Is there a power OTHER than the mind that can cause things to happen to us? What causes sickness? What makes death happen? Do we actually have any control over this world? Do we have a power, to such an extent, that we can actually determine what happens or doesn't happen? Can we actually CHOOSE to cause or not cause sickness and death?

This is an important issue because if we are not the ones orchestrating everything that occurs, everything we experience, then that places us in a rather vulnerable position. If there is a power or cause or law or something that drives stuff to occur, without our consent, without our choosing it, this basically means we are capable of being victims. Stuff can happen to us against our will.

It may seem SUPER radical to suggest that you could be in a position of having so much deliberateness, so much choice, so much power, that you could be orchestrating an entire dream. That the things that happen are what YOU decide will happen. That nothing else happens, because you haven't chosen it. It really then boils down to, are you actually able to choose not to suffer, to not be sick, to not die? Can you choose that events don't occur at all? Do you have the power to CAUSE these to not happen, and do you have the power to cause them TO happen?

This then really becomes a question of RESPONSIBILITY. Who or what is responsible, in every case, for what happens in your life? Do you shift responsibility and therefore "blame" onto others, onto the body or the world itself? For what seems to happen TO you? Who is responsible for whether you are attacked or not? Who is responsible for whether your body becomes sick, or is healed, or just carries on being sick without hope of relief? Because ultimately someone or some "thing" HAS to be the cause. It's either you, or it's something else. There are NO effects without causes.

If you look at the teachings of ACIM closely you will see that there is a huge theme of EMPOWERMENT. This empowerment is saying that you are so powerful that you literally are the dreamer of the dream. It says that you are ruler of the universe. It says that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts. It says you cannot die without your own consent. It says that you are not the victim of the world you see. All of these themes point towards you having POWER OVER what happens. YOU CHOOSE!

"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."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

Indeed it leads to what ACIM calls "the secret of salvation". This is quite a radical passage because it basically says that unless you were to go into a kind of unconscious state of denial in which you disown power and see the dream as "happening against your will", NOTHING In the world can do anything to you - no matter how vicious it seems. And in fact, that the secret to being SAVED FROM all forms of suffering, is to realize and own fully that you are "doing it to yourself." That takes great OWNERSHIP of power.

We immediately start to bark with objections about how this can't be true in all situations. But the passage tells us that no matter who is the victim or victimizer, it is true. No matter who seems to do what to whom, or what the apparent severity, it is still true. So it's then telling us that despite any appearances, despite what may look like external causes or separate people acting in certain ways, no matter what it looks like on the surface, it is ALWAYS TRUE that you are doing it to yourself.

And it calls this the "secret of salvation" because it talks of how this is the ONE LESSON the holy spirit is teaching to SAVE YOU from ALL forms of suffering. That the cause of ALL forms of suffering, no matter what form it takes, including physical sickness, is the fact that you are the one doing it to yourself. And because you are doing it yourself, you can change your mind and STOP doing it.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

Because in truth, really, UNLESS you are actually the one with the power to CAUSE anything to happen, you would not be in a position to be able to USE that power to NOT cause it to happen, or to undo it. It is because you DO cause it, that there is IS hope for salvation. There is a way out of hell and suffering and sickness and death BECAUSE you are the one that keeps putting it in place. And if you weren't the one putting it in place, you'd be stuck having to tolerate it, experience it, suffer from it, and go through it, without any hope of relief, ie no salvation.

This is quite a radical teaching and it is extremely central to the entire A Course in Miracles view of cause and effect, of who causes what, and of how POWERFUL you are. It rests on the fact that you are an immortal being, a permanent changeless being, who is always the same and is incapable of change or of being changed. A being that is NOT AFFECTED by the world.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

Forgiveness rests on this immortal fact, because obviously if you are immortal nothing can happen to you, so you have no grounds for playing at being a victim, no grounds for believing that something is happening against your will, and no grounds for suffering. If you are immortal then you quite literally are invulnerable to the entire world, and there is not a single thing in all the world that has even the slightest power to cause anything that you do not want. In fact it means you have power OVER DEATH, because you cannot die.

This is what the entire teaching of ACIM is leading to. The total identification with spirit as Christ, the immortal son of God. The total owning of RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEING CAUSAL - a causal CREATOR. The total reclaiming of absolute unlimited POWER, which can do literally anything. The reclaiming of the power to work miracles, to heal sickness and to prevent death, and to change the world if needed. It is asking of you to reclaim a role and position of nothing LESS than TOTAL ABSOLUTE POWER.

By having such a power, a power so great that literally the entire dream is being dreamed up BY your mind, a power that puts the world in place and makes it spin, a power that materializes bodies, a power that causes events to transpire, we're talking about you being extremely DELIBERATE and CHOOSING everything that occurs or is experienced. And this does mean without exception. Not one single thing occurs that you do not choose, and because the power of decision is yours, you CAN CHOOSE not to have the body be sick, or die. YOU make the world go round.

This isn't a course in leaving any room open for some kind of fictional "alien will", a separate power, an external power, some kind of power the "dream" seems to have over you, some victim consciousness, some kind of external causation that can do things to you against your will, some kind of power that puts sickness into your body without your asking for it, or some kind of power other than your choice that seems to make death happen.

These are all the views that the EGO has, in its sense of weakness and powerlessness and vulnerability and fear. It sees itself as utterly at war with a separated-off power not within itself, that does things to it against its desires. And it sees itself as having no control or real power over anything, so instead to uses "force" and "doing" to try to make things happen.

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

We are being asked to own up to being immortal beings. Beings who are purely CAUSAL and CREATIVE. Beings who express from love and whose expressions come out as what you want, and as what you create and thus as what happens or exists. Where you are constantly choosing WHAT shows up and what occurs. There is no room in the mind of a creator/co-creator for stuff happening "by some other means", or of your choices being unheard, or of your decisions lacking power, or of your causation lacking effects.

This is a course in TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. And that means and includes the total responsibility and ownership of being THE CAUSE OF all your suffering, in every form it takes, INCLUDING the condition of the body, all of its forms and sickness and suffering, and even over death itself. You even have the power to literally move mountains and to make worlds. Only in this extreme of absolute ownership of the POWER OF GOD, which is your inheritance, is victimhood and vulnerability and pain and misery snuffed out forever. There is no power OTHER THAN the power of God that you share with him.

The question is whether you are willing to go all the way to accept this power, to take on this role and position of being ruler of the universe, whether you are willing to OWN this power and regain access to USE it consciously. Whether you are ready to let go of all victimhood roles and all sense of not choosing or not being the one who makes things happen. It's putting you in the hot-seat. If you are to reach the resurrection and FINISH the curriculum, you MUST gain the absolute power over death, which gives you the ability to cancel and reverse and prevent it EVEN on a physical level.

"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."

If you believe that sickness happens through some other reason, by some other cause, something in the world or body, something environmental, something someone else does to you, if events happen on their own chaotically or randomly, if death chooses for you when you will die, if sickness happens to the body, if sickness can remain within the body against the mind's choice, and if you believe that you do NOT have the power to do anything about this, that IS an egoic position of victimhood and powerlessness. And we are all-too comfortable playing this role.

It means you are "playing the game of death", as an immortal being, PRETENDING that you do NOT have the power of God, and trying to pull off a stunt of making it look AS IF you are not the one causing everything to occur. When it appears you did not choose something, it is an illusion. You are ALWAYS choosing what you experience, what you feel, what happens with the body, what events transpire. NOTHING happens without your consent. This is because you are an infinitely powerful being with an extremely powerful unlimited mind capable of creating entire worlds.

"There are no accidents in salvation."

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

Owning up to this power - the shared Power of God - which is UNLIMITED, and there is NOTHING that this power (thus your holiness) cannot do .... places you in a position of being co-creator with God. For a creator there is nothing that comes IN to you from the outside, there is ONLY an outflowing from the inside outward. An extension so strong it cannot be stopped. The unlimited will of God.

You cannot have things coming at you, attacking you, changing you, affecting you, choosing for you. YOU are the master. You dominate everything. You are the ultimate cause. YOU are in charge of your destiny. You are NEVER a victim, and NOTHING happens without your choosing it and causing it. OWN THIS, and you will be free from suffering and death forever.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently."

"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."

"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."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"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."

God's laws aren't the same as earthly laws. In God, there is a law that giving and receiving are one. This means that in order to have anything, ie to receive anything, you have to give it. And if don't give it, it obviously shows that you don't have it TO give. So if you don't give it, you cannot have it either. Anything you want to have, you must ensure everyone else has.

"To Have, Give All to All."

This means that God has to give what he has in order to have it. It means he has to SHARE in order to have what he has. It means that love can only be love if it is given and shared, and without this giving it is not really love. Similarly if God were not to give ie create sons, he would not be able to have anything at all and would not exist.

"The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU. You are unaware of YOUR gift BECAUSE you do not give it."

This relates also to how we relate to others, and how we accept atonement. If you want to accept atonement you CANNOT accept it only for yourself. The same dynamic applies. Whatever you want to have, you MUST to give to others. If you want to accept atonement, you have to be willing to GIVE atonement. If you want healing, you have to GIVE healing.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal."

This is why we MUST recognize that atonement is not a STATIC STATE which just sits there and does nothing. God is not a static state that does nothing. Something MUST come OUT of this and be EXPRESSED. If it is not, then you cannot have this state. This is the law of God. If God would not give to ANOTHER, God would be dead.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

The sole responsibility to accept atonement for yourself does NOT entail you simply moving into a state of peace or a state of awareness and acceptance. It's not a closed box or some kind of physical destination which, when you arrive at it, you are no longer anywhere else. It is not something you can put a fence around or separate off from everyone else. Instead it can ONLY be attained by the willingness to GIVE IT TO OTHERS.

Sometimes people, particularly those into the non-duality mindset, will say that all they have to do is accept atonement for themselves, as if this means - GET atonement ONLY for themselves WITHOUT giving anything to others. This is - as usual - only part of the truth. The truth is that you cannot have atonement for yourself UNLESS you literally give atonement to others.

Atonement is not some static state that just sits there, any more than forgiveness is just a static state that sits there observing passively. There is NO passivity in God's kingdom and laws. There is ONLY EXPRESSION, or in other words extension. You MUST be willing to extend and GIVE AWAY what it is that you want to have, otherwise you CANNOT have it.

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

Similarly we all have to learn something that seems very counter-intuitive, and is based on God's law of the golden rule. That is, that since you are one with your brother, you are in him and he is in you. Whatever you do to him you do to yourself. Therefore, if you want to receive, you must give to him.

This leads to the fact that whatever you want FOR YOURSELF, you must GIVE TO HIM. This means you GIVE FIRST (fore-giveness), in order to get what you want. This is the reverse of the ego's selfish law that you must FIRST GET in order to be able to give. God's law is opposite, and your mind is very conditioned to think this way and act this way. Learning to put the needs of another FIRST in order to receive SECOND is an OPPOSITE way for your mind to function, and at first it finds it very hard to go against its conditioning.

Everyone has to learn to function this way in order to operate under no laws but God's. Miracles are EXPRESSED FROM a state of miracle mindedness because a miracle isn't something that just SITS THERE passively doing nothing. A miracle is a window of the extension of God. YOU are a miracle, created to be a co-creator and extender of God. God is a miracle, who shines and gives and shares and create IN ORDER TO BE what he is.

You therefore cannot be a miracle worker performing miracles unless you are willing and active in GIVING MIRACLES TO OTHERS, such that you are EXPRESSING something FROM your miracle-minded state. A miracle is not merely some way to see, or some way to shift perceptions. It is something which also goes beyond itself and extends and is given and shared by all.

"The miracle is an ***expression*** of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

Therefore you cannot just accept atonement for yourself. You cannot just have a miracle just for yourself. You cannot have ANYTHING just for yourself. That is the ego's idea of exclusivity which is separation and is selfish. The ONLY way you can have atonement and peace and love and power and life and God and miracles, is to GIVE THEM AWAY. Which means blessing and healing and loving everyone else as a priority!!!!!

This is also why it is NOT true that you can just transcend sickness and death and observe them passively or try to be at peace with them still existing. And it is also why the sickness in the body CANNOT REMAIN if you are to be in a "state" of forgiveness and acceptance and peace. It is because something HAS TO ALWAYS extend out of those states and be GIVEN. Life has to be GIVEN otherwise it results in death for the one who refuses to give it - because they refuse to have it.

The body is healed because miracles express and extend. The mind has power over the world because power extends. Brothers are resurrected and healed by your mind because your mind JOINS and SHARES. Everything that is of God follows these laws and you must learn to also function according to these laws.

You cannot have anything exclusively just for yourself alone if you want to be free of the ego. And you cannot be passive, inactive, powerless, not causing, not doing, not healing, if you want the gifts of God. Far too many people are taking a somewhat selfish attitude that they can go into a state of peace and acceptance and awakening WITHOUT giving it to others, WITHOUT healing the body, WITHOUT causing the world to change. This is **IMPOSSIBLE**.

"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."

"And being ONE with It, it MUST be given you to give what IT has given, and gives still."

"You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone."

"And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared. It is this attribute which sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth."

"I, too, must give, and so all things are given unto me forever and forever."

"The peace of God can never be contained. Who recognizes it within himself must give it."

"To gain you must GIVE, not bargain."

"Where there is love, your brother MUST give it to you, because of what it IS. But where there is NEED for love, YOU must give it, because of what YOU are."

"And because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him."

"Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing, because having RECEIVED the idea of healing they MUST give it to hold it. The full power of creation (creating) cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas are withholding it from the Kingdom."

"Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will NOT receive it. If you will to have it of me, you MUST give it."

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

"You who share His Life must share it to KNOW it, for sharing IS knowing."

"As a man and as one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which IS the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for ALL. I could not have it myself without knowing that."

"YOU did not make this power any more than I did. It was created to BE shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as BELONGING to anyone AT THE EXPENSE of another."

"Thoughts INCREASE by being given away."

"Therefore, it is strengthened by being given away. It increases in YOU as you give it to your brothers."

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."

"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."

"Today the holy Word of God is kept through your receiving it to give away, so you can teach the world what giving means by listening and learning it of Him."

"Think what this means; he has the gifts of God Himself to give away. His patients are God's saints, who call upon his sanctity to make it theirs. And as he gives it to them, they behold Christ's shining face as it looks back at them."

"And so they gain by every message which they give away."

"The teacher of God does not want anything he cannot give away, because he realizes it would be valueless to him by definition."

"But he does want to keep for himself all things that are of God, and therefore for His Son. These are the things that belong to him. These he can give away in true generosity, protecting them forever for himself."

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession. Here the laws of Heaven and the world agree. But here they also separate. The world believes that to possess a thing it must be kept. Salvation teaches otherwise. To give is how to recognize you have received. It is the proof that what you have is yours."

God's nature is not alluded to by the nature of things in this world. We are incredibly used to this world, conditioned in believing that everything does and must change all the time. Even time and space possess properties of change. Every atom is always moving, every object always transforming, everything always being born and growing and dying. God is not like that.

God doesn't change or transform over time. He doesn't create in order to experience 'new' or previously non-existent parts of Himself. He doesn't have moods. He doesn't change His mind. He doesn't get upset or angry or judgemental. He doesn't experience harm or damage or resentment.

If ever there was an 'identity' which you could truly say is so rock-solid and clear and absolutely free from any deviation or adjustment or change whatsoever, it's the identity of God. What God is. It's permanent.

So God is always there. No matter how many 'times' you go to Him, he is always there, always the same. Like.. the most reliable 'thing' in existence. He's always in the same place, having the same expression of divine love, constantly consistent and extremely joyous. He is absolutely unaffected by anything, anywhere.

This is what immortality is like.

And God created us as Immortal Spirit, so this is really what our own true identity is like, as well. Unchanging, unaffected, unmodified, already perfectly whole and innocent, completely unharmed and having never left God in any way whatsoever.

Really, the difference between God and this world is the difference between the absolute and the relative. God works the same all the time. He is always absolute. Always complete. Everything he does is complete. There are no loose ends, no guesses, no 'maybes', no confusions, no delusions or illusions, no mistakes, no options. Just always the same. Totality.

God's nature is your true nature. You are not this strange formation of ideas and concepts and thoughts and memories and experiences and differences and reactions and mortal specialness. There is nothing exclusively special to God because everything is equally special to God, including you, including your enemies.

God loves your enemies. Yup.

Just the same as God loves you.

A Course in Miracles might seem like a self-study where you do certain prescribed steps and have your own willingness and wake up all by yourself.

But, Holy Spirit has other ideas.

He is not only willing to help you, but is capable of helping you, in ways that are beyond what you can do for yourself. Including supernatural ways, ways of healing your mind, emotions and your body. Things which all by yourself you are not equipped to accomplish or even understand, but which are still possible in spite of your inability to comprehend it.

I think that as you become more willing and open and surrender more ego, instead of it being all bout what your ego does to become spiritual, it becomes more about what you're willing to accept and receive and allow, and this opens the flood gates for Holy Spirit/God to come in and help you.

Your development of trust in God allows you to become willing to operate in God's gifts, to extend those gifts, and to receive them for yourself and others.

Holy Spirit isn't a Holy Bystander, although His perception is uninvolved with the ego. He recognizes our beliefs and illusions and overlooks them and leads us into the light with True Empathy. But this also means, besides Him lifting you up into the light, that He can reach into your illusions and work on them with you. He can heal them, and all forms of separation, including death. Let's also remember that Jesus was raised from the dead BY the Holy Spirit.

Welcome Holy Spirit into you. Invite Him in. Encourage Him to enter by being willing to surrender, relax, let go, and trust to receive His helpful support and healing power.

I was having, or was going to have, a big release as part of a healing that I wanted to "get over with". However, upon being willing to start to release it, Holy Spirit came in and said "you don't have to suffer" and started to heal me, draining and disappearing those feelings as they were coming up.

Often I also now find that if I am upset and need to cry, at the instant that I become willing to cry and let it out, Holy Spirit steps in and suddenly starts to clear it for me. No tears come out, but the issue goes away. Holy Spirit asked, when I was wondering why the heck He kept doing this, "would you rather cry?"

You don't have to do this all yourself, and you don't have to suffer, and you don't have to put up with symptoms, and you don't have to even go through all of your unhealed pain all by yourself. What a relief!

"Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

This is very powerful and important. The consequences of your wrong decision, whatever it may be, is whatever came from your belief in separation. Self attack, denial, emotional pain, physical sickness, disability, mental illness, whatever. Holy Spirit CAN and WILL undo all of those 'symptoms of separation' - the alleged consequences of sin - the "real effects" which your belief in sin produced. IF you will let Him, and to let Him, you have to develop trust in Him and in allowing Him to operate in and through you.

You have help! Use it.

In this world we've all heard the statement "I love you". This is usually from one person to another one person. Also this is not usually true unconditional love, and is most often special love.

This is an exclusive love, which is directed by one separate person to one separate person, maintaining a sense of separation while also claiming to reach the heights of at least "some loving sentiment" toward them. But not too much mind you, lest it challenge the very notion of being separate.

As we open up to the atonement, which is all about sharing, we have to actually learn that we don't do anything alone. We are not alone. The Holy Spirit being with us guarantees we will never be alone, and our acknowledgement of his presence ensures an end to our solitude and loneliness.

Then it becomes not so much about what you are doing alone, but what you and the Holy Spirit are doing together. That he becomes involved in your doings and you become involved in his. "Do his works". And now as you go to express and give and love, you should find that he becomes involved in this as well. And now the two of you are doing it together.

If you take this to its logical extreme, you should have the experience that you and the Holy Spirit are completely one, joined, fully open to each other, willing God's will together, and that together you are expressing the same intention and love. That the two of you are, for example, sending love to a person. The two of you love that person.

This also extends outward to be fully inclusive, in which you should experience that, in truth, you are the whole sonship, including Jesus. And Jesus is also with you and you should be aware of being one with him. And you and the Holy Spirit and Jesus all together should be functioning as one unit, expressing one love.

And then it becomes more obvious that you aren't just a solitary lonesome loser expressing limited exclusive love to one special individual, it's more that you AND the whole Kingdom of God AND God also are expressing love together in a co-creative act of mutual willing and sharing.

The whole kingdom creates as one. The whole sonship gives everything to everyone. And one single person is not even the only target, because the love spills over and resonates and is shared among everyone when you give it to even one person - because they too ARE the whole.

In my healing efforts now to send love to a person, I now find myself including the Holy Spirit, Jesus and God. That all of us together express and extend love. This is in alignment with our co-creative ability and natural function.

For me it brings to light a renewed meaning to when Jesus says repeatedly, "you will see miracles through your hands through mine." Because if we can join with Jesus and be aware of his presence in us, sharing with him, and TOGETHER we can operate and function as one, then BOTH you and Jesus can perform the functioning of miracle working. And thus you will see HIS miracles AND your own working together as one, through your hands.

I fully imagine at this point, that at some future time I will become so much immersed in union with Jesus and Holy Spirit that it will be as though Christ is working through my body and the whole light of heaven is pouring through it along with me at the same time. We don't do this work alone. It's a team effort. The whole Kingdom of God is professing christ, which is the work of the atonement.

ACIM says that "I do do not know what anything including this means". It also says that if you let go of everything you ever learned, then you become open to actually learning. In effect, it boils down to that we need to let go of the accumulation of "answers" that we've taught ourselves, becoming ready and willing to be open to something that we "may not know".

Only by being willing to, in effect, be a "beginner", or a "student", are we really receptive. You'll notice that people who are beginners to ACIM are in fact quite open minded, and that in fact many who have been trying to do the course for decades can become very closed-minded and rigid.

This is because we think that we've found all the answers or learned everything there is to learn. But Jesus is really saying that your mind needs to approach an innocent and "new" kind of state, where you are trusting and open to guidance, where you can be told what to do, where you are willing to serve God's will, and where you are not filled with "plans" and "wishes" and "control" and "being right" and the whole accumulation of ego nonsense. To be as if you are only just starting out, all the time.

This takes for you to let go and purge out of yourself all of the past and all of your false beliefs and all of the trying to do everything on your own. To let go of all the sense of gaining and getting and taking and accumulating. To get past the whole intellectual pursuit of amassing more and more concepts and theories. And just get down to being primitive, in a sense, original and innocent and pure.

That's why it's all about purification. Throw that shit out. We're actually in a process of retracing our steps and going BACK to where we came from. That's why atonement is about UNDOING. It's radical, the teaching, that to gain heaven, you need to let go of everything you think you know and give up everything you ever learned. Only be returning to a fresh clean slate can you be ready to accept what is already true. "In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own."

"You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS. You are afraid of this, because you believe that, WITHOUT THE EGO, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that, without the ego, ALL WOULD BE LOVE."

"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."

"Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so COMPLETELY different from everything you have taught yourselves. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything YOU learned you DO NOT WANT. Ask to BE taught, and do NOT use your experiences to confirm what YOU have learned. When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in ANY way, say to yourself, "I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now." By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you, will speak to you. HE will take His rightful place in your awareness, the instant YOU abandon it, and offer it to Him."

Right now, living in a human body with an ego, your experience is that you are separate from God. As if you are somehow outside of God. As if you are living in exile in some kind of separate world that seems to exist in a dimension where God doesn't exist.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile"

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

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

If you are not experiencing that you are in heaven, and are not with God, at home in reality, and instead find yourself in a body, it means your mind believes in this exile and sees itself as though it is "outside of heaven."

It's not really possible to be outside of God, but in the separation from God we had this idea and belief that we CAN exist without God, outside of heaven. This produced a sense of being in exile, which literally was a belief in existing "outside" of God in some external world, which in turn produced the entirety of spacetime and all its contents. As if a kind of world outside of heaven itself, set apart from it and designed to keep God on the other side of some kind of wall.

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

So now in your experience, there are certain things which belong to God, which are found only within God, and are a part of him, which you must therefore have difficulty accessing.

If God is on the other side of the wall, hidden in what seems to be an entirely different dimension of reality, beyond space and time in heaven, and if you consider yourself to not be squarely rooted and at home in God, then you're going to find it hard to experience the properties of God.

Some things ARE God, thus belonging to God, and there is no substitute for them, no other source, and no way to have them or experience them WITHOUT including God. That includes happiness, joy, love, peace, eternal life, power, certainty, fearlessness, wholeness, reality, identity etc. So if you are seeming to live in some kind of world "outside" of heaven, away from God, you are pretty much cut off from these things.

What that means is, you're going to have to find a way to move closer to God, including God, sharing with God God's nature and properties, if you want to have any of the things that can ONLY truly be found within God. It's like God is this whole other Kingdom that is outside of spacetime that you need to find a way to access, in order to gain access to love and happiness and peace etc. You have to, essentially, go there, if you want to have those things.

"Infinity is meaningless WITHOUT you, and YOU are meaningless without God. There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."

Before you entirely disembark and zap yourself out of spacetime completely, however, you can take steps to move closer to God, and thus to allow God to enter into and share your mind. It's possible to bring a taste of heaven to your earthly experience, such that God can be mostly in your mind, and mostly seen in everything you see.

What happens here is a kind of phasing in and out. The physical world is gradually phasing out, along with its bodies and objects, while the nonmaterial spirit world is gradually phasing into your awareness. The more you attune to God the more you tune out of the physical, including physical sight.

"This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So you start to see more of God, so to speak, and less of the world. The world becomes a thin transparent veil, turning invisible, as God's world become more and more visible. In terms of your perception, it will seem as though you are looking on what lightly remains of your perception of the physical world through more spiritual loving eyes, which of course renders that physicality with greater forgiveness and love.

"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

This is only possible because the physical is phasing out and love is taking over. Eventually the exchange results in the world disappearing from view entirely, replaced by the face of Christ, in which the world is forgotten and the veil that seems to separate you from God's dimension lifts and you find yourself eventually awakened in heaven.

To experience joy and happiness and love and peace, you have no option but to include God more and more in your mind and awareness. There is no way to have light without it, no way to see without him, no way to love without him. Nor will you be loving independently on your own, you can only love by sharing God's love. So as you love, it's not just you loving, it's you plus God loving, you extending his love. You can't even muster a "separate love".

Lesson 127 "There is no love but God's."

"Alone they are nothing. But in their joining is the Power of God."

"You are not frail, with God beside you. But WITHOUT Him, you are nothing." "Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."

To us folk who are not used to miracles, or are not used to the power that we share with God, or the potential freedom of Christ, or the endless possibilities of immortality .... which is most of the planet including me, lol .... we consider miracles to be... "miraculous". Perhaps we are inspired by Jesus's work as documented in the bible and elsewhere. Perhaps we are in awe.

But the thing is, miracles only seem to be miraculous to those who are further removed from miracle-mindedness. And truly, miracles are actually completely NATURAL, and are supposed to be happening all the time. They are in fact supposed to be a normal mode of functioning, in which you have absolute power over all illusions and are subject to no limitations whatsoever, able to bring into manifestation anything you might desire in alignment with God's will.

So it's really a matter of perspective. We are just not 'used' to miracles, so they seem outstanding or awesome or .. miraculous... when in fact they are simply the natural, God-given inheritance that we all deserve and should be functioning in 24/7. Commonplace works of God.

Note that it's important to beware, of thinking that when the Course talks about miracles as. .. not a big fanfare.. it's not because miracles are NOT impressive or important or capable of overcoming all ego limitations, but because they do so ALL THE TIME and we're supposed to be functioning in a constant mode of miracle-working, such that it is second nature at the same time as being 'extra-ordinary'. Another word for this is, super-natural.

Here are some miracle principles from ACIM which back this up:

2. "Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source." - i.e. they don't matter as such because they're not 'special', they supposed to be normal and a given.

3 "Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love." - Notice they occur NATURALLY, which means they are not really unusual and are supposed to be your normal mode of operation.

4. "Miracles are habits and should be involuntary." - Again miracles are something you can do all the time having learned the 'how' and are practically like just habitual, natural activities, rather than something out of the ordinary.

6. "Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong." - Again miracles are completely natural and indeed effortless and easy for those who are miracle minded. It is normal for the miracle-minded to perform miracles constantly. When this is NOT happening, something has gone wrong, and you can see that the profound ABSENCE of miracles in our lives indicates a LOT has gone wrong.

7. "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." - Miracles aren't for the few, or the special, or the one in a million. They're supposed to be commonly available and achievable by ANYONE. Everyone has a right to miracles.

10. "The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose." - I feel the point here is that if you were doing miracles all the time, to bring healing, correction, unlimited supply, abundance, etc... it would be pretty pointless to suggest that they are 'special'. To make miracles special requires that miracles are NOT always happening, such that when they happen it is out of the ordinary and something to shock and awe. When we are truly always miraculous, using miracles in this way actually works AGAINST miracles and suggests they are special and limited when in fact they are completely unlimited in their availability. See also principle 31 "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe."

15. "Each day should be devoted to miracles." Each and every day. Miracles. Every day of the year. Every year. Forever.

21. "Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others." - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness, natural as in, how things are supposed to be, as determined by God's will for us.

So you can see, our natural inheritance is to be capable of performing miracles, every day, anywhere that they are needed or helpful. 'Miraculousness' is a state of being plugged into God's unlimited power source, his unlimited abundance, and able to bring that forth into any form at will, including the complete healing of sickness, reversal of death, manifestation of objects, being able to walk on water (if you so choose, might be fun), etc.

Once we are 'used' to our miraculousness and have accepted our natural state of being, unlimited and immortal, we would not think of miracles as 'miracles', but merely as, completely natural and a no-brainer. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

"Everyone should love everyone."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. 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."

This is a clear message from Jesus. Each one of us needs to get to the point where we love *everyone*, literally. Not a single exception, not a single "type of person", not a single reason why we can't love someone.

Regardless of what political party, regardless of criminal history, regardless of sins committed, regardless of what color or sexual orientation their body is, no matter their personality, no matter how they behave or what their voice sounds like or what foods they like or what team they support.

This is unconditional love. Love without exceptions. Love without special conditions.

If you are a man, a straight man, are you willing to fully love all other men? Including gay men?

If you are in an exclusive marriage, are you willing to love EVERYONE as much as you love your spouse?

Will you love your children as much as your husband?

Can you love all of the neighbors that you disapprove of?

Can you love all celebrities, political leaders, groups, corporations, the military, all war mongers, hitler?

Wherever there are reasons not to, there are reasons not to love yourself. Wherever there is some limit on WHY you cannot love them, there is a limit on why you cannot love yourself. If you cannot be willing to fully express love to every single one of God's children equally and fully, there is a limitation placed on how much love you are willing to receive. Which means you do not love yourself either.

Special relationships are especially prone to exclusion. That one special person, who is better than all others, your favorite, whom you love the most, such that no-one else compares, and everyone else sucks. Can you find the same love everywhere you go, regardless of whether that special person exists?

Can you love another man's wife as much as you love your own?

Can you love another woman's husband?

We're not talking here about having sex with them or getting into an orgy. We're talking about non-physical spirit-based extensions of love through the heart.

There can be no enemies if you want peace. There can be no-one identified as "not worthy of love" if you are to be worthy of love. You can't maintain that someone is wrong or sinful or undeserving. You can't keep separating off one group of people to spiritualize them at the expense of putting another group down.

Jesus loves EVERYONE EQUALLY. Every single person on or off the planet. All the children of God. When there isn't full total willingness to love everyone equally, there is a resistance to loving ANY of them fully. This is why Jesus says if you do not love them ALL fully and equally, you do not really love ANY of them.

If you have a special person or family member that you feel you love a great deal, but you do not love every other person to the same extent, you DO NOT love that special person fully. The love you withhold, the unhealed grievances, the special hate you have for others, must detract from how loving you can be towards a special person. To love that special person fully, you HAVE to love everyone fully. It's the only way that works. In case you didn't notice, you cannot love and hate at the same time.

For those who want to return to Heaven, to God, to unconditional reality without limits, all such grievances must be relinquished. All specialness has to be questioned. All exclusivity has to be transcended. Whether you choose to spend extra time or attention with certain people still, that's up to you. Holy Spirit wants to turn your special relations into holy ones. But to be holy, what applies to that one person must apply to all, including you.

You cannot love others if you do not love ourself. You are also included in this. To have enemies is to be at war with yourself. You cannot get away with it. Maintain enemies and you are not at peace, seeing yourself as under attack. Only when every single person is your friend are you free from this. And to do that you have to be a friend to yourself. You have to be willing to love yourself and receive love from God. When you do, you can then give or extend it. You must be included in this because love is a state of SHARING. It belongs to everyone.

1. Everything other than me is responsible for sin happening. Everyone else is responsible for my condition and happiness. Everyone else is doing everything to me. The world is causing me. I am not responsible for anything (face of innocence, victimhood, death). They need to change, not me. This is "forgiveness to destroy".

2. I am the one who caused sin to happen. I did this to myself. "The Secret of salvation is that you are doing this to yourself". "It can be but myself I crucify." Owning up to what you THINK you did. At first this induces ego guilt because it still regards the sin as real. "I did it" ... "to myself". You have to pass through this stage, you can't bypass it. You do have to recognize you *believe* you did sin, before you can recognize you did not. You HAVE made all sins real, and need to move towards NOT making them real.

3. No one caused any real sin, so no one is responsible for what hasn't occurred. "Forgiveness recognizes what you think your brother did has not occurred." No-one has sinned, including me. There is no sin. What I believed I did, did not happen. It has had no consequences. I am responsible for being innocent. I am responsible for owning up to the Christ self that has not sinned. I am responsible for accepting the atonement. This is true forgiveness. Recognizing there is no sin TO forgive. All is forgiven. "I am still as God created me." "Enlightenment is but a recognition".