Think of an apple. Now think of a knife cutting through the apple. The knife is separation. BOTH sides of the knife will experience the effects of separation. The knife will come between them and attack both of them. The inner and the outer will both suffer.

So sickness, as an implementation of the separation idea, isn't just happening to you. It's happening towards yourself and its happening towards others.

What applies to you applies equally to everyone else. That's the rule of the Holy Spirit's thought system, and the truth of how your mind works.

You cannot attack yourself without attacking others. You cannot separate yourself from the truth without pushing others away, which is an attack.

This is why Jesus explains that when we have sickness in the body, we are using sickness as an attack on our brother. The sick are always accusers. A sick body is a sign of an unhealed mind. And sickness is a device for separating you from everything else through attack upon yourself and others.

Death, as pathetically powerless as it seems to be, is the ultimate form of attack. It's not only an attempt to attack yourself so thoroughly that you completely separate from Life, but is also actually an attempt to attack Life - all life. Those who die are attempting to destroy all of creation. And they are attempting to destroy God. Their insistence that God is dead, which is a vicious attack, causes them to die.

So don't think of sickness as, one person has this sickness and another person doesn't. Sickness comes BETWEEN people. It is a separation device, a wall, a crow bar leveraged in-between what once was whole and joined and connected. It comes as a defense and as an attack. All defenses (against the truth or wholeness) are attacks.

So yes, everyone who is sick right now, is attacking not only themselves and God, but also everyone else. Anyone with a common cold is attempting to destroy themselves and others. This is why many supposed forms of sicknesses are contagious as well - an expression of the idea of attacking not only self but others also.

If you are sick it is because you have gone into isolation which means you have attempted to isolate yourself FROM others, but in so doing, also isolating OTHERS from you. Sickness is always a double-edged sword. It hurts you and it hurts everyone. It is applied to the whole sonship simultaneously.

It may seem in this world that for the most part, the sick are the only ones who suffer, or what can happen to them isn't happening to anyone else. But this isn't true. This is why a joining of minds with your brother can heal sickness because sickness is separation in the mind - separation between separate selves, who really are One.

Your sickness keeps you imprisoned and keeps everyone else imprisoned along with you. I'm not trying to make this a guilt-trip, but we need to recognize it for what it is so that we can be free of it. Self-attack is all-attack. Sickness is an attack on everyone.

Think of yourself not as confined to a small body, but think of yourself as, in your natural state, being expansive and the size of the universe. You are omnipresent, you are everywhere and in all things. You share the entirety of existence with all other children of God. You overlap with everyone. You exist in the same space, share all of your being with other beings, and commune intimately in a state of oneness.

What happened to that self, which was a universe-sized fully sharing being, in the separation idea, is you attempted to withdraw from immersion in the whole, you confined yourself, you shrunk down, you limited yourself, you withdrew yourself from the communal experience, and so made yourself show up as an isolated body person.

You became small and little and weak and frail, fenced off from the rest, not wanting to share with anyone, wanting to have something special just to yourself, something exclusive, something that only you have, which makes you different and unique and selfish. Instead of being everywhere you decided to be somewhere, restricted in spacetime to a small tiny spot, around which you defend against the entire universe from entering.

This is what happened in the separation. This is how you took your pre-existing sharing self, and "made it separate". You separated it from its communal experience with other infinite beings, putting yourself in a corner and walling yourself in, in order to keep them out and you in. You did not want to share in them, and you didn't not want them to share in you. This was the purpose of the body idea, a separation device and a wall of flesh around the mind.

This produced what is termed "the separated self" which is a self who used to share with everyone, who now does not want to share at all. This imprisoned self, is still a real self, but has placed itself under limitations. And these limitations are made of illusions, which seem to now substitute for a sense of real, full self, making it seem as though you "made up a self" to replace the fullness of your soul. You made the body, and identified with and as it, in an attempt to isolate and exclude. This is all that happened in the separation. You just became selfish and special and different.

The restoration of your true nature simple entails the willingness to drop the walls, remove the isolation, transcend the body separation device, return to being the size of the universe, re-immerse yourself in creation, rejoin the community of the Sonship, and resume a state of perfectly unselfish sharing. The willingness to let others share you, as much as you share them. Restored to being your natural self as God created you, a self who is equal to all real brothers and who shares everything with everyone.

Once you can see what you were like BEFORE the separation - a limitless universal being who shares everything with every other limitless universal being - the family of God - you can easily contrast this against the position you now find yourself in, and realize that it was the attempt not to share that put yourself into this situation. Where you are now inside a body, everyone else is kept outside, you seem to inhabit it alone, and now no-one shares anything with you inside your little fence. Being kept apart and separated off and unwilling to join, is a lonely and isolating experience.

The walls of separation, the body itself, all physical matter, all illusions, the ego, body identification, forms, the world, all things little, every prison wall which keeps you from sharing and immersing yourself in communion with God and Sonship, which occurs only in Heaven, keeps you from being IN heaven, and keeps you imprisoned. This is why the body cannot contain you who are love, any more than God can enter a body or join you there. You must expand. You must become unlimited. You must return to being an eternal being who is everywhere and sharing with all other eternal beings in an unlimited, open and unselfish way.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

Both sides of every war are run by the ego. The war is symptomatic of the ego attacking itself. War is self attack.

When you believe that one side of the war is the good guys and one side is the bad guys, YOU have fallen for the ILLUSION.

BOTH sides of every war are played ultimately by the SAME side. There is only ONE side which has divided against ITSELF, and is attacking itself in both directions. This is the ego mind, the split mind, pretending to be TWO, when in fact it is one. The human race is attacking itself.

When we are deceived by all of these ILLUSIONS that someone did not ask for something, someone is a victim, someone is unfairly treated, someone is sick against their will, someone is suffering unfairly, etc... if we believe these things, that the person did not in any way choose or want this, WE TOO have fallen for the same illusion they fell for. And now we are supporting and adding to their illusion, and have kept them imprisoned.

We need to learn that the world is FULL of illusions of Party A appearing to be separate form Party B. In every way that this expresses, it ALWAYS looks as though one group of people is separate from another group of people. Ie that there are two distinct identities, or parties, or teams, or groups, or agendas, or whatever. Always two separate camps. And the appearance of two separate camps is the EGO. That's what the ego split mind looks like - a mind with multiple personalities, where those personalities are at war with each other.

We need to learn not to fall for these illusions. They are NOT the truth. It is NOT true that victims are victims. It is NOT the truth that things happen to people against their will. It is NOT true that death isn't chosen. It is NOT true that people do not want to be sick. It is NOT true that those who are afraid are being caused to be scared by someone or something outside of them. It is NOT true that people suffer against their will. These are ILLUSIONS, lies, disguises, covering up what the person is secretly really doing to themselves.

When we then believe and fall for these illusions, we are not seeing correctly, and we ourselves have become insane. And now we are entering into FALSE EMPATHY with others by joining with them in this delusional thought system, supporting their CLAIM that they do not want this, or that it happened without their choosing it. By entering into this with them we support and empower them to STAY the way they are, thus keeping them imprisoned. We cannot set them free until we are willing to FORGIVE, which means to overlook the ILLUSION that what they're presenting to us is the truth.

People who are victims will fervently express the belief and conviction that they did not want this to happen. People who are sick will passionately proclaim how this suffering is unfair and unwanted and they did not ask for it, and that they want to do everything to get rid of it (while doing nothing to really cure it). People who are in fear, are actually attackers who believe in disempowerment and weakness and attack others by seeing them as guilty and sinful. Do not believe appearances!

You have to learn, if you're to be a miracle worker, to OVERLOOK all of these illusions because they are all LIES. They are untruth, and dishonesty, and irresponsibility. Do not get into pity and sympathy and false empathy about how people are suffering against their will. They are attempting to bring you into a delusional thought system. They are attacking you with their DEMONSTRATION that they believe in attack and defense and war and conflict and fear and suffering.

Do not believe in sickness. Sickness is not REAL. Do not believe in death. Death is not REAL. Wake up! Be the light of the world and demonstrate a different truth. Demonstrate that the secret to salvation is that we're doing all of this to ourselves, and that owning that is being responsible and honest. Demonstrate miracles, that no matter what has happened, it can be undone, because there IS no real sin, and all of the effects of an ILLUSION of sin must be reversible.

The world is full of lies and liars. Be careful of listening to other people's "obstacles to peace". Beware of the way that other people make sin real and attack you by reinforcing their own belief that you should be afraid of "real bad things happening". These would not come from a sane mind or a mind that is aware of God, and aware of Reality. Discern the difference between illusions and reality. In truth nothing has gone wrong, no-one has suffered against their will, there is no death and there is no world.

Time to wake up!

Are you guilty? Do you deserve forgiveness? Have you repented of your 'sin'?

If you are guilty of something, the very best thing you can do is to reclaim your innocence as soon as possible. If what you were doing before was incorrect, then returning to a state of correction is the best possible atonement you can offer.

If someone truly had a sane perception of you, they would ask that you stop being guilty and instead hold the light of innocence so that both you and they can be healed. Right? The greatest gift that a victimizer could give is to cease victimizing. Right? So to cease victimizing you have to stop choosing sin or guilt or fear. Which means you must choose innocence.

So while often we want our victimizers to be punished, to pay, to suffer, to be guilty, as though this somehow is 'better' or is justice or is a way of making up for what they did, this really is self defeating.

It is your brothers role to provide salvation and healing to you. He can only do that if he also SHARES in salvation and healing. The unhealed cannot heal. The guilty cannot provide innocence. You can't have it both ways - you can't have your vicitmizer be guilty while at the same time wanting them to 'take back' what they did.

You also can't hold guilt against a victimizer and expect to feel free of guilt yourself. How about that?

Here's the new rule.

Either you are both guilty or you are both innocent, but never one or the other.

If the world ran more according to this truth we would be far better off. An offering of guilt from a victimizer following an attack is nothing more than rubbing salt into the wound. Why would you want them to be guilty on top of having already attacked you? Guilt is an attack. You THINK that the attack of guilt is isolated to the person, and they can be guilty but not you. This is completely false and will totally undermine your sense of safety.

If a person is guilty, the guilt attacks them and you equally. Just as when someone is sick, the sickness is not limited to them - it is a statement of attack AND an attempt to infect everyone else. Not to induce guilt in saying that, but the Course does explain that sickness is an attempt to prove that everyone is sick. And not just bodily sickness - mind sickness, emotional sickness, etc.

The ONLY way for you to truly be happy and peaceful and to receive love and healing and be free of all effects of an attack, is to see the attacker as innocent and to encourage them to be innocent.

So yes, is sounds completely nonsense.... you just attacked me, ok, please revert to being loving and love me instead. Instead of... you just attacked me, you horrible asshole, you're so guilty and I hate you. Well, good luck with that self hate.

And if you are the victimizer, do you really think you're going to be better off or are doing the victim a service by being guilty all the time? Like, how much time is needed for you to be in shame and guilt in order to atone? A lifetime? At what point is it enough? When do you deserve forgiveness. You ALWAYS deserve forgiveness but you HAVE to claim and own it for yourself, because nobody, including the victim, is going to give you that permission of entitlement.

If you've ever made a significant enough mistake you'll know from experience, that people love to use you as a skapegoat and to jump on the bandwagon of unforgiveness. They want you to be guilty, so that you are the one who gets the punishment. What about THEIR sin? They're hardly being an example of love. At some point you have to realize, not only that you are the one who chose to be guilty and ashamed, but also therefore you are the one who has to reclaim innocence. Nobody can do it for you.

We all deserve to be innocent. We all deserve love. True `repentance` of sin, IF we REALLY want people to truly atone and repent, MUST mean that we allow them to be our SAVIOR. We can't hold a grudge, and we can't keep demanding their punishment. This only keeps ourselves imprisoned. IF we really want atonement and we really want healing, we HAVE to allow the attacker to be seen as innocent, otherwise there is no hope whatsoever and we're just getting lost in the ego.

Yes it runs against what we're used to. It runs against the ego. It goes against the societal normal. It runs counter to our normal ego emotional reactions. But if we want freedom and we truly want healing rather than suffering, we have to forgive ourselves AND everyone else no matter what. We HAVE to ask for a gift of innocence from all of our enemies, otherwise to hold them imprisoned is just to attack ourselves indirectly.

Love is not guilt. We don't need an offering of guilt or a performance of shame to make up for what someone did to us. We need THEM to heal. We need THEM to return to peace and love. Otherwise, how are we going to be able to get there ourselves?

Love your enemies. We are all one.

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.

(Comments on "the mechanism of miracles.")

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

... Here I initially thought Jesus is talking about a typical form of denial, like, not wanting to admit something. But Jesus seems to be referring to the fact that you can deny LIFE and health and thereby implement all forms of sickness and even death. Miracles then can reverse the "denial of life", ie death. Miracles resurrect.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

...Loving yourself can heal your sickness. All sickness is a lack of love.

"Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES."

...This seems like a quandry, people want to not be sick, but behind the denial they do, so they continue to deny what would make them well - the admission of love.

"If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick."

...Recognizing you are love heals all sickness.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

...To help someone heal, you must not believe what THEY are believing about themselves. They are in denial of their love, you must acknowledge their love and overlook their denial/belief in being unloveable.

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them."

...At first this suggests you cannot heal anyone else.

"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

...So since someone has "disabled" themselves, blocking the source of their own healing, and while requesting help are also rejecting it, someone ELSE needs to help them. The light in YOU as a miracle worker IS the "same" as the light in the other. Therefore you can cause THEIR light to BYPASS their own denial.

"The light in them (the miracle worker) shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. 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."

...Even as your brother sees themselves as imprisoned, you have to see them as NOT imprisoned. Not buy into the illusion of the denial or sickness. You must not "give power to" the sickness and must not believe it HAS any power, otherwise you are making it real and giving it strength, which reinforces it. You must deny the belief that THEIR denial (showing up as sickness) has any power, including the belief that the sickness is too difficult to heal.

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN."

...Recognizing your brother as "not really sick" and remembering his true self/love for him, recognizes it in both of you. You remember FOR both of you. Ie you put the ove back into both of your minds.

"To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

...Some have interpreted this to mean that your brother "is" you which is almost true. You are identical and you share with him. When you can see that what is true of him is true of you, YOU are remembering God. For both of you.

"Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself."

...Love is the basis of miracles. Expressing love can heal sickness. But notice it also says OFFER... which doesn’t mean it is forceful, and it potentially can still be rejected. There is a line in ACIM which says "miracles are not always effective because of what love is" or something like that.. because they respect freedom.

"Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love."

...This is quite advanced. To perceive WHOLENESS requires no fear and complete love. Perception has to be very "correct" in order to *recognize* that the sickness is a call for love, and to not be deceived by it. The person has implemented sickness through denial of love, via hate. You have to not believe the hate.

"And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."

...You must give love to both of you. This is why "you can only give the miracles you have received". In order to share love which will heal your brother, you must be IN the love yourself. If you are not willing to love yourself, you cannot heal others. But if you do love yourself and are healed, you CAN heal others.

Your brother really wants love, but has denied it to himself. To give it to him, you must love him "as you love yourself". Loving your brother shares it with both of you and restores unity and wholeness to both of you. Worth repeating:

"Healing is the love of Christ (sonship) for His Father (father of all souls) and for Himself (all brothers and yourself).

Love yourself so that you can love others. Love works miracles.

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."

If there is fear in you, and if you are projecting it outward, you will project it onto specific things. This is because fear is divisive and not whole, so it attaches to PARTS OF the environment. And in particular it can project onto a specific body.

When fear is projected, another's body is seen in a very isolating way. Fear distorts perception heavily and anchors you into the physical. It then seems that only the physical exists, only the physical rules apply, only physical causation is real, and there is no escape from anything.

By making your brother's body his "reality", focusing on its condition or form or appearance, projecting fear onto it, you turn it into an enemy. You give it power over you. Your whole awareness sinks into the ego and you can find no way out.

As the body is given reality, which is very easy to do when you are afraid, your whole focus shuts out the mind and awareness of any higher truth. And now you feel like you are completely imprisoned and held captive by this "sinful body" you see. Like you are locked in and completely at its effect. Anything it does, or doesn't do, now seems to completely affect you against your will, as if you have no ability to stop it or do anything about it. If the person has a sickness or problem and cannot fix it, or isn't trying to, you will now feel like they are imposing limits on you and forcing you to suffer.

Seeing yourself as a victim of this dynamic, already deep in fear with nowhere to turn, everything now seems like a closed system. Having bound your brother to his body, imprisoning him, you see yourself as imprisoned. And now your brother's body seems to be attacking you. This incites reactions of even more fear, which turns into anger and rage, justified due to what he seems to be doing to you.

It will now feel like there is nothing you can do to be free, as if your mind is somehow locked onto their body state, as if you have merged with it and are kind of one with their body. You will feel exposed to it and completely vulnerable to it, as if you have opened up a conduit or bridge, a cord that has bound you to it. Its every move seems to dictate your suffering, and you cannot seem to be free unless the other person changes. And now you will demand they change, rather than look at the fact you are projecting fear.

This really is the ego's version of "forgiveness to destroy" taken to the extreme. The projection of fear blinds you to stepping back or looking into your mind, seeing yourself as doing anything to yourself. It warps your perception and turns it inside out. Cause and effect are backwards and you see yourself as completely victimized. The more you go into it the more you lose sight of the fact that you have any power or are choosing any of this.

Your whole sense of peace then seems to completely "depend" on the other person. If their body has any issue at all, you'll blow it out of proportion and see it as a threat and a danger. And how dare they not resolve it for your benefit. The only way out of this is to stop projecting fear, look at the fear within you, heal it and return to love.

True forgiveness is needed, and you must be clear that fear really is an attempt to attack. "The fearful are apt to be vicious." Viciousness comes out when you are afraid. And by attacking, you will see another as attacking you. And having attacked them by seeing them as only a body, you will see their body as attacking you. Just even by sitting there in its condition, it is experienced as a threat, because you have threatened it, having threatened yourself.

Fear is really part of your self-attack, resulting from guilt, resulting from a belief in sin. Your own sinlessness is the key to salvation and to removing the basis for fear. There is nothing to fear because only love is real.

"It seems to be the body we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear."

"But fear attaches to specifics, being false."

"Bodies attack, but minds do not." "This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols."

"The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind."

"When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold; seeing itself in everything; compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

Fear has the potential to paralyze you. It stops people from living. It keeps people imprisoned in their own homes.

People affected by fear can avoid doing certain things many, many times over, missing out on countless experiences, interactions and relationships.

Afraid one day, afraid many days, afraid for months or even years, and allowing this fear to run your life, there comes to be an entire "life" that you could've lived but you didn't, systematically avoiding it one opportunity at a time.

I've seen this happen to a number of people, whose ability to enjoy a full life is almost permanently destroyed by fear. That includes me - I used to be so afraid of people and of living life.

So many things which could've happened but didn't, because fear said it must be avoided. Or fear said it was a threat, or dangerous, or would upset someone, or that it would lead to punishment.

Fear is always about the believed threat of some form of punishment or attack that you *perceive* is going to happen. You're sure it will happen because you yourself believe that you are guilty, for whatever reason. Actually the only reason is because deep down you believed you have sinned. But sins are forgivable because they aren't real, and one who would punish you is a sinner themselves.

You don't have to live in fear your entire life. Fear is an illusion. It isn't real or founded in reality. It's a psychological condition of temporary insanity, projection and denial. It's a choice to disown yourself, and what ends up being disowned is your life that you're not living.

Don't let fear lock you in a prison today. Set yourself free.