. It is a horrible logical bandaid placed over ACIM's holographic metaphysics by people who think using the ego's rules and do not even realize they're doing it. It has led to a "version" of ACIM that does not allow for sons of God or souls, does not permit free will, does not include relationships, does not support co-creators, does not acknowledge the Holy Spirit or Jesus, does not support performing miracles to help others, and in general points solely towards the non-dualistic eradication of God's Kingdom and the death of the self. Literally, it is UPSIDE DOWN and destructive and an attempt to destroy reality and its contents.

All of this has arisen PURELY because of a faulty logical reasoning, based on a lack of comprehension of the subtle SYSTEM of God's mind and its properties. God is not just another "space". God is not like space or time. God is transcendental and holographic in his nature. All of God thinks at once, and when all of God thinks, EACH thought contains all of God, because it is a thought OF wholeness BY wholeness. And this produces WHOLE creations, which are FULLY created, which are inherently therefore "independent individuals", but WHO ALSO are STILL the whole.

"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."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit."

Thus we have this perfectly legitimate and perfectly accurately worded statement in the urtext AND in FIP 3rd edition:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings*** who have everything ***individually***, but who want 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."

Notice a few things here. It is stating that God does encompass all being - he is the whole of being, all of existence. It is stating that regardless of this fact, GOD HAS CREATED. It is stating also that God has created many things, because he has created a PLURAL of beings as his many thoughts. Note also that while it uses the term "separate beings", which is ENTIRELY VALID, because each of these beings IS a WHOLE BEING, this does NOT imply that these beings are egos or that they do not share in oneness. It also states that EACH of these whole beings "has everything individually", which again reflects the holographic principle that the whole is in every part and every part (being/self) is whole. And this of course does mean that EACH being is an INDIVIDUAL, but NOT CUT OFF.

This again goes on to confirm not only that God created individual beings, but also that individuality and having a SELF is perfectly natural. "I am still as God created me." As in the first quote I gave, "what is natural to him is natural to you". YOU have a self that lives in heaven. You also have brothers in heaven who have selves, as individuals. This is because each of God's MANY thoughts are living beings, and you have relationships of wholeness with these selves making them PART OF YOU as well. The whole of God is shared by EACH brother, making your brother contain the SAME whole as you, and therefore each brother IS you also, and is part of God - while still being a separate distinct brother.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This again is a seemingly highly cryptic and contradictory statement WHEN you consider it in terms of separate boxes. When you think about it with the ego, you come to false conclusions. When one brother is all brothers, it DOES NOT mean that there is a single person standing alone. Or more to the point, there IS a oneness, but there also are still MANY brothers, many in number. They ARE brothers because they share the same parent - the same whole in the hologram. EACH brother is a brother (whole part), all the brothers are equals (share the same whole as one), and they each contain EACH OTHER. But they are still many!

Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. This again is a holographic principle, not a linear principle. It means that there are in fact many minds "(all the minds God created one with me)", and EACH of those minds contains ALL the minds. The fact that EACH mind contains the WHOLE of mind, does NOT eradicate the fact that there are many minds. The manyness, and the oneness, exist SIMULTANEOUSLY in a holographic system. And God's mind IS a holgoraphic system.

Unfortunately all of this is very rarely understood by ACIM students. It is not something I properly understood until recent years after a great deal of exploration. I rarely hear ACIM people talking about this, and I even more rarely hear ACIM people understanding it. Yet it is absolutely the CORE of A Course in Miracles's metaphysics. That God is not a solitary lonely figure, but in fact has many thoughts and many children, many co-creators who even themselves have many children. That REALITY in fact comprises ONE AND MANY, and NOT JUST ONE. That oneness is ALSO manyness.

Until there is a full grasp of this, ACIM students will continue to misunderstand and misrepresent A Course in Miracles. This isn't just something that a select few teachers have done, it is very widespread among teachers and students at all levels. The lack of recognition that the WAY YOU THINK is firmly rooted in separation, is the real culprit. The fact that we are all so used to thinking in terms of "separation of objects", because the physical world is set up this way and it works very well when describing SEPARATE THINGS. But it is HORRENDOUS when it is used to describe a state of reality which is nothing like "the separation" of space.

It is solely because everyone thinks in compartmentalizing terms of "either this or that" or "not that" or "not both", which is thinking WITH AND LIKE the ego, that we've resulted in these extraordinary skewings of the ACIM teachings. Especially in terms of trying to foce reality into a non-dualistic model, which is completely inappropriate and inaccurate. Also in terms of the very basic and wrong interpretation that "oneness" means "there's only God". Yes there is only God.... PLUS the many parts of God which God shares all of himself with, which are MANY in number, AND which are fully "separate" creations. Non-duality is only HALF of the story.

Even the term "separation" has become taboo because people think "the separation" is a bad thing and getting rid of separation is a good thing. This is a fallacy because God in fact does include many separate parts. It's just that those parts are ALSO joined. They are separate, AND they are joined. The true logical system of God's mind and thus reality is not "either this or that". It"s "this is BOTH this AND that." This is what the Golden Rule is based on - what is true of me is true of you. Either/or always means ego, and both/and always is true to God. Using any kind of either/or logic to describe reality is an ABSOLUTELY FAILURE.

Major teachers of ACIM never realized this. They came to faulty conclusions about the nature of reality and taught it to many people. They used the ego to reason as to what reality is like, and came to egoic conclusions about God's system of thought. This led them AUTOMATICALLY to the ONLY conclusions that an egoic thought process COULD come to, because their LOGIC drove them there. This results in these ideas of "only one son", "one dreamer", "fragmented son", "no others", "no free will", "no relationships", "no miracles", etc. This whole "model" of ACIM is completely false and has resulted PURELY form BAD THINKING. By people who do not understand the logic of God's mind.

This highly distorted and soul-destroying self-denying anti-creation version of ACIM needs to be pushed aside and replaced with a much more accurate holographic model. One which supports, is open to, allows for, and accounts for, the presence of many beings in heaven's reality. The fact even that you have real brothers, with real relationships, and that God has a real family, and that all of this is permanently real. That reality itself is not JUST oneneses, it is also an entire Kingdom of absolute creations.

This is the true form of A Course in Miracles. Not a non-dualistic flattening of God, not a creation-ignoring blob of singularity, but in fact a sort of "hybrid" idea which joins the one with the many in a perfectly natural system. Perhaps we can call it trans-duality. But it is definitely not non-duality. Yes duality is not real, yes bodies are not real, yes separate things are not real. But in God, there are also separate things which SHARE, and that guarantees they are still one. You DO have brothers, God DOES have children, and you ARE part of a divine family.

We have to open our minds to thinking WAY outside the box, and to stop thinking WITH boxes, if we want to understand what A Course in Miracles is really saying.

When I recently started to recognize that the whole world is fundamentally unreal, I started to experience "faith" in God. It seemed to require an UNBELIEF that this world is "true", in order to shift my allegiance and dependence over to the unseen Source.

Jesus talks about faith in the Course, in reference to putting our faith in the ego (faithlessness). We have faith in what we believe is true.

"Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. How can this be reversed?" - lesson 91. "Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols" - lesson 50

And from Chapter 17 "the call for faith": "Had you not lacked faith that it could be solved, the problem would be gone". "There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve."

If you believe the world is real and the problems are real and people's sicknesses and suffering is real and sin is real etc, that's a lot of faith being put into the ego. You are siding with it and you are siding with this world. You are convinced by physical appearances and believe this stuff is really happening. There is no faith there.

Now, prior to this shift for me, I've experienced many years of talking to Holy Spirit and Jesus, working with Angels, and having various other interactions with "the other side", and came to depend quite strongly on their guidance each day. And that over time developed trust. But, it didn't develop trust to the level that I'm starting to experience now. It really required me to question whether the ENTIRE WORLD was real and a source of truth.

Some major chunk of belief in the ego world has been withdrawn from it. You have to realize that this world does not contain any truth at all, and notice the ways that you keep trying to find truth in it, and how futile that is. It's like, all this time you were believing in the world and listening to it and trusting it and taking its word for the idea that it was fundamentally real, had factual truth to it, COULD be trusted, and that it was just something wrong with you that was making you incapable of successfully FINDING its secret truth.

And now, suddenly its cover is blown, you have been disappointed by it one too many times, it has lied to you, it has promised that you'll find truth and yet failed every time, and so now you have come to your senses. You withdraw your allegiance from it, withdraw your trust and belief in it, and now are all the wiser. It is NOT to be trusted and cannot be believed, because the truth is not out there. To get this, I think you have really open up to the idea that the whole world is not real in its entirety, including everything in it - people, bodies, planets, space, time, suffering, loss, pain, death, etc. All of it. A big giant lie.

Then you compare this world to God's truth and you start to find out that EITHER God's truth is true or this world is true. Because this world contains so many things that simply cannot fit into God's truth. You must learn and trust that God is unconditional love at all times, which MUST mean, God cannot and does not create suffering, sickness, despair or misery. He would not create death.

"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. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."

As you open up to this, it should dawn on you not just that your mind inside your body has ego in it, but that the body ITSELF is ego, and the physical universe ITSELF is ego. ALL OF IT! This will be somewhat mind blowing. But at the same time you'll discover that it makes incredible sense. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of things that Jesus says in the course suddenly click into place, clear as day. "There is no world", literally, because it is not real. Not just a metaphor, not just an interpretation of your mistaken perception's view of a real world, but literally this whole physical universe is just a DREAM. It really is true.

This is a major turning point in your awareness to realize this. Because now the foundation for all of the ego thought system is exposed. So many mistaken perceptions and beliefs and values are now brought into question in contrast to this new truth, that God's truth is true, God's truth CANNOT create worlds like this, and therefore this world CANNOT be reality. "This world is not my home".

For me, it was at the dawn of STARTING to accept this truth, that I started to find myself experiencing "faith". It was as though I was faithless before. I had now "sided with God". The world seemed much less believable, much less real and trustworthy. I started to notice when I was looking to anything IN IT as a "Source" of truth, or as a solution, or as an answer, or as a way to solve problems. The idea of the "source" of truth had shifted away from this world and began taking root in God. A God, a reality, that is beyond this illusory world entirely.

As Jesus explains, "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."

What this means is, your sense of REALITY and TRUTH shifts to an UNSEEN world, the world of Spirit, which is God's realm. Even though you may not see it, and you may not directly experience it yet, you have some amount of BELIEF that it contains the truth - a truth which must be more true than the physical world in its entirety. That trust, that belief, which spans and overlooks and bypasses physicality, produces FAITH.

Faith indicates that you trust something that is REAL, and are shifting to an awareness of its existence. At first it may seem distant and remote but over time that faith is going to increase. It's real faith because it is faith in reality. It also means that you're starting to recognize and depend on a SOURCE which is not of this world. A source which provides not only answers and truth, but a source which has power, which is creative, which can express through you, and which performs miracles. It's a source of abundance, a source of correction, and a source of being SUSTAINED by God.

That means, you are now shifting from a "horizontal" belief system in the ego, a linear belief system, where you look to other locations in physical space as the source and cause of things. Before, you believed the only way to be provided for was to earn money at a job. Or you believed the only way to heal was to identify a linear cause in this world. But now, you're going VERTICAL. And that means, you're looking to a SOURCE which completely transcends this world, whereby you actually have access to a creative, abundant source of everything, which can flow through and to you from an unseen place. A supernatural source of support.

Your faith in that source starts to rewrite all the rules about HOW you are going to be able to accomplish things in this world. How money is going to come to you. How health is going to be restored. How relationships will improve. Where you should go and what you should do. It all starts to be inspired by AND empowered by an unseen Source of supernatural POWER, which is God. And this reliance on this Source means that all the laws and rules of this world will be broken in demonstrating faith in it. Miracles. Spontaneous financial abundance. Spontaneous solutions to "problems" which has no basis in the physical "natural" world. It's not going to "come from" this world, because this world is not a real CAUSE. It's going to come from BEYOND this world, supernaturally!

When you go to do things, you will start finding yourself placing an otherworly level of trust in something you don't even see. If it says to go do something, your trust that it is true allows you to trust it and go do it, EVEN IF there are "natural" egoic reasons why not. And as you go do it, with FAITH IN that supernatural power, you go forth miraculously and with light and an empowerment that defies the laws of the ego world. It would seem crazy to depend on a Source of strength that you don't even see yet, but your faith in it will bring forth "witnesses", ie demonstrations and PROOF, that you were right to trust it, and this will only further amplify your reliance upon it.

Now you are no longer alone, you are no longer fighting through life with little power, you are no longer scraping to survive. You have all of Heaven behind you! And not just remotely, but like, working through you, orchestrating events, causing healing miracles, giving you strength that you could not have had if the ego were your source. Bypassing all illusions and all physical laws completely.

God really is a "supernatural God", a miraculous God. This is what we are to come to learn to trust and depend on. Removing our faith in the ego's world and the ego's laws and the ego's version of reality, we are able to shift allegiance to trusting and depending on God for everthing. For me I feel like I am only just getting started in this, and experimenting with it, but I can only see an exciting trend in future towards INCREASE in this faith, INCREASE in miraculous living, INCREASE in abundance from God, INCREASE in joy and happiness, and INCREASE in trust.

Later, as Jesus promises, that which you had ego-defying faith in, beyond the world, which was unseen, will become more and more seen, and more and more demonstrated, to the point where it is no longer unseen. It is all around you and through you. And you will become more directly in the experience of God, finally FULLY believing that only His truth is true, and that there has never been another truth to replace it. YES!!

It may not be obvious, but A Course In Miracles is basically trying to get you out of a state of mortality, into a state of immortality. Think about all the ways that it does this.

That you are not at the effect of the world.

That nothing in the world causes you or brings oppression or makes you sick or afraid.

That you have the power to dominate everything you see.

That your body has no power over the mind and mind is stronger than the body.

That in the rusurrecetion you overcome death entirely.

That all forms of suffering are forms of mortality/death.

That you are to dis-identify from being an illusion such as believing in the body or the world.

The fact you are at home in God, immortal and permanent, merely having a dream of death.

The teaching that your attack thoughts attack your invulnerability, that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts, and that without attack thoughts you are invulnerable.

The secret of salvation, that you realize you are doing everything to yourself, have made a wrong decision which caused you to not be at peace, and now you want to choose immortality again.

The application of forgiveness which is the same thing as atonement and true perception and salvation and resurrection, nothing short of overcoming death and becoming absolutely transcendent of all suffering.

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God", clearly indicates that you as an immortal child of God should never be choosing death, which means never choosing mortality. Which means claiming your immortality.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt", the entire teaching about what you use the body for, that death is a choice and you cannot die unless you choose to, and the use of the body to demonstrate your brother’s innocence or sinfulness, is all geared towards you acting like an immortal being not a suffering sinner.

Every single aspect of the Course is geared not merely towards you becoming peaceful and dying, or happier but sick, but in fact is aimed at taking you totally beyond all forms of suffering, death, sickness, unhappiness and vulnerability of every kind. To never again be affected by anything. Nothing short of immortality. Never again to suffer, never again to die.

This is the central core of the course. "There is no death, the Son of God is...." IMMORTAL!

Every lesson, every quote, every paragraph, is all speaking to the vast collage of illusions we have invented to try to PRETEND to be mortal in a dream of death. To pretend it is possible to die. To make-believe things that seem to crumble, decay, erode and end. An entire fiction of a world that seems to come and go, having beginnings and endings which clearly are not eternal.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates MUST BE ETERNAL as himself."

It’s not merely a matter of whether the world is real, it obviously cannot be because nothing in it has immortality. It is a dream of death, and there really is no world.

This is all over the course. Immortality, invulnerability, not being affected, permanence, peace that lasts forever, God’s creations and minds carrying on uninterrupted forever, nothing being able to attack or sin against God/reality, nothing real being affected, the Son of God being beyond death, it all points to IMMORTALITY being your totally natural state of being.

"You cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

This is also why "the body cannot contain you who are life". It’s also why "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." This is why God’s Kingdom is an IMMORTAL LIVING FOREVER WORLD OF LIGHT.

Any time we entertain ideas of suffering, sickness, death, fear, being affected, caused, threatened, anything that suggests or even hints at us not being invulnerable and immortal, we are "playing dead". Any time we take illusions of attack, vulnerability, suffering, or any kind of non-immortal activity seriously, we are believing we are NOT immortal. And we believe this about others too when we fear for their life. That condemns us both to death, or at least tries to. No-one can really die!

Because your are immortal, you ARE still as God created you. God did not create you capable of death. Or sin. Or attack. OR murder. You cannot do any of these things in reality. So you DREAM of being in a world where all FALSE things are possible, where IMPOSSBILITIES seem possible, where everything is subject to attack and impermanence, and where death seems to strike at every thing that moves. An entire fantasy world that runs against every law of God and opposes His Will, trying to prove His children can die.

"The laws of this world go against your nature." This world goes against your IMMORTALITY.Your natural condition is to live utterly free of all attack, impervious to all suffering, incapable of death, incapable of unhappiness, and absolutely permanent in all your ways. Absolutely incapable of being attacked ever! You are not RELATIVE to life, you are ABSOLUTELY ALIVE. Forever. Nothing can affect you against your will unless YOU WILL TO BE AFFECTED. And then you are FAKING IT, because your immortality CANNOT be affected. All sickness, suffering and death is FAKE. A huge lie.

You are as permanent as God. Any attempt to believe, perceive, suggest, portray, act, think, or live otherwise, is a denial of your immortality. It’s an attempt to make believe that you are not immortal and that you can suffer. And every single form of non-immortality or vulnerability is a self-chosen, self-inflicted attack and an attempt to prove you are not immortal. And because all such attempts to change your unchangeability can never work, they are absolutely futile make-believe.

Death is futile. It has no causal effect whatsoever upon the Son of God. It does not work. Everything you are doing to make yourself suffer is a waste of time. It has no effect on your immortal spirit. And you are only your immortal spirit. Every single way that you pretend to be afraid, sick, suffering and dead, is absolutely 100% chosen by you as part of your attempt to ACT AS IF YOU CAN DIE. It’s an attempt to prove death is real and happening to you. How can death happen to someone who is IMORTAL? How can an immortal being be SICK or suffer or even unhappy in any way, thinking that something can disturb its permanent peace?

Potent questions to ask oneself:

1) Am I using this to pretend to not be immortal?

2) Why am I trying to prove I am not immortal?

3) Why am I believing that my immortality can be affected by this?

4) Does this have any power whatsoever to change what God created?

5) Why am I lying by pretending I can suffer?

6) Why am I denying that I cannot be affected by anything?

You are an immortal being, temporarily hanging out in a dream world where everything is an illusion of mortality. A world of death is obviously not the natural environment for a being of eternal life.

Yet the body can become a sign of life to those grown tired of the fetid stench of death. It can become a symbol of immortality, representing eternal life. Through its loveliness and health it can teach by demonstration with a power greater than a thousand tongues that there has been no attack, no vulnerability, no damage, no mark of sin, no evidence or proof of viciousness and no sign of evil effects. It can represent wholeness and healing and innocence and invulnerability, and thus teach this to everyone.

To awaken fully is nothing short of waking up to immortality, to eternal life in Heaven, the end of all sickness and death, the cancellation of sin and guilt, and a return to unlimited permanence. It requires the end of the body, which is nothing. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge."

NOTHING REAL CAN BE THREATENED, because it is immortal! YOU are real. You cannot be threatened! You are totally permanently alive. Forever and ever. Why do you believe you can or have been affected by anything or anyone ever? You have done nothing but attack your own inherent invulnerability, trying to pretend you can suffer. Isn’t it time to own up to being immortal?

I used to think I knew what this meant. But the definition is changing right before my eyes.

I used to believe that if I was loved unconditionally, it meant that God loves me regardless of various attributes that I have, even if I keep those attributes. So let's say I have a crooked leg, and I look like I have the hind legs of an ass, I would perhaps say, well, God still loves me despite the fact that I can't walk straight to save my life. And that seemed somewhat comforting. But there was always a certain unease about this because, like, how could there be complete love at the same time as bodily forms or illusions existing?

In ACIM we're taught that only the truth is true and only God's creation exists and nothing else exists. That there is no world. That there hasn't been a separation. That illusions are not real. So that really means, my crooked legs do not exist. So God loving me unconditionally really has to be redefined, because while it is always true that God loves unconditionally, it also has to be true that God ONLY loves that which is not conditional. God cannot be unconditional about conditionality. Having crooked legs is conditional, limited, and an illusion, and the ego wants to run with it and get God's approval.

So this really brings into question, WHO AM I. Who is the `I` or `me` that God is loving unconditionally. Does God love this limited illusory me unconditionally, OR... is God loving some other `real` me that is actually lovable? Does he perhaps OVERLOOK my crooked legs and is fixated only on the Christ in me, the real me, which he loves without condition or limitation, recognizing that the Christ in me is not limited or conditioned? And what happens to my self-hate if I accept his love - do I keep it? No. If *I* want to be unconditionally loved, then I need to identify myself AS my `unconditioned love self`, rather than my ego, or my body, or my behaviors, or how I look, or how I believe I am not lovable, which includes ALL the limiting ideas about myself. Those are not really ME.

It would be nice if my illusory identities as a body, as a behavior, as a set of thoughts etc, would be unconditionally loved. And it is true that God is ALWAYS in a state of loving with no requirements. BUT, and because of His permanent perfect love, He loves the TRUTH of what I am BECAUSE he does not see or recognize or acknowledge the bullshit that I am not. So I am not really a body with a crooked leg, or with a funny walk, or a person with a strange belief, or someone who talks in a weird accent. God isn't loving me unconditionally because of these things, but IN SPITE OF these things, in recognition of who I actually AM and not who or what I think I am.

So I guess there's this ego/new-agey version of unconditional love that says my body is real, my ego is real, I am a separate self, and at the same time, God sees and acknowledges this separate self and gives the old `nod and wink` that this separate self can be kept and loved. But that's not really possible. Here's the truth. If God, as LIGHT, were to shine toward these illusory forms of `myself` in attempt to love them unconditionally, THEY WOULD DISAPPEAR. They would be HEALED. Because all of these forms of self are actually forms of error, forms of separation, and forms of sickness. They are symbols of separation that's aren't real or TRUE and God can't love a lie.

So yes I could be in a transitionary phase where I still have a wonky leg and I somehow open up to some amount of uncondtional love, but as I do so, as I allow that love to enter `me`, it MUST transform me, and MUST go beyond my wonky leg. The unconditional love doesn't say "I love you even with your crappy leg". It says, "I love you BESIDES and IN SPITE OF and BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE a crappy leg." It looks to the real me, the Christ me, the perfect me.

This is how I am seeing unconditional love being redefined for me. As I open up to allow God to love me more, God is reminding me of who I really am and I am 'becoming love', awakening to love, which is transcending all of the excuses and reasons WHY I am not love or not lovable. All my sicknesses are expressions of an attempt to not be loved. All of my sense of separation from God is an expression of my attempt not to be loved. All of my victimization is an attempt not to be loved or to justify staying unlovable. All of these forms and illusions are barriers against love. Yes, love loves all the time, but love doesn't love what doesn't exist. Love doesn't love forms or bodies or illusions or images or thoughts.

Love loves SO THAT these things DO NOT EXIST. It is the same as fore-giveness - fore-giveness looks with love SO THAT mistakes in perception are not made and so that judgement doesn't arise. Similarly love loves uncondtionally SO THAT heaven is always maintained, so that you are always Christ, and so that NOTHING ELSE CAN HAPPEN. Unconditional love sustains reality, it doesn't justify or give a nod of acceptance to illusions. Love loves SO THAT `conditions` do not arise - it doesn't love real conditions! Love loves so that there isn't anything that 'needs' to be loved, because it IS loved, just as forgiveness fore-gives so that there is nothing TO forgive because all IS forgiven.

And yet love is gentle so it can seem like it does this. It can seem I am lovable in spite of my crooked horse legs. But really what I'm doing, if I'm allowing myself to be loved, is actually relinquishing identification with the horse legs and identifying myself AS love. I can't keep illusions if I want to accept a transcendental love.

God loves me - not the body me - my spiritual REAL ME - unconditionally. God loves you unconditionally - the real you. If God were to be ABLE To love your stupid illusions as though they were real, you would be AWARE of unconditional love even while you are separate from God! That's totally impossible. That's why you are asleep - because you do NOT have awareness of who you really are or the fact that God loves unconditionally. God's unconditional love doesn't violate the blocks that YOU put in place to keep that love out, in the name of justifying and glorifying and SPIRITUALIZING the forms of error that your ego is worshipping. The ego wants to spiritualize everything unreal by saying God loves it. Nope. God loves SO THAT ILLUSIONS DO NOT EXIST.

God does not make your illusions real and doesn't 'approve' them for your ego to keep. Otherwise the ego would have perfect justification for staying separate from God. God sees you - who you really are, as Christ, as divine perfection, and it is YOUR REAL SELF that He loves, and it is your real self that you really are. He loves to remind you of who you are IN love, AS love, WITH love. All the rest of 'you' that you want to be loved - your manky body, your crappy illusory life of suffering... its horse shit. You don't love it because you CAN'T. Love it and it must be HEALED. Life sucks BECAUSE you refuse to accept love. Love would literally CHANGE your life, not make it 'acceptable'.

So let's admit it. You don't REALLY want God to love your crooked legs, do you? You don't really want God to come along and say, yup, I see you look like the back end of an ass, and I love you anyway. You don't want that. You'd be like, well, that's nice, but now I still look like a mule. What you want is fricking HEALING. You want to remember you are not a body. You want to be healed in your mind so that your identity can be revealed as Christ - as immortal Spirit, not as some donkey. You don't really want God to unconditionally love your shit. You should want God to lift you into the awareness that you are ONLY LOVE and nothing else. Only the truth is true.

God loves you. God doesn't condemn your illusions because they don't exist. But God does want you to remember how much you are loved, and you can only do that by realizing you are love itself and nothing else. Only love can be loved. All the 'rest' that you think you are 'left with' that God doesn't love... don't worry, it doesn't really exist and it's not who or what you are. Isn't that a relief? Did you really want God to give total approval for your pile of shit ego? He can only love what is real. So let go of what you are not and return to an awareness of love as it really is.

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?

When considering "what are you?", the body could be said to be responsible for a vast majority of what you think you are, including most of your personality and aspects of your mind.

All bodies are different, even if there are similarities. All brains are different. The body gives rise to a superficial personality as well. Within this personality there are different parts and some of these parts even conflict with each other, are activated in different scenarios, and have sub-personalities within them.

Consider what happens in the eyes of your soul, as it passes through different lifetimes with different bodies. Sometimes you are a man, sometimes a woman. So right away your seeming gender is not a consistent and permanent part of your real self. Sometimes you are gay, sometimes straight, sometimes asexual. Your sexuality is not a permanent part of what you are.

Sometimes you are black, sometimes white, asian, mexican, chinese, english, who knows. None of these qualities or ethic backgrounds or body types or genetic materials defines what you really are. Sometimes you have brown eyes, sometimes blue or green. Sometimes you have dark hair, sometimes blond, or red, or whatever. None of this is part of your permanent identity.

The body also gives rise to personality. Personality springs from the various qualities and focuses and 'talents' and attributes and wirings of the brain and the rest of the system. People are born with certain qualities, which give rise to preferences and interests.

Some are born with a strong intellect, while others may lack the precision and brightness of thought. Some are born highly emotional, while others may be shallow. Some are born flamboyant and dramatic, while others may be more subdued and withdrawn. Some are extroverted, some introverted. These are largely all based on the nervous system and the brain wiring.

You'll notice also that you generally keep roughly the same personality throughout the lifetime. Even if you're working on spiritual things, your voice is much the same, your mannerisms, your way of walking, your intonations, your subtle ways and nuances, all much the same still.

In the course for example in the manual for teachers, Jesus remarks about how teachers of God retain these attributes:

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct." UrM5A1

So here he's saying that the physical appearance of the body is going to be much the same, to the body's eyes their bodies are all different still, they have different backgrounds and experiences, they have superficial personalities still which we quite distinct etc. None of that changes just because your mind is waking up. And notice how it says the personality is superficial - ie appears to be an entire character, but isn't really you.

You'll notice also for example that people who go through awakenings don't suddenly really change their physical or personality nature or style. They still have the same body, the same general personality, the same way of talking, the same sense of humour, the same general way of expressing etc. Their personalities are much the same. They might be more serene and calm, more peaceful, happier, lighter, healthier, etc... but in general the body and personality stay much the same.

So that being the case, we have to ask ourselves, WHAT exactly is your real self, if all of these many varied bodies and personalities are NOT what you are? And how do we transcend or rise above or dis-identify from this superficial personality, if it is not our real self?

You might've been thinking all this time, doing the course, waking up, that "you" or "your mind" is somehow "your real self". That you are applying things "separate from" some kind of lower ego self or body. But perhaps that isn't true. Perhaps the personality that you've been using and thinking is "you", is actually part of the body's personality. Maybe this whole character, this person, that you think you've been all this time, isn't actually you at all. And maybe your real self is actually so far out of sight and out of your awareness that you don't even know it's there.

"You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has INTERFERED with reason. Reason lies in the other self you have CUT OFF from your awareness." UrT21F5

Perhaps you've divided up parts of your fictitious self and called some parts the real you and other parts the fake you. But maybe all of it is the fake you. Maybe quite honestly, the whole of what you think has been you all this time, is not you at all, except for what? What exactly is left over, when you take away the body, the gender, the sexuality, the nervous system, the brain wiring, the personality, the preferences, the things you feel comfortable with, the compatibilities and incompatibilities? What part of any of your experience is actually the real you at all?

We're told that CHOICE is at least a freedom we still have, which is part of the mind. Here is Jesus saying that even our seeming "consciousness" is not really what our real mind is like.

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. CONSCIOUSNESS is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that consciousness cannot reach knowledge." UrU2A6

So it seems that in some regard, "consciousness", in its essence, which is a separation-based psyche, and part of the larger "mind", is the only part of our experience and reality that we would retain if we awaken. And indeed consciousness itself is based on a split mind, and that split will end when we wake up, restoring us to "awareness". But it is mind that has belief and denial and choice, and mind is where we can have perceptual changes and alterations to values and desires.

Yet some parts of what seem to be mind may not really be our real mind. And many of our thoughts are not even what ACIM would consider real thoughts. Ego thoughts, separate thoughts, thoughts about bodies, thoughts of attack, etc, these are illusions of thoughts, in what is really a sort of blank mind not really thinking anything real. But we have to work with thoughts to get our mind to re-align with spirit.

"Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors." UrT1B27E

"You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training." UrW94L4

"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth." UrW1Ln11

So it seems that overall the "course" or curriculum is about training the mind to be put back into its proper role as a medium for the soul to use for creative constructive purposes. This mind is trained by various practices, in the mind, including a shift in a sense of identification. From believing that you are the body, or that you are even the body's "personality", to identifying yourself as Christ/Spirit/Soul/Sonship. And this includes dis-identifying from the body's "personality" character.

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification." UrT1B26

Along the way, we have to sort out and question, what parts of what we think are our "self" are actually part of self, and what are just transient temporary things. All aspects of the body are not permanent and not part of a permanent identity. Even across lifetimes. Whatever body attributes seem locked in for a lifetime, are irrelevant to what you are. But this also extends to major personality traits, the way you handle emotions, the sensitivity level with which you experience the world, the way you speak, how your body moves as an expression of your sense of your "character", all of this stuff is superficial.

I think then at some point we have to realize, even our personality here is not likely to really be true to how we are in spirit. This "person", this character in a dream, that you thought was you, maybe that too is an illusion. Maybe it would change radically if you switched bodies. Maybe none of these personalities are real personalities. Maybe all that is left over in your awareness that is real, is a much more fundamental underlying "pure awareness", coupled with the magnificence of the soul and the attributes of being part of God.

For now, this "you" that you have to work with, is like an interface to the world, a tool... just a figure in a dream, like a puppet, complete with a built-in software character, that has certain characteristics. A sort of persona. And you can work through that and use it, but must find a way to not regard it as your self. If you could see all the seeming selves you've been across lifetimes this would be far more obvious.

The fact that the personality is part of the body, and that we have a superficial egoic mind, is revealed in this paragraph, where we're told that "the body" "seeks for friends and enemies", it has a concern for safety, it looks for comfort, it looks for pleasure, it avoids hurtful things. These could not be attributed to a mindless body, they have to mean that the body and personality-mind are part of one system, this "character" of a dream person, a false self comprising physicality AND personality, which interacts with the world and has motivations and actions and preferences - like a favourite ice cream and favourite music. This is all part of the body, and not part of what you really are.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart." UrT27I1

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU." UrT21F3

"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."

There are many clues in ACIM about miracle working and this is one of them. It says that to perform a miracle, you should BEGIN by perceiving light. What is light?

In workbook lesson 121, "Forgiveness offers everything I want", there is a procedure in which you start by pulling up an image of a guilty person that you want to apply forgiveness to. You start to see light in this person. You look for ways to credit them and see their merits and recognize the good they've done and so on to try to frame them in a more forgiving, charitable, honoring, allowing and respecting kind of way. Gradually you cover the person in this light and it replaces the guilt THAT IS YOURS in your mind.

So then what we learn is that this lesson is taking you from a state of darkness to a state of light. Darkness is guilt and attack/sin and fear. To shift "into the light" as it were, is to basically try to seek out the light, the good, the application/gratitude, the recognition of the light in someone. That the persons not entirely evil, dark, a monster or an enemy. You move towards innocence and away from guilt. Toward forgiveness/miracles and away from grievances.

So if we're not IN the light already, then we need to get INTO the light. We get into the light by healing OURSELVES, through this kind of forgiveness process in which we gradually replace darkness with light, becoming willing to move towards innocence and away from guilt. It's our own guilt that needs undoing at this point so that we can become miracle-minded and miracle-ready, so that later we can get into miracle-doing.

When we've DONE this, and we're got our minds into a state of forgiveness and light, we're more loving toward ourselves and others. It's the state of light that we need to get to BEFORE we can perform miracles for others as EXPRESSIONS. This is why "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." You have to purge out all the guilt and sin and fear and rise up into the light, so that miracles are not blocked by a lack of love. Miracles are always expressions of or FROM a loving mind.

Once you can get yourself INTO the light, now you are ready to perform a miracle FOR another person. This is also described here... "Tell him that the implied lack of love that his version contains is WAY off the Mark, and misses the level of right thinking entirely. He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

So Jesus is saying that first if YOU are not in the light you can't work a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR others, and YOU need a miracle to heal your OWN perception first. You work a miracle - ie you transition from guilt to innocence, within YOURSELF, on behalf of yourself, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This gets you up into the state of light. Then when you're IN the light, you are in a position to "begin by perceiving light." Similarly "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

So we have to first work on ourselves to become lighter and filled with light and filled with the Holy Spirit. It is this light, or LOVE, which forms an ability to SHARE. You can ONLY share love because love is a bridge that joins everyone together in openness and welcome. The love MUST be present in order to perform a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR another person. To GIVE what you have received. You cannot give God's power WITHOUT love.

So we focus on becoming more loving by removing these heavy chains of guilt and lifting our minds up into lighter states of forgiveness and innocence. This gives us ACCESS to the power of God through the Holy Spirit, and activates the LOVE that bridges to JOIN with another person. This is some fairly high-level stuff which is why miracle-working in general is largely reserved for the more advanced "more forgiving" individuals who have purified themselves of ego/guilt. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

Once you "perceive the light" in another person.... ie, see them IN A FORGIVEN STATE first, THEN you are in a position to transfer miraculous power to them as a "creative energizer", which GIVES THEM ENERGY, and thus gives them LIFE, and raises them from death or lack/fear. Once you are in the light, you are also in a position of knowing your function and how you share the Holy Spirit's function, and are now willing and able to ALLOW HIM TO HEAL THROUGH YOU.

Jesus says we are to "continually extend" the light. That's like a transmission of healing love power. He says we should "accept its acknowledgement", which I think means to SEE the light in the other person (the holy spirit effectively) ie forgive them, and thus witness or acknowledge that it IS THERE in them already. The divine spark is in them already. We need to see this light in them - frame them as innocent and immortal - and acknowledge that this is the truth about them ALREADY. ie "there is nothing wrong with you".

Then Jesus says you cannot bring light OF yourself, because you're nothing without God. But the Holy Spirit can bring light THROUGH you and extend through you as you "hold the door open". Effectively you channel the holy spirit's power, and let HIM amplify the life in the other person, through your mind. This also lifts you AND the other person up. You let the Holy Spirit do the healing by you "holding the light" for the recipient and letting him apply healing.

So the main ingredients boils down to:

1) Invite the Holy Spirit to work upon you, then through you.

2) Get yourself healed and into the light first. This takes a lot of purification/forgiveness work.

3) Be in a loving state, either by inducing it or receiving it or imagining it and feeling it.

4) Extend the light and see it in the other person, ie see them as forgiven - see their real immortal unchanged self and don't accept their ego/sickness.

5) Let the love join you with your brother and act as a bridge for sharing/holy relationship. Be in the light together as one.

6) Let the Holy Spirit move "across" (transcend) this bridge and also increase within your brother's mind. Amplify the light in him.

"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. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear, but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will UNDERSTAND it. Understanding is APPRECIATION, because what you understand you can identify WITH, and by making it part of YOU you have accepted it with love. This is how God Himself created YOU, in understanding, in appreciation, and in love."

"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him."

So Jesus says there is an absolute nature within you brother which never changes. That is your brother's immortal self, it is permanent and still as God created it. The Holy Spirit reflects that and is one with that.

Your brother THINKS he can change himself and that he has, which is why he perceives he is NOT immortal and is sick. He does not KNOW HIMSELF. But the true nature of him is STILL in there behind his self deception and denial.

By recognizing the UNCHANGED SELF in him, the absolute, you are helping to change his mind about himself FOR him, by holding a different view of him.

By recognizing your brother's immortal self - the holy spirit in him so to speak - you are APPRECIATING your brother in gratitude. Recognizing him for what is true of him. Thanking God for him. Then by appreciating your brother's reality, it is recognized as part of YOUR SELF, and you now join with your brother as one.

It's all about light/love/life, being IN it, sharing it, giving it, seeing it, amplifying it, allowing the Holy Spirit to increase it, acknowledging/appreciating it, recognizing it, sharing it. Through this "joining of minds in light" which we might also call "sharing innocence and immortality", resurrection takes place mentally and physically.

"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 is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

"Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING."

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 ego's problem solving solution is to separate. It will tell you that the way to forgive something and free yourself from suffering at its expense, is to separate from it and/or attack it.

The way you'll separate from it is to deny it, try to believe it's not real, to see it as not happening, attach a label of illusion to it, affirm over and over how God didn't create it, label it as duality, and generally weaponise various parts of ACIM against it to "make it go away."

This is what the course calls "forgiveness to destroy". It demands that either a) the thing itself changes so that you're not affected, or b) you destroy its existence so that you're not affected. Both entail you not really changing yourself, while increasing separation - but disguised as "forgiveness."

The main problem is sin. Sin is a combination of two things: form and meaning. Meaning or interpretation is given to a form and associated with it, but then it seems like the form IS the meaning and you're dealing with ONE thing. One object that is evil, one act that is bad, one person body that is sinning, etc.

The combination of ego interpretation and form, makes it seem like your only solution is to get rid of the form. You have to throw it away in order to free yourself from the meaning. This immediately produces the spiritual bypass in which experience is denied, feelings are repressed, guilt is not looked at, beliefs are not questioned, the world is denied, bodies are denied, and the person tries to "escape" from the world of form.

The insight that HAS to happen for proper forgiveness to take place, is to recognize that "the problem" IS a combination of two things - form and a meaning you're giving it. You have to recognize that YOU are contributing something extra to the thing, you're adding something to it, you're giving it a meaning. And that means that there is an ASPECT of the thing that you can change your mind about.

This then leads to the realisation that if you were to think differently, believe differently, undo guilts, change your attitude, interpret in a lighter higher way, or generally alter YOUR MIND, it would change how you experience the thing. We're not talking here about doing this to make the form of the thing go away, but we're talking bout making the FALSE MEANING go away by REPLACING it with a higher meaning.

What this then does is it acknowledges the continued possible presence of the form without bypassing, without denying it's there, without trying to make it unreal, without attacking it with quotes, without ignoring the body, without numbing the feelings, without pretending you're not unhappy, and without denying the guilt.

Instead of being a "shove this thing into the pit of hell so that it's out of my way", it's more like "I'll change MY contribution to this so that I see it in a better way". This entails an honesty and a willingness to question your beliefs, to consider that your interpretation might be mistaken, to have a little willingness to admit to being wrong, and certainly a willingness to stop denying what you are experiencing. In fact you need to acknowledge the forms that are taking place EVEN MORE, before you can properly move into forgiveness.

For example if you are full of guilt but are in denial about it, you will project that guilt onto forms. And then you'll associate it with the forms. And then you'll think that the form + guilt is actually just "formguilt", like it's locked in as one thing. In order to move away from this delusion, you would have to be willing to stop denying that you feel guilty, stop denying that you believe you are guilty, and look at the guilt with the Holy Spirit and find a better to look at it so that you can overlook it and see your innocence.

As no time are we looking to write off, ignore, relegate, label, attack, dismiss, deny, pretend, or otherwise "make go away" anything physical or emotional or mental. We just want a different ANGLE on it. As soon as we start getting into "I want to make this go away", we're very likely binding meaning with form and are trying to get rid of it all at once. And that means we're going to move into a "reaction to sin", with a counter-measure of forgiveness to destroy. And then we're in a bypass.

When we use high-level lofty truths, the proper use of them is NOT to deny form or experience, or to create another separation or rift between heaven and earth. It's to use it to steer the mind towards truth WITHOUT negating or attacking or denying the illusory world. If there is any hint of "separate from it" in your forgiving, you're got some ego in there.

For example if you say "there is no world" and you're using that to try to write off the world and make it go away, that's a spiritual bypass and an attack. If you are saying it with the purpose of affirming your true identity and increasing the recognition of what the world IS, that's a proper use of it. There's a subtle difference there, but it's also huge.

If we say for example "I am not a body" the purpose isn't to destroy the body or make bodies go away. The purpose should be to affirm your identification with spirit and shift your identification away from the body. This isn't to be used as a statement with a hidden meaning of "bodies aren't real" or "bodies don't exist." Because the truth is that you DO believe very strongly that bodies exist. Your aim is to dis-identify from them not destroy them and not see them, at least not until much much later when you're ready for that.

We have to therefore always be careful to check whether how we're USING the course is using denial properly. If we've got some "make it go away" vibes in there, we're introducing some ego. If we're weaponising statements in order to "defend against", we're got some ego in there. If we're trying to say I am immortal spirit in an effort to get rid of the body and shut it out, that's a huge bypass.

Overall, the best way to avoid bypassing is to adopt an attitude that you are in this world, in this body, and you will remain in this world in this body, even when you are very close to awakening. An attitude that you will find peace even here in this world, and not initially attempt to escape the world in order to find it.

An attitude that you will repurpose and re-use the body and express the love of God through it to others here in this world while you have it. That you'll use the body for teaching and healing, rather than trying to not have a body at all.

That instead of trying to attack the world away, you'll find a way to forgive it and arrive at the forgiven world, seen here in a body with christ vision. An attitude that you will STAY AND HELP, rather than trying to "escape from hell", that you will be a healer and a teacher of God and bring light INTO this world. To be the light of the world!

As soon as the course is being used in an effort to escape from the world, you're going to go into a spiritual bypass. As soon as you're trying to write the world off, get rid of the body, demonise death, repress feelings, deny suffering, or make the whole of spacetime out to be some defective sinful thing that you want nothing to do with, you're going to be bypassing.

This bypass results in escaping into the intellect, using very lofty level 1 statements to try to "write off" the world and the body, using non-duality ideas to invalidate everything you experience, makes you sacrifice and control and limit everything you do including anything you enjoy, produces a cold dismissive attitude of rejection, develops a sense of total separation between heaven and earth, and generally increases the ego.

Jesus suggests to avoid this "top down" sort of approach where we just try to hammer high truths into our minds or force ourselves to believe things. We're meant instead to work from the bottom up, from where we are at now, without denial of experience or feelings or suffering, and work with whatever we're open to as the next step, to question our current beliefs and consider a better way to look at things. So that we can work our way up from the bottom, instead of pretending to sit on the mountain-top hurling down judgements.

"And as a man, I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, so much as to CORRECT error from the bottom up."

"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."

"Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone."

"When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share this light with you."

"I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here."

In the Kingdom of God, His creations and all of their creations are fully open to each other and share everything lovingly. Each of these beings is made of love and it is through love the they have full access to each other, to join and commune intimately.

In this way, communication is sharing and joining and oneness or kinship, whereby you can merge with others, overlap with them, share space with them, and directly connect with what they are. To communicate soul-to-soul or mind-to-mind is full communication.

Love is required in order to accomplish this communication or communion, because only in love is there a full openness to communicate fully. Only by communicating lovingly can you communicate at all.

When love is lacking, which occurs through an attempt to attack rather than love, communication breaks down. What would appear to be an outward attack is actually a withdrawal away from others and away from God and from yourself. This is what happens when you become "selfish".

Jesus says this of your soul, in contrast to your ego:

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

God therefore created souls/sons to be FULL of Self, meaning expressing fully as a being in an unlimited way, and therefore able to be open to and gain access to the rest of Creation, to connect with it and intimately share with it.

Therefore when you are not being fully loving, you actually are attempting to withdraw yourself from creation, to isolate yourself from Heaven, to contract yourself down in fear to a single point in space, to put a wall between you and everyone else (the body), and to confine yourself to the body. This is how you become body-identified instead of spirit-identified.

Attack and withdrawal are the same thing. As soon as you have an attack thought you are having a "withdrawal thought". It's a thought of no longer sharing everything openly with everyone. It's an attempt to shut yourself off and be excluded. The ego is all about being exclusive and therefore special. It focuses on SELFISHNESS, which means prioritizing your own self OVER or in a different way to other selves.

Ego is an emphasizing of how you seem to be not equal to others and how you therefore have something that they do not have. And by emphasizing that you have something they do not, you also simultaneously emphasize that they have something that YOU do not, and therefore you are automatically lacking. Moving into exclusivity you move into isolation, lack, limitation, partiality, and not having everything. The promise that an exclusive PART of existence is more desirable than ALL of it, is the ego's game, through which it robs you of all joy.

So basically this is an automatic law that the only way you can actually communicate with anyone or anything else, is to be fully open in a loving way. Since other beings ARE love, you can only communicate with them through the LANGUAGE of love, at their level. If love is absent, communication breaks down, you arrest the extension of your mind through the arresting of love, and therefore hold yourself back. This holding back isolates you to a point in space and binds you to the body. This is withdrawal away from wholeness, and is you not allowing yourself to express.

Therefore when you isolate into the egotism of selfishness or specialness, you are taking yourself away from life and from others. You are trying to steal yourself from God. This withdrawal guarantees that no matter how attacking you think you are, your attack IS withdrawal and therefore you have NOT advanced TOWARDS God in your attacking efforts, it is caused you to go AWAY from God and away from your brothers.

Either you communicate with other beings through openness and love, or you will withdraw away into a breakdown in communication, a failure to express, a giving up of life, a cessation of extension, and basically you become paralyzed. That IS mental illness because in order to withdraw from others, given that your SELF is IN them sharing with them, you must split yourself off from the part of you that is in them and now you have a split mind.

A split mind is an insane mind at war with itself, and now it is attacking itself. And in this SELF-ATTACK, it will harm only itself. It is not POSSIBLE to attack another because another person is LOVE. Love can only be accessed THROUGH love. Lack of love stops communication and denies access. Indeed, denial of your brother's love DENIES YOU your own abilities, and thus shuts down any ability for you to join or connect TO them, preventing your unloving attacks to REACH them in any way.

This is why you cannot sin. It is literally 100% impossible to hurt anyone. It is literally impossible to hurt God. Any attempts to do so result in a self-imposed imprisonment and isolation away from the thing you are trying to attack. THEY do not suffer as a result, YOU do. You have hurt your own self, and it is then ONLY YOU who needs to forgive yourself.

Nothing real can be threatened. God and His Sons cannot be threatened. They are perfectly safe because they are wholeness and love, and anything that is not wholeness or love CANNOT COMMUNICATE with them, and therefore cannot ACCESS them, and therefore cannot transfer anything TO them, and therefore CANNOT ATTACK THEM.

The idea of there being an ABILITY TO ATTACK LOVE, is the notion that communication channels can remain OPEN, while transferring a message of BEING CLOSED through the channel. This is an obvious contradiction and impossibility. You cannot communicate "lack of communication". You cannot transfer attack to another, because attack causes the communication channel ITSELF to become closed off. Either you express love to your brother which He CAN receive, OR you isolate yourself and are fighting your way out of paper bag. YOU CANNOT ATTACK.

The kingdom of God is PERFECTLY PROTECTED and does not even NEED a defense. If you try to defend yourself you are attacking yourself, proving you are vulnerable and in need of the defense, and therefore affirming that you are under attack. Defenses do what they would defend against. God's Kingdom - you in reality - do not need to be defended at all. Love is automatically invulnerable! No illusion can do anything to reality.

No part of the ego can wage war against God in any real way. You need ONLY to be real, to be love, and you are immediately off-limits to the ego. The ego can only attack itself. This is evident in all wars where one side seems different to another and they attack each other. This is the ego on BOTH sides, attacking itself, as evidence of a split mind. The ego is NOT attacking God. The ego is attacking the ego.

The ego cannot leave its own domain. It cannot leave the state of mind that is lives in. It HAS to remain in darkness otherwise it will disappear. If it were to try to step into the light to reach where the light IS, in order to attack the light, it would disappear instantly because light dispels darkness. Light shines darkness away. Light thus is perfectly protected FROM darkness because it has power OVER darkness and cannot be "made dark" by it.

The belief that darkness can hide is an ego belief that darkness can cause light to be blocked, and therefore can conceal the light. This is the ego's belief. This is how we try to hide from the light of God by pretending we CAN be in darkness and therefore that darkness has power over light to stop it from reaching us. In the ego, darkness can attack light and only through darkness can there be communication. In truth this is completely backwards. Only in light is there communication of any kind and darkness will NEVER be able to approach light or do anything to it at all.

Therefore you do not need defenses because, as love, you simply cannot be appraoched by darknesss or attack. This may seem counter-intuitive at first but each time you defend yourself or resist another or try to make something go away or use withdrawal to attack, you WILL notice that you become worse off and it doesn't help - in fact it makes you sicker.

Only by ALLOWING in the face of what appears to be attack, can you have the strength that comes from UN-ARRESTED EXTENSION, because only through extending love does it confirm you HAVE love and are therefore invulnerable. It is in your innocence that you are invulerable and strong, not weak. The ego says innocence is vulnerability and proves it with every bodily child. But this is 100% fiction. Innocence is powerful and cannot be hurt. It needs no defenses to keep it safe. What does it need to be kept safe from? An illusion of darkness?

You cannot be threatened. Only if you identify yourself with the ego, meaning you HAVE attacked yourself, and have withdrawn from your brother, does it indicate that you are trying to USE separation as a defense. Separation will always hurt you, it cannot defend you. It is the lack of defenses that makes you invulnerable. Standing in the strength of light and truth in the face of "danger" dispells the danger and makes you impervious.

Defenses lead to death. Death is nothing other than an attempt to withdraw from life and imprison yourself in darkness. It is the ultimate sacrifice of yourself. It arises from a complete breakdown in communication, using the body for attack instead of for communication and joining. Without withdrawing from life there can be no death. Death becomes IMPOSSIBLE when you are fully open to love and have identified with SPIRIT - with the fullness of sharing, the openness to all brothers, the lack of attack and the presence of love.

In love, there is no death. In love, death does not exist. In love, death is impossible. It must be, otherwise God would die. Life does not die. Life has eternal life. Only through the illusion of being able to sin, or the attempt to sin, which is really a failure to sin, can you produce a state of what seems like death. And yet as Jesus says, swear not to die, because you have made a bargain you cannot keep. The bargain is that you WILL be able to die because of having been able to sin. This is actually literally impossible. Even in dying it is only denial and illusion, and your spirit is utterly unaffected.

You cannot die, any more than you can sin. Sin and death are IMPOSSIBLE AT ALL TIMES. Even those who seem to sin and die ARE NOT DOING SO. No-one can die because it is not God's will. You can only have eternal life. Attack and death are only attempts to DENY that you have eternal life, and denial can only HIDE the truth, not change it.

You cannot be attacked any more than you have attacked God. Nothing real can be threatened. You are safe forever in God's love. "Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

We are addicted to the body. We talk about the body as if it is the same thing as the person. We talk about what they are wearing as if they are the body wearing it. We ask what they are looking at, as if because the body is looking so are they. We talk about what the body did, what the body ate, and how the body slept, as if it was the person doing these things, which we then celebrate the body doing. We cover the body in clothes and remark at how wonderful WE look. We think we are it, and this is a major confusion of identity.

There is a PROFOUND degree of body identification in this world. Take a look at the news. You can be pretty much guarantee that almost every single news report will feature people who are heavily in victim fear roles, heavily bodily identified, not overlooking the situation whatsoever, and quite unconscious, discussing what happened to bodies. And then you have the whole "he did this to me" "she did that to me" "they were doing this and that". Always pointing to bodies, because only bodies can sin. "Only if there were a body is sin possible." "Only the body makes the world seem real." Always mistaking bodies for people.

And then we look to a spouse or a child or a parent or a neighbor or coworker or some other stranger and we say, look, behold, there is a person. But all we point at is the body, using our own body to sense its presence, and seeing little else.

Bodies are not souls, they are not real, and God did not create them. Parts of our mind are using the body temporarily but any confusion about the mind BEING the body is level confusion, magic, sickness, authority problem, body identification, attack thinking, blindness, and evidence of blocks to awareness. But this is how the whole world is operating almost all the time.

It is SO habitual, so ingrained, and so accepted as normal, that you see it very subtly infused into every advertising, every conversation, every interaction of body folk. It's become totally habitual. Always with the "you", in reference to the body self. "They" in reference to groups of bodies. The whole word of the law is written based on what bodies do to bodies and whose body did what to whom. Copyright law doesn't even acknowledge discarnate entities as valid authors, such as in the case of Jesus and ACIM.

It is so heavily assumed that people are bodies in this world, due to massive widespread body identification, that it is literally everywhere. In all walks of life, in all forms of communication, people think they are human beings with arms and legs. This is a problem, because it is not true. And we have to actually deprogram ourselves of this belief. And as we do this, we're going to start becoming VERY aware of the fact that the whole world is going against the truth in this way. That 99%+ of the population relates at a body-to-body level and does not see beyond it.

You can see how the development of christ vision, the opening of the spiritual eye, the clarification of spirit identification, recognizing YOU ARE NOT A BODY, you are spirit, is an entirely different kind of way of relating to people. It totally steps back from the entire association between "you" and "your body". It denies the assumption that your brother is his physical form. "You're looking great today Paul". Well, no, Paul isn't flesh and bones and you are blinded by perception of form. If Paul's like, oh hell yes, I'm looking great today, then now we're into Paul being body identified and having level confusion. And if Paul decides to confuse himself with his body in order to confuse his brother with a body in order to have a body relationship, well now he has a cell mate and they're both in hell.

This is how profound the course is. We have to learn to dis-identify ourselves from the FLESH AND BONES body prison. We have to learn it is NOT OUR SELF. We are not made of bits of flesh and strange organs. It does not look like us. It is not a representation of our true nature. At best it symbolized health and wholeness but your soul absolutely does not have a penis or vagina, nor does it make shits, nor does it sip the cool-aid. "I am not a body I am free" should mean that totally literally. 100% NOT even REMOTELY the body. Not even a tiny bit the body. Such that the body is utterly UNLIKE you in every way. Just a random picture of a form. Because "The body cannot contain you who are life." and "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

When we show the body to our brother, identified with it, we are offering him hell and damnation, having damned ourselves to it. We give him what we have given ourselves. We can only offer him a body if we think we are a body. And this means we are offering him something valueless and meaningless. Which is a way to attack him and strip him of his divinity. Neither you nor your brother are physical. Your mind is non physical. Your soul is formless. UTTERLY FORMLESS. Abstract. Shapeless. Boundaryless. Unlimited by space or time.

When we make the body sick we use the body to accuse our brother of sin. This is an entire teaching to do with how the body symbolizes attack and communicates a message of proof of sin in order to find your brother unworthy. But it goes even further, not just including typical sickness, and even beyond sex. It goes as far as to say that EVERY way that you use the body determines the message it symbolized and if you have ANY KIND OF BODY IDENTIFICATION, this is an attack on your brother AND yourself.

If you show the body to your brother mistaken for yourself, you are communicating that he is not himself, and this is an attack. Just as body identification produces sickness, believing you are a body is denial of yourself and your brother. If you depict it to him with an attitude of "this is my self, look at me", you are trying to cause him to be confined to his body also. You cannot possibly see his true self if you cannot see yours. You cannot possibly appreciate his divine christ nature if you think you're not christ but a body. We need to rediscover our soul, our innate inner truth, God-given, if we are to RELATE in any kind of real, loving way to anyone.

If there is not a movement towards recognizing yourself as spirit, NOT a body, there is no awakening at all. That is the whole direction of the curriculum. Moving away from body identification, confused about who and what you are, towards clarity about the fact that you are not a body at all and never were. When "you" (body) look in a mirror you should not be believing that you're looking at yourself. Vanity is ego. When "you" (body) puts on the latest clothes that you fancy yourself in, you shouldn't be believing that this changes who or what you are at all, nor do these clothes define you. You could wear a sack of shit and be spirit identified knowing your true nature is absolutely golden and that the body has nothing to do with who you are.

Sex is only a small part of the body identification issue. It's a cornerstone and a reason to keep perpetuating the focus on bodies and the belief that people are physical forms. Confusing mind and body and believing the body can create, can cause, has power, can live, and is important. As Jesus says, "the body is hardly worth the least defense." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "God did not create the body."

So isn't it clear, that in order to exist, and to be created by God, you have to become very very clear that you are NOT a body in any way whatsoever, you don't need one, you don't want one, and you don't have one. Because "to be without abody is to be in your natural state.", which is a state of being solely spirit.

It is by identifying ONLY AS spirit (and not a gender or a sexual preference) that you free yourself FROM the body and become able to return home to God. You cannot be believing that ANYTHING "true" of the body is true of you. You are not male or female. You are not gay or straight or bi or anything else. You are spirit. You are immortal. You are made of light. You are divine. The body cannot possibly be anything but a fake artificial picture of a fake artificial self in a fake artificial dream pretending to be a someone. And the body cannot go to heaven with you. "Leave it behind, it cannot enter heaven."

But you, as spirit, can enter the spirit world. Your spirit is the only way through the gates of heaven, to reunite with God, the creator of your spirit, where "the only function of spirit is to extend God's being." There, your spirit has always dwelt with its maker, and has never really left. It is your spirit that is permanently recognized by God as holy and complete. "The soul never leaves the sight of God." "God's children are as equal as learners as they are as souls." Only your spirit self is the reality of you. Everything else is an illusion that you have become tangled up with, confused with, lost in, and believing is you. The body is not you. You are eternal.

"Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body or cover it, or for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see. Think on the many offerings made for its pleasure, and remember all these were made to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your brother to you, and to attract his body's eyes? Learn you but offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight acknowledges the lack of value he places on himself.

Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out or take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and give. And every gift it offers depends on what it WANTS. It will adorn its chosen home most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it wants, by offering them to those who come unto its home, or those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange their gifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them.

Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the GIVER. No-one but sees his chosen home an altar to himself. No-one but seeks to draw to it the worshippers of what he placed upon it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a light upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed upon it, and take it for their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother, and on yourself. Here is your gift to BOTH; your judgment upon the Son of God for what he is. Forget not that it is your Savior to whom the gift is offered. Offer him thorns, and YOU are crucified. Offer him lilies, and it is YOURSELF you free."

I think that for years I have been mistaken about the course. Mainly in terms of the orientation of my mind and the direction in which it was heading.

We start out in false perception, in ego, in body identification. As if we are down in hell at the bottom of a ladder. And then we think of heaven or light or truth or atonement as being higher up the ladder, and so we start the process of climbing out of hell.

Along the way we're told of particularly "high" things which become goals to strive for, like true perception, accepting atonement, the real world, christ vision. And we wonder how to achieve these things. We kind of come at it from a "I don't have it, how do I get it?" point of view.

But the thing is, this is all backwards. We're literally starting out in a backwards thought system, moving in the wrong direction, looking in the wrong direction, and trying to get our heads around what the truth is.

I think as we gradually learn more about the truth, God, soul, reality etc over time, we open up to it more. We do more forgiveness, we heal, we let go of old pain etc. Our identity starts to shift away from the body. We begin questioning the reality of the world etc.

Then at some point, perhaps a kind of tipping point, where for a while we've had our feet in both worlds - heaven and earth - we start to lean more towards reality. We start to side more with the truth than with the false. We develop more truth and find a surer footing that anchors us in reality.

The interesting thing then is that our whole orientation seems to do a 180 degree shift. We start looking from the top down instead of from the bottom up. And we feel more secure in the truth of God and more accepting of what's real as "where we are coming from".

I have found it extremely helpful and clarifying to spend time investigating the nature of God, heaven, creation, souls, sonship, mind, free will, causation, etc. Not the things of this world. This has really fleshed out some solid "facts" that I can depend upon.

I see the simple truth that God, who is truth, has extended himself to create me, and whatever is true of me ONLY comes from God. And that I in turn ONLY have what I inherited from God, and can only be and extend that which I have been given. This has now become a kind of "starting point" for me. A rock solid core of truth within my being. Not even I have any real say in what I am or what I can do.

Now I find myself basing my whole thought process on that truth. Regarding myself as not of this world. Recognizing that only the Kingdom is real. Feeling into and aligning myself with God's will and with my real function. Embedding myself in heaven and looking outward from there. This is orienting me from "the top down" to look at everything the course says from a new vantage point. And it's as if I am seeing things in a way I never saw before.

I'm finding is just an avalanche of clarification and insight about what it's getting at. I find for example that while many "bottom-uppers" believe their whole mission is to escape from hell and return home, really the whole course is aimed towards anchoring yourself in your true nature and expressing that, shining a light into the world to produce healing. As if what's at the top of the ladder reaches down to the bottom of the ladder, to either shine it away or raise it up.

There are in fact many parts of the course related to bringing heaven into the world. Shining God's light as a reflection of his being. The extension of miracles which we are literally told fall DOWN like drops of healing rain FROM heaven ONTO the earth.

The fact that christ works through our bodies, that the holy spirit uses the body for his purposes, and that we extend through the body to form holy relationships. Even forgiveness is a matter of allowing the light of heaven's truth to infuse the mind to correct it's perceptions. Where do we get any kind of truth from if not from outside of perception itself? Truth is of God!

It's not so much a "let's just get out of here" thing. It's more of a, let's remember who we really are anchored in heaven's reality and shine outward from that core truth into the world, to be the light of the world, a healing presence, a teacher/extender of God into the dream, and to help shine away the world. This isn't escape from hell, it's a DISPELLING OF DARKNESS by shining the light of heaven onto it. And this will seem "backwards" to those who believe their only goal is to get out of here asap.

I also think that all the discussions about true perception, christ vision, the face of christ, the real world, atonement etc, are all quite misleading. Mainly because it's very clear to me now that true perception is merely a SIDE EFFECT of a mind which is anchoring itself on the OTHER side of the separation. A mind which is identifying with the spirit being that is BEYOND the realm of perception entirely.

Even the perception of the real world is clearly infused with the light of heaven and is really just a stopping point just prior to entering heaven, on the way to TOTAL immersion in heaven. It just represents a state of being ALMOST entirely spirit identified. And giving yourself over entirely to the atonement merely means becoming FULLY dependent on the truth, having been previously only "mostly" dependent upon it. And truth is not of this world.

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement (but have partly accepted it) and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know."

This really tells us that the acceptance of atonement is at first a GRADUAL TRANSITION out of hell towards heaven, out of false perception towards truth, and it is only FULLY or FINALLY accepted at the end, where you are 100% willing to accept the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Until then, you are PARTLY atoned, just as Jesus says you are "not now wholy insane." Truth has corrected your mind to SOME extent.

Indeed the whole idea of forgiveness is riddled with confusion and misunderstanding. To forgive really means, that you recognize what is true - which IS HEAVEN, and to then "defend" that truth through the proper use of denial, to REJECT that anything not of God is real or has any power. It's a recognition that illusions are false, BECAUSE OF what is true. AND what is true is God - not of this world. Forgiveness thus is rooted in and depends on recognizing God's nature, which is itself BEYOND forgiveness.

The most obvious point is that, here we are in bodies starting out in false perception, blind to God and in denial of reality. The question then is how do we solve that. And obviously the only real way to solve that is in "leaving the desert". That means that in order to become more loving, more light, more truthful, more sane, you have to actually identify with something BEYOND the dream, with a real eternal truth that is entirely OUTSIDE of perception, so that your perception transforms to line up with it. The blueprint for right mindedness is the one mind.

You can't just work on perception in a closed box. True perception in fact has to be BASED UPON knowledge. And knowledge is the real truth. Believing that the real truth is true - a truth which is OUTSIDE of spacetime - causes perception to be transformed to line up with it. It's almost like, you have to reach outside of ALL perception first, get a hold of reality, then infuse that reality into your mind so that your perception becomes lighter. This was not at all evident in years of past study and in the common interpretations of the course.

We're also told about miracle working and the fact that miracles in fact come from God and fall down from heaven like healing rain, onto the earth. This is similar to how forgiveness works, in that the light that is higher and more true, shines into the mind and into the world, and bestows life where there was death.

Because "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" and "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers". That means they're starting out IN HEAVEN and are expressing FROM God through our minds, transforming perception and healing the world. That's a TOP DOWN mechanic, which is why they cannot be received when fear (false perception) is too strong.

I've also found that until you can get a really solid metaphysical, logical grasp of the nature of God and creation, you can't really have anything clear and true enough to compare anything to. You really need a solid idea of the light, in order for it to clearly contradict the darkness. You need to know the truth of heaven and of your being and nature, in order to compare that to other things that happen in the world, to recognize WHY those things are false and unreal. You can't just compare illusions to true perception, you have to compare them to God, then perception will follow.

"Perception (even true perception) is a RESULT, not a cause".And so it sort of comes down to not just the question of what things are, but of the question of WHY they are that way. The understanding or logical reason that they are based on. Illusions are illusions BECAUSE of what the truth is. Sickness is unreal BECAUSE of the immortal nature of God. The world is a dream BEACUSE reality is not like it. Miracles can raise the dead BEACUSE of their expression of eternal life. If you don't have your mind anchored in heaven, you really don't have any solid ground to stand on at all.

For me, my whole orientation with the course is quite strongly transitioning to a totally top-down view at the moment. This reflects the changes in myself which are transitioning to a "going within in order to be able to express outward", or seeking the higher mind in order to shine FROM it into the world. Or aligning myself with a higher light, so that I can shine darkness way. I am finding out WHO I AM, so that I can REJECT what I am not.

"Yet when they find their own Reality is even here, then they step back and let It lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make?"

"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

Ultimately what we're really doing is we are rising up from the pits of hell and ascending into heaven. But the closer you get to heaven the more you feel like you are IN heaven, looking back downward towards hell. It's most like returning to HERE, having been AWAY. Or becoming more PRESENT, having been absent. Or becoming more authentic, having been artificial.

That orientation of "peering out from the truth" or "operating under the laws of God" or "being true to yourself first" or "having innocence in you first which you project out", is what MAKES the real world and true perception be what they are. They are reflections of the light that is IN you, which you have stepped into and are radiating. The love which you give in order to see love. "Love looks upon itself."

So it's really about you deciding to change which ROOM you are located in. Are you in hell, or in heaven. When you seek for a better way than suffering, to any degree at all, you are seeking to be in the room of heaven, where you are happy. And then you start to move between the rooms. You want to get yourself as much immersed in heaven as possible, so that almost all of you is very close to being in heaven just before you leave the world. That means you are practically a REFLECTION OF DIVINITY, while in the dream, allowing you to perform miracles and heal the world. To extend God's love and light and to keep illusions from tempting you.

It's all top-down. All the correction is top-down. All the extension of love and light and power is top-down. All of the being true to yourself is top-down. All of the health of the body is caused from the top-down. All dispelling of illusions and the sanity of the mind is brought about from the top-down. Death is conquered throught the top-down expression of eternal life. True perception and the forgiven world and the real world all come about through the top-down application and expression of your true nature. And eventually the goal is to be SO completely vigilant for the Kingdom, or to seek first the Kingdom of God, so that you put God FIRST in all things, and everything else just follows naturally from there.

In heaven, you and your brother share everything. Not just as two beings who "trade", but as two beings who are one. You overlap, sharing the same space. You are in him and he is in you. He literally is you, while also being himself. The two of you share everything as the Christ mind or One Son/Sonship. Along with everyone else also.

There is therefore a part of your own self, which is in your brother and is your brother. It's like you live inside of each other. His own self is part of your own self. Therefore the wholeness of who and what you are is not just you, it's that you are also him, and you are also part of God.

In the separation, the aspect of you which is hosted inside your brother, and which is one with his mind, was "sectioned off" through the separation device of the body. The body seemed to "fence in" the part of you which seems to be "you alone", and "keep out" the part of you which is literally in your brother "as" your brother.

Part of your mind is now seemingly housed inside the body prison, while the other part of your mind is seemingly housed inside your brother's body. And since the two appear in the form of "being separated by physical distance", it creates the illusion of a "gap" between not only you and your brother, but between you and the rest of you, which is in him and as him.

The initial function of bodies as separation devices was to make it appear that you are not in your brother, you are not one with him, you share nothing with him, you are not equal to him, you are different to him in every way, he is a stranger to you, you do not know him, and you do not recognize him or yourself. And the body paints a picture of an identity which is not in any way what you or your brother are really like.

This egoic view of him confines him to a body, and therefore also denies that he is in you. And so it reduces him and yourself you being less than whole. Bodies isolate the "self" portion of you while rejecting the "shared" portion of you. So now you and your brother find yourself inside prison cells and trapped in brains and kept apart and not communicating.

The body makes it appear that there is NO relationship between you. It demonstrates the proof of sin that separation has occurred. The two bodies being unalike do not share the same truth, and so are in disagreement, and are therefore at war with each other, just by virtue of their different natures. Which in turn, when identified with as your self or as your brother's self, makes it appear that you are fundamentally in perpetual war and competition with everyone. And everyone lacks what everyone else has."There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone."

"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."

In this state, you are in special relationship. Which we really should call, no relationship. It is a breakdown in communication, it is a lack of sharing, it is a broken interaction. It really is a lack of relating at all. And in this relating, neither party is viewed as a whole being, because wholeness means sharing and the part of you that is seemingly separated off inside your brother is rejected as "him alone". So now you are not your whole self, and he is not his whole self. And neither of you are wholly relating.

"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."

"An altar is erected IN BETWEEN two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body, raise another self that TAKES HIS POWER FROM HIS DEATH."

"The special relationship is totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you must also value the body."

When your mindset is one of being only the you that is in your body, as a body, you cannot help but relate to others in a dysfunctional way. And may struggle to relate at all. You may think, "I cannot relate to them because I am not physically like them."

The gap seen between you also produces justification for getting away with murder, a breakdown in cause and effect, and justified selfishness. Any attack you make upon another you do not realize is attacking the part of you which is shared with him. And the more you push him away in a lack of love, the less you accept yourself.

To have holy relationship doesn't merely mean that you love another person a lot. It doesn't mean, that you are still a separate person trapped in a body whose whole self is in that body, and who then relates lovingly with other people. This is still special love. To be truly loving and holy you have to be whole, which means you have to recognize that your identity is shared with your brother. That there is a part of you IN him and a part of him IN you. And that through your oneness you transcend the body boundaries, and therefore ARE NOT bodies.

You can't be all of yourself while isolated to space and time. You can't fully relate to anyone if you don't recognize that they are simultaneously you, and therefore that you see yourself in them and truly have something in common. You cannot treat anyone correctly unless you have a vested interest of treating yourself correctly, having recognized that you are in them, so that what you do to them you do to yourself.

To relate in holiness isn't two separate wholes relating, it is a relationship in which two are one. You are not just loving another, you are loving yourself AS another. And you are loving the self that is in you and the self that is in the other, as yourself. And the two of you as one together share everything.

"Miracles are a way of loving your neighbor (brother) as yourself."This must entail the shared/joined state of mind, which is more than just two minds sitting next to each other sending love vibes from afar. It is two minds FUSED together sharing everything to such a degree you cannot even tell where one begins and the other ends. Where the identity of both individuals is recognized as the same, being one in Christ. Two Christs, who are one Christ. Where what is theirs is yours and what is yours is theirs and both of you have everything simultaneously.

"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."

Each soul also knows all other souls completely. And you are part of God. And you are the whole Sonship. And you are the One Son, and Christ, and a Soul. And you are all Souls. And you are all Creations and all of Creation. And you are part of God Himself.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The soul is the idea of self fullness."

To relate fully to your self, you have to relate to the whole of yourself. The whole of yourself includes the part you fenced off in your body, AND the part that is in literally in your brother. He has to be recognized as part of your self, in order for you to have shared interests with him. Because by recognizing that you are IN him, you recognize that how you treat him is how you treat yourself. You cannot "see the Christ in Him" without recognize that Christ SPANS the two of you and INCLUDES you both as one identity.

When you do not recognize yourself in your brother, a wall or gap starts to form between you, you lose recognition, you become blinded by form, you start to focus on the body, sickness arises, and you begin to attack. The formation of this "separation gap" in between you and your brother makes the world of bodies and sin. And it is there that you enter into illusions of suffering and death, war and competition, disagreement and hatred and fear.

When you re-embrace your brother AS yourself, recognizing that in actual factual truth this is how God created you - joined with everyone, you are putting aside that gap between you and are overflowing your body. You are now extending PAST the body and past the body of your brother. Because your full self transcends these imprisoning boundaries. You are everywhere. You are everything. And only by relating to yourself as that, can you be fully yourself and fully awake.

Two separate things bumping up against each other is no more relationship than two separate things being at a distance. But when the two separate things realize they are not separate and they fuse together and become one, in which each of them is in the other, like yin and yang, there is now a union and a harmony and an equality. To be equal with something means to BE IT, not just to be like it. a = b means a IS b, no just that a and b are alike.

Bodies present a picture which is a complete lie. It is totally opposite to the nature of reality. It is an attempt to pull deeply relating immersed beings away from each other and lock them up in little isolating prisons in the farthest corners of the earth. Kept apart, they believe they are their prisons, and that they have no relationship. And every way they relate is on a basis of a lack of self, the attempt to get self from the other, and the attempt to lose even more self in doing so through sacrifice and loss and bargaining.

When the body is your identity, and you think that the you that is solely within your body is all of yourself, and you have a "bodily identity" in your mind as a picture of who and what you are, you are cutting yourself off from yourself and from relationship. In order to become spirit identified, you need to identify with the spirit that is both in you AND in your brother. You cannot find yourself without sharing yourself. And you cannot accept atonement without sharing and extending it either. You have to give what you have received.

This is why the body has no part to play in a holy relationship. This is why focusing on the body is a rejection of health, because health comes from wholeness and from extension. When you do not allow your SELF or identity to extend past the body and past your brother's body to the SHARED identity that is the Christ in both of you, you cannot be healthy, because your mind is split BY the body. If you allow the body to separate you off from others, you have a split mind and are choosing death.

When you join with others, which does not mean ego joining or a special relationship joining or bodies joining or two separate selves remaining separate and hooking up, mind extends past limitation and separation. It transcends the gap. And now the two that were on either sides of the gap span across the gap and erase the gap. And there is no gap. And in this view the bodies actually become healed because the mind is healthy. In effect, mind has to adopt a state completely "alien" to the body in order for the body to be healthy, which overrides the body's laws with the laws of God.

Reunion with others is reunion with your self and with God. You are a "whole part" of the hologram of God's creation. What you are is what your brother is. Your minds are one. Your souls are connected. You both overlap with each other. You share the same space. You overflow bodies and transcend their limits. You are everywhere. You are infinite, immortal and unlimited. You are the whole Sonship and the whole Son of God. And you are part of God Himself. And what God has put together no man can put asudner. You are eternally married to all beings forever and ever.

"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. You do not yet realize how COMPLETELY different these evaluations are, because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is."

It is vital to have a firm grip of what the truth is, in order to be able to make a clear comparison with what is false. The light of heaven, the immortal soul, the truth of the laws of God, the nature of reality, must be very clearly discerned. In light of this truth, all things which are not of God become very obvious. But you have to see IN AND FROM the light of truth in order to tell what everything is.

You cannot have clarity or see clearly without being able to clearly discern what things are. You cannot clearly discern whether you are a body or not unless you can get a clear view of who and what you really are. In light of that, with everything seen in its proper place, you can then clearly see that the body is totally opposite to what you are. Now it is recognized as not the same, and clearly not your self.

In order to find recognition, which is enlightenment, you must use contrast. It needs to become extremely clear to you the difference between reality and unreality, truth and illusions, spirit and form, immortality and mortality, innocence and guilt, health and suffering, eternal life and death. You can't find clarity if you cannot recognize what things are and why they are not the same.

In the ego states of confusion, there is a great loss of clarity and a total lack of recognition. All of its reasoning leads to total confusion about everything, in which it cannot tell what is true or false, it does not know whether something is real or not, it does not recognize who or what you really are, or are not, and it is incapable of telling anything apart. It is so out of touch with what is actually real, distinct from what is not, that it has lost touch with reality and is insane.

You need an anchor. You need something very very dependable and firm and unchanging. You need a fixed perspective. You need a light which does not waver and does not lie. You need even a conceptual or theoretical foundation of what the truth is like, what is of God and what isn't, what reality's nature is, what is true of you, and who you really are. Even if at least in theory you can build up a picture of the qualities and aspects of what is true of you, you can hold onto that and then use it to compare.

Comparison then becomes a very valuable tool when used AGAINST the ego. The ego would use it make all things part of the same soup, within which it uses comparison to produce inequality and specialness, to upset the balance and to produce war. This is a horizontal use of comparison. When you use comparison vertically to compare between reality and illusions, or heaven and earth, or spirit and bodies, or eternal immortality vs sickness and death, it becomes fare more constructive.

I found a great deal of clarification by simply focusing on heaven and investigating the qualities of reality. Building in my mind a description of God and or creation, or the holographic principles of a shared existence, looking at cause-effect relationships in truth and the nature of an immortal life. This really helped me to greatly "compare" this clear picture of the light, with the darkness, in order to be able to tell which is which. And this is what we have to do. This is what the "sorting out" is all about.

For me lately the fleshing out of "what is true" has for me been converging ever more upon "who am I". Recognizing that I need to learn to know myself, to acknowledge my original self as God created me, to recognize my immortality and permanence, my invulnerability and unchangeability. A sense of self which is rock-solid fixed and unalterable, an IDENTITY that I can not only latch onto but identify WITH, and recognize it as the truth about me.

This also provides for me now a basis for recognizing the truth about others. By accessing the christ in me and opening to the holy spirit, learning of my immortal nature behind everything, which is non-physical, I can also think similarly of my brothers. I can now compare and contrast and see that, in comparison to who people are in the light of God, the body and its form cannot be who they are. Sickness cannot be true of their immortal nature. Death cannot be happening to them.

This also reveals that all physical form is a lie, the whole world is nothing but an illusory appearance, something appearing to be something it's not. Something appearing to show something as if it's true, which cannot be true. And the reason I can discern it cannot be true is because I have an increasingly clear grasp of what the truth MUST BE. By very strongly and intensely focusing on God's truth about me and others, I can REJECT and properly deny the illusory lies of apparent matter when I am presented with it. I NEED the clear handle on the light in order to recognize the darkness for what it is.

As the course says, the Holy Spirit also uses contrasts, and that you need contrast in order to correctly discern anything. You need to be able to COMPARE God's truth to the world's truth and recognize just how OPPOSITE they are, how they are totally unlike, and how they are INCOMPATIBLE. And it is in the light of bringing these two opposites into awareness that your mind becomes able to see. ... that it must reject one of them, THEY CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. When placed side by side and compared and are seen to be opposites, you CANNOT confuse them OR accept both of them. Only one can be true.

It is the totally clear CATEGORIZATION of all things true into the "true" box, and all things false into the "false" or unreal box, that gives you the recognition of enlightenment. The GOAL here then is to sort out what is true and what is false, what is of God and what is not, what is God's law and what isn't, what is real and what is unreal, what is immortal and what is mortal. Everything that gets in the way of this or makes it seem like the two are unclear and not different, is CONFUSION. And to become SANE again is nothing more or less than undoing your confusion about which is which.

We are to completely separate out the true from the false, so that ONLY THE TRUTH IS TRUE, and NOTHING ELSE IS TRUE. And that is a matter of comparing and contrasting until it becomes COMPLETELY black and white. Clearly discerning what is and what is not, is what this ENTIRE course is about. Increasing the CONTRAST between the two so that you can make a CLEAR choice and RECOGNIZE that reality is real, and unreality is not. Only in that intensely black-and-white contrast can you be CERTAIN, and therefore free from fear.

"You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid, and what to seek."

"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST. Only BY this contrast, can insanity be judged as insane."

"They ARE together, and when they are SEEN together, ALL attempts to KEEP both truth AND illusion in the mind, where both MUST be, are recognized as DEDICATION TO ILLUSION. And GIVEN UP when BROUGHT to truth, and seen as totally UNRECONCILABLE with truth, in ANY aspect, or in any WAY."

"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."

"For you will NEED no contrast to help you realize that THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT, and ONLY this."

"ou who are steadfastly devoted to misery, MUST first recognize that you ARE miserable and NOT happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach WITHOUT this contrast, for you believe that misery IS happiness."

"The contrast between what is true, and what is not, is PERFECTLY apparent, yet you do NOT see it."

"And changing concepts IS salvation's task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth, which has no opposite and cannot change."

"In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else."

"Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."

"If sin is real then happiness must be illusion, for they cannot both be true."

"Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true."

"What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives, EXCEPT truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled, and CANNOT both be true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy."

"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."

"Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true."

"He made a clean distinction, still obscure to us, between the false and true."

"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."

"There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate that you believe one or the other is true all the time."

"They are all true OR all false. It is absolutely essential that you understand completely that behavior is erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made."

"That is why I always choose between truth and illusion; between what is there and what is not. The light has come. I can but choose the light, for it has no alternative. It has replaced the darkness, and the dark is gone."

"What COULD you choose between, but life or death, waking or sleeping, war or peace, your dream or your reality?"

"Now MUST you choose between yourself and this ILLUSION of yourself. NOT both, but ONE."

"The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

"This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you."

"You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these."

"You ALWAYS choose between YOUR weakness and the strength of Christ in you."

"Remember that you ALWAYS choose between truth and illusion, between the REAL Atonement that would heal, and the ego's "atonement," that would destroy."

"Consider what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you choose between. There ARE but two. Be not deceived by what appears as many choices. There is hell or Heaven. And of these you choose but ONE."

"Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

Your true self in God is a beautiful soul, who is whole and holy. Your wholeness is shared with the wholeness of all other souls, forming the sonship, and sharing everything with God. The rejection of sharing began the ego's selfishness - your attempt to be exclusive and excluded.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

In the separation, a PART of your mind attempted to believe it could attack the whole - to attack God and your real self and the union of the sonship, which is also the Son of God. This part of mind believes in sin because it believes it can and has attacked the whole, in order to set itself apart.

"The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division. But how can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is attacking Him?"

"The ego is the questioning (fearing/attacking) compartment in the post-Separation psyche which man created for himself."

"The ego does NOT regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system."

A PART of the mind therefore formed a PART of your belief about yourself and others. It results in a split mind, whereby a larger portion of your mind is allegiant to your soul, while this small split-off part of mind sees itself as what's left of you. In effect you then seem to have two selves, living TWO lives.

"From an idea of self AS TWO, there comes a NECESSARY view of function split BETWEEN the two."

"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate."

"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."

This part of the mind which sees itself as separate, believes that it is completely alone. That it has divorced from God and from the rest of you and others. It sees itself as autonomous, a God of its own Kingdom, and dependent on no-one. It has no relationships and does not want to share anything.

"The ego IS the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own."

"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. And they have NO relationships, for no-one else is welcome there."

"This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return." - "The unholy relationship is NO relationship." "The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

The ego, being a kind of symbol in the mind representing the idea of a "self who is separated off", is completely selfish. It has only self interest. It is not interested in you as a soul, or the rest of your mind. It is almost like a kind of cancer in the mind, an unnatural growth which is not supposed to be there.

"The ego is the symbol of the Separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace."

"If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt."

The ego is NOT your real self, or your real identity. It is an artificial sense of identity, mistaken and untrue, whereby this small part of your mind is at war with the rest of you, and with God.

"Your will is NOT the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

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

"When you feel guilty, KNOW that your ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but YOU have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me. That is what the Atonement is for."

The ego is like the anti-christ. It is the idea of a complete opposite to christ, to sharing, to love, to unity and peace. It sits in the dark recesses of your mind, plotting your death and finding ways to see itself as a victim. It uses the body as its chosen home, as a weapon through which to attack others and keep them separate.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

"not because the EGO is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that YOU are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only YOUR willingness to use the device that enables it to endure."

You have an ego in you, in your mind. Much of the time it may seem to be hidden, and you might regard youself as relatively friendly. But when the gloves come off the ego comes out to play.

If you'll notice, the ego is the idea of both victims and victimizers. It attacks and sees itself as heinously attacked. It sees itself as overpowering others with tyranny, while also seeing itself as terrorized and weak.

Whenever you are playing a victim role, you are being extremely selfish. This of course sounds like some kind of vicious accusation, to the ego in people, but it's true. Being a victim, you see yourself as lacking and in need, deprived and weakened, threatened and undermined. And these are all hallmarks of making yourself small and limited. They're all actually attempts to put ALL of the focus on you as a separate self.

In victimhood you yourself as separated off, alone, threatened, vulnerable, confused, insane, afraid, vicious, attacking, vengeful, angry, hurt, justified, unfairly treated, sick and suffering. The whole bag of ego tricks comes flying out. Precicely when you think OTHERS are being selfish in their neglect of your needs, it's because YOU are being selfish.

The ego is all about selfishness because it's totally the idea of rejecting sharing. Of confining and limiting and hoarding and possessing, owning and getting and being exclusive. Whenever the focus shifts to "only me", like "poor me I"m the only victim", you are contracting into a ball of fear to try to separate yourself off. And the reason you want to be separted off is always beacause you don't want to share with anyone. Your own interests become your ONLY interests.

The thing to realize is, that YOU, who and what you are, is in fact a WHOLE self, your SOUL, as created by God, sharing everything with everyone. The ego is a PARTIAL self, not even a full self, and resides only in part of your mind. YOU get to decide whether or not to side with the ego, to identify with it, to think of it as your whole self, and whether to see out through its insane eyes.

What YOU are, is distinct from what the ego is. The ego is a fictional framework of make-believe wishful-thinking confused nonsense, jumbled up together and screwed tightly into a ball of hatred. It wants to keep guilt, maintain fear, suffer, and induce death. It actually wants the REST of you to die, for your soul to be exterminated, and for ITSELF to perpetuate. "The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT itself."

When you feel stressed out and upset and overwhelmed and in need, and others are trying to take from you, and you are thinking of them as selfish assholes, YOU are in fact being selfish. You're seeing yourself in an egoic way, as a self in pain, a suffering victimy weak self, who has nothing to give and is lacking everything. The ego sees this way because it is deprived of God. And this means you are aligning and associating yourself with it.v You do have the freedom still to choose WHETHER to align with the ego in the mind, or to deny it and align with the Holy Spirit, or the wholeness of your soul. Moving towards wholeness, the ego in you will remain vicious and backwards, and will likely try to attack you more, or to tempt you away from the truth with its lies and slander. But what it cannot do is decide for you, or take your power away against your will. YOU can withdraw your power from it at any time. "If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

Ultimately in truth the ego does not really exist. The Holy Spirit knows it is nothing at all, nothing but a collection of mistaken beliefs which can be undone. The atonement IS the undoing of the ego, because in the light there is no sin and no separation. The ego in - the SELFISHNESS in you - must be completely recognized and undone.

"For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not."

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly."

"The ego is totally confused about reality"

"The ego is the "proof" that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true."

"So it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life."

"of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception"

"The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that IT can offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES."

"GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice."

"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."

"The ego is the self-appointed mediator of ALL relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and INTERPOSING them BETWEEN those who would meet, to keep them separate and PREVENT their union."

"The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay."

"The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"The full appreciation of its (the soul's) self-fullness (wholeness) makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest."

"The essential thing to remember always is that the ego DOES NOT RECOGNIZE the real source of its perceived threat. And if YOU associate yourself WITH the ego, YOU do not perceive the whole situation as it really is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego ANY power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and MUST realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed." "The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness."

"This is the Voice for God, reminding you of your Father and of your Self. This is the Voice of truth, replacing everything that the ego tells you about yourself with the simple truth about the Son of God. You were created by Love like Itself."

"Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature."

If a person - ie a body - does something wrong, and you focus on their body and what it did, you are being unforgiving. It isn't possible to keep focusing on the body and forgive the person. You can't be psychologically aiming your focus at the person's body while exclaiming that you forgive them. To focus on their body IS to imprison them AND accuse them AND not forgive them.

What is required then is to completely disregard ANYTHING that the body person seems to have done, on the basis that they are NOT that body self. That body self - the combination of the body and the ego - is NOT their soul. It is not who or what they really are. This means basically dismissing anything anyone physical ever seems to do, with a thought that completely ignores anything involving the body, recognizing NONE of its behaviors are real.

This of course takes an initial willingness to approach the idea that a person IS NOT their body. This can be very difficult and threatening at first, especially with strong special-relating tied up in it, valuing the body, associating a sense of identity of the person WITH their body, and constantly referring to their body-self whenever thinking of "them". We have to become open to the idea or the possibility that the person's identity or self IS NOT their body, or their ego. And everything the ego-body does is not real or relevant.

That means challenging your own belief and conviction that people are fundamentally bodies. This is a HUGE change. That when you look and your physical eyes see a body, you think "that's a person", and you give it a name such as Michael or Jane or whatever, referring to IT as if its the person. We do this all the time. If you watch and notice whether or not your references to a person are including the body, you'll probably find that ALL of them are. You barely can even think of anyone without your mind bringing up pictures of their body in your mind.

"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. 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."

We essentially have to deprogram ourselves away from regarding the ego-body-self as the truth about the person, or that it even IS the person at all. We have to be open to the idea that their ego-body-self IS NOT who or what they are. It is entirely unreal and fictional and NOT part of their self. That's completely bizarre to contemplate and rather threatening when you are very much bound to living in a world of bodies, as a body. The bottom line is, ALL relationships with bodies are special relationships.

But we need to find a way to not hold anyone's ego-body stuff against them. If their ego-body stuff is real or happening or associated with them, it DOES ACCUSE THEM OF SIN. Just even merely looking upon it accuses them of sin, if we're identifying them with their body and its actions. To NOT accuse them of sin, to be forgiving, to overlook, actually REQUIRES that we look beyond the body. It's can't be that the person IS a body if we are to forgive them. The forgiveness has to include the recognition that people ARE NOT BODIES AT ALL.

So anything the "person's" ego body does, any actions you see with your physical eyes, any mistakes they make, anything that comes out of "their" mouth, any behaviors, any attacks "they" seem to make, any way at all that their body is regarded as "the person", HAS to be undone. We have to learn that this world is not populated directly by souls or real identities, it is populated by FAKE IMAGES of FAKE BODIES doing fake things. And if ANY thing that any such body-self does is held against anyone, you are accusing them of sin.

That effectively means that we have to be willing to let go of a person's body-self, stop referring to them as their body self, stop binding them to their body whenever we think of them, and realize the quite shocking revelation that you've been in a relationship with AN UNREAL BODY SELF all this time, which has had nothing to do with their real self.

You'll also find that you will be afraid of admitting that their body is not really the person, because this implies that the very people (bodies) that you love the most don't exist as those bodies. They are beyond them. And your ego may interpret that as a loss, or a threat to your relationship, or an attempt to kill off the people you value.

You can more or less disregard all bodies, and basically ignore what any body does, on the basis that it is nothing. It is basically part of a dream. "The body is a dream." The body is not real and it is not the person. Anything you've seen them do or heard them say basically HAS NOT HAPPENED. It has no real consequence and means nothing whatsoever. Your challenge is to basically not hold ANYTHING IN THE WORLD against anyone!

So you might as well just brush off absolutely everything you ever see "any-body" seeming to do, simply on the basis that it is NOT THEM. And thus not hold their own body against them, nor the ego behaviors that seem to emit from it. If you try this you will find that you move into a much more forgiving space and are much happier, because now you're actually BEING forgiving by recognizing that bodies are not real, sins are not happening, no-one is doing anything, and nothing REAL has been threatened.

"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. "

"This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you."

"Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness."

"You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do."

"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. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. "

"Let your awareness of your brother NOT be blocked by your perception of his sins, and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack, EXCEPT what you associate with his body, which YOU believe can sin? BEYOND his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation."

"When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his."

"He is not brother made by what he DREAMS, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light."

"Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon."

"The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not."

"Limit your vision of a brother to his body, which you WILL do, as long as you would not release him FROM it, and you have denied HIS gift to YOU. HIS BODY CANNOT GIVE IT. And seek it not through YOURS."

"Framed in his body you will see YOUR sinfulness, wherein YOU stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ in him proclaims HIMSELF as you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT. And you will see SAFETY IN GUILT, and DANGER IN COMMUNICATION."

"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."

A Course in Miracles has some basic structure to it. The very simplest of these is the contrast between reality and illusions. e.g.

God, reality, awakening, light, creation, eternity, wholeness, permanence, heaven, truth, the Kingdom of God, etc... these all represent THE ONE TRUTH. This is "really big picture stuff". Only the Holy Trinity is real.

Illusions, separation, ego, denial, unconsciousness, death, dreaming, attack, murder, sickness, suffering, unawareness, darkness etc... these all represent THE EXACT OPPOSITE TO that one truth.

This produces what you could either think of as "two boxes", or as a container within a container.

Box A: Heaven, God, Creation etc

Box B: World you made, illusions, ego etc

as in "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way"

or

Larger container: Heaven, God, Reality etc

Smaller container inside it: ego, illusions etc

as in "you are safe in God, dreaming of exile"

You as a being, with a mind, are able to seem to "be in" either one of these two states. You can be in reality, or in illusions. You can be in heaven, or on Earth. You can be out of a body, or in a body. You can be having eternal life, or seeming to suffer and die.

In every case, there is a clear distinction between the "box" of reality and the box of illusions. Because in truth, the box of illusions does not really exist. There really IS only reality, and the "illusory fearful world" isn't real.

"Life has no opposite, for it is God."

Jesus describes this:

"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"

Your experience of "where you are" and "what you are", is determined by whether you believe that Actual Reality is REAL, or whether an ILLUSION is real. If you believe illusions are real, you will substitute reality for it, BLOCKING your awareness of reality, and you will believe that illusions are reality. This is the ego at work. Being deceived by things which don't exist.

When this happens, you seem to find yourself WITHIN the "context of" which of the two boxes you believe is reality. Either heaven seems real, or earth seems real. Either God's Kingdom is reality, or "the world you made in dreaming" seems real. And if the world you made is your reality, you will believe you are LOCATED inside of it.

Now, there are things which ACIM states about reality, which is true in the biggest possible picture. For example, "Reality is a constant state", "Nothing real can be threatened", "Nothing unreal exists." In this CONTEXT, it might correctly identify that, from the perspective of reality, "the body is a dream" - "the body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist" - "God did not create the body."

These are statements made FROM the context of reality. BUT, in the same Course, Jesus might go on to start talking about the body. He might talk about your USE of it. He might talk about what it pictures or symbolizes. He might talk about how to heal it, and about sickness of the body. These statements are made WITHIN or inside of the context of assuming that "the illusory body seems to exist."

So Jesus then is dipping inside of the "illusions" box, and starting to talk about the body as if it matters. But then later he might jump out of that box again and talk about it as though it is nothing and doesn't exist. He might say "The mind, being sane, heals the body." This is squarely within the context or box of "IF the body exists." We are ASSUMING here that we're talking about the body AS IF it is real. And so now Jesus talks about how to heal or change its condition.

But then Jesus might go on to say, "The body cannot stay without illusions" - "the body is a limit" "therefore it does not exist" etc. And this means he has stepped OUT of the context of the illusion box, into the BIGGER truth. The big truth now reveals that sick bodies and healthy bodies are EQUALLY ILLUSIONS.

What happens then is, if people don't RECOGNIZE which box Jesus is speaking FROM, what the CONTEXT is, what is assumed or accepted for the sake of description, mistaken conclusions will be drawn.

If you don't realize that there even ARE these two "levels" or contexts, you might read the entire course thinking it is describing ONE single context or state. And this will produce significant confusion and contradiction, because he isn't talking that way. What this then means is that you are "confusing the levels" because you are not clearly recognizing the context he's talking in.

So you might say, as if on the same level, "Jesus says sick bodies are the same as healthy bodies"... and "therefore, there's no point healing them." Do you see the subtle shift between contexts? It suddenly went from a "big picture" context, took that "level" of truth, and then shifted into the small picture context, and tried to make the big-picture truth apply equally at that level. This is a mistake in reasoning.

It leads to things like "there's no point changing the world", "there's no point healing bodies", "there's no point working miracles for others" etc. It also leads to "I'm not really a body so I should stop eating", "the world is not real so why bother having relationships", and all kinds of other nonsense. Confusing the levels leads to false conclusions. It also leads to sickness.

There are times where Jesus speaks highly of the world. In its forgiven state, He suggests it is the loveliest thing you'll ever see. How there is nothing but holiness reflected in it. That it's practically like heaven on earth. This is within the context of "inside the illusion box". It's under the ASSUMPTION that we're accepting that "the world seems to exist."

But Jesus then goes on to talk about how the world is NOTHING, the "sorry outcome" of a split mind, a world made by minds driven mad by guilt, an attack on God, a picture of the crucifixion of God's son. That eternity will shine away the world, and even the forgiven world will spin into nothingness. He even goes so far to as imply that in comparison to Heaven's reality, IT IS UGLY.

"This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all **ugliness**, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

So at one moment he is speaking seemingly very highly of this world. Speaking of the highest possible way that you can look upon whatever it is, as if he's putting it on a pedestal and worshipping it. Then the next, he jumps OUT of that context of "the illusory world forgiven" and reminds us of how in the BIG picture, everything he just said so amorously about he world is dashed to the rocks and thrown into oblivion.

Because in the bigger picture, in that CONTEXT, there literally IS NO WORLD. Describing the world then as an illusion, false, unreal, hell, temptation, lack, darkness, the world of sin etc, is a CORRECT and truthful perspective when regarding the world from the LARGER perspective of reality. And this SEEMS now to be a "negative" tone, not at all praising the world or "sounding loving". Yet it is true.

This could cause a lot of confusion if you think that there are no levels or "structure" in the course. Many people, me included, read the course thinking that everything it says is all one ONE level and applies to everything. But believing this, one must be fundamentally confused by what it says. Jesus must sound contradictory. And what He says is likely to be only PARTIALLY accepted.

In this way, we will gravitate towards parts that we find acceptable or "sounding" more lovely, and will likely reject the parts that "sound negative". One part of the course will be pitted against another part and held up as defense against what the other part says.

It is vital to realize that there ARE levels because there IS a significant difference, TOTAL OPPOSITION, between reality and illusions. Which means effectively there are TWO WORLDS. The Kingdom God created, and the one you made to OPPOSE it. And the one you made in dreaming is totally opposite to God's.

"Earth, heaven's OPPOSITE in EVERY way."

You find yourself on earth in a body because of the fact you don't want to be IN the CONTEXT of heaven. Each of these two major contexts are not just concepts. Each one is a thought system. Each has produced an entire REALM of existence. And each is its own WORLD.

When you are IN the context of reality, you are NOT in this world. When you are IN the context of illusions, you are in THIS world. You cannot be in THIS world, this context, and be free of illusions. "The body cannot stay without illusions." "Indeed, you cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "Those who perceive still need healing". etc.

So there are two major contexts, two worlds, two realms in which to find yourself, two thought systems, two "universes", and only one of them is totally true. The other seems true ONLY WITHIN its own context of "it seems to exist." If the world is accepted as existing, there IS something to be done to help others in the world. There is a curriculum to learn. There are miracles to perform. Bodies and minds need healing.

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. ***Only the mind and body need Atonement.*** The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors."

Outside of the context of "I am in this world", being OUTSIDE the illusion box, you exist in Heaven with God. In Heaven there is absolute reality, permanence, truth, certainty, communion, creation, eternal life, holiness, omnipresence, immortality, constancy. "Outside" heaven in the dream world, none of these things are possible because the illusory world DENIES all of them.

So beware when you read ANYTHING in the Course, try to discern WHAT level it's on. What context is it being said within. And watch even for shifts in context/levels mid-sentence. Creating in your mind a crystal clear distinction between the two levels, assigning appropriate things to EACH BOX, will go a really long way to clarifying what Jesus MEANS and what he's referring to.

There are some extremely lofty beautiful things He says which are STILL squarely within the realm of illusions. And there are things which don't sound beautiful at all which are actually coming from a HIGHER level. "There is no world" isn't a damning condemnation of this world. It's just being honest about this illusion, from the perspective of the big picture. It actually should be cause for celebration.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

Disassociation plays a big part in making your forgiveness seem much more difficult.

Disassociation means that you are "not associating your self" with something. You're trying to put distance between you and something.

The problem is that you use disassociation on your SELF. You split off a part of your own self, the content of your mind, by having an unforgiving attitude of judgement. Then you try to reject that part of yourself, label it, judge it, hate it. You try to think of it as something you don't want, that is not your self.

You use these tools of separation against it because this helps you to have the impression that it's got nothing to do with you. You want nothing to do with it, like you want nothing to do with an enemy.

It is possible with your mind, to so thoroughly disassociate yourself from this "part" of yourself that you've decided to hate, and to have such a strong sense of rejection against it, that you come to believe it is NOT YOU.

So now that this part of you seems like it is not you, you quite literally perceive, experience, and belief that this thing is 'someone else'. You believe it is "not me".

If you've ever had an enemy in the form of a person, someone who perhaps seemed to abuse or hurt you a lot or who you were really angry with, or who over time you built up a hate towards, it could be a family member or an old friend or lover or a politician etc... notice how you had this sense of wanting nothing to do with them. You did not want to associate yourself with them, didn't want to be near them, even wanted to "get rid of them" from your experience. Maybe you even wouldn't have minded if they were dead or something.

Well this is what happens with a part of yourself that you disassociate from. You attack this part of yourself so strongly and pull yourself away from it, split yourself off from it, and there is this seeming "rift" between you. A separation. You use denial and illusions to make it SEEM like it is not part of your "self". You dis-identify with it, and form a different sense of identity that shuts it out. And the way that you perceive this part - which now appears like an 'other', with an alien will - looks to you like someone completely separate from you.

So as you break off parts of yourself and reject them, you form an attitude of tremendous rejection and attack towards them, and this makes them change how they appear to you. They look like something you don't want, like an enemy. And your sense of 'self' is disconnected from it. You say it is not you. You perceive it not you. You isolate your sense of "self" from it so much that you really believe it is not you. And that means, it's not "inside you". It's not part of yourself. And therefore, it has to be NOT YOU. So... if it's not you, it must be someone else's stuff, right? It must belong to someone else.

So this is where you then perceive that this rejected part of yourself is in fact intimately tied into someone else. And as you walk around the planet and meet people, you will still continue to experience this condemned part of yourself, within yourself, but you will have disassociated from it so much that you will perceive it's part of other people. You will think it is theirs. And this is what we usually refer to as "projection". This is how you seem to project things onto other people. You overlay your disassociated self onto others.

So then when you're in this situation where it seems like someone is an enemy, and you hate their guts, they really have nothing to do with this. There is a portion of your mind that you hate the guts of, and you're seeing this on top of the person. And you're so dis-identified with that part of you, that you think it's not you, or yours.

Like, it seems like it the other person is quite literally the one who is doing this stuff to you, because you think that this hated part of yourself is attacking or enemy of what remains of your "self". And so is born the idea and perception that you are being victimized by "other" people, by "not me". And this also means, you are now completely irresponsible because you are allegedly not the one who is doing this to you. And simultaneously this paints whats left of you as "innocent" - the innocent victim who has nothing to do with this evil thing.

But you are not really in a victim/victimizer relationship with other people. You're in this relationship with this broken-off part of your own self, which you hate, which is STILL within the confines of your own mind. So the question arises, who are you? What is left of you, if you are not this part you rejected?

Well when you've broken off part of yourself and judged it and disowned it, the part that remains is what we call the ego persona. You think it is the part of you that you are identified with and which is your "self". You think it is all of your self, your whole self, because it's the only parts of you that you have accepted and allowed. It's the parts of you related to what you want to be, how you want to be seen, the good citizen, the successful achiever, the strong personality, whatever. The parts you "keep" are the parts that you have not disassociated from, so you think this is still you. You don't realize that the other parts you've cut off within yourself are also you.

So now within your total mind, there is this small portion that remains, the persona, which is who you THINK you are, and this persona self focuses on including what it wants and rejecting what it doesn't want. And what it doesn't want are the things that it judges and attacks, within you. So this persona attacks you. And it relegates part of you off as not worthy, not allowed, not acceptable, not lovable, not forgivable, not good enough, bad, evil, etc. All of those parts form this disassociated self, another word for which is the "shadow".

This shadow portion of your own self is still within your mind, and there is a war going on between it and your persona. The persona wants to get rid of it at all costs, and does so by continually refining and trimming down what's left of you, chopping off parts it doesn't like with goal of artificial perfection. If it were to succeed with that goal, there would be nothing left of you because it will have relegated so much of you to the hated shadow. The shadow part of you, the disassociated self, which you think is in other people, is really still within your mind, and there is a war waging between these two parts.

So the stuff you hate about you, projected onto others, is believed to be attacking the stuff you exalt about you, which now sees itself as under attack and needing to defend itself. But the hilariously ridiculous, insane thing is, both of these perspectives, these two identities, are both inside of YOU. You have a split mind. Everything you think is inside you, inside your body, you have kept, and now the surface of your body shows this 'mask' of the persona to represent where you stop and where "otherness" starts. And anything outside your body that you think of as "not you" is where you DUMP all of the parts of you that you cannot love. And by relegating all these parts to "not me", "other", "external", it is very easy to perceive that this stuff belongs to someone else.

So now it's someone else'e fault that you nice tidy ego persona is being attacked. Or someone else is doing it to you. Or there is a cause outside of you - so you think. Or you are being affected and upset by something, some separate self, some alien will, that is outside of what you think is 'you', attacking you and trying to destroy you. But it's really part of you. It wants to be integrated and it wants to be unified and it wants to actually cancel out the persona so that your IDENTITY can become WHOLE.

The separation between these two parts of you is the problem. The fact that the persona attacks you by saying only a part of you is acceptable, and the rest is not, creates a split in your mind and therefore creates the shadow. So now the persona has become the defender of a false idea of self, and the shadow that it ITSELF has created, now becomes its apparent enemy.

This makes forgiveness difficult at first because you walk around this planet constantly perceiving that everything to do with "other people" has nothing to do with you, is not your stuff, is not your problem, is not in your mind, is not something you put there, you can do nothing about, you are a victim of it, and you want nothing to do with it. This is disassociation. It IS your stuff. It IS your self. It IS your content. So you have to see that your upset about so-called "other people" has NOTHING to do with them. It's your upset about a part of your own self. It's your persona being upset about the shadow. Part A being upset about Part B, of you.

So you are at war with yourself. And you are attacking yourself. And both sides of yourself are attacking each other. And there is a separation between them. And you hallucinate that the separated-off you is not yourself. So this has to be healed somehow. The separateness of these two split parts needs to be undone.

The only way this can be achieved is when you become willing and able to see, and recognize, that this whole drama is taking place WITHIN YOU. It's really not outside of you. It's got absolutely nothing to do with other people. The problem you see in them is YOUR STUFF. It's your power. It's your attack. So there's this victimizer that you think is out there, and this victim that you think is in here, and BOTH of these characters are inside the whole of your own mind. Both of them are being PLAYED BY YOU. You are simultaneously being the victim and the victimizer. The part of you that you think remains - your persona self, is being animated by your mind. And the part of you you think is not you, the projected shadow, is also being animated by your mind - like a remote puppet on a string.

Now, when you see this, it is very powerful because no longer are you paralyzed by believing in disassociation. No longer are you locked in from being able to do anything about this as a result of believing it's totally under someone else's control, is not within the realm of your mind and is not something you can wield control over. By seeing that you are the actor who is playing BOTH SIDES, the person and the shadow, the wanted and the unwanted, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the innocent and the guilty, the attacker and the attackee, you will see this war going on INSIDE YOURSELF.... and recognizing that YOU are the one who is playing both parts, that must snap you out of falling for this ILLUSION that it's got something to do with someone else. You must see that your identity, your actual identity, is "behind" both of these split characters, and therefore YOU are doing this, YOU are creating this 'performance', and YOU are the one who is having a war with yourself.

So if you can see this, that you're doing this to yourself, that you're playing both roles, and nobody else is involved, then this AWARENESS unmasks both characters, because it is so utterly ridiculously that you can no longer be deceived by it, and you recognize that they're both you. So now you have become INCLUSIVE, instead of exclusive. Inclusivity is healing, unifying. The awareness in which you see both characters simultaneously shows you that it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to have been one and not the other. It's impossible for you to be maintaining this position of "I'm the victim who isn't doing this to myself". And it's impossible to also maintain the position of "I'm the victimizer who is doing it to the persona". The cover is blown. The illusion is broken. They're both you. And you're doing it to yourself. It can be shocking to see this. But it is liberating. It sets you free to see the truth of what's going on.

Anyone who sees this, that they are doing this to themselves, will be set free. The persona and the shadow both will be undone, and an awareness will take their place. This awareness is your real self. Or in other words, your WHOLE SELF, which does not have these parts disassociated from each other. Your whole self is not stuck inside the illusion of victim/victimizer roles. It is not deluded that someone is doing something to it, or that it is doing something to someone. So now you are set free by the light of truth.

This also then means, automatically, that you will stop believing that this has got anything to do with other people, and that they're not really your enemies, and they really had nothing to do with this from the start. You thought it was to do with them because you were projecting your shadow self onto them and accusing it, attacking it, trying to get rid of it. Jesus describes this completely clearly in the course, that we project our own sin onto others and then attack it in attempting to destroy it. But other people are all innocent. This war was never with anyone else, it was with yourself.

This is the secret to salvation. You are doing this to yourself. You are your own enemy - but not just the receiver of attack, but also the one who attacks. You are both parties. And its you that needs healing and forgiveness between what has become two parts of you.

Taking TOTAL responsibility for EVERYTHING you experience is the ONLY way to find salvation! It is the meaning of forgiveness.

Throughout ACIM there is a simple theme. You are doing this to yourself. You are responsible for everything you experience. Whatever you're feeling, you chose to feel it. Nothing in the world is causing anything that you expeirence at all. And this means you have to own up to full responsibility for choosing all your suffering, in order to stop suffering. It means you have the POWER to make yourself suffer, and to stop the suffering.

This also means that it is impossible for you to be in a victim role, its impossible for the world to hurt you or attack you, no-one is EVER doing anything to you, no one is EVER responsible for causing you to feel anything at all, nothing happens without your consent, you can't even die without your own consent, your own thoughts are the only thing that can attack you, and if you would stop hurting yourself you would never be hurt.

This simple fact of your TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY for everything you experience, is the central truth that all forgiveness is based on. It is really owning up to the fact that YOU ARE IMMORTAL. And because you are immortal and eternal, you never change, you cannot change yourself, and nothing can change you. Any seeming changes you experience YOU must have decided to pretend to have, and nothing OTHER than your own mind can cause these to appear.

If you were to say, there are no other people in the world, you are the only person left in existence, and absolutely nothing happens except what YOU decide, you'd be close to the truth. This is not to say people don't exist, but this is the kind of mindset you need. You can't blame anyone for anything. You are THE CAUSE OF EVERYTHING. And this is described as the Holy Spirit's ONE all-inclusive lesson, which would eradicate ALL forms of suffering.

If you want to know about what forgiveness means, here it is. Forgiveness is simply the total ownership of the power of God, in which you are purely causal, and in which you recognize your immortality and that of everyone. Since we are all immortal, no-one can sin or attack or hurt anyone including themselves. And this means that no-one can be blamed, no one is a victimiser or a victim, and nothing is happening to anyone. In this view, there is no sin, and everyone is innocent and forgiven. It is the recognition that there is nothing TO forgive because nothing real can be changed, and therefore you need do nothing.

It's as simple as the fact that, if you are suffering in ANY way, you ARE the one who is choosing to suffer in this way. As an immortal being, NOTHING can happen to you or change you in any way. Which means no-one can be responsible for ANYTHING you experience, and nothing in the world does anything to you at all. It therefore means that if you seem to be experiencing any kind of suffering, YOU must have chosen it and put it in place yourself. And because you have that power, you can also undo it.

This includes all states of unhappiness, all sense of fear and threat, all sicknesses and pain, all bodily conditions, cancer and disease and death, all forms of attack, all grief and loss, all despair and depression, every kind of victimhood, all roles, all states of stress and upset, every offence, every hurt, YOU MUST have put it in place yourself.

Sometimes it is very hard to RECOGNIZE that this is true, and indeed this is all about recognition. Because without recognition you will not see that you are the cause - that the cause is in your mind. And then you will seek somewhere else, outside of you, in someone else, for the cause of your suffering, to explain how it got there, having disowned responsibility.

Without recognizing what you are doing to yourself, you will just keep doing it to yourself. And this lack of recognition will turn into projection and blame and victimhood and more suffering. If you do not take total responsibility, you will require someone or something else to be responsible. And then you will want someone or something else to change in order for you to be better off, which is the ego's "forgiveness to destroy." You would seek to destroy another in order to make yourself feel better.

This is also why anger is never justified because it's always a reaction to a faulty perception that someone ELSE is responsible, someone ELSE is having the guilt, someone ELSE has the power of causation and has caused you against your will. This is a disowning of YOUR power and making yourself a victim of your own power. Through projection your mind splits and dissociates from your power and puts it outside of you, and then subjects yourself to it, and now you are affecting yourself and at war with yourself, but you will believe that someone else is doing it. This all hides the fact that YOU are responsible for it.

All effects you experience, you put there. All forms of sickness, you chose on purpose. All suffering, you wanted. All guilt you intentionally chose. All fear you subjected yourself to by threatening yourself. All shame you piled upon yourself. All sense of unworthiness you deliberately tried to convince yourself of to keep God and thus power and responsibility away from you. All unhappiness and loss and despair you wanted on purpose to justify why you were powerless and not responsible.

The ego exclaims, someone else did this, not me! I'm not the guilty one, they are! Look at what's wrong with them, look at their sins and errors, I can't be the one at fault, this isn't my doing, I am not the criminal here, other people are accusing me falsely, other people are blaming me, they are all doing it to me, they're out to get me, they're so evil and wrong and guilty, how can they think they are better than me when they are just as bad if not worse, it's not me at all, poor me I am suffering as a victim because of other people and the world, they are all responsible for my happiness, they are all choosing wrongly and choosing unhappiness for me, why won't they just love me and worship me and make me happy against my will?!

That is unforgiveness because it is powerlessness and irresponsible. There is no ownership of CAUSATION in that view. It is false perception. Only by OWNING CAUSE and BEING THE CAUSE can you be free from suffering, reclaim your immortality and eternal life, enter a state of forgiveness, re-identify as the pure Christ being that God created you to be, recognize there is no sin, reclaim innocence, and therefore find SALVATION from suffering and death forever.

YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR POWER BACK!!!!!!!!! OWN UP TO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!! LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!!! CHOOSE AGAIN!!!!!!!

"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."

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"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."

"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."

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

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

"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."

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it."

"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. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do. -- My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: --- I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. --- Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."

Why do we try to keep bodies from dying? This is a very deep question. ACIM tells us we are immortal beings, incapable of sickness or death. That God has created us to live forever, because nothing real can ever be threatened.

It also tells us that we "play a game of death" by pretending to be something which can seem to die - a body. By believing we are mortal, our mind enters into identification with the body. We believe the body is our self, something vulnerable and limited and capable of being attacked.

"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." UrW191L9

Identifying as a body brings immediate fear. The body is fundamentally vulnerable and can be destroyed. If you are a body, you can never be safe. We know this, deep down. It produces a compulsion to then try to preserve and protect the body, believing that if the body dies we will die.

Anything which now seems to threaten the body is a threat to our existence. If the body becomes sick we are terrified that we're going to end. If a body dies, we feel it is the loss of someone real. This "fear of death" now turns into an entire death-worshipping culture in which we are constantly trying to keep bodies from dying. Constantly trying to deny that we believe they WILL die, and us along with them. Fearing whenever sickness strikes.

All our laws are set up to preserve bodies, to protect bodies, to defend them, to keep them going. We see sicknesses as defeat. We see death as total failure. We see all forms of attack as a threat to our existence and our health. We don't even live in a safe environment, surrounded by danger constantly. And yet we constantly try to surround the body with protections and shelter, all of which are guaranteed to fail.

"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." UrW153L1

If someone becomes sick, we feel afraid for their life, wanting their body ("self") to keep going. If someone is attacked, we rally around them and try to make them better. If someone is in a war, we see it as a tragedy, and how dare so many people be killed. Always essentially exalting the body, preserving the body, keeping the body going, worshipping the body, wanting the body to last forever. Wanting to avoid anything happening to "body-people" ever.

But the whole compulsion to have the body last forever is driven by the fact that bodies CANNOT last forever, the sheer terror this produces when you identify with it, and the NEED that arises to protect it to "save your life". We're not then trying to keep real people alive, we're trying to preserve a fake body person so that an otherwise immortal being can keep pretending to be mortal while denying they are mortal.

This applies not only to bodies but to the entire world and all physical life forms. Every single thing in this universe was made to be mortal, to lack, to lose, to suffer and to die. All the world's roads lead to death eventually, and all bodies and planets will die. That's just how it is, because this world depends on denying eternal life.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6

That fact is that we spend our entire lives trying to keep bodies going for as long as possible, avoiding all attacks, avoiding the weather, avoiding sicknesses, trying to end suffering, trying to stop the bodies from dying. But why? It is not necessary to stop bodies dying, because it has NO EFFECT on the immortality of the soul. Maybe we should stop resisting death so much, because resisting death induces it.

From the perspective of the immortal soul, the soul simply USES the world and the body for its higher purposes, as it attempts to awaken from the dream of death. It comes and goes, into one body, out of it, into another, until it learns its lessons. From its perspective, the body's purpose is to SERVE the soul's goal of reunion with God. And the body has no purpose or life of its own.

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION." UrT1B40J

As far as the soul is concerned, it knows that certain lifetimes cannot last, and will not be the lifetime in which it awakens from the dream of death. It determines to use a body for a certain amount of time and for a certain purpose, and then puts it aside. It was never necessarily the goal to resurrect the body in that lifetime or to make it healthy. It was not a part of the plan or "useful" for the soul's lessons at that time.

Yet when we are so heavily focused on bodies and believing people are bodies, with "one lifetime and then you die", we constantly and obsessively try to avoid the body's demise at all costs. It is a faulty approach because it identifies the person with their body, trying to keep them in it for as long as possible. And always to avoid the fear of "ending".

You'll do everything you can to fix the body and save the body, thinking that by doing this you will avoid loss and death. But this isn't how the soul uses the body at all. Instead of letting souls be free, we imprison them in bodies for as long as possible, not wanting the body to go because it would mean the loss of a body-person. A body that a person is not.

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT." URT15H12

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" UrT24H6

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me." UrW219

The big question then is what is the body FOR, and how is it being USED, and WHY it is being used this way, and for what purpose? The body is NOT an end in itself or something to be kept for its own sake. The ultimate goal for the soul is reunion with God and total spiritual awakening to heaven's reality. Its goal IS NOT to keep bodies living for as long as possible. The soul does not care about bodies whatsoever, because it knows they don't even really exist.

Sometimes bodies no longer serve the soul, no longer function well enough, and become unhelpful. When bodies become severely sick and disabled they may no longer prove "useful", and the soul will want to move on to a new one. Sometimes it is simply "time" for a soul to leave a body, even if the body is NOT in a state of health or a symbol of eternal life, because it is no longer realistic or feasible to keep using that same body for awakening. This isn't a failure, bodies just don't last long enough for the soul to fulfill its very long road to awakening.

We need to drop the idea of constantly defending, fixing, saving, trying to cure, and trying to preserve bodies as if they are supposed to be eternal entities. They were never designed to last forever. They are not made of immortal spirit. They are always temporary at best. The mind attacks them and they break down and die, and this does not matter in the big picture. There will be a "second coming" of the soul, and another, and another.

But more importantly, the mindset and belief that people ARE bodies is the whole problem. This leads to an automatic sense of threat to your existence, which leads to automatic fear, which leads to a compulsion to "not die". Thinking of bodies as people, as though when anything "happens to" a body it's an awful tragedy which should never have happened and is real and must be avoided, is not in any way forgiveness. It is being "blinded by perception of form". It is a guilty worshipping of an idol and a mistaken sense of who and what someone is and what's important.

Actual souls CANNOT BE HURT, cannot suffer, and cannot die. All suffering and sickness and death is an illusion. That's the soul's view of bodies. Souls do not care whatsoever for whether bodies carry on or not. They are valueless and meaningless and are nothing. They are not worth anything. They are just tools that we're using temporarily towards an end. The end is not death. The end is transcendence of bodies and a permanent awakening to spiritual reality.

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. 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. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?" UrW135L9

You'll continue to see that the world will remain obsessed with body preservation, worshipping of babies, attempts to avoid death, and the frankly inhumane notion that letting someone die is never in their best interests. People should be allowed to come and go as they will. Sometimes it is better to depart than to stay. And they do anyway, because a death is always consented and planned by the soul. It does not care about keeping bodies going or avoiding death, and death can be a liberation.

Avoiding death isn't really a miraculous viewpoint. Trying to have bodies always be resurrected and healthy isn't really a miraculous viewpoint. Making death real and then trying to rescue a person from it, is not a miracle-minded viewpoint.

These things are okay if they happen as side effects of the mind healing, and indeed we are to demonstrate symbolic bodies representing eternal life. But not because bodies are important whatsoever, and in an attempt to avoid death, or to try to use miracles as a way to DENY that we believe we are going to die. To falsely resurrect bodies in the name of body preservation is anti-miraculous. Resurrecting the MIND, such that bodies may also be healed indirectly is miraculous. Mind's belief in bodies must end.

"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." UrT29H4

Let the bodies go. Let them die if they're going to die. Someone dying does NOT always mean it's the worst possible outcome or a total tragedy or even something to be upset about. Don't mistake bodies for people or for souls or beings. They are nothing but artificial pictures, empty voids, vehicles and tools, used temporarily by a higher power and worth nothing in themselves. They have no meaning and no life of their own, and nothing worth keeping. They are only useful until they're not.

We need to drop the idea that "staying in a body" is the only valid and sane choice. Or that we need to preserve the body in order to protect the self. Souls leave bodies when the body is no longer useful, and never again do they give the slightest interest in what becomes of the corpse. Souls will use up a bazillion bodies and throw them on a scrapheap, across countless lifetimes, it if means being able to eventually wake up from bodies entirely.

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation." UrT1B40J

Most of us approach a spiritual path as something that we have to DO. But I'm questioning what exactly it is that we have to DO. And in fact, DOING is the OPPOSITE of what we're supposed to be doing.

For example, God has already accomplished the absolutely perfect act of creating us to BE perfect FOREVER. We have been given an absolutely perfect holy loving joyful innocent self which has eternal life and is immortal. There is nothing wrong with it and there never will be.

So in that light, what is there to DO? The course tells us that when we reach the END of our path and awaken to the truth, we will gladly realize "I need do nothing", because it's a recognition that everything true is still true, everything false is false, and you are still exactly as God created you. So there's nothing to do.

If in truth there is nothing to do, and heaven is still perfect and undefiled, then what exactly is HEALING, or correction, or waking up, or all this learning stuff? Because ultimately the actual purpose of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn. The purpose of choice is to choose against choosing on your own and to eventually realize there is nothing to choose between. So what are we supposed to be DOING?

The truth is .. .I think... that it's all really about UNDOING. The course for example says that the miracle doesn't "do anything", it just UNDOES. That is still a change and an act, but it sort of takes away distortions and removes blocks and cancels out ego stuff. That's not a sort of "addition" of something, it's a removal. And atonement meant to UNDO. It's more like a path that SUBTRACTS, takes away, cancels out and STOPS doing. You come to God with EMPTY HANDS, not hands full of ego achievements.

So how do you "do the course" or "do awakening" if the process is really supposed to be centred around NOT doing? Perhaps the focus is on learning NOT to do the things you are already doing with ego. More of a "melting within" as the course says.

It certainly is NOT a process of building, assembling, erecting, putting together, creating, establishing, accumulating, or any other form of "I need to be the one who makes things perfect". God has already created that which is perfect. So it's certainly not our job to be trying to "perfect something". And really this makes it more clear that the spiritual path isn't a sort of "growth" towards something that doesn't exist yet, it's a RETURN to something that God ALREADY GAVE.

Along those lines, we can spend an awful lot of time hammering home course quotes and concepts and ideas trying to sort of ... induce some kind of higher state, to steer ourselves toward God. But the course also says quite simply that fear is the only problem, and the only solution to fear is love. Love is literally WHAT YOU ARE as created by God, as a self which is completely centred in and identified as that love, within God.

So what it's really saying is, just as light shines away darkness, it's really the light of God, or the love of God, coming from your true self, that CAUSES all your darkness to be shone away. As it says, "salvation comes from my one self." So the truth is that your one self has the POWER OF LOVE in it. But the question is, what is it that we are trying to heal? It seems to be more about gaining ACCESS to the love/light/self that has power in it, to let IT shine away our problem - but the catch 22 seems to be that we need that love in order to get TO that love, which is why we need help and willingness.

The self that you really are does not need any healing. It has nothing wrong with it. There is nothing to be done to it to fix it. It has no needs or lacks or faults. And it is in fact the LOVE - which is God - that is present IN AND AS what you are, that is the established "proper functioning" of yourself. It is God himself who guarantees your proper functioning, as in "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." And God is the mind with which you think, the strength in which you trust, his will is your will etc.

So if you think about it, the love that you have in your real self, your christ soul self, IS THE REMEDY, because it is that love that heals and shines away sickness and undoes death and ego. It its the love that is ALREADY in you, that melts away the mental distortions of denial and deception.

So it's a very strange scenario where your already-perfected self is the very thing which is come to save "you" and heal you from the BELIEF that there is something wrong with you. This of course seems completely backwards. You believe you are a defective limited self that needs a lot of help and lacks a lot and is sinful and guilty and afraid.

And yet this self is NOT what you really are, and what you really are - Christ - will actually PROVIDE the LOVE that melts and heals your mind from this faulty view of yourself. So you in effect - as a perfect soul - will save you - the idea of your false self - from believing that you are not christ.

You can think ok, if I do this lesson and recite this text and say these affirmations and "do" this forgiveness, then it will get my mind into a state where I am more loving. As if to say, that all these things will CAUSE the love to show up, or will MAKE healing happen in your mind, or FIX your problems, or RESTORE your sanity.

But mind is something you have absolutely no comprehension of. It's more like a presence of living light. You have no clue how to fix it or correct it. And you'll find that it's not any of these "techniques" that CAUSE the presence of love or to get the mind to be more awake. How do you even manufacture "wakefulness"? How can you put love in place? You can't. And you don't.

So you can become actually very stuck in this cycle of trying to fix what is not broken, trying to apply all kinds of methods to somehow "put in place" what you think is missing, as if it's your job to make yourself have the perfect nature that you're supposed to have. But that's not your job, and you are completely unequipped to do it.

GOD HIMSELF has established your nature, has created you from love with love, and this love is beyond description and concepts. It is actually the LOVE ITSELF that CAUSES the miraculous healing of your mind and that of others. It is not that you need to do something to MAKE the love show up, it's that the LOVE needs to do something in order to make the UNLOVE go away. And your ego self is an identification with being the unlove - ie a lack of love, which is also called sin and fear and death. Lack of love can only be healed by LOVE BECOMING PRESENT, as light REPLACES darkness.

It is the LOVE OF GOD that shines away the darkness. This is its POWER. Remember that "healing is but another name for God." And "miracles are a universal blessing from God." God GIVES YOU the healing and remedy that you need. God operates ON YOU to heal your mind. God SENDS YOU the love that shines away all sorrows. God PUTS IN PLACE the proper perfect nature and condition that your mind needs to be in - IF you will let him.

This is why the course then says that the Holy Spirit - NOT YOU - THE HOLY SPIRIT - WILL UNDO, ALL the consequences of your wrong decisions - IF you will let him. If you will let HIM, NOT YOU. And this is to do with the question of, what's your proper function? What are you supposed to be DOING here, how are you supposed to be functioning, what is your ROLE? Your roel is NOT "I am going to separately individually and on my own fix my entire self and make it holy and spiritual."

The truth is that a "thought of God" has entered the darkness of our minds to BRING LIGHT INTO our minds, to shine away the darkness. That is a miraculous blessing from God. That's the Holy Spirit's function of HEALING. HIS function is to heal our minds WITH the eyes of christ and the love of God. With the very love that is in and comes through your real self.

So then what are we supposed to be DOING? Well, it then cannot mean that it is our function or job to DO anything really, except that, we're supposed to be WILLING to LET OURSELVES be forgiven, to let ourselves be healed, to RECEIVE HELP, and to let God do the work for us. The course even says that we do not even do the miracles and we have no clue what miracles even are really, other than vague descriptions of them. We have no idea how to ESTABLISH perfect love in ourselves.

So really the "spiritual path" is quite paradoxical. It's about using the body to make the body unnecessary. It's about using learning to learn that there is nothing to learn. It's about using change to learn that you are changeless and have never changed. It's about surrendering separateness. It's about letting God come back into your awareness and be in your mind and share himself with you - to let him GIVE LOVE TO YOU, to shine away your darkness FOR YOU.

So I think overall we're really supposed to be acting more like ... having willingness and humility and surrender to stop trying to wake ourselves up on our own, and instead open up to letting God perform spiritual surgery on us. We HAVE to get God's LOVE into our awareness.

As the course says, "identify with love and find yourself". Love itself is what you are, and in the presence of that love there is no fear or guilt or death. Nor because we hold these things at bay with the amazing power of our concepts, but because the LOVE SHINES IT AWAY FOR US. The atonement is the idea of God's love, shining away and undoing all ego and death.

All we've really done is we've gone into denial, and the solution to that is to do the opposite - which is acceptance. But acceptance isn't a DOING, it's a laying down of all the DENIALS and blocks and barriers and resistance and fear that try to PREVENT the love from doing what LOVE does. It's all an attempt to STOP GOD'S WILL. So the solution can't be that we keep doing our own separate will and expect it to work - we've God to let GOD'S WILL do its thing.

And that ultimately means coming to recognize that God's will is already DONE, because God is not indecisive or in two minds or uncertain. He already has GIVEN us EVERYTHING, and the only part missing is that we keep pushing it away, we have become ungrateful, and we do not want it. So it's a matter more of stopping the resistance - the resistance is a doing that needs to stop. And all the things we've taught ourselves have to be let go. And all the barriers we've built AGAINST receiving everything from God have to be dismantled.

Really then what we're supposed to do is LET GO AND LET GOD, receive God's love and support, let the Holy Spirit operate on us and HEAL US FOR US, let ourselves recognize that we have already BEEN forgiven, and gently let go of all the things that say otherwise. That's not so much a doing in terms of a putting in place, but more of a sort of PURIFICATION, a sort of clearing out, an emptying of self-made bullshit, a letting things come and go without attachment, a relinquishment, a purging catharsis, a kind of release from everything we made.

The very thing we need - the power of God as the love of God - is the very thing we have denied. And yet it is still there waiting to help us through Christ. As the course says, "ONLY Christ forgives." WE ARE NOT being forgiving at the level of having an ego, forgiveness is not complete until we are IN CHRIST BEING CHRIST looking out through Christ vision. Because forgiveness is a result of maximal love. The love has to be there FIRST in order to result in true perception.

From our ego perspective it's more like opening up to becoming a "medium for God", or a channel through which God can resume his expression and extension. "The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function." We are learning to resume our function of LETTING GOD, doing his will, not blocking him, and thus receiving and extending the love he is already giving, which will heal our minds and undo ego. GOD'S LOVE WILL DO what needs to be done. There is NOTHING ELSE to do.

Accept, receive, allow, admit, open, extend, give, share, include, be grateful, recognize, acknowledge, be.

LOVE TRANSMITS, YOU RECEIVE AND EXTEND. THAT IS ALL!

"I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. ***God has already done all things that need be done. 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."

"***God has ALREADY given him*** all that he REALLY wants."

"With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy ***God has already given them***. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death."

"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."

"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***."

"When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "***I need do nothing.***" Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. "

"THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. ***All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference*** to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

"***The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function***. ITS fullness cannot be contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness IS extension. The ego's whole thought system BLOCKS extension, and therefore blocks YOUR ONLY FUNCTION. It therefore blocks your joy and THIS is why you perceive yourselves as unfulfilled. Unless you create, you ARE unfulfilled. But God does NOT know unfulfillment, and therefore you MUST create."

Sometimes it *seems* as if something happens to us that we did not choose. Let's say, something physical in the world comes along and hurts your body. Maybe its a car crash. Maybe someone is having a bad day and spills hot coffee on your body. Whatever it is, the question arises, did *I* cause this to happen? Am I a victim?

If ever the answer is that I DID NOT choose it, what are the implications? It means that there must be something that has power over me, I must be a victim, I must have no hope for a cure, I must be vulnerable to external attack, and I must be capable of being made to suffer against my will. This whole belief is especially wrapped up in sickness and death, via perceived external or bodily causes.

There is also the fact that we are co-dreaming this world with others, and that means some other brother, not in his right mind, might elect of his own free will to attack your body. Is this also asked for? Did I CHOOSE to be attacked? Have I harmed myself or used my brother's body in some way, perhaps in agreement with him, a mutual attack? Surely if I did not participate in its choosing, HE is the sinner, and my victimhood and proof of attack in my body accuses him. "Sick bodies are accusers." "Brother at your hand I die."

Jesus says this.

"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."

So EVEN if there is a seemingly completely distinct attacker, some other person who of their own free will seems to be trying to attack your body, EVEN THAT is somehow chosen by you. And if you are pain or are suffering physically or emotionally, it is STILL true that you are causing it. In essence, there are NO EXCEPTIONS to the secret of salvation, and the instant that you believe there are, there is NO WAY TO FIND SALVATION, because now you've ruled out of the possibility of being FREE FROM "unwarranted external powers" or an "alien will."

Jesus goes on to say:

"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."

Here he seems to me to be saying, if you were sitting high up and were dreaming of a world down below you, which YOU populate with figures, and YOU animate, and you make "do things", like a child playing with dolls causing the dolls to pretend to interact or fight, then you'd realize that YOU are not identified with any of these figures and so these things are not happening to YOU. By being spirit-identified, you are not dream/body identified. So any activities in the world - in your dream - which you made do what it does, has no real effect on who and what YOU really are. But this does require a total clarity and atonement-level acceptance of the awareness of dreaming and the fact that you're making the world happen.

Jesus continues:

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

So now he's telling us that the form of the issue does not matter. Whether it be a violent person or a car crash or a disease or unhappiness. There is ONE truth about them all, and that truth is that YOU are doing them to yourself, by identifying with the body and dreaming a dream in which you CAUSE the bodies to hurt each other. For this to be true, you as a dreamer has to be a really high-level, powerful position. Can you comprehend the power entailed in dreaming a planet? Can you accept or own that this entire environment is in your mind?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

The issue with your body is a tiny speck of the dream that your mind is supposedly dreaming. Like in your dreams at night, where your mind invents an entire environment and then puts a little body in it, perhaps too it is true of this physical world. We dream up an entire ecosystem of events and activities and people and then make stuff happen and the only way we'd feel that we're vulnerable to any of it, is if we forget we're dreaming it and identify with some part of it, such as believing you are a body. Jesus is practically saying that what you are transcends ALL bodies. Is this too lofty of an interpretation? Too hard to relate to?

Jesus says to let them be as vicious as they may. And that seems to mean, even allowing the body to be attacked and damaged.

""In my defencelessness my safety lies." - 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."

But somehow, if you were conscious enough of being the dreamer and not the dream, you would not be even slightly confused or believe that anything the body is experiencing is anything to do with what you are. That it is having NO EFFECT on you. It's not disturbing your peace of mind or happiness.

The problem with this is, "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body." So one moment Jesus is saying to let people be vicious, which presumably could mean your body is damagable, which is backed up by his statements about "only bodies can be attacked". And then the next he's saying that the mind should heal the body, and if it doesn't, the mind is not healed. "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." Yet if another person did the damage, does that mean your mind is not healed? Is your mind not healed because YOU dreamed of the other person? Is your mind not healed because you made up another body to attack this body, in your dream, thus literally doing it to your body self?

Jesus seems in some ways to say, you can transcend all worldly happenings, all bodily situations, be fully spirit identified, recognizing you are mind not matter, and be free from every possible dream scenario no matter what happens in the world. BUT, he also seems to teach that a mind in such a position would therefore have the miracle-working power to UNDO or correct or heal, anything that arises. This seems to imply the body can be attacked and is vulnerable, BUT that the mind CAN heal it, and if the mind has not healed it the mind must not be healed simply because it's not sane to allow the damage to remain. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother and yourself." "A miracle of healing proves separation (attack world) is without effect."

A question arises, is it possible to somehow supernaturally cause the body to be INCAPABLE of being attacked? Jesus speaks of a "protection" near the end of "sickness is a defense against the truth". He speaks of the body being unable to be sick, or to die. But if bodies can be attacked, would some other person come along in the dream and still attempt murder? And would it still produce a wound on the body? Does mind wield a power capable of essentially making the body literally immortal and undamagable?

Or would this be simply impossible, given the body is not real and only real things are free from threat? It would suggest the body can still be attacked, but that the mind could heal the attack. And that would seem to line up with Jesus's body being crucified in spite of his profound advanced mental state. If his mind has permanent projective power over the body, it would not have been crucifiable. The spear would not have been able to penetrate the hands and the nails could not be driven into his limbs.

It's true that, nevertheless, "the mind that made the body can make another". So in a sense, if the body is destroyed the mind, which is not the body, could manifest another illusory body, which also has inherent susceptibility. ie bodies fundamentally exist only as illusions, illusions can be attacked (illusions of attack) fundamentally, and so there is no way to render a body immortal or permanent. The mind CAN however heal the body, can project new bodies, and has the power to perhaps supernaturally manipulate events, utilize divine guidance and therefore find a "safe" path through the dream of attack.

One line says, "without the idea of death there is no world." Another says "to see a sinless body is impossible" and "the body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Which means, if the body seems to exist at all, it depends on death. It is made of death. And at best, it can symbolize eternal life but cannot BE it. Mind can maintain it and heal it. But there are limits - and short of a supernatural miracle, a body wouldn't survive a direct encounter with a supernova.

We know the body is just an image, an illusion, projected by the mind. It SHOULD, in the "movie projector analogy, mean it's possible possible for the DREAMER to NOT dream attack scenarios. In fact, "my self is ruler of the universe speaks to 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. This must I accept."

How absolute does this sound? It seems to literally mean, as the ruler of the universe, nothing can happen without your consent. No events can occur, without you dreaming them. Wars cannot take place unless you make them happen. Not only does what you desire happen, what you DON'T want to happen does not occur either. ie, you have TOTAL CONTROL over the dream.

And if that is true, does it not mean you could organize that there will NOT BE an attack upon your body? Unless you CHOSE that there be one and made it happen, that perhaps Jesus orchestrated every aspect of his own crucifixion? But does not this also mean that he must've dreamed of the "rest of us" too? Why not just dream of everyone being fully awake and bring an end to the dream entirely? How are we co-dreamers? Through a shared will?

Jesus also speaks of the body disappearing upon awakening. This suggests, in a co-authored dream, when a dreamer wakes up, he stops making a body. The recognition of its NOTHINGNESS cancels its illusions, making it impossible for it to appear to exist at all. A light shines so brightly, the body vanishes. "And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar of the Son of God."

If mind has the power to make a world, it would seem mind could have the power to force the body not to age, be sick or die. That mind would take authority over any occurrences. Mind could supernaturally make it impossible for the body to be attacked. It could "sustain the body indefinitely, BUT within time, where all bodies exist. This would require an ongoing maintenance, a vigilance, in orer to maintain this projection. And this seems to be what is spoken of here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement 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. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

So Jesus is suggesting a potential for indefinite sustainability of the body's health and state, where mind is overriding any worldly causality. This feasibly could continue for thousands of years. And there are stories of certain masters who have accomplished this longevity. St Germain, Babaji, etc. These advanced teachers of God apparently have the power to reverse, heal, and resurrect the body. At least for as long as it is useful in the atonement plan. The purpose is the plan. And once fulfilled, bodies are no longer needed.

"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."

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then - and then - I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

"This is the message of the crucifixion: there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusion are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains."

So what's the conclusion?

Mind has power over everything. Mind is co-dreaming the world with others. All illusions are attackable IF the mind CONSENTS to it. Due to free will, other minds can use their bodies to try to attack your body. This possibly cannot happen at all if you do not consent to it. If it does happen, you have agreed to a mutual attack scenario, and now your brother seems able to attack your body. But now your mind has the power to miraculously heal it, and being sane it would do so. And this the body can be "protected" by the mind indefinitely while useful, eventually to be laid aside ie vanished when no longer useful. You can choose the body cannot be sick, age or die, by protecting it actively, or through miracles of healing. But the time of bodies will come to an end.

A collection of ACIM quotes focusing on the UNREALITY of the world. It is vital, and our only task, to correctly identify the world AS unreal, to take away from it all sense of reality and assign it to the truth of God. Only God's reality can be real. The world we made is completely unreal. Nothing in it is real at all. Recognizing its unreality is the awareness of dreaming. Recognizing its unreality is liberation from all suffering.

"Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. They can be valued, but remain unreal."

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real."

"Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits on your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see, and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one."

"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. And you who share God's Being with Him, could never be content WITHOUT reality."

"It is, then, only your WISH to change reality that is fearful, because, by your wish you think you have ACCOMPLISHED what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, ACKNOWLEDGES your power, yet by DISTORTING it, and devoting it to 'evil,' it also MAKES IT UNREAL."

"It is not my will to grope about in darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal."

"We will attempt to leave the unreal and seek for the real. We will deny the world in favor of truth. We will not let the thoughts of the world hold us back, and we will not let the beliefs of the world tell us that what God would have us do is impossible."

"Then try to go past all the unreal thoughts which cover the truth in your mind, and reach to the eternal. Under all the senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the thoughts which you thought with God in the beginning."

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and COULD not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"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."

"Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have interposed BETWEEN reality and your awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all."

"There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial, and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive but equally unreal."

"This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. But neither is it safe. And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal."

"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."

"When you try to bring TRUTH to illusions, you are trying to MAKE THEM REAL, and KEEP them by JUSTIFYING your belief in them. But to give illusions to Truth is to enable truth to teach that the ILLUSIONS are unreal, and thus enable you to ESCAPE from them."

"Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

"God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy," which he made, is TOTALLY unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you HAVE escaped. The war is gone."

"Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."

"Forgiveness that is learned of ME does not use fear to UNDO fear. Nor does it make real the UNreal, and then destroy it."

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent."

"Include all of the ego-based attributes which you ascribe to yourself, positive or negative, desirable or undesirable, grandiose or debased. All of them are equally unreal because you do not look upon yourself through the eyes of holiness."

"But you have not left open and unoccupied the altar where the gift belongs. Where THEY should be, YOU have set up your idols to something ELSE. This OTHER will, which seems to TELL you what must happen, you GAVE reality. And what would SHOW you otherwise must therefore seem unreal."

"Faith in the UNreal leads to ADJUSTMENTS of reality, to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful world, to JUSTIFY its purpose. What you desire, you WILL see. And if its reality is false, you will UPHOLD it by NOT realizing all the adjustments YOU have introduced, to MAKE it so."

"But they have names which differ for a time, for time needs symbols, being itself unreal."

"Yet when peace is found, the war is meaningless. And it is conflict now that is perceived as non-existent and unreal."

"You can see yourselves as separated FROM your meaning only by EXPERIENCING YOURSELF AS UNREAL. This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible."

"Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete. But if they perceive ANY of their brothers as anything OTHER than their perfect equals, the IDEA of competition HAS entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant AGAINST this idea, because ALL your conflicts come FROM it. It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving YOURSELF as unreal?"

"Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout? And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them as real, and so they are real to him. When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear."

"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."

"You cannot make the UNreal because the ABSENCE of reality is fearful, and fear cannot BE created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, YOU WILL NOT CREATE. Opposing orders of reality MAKE REALITY MEANINGLESS, and reality is MEANING."

"You cannot DISTORT reality and KNOW WHAT IT IS. And if you DO distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic, because you are trying to MAKE YOURSELF UNREAL."

"When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have condemned yourself. But if ALL condemnation is unreal, and it MUST be unreal because it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE no results."

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that."

"Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has."

"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."

"There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing ALL calls for help as exactly what they are, EXCEPT YOUR OWN PERCEIVED NEED TO ATTACK. 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."

"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."

"Such is the ONLY rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God CAN have no need of them."

"For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, 'til you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal."

"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."

"The special relationship is your DETERMINATION to keep your hold on unreality, and to PREVENT yourself from waking." "It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The WISH to make it IS incredible."

"How can faith in reality be yours, while you are bent on making it UNreal? And are you REALLY safer in maintaining the UNreality of what has happened, than you would be in joyously accepting it FOR WHAT IT IS, and giving thanks for it?"

"Nor could one mind think only for itself, unless the body WERE the mind. For ONLY bodies can be separate, and therefore UNREAL. The home of madness CANNOT be the home of reason. Yet it is easy to LEAVE the home of madness, if you see reason."

"We said before that, to limit love to PART of the Sonship, is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus MAKE THEM UNREAL."

"It does not really matter, in the end, whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it IMPLIES the belief that reality is yours to choose FROM."

"Only the timeless must remain unchanged. But everything in time can CHANGE with time. Yet, if the change be real and not IMAGINED, illusions MUST give way to truth, and not to other dreams which are but equally unreal."

"To you who still believe you live in time, and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind."

"And everything that points the way in the direction of the past but sets you on a mission whose accomplishment can ONLY be unreal."

"Every step taken in the making, the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship, is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality."

"YOU have made the relationship unreal, and THEREFORE unholy, by seeing it WHERE it is not, and as it IS not. Give the past to Him Who can change YOUR mind about it, FOR you."

"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. But it CAN be recognized or unrecognized, real or false, to YOU. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you, BECAUSE you hid it, and SURROUNDED IT WITH FEAR."

"The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it, is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here IS truth, SEPARATED from illusion, and NOT confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For ONLY fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally UNreal. "

"The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears."

"Fantasies are distorted forms of thinking, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision."

"But Christ-control takes no account at all of the MAGNITUDE of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at RESTORING reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws of the same error it aims to correct."

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.

Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.

Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.

Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.

The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".

To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.

Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.

It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.

The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.

Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.

Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.

Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.

Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.

It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.

Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.

You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.

The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.

Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.

Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.

Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.

In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.

Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.

It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.

It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.

You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.

This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.

To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.

Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.

You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.

Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.

Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.

Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.

Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.

It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.

You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.

You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. 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. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) 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."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"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."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. 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."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

What does it mean that you are not the body? It's not what you think.

What you are, is whole, within. Like you are this little orb of light which contains the whole of God.

As a whole self, you increase by extending and creating.

When the separation idea was introduced, it was suggested that there was something separate from you or outside of you, or indeed that you were separate and outside of yourself.

This was the idea of sin, and it ultimately led to the invention of the body through OUTWARD PROJECTION FROM THE MIND. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

The body then is sort of this "shell", really an IDEA, which you have surrounded yourself with as a result of this belief that a) you are outside of yourself and b) there is something separate from your inner self.

It has thus formed a picture which seems to surround and enclose you. This is why when there is a body showing up it seems like you are "inside" it.

But it also then simultaneously seems as if you "are" the body and the stuff inside you is invisible and not yourself. This leads you to build a "bodily identity", to be identified with the body. In more extreme cases the outer bodily self seems to be the ONLY self, and the inner self is very hidden. We need to reverse that.

So the part of your mind that you split off and think of as separate from your inner self, forms a fake identity composed of a body image, which you now think is yourself.

So what happens when you stop having a split mind?

What is the purpose of saying "I am not a body I am free"?

The purpose is not to deny the body. It is not to identify yourself as being that which is inside the body while the outer bodily image remains either. It is not to disassociate from the body. It is not to escape the body. And it is not to think of yourself as "only mind and not a body."

The state you are meant to be returning to, is a state in which there is no separation in you, there is no sense of something having been split off as outside of you, and therefore of being whole "within" yourself. When you do that, what is going to happen to the body which was "outside you"? How is it going to even show up if there is no part of you that identifies AS IT because there is no part of you which exists outside of your inner self?

IT IS GOING TO DISAPPEAR.

It was only showing up there because your inner self projected it (the idea of sin projected outward) and it is only showing up because part of you believed that you were outside of yourself.

Your sense of identity formed a "bodily identity" or an identification not just with a body but AS a body. You can also think of it as an "external self". And however the mind is relating to its own identity, that is how it shows up. If the mind is thinking that it has separation in it, ie walls, it will materialize a body! And yet if the mind does not believe it has any walls within itself, the body will disappear because the mind is seeing itself as a WHOLENESS, not a split-off self.

This is also correlates to the creation of sickness. When the mind is more strongly believing that it is separated from itself, split in two and part of itself is outside the inner self, this belief in separation attacks yourself and makes you SICK. And that sickness will now manifest IN, or more accurately, is projected outward AS, a sick-looking body, which is really just a mental image of yourself as sick. The less you believe in separation, therefore, the less your mind is split and the less you believe you ARE an external self, the less your body image will show up as sick, and thus sickness will appear to disappear as well, leaving a "holy" and "immortal" body, just prior to its complete disappearance.

When that externalized identity is returned to your true "inner" identity, the "outer" illusory separate self is not there anymore. It's been integrated into the whole of what you are within. So there is no basis for the body. It has no grounds, no function, no purpose, no reason to be there. SO IT DISAPPEARS. The mind is not seeing itself AS one, it does not believe it has a second identity, so it STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY.

The presence of a body is simply a symptom or side-effect of you believing that you are not pure spirit and therefore you have a separate second identity. Identification "with" the body is nothing more than the strength of your belief that you MUST BE a body, because you must be outside of yourself , having gone "out of your mind."

It's not that the body exists on its own and you happen to "come into it" or incarnate into it or that it was there before you arrived or that it will remain after you leave. If you seem to go through that process of discarding bodies, you will reincarnate, because the discarding process (death) is really an attempt to SEVER yourself from yourself. What that means is, you have tried so hard to DISCONNECT your inner self from the part of you which became "outer", the part which identified with being "a body", and so CUT OFF part of yourself and destroyed it. All death occurs to the "projected self", not the inner self. And all death is just a testimony to how much SEPARATION and therefore false identification there was within you. And that mental state REMAINS, and will CAUSE ANOTHER BODY to be desired and projected.

That's what causes all death. Death is the self-attack of the inner self upon the outer self. Or to put it another way, what we think of as "mind" seems to be the inner self only, and we say that this mind-self attacks the body self, but the body self is actually another PART of your mind which is temporarily identified with being an external illusion. So one part of mind is attacking another part of mind. Mind is not just the part of you that is INNER, and it is not just the part of you which is INSIDE the body.

The body IS WITHIN THE MIND and it is an image being thought of, projected, imagined WITHIN the mind as a whole. One part of mind attacks the other and tries to destroy it, and that results in the illusory sickness and death of that other part of mind, but does not heal the desire to attack, and so the mind "makes" another body (reincarnation) and proceeds to attack it again. This will keep on happening until both parts of mind are rejoined as one so that there is no separation, then there will be no more bodies materializing as ideas of sin.

So then having destroyed part of yourself and yet still believing your identity WAS the outer self, your inner self is still projecting and split and MUST manifest another body. And this forms the basis for reincarnation - that you still believe you are a body and must have a body and so this magnetizes you to a body or causes one to materialize. YOU put your body into your mother's womb and YOU grow it and YOU cause it to show up the way it shows up. Sperm and egg coming together does NOT CAUSE bodies to appear. It is an illusion. Mind causes bodies to appear and arranges FAKE JOINING on an ego level (which must be an illusion of joining) to pretend that you are inherited from the dream.

So death is not a way to leave the dream, or to heal separation. It cannot accomplish this because it means that you simply attacked part of yourself with hatred and tried to destroy it and had identified strongly with "being a body" at least in part. The only way out of the dream is NOT THROUGH DEATH. "The dream is not left by death but by truth."

The dream is only left by truth by re-integrating the part of you which you split off and associated with a body, and returning its identity to be identified with the INNER self which remains hidden behind the body or seemingly trapped inside the body invisibly. You do not withdraw FROM the body, you withdraw the body itself. You withdraw belief in BEING a body. You must not try to "separate yourself from the body"!

If you do that all you're doing is adding denial on top of denial. Denial of the body is an unworthy form of denial - that's what this means. If you believe the body exists ON ITS OWN and HAS ITS OWN WILL and you then try to get away from it to "be only mind", you are SEPARATING YOURSELF MORE. You are trying to separate yourself off from the separate self which you already split off from yourself, adding another whole layer of denial and separation. This will make you more sick. The body in a sense should be embraced but only up to the point where you recognize that you are projecting it and therefore can un-project it through its PROPER UNDOING, by reversing your belief in separation. Without a belief in separation, there is no sin, and therefore sin cannot be made flesh and projected outward. No more body.

You withdraw the PROJECTION of the body through re-owning yourself and identifying with Spirit. This does NOT mean that the body exist at the same time as the spirit. It does NOT mean that the body WILL REMAIN once you have shifted identity to being ONLY spirit. It means the body MUST DISAPPEAR. It is only showing up because it is what you believe about your identity and what you think you are. When your mind is no longer believing that you are a body AT ALL and is completely whole and healed and no longer split or divided or separated off, there is no NEED for a body, no BELIEF in a body, no PROJECTION of a body, and your mind will STOP MAKING ONE.

That is when you are free. Not free of a body that carries on existing. Not free through deathin which the body CONTINUES. Not free because you laid the body down to die and then headed on over to God's party. But simply free of MAKING bodies at all. If you want to be free of reincarnation, and free of DEATH, you MUST STOP BELIEVING YOU ARE SEPARATE FROM YOURSELF, which means you must stop believing you are, or need to be, a body. And thus you will stop making bodies and your body will disappear entirely.

Doing this alleviates all signs of sickness and makes the body temporarily invulnerable and useful only as a communication device. Just prior to the body disappearing completely, it becomes a sign of immortality. Jesus writes about this clearly here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

And here...

"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. 4 Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

Note that when he says "laid by" here he is not talking about making it die and laying it on the ground and letting it rot while you whiz off to heaven. He means literally, you stop making it, as evidenced by his statements about how he did exactly that.

Jesus already accomplished and demonstrated this through the PROPER UNDOING OF THE BODY through truth and the DISSOLVING of it through spirit identification, not "escape" from it through death or separation or denial or thinking that it still exist OR making it still exist. We are responsible for making ourselves show up as bodies, WE made the body with our mind and can un-make it! We made all sickness, all death, and the body itself. " "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."

Here is what Jesus has to say about this whole process, which ultimately is the completion of the atonement and the RESURRECTION.... and guess what... not just the disappearing of the body, but the disappearing of THE WORLD (this universe), which is only showing up based on the exact same principle of mind believing in separation, and MUST DISAPPEAR when mind has returned to spirit identification.

""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. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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.

"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. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.

"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. 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. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time that you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then — I cannot speak of that.

"A body can not stay without illusion and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion; There is no order of difficulties in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection: Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.

"These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen but an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven’s gate, where God will come Himself to take you home"

"Forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want, and everything I give I give myself. This is salvation s simple formula."

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."

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

As I learn that any upset I feel is entirely self created and internal and nothing to do with anything else, I begin to experience a strangely unexpected disconnection between what seems to happen and how I react.

I can see that things happen externally, and perhaps they trigger internal reactions initially, but if I work on those reactions or realize they are just some old unhealed junk surfacing in my awareness, and I heal it, I am then restored to a more peaceful happy state even in spite of the fact that the external situation may still be the same.

And so this shows me that there are kind of two things running simultaneously. There's the external story, the world, showing pictures of things happening. And then there's this internal story or dialog, this inner reactive ego response, which runs alongside it. The ways that I am attacking myself, and then USING the world as a scapegoat.

As I practice ownership of my inner experience and see myself responsible for choosing and causing it, rather than making a false ego causal connection between "what I feel" and "what is happening outside", the two previously merged stories are peeling away from each other. Whereas before I thought that my upset goes hand in hand with a given situation, it is suddenly evidence that the two are not connected.

They no longer completely coincide and I now see myself sometimes moving outward to join with the external story but then flowing back inward again to pull away from it. If I identify with the "what's happening out there" story, I lose myself and react to it. But if I recall that I'm doing this all to myself internally, and ideas leave not their source, and any reaction in me I have chosen to reinvent myself, the whole sense of being "caused by" the world diminishes.

Where there used to be simply a total confusion and distraction and immersion and absorption into the hierarchy of illusions, all of the effects the ego dream would suggest I have, and its entire script for what I "should" be experiencing as a result, there is now an intermittent but increasingly wide divide between "what the dream is doing" and "what I am doing to myself."

If I am being triggered a lot by some situation that is ongoing, but then I recognize the triggered reaction is a re-emergence of a prior condition of self attack in my mind, my own accusation of myself as sinful, and I work on that and undo it, and it goes away, and the external situation just continues in its normal form but without triggering me, I see that there is a definite difference between me and "it".

It's as if, we don't just become body identified, we become world identified. We believe that *everything* external to the mind, which includes the body, has become the storage place and cause of all the stuff we are experiencing. We bind with it, just as we bind with the body in pain. We fail to separate out what is the dream and who is doing the dreaming. It's like an attempt to be one with the dream, to merge with it, and to fail to recognize it is not dreaming you.

If I think the world is dreaming me and causing me, I'm going to go out of my mind and connect my sense of who and what I am to whatever the world suggests I should be, based on that causality. If I let the dream dictate everything I experience, I am now in a constant victim role. As I continue to believe that I'm at the effect of the world, I cannot separate out what is happening within me versus what is really causing it. Because the world is not really the cause at all, and I'm doing this all to myself from within, to within.

I have to learn to recognize that whatever is going on inside me, whatever feelings or upsets or experiences or beliefs I'm having, not one single one of them is the result of the external dream world. There is not a single cause in the world with the power to do anything to me, as an invulnerable, immortal being. And that means learning to stop having this symbiotic merging of identity with the world, where I plug myself into the external illusion and allow it to trample all over me under the belief that it CAN and IS doing so.

I have to learn that nothing I experience is caused by anything but my innermost self. And if I am upset, I must address what I am doing to myself. And if someone *seems* to trigger me, I have to not accuse them of causing what comes up because they did not put it there, I did. And I would then thank them for bringing it to my attention. And so I must then recognize, if it weren't for me hurting myself, accusing myself, upsetting myself, I would NEVER be hurt, accused, or upset. An in fact as Jesus says, "you cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

It actually isn't really so much a matter of what the world has been doing TO ME. It's more in fact a matter of what I have been doing TO THE WORLD. I have been putting MY self-accused sins ONTO the world and have been attacking it and using it as a scapegoat to blame for causing the very things *I* have been doing to myself! The world has not been guilty at all, it's been innocent the whole time. And it's my own inner conflict that has been playing out projected and disassociated externally, to make it SEEM as if it's not part of me or in my mind or anything to do with me. I then get away with blaming the world for everything I do not like about myself.

MY task now is to step back, out of the drama I am causing, out of the rollercoaster of reactions and suffering that I'm producing based on what I've done to myself and tried to accuse others of, and constantly correct the "spilling over" of my inner wounds onto the world. Indeed I am to take off of the world all of the shite that I have been dumping onto it through my egoic projections of self attack.

All the guilt, sin, fear, unworthiness, shame, whatever.... if I address it as an internal scenario that I am doing to myself, NOT caused by anything or anyone else, and it is addressed honestly and correctly within my mind, then gradually I'm lifting off of the world all of this inner baggage that I was associating or attaching to it. And that means the world itself, the dream, is going to be recognized more as not really the cause of anything.

In this way, gradually the world becomes forgiven, in the sense that it is seen WITHOUT my inner content projections. As I stop seeing inner junk "out there", what was behind the junk - the illusory world onto which I projected more illusions - the illusory world is "revealed" more for simply what it is and not what I was making of it. Without my sins being projected, and without having any sins, I cannot see sin IN it.

The guilty meanings I was projecting onto it, the causality I was accusing it of, the sense of vulnerability and stress and suffering that I thought IT was responsible for causing but which I was doing to myself backwards, are no longer seen as "coming from" the world or from anyone else, but myself. It's all an inside job. And it's really me that needs the forgiveness, having accused myself of things that are untrue of my perfect divine holiness.

If I am wounded, by my self attack, I will project my wounds all over the place, bleeding out onto the world a blackness of self hatred. This will cloud my perception of the world and render it dark. As I heal the inner wounds, within, where the problem really is, in my mind, I can no longer have anything TO leak out onto the world. The world simply becomes automatically "forgiven", not because it did anything, but through simply being able to SEE what is there as the world, through self-forgiven eyes, rather than seeing THROUGH the old lens of sin and guilt.

As such, the world becomes uncovered, released, "saved" from me, from my projected self attack. And without a log in my own eye, I no longer HAVE sin in my mind TO attempt to displace onto external figures. And without this sin blocking my vision, I become more able to simply see the world for what it is, without all of the sin guilt and fear dumped onto it or filtering it. And without this angry dark content, perhaps the world is filled with light.

We're told that as we progress with this, the "real world" will become more visible to us. That is, the world we made, but without judgement, projection, disassociation, displacement, or all the other forms of disowned self attack masking it. Without this content, its forms seem less inherently meaningful. Without putting these dark meanings onto the world, the world IS meaningless. It is also neutral, and in a way pure, because it is nothing.

The world, in its "reality", or rather, seen "as is", is just a picture, without sin or guilt or fear or death projected onto it. It just stands like a thin veil before the face of Christ. It has no meaning of its own, because God only creates meaningful worlds and He did not create this. It is not dark. Or alive. Or dead. Or holy. Or sinful. In fact it can become more seemingly beautiful, as the inner beauty begins to look upon itself and shine outwards, illuminating the picture rather than attacking it. And as such the "real world", the forgiven world, begins to show up in awareness as a reflection of your OWN holiness projected onto a NEUTRAL canvas.

While the world in its physicality and form is "false perception", in which the forms are only focused on as part of seeing falsely and dwelling on separations, guilt and death, as perception rises toward the light within, looking first within and then looking outward, the forms are overlooked. They don't define anything quite so strongly as before. They don't separate off with harsh boundaries and walls. They become less solid, less heavy, less dark. They loom with less weight and seem to have less substance or meaning. As if they are not there, because they aren't, being just illusions.

The world becomes lighter, within, and seen without, as the dream seems to turn to a happier dream, where the unhappiness that was in you is no longer added to it. Where happiness returns to the mind and the world is seen as not containing any real sin or guilt - because the mind has none to project onto it. You can only look upon yourself. If you are love you see love in everything because the world is not real or evil. If you are guilty, you see guilt in everything and the world seems like hell. By forgiving yourself and restoring heaven to your mind, the world can be but a reflection of heaven to you.

The world without your guilt is the forgiven world, shining and sparkly and new. Still an illusion, yes. Still neutral and meaningless, yes. It is still nothing at all. But now the meaningfulness of love - God's will - is projected and seen within it, rather than darkness. This makes the world seem "lovable". Not because it is love or made of love, but because you can see only the love BEYOND it and can do nothing else. And God does love the world we made. This love, seen in it, is its only reality, and in the intensity of this love, all of the forms melt and disappear. Because the love is deeper than the forms and lives between the lines.

When eternity finally shines away the world, all its forms have vanished, everything has fused into oneness, love has erased death and the nothingness of the world of bodies ceases to exist. Without separation there are no forms. In light, there is no darkness. And in love there is no fear. All that remains beyond this disappearing world is heaven. Love looks upon itself. Christ looks upon Himself. And then God is known in completion.

"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. This leads directly to dissociation"

"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. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything else from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked within, and thought you saw the power to give something else WITHIN YOURSELF. It was only this decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision of what you SOUGHT."

"You are afraid of me because you looked within, and are afraid of what you saw. But you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of God's Creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace, IF YOU REALLY LOOKED UPON IT. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something THAT IS NOT THERE. Yet in this same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind that created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to project His peace through YOU."

"When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace, you will FIND it. For by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its holy witnesses will surround you, because you CALLED upon them, and they will come to you. I have heard your call, and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me, nor hear the answer which you sought. But that is only because you do not yet want ONLY that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that you DO want only that. And you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the world as God created it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen."

"As you decide, so will you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision. When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is YOUR judgment, it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging as HE does, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."

Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."

A Course in Miracles itself is over 550,000 words of deep and dense material. It appears filled with meaning dripping from every word, and seems to talk on many topics. But really the entire thing has very simple origins and a very simple goal.

You simply started off in heaven's reality with God, and then you tried to rebel against his will and put yourself to sleep. You had a strange dream of mortality, and now you're trying to remember what your immortal reality is like again, so that you can wake up. It's no more complex than that.

Jesus even summarizes what the course/atonement is encouraging you to accept, in just 4 words, as "only reality is true." Or similarly "only the truth is true and nothing else is true." Or "I am under no laws but God's."The "truth" is what is "real", what is actual, is the most encompassing and the least interpreted. Just simply, what really exists as given by God. That which is actually happening and its truest actual meaning without distortion or denial.

The whole course is simply saying that you fell into a strange sleep where you appear to be insane and have lost touch with reality. And now he is trying to help you to become sane again. It's funny when after a while he says: "you are no longer WHOLLY insane."

"Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much of your insanity, and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason."

"For you are no longer WHOLLY insane, and you WOULD recognize the guilt of SELF-betrayal FOR WHAT IT IS."

But it's worth realizing that words are symbols of symbolic things - dream things. Just as the body is a dream, it symbolizes separation and ego. And the word "body" symbolizes that symbol. And A Course in Miracle as a book of 550,000+ words is filled with symbols.

Symbols always point beyond themselves to something else that they represent. They are not ends in themselves and don't really have their own meaning. They are representatives of a state prior to themselves, from which they express. Just as the body is a symbol and an expression which represents the mind from which it comes.

Jesus teaches that "nothing so blinding as perception of form". And that believing form is real or true is false perception. So when you look at the forms of the words in the course and you take them to be the truth, in and of themselves, based on the form they take, you are in fact blinded by perception of form.

Some people become very enamored with the choice of symbols in the course, the beauty of its seeming artistic poetry, and its mastery of language. But it only appears this way because it came from an origin higher and beyond and prior to itself, who articulated otherwise random symbols into seemingly symbolic arrangements to convey a message.

It's possible to mistake the words in the book for the truth itself, to idolize those words, to put them on a pedestal and think of them as the word of God. It's also possible to then become blinded by them, unable to look deeper or see the meaning on which they are based. Ultimately the purpose of the course is to make itself unnecessary, all of it has to eventually be let go and all of its words overlooked through forgiveness.

There becomes fanatical defense against the words being changed, the preservation of the words, and the attempt to prove logical arguments based on whether or not the words show up in the book. But this is all a false perception of the course, taking an illusion to be reality.

What is really needed, to go deeper, is a forgiveness even of the course itself. What begins as false perceptions of very sophisticated wordings must at some point move past the appearance of its symbols. To mistake a symbol for the thing it symbolizes is a mistake.

If you want to really find out what things mean, where they came from, why those symbols were chosen, or what they are expressions of, then you have to move beyond the words. You have to overlook their form and not get hung up on whether or not something is explicitly written, or whether it's in its original form, or whether it's been edited all to hell.

Jesus expressed A Course in Miracles from a very lofty vantage point, a point in which words mean nothing. He translated his awareness and experience into symbols upon symbols and into sequences of symbols, to try to speak a language that you might understand, or which might at least serve as an in-road towards their origin.

The words in the book are signposts and pointers, aiming in the direction of the truth. But they are not the truth itself. Nor are they even capable of accurately representing that truth, although Jesus has done an exceptional job of being very careful to convey meaning as accurately as possible. But you still have to learn to look past the words if you want to find out what they really mean, otherwise the course is just another idol.

What I personally found is that behind all of the words in the book, there is a deeper metaphysics. There is a logic which is amazingly impeccable and self evident, a living logic. There are natural structures and perfect extensions of truth. That even God is a logical premise with a logical conclusion.

There are reasons for everything being the way it is in reality, and in the ego's realm. Even the separation and the nature of this world are a progression of logical reasoning. The descent into hell was a procession of logical steps leading away from the truth, and all of this can be carefully detailed.

"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."

What you eventually have to do is a total rewind of all learning back to the origin, back to the nature of God and his reality. You have to then look logically and with reason, and very carefully, at how and why God is the way he is. To look at what it means to be absolute, infinite, unlimited, immortal, eternal and so on. There are laws behind all of this.

This is because God is actually the logical premise of all reality. It is his nature which dictates the entire laws that heaven is based upon. He is the truth and the source of all reality. If you understand why he is the way he is, then you can begin to logically reason why everything else must be the way it is. Because everything began with God and everything else followed very precicely.

Even if you completely forget everything you ever learned in ACIM and just start over from the very beginning, with the nature of God's reality, and reason out from there, you will surprisingly find that you'll come to the exact same conclusions that are written in ACIM.

Thats's because everything ACIM is saying is logically perfect. It is completely true. And if it weren't, the logic would be out of alignment with it and show why it is flawed. But it's not flawed, because Jesus is not flawed, and he knew exactly what he was talking about, as he still does.

In fact the entire nature and structure of creation, of all real relationship, including the shared sonship and the laws of heaven, all derive according to very simple and clear logical rules. These rules and their extension can be followed perfectly and make absolutely perfect logical sense. They are completely impeccable and flawless in their clarity that only a fool would argue against them once explained.

When you take these very simple logical foundations and you look at what they mean and imply, and then you take A Course in Miracles and you look at what it says about God's reality and nature, you find that they EXACTLY match in every case. They validate each other. Which means that everything in reality is perfectly logical, is exactly is the way it is, and can only be that way, and cannot be any other way. And that therefore ACIM is in fact based on the real truth.

Looking to these logical foundations, the logic can be expressed in simple words or diagrams, and it can be shown step by step, exactly why God is the way God is, exactly why and how he creates, exactly what must be created and its nature, and why the Kingdom of God operates the way it does. It can all be accurately described, and in far less words than are in ACIM. The basics are quite simple.

When you get all the words out of the way, so to speak, and see the deeper connection or basis for all of it, then you realize that Jesus really is just basing all his expressions on very simple concepts. Seeing past the complexity of the many ways it has been expresed, and not being blinded by its forms is the hard part. And it can take many years to try to find the needles in the haystack.

See, Jesus doesn't really write at the level of the words. It's not like some regular human who is sitting in this world at a typewriter pounding the keys and coming up with an egoic novel about ego stuff. He has written the course from a maximally high level, translating truths into an elegant breakdown of its aspects. How it applies to the world, how it applies to the body, how it applies to relationship etc.

He's done this so that you can be reached wherever your starting point is, and in terms you are familiar with, and using language and references you can understand. But the purpose isn't to leave you there poking around in the dirt and arguing over words, but to raise you up and bring you closer to the origins of the course. To the state of reality Jesus shares, and to its divine truth.

The metaphysics that the course is based on, shows that the course itself is an expression of something higher and deeper. It comes from a source that is very simple and is in touch with reality. Just because a person is putting the same teaching into over half a million words, or even a trillion words, doesn't mean that even more than a few words are needed to convey the whole truth, such as that "God is".

You don't necessarily need all those words. You don't really need to learn every single word form or memorize every quote or only quote from a specific version. In fact if you cannot use reason to determine WHETHER or not something is true and accurate, you are already in a state of not only depending entirely on but being blinded by the words themselves. You're supposed to see the logic behind them.

You don't really have to even read the whole book. It has a holographic nature reflecting the holographic nature of reality, such that the whole truth is in every part, because every part is an expression from the whole truth, given wholly and truthfully. Jesus wrote it all from a single whole truth and all of it expresses a cohesive single message, which you can find on every page.

You do need to fully apply it yes. You need to fully learn the simple truth, the basic nature of your self. You do need to shift allegiance from the forms of error to the unified reality. And you do need to develop trust and learn to relate with actual love and so on. But you don't need hundreds of thousands of words to do that. Maybe at first it seems you do, then later you realize you don't.

What I'm doing in the book I'm working om right now, is stripping away all the words entirely and "starting over" with pure logic. I'm examining what is deeper than all these words. I'm going to present extremely clearly what the real logic of God is and what reality's nature is.

I'll be explaining in simple clear steps exactly how heaven came to be and why it is run by the laws that it is. How creation comes of it and what must be true of you. This can all be arrived at through simple logical steps. Even God's nature can be logically and accurately described, because what you find out is that reality is in fact a living logic system of divine states, with very specific rules.

The aim is to come up with a "reformulation" of the form of the course's teachings, in far fewer words and in much simpler terms. A deep look at the ideas behind its many words. A formulation which still represents the truth with perfect accuracy, but which can be learned very quickly and easily in its more purified form.

Really the metaphysics behind the course is very simple and clear-cut, its not all that complicated once you can see it. But for many people, seeing through the fog of the course's words can be a hurdle in itself. It needs to be laid out in the simplest and clearest way possible, to save time and effort and to provide accuracy and clarity. And it has to bypass the entire realm of "opinion" - the logic has to stand on its own two feet and speak for itself.

That's why I'm making the book that I'm making right now. It will cut through all the noise and all the opinions and all the ego arguments and all the confusion. It goes deeper than debate and countless theories and interpretations that are hung up on word choices.

It's kind of like brushing away all the many forms that have covered over the course's true origins, to reveal what's behind it at all. I hope it will act as a "primer" and easier introduction, especially for those who are newer to the course.

You'll see, once you read it, and as you follow its reasoning, that it is extremely hard to deny what it says, and it is ultra clear in making total sense. I'm deliberately making it so that it is practically impossible to find fault in it. The logical is very flawless, not because I'm "expert" at it but just because reality's laws are themselves flaweless. Such that the true metaphysics of the course will be revealed in the light and seen for what it must be, completely accurately and consistently.

Then the really interesting thing is that, once armed with this tool, a kind of magnifying glass for the course bringing its depths totally into the light, it actually shines a light of clarity onto all that the course says. It helps to frame its meaning, to clarify intentions, to properly identify what Jesus meant in his wordings, and to steer away from common misinterpretations. The logic even helps you to realize things which must be true, which may not even be written in ACIM itself, yet are completely consistent with it.

The book itself actually stands alone in that it comes to the same conclusions as the course through its own process. It doesn't even rely on the course or anything the course says, to make its points. It doesn't need any quotes from the book either. It simply uses clear reasoning to come up with a clear metaphysical foundation.

Then it looks to what the course says to find out IF it agrees. And it happens to validate and agree with everything it says. And both of them reflect each other perfectly because they're based on the same exact truth.

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. 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. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) 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."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"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."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. 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."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

Before the separation, you were simply in heaven having a great time. Immortal, invulnerable, happy, loving, full of life.

Then the separation happened and we produced a state exactly opposite to heaven - heaven's logical opposite. A physical world in which bodies gave us constant "false perception", deceived by everything, seemingly at the effect of everything and prone to attack.

"Earth, 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."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

These are really the only two states. These are the two worlds, heaven and hell.

The question then becomes, how do you get out of the second world and go back to the first?

As the course says, you might find a sudden leap into heaven as frightening, if you retained your ego and interpreted it through it. In fact the ego interprets heaven as hell, beings its unwanted opposite.

So instead, we gradually transition towards heaven. But let's be clear that heaven IS your only alternative to the physical world. There is no other place to go. It's one or the other.

It's also a fact that the world you made is false, and heaven is true. In the denial of God and the rejection of heaven, you came to believe that a world of lies and illusions is true and real.

That puts you in a position where, to return to a full awareness and acceptance of heaven's truth, you're going to have to both invest belief and acceptance in heaven's truth, while shifting your whole focus away from the physical.

As the course describes, beginning to do this begins the process of "opening the spiritual eye" and "weakening the investment in physical sight".

"Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute."

Now, we need to keep in mind that you are either in a realm of perception or a realm of knowledge. We really only made false perception, built into the functioning of the body senses. And leapt straight from heaven to false perception, placing us in bodies.

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

Your goal, really, is to return to heaven. The goal of God. Any goal less than this is not enough. You are to return to your original state of reality and immortality. To identifying as Christ. To being as God created you and co-creating with Him in reality.

But trying to leap into heaven from a perspective of false perception, which is total confusion about what is true, would be too jarring. The contrast is too great, and we have gone deeply into the ego thought system.

Instead, there is a seeming path, the atonement plan, the personal curriculum, which lays out a more gradual transition. This is partly because the use of your free will choice is required in order for you to make any changes in your beliefs at all.

So it seems that, in time, we gradually then progress from abject hell, which is a heavy identification with a body, special relationships, attack thoughts, fear of death, sickness and suffering seeming real, etc, towards a more God-given inheritance of perfection and immortality.

This doesn't just mean you're going to run up against the "ceiling" or external walls of the perceptual realm, before experiencing ANY heaven. It means that you need to transition so that you are experiencing ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY heaven, just before you leave this world.

But how do you do that? How do you move "towards heaven", towards reality and truth and immortality, while still being within the realm of perceptual dreams? How do you become heaven-like or as close to your original nature as possible, while still being in a state which is fundamentally separate?

"Perception is a separated state. Those who perceive still need healing."

It's going to entail some kind of re-purposing of perception, some way to use it against itself. To use what we made, to undo what we made, from the inside out. We need a reinterpretation of the meaning of the world. Or a different vantage point or way of looking, that makes it seem like hell has been turned into something similar to heaven.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it."

What we find out now is that there are kind of two components to what we're experiencing. There's whatever "the world is" that we made, and then there's our interpretation of it. We seem to be able to change its meaning or how it looks to us.

What we're then told is that there is a "forgiven world" or a version of hell which, seen with some kind of light, or seen with loving eyes, doesn't look like hell anymore. It's still a dream world, still an illusion, still unreal, and still false, but seems to reflect heaven's innocence.

So where does this light come from, or this loving perspective? Well, a clue is that "Perception is a result, not a cause". And "projection makes perception". We look within first, at our idea of what truth is, and then we broadcast that out, and the end result is a kind of hallucinated image, which we call perception.

So the main deal is, the question of whether when you look within you see a belief in the reality of the world, that false things are true, that you yourself are something false and evil, or whether when you look within you see sinlessness, a lack of guilt and fear, innocence and holiness. Those spiritual attributes are not attributes of a dream figure, they are attributes of YOUR SOUL, which needs to come into your awareness while you're still dreaming.

How do you go about changing your inner landscape, so that it contains only attributes which seem to reflect the state of heaven, so that when you look out you see then projected?

Well if you remember, perception is always essentially false, and the realm of knowledge is always true. The illusory world is always illusory, and heaven is reality. So in order to transition your inner world so that it "matches" heaven or is heaven-like, you're going to have to reach out beyond the illusory world and start identifying with God's creation.

"The world you see must be denied" "Beyond this world is a world I want." "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

So now you're in a position where, you're inside a dream, and trying to shift your attention to not only see but identify with, to recognize as true, and to accept, a reality which is entirely OUTSIDE of the dream.

"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."

You're trying to learn what you ARE in the Kingdom, while still being inside of the classroom of hell. Your real identity is your soul which God created which has inherited its truth from Him.

In order for you to transition your inner identity to christ, you're going to have to start identifying with something that isn't even in the world.

The best analogy I've come up with is the comparison of two rooms. We made a room with no windows, inside heaven, kind of like a prison cell. It's a dark room which shuts out the light. The walls seem solid and impassable. There is no awareness of what is outside the walls. Your whole identity seems bound to a lump of matter, the same thing that the prison seems to be made of.

Then as you begin to reach out beyond the dream, beyond the prison, beyond believing the walls are true - the granite block of sin, the veil which hangs before the face of christ, the walls of the prison begin to become transparent. They lose their heaviness and solidity. Even your own body seems to start to disappear.

This happens only by extending your mind past the separating limits of the walls, reaching out (or in) to heaven's truth, and latching onto (identifying with) the ever-growing awareness of who you are outside the prison. Your real self, which God created, and which stands beyond the world of form.

As your mind starts to associate with being a christ-soul, and starts to believe in God's truth, and starts to accept that only heaven is real, and shifts all of its attention away from the tempting deceptions and lies of physical matter, it puts its faith and belief in reality and love and light. Things which are not even INSIDE the dream world.

"Love was never in the world of dreams."

While still inside the prison, which is fast becoming a glass room with a door, enabling you to see through the walls and beyond them to the light with "christ vision", you become able to see again.

You can see a light beyond the body and beyond the world, beyond the room, and your sense of "who and what I am" or "what is true of me" is shifting away from the body and onto spirit - a spirit which is well outside of the room entirely.

Eventually this room, which acts like a veil covering up the greater environment of heaven, becomes so transparent that it disappears, and finally you are able to see christ clearly. To recognize what you are. And to see the contents of heaven. You then move through or past the walls of the room, the room disappears, and you find yourself squarely and fully in the shoes God created for you to fill.

We may talk about true perception, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, sanity, the spiritual eye, and various other aspects of the awakening mind. But ultimately true perception is an act of OVERLOOKING the realm of perception, overlooking hell, overlooking the opposition to God, and fixating on the Kingdom.

Essentially, true perception is a re-purposing of perception, such that it actually UNDOES ITSELF. Similarly to how forgiveness is way of using illusions to point AWAY from illusions. True perception is a cancellation of perception. Just as false perception was an attempt to fixate perception on itself and make perceptions real. True perception points AWAY from the realm of perception entirely, and towards the light of God, beyond the dream.

"Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest."

"Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others."

"Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking."

"Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death."

To dream of awakening, which is the happy dream, is to dream of what it is like to BE AWAKE. To be awake is to be IN HEAVEN. Therefore, forgiveness is a dream in which you imagine yourself to be NOT ASLEEP. To be similar to the way you actually are in reality, outside of dreaming. It is a dream based on the knowledge of heaven, in which, while still technically being in a dream-perception realm, you dream a dream so close to heaven that it's almost like being in heaven itself.

Just prior to leaving the prison, with sight firmly fixed on christ, who is in heaven and not in the world, you see the face of christ through the perceptual system (based on judgement/evaluation), and this "vision" is "the real world". It's you being able to see. "God is the light in which I see."

The real world is really heaven. It is the only reality and the only world truly deserving of being described as real. From within perception we see it through a perceptual filter, then we leave perception behind and KNOW its reality. "First you dream of peace, then awaken to it."

To see the real world, is to look out from within spacetime, within the perceptual realm, using perception, but using it in a special way which enalbles you to look OUTSIDE the perceptual realm. To peer into heaven beyond the separate bubble of spacetime. You don't actually become able to BE IN heaven at this point, outside the dream, but you stand within the dream, looking through its transparent walls like an window onto God.

As you do this, as you open up to reality while still dreaming, as you disbelieve in the solidity of the prison walls, as you form a bridge to the Kingdom, as you reunite gradually with God and with love, light seems to stream into your mind.

In fact an awareness of God gradually seems to return to your mind, and starts to be "seen in" the things you see. "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Eventually God is ALL that you see, which causes the "things you were seeing him in" to disappear.

So what we're really doing is, shifting our attention, away from hell, towards heaven. Shifting it away from God's absence, towards God. Away from body identification to spirit identification. Away from darkenss to light.

Away from fear to love. God, christ, soul, spirit, light, love, truth and everything real, is squarely NOT a part of the illusory prison world. It is "outside" of it, psychologically. So our job is to "position" oursleves in heaven, while still in the separated realm, and shine our light from heaven, into this world, erasing it.

This is why the closer your mind comes to aligning with God's will, with heaven's light, the more that light and love are able to stream into the dream through you.

The miraculousness of heaven begins to seep into the dream. The laws of spacetime begin to be overruled as you learn "I am under no laws but God's." You start becoming able to do things which "are not of this world." Your body returns to health as a symbol of eternal life. And you become empowered to overrule death.

To be the light of the world, is to extend heaven's light into the dream. To shine into the darkness, to illuminate it and shine away death. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The stars will disappear in light."

As your perception becomes "truer", it simply means that you are not mis-perceiving, so become able to "accurately" perceive what God created. This isn't the same as knowing what's there, but we can use perception to interpret what's there. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." - but you CAN perceive the truth, which is heaven.

As the walls of spacetime melt, as the granite block of sin turns to whisps of smoke easily dispelled, as the light of God shines into the world through forgiveness, and as the hell we made no longer has internal sin projected onto it, the world is seen as beautiful and forgiven. A beautiful illusion. Yet "A world forgiven cannot last" because it's still an illusion of a world. And it will disappear.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"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."

"Heaven is all that remains."

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever."

This is pretty much the "model" of the course's levels and metaphysics that I've converged towards over time. Simply that there are only two states, realms or worlds. They are logical opposites. And while we're in the world opposite to heaven, we gradually transition our truth, reality and identity over to the other world, such that toward the end we are almost entirely heaven-identified and vigilant only for the Kingdom.

Our task is simply to ANCHOR ourselves into our soul, remember who we really are outside of the perceptual dream environment, tune into God, leave all perception of form behind, forget the world and embrace our true nature, inherited from God.

You are the spirit that God created. You are the reality that God established. You are the power that God extended. You are the will that God has expressed. You are the light which God radiated. You are the truth which God gave you. You are nothing and have nothing that does not come from God. And nothing in the world of illusions has ever changed that.

"So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear."

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

Since my wife "died" in January, my perspective on this world and the body, sickness and death has changed drastically.

My wife (her body) was afflicted with various disabilities and medical conditions for over 12 years. For the past 4 years she lived in a bed, and unable to walk. We're talking amputations and strokes/paralysis and heart conditions and sleep disorders and cancer and diabetes and kidney failure, brain damage and dementia, eye problems, breathing problems, digestive problems, multiple trips to the ICU, declared brain-dead one time and barely making it through a triple-heart-bypass another.

The horror show compelled me to want to perform miracles, to heal her body and undo her limitations. Like any person would, driven to alleviate suffering and to make things easier. Avoiding death became the whole focus. And obviously this revolved around my mistaken belief that she was at least in part a physical body. A body with seemingly "real" sicknesses and serious problems.

For years we had this dynamic of me trying to get her (body) back to health, to keep her (body) going, to keep her (body) alive, to resurrect her (body) and fix her (body) and undo everything that happened to her (body). But it all took a toll and over time her body's condition deteriorated. It just couldn't function enough anymore to keep her going. While I helped in some ways, I failed.

Just before she passed, I reached a point where I finally found a willingness to consider, maybe I should just stop trying to keep her (body) alive. Maybe I should just let her go and let her die. All the years of fighting against it, resisting it, avoiding both sicknesses and interventions, trying to prop her up and keep her ticking, it all just kind of came to a point of surrender. It was long and cruel and stressful and fear-inducing. She'd had enough long before, and so had I. Eventually it becomes so ridiculous you just can't keep going.

It was then within a week or two that her body was really giving out, and quickly led to a brush with death, and then a very rapid but mostly peaceful passing. All the time spent resisting death, trying to stop the body being sick, and trying to keep it going indefinitely, culminated in what seemed to be a total failure. A failure to raise the dead, a failure to be miraculous, a failure to stop death itself. But despite appearances, it turns out that wasn't a bad thing.

Actually death turned out to be liberating for both of us. It wasn't what I thought it would be like, and nothing like I feared. In fact, as she continued to live in spirit and communicate me on many occasions in many ways, it proved to me that she was far better off now. She was thrilled and excited and happy, peaceful and calm, liberated and empowered. After she went through a kind of rehabilitation period, she showed up even more, refined and purified and centered in her soul.

Meanwhile her body was on ice shoved in a cardboard box, awaiting cremation. As I looked upon it I could shift perceptions back and forth between believing it was her and that it was nothing to do with her. Clearly something had left it, regardless of how convincing it looked and seemed to have all her features intact. But it wasn't her.

I deliberately viewed the corpse a few times to make the most use of the opportunity to forgive and see it correctly. To distinguish that the body was not her, and to separate out her spirit from the form. So now I was presented with this intense contrast between - the body says she's dead, and the reality and experience of spirit/mind says she's totally alive. And they can't both be true.

It became apparent while communicating to her and thinking about the soul's journey, spanning lifetimes and many bodies, that it never really was 'the plan' in this life for her body to reach an resurrected state. We had this dream that we would ascend to heaven together, and that was a total flop - but partly because in the big picture plan of atonement she is due to wake up in another lifetime, and I'm due for some radical change.

And that was ok, because there was a bigger picture. The really big picture has souls using bodies across many lifetimes, and they are just as easily discarded when no longer functioning well as they are picked up in the first place. They are just tools, devices, vehicles, that we temporarily use for a purpose and then throw away as worthless.

The destruction of the idea of saving her body from death, the complete failure to cause her to avoid death, the surprising discovery that death was liberating and "not all bad", the experience of her continuing to live and interact, the expansive perspective of the soul and its use of bodies, and the way her passing into the light lifted me into the light also, has altered how I look at all this.

What has become super clear is that as soon as we identify with bodies, we immediately go into fear, and start feeling compelled to defend the body against its own nature - its ultimate purpose of dying. As a body we want the body to carry on forever. I wanted to be with my wife's body forever. Then the body snuffs it. Good luck with that, cus you're all gunna die, unless you stop being a body.

By believing a person is a body we develop an entire culture of body preservation, keeping people in their bodies as long as possible, freaking out when the body is attacked or sick, not allowing anyone to leave their bodies voluntarily, trying to stop the body being sick, and generally just resisting the body's death at all costs. It all adds up to a mindset of the fear of death and an attempt to protect and defend the body at all costs. Until that entire mindset goes crashing against the rocks and is smashed to smithereens.

That's what's happened for me. The whole mindset of "lets keep the body going forever" has been destroyed. All the cultural and social ways that we have concern for it, fear of dying happening, avoiding things, trying to create security and safety, freaking out when "someone dies", valuing the body, wanting it to live, even the idea of using miracles to rescue the body endlessly, all has been destroyed for me. And that's a good thing because it was all rooted in believing bodies are people, valuable objects, and something to keep.

I've shifted from a horizontal to a vertical perspective. I would even go so far now as to say "let it all die". Not just the bodies, but all the things of the world. It's dying anyway, and it's going to. All the resistance I had and the fear of it happening was pointless and worthless and ended in a total inability to stop it. It was actually good that I ended up at the end of this lesson surrendering and "letting death happen". Because funnily enough, that was a key to stopping preserving it through the wish to defend the body at all costs. I'm guided now to simply "let her be dead". Because in truth, she isn't.

Trying to prevent death induces it. And I also realized that trying to stop sickness is just making it real and fueling it. So you can imagine that being exposed to someone with many severe sicknesses for a long time has drilled this home for me. I had to get past her body, get past believing she was sick, get past trying to resist the sickness, and get past believing she could even die. And she's proven to me many times over now that she absolutely has not died.

That then becomes a strange irreconcilable contrast. On the one hand the body is sprinkled in the wind as ashes and is no more, seeming to suggest the person is totally destroyed, and yet there she is even more alive than ever, happier than ever, having a great time. When I told her it would be great to be able to see her walking again, and she showed me herself running through fields, she even said "I can fly!". So she's having a great time, and what appeared to be "death" on a physical level did nothing but leave her better off.

So now my whole perspective on bodies and the world and sickness and death is different. I've used her death against death. I see people believing they are bodies, when it's been shown to me that people are not bodies. I see people fearing the body's vulnerabilities, when it's been shown to me that this is because they think they are bodies. The whole culture of body preservation and trying to stop people being sick is a joke. And even in this world the idea of voluntarily going to heaven is illegal and taboo, forcing people to suffer horrible conditions until they "naturally" snuff it.

I know this sounds a bit potentially anti-miraculous but, the hard lesson has actually been to let someone die and to stop fighting it. It was actually less spiritual and much more psychologically unhealthy to believe someone was a body and to be constantly worried for their safety and fearing for their life. What dies is not even a real thing, its not the person, and they cannot die. What dies is a lie, and death is a lie, and the whole basis for avoiding it is a lie.

So now I am much more flippant. Not to say like, okay, go ahead and die on purpose just so you can realize that being in heaven is totally amazing. Because we are still using bodies to learn shit. But in the big picture souls don't give a shit about the body really, they just use them temporarily as learning devices. Then they throw them in the trash. In and of themselves they are worthless junk. They are nothing. They are not people and they are not life.

My view now is much more aligned with my wife's view, seeing from her perspective and from the vantage point of the bigger picture. Souls coming and going, taking on bodies and then discarding them. Not identifying with them. Not falling into the trap of believing they are people, or the nightmare of fear that comes from that. My fear of death has melted because a) dying and going to heaven is wonderful and b) I can't die. Just as my wife can't die.

I've lifted up out of the body-identified body-worshipping death-avoiding culture of the world. Avoidance of death is definitely the same thing as promoting it. Nothing real can be threatened. The whole problem of the world is people believing they are a body and not knowing they are spirit, which results in a nightmare of danger and threat and attack and vulnerability. Then everyone starts barricading themselves in trying to avoid the bad stuff happening, and the sicknesses set in and the people want it to all go away so they can stay in their bodies forever and never go home to God.

I couldn't care less about stuff dying now. It's everywhere and relentless. It's the way of the world, driven by laws of death. Stuff is dead before it's even born. Everything here is guaranteed to end, to rot and decay and turn to dust. So I say, let it. Fuck it all. Who gives a shit about it anyway. It has no effect whatsoever on our reality as spiritual beings. And trying to stop it happening is madness. But what does it matter when an illusion dies? It really means nothing at all. The death of an illusion means nothing.

No-one who believes that bodies dying means something can work miracles. No-one who believes that a person is really sick can work miracles. No-one who believes that death can actually change the sons of God can work miracles. And no-one who fights against it happening can have any power over it. I had to go through the lesson of associating my beliefs in sickness and death with my wife's body, so that as her body died so too did my beliefs in these things.

I failed to raise the dead or to stop sickness happening, and it was the best thing I could've learned. The lesson is that death doesn't matter. But the key is to let death be what it is, because in truth it is not anything. Surrender the fear of death and let it all go, let it all die, and you'll be free from it. And then maybe you'll be ready to be a miracle worker. To surmount death is to transcend it, and you can't do that while you're resisting it. But letting it be also lets it go, and then you can rise above it and have power over it.

"But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it."

"But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."

"Behold the body, and you will believe that you are there. ⁴And every body that you look upon reminds you of yourself; your sinfulness, your evil and, above all, your death."

"There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created."

"And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. ⁷The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."

"The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body."

"This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. ²We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. ³But 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. ⁴Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."

"False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. ²It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. ³Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God’s substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. ⁴At last the gate of Heaven opens and God’s Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him."

"The “self” that needs protection is not real. ²The 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. ³Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

"From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto is home."

God who is love created you lovingly, with love, through love, as love. You are permanently made of immortal love. When you are being true to yourself, you know that the love you are is shared with God, who is your love and who loves you and with you.

God is in you, and you are within you. There is only this inner experience of inclusion. In heaven, given God is everywhere, creation can only increase INTERNALLY through sharing. God shares his INNER being with you and HOSTS you inside of himself. Creation increase inwardly by adding hosts who share that which already is.

In heaven there is no such thing as "outside" or "external" or "excluded" or "separate". When you are everywhere, you encompass everything inside yourself. There, your brothers are not really outside of you surrounding you, they are WITHIN you and share your innermost being. This is the only real way to be intimate - to welcome your brother INSIDE of you psychologically.

"God who encompasses all being..."

The separation, or as I like to think of it more accurately as "the opposition or denial of God/reality", was an attempt to deny that you are inside of God, and to deny that you are host to him. It was an attempt to LEAVE God and go BEYOND the Kingdom, as though stepping OUTSIDE OF reality.

This produced the mad belief in spacetime, which is the idea of being EXILED from heaven, outside and external to the Kingdom, in a place where God could not exist or enter, seemingly separate and a kingdom you rule without him. The opposite to inner reality is obviously outer reality, which produced a kind of EXTERNALIZED idea of existence. The idea of this "world".

Basically, "you are at home in God, dreaming of exile", which means you are imagining that you are not WITHIN, and are WITHOUT. That you are outside of heaven in some other weird dimension (spacetime). It's an illusion of a separate realm outside the Kingdom. And everything in it is focused on the EXTERNAL.

"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." "Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

Whereas in heaven, your brother is inside of you, as is God, because everyone shares and hosts the same stuff, "on earth" (in exile) it appears your brothers are OUTSIDE of you. It seems you are the only one allowed to inhabit your little speck of existence inside the body, the body fences you off from the universe, and everyone else is kept at arm's length. "The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you."

"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."

So now the body experience becomes one of isolation and imprisonment inside a fence, where the fence ("the body is clearly a device for separation") comes BETWEEN you and others. It's designed like a thick wall to keep them out and keep you in, safe from love (joining/sharing).

You then focus entirely OUTWARD towards the external, as if the external world is all of reality. As you'll notice, all the body's senses are directed to the detection and validation of WHAT IS EXTERNAL to you, and not what is inside you. In fact, the inside of you is considered invisible. Yet it is the INNER WORLD that is the only reality. Heaven's reality is IN YOUR MIND, and God is inside your mind.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen." "And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One." "He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today."

"Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there."

"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."

God is really not external to you. Nor is heaven. It's not out there in the world. God only temporarily seems to be "in everything you see" ONLY because God is IN YOUR MIND FIRST, not because he is outside of it in the world. You don't look out there WITHOUT him in order to see him, and looking WITHOUT him you WILL NOT see him. This is also why such a large portion of workbook lessons are devoted to you going INSIDE behind your clouds and blocks and denials to try to find the door to heaven. Inside your mind, not outside you.

But when you have blocked access to God, who is inside your mind, your experience is that your "inner world" is lacking love and that the awareness of love's presence is blocked there. Because you seem not to have God IN you, as though you are denying your hosting of His love, you see yourself as deprived. Then you project this outward.

This projection of the seeming absence of love forms a dark hallucinated world, the unforgiven world, in which externals are the primary focus, body identification is emphasized, you cling to the physical, and you see yourself and others as separate objects. The body, external to you, looks on the external aspects of others ie their bodies, and regards this as total reality.

"Only the body makes the world seem real." What that means is that the body is designed to make the idea of "outside the Kingdom" real, to make EXTERNALS real, and to focus on illusions of exile, separation, exclusion, isolation and the absence of love (sin).

"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."

Failing to invite, welcome, and experience the love and presence of God INSIDE your mind, you reason that cause and love and presence and God must be OUTSIDE. If you are not the cause, then you are effect, and now you are a victim, at the seeming effect of an external world that you are putting there. Thus you are doing it to yourself. And yet you are convinced the world is externally objectively real, when it is nothing more than an illusion of BEING OUTSIDE the Kingdom.

"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." "What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. "

"The good is seen OUTSIDE; the evil, IN."

"An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real, and seen OUTSIDE the mind."

While you may have ideas of God being way out in the far reaches of the universe beyond the stars, I have news for you. God is SO close to you that he is under your skin, behind your body, deeper inside you than even your own split mind and ego, and so close to your soul as to represent the ultimate INNER intimacy. He calls to you FROM WITHIN, not from without. He's not calling to you from the mountain tops or in some external special body or through toys or favorites or any other idols.

This you see is the problem with external salvation. All forms of external searching result in sickness ie mental illness because they take you AWAY FROM where the answer it. The cause and the answer to your problems is INSIDE YOU not outside.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."

You cannot find peace by looking FOR it outside of yourself, in the bodies of others, in the planet, or in space or time. The truth IS NOT out there. The truth is an INNER truth. And the peace of God dwells ONLY INSIDE you in a shared inner experience.

You see, mind can only really experience INSIDE the confines of itself. It cannot go anywhere or be anywhere or experience anything that is truly beyond its own reach. Everything it sees and experiences has to be INTERNAL. And this is also why "ideas leave not their source." And also why you are an idea IN the mind of God, not outside of it.

When you see yourself as lacking love you WILL reason that it was caused to be lacking, as an effect, or an EXTERNAL cause. And now you will project cause, and see causation happening against your will by others doing it to you. And thus you accuse them of sin. And this is not forgiving. But to forgive them has nothing to do with reframing what they're doing, and everything to do with looking INSIDE YOURSELF for the responsibility of causing your own suffering. Just as also inside yourself you'll find freedom from your self-inflicted harm.

Seeking outside you WILL NOT FIND what you are looking for. Because in fact, the more you seek outside, the FURTHER AWAY you become from the thing you are trying to find. This is the ego's entire mantra of "seek and do not find."

It makes sense to you to seek ELSEWHERE when you fail to acknowledge, or be aware of, or accept or be open to, that which IS WITHIN you (God, light, truth, your soul etc). Because if it's not regarded as within, surely it is somewhere ELSE. And so you look somewhere else, and do not find it, because it is not there.

"...everyone who believes that the ego is salvation is intensely engaged in the SEARCH for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find.""

"Such is the ego's plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in strict accord with the ego's basic doctrine, "Seek but do not find?" For what could more surely guarantee that you will not find salvation than to channelize all your efforts in searching for it where it is not?"

""Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise." You will not find God outside of you. You will not find God in the world or in a book or in a body or in a planet. You will not find God in this universe. This is the world of EXILE, of EXCLUSION, and of EXTERNALIZATION. It is an hallucination precisely because you DO "project out" what you wanted to see IN PLACE OF what is within you.

Searching to find love's SOURCE, will turn up empty handed, when you look to the idea of EXILE FROM the source, which has manifested as EXTERNAL "reality". What is outside the body is not there. Even the body itself is outside of you. It's constructed from the idea of the avoidance of your soul. This is why you can either identify with the body or with spirit - which really is a question of whether the EXTERNAL is real to you, or whether the INTERNAL is real to you.

You will not get love from external people. You do not want to. If you were to succeed in doing so you would no longer look within to find God and would be without him. This is the ego's promise and deception. Real love is not out there. You have to FIRST find it within, if you want to be IN it, enough to be able to EXTEND it, so that you can then RESULT in perceiving it. Remember that "perception is a RESULT not a cause". PROJECTION is the cause. And you project from what you have WITHIN. You can only seem to see God in the world IF you FIRST look within and find God, before projecting his love.

"It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the PERCEIVER's mind."

"You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."

Realize then that you first must look INSIDE, and your INNER state of mind is all important. This is also why you have to become miracle minded in order to GIVE miracles. You cannot give what you do not have. "I can only give the miracles I have received." This is also why Jesus says you should look within and find out "there is no sin". You are supposed to find the love INSIDE YOU, which is where love IS. It is not separated off and made external.

When you are IN that INNER love, you are in God. You are IN the light. You are IN the heavenly experience. Then you can EXPRESS that love miraculously. You can SHARE it, but you have to be plugged into it. You cannot go looking for the end result outside of you and then hope this will trigger off the cause.

God is NOT in the world, the world is the idea of existing without him. But if God is IN YOUR MIND, then you will look inside and see God, and project God's love outward, and look upon the LOVE that you have projected, which you put there TO see. It it will reflect God. Not because an illusory world is made of God, but because God REPLACES the illusion of exile with presence.

It is so easy to be deceived by the dangling carrot of spacetime. The great TEMPATATION to draw you AWAY from yourself, to suck you OUT of your mind, to hurl you INTO the world, and to make you FIXATE on bodies. To draw you into hell and away from the heaven of your mind. But what if we simply say, THERE IS NO EXTERNAL WORLD?

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see."

"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? "

There is no life OUTSIDE of heaven. Outside of heaven life is an ILLUSION of life at best, at worst death. Outside of heaven is a sensless, lawless place, of space and time, governed by laws of death. Because God is not there. The "out there" is NOT OUT THERE. The "in here" IS IN HERE. You must go WITHIN, turn away from the world of distractions, find what you have BURIED deep in your mind, welcome Got back into your awareness, and open up the deep inner doorway to heaven. God is waiting for you INSIDE YOU. He always has been. He did not go anywhere. It's you who wandered off into exile. Turn around and go back to where you came from.

"At last the gate of Heaven (within you) opens and God's Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him."

"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.

Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.

Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.

This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.

It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.

This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.

Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.

So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.

This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.

There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.

You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.

Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.

It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.

It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.

On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.

The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.

This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.

But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.

A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.

The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.

Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.

Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.

Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.

But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.

All is well. It's just a room.

The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.

As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.

The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.

To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.

Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.

If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.

True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".

Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.

To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.

"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."

Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.

Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.

In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

"A world forgiven cannot last."

As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.

To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.

----TL;DR: Changing your perception OF a sick body, isn't enough to change what you are projecting. You are projecting your body and the symptoms.----

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition. As you think so do you perceive."

Recognize that projection COMES FIRST, then perception happens SECOND.

"The world you see" (perceive) "is what you have put there to see" (what you projected first).

"The world you perceive" (second) "is witness to your state of mind" - your perception "witnesses", perceives, and reflects back to you, your state of mind, because your state of mind PROJECTED what it is that you are now PERCEIVING.

These are two different processes. The act of having a certain state of mind, which you then project FROM, puts stuff "out there", which you THEN perceive as a secondary process.

Even the body itself is a projection. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The body then PERCEIVES, AFTER having been projected.

Jesus talks about how this is a circular logic for us, a trap, whereby we believe what we want to see, we project it because we believe in it, we "make it appear" (manifest it), then we "perceive" ie let the body tell us what it is we projected.

Perception then, is distinct from projection. It is a secondary act. Without projecting, there would be nothing TO perceive.

So here's what you need to realize about perceptions of sickness.

The mind, in whatever state it is in, has beliefs in it, thoughts, which then project. These projections MANIFEST the body and many other forms and objects. The mind for example projects the body ITSELF.

If the mind has a belief in separation, it will project a body which shows up with signs and symptoms of sickness, because it is a PICTURE of your inward condition, and your inward condition is one of "I am under attack". So the body SHOWS it. it is a WITNESS ie corresponds to your state of mind. This is why "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." The body literally only shows up as the mind's manifestational projection. It's an image being projected by the mind.

Jesus speaks to this in his "special notes to helen"....

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. ... 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."

So here we can see, the MIND, MAKES the body. Your mind is projecting your body, and everything about it, right now. However it is showing up, witnesses to your mental content and your belief system. If it is showing up as sick, it is therefore directly correlated, it is PROOF, that your mind is not healed.

This also means, that when the mind IS healed, or close to, and it is still projecting a body, it MUST project a body which appears without signs or symptoms of sickness. This is because the body COMES FROM the mind, mind is its source, and a healthy mind WILL ONLY project a healthy-appearing body image.

Now. There is a problem here in how many people are interpreting the correction of perception.

Remember perception happens to look upon WHAT YOU PROJECTED, after you projected it. The body's eyes receive little photons of light to tell it, oh look, there's a body there. That's part of perception. The illusion that the very thing YOU PROJECTED, is now telling you what IT IS, completely forgetting that you put it there in the first place.

So now perception, is ONCE REMOVED from the direct expression or projection of the mind. Perception therefore is a secondary experience.

So now, let's say that you have projected a body with a broken leg. The broken leg was not caused by anything in the world. It was ONLY projected from the mind. The mind did not project a broken leg ONTO the body. The mind directly projected ONLY an image of a body with a broken leg. The body does not EXIST as a separate object, or a "thing", or something as an end in itself. If you do not project it, nothing shows up! If you do not project it, there is no body!

So now, that you projected an image of a body with a broken leg, you now will perceive. Perception can be in a state of correctness/clarity or in a state of false perception/distortion. Since your MIND has a belief in sickness in it, and has made a sick-appearing body image materialize, it also now believes sickness is real. Perception is now going to take place, and that same mind which PROJECTED the "sick body", is also going to see that same belief in sickness IN the body that was projected.

This means perception is now going to show you a hallucination of "sickness is real", "something is wrong", "sin and guilt" etc, as though it is *IN* the body. It is not in the body, it's in the mind. Thus the idea of sickness, which made the body to begin with, is now SECONDARILY projected ON TOP OF the body that you projected.

Then you will have various ego reactions to what you are misperceiving, and will start to seek a resolution. But your planned strategy here isn't typically anything to do with fixing your PROJECTION, it's always to do with fixing your PERCEPTION. And that means, something very obvious is about to happen.

If all you do, is fix your perception OF what you projected, you might be able to seem to "be at peace" with what is showing up. You might seem to become less upset or resistant or less fighting with, your broken leg. You'll tell yourself, if your perception OF the body is healed, you will be TOTALLY DONE. But this leaves you with a problem, and a state of denial.

Fact is, even if your so-called "perception" is perceiving your broken leg as "lovely and wonderful", oh how lovely that death looks.... your leg is STILL BROKEN. And that's a problem. Because now you are demonstrating that you can be hurt, you are attacking the entire world by claiming that something OTHER THAN YOU put the break there, you are holding this broken leg up for everyone to see to make them guilty and accuse them of sin, and you are attempting to demonstrate that God's Son can be killed.

It also means that since ALL sickness manifests as a DEFENSE against the truth, in the mind, which then projects a "defending body", which shows up as attacked, you CANNOT accept full and total peace while still maintaining that defense. It is impossible. The defense has to go, which means the belief in separation has to go, which MUST produce a projected body which shows up as HEALED.

Nothing happens to the body that was sick that you projected previously. It does not exist. You just RE-PROJECT A NEW ONE, every moment. Sickness in the body can only show up if the mind is defending against truth, and sickness can only show up in the body if the mind has GUILT. "Sickness is but another form of guilt". Therefore, if the mind does not have guilt and defenses, the body WILL ONLY show up as healed, as PROOF, that the mind is healed. The mind will PROJECT a healed-appearing body to testify to ITS inner condition.

So while that broken leg persists, you are in denial. You may be owning up to the fact that you have some control over your PERCEPTION. But you are not admitting that you have the power to PROJECT what you are even looking at.

This is a fundamental difference and there is a pretty big divide in the ACIM community based around this one distinction. Many people believe all they need to do is fix their perception OF the world, or what's showing up, and then they are done. In this belief system, it becomes justified that you can still have sickness show up and have a "healthy mind", that you can still DIE and be innocent, you can welcome death, you can keep your sickness and be totally happy, etc.

Yes, to a degree, as a preparatory step, you can come to be "relatively peaceful" about these things through changing your perception. What you are INDIRECTLY doing there, is that it's not actually your perception that you're fixing, is the content of your mind that PROJECTS the body in the first place. Attempting to change your perception is a second-hand roundabout way of trying to address the content in your mind, which is "showing you" a belief in sin and sickness "in" the broken leg. But at some point.... you're going to hit a wall.

The wall will simply be, that in order for you to really thoroughly change your perception so that you do not believe in sickness, and have no sickness in your mind, you're going to have to also ADMIT, that your mind is projecting the FORM OF SICKNESS *AS* the body, in the first place, regardless of your perception OF it.

So many people are onto this "change my mind about the world" kick, which changes perception OF the world. But they do not realize, at some point, if you are not going to perceive sickness, your mind has to be emptied of all belief in sickness, AND THIS MUST result in the PROJECTION changing. It has to. The mind can't retain some small amount of belief in separation and have *perception* be a state of peace.

If that broken leg is still showing up, but you are relatively "ok with it", you are IN DENIAL. That broken leg is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING UP AT ALL. A sick body is PROOF the mind HAS NOT been healed.

There is this second camp of ACIM folk then who see this, and acknowledge, that the mind projects the body. Jesus Himself said it in that quote above. The mind that projects the body can make another. And if the mind can project the ENTIRE BODY, then IT is 100% responsible for making the body show up with ANY sign of sickness or death. This is how no-one can die without his own consent! If your mind does not put it there, it cannot be.

So if you just stop at.... I'm going to just be okay with this sickness, I'm going to perceive this sickness differently, I'm going to perceive this BODY differently, I'm going to look at this body in a more loving way etc.... that's a step TOWARDS healing the mind's content. But if that body is still showing up as BROKEN, you are NOT DONE.

This is where there comes to be a lot of denial, because not only is it often difficult to see that you projected the sickness AS the body (it can happen really fast and then go unconscious), there is also a lot of FEAR about this idea that your mind is THAT POWERFUL, that it can not only make sickness and death happen to you BY your will, but that the mind can also reverse that. Yet Jesus teaches:

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both." ABOLISH means, to TOTALLY REMOVE. That means, the reversal of ALL forms and signs and symptoms of sickness in the body AND mind, and EVEN DEATH. It Literally means, the ability to reverse death, to raise the dead, and to completely restore life. It is the ability to REWIND SIN and UNDO ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES (effects) of your wrong decision.

Your mind is cause. Your body is your effect. The body is NOT CAUSED by the world in any way whatsoever. Ever. Your sickness is NOT PUT THERE by any cause outside of your mind, EVER. You are responsible for what you have chosen. And because you are, you can CHANGE YOUR MIND and it MUST CHANGE THE PROJECTION.

So yes it's one thing to work on changing your perception, but your perception has arisen from what you have projected. And that means, if you are GENUINELY undoing the sinful content in your mind, are taking full ownership of your power, are NOT believing that anything in the world has the power to affect you or your body, and are NOT attempting to demonstrate that the Son of God can be hurt and killed THROUGH the symbol of the body (the body can become a sign of immortality), then YOU WILL STOP PROJECTING SICKNESS AND DEATH.

You do not project it ONTO the body. You project it AS the body. No-one else put the body there. Your parents did not put the body there. Biology did not put the body there. Chemical reactions and physical interactions did not put the body there. The world, the dream, other people, did not put the body there. ONLY YOU DID.

So that means, if you're to go all the way with this.... this is where you get into MIRACLE WORKING. Because it means, you are willing to DEMONSTRATE, to live by example, that it is possible to reverse all sickness and death in yourself, AND IN OTHERS.

You first reverse it in yourself by accepting atonement. This allows you to receive miracles. Then you are able to express those miracles to and for others. If they are willing to accept it.

We are not supposed to be walking around with limbs hanging off and body parts failing and organs malfunctioning and eyesight going bad and developing a limp and a having cancers and diseases and various other forms of SIN.

Death is an attempt to demonstrate that the Son of God can be killed. Pain is an attempt to bind the son to the body to fixate him on and identify with being a real body. Sickness is an attempt to prove the Son can be hurt. Sickness is an attack on your brother. Sickness is the result of seeking outside of yourself, and demonstrates level confusion. None of this is God's will. It is a demonstration of the OPPOSITE OF GOD'S WILL for you.

No-one is supposed to be dying. Bodies are not supposed to be decaying and dying. There is NOT supposed to be 7 billion people planning their own death, who will very likely die in the next 100 years, putting 7 billion corpses in the ground, just because they did not want God's healing and love. That's their choice. It does not have to be yours.

If we are to demonstrate that we are immortal and invulnerable, we ARE supposed to demonstrate here, in the flesh, that the body cannot be hurt, BECAUSE, the body is ONLY coming from the mind, and therefore if you project a healthy body it will STAY HEALTHY at all times. And nothing can attack it. It is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be sick. NOR CAN IT DIE.

"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. The mind makes this decision, as IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION."

Later, when it's done being useful, it is simply DISAPPEARED. Just as Jesus did:

"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. "

It was not a matter of it disappearing from his perception OF it. The body ITSELF disappeared because HE STOPPED PROJECTING IT.

THIS is our natural inheritance, this ability to work miracles, to reverse all sickness and death, to not only correct perception but to CORRECT PROJECTION. To UNDO everything we have PROJECTED. AND that ultimately includes your body, everyone else's body, all sickness, all death, all forms of separation, all objects, all planets, and this entire ILLUSORY UNIVERSE which is a PROJECTION coming from the mind.

So don't stop at "I will just change how I see the world." "Seek not to change the world, seek to change your mind about the world. Perception is a RESULT (effect of projecting) and not a cause (the body that shows up is not alive!). "And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless." ie... change your MIND, your body and the world MUST CHANGE to reflect the content of your mind. Without exception.

There are people who wake up in this world. There are people who are awake in the dream. There are people who have purified perception to such an extent that they seem to be seeing the real world or something close to it. They recognize that they were contributing sin to what is here, projecting it "onto" the body and world. But what they usually do not realize is, THEY are projecting the body and the world. And therefore, typically, they age, and they die. And then they reincarnate and make another body. Why? Because they did not get to the level where they woke up FROM dreaming, and FROM perceiving.

To wake up FROM the dream, you have to get in touch with the fact that you are the DREAMER of it, the one who is PROJECTING IT, and you are the one who is PUTTING ALL OF ITS OBJECTS OUT THERE. This puts you in touch with miracle working because now you are able to enact VERTICAL PERCEPTION, cause and effect are now vertical not linear, and you recognize the power of YOUR MIND to manifest absolutely anything in this dream, or change it, at will. Because you will realize, you have been DOING THAT all along. Your body was coming from YOUR MIND, and your mind only.

To wake up from the dream requires the undoing of dreaming, which overrides ALL perception, deals with separation at ITS CAUSE, and therefore DISAPPEARS THE DREAM UNIVERSE. That means, the disappearance of the physical universe, including precious "planet earth", which was never anything but a mental projection. All that is then left, is God's creation, which is Heaven.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

Let me first just say that I don't intend for this to be a "negative" post. Nor is it being pessimistic. But it's going to point out the inherent negativity of the world. Not to try to make it real or be drawn into despair over it, but to just recognize it for what it is. And there is no need to react to it with assertions of "happier interpretations."

There is a tremendous need for us to stop believing that the world is something we WANT. Or something that can offer us any redeeming qualities or content. Jesus actually wants us to learn to recognize that this world has nothing to offer, nothing to give, does nothing, means nothing, and is nothing.

Jesus frames the world - by which I mean EARTH and its physical neighbors regardless of your perceptions - as nothing. And that we are to recognize its nothingness in order to realize that giving it up is not a sacrifice. And that by giving it up, we stand to GAIN EVERYTHING by accepting the reality of the Kingdom that God created for us.

"The world I see has nothing that I want."

"But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth."

"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?"

ACIM is teaching that the world is nothing, it has no value, and everything in it is a pain. It says you do not want this world. That even though you made it you do not want it. And even that you made it BY not wanting it - by not wanting what was in your mind, which you projected outward as a world to try to get rid of it.

"the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want."

We are confused and caught up in the world because we keep believing that it can offer us salvation, something of value, something beneficial, something we want. And before you start dreaming up denials via the repurposing of the body and world, let just just clarify that the purpose of the world does not change what it IS.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

Our problem is that we do believe the world has something to offer. That it is a great place to live forever, and never leave. That it has real pleasures and that its pleasures entail no pain. But Jesus also teaches that even the pleasures of the world are really pains in disguise, because the cost is that by indulging in temptation you are separating from God, and real pleasure only comes from doing God's will. Pleasure binds you to the body and takes you away from reality, just as pain does.

He wants us to recognize that pain IS pain, and pleasure IS pain, because truthfully we actually don't quite recognize what anything is. We think that pain is pleasure. We even think that sickness is saving us from life, and death is salvation. In our confusion we keep trying to dress up this world and frame it as somewhere that you can enjoy the full fruits of heaven. But as Jesus aptly explains, you CANNOT ESCAPE from the world's suffering by staying in it.

"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."

Much of our problem then is that we think there really is a way to be in the world that fixes it up and makes it great and provides room for an entire civilizations to emerge. A massive attempt to tame hell and "civilize" it. But this is really a form of DENIAL. The truth is that ALL of the world's roads lead to death, suffering, loss and disappointment. If you are willing to look at it you'll see this is true. And it will just keep on disappointing you until it disappears. That is its NATURE. It is a device for guaranteeing death.

"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"

"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."

These are the facts. Everything in spacetime is limited, it is not even really life (only eternal life is life), bodies are mostly destined to die, flowers can't bloom without dying off, entire planets cease to exist after a while, there is decay and destruction everywhere, sacrifice is built into spacetime itself, and there is scarcity everywhere. The world is TURD floating in cess-pool toilet-bowl of spacetime. Failure is inherent to the entire cosmos. This is not being negative about it either, it's being honest and truthful. This is a dream of mortality.

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

If we go into DENIAL that the world is basically a one-way trip to hell and death, we will start trying to find ways to PRETEND it's not true. We in fact have built up what we call a "civilized society" (a dysfunction), complete with the "comforts" that avoid as much pain as possible, the clever manipulations of matter that result in seeming "fixes" for problems, we've found all kinds of distractions and ways of making life seem "interesting", and have discovered every imaginable toy and play-thing to occupy our time. And yet all the while death can strike at any instant in any number of ways. And no-one knows what the heck they're doing.

"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."

The world really, in truth, is fundamentally broken, and it was broken from the start. It was made from the idea of the malfunction of reality. It was an attack on order and peace and love and harmony. Its separations are constant and relentless. Its isolation and exclusion are rampant. And not one single particle in all of spacetime is without a form that symbolizes separation, repulsion and rejection. The world is made of denial, and it even denies its own existence.

"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."

If you look, you'll notice that the world has a plentiful supply of problems lined up for you, and even if you seem to solve one using a highly specific customized solution made just to perfectly fix this one problem, it WILL NOT EVER stop the onslaught of all the other problems it has lined up for you. Not to mention death. The one problem that everyone seems to be in TOTAL denial about, as if it doesn't matter because it's off in the future. And so we pretend we won't die, while nevertheless rushing towards it and making sure it happens.

We have to be willing to put aside all of these adjustments, these wishful thinkings, these rose-tinted glasses, the ignorant bliss, the framing the world as heaven, the trying to make it be our home, our adjustments to it and our attempts to make it out to be a great place. It is nothing. It can be forgiven, like all illusions can, but its nothingness is what makes this possible.

"YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it."

Adjusting to the world, trying to cope with the world, trying to make it more palatable, trying to make it softer and safer and seem to be a place that's not all that bad, is all forms of denial. The desire for the nice materials, the riches, the shiny objects, the fancy cars and expensive buildings, it's all an attempt to pretend that the world is desirable and that it WON'T disappoint you, as you seem to enjoy SHORT LIVED temporary reprieves from its hell-bent destructiveness. And as you hide behind the next "new thing" which claims to offer escape from death.

It is an avoidance of the fact that the world is just fundamentally not EVER going to really work correctly. It cannot function correctly because it is based on an idea of death and destruction. It is fundamentally a world of suicide and self-attack. Everything in it will always go wrong sooner or later. Expecting it not to will make you suffer.

This isn't a pessimistic view, by the way. This is a truthful view. I am not saying that we should be sad and unhappy and despairing because of it. Or that there is no alternative. In fact, Jesus is trying to get us to look at this truth SO THAT we can be recognize it is something we DO NOT WANT, so that we will in turn change our minds and choose the one reality that God created for us. And in which we will be infinitely happy forever. We only keep choosing the world because we mistakenly think it is WORTH HAVING, but how can you want a world made of rejection?

The world is not supposed to be your home, the thing you are in love with, your special adored idol, or your salvation. If you watch honestly you'll see that everything just goes wrong, eventually. It happens, again and again. Stuff breaks. Things get lost. Objects fall off tabletops. Food splats on the floor. The clothes become worn. The beds become mis-shapen. The roofs leak and cave in. The cars break down. The rust creeps in. I like to say, "there goes the physics again". And the assault of time, which is the idea of change and therefore death, guarantees that everything comes to an end.

"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."

Shall we live in denial that this is true, that the world can NEVER BE HEAVEN? Shall we live in denial that everything in the worl WILL END? Or even that it has death built into it from the start? That it can never turn into a perfect society or an ideal civilization or even a safe place? We try to make it safer with our defenses and castles and our potions and rituals and our avoidance of dangers, but it remains an unsafe place. Can you escape a supernova?

"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 world cannot GIVE us what we want. It cannot make us happy. It cannot provide us with peace. It cannot satisfy us. It gives only to take away. It fails in order to disappoint. Every road, path, way, direction, goal, ambition and achievement in the world is pointless. Yet the world can present seeming illusions of "things going well", for a while, before it attacks and destroys what it has given. It can tempt you will fake happiness and fake values and fake salvation, only to fail you once again and deceive you in doing so.

"On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once."

"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."

Jesus is not being negative when he describes the world like this. The world IS like this, isn't it? It's not a matter of how you look at it. There is no real loss in admitting to this, nor is this an attack upon the world. It isn't an unforgiving accusation. It is just a simple clear look at the world we made, its inherent nature, and its limitations. It is a world of limits, not a world of freedom, which is why it is like a prison for everyone in it.

"Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you."

"If it (mind) 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 world itself is tyrrannical. It is selfish and separate. Each part of it is separate and at war with every other. Even the forms of objects are in conflict, which is why they are different. Conflicting shapes, sizes, colors, textures, they are all forms of war. Everything the body sees is a form of conflict. Every atom is at war. You cannot turn something that is fundamentally conflicting into something that isn't, because this will erase all of its properties and it will cease to exist.

It is by recognizing the world as "the hell you made", that we might be willing to go the other way. It is when we sugarcoat it as "not hell" in a spiritualizing pretense to make it seem wanted and worthy, that we put ourselves to sleep. We are blinded by perception of form and tempted by its luster and flair. Its picture frame of jewel-encrusted death suggests it is not a world of death but our most cherished possession.

We are to correctly identify that the world IS meaningless and IS nothing and HAS nothing that we want and DOES nothing for or to us and ISN'T our inheritance from God and IS NOT real and HAS no power and is basically absolutely NOTHING. The recognition that "there is no world." How can a world which does not really exist appeal to us and be something we want INSTEAD OF God? At the cost of heaven? And in a bargain where we "gain the whole world and lose our soul"?

True escape from the battleground does not entail the faulty belief that the battleground can be made into a pleasant place. You can rise above it, and you can leave the desert, and you can see it in a better light. But you cannot change what it IS. And denying what it is merely keeps you in hell for longer. And that isn't going to make you very happy.

"The world you see must be denied."

"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."

"A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert." ... "The thing to do with a deserve is to LEAVE."

"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."

"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."

"That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"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."

"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?"

"What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise."

"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?"

"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."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."

I really like this term - "sinlessness". It feels good. It feels the way "there is no sin" feels when I say it. That my sinlessness is guaranteed by God, is right up with there "I am still as God created me." It specifies not only what I AM, it also specifies what I am NOT. I am not sinful, because I am sinless. I am free from the sinfulness that I am not.

Sinlessness is more than merely the absence of sin, as well. It is the presence of immortality. It is strength and innocence. It is invulnerability and fearlessness. Where there is sinlessness there is no reason to be afraid. If your brother is sinless, he is not threatening you. If the world is sinless, it is doing nothing to you. Sinlessness is safety. Sinlessness is your purity as Christ!

Sinlessness is also the end result of forgiveness. When forgiveness is completely, you are in sinlessness. When you have forgiven your brother, you recognize and can see his sinlessness. The sinlessness in him is your own. It is the light of Christ. It is the guaranteed purity of God, which was given you in your permanent creation. You are sinless because God created you sinless forever.

The juicy quotes...

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal. The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you."

"Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought; you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself. Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you. Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there."

"If a situation arises which seems to be disturbing, quickly dispel the illusion of fear by repeating these thoughts again. Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently:

"Light and joy and peace abide in you. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.""

"Brother, come and let me look on you. Your loveliness reflects my own. Your sinlessness is mine. You stand forgiven, and I stand with you."

"If you but knew how much your Father yearns to have you recognize your sinlessness, you would not let His Voice appeal in vain, nor turn away from His replacement for the fearful images and dreams you made. "

"True light is strength, and strength is sinlessness. If you remain as God created you, you must be strong, and light must be in you. He Who ensured your sinlessness must be the guarantee of strength and light as well. You are as God created you. Darkness cannot obscure the glory of the Son of God. You stand in light, strong in the sinlessness in which you were created, and in which you will remain throughout eternity."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."

"The state of sinlessness is merely this: The WHOLE desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than he is."

"And so you walk toward Heaven or toward hell, but NOT alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be, when you perceive it! And how great will be YOUR joy when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you."

"Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, SHARED with the Holy Spirit, and at one with Him on what salvation IS."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. The Holy Spirit GUARANTEES that what"God has willed and given shall be yours."

"My sinlessness protects me from all harm."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me. What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. God has already done all things that need be done. 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."

""You who created me in sinlessness are not mistaken about what I am. I was mistaken when I thought I sinned, but I accept Atonement for myself. Father, my dream is ended now. Amen.""

"I choose to see my brother's sinlessness."

"I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see, and only this. My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light."

""What could restore Your memory to me except to see my brother's sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me and like myself. In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well.""

"I can attack but my own sinlessness, and it is only that which keeps me safe."

""Father, Your Son is holy. I am he on whom You smile in love and tenderness so deep and dear and still the universe smiles back on You, and shares Your holiness. How pure, how safe, how sacred, then, are we, abiding in Your smile, with all Your love bestowed upon us, living one with You, in brotherhood and Fatherhood complete; in sinlessness so perfect that the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.""

"Let us not, then, attack our sinlessness. For it contains the Word of God to us, and in its kind reflection we are saved."

"Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond."

"Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent."

"We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within."

"And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain."

"The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness."

"Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His."

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that. It does not battle with the Son of God. It does not hurt him, nor attack his peace. It has not changed creation, nor reduced eternal sinlessness to sin and love to hate."

"I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me, and with perfect certainty assure myself, "God wills that I be saved from this," and merely watch them disappear. I need but keep in mind my Father's Will for me is only happiness, to find that only happiness has come to me. And I need but remember that His Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His arms. I am the Son He loves. And I am saved because God in His mercy wills it so."

"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You."

"Behold his sinlessness and be you healed"

"Father, today I would let all things be as You created them, and give Your Sons the honor due their sinlessness; the love of brother to his brother and his friend. Through this I am redeemed."

"I will forgive all things today, that I

May learn how to accept the truth in me,

And come to recognize my sinlessness."

"In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness, and with this thought we gladly say 'Amen'."

"And with this choice I see my sinlessness, my everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and my way secure and clear."

"Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not. Through this I come to You. Judgment will bind my eyes and make me blind. Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here, reminds me You have given me a way to find Your peace again." "Surrounding me is perfect safety. Can I be afraid, when Your eternal promise goes with me? Surrounding me is perfect sinlessness. What can I fear, when You created me in holiness as perfect as Your own?"

"In quiet may forgiveness wipe away my dreams of separation and of sin. Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart."

"Today I would behold my brother sinless. This Your Will for me, for thus will I behold my sinlessness."

"I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness which God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one Eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well."

"Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. For we who are Your holy Son, are sinless."

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify."

"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness. The song of Heaven sounds around the world, as it is lifted up and brought to truth."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. What further sight is needed? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love behind all forms, beyond all purposes."

"Their patients can but be seen as the bringers of forgiveness, for it is they who come to demonstrate their sinlessness to eyes that still believe that sin is there to look upon. Yet will the proof of sinlessness, seen in the patient and accepted in the therapist, offer the mind of both a covenant in which they meet and join and are as one."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom. Now it is no longer a contradiction in terms. Rather it is a statement of the unity of Christ and a recognition of His sinlessness. And now it has become holy, for it acknowledges the Son of God as he was created."

"Now, without needs of any kind, and clad forever in the pure sinlessness which is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer can again become what it was meant to be."

"Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness."

"What he has done now must God's Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison's key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father's Love."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His own."

"Now prayer is lifted from the world of things, of bodies, and of gods of every kind, and you can rest in holiness at last. Humility has taught you how to understand your glory as God's Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin. A dream has veiled the face of Christ from you. Now can you look upon His sinlessness."

"He will hear his sinlessness proclaimed around and around the world, setting it free as God's final judgment on him is received. This is the judgment in which salvation lies. This is the judgment that will set him free. This is the judgment in which all things are freed with him."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created. Now He can speak the Word of God to listening ears, and bring Christ's vision to eyes that see. Now is He free to teach all minds the truth of what they are, so they will gladly be returned to Him. And now is guilt forgiven, overlooked completely in His sight and in God's Word."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"Do you not see the OPPOSITE of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? INNOCENCE IS STRENGTH, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear. And fear of any kind is weakness."

"It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him." "In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"Your special function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose sinlessness He shares. HIS understanding will be YOURS. And so the Holy Spirit's Special Function has been fulfilled. God's Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness, and NOT his sin. "

"To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them."

"Your home is built upon your brother's health; upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made INSTEAD has shaken the Foundation of his home."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"And as we see the sinlessness in him come shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God, we will behold in him the Face of Christ, and understand that it is but our own."

"Give me your blessing, holy Son of God,

I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,

And see my perfect sinlessness in you."

"Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness."

"You still are holy with the Holiness which fathered you in perfect sinlessness, and still surrounds you in the arms of peace. Dream now of healing. Then arise and lay all dreaming down forever. You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world."

"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed."

"Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it. It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict, and keeps his sinlessness forever safe."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask only, "Do I REALLY wish to see him sinless?" And, as you ask, forget not that HIS sinlessness is YOUR escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon IS sinless. No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation. And what he sees he did NOT make, for it was GIVEN him to see, as was the vision which made his seeing possible."

"The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM."

"What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness?"

"No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness."

"Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness."

"Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness."

(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. "

In A Course in Miracles there are hundreds of references to FREEDOM scattered throughout. Freedom is also contrasted against its opposite, which is imprisonment, enslavement, being bound to the ego, to the body, to darkness, suffering and death. The whole course is geared towards you reclaiming your freedom, and giving freedom to others. Through your miracles you are setting others free, and releasing them from the chains of imprisonment you held them in before.

"I am not a body I am free."

"Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear."

"I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want."

"It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom."

"I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, UNLESS I WANT TO

USE YOU TO IMPRISON MYSELF."

"But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE."

"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." "When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."

"They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus."

The idea of freedom really goes back to your creation as a free-willed being by God. God has absolute freedom, being free from all limitation. God is unlimited. He who is unlimited can only give complete freedom, because he knows not of imprisonment. God does not create by imprisoning, he creates by giving freedom. All his children are not only free, they are fully free. It is because they are completely free ... in a sense, free from God .... though still sharing freely with him, that they are established as truly cooperative co-creators in heaven.

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless."

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His."

Any attempt you make to imprison another, to attack, to judge, to condemn, to blame, to project, to hurt, to destroy, to make guilty, to accuse of sin, to be victimized by, to victimize, to narrow to a body, to induce suffering of any kind, is actually an attempt to take away the freedom of others, AND to deny your own freedom. You cannot be a victim or suffer in ANY way if you acknowledge your total freedom. But in order to gain your own freedom, you MUST acknowledge that everyone else is also free from YOU, and you from them. You are not bound BY your brothers, any more than they are bound by you.

Dwell for a moment on the feeling of "keeping to yourself", in the sense that you ALLOW everyone to be free FROM YOU. Acknowledge that everyone is completely free. You are free from their tyranny over you. They are free from your tyranny over them. Let go of all manipulation, expectation, wanting others to be a certain way, or resisting their choices. Withdraw all your efforts to control and coerce, to blame and accuse. Let go of everyone. Let the whole world be itself. Settle back into your own inner freedom. You are free from enemies, free from attack, free from the choices of others, free from the body, and free from the world.

The course is in fact leading entirely to your TOTAL FREEDOM. Claiming your freedom is the restoration of your birth right. You cannot however claim your total freedom if you are imprisoning others, because the attempt to do so is an attempt to reinforce the idea that freedom doesn't exist. And thus you imprison yourself. It is said that your brother can set you free, or is the key to your salvation. By GIVING him total freedom, you give it to yourself. By recognizing he IS FREE, you recognize YOU are free. Try it.

Atonement is all about claiming freedom for yourself and the whole sonship. It is an act of setting everyone free from imprisonment. It releases you and everyone from slavery, bondage, body identification, death identification, and from all forms of suffering. You cannot BE affected by forces outside of you. The world cannot make you imprisoned or take your freedom away. No-one can deny your freedom for you. Not even God can decide whether you are free or not. He established you as free forever, and only you can deny your OWN freedom by denying it to the whole sonship.

When you acknowledge that you are COMPLETELY FREE FROM EVERYTHING, you settle back into your soul, you lift your hands away from the territory and lives of others and you set everyone free. In so doing you BECOME free yourself. You can feel it inside you, an acknowledgement of your own freedom, and it makes you feel happy and safe. You are safe from all attack because you are claiming your freedom. You are even save from suffering and death and from all the forces in the world. Nothing can imprison you or act against your will, but your will itself. When you stop imprisoning, you stop imprisoning yourself.

Below is an extensive collection of quotes from ACIM on the topic of freedom.

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free."

"And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will."

"No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found."

"But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"Only in dreams is there a time when he appears to be in prison, and awaits a future freedom if it be at all. Yet in reality his dreams are gone, with truth established in their place. And now is freedom his already. Should I wait in chains which have been severed for release, when God is offering me freedom now?"

"I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to look to find it. Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me. Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in God alone."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."

"We sound the call of freedom 'round the world with this idea."

"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom."

"In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well. Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body."

"For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."

"Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance."

"For as we offer freedom it is given us. And we would not remain as prisoners, while You hold out our freedom unto us."

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom"

"That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom"

"The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God."

"Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy."

"Father, I thank You for today, and for the freedom I am certain it will bring. This day is holy, for today Your Son will be redeemed. His suffering is done."

"Thanks for today, my Father. I was born into this world but to achieve this day, and what it holds in joy and freedom for Your holy Son, and for the world he made, which is released along with him today."

"Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world."

"Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any laws idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God. He is not bound except by his beliefs. Yet what he is is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom."

"But those who are FOR freedom, even if they are misguided in HOW they defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which IS true."

"And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own."

"Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God."

"Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS."

"And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"Forgiveness, truly given, is the only way in which your hope of freedom lies."

"Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom."

"The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace."

"For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand."

"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. 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. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true."

"In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him."

"This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is."

"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father."

"Only the function God has given me

can offer freedom. Only this I seek,

and only this will I accept as mine."

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice."

"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."

"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me."

"Can I lay limits on the Son of God, whose Father willed that he be limitless, and like Himself in freedom and in love?"

"So will YOU learn the freedom that I taught, by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you RAISE to freedom, and bar my way to YOU."

"So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own."

"Today's idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom."

"And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them."

"All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom FOR you."

"Accept this key to freedom, from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, YOU do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER."

"You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it."

"Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom, for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's attraction."

"How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value MORE than this? For here is YOUR salvation and YOUR freedom. And it MUST be complete, if YOU would recognize it."

"But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me."

"The mind that is made willing to accept God's gifts has been restored to Spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own."

"Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave."

"Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge."

"Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you."

"Thus do we lift the chains which bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals."

"Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.

"He would only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom."

"The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered you through the grace of God."

"It contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve."

"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."

"LOVE IS FREEDOM. To look for it by placing yourself in BONDAGE, is to SEPARATE yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you BE released."

"The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the REAL lure in the special relationship. You do NOT recognize that this IS its REAL appeal, for the ego has taught you that FREEDOM lies in it."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

Let me accept the strength God offers me

And see no value in this world, that I

May find my freedom and deliverance."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

I seek my freedom and deliverance,

And this is not a part of what I want."

"And think how holy HE must be, when in him sleeps your OWN salvation, with HIS freedom joined."

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home."

"It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for BY his freedom will you gain your own."

"He HAS no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him."

"But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom."

"The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."

"In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom."

"Practice GIVING this blessed instant of freedom to all who are ENSLAVED by time, and thus make time their friend FOR them."

"Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God." "Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now. Deny him not. His Father's Love for him belongs to you."

"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."

"It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace."

"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real."

"But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself."

"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."

"For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form?"

"You have denied HIS freedom, and by so doing, you have denied the witness unto YOURS. You could as easily have FREED him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him TO it. And in HIS freedom would have been your OWN."

"Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation."

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU."

"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone."

"You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these."

"In the name of MY freedom, I WILL your release,

Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.

So will the year begin in joy and freedom."

"For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace."

"Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom."

"A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last." "Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world"

"Where COULD his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free ALREADY? And who could bind him but HIMSELF, if he DENY his freedom?"

"Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS."

"Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies."

"Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different."

"Today escape from madness. You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace."

"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse."

"Give joyously to one another the freedom and the strength to lead you there. And come before each other's holy altar, where the strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads you home."

"His is the Voice of God, and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear."

"Whom you forgive is GIVEN power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto YOU."

"Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit, for BOTH of you. And be you free together, as you offer TO the Holy Spirit this SAME gift, and, giving it, receive it OF Him, in RETURN for what you gave."

"Offer each other freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."

"Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety."

"It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son."

"There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom."

"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."

"Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them."

"Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."

"And what they see upholds their freedom FROM imprisonment and death." "Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's Saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and RELEASE from suffering to everyone who NEEDS a miracle to save him."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." "We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own."

"Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace."

"Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it."

"We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom."

"What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your Savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours."

"Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are."

"It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you"

"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom. "

"The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt."

"Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless."

"You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your Father loves you."

"The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood."

"I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world, for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom."

"He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you." "Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."

"Your special relationships will remain, NOT as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."

"The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it."

"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."

"Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it."

"He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his."

"My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way."

"Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire."

"Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the word "atone" really means "undo."

"In this phase of learning, working miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you."

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS."

"To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you HAVE accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you OFFER the gift of freedom from the past, which you have RECEIVED." "Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here."

"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."

"Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds."

"For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was NEVER absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice."

"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."

"And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him."

"The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES."

"You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear."

"Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by HIS Being."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free."

"Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower."

"In the service of the "Right Mind", the denial of ERROR frees the mind and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY free, it CANNOT miscreate, because it recognizes ONLY TRUTH.