(and why this world is NOTHING like God’s creation)

"For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well."

Everything about the ego is based on the idea of not sharing anything. This results in everything being completely separate from everything else. What is in a banana, is not in an apple. What is in my house, is not in your house.

Because this ENTIRE UNIVERSE has been made by the ego thought system, every property of matter follows the same law. The ego’s entire statement is "share nothing". Bodies do not share or join. Atoms do not share or join. One mountain is not another mountain. The Earth is not Mars.

In this ego world, absolutely everything is confined to limited FORM. The form or appearance of the surface of objects, fixated on by the body’s eyes, show you a picture of "nothing being shared". Another word for a world where nothing is shared, is DEATH!! This is a world of death, a dream of death, fundamentally. That is why is it OPPOSITE TO LIFE, and OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY. "There is no life outside of heaven" "Only the creations of light are real."

The form of your TV separates and distinguishes it from the form of your chair. Forms seem to have different properties, qualities, identities. This applies not only on the level of the PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, it also applies in all aspects of EGO THINKING.

The ego literally thinks in terms of not sharing. It fundamentally assumes that one thing is separate from another. That one thing is limited by its form and is not something else. There is no oneness. No sharing. No overlap. No unity.

To the ego, there is "only so much to go around". It evaluates the "amount" of something based on "how much form there is". Or in other words, how limited something is. It does not give ANY value to any idea of sharing. It does not count something twice. It does not measure amounts by anything present in multiple objects simultaneously.

This leads to a way of thinking which is anti-abundant, has built in SCARCITY, is fundamentally a thought system of LACK, and therefore produces competition, war and sacrifice. To the ego, there is simply NOT ENOUGH to go around. Not enough of anything. This is the ego saying, God is not enough, God is not sharing, God is nowhere, and love is limited.

It does not simply make this statement or belief on a mental level. It is DEMONSTRATED on the level of PHYSICAL OBJECTS. This entire universe is an idea of lack, deprivation, limitation, scarcity, loss, with nothing being shared, and God being nowhere.

This is because the ego is very very EXCLUSIVE in its thought processes. It *separates out*. It divides. It sees in one part what is MISSING from other parts. If I own the only 1 pound diamond in the world, you do not. If I own the best property in New York, you do not. If I bought all the apples at the store, there are none left for you. There is NO SHARING in the ego. It has absolutely NO CONCEPT of INCLUSIVITY whatsoever.

This is intentional. Because this is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what God is like. God is not like this AT ALL. This is why "Heaven and earth are opposites IN EVERY WAY". Earth, and this "physical" universe, fundamentally demonstrate the idea of SEPARATION in ALL ITS FORMS. Every form - or object - is the form of ERROR. This world is fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, down to the subatomic quantum particle. This is why GOD DID NOT CREATE THIS WORLD. It is NOTHING LIKE HIM!!

Here is what God IS like.

God thinks ONLY INCLUSIVELY. God thinks only in terms of SHARING. God thinks only in terms of INCREASE, abundance, availability, unity, creation, an NO form of exclusion.

God does not think, hey, all of myself is over here being shared with Paul, therefore, there’s none of myself left to share with that other person. God does not DECREASE by sharing himself. He is not a quantity. He is not limited. He is not finite. "Nothing real can be increased except by sharing".

Because of SHARING, which the ego has completely opposed, it IS POSSIBLE in God’s world (Heaven) for something to be accessed by multiple individuals simultaneously without ANY LACK. This is because there is no POSSESSION or ownership or exclusivity. Everyone SHARES everything.

This means not simply, there is a limited amount of stuff and we all compromise on how much each gets. That is ego. Rather, each time something is shared, IT INCREASES, because it is CREATED, and this ADDS TO what exists. Each time God shares himself in an act of creation, he puts all of himself into the creation, and yet STILL has all of himself left.

Remember, ideas are INCREASED by being shared or given way. Remember also that nothing real can EXIST UNLESS it is shared and extended. It must extend in order to have PRESENCE, and this makes it shine with radiance. In God’s reality, if you give something to another, you do not LACK it. You do not lose it. You are not left wanting. What you give, YOU HAVE, and you give it only because you have it, and you KEEP IT by giving it. "To have all, give all to all". Giving does not REDUCE. Giving INCREASES.

That means, unlike in the EGO WORLD, Heaven is utterly filled with abundance, everything functions based on SHARING, and sharing does not mean lack or loss. This sharing requires the ability for multiple individuals to OVERLAP, to literally SHARE the same space. Another word for this is oneness. Oneness doesn’t mean "one finite thing" - that is the ego’s version of oneness. Oneness means SHARED WITH ALL AND BY ALL. It DEFIES ego logic.

You being a creation of God, one of many, occurred because God shared the WHOLE of Himself in order to create you. And He created you AS A WHOLE. You have been FULLY created. God thus INCREASED His Kingdom by creating you. You have been ADDED to God. This means that God is IN you, fully, and yet it ALSO is fully present in all other souls. God being in you does NOT limit Him or deprive anyone else of Him. For one simple reason, the one idea and NATURE that the ego hates: SHARING.

You SHARE God with all other creations. You all have access to all of Him, at the same time, with no lack and no private hoarding. This gives new meaning to "whats mine is yours". "One mind contains all minds" "One brother is all brothers". God has One Son AND MANY SONS simultaneously - this is the Sonship. It is REAL BECAUSE it is shared. This is impossible in terms of the ego world of matter, but entirely possible in heaven. "It is the world you see that is impossible" refers to the physical universe, which is a picture of impossibility, a picture of death, a picture of NOT EXISTING because there is no sharing, and a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son, IN MATTER.

This can be demonstrated through miracles WITHIN this impossible world. Here, it should NOT be possible to feed 5000 people with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish. This is because there is not enough FINITE AMOUNT to go around. The ego says, by its laws, you can only give 5 loaves to 5 people and you have no more to give. This is embedded into the nature of the PHYSICAL OBJECTS.

If there are only a few loaves of bread and a handful of fishes, and there are 5000 people to feed, the ego says there is not enough to go around. God says, YES THERE IS. And through SHARING, at the supernatural level, those loaves and fishes MULTIPLY. The amount INCREASES. All 5000 people get fully fed. This *demonstrates* that what appeared to be finite lack, was an ILLUSION, was not TRUE, was not God’s law, and it was PROVED to be false through a miracle of demonstration. Jesus fed all the people by demonstrating GODS LAW, God’s truth, that sharing increases abundance, there is NO LACK, giving does not diminish, and supply is unlimited.

This is what it means to perform a MIRACLE in this world. To demonstrate that the ego’s ways, the ego’s laws, the very nature of matter itself, IS FALSE, a lie, can be demonstrated to BE a lie, and that God’s power is UNLIMITED. This shows through proof, that this world is lying to you, because its laws of lack and limitation are NOT TRUE. This is why miracles are teaching devices. Jesus didn’t just feed the 5000, he TAUGHT that THERE IS NO LACK, there IS enough for everyone to have ALL of what is available without loss, and what is given to one person is GIVEN EQUALLY to all from an unlimited source.

God shares all of himself with EVERY PART of his creation. There is no competition, no war, no scarcity, no lack, no deprivation, no loss, no reduction, no inability to have everything, no isolation, no exclusion, and no posession. This is why God’s world - heaven - is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the "physicality" or physical NATURE of this entire universe. God CANNOT have created this world of limitation. Next time you don’t have enough money, remind yourself, THE EGO DID THIS. When you run out of food, the ego did this. When you had to SACRIFICE, the ego did this. There is no sacrifice in God. EVERYONE SHARES EVERYTHING FULLY.

There is an abundance of love to go around. Being loved does not mean others are not loved. Getting God’s attention does not mean others are excluded. Receiving a LOT does not mean the supply is reducing. Having a lot does not mean others are being deprived. God has an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF LOVE. Everytime it is given, it increases. God has FULL LOVE for you, not just scraps of attention or leftovers from what other people have ripped away as their own posession.

Ultimately your SELF is unlimited. You thought you could posess a part of God’s creation and make it your own. You thought you could STOP SHARING and place a limit on your identity. Your individuality is not a problem and is not ego. All of God’s children are permanent and real. The only problem is that you tried to reduce by seeking to be special, to have exclusive interests for yourself. To give yourself more, so that others would have less. This is the opposite of SHARED INTERESTS. Everything in heaven has shared interests.

You being a self is not ego because your self naturally SHARES. You being SELFISH and not wanting to share, is ego. You being an individual is not ego. You believing in sacrifice and lack and deprivation and possessiveness is ego. You being one of God’s Sons is not a problem. You trying to ISOLATE YOURSELF so that SHARING is prevented, and so that there is a LIMITATION on yourself, THAT is the ego. Lack of sharing is imprisonment.

Placing your mind under authority of ego places it under tyrannical rule and leads to imprisonment. It leads to the ego’s thought system of NO SHARING and lack and finite limitations. It leads to BODIES being made to represent the idea that nothin is shared AS physical, limited matter. It makes this universe. It leads to all forms of suffering, lack and sacrifice. And it leads to DEATH. What is starvation but the total lack of sharing or access to what you need? Death is DENIAL OF GOD. Death is DENIAL OF SHARING.

That is not God’s will for you. It is God’s will for you that you HAVE EVERYTHING, and that you share it with ALL OTHERS, AND that you increase it by creating MORE, which ALL SHARE IN. Abundance is your natural inheritance. You will NOT find it in the physical world, which is a world of lack, limits and sacrifice. It is a world of compromise and loss. Although you can DEMONSTRATE it here through supernatural miracles which prove just how UNLIKE God this world is, and that "you are undo no laws but God’s".

Your abundance is waiting for you in Heaven. In God’s world. By Gods laws. God wants to share ALL OF HIMSELF with you, and he already has. That is how you were created and that is what is natural for you. You ARE sharing fully with God, with His One Son, with All His Sons, and with the whole Sonship, FOREVER.

You are loved and provided for by God, UNLIMITEDLY. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do."

The Kingdom of God has the interesting property of having to be shared and extended in order to exist. And the Course teaches that in order to truly 'have' something, you must give it away, because giving it proves that you must have had it and you can only give what you have. It also tells us that in order to experience anything you must SHARE in it because it is available to all and is not for your private possession.

"To have all, give all to all".

This is also reflected in "giving and receiving are one".

What it means is, things of God don't just sit there idle doing nothing. God isn't just "being God" without any increase or creation. If you are not sharing and extending love, love is not being love. This is why definitions of 'oneness' and 'non-duality' fall far short of the creative, extending, loving qualities of God.

We are also told that miracles which come from love will "go out because of what they are", but that "you are needed that they can begin." What that means is, love simply automatically radiates and extends by its own nature, but in order to allow it to extend through you you have to remove your blocks to it first. Then it moves through you without you having to make it do so.

Everything about God's Kingdom shares this nature. Something is not real unless it is shared, open, extending, increasing. This sharing and extending is like a RADIANCE or a radiation, or radiating outward. This produces LIGHT and PRESENCE. In a sense "God said, let there be light", speaks to God's creative ability to shine and create and extend.

Remember that in God's Kingdom everything is increased by being given, and giving something does not mean there is a loss (an ego idea). Instead, giving anything real increases it because giving does the opposite of losing.

Jesus talks about this in terms of everything being an idea. When you share an idea it is increased and it becomes stronger the more people believe in it. It does not diminish and the person having the idea does not lose anything.

The Course also says, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". It is also the nature of love to extend and increase, because it has absolutely no reservations or limits or reasons to withhold itself from "shining" and radiating and going out everywhere.

Jesus talks about this in how the children of God contain the same "inner radiance" as the Father, and this is the source of all extension and creation.

Creation and extension and sharing are the same thing. To share to the ego means both parties have less than the whole. To share in Heaven means that both parties SHARE the WHOLE, and there is no decrease, and in fact there is an increase. The total is greater than the sum of the parts.

This is also true of the Sonship - "the combined total of the Sonship is greater than the sum of its parts". This is because each Son in the Sonship is not just a finite unit. Instead, each son SHARES and extends and increases and amplifies the rest of the Sonship. So it's not just like 500 sons lined up alongside each other, it's more like 500 sons overlapping and increasing with each other, creating a wholeness which is far larger than their individual contributions. This is also part of the holographic nature of creation.

Everything about God, His Kingdom, Creation, Extension, Sharing, Reality, Truth, Love, it all has this property of increase and sharing and going out and radiating and illuminating. And if this radiating and extending were not occurring, none of this stuff would be able to exist.

Love could not be love unless love loved to love and radiated love and extended and increased love's presence. Creation would not be possible at all (since nothing real can increase unless it shares) if it weren't for this sharing, giving, increasing.

There would be no light without the ability for it to shine, which means to "project" or extend outward beyond its source. God would have no Sons or Sonship and Heaven could not exist without it being in a constant state of radiance and increase.

Also therefore you cannot have or enjoy or share in anything real unless you also are willing for it to be given and extended. This is because, if you think about it, in order to receive something of God, you cannot just take it and possess it and diminish God's supply of it. Instead you have to be open to receive, to SHARE it, ie both you and God are experiencing the same thing, which also means this openness makes you willing to GIVE it as much as you receive it - giving and receiving are one, and therefore to experience love requires the willingness to share, receive, and give love, which automatically increases it.

God's act of CREATION, which we also possess since God shared it with us and created us capable of creating like Him, is an act of RETAINING your own light and love and yet 'projecting' it outward so that you shine, and this shining produces an increase, and manifests a "new creation" which itself possesses the ability to create and extend to exactly the same degree as yourself and God, and so now there is the whole of God + the whole of you + the whole of your own creations, and nothing is lost, and so there has only been an INCREASE. This is why Heaven rejoices as each Son of God returns Home to increase its light, and why joy increases, and everything just keeps on "growing" infinitely.

As love is received, shared, and extended, it increases because you are now acting like an amplifier or a relay which boosts the signal as it passes through. By giving it, by sharing it, you can 'have it', but you can't 'have' it by claiming it in isolation for yourself (which is ego). And so anything that is real cannot be possessed it has to be shared, and so anything real automatically has this sharing/increasing quality to its "terms and conditions". To exist (to have), it MUST extend. This is also why God creates and why every child of God is imbued with the same will to create. It is NATURAL to extend and create and to increase the presence of love. Nothing can exist without sharing and extension and equal giving and receiving.

Fear, which is really uncertainty, is the ego's version of certainty.

If you're afraid, you are grossly uncertain. As uncertainty increases, fear increases.

And yet at the same time, as you become more uncertain, you become more certain that things are uncertain. Uncertainty becomes real. And if uncertainty is real, you definitely are justified in being afraid.

So whatever fear you're having, it's because you're uncertain about something and have moved into the ego. The ego is not certain of anything. Uncertainty can't be the truth, which means fear can't be the truth.

Reclaiming a sense of certainty, confidence, clarity, surety, automatically alleviates fear. But you must become confident about what is really true (God's truth) rather than confident about the ego's truth.

When you are afraid, you are confident that you are in danger. Its a strange thing, to be sure that real certainty is threatened, or to be sure that invulnerability is threatened.

Truth is, you can't be sure that uncertainty is the truth. You think you can, and while you're in uncertainty you'll keep looking for a sense of certainty. But you're already certain, just about the wrong thing. It's a bit of a mind-bender, but to get out of fear you need to be less certain that uncertain things are the truth.

What CAN you be truly certain of? This takes some honesty. Are you absolutely SUUUUUURE, like, really really really sure, that outcomes are terrible, or that people are plotting against you, or that you aren't safe? Are you REAEAAAAALLY sure about that?

If you test that, in the extreme, and if you demand total honesty from yourself, you have to admit to yourself - no, you're not sure. There's so much uncertainty that you do not really FEEL sure even if you're certain about being uncertain, lol You tend to feel what the surface appearance tells you, so if you're sure about uncertain things, you'll FEEL uncertain. But if you're sure about certain things, you'll FEEL certain.

The only thing you can be certain of and feel sure of and re-assured by, is God's love and God's truth. Ego's truth will never reassure you. Be more certain that God's truth is true and ego's truth is false. You are not in danger. You are safe in love. You can be sure of that.

Identity is completely tied to how much awareness you have.

Everyone believes that "all of their self" is defined by what they are aware of.

When you look within, whatever you are aware of as being within yourself, you will regard that as all of you. If you do not see yourself causing or choosing things to happen, you will believe you did not do it.

It doesn't matter how much awareness you have, either.

You could have a tiny amount of awareness, a very limited sense of consciousness, and would still regard whatever you are aware of as all of yourself.

But what happens when you take away some blocks to awareness and you become aware of some part of you that you didn't even know was there.

Your sense of self expands.

Who and what you are, is tied to, what you are aware of.

As blocks to awareness are removed, your identity changes. Your sense of who and what you are transitions from an isolated, limited, small little being, to a grand, expansive, unlimited and immortal being of light.

It's kind of like russian dolls. If you were inside the smallest russian doll in the middle of the stack, you would not be aware of much. As each layer is removed from the inside out, your sense of "what is there" or what is present, increases. Eventually all limitations are removed.

Your self does not actually expand, as such. Rather, you are already unlimited and infinite and omnipresent, because you are Created by God to be so.

Rather, you have placed severe limiting devices on your awareness and it has seemed to "narrow down" your sense of what you encompass. This is the idea of "littleness". You have tried to make yourself very small and limited. And you did this by adding blocks to awareness, so that you would not be aware of all that there is to you.

So as you lift away these artificial blocks, you find yourself (literally). You find more of yourself. More of what there is to you. More power, more choice, more freedom, more will, more responsibility, more causality, more love. Your identity increases. "You" seem to expand because your notion of self is having its limits removed.

As limitations are removed, you may even experience this as though your identity is being threatened and that you are dying.

You may have experienced this for example when you make a big life change and move to live in a new location or city. When many things change, aspects of you which had formed your identity, based on limitations, are shaken up in a big way. You can start to feel overwhelmed by all the new stimuli, behaviors and habits and patterns which are no longer supported start to break down, and you can start to experience a quite strong sense that you are falling apart and "dying".

This is really that the old sense of who you were, your limited self, is being broken down and the limitations themselves are being recognized for what they are. Rather than thought of as defining you, you're learning from a larger perspective that these things are not really a part of your identity. And so they seem to have to be let go, which the ego - who wants to cling to these as "identity", experiences as loss or death. I have experienced this a few times when we moved to a new city and I did not know why I felt like everything was falling apart.

Nevertheless, this gives way to an actual increase in identity, a removal of limitations, a freeing-up of borders and boundaries, and a sense of rising up to a higher level. You are becoming more of yourself and are opening up to awareness of discovering things about yourself that you did not even know were there. Choices and powers that you have that were hidden. Things you have the freedom and power to cause which you forgot you even had.

Eventually when you remove all blocks to awareness your unlimited underlying identity will be revealed. There is really no limit to who and what you are, buried beneath these blocks. So when you finally realize that you literally are unlimited, your identity now shifts away from littleness to the most magnificent expansive beingness. Your true identity as God's Son.

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

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

The hierarchy of illusions comes from this.

No two objects sharing anything comes from this.

Finite limits come from this.

Not being able to truly share anything comes from this.

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

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

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

That means you can say something like:

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

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

I am one with God, and so are you.

I have everything, and you also have everything.

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

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

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

Can you accept this truth? Immortality isn't mentioned all that often but it does show up several times and is the truth of who and what you are:

Here are some quotes:

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You made a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is IMMORTAL as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has IMMORTALITY."

"You are God’s Son. In IMMORTALITY you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of IMMORTALITY."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God, and holy as Himself. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, IMMORTAL yet on earth. How great the power that lies in it."

"Salvation is God’s justice. It restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you perceive as broken off and separate. And it is this that overcomes the fear of death. For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is IMMORTAL. It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him."

"Your present trust in Him is the defence which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only IMMORTALITY. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

1) Notice that it says if you project sin and guilt onto anyone, you WILL ALWAYS hurt yourself. 2) Notice that projecting guilt through attack REINFORCES your own belief in YOUR OWN SPLIT MIND. That's a serious problem because it means every time you attack anyone at all, your mind INCREASES its sense of separation and moves further away from God and from love.

3) Notice that the ego's PURPOSE of projecting guilt is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It accomplishes this EVERY single time that you attack someone. Because "the separation" is taking place between you AND your brothers, as well as between you and God.

The whole purpose of attack, is to use some kind of forcefulness to PUSH AWAY. This is literally an attempt to create "a rift" or "a gap" in between you and others. Some kind of footing that isn't equal, in which you are NOT seen as equal to your brother.

On unequal grounds, you can then claim to be superior, and you can also become cut-off from the seeming consequences of your attack. You go into DISSOCIATION. Because separation really IS a matter of becoming dis-associated from the part of yourself that IS your brother.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

You are ONE WITH your brother, meaning literally their own self is part of your own self. You SHARE an identity. When you attack them you are driving a wedge in between you which SPLITS your mind. Your mind encompasses you AND them. If you attack what seems to be "them only", in an attempt to claim that you are NOT THEM, you split that shared mind and separate it into two. One part you think you retain as yourself, and the other as your separate brother, who is now an enemy.

Doing this hurts your mind. Every time. Every time you attack, your mind splits and puts up a huge wall between you and everyone. In fact we can say it puts you into a self-imposed prison. It makes you anchor into your body and anchors him into his.

The stronger your attack, the more you want to be distanced from the person, the more "spacetime" you invent between you. The gap increases, and the trenches of hell widen. You disassociate from them and see them as very strongly "not me". The stronger this sense becomes that they are not your self, the more your mind is believing in the separation from God.

At its worst, your perception will be totally convinced that this other person is evil, an enemy, hated, you want them dead, you want nothing to do with them, you do not want to be associated with them in any way, you see them as nothing like you, you despise everything they do and say and think, you regard them as not even remotely on the same page or like you in any way, and see yourself as completely separate.

The only way you ever could accuse anyone of anything is if you were to believe that they are not yourself. Because otherwise you'd know that, if they ARE YOU, then attacking them directly attacks yourself. You would have a vested interest in ONLY being kind and loving toward them, otherwise you would literally be hurting yourself. But when you lose sight of the fact that you are joined as one, you start believing that you are NOT them, and this completely justifies all attack, because you think now you can attack WITHOUT BEING HURT.

This is a breakdown in cause and effect, symbolizing the separation between father and son. It's like saying, what applies to you does not apply to me - the golden rule is violated. And therefore what I cause towards you, I do not experience the effects of. I escape the effects because I am not included in you. So now I can attack you and get away with it - get away with murder. This is why Jesus says "What is not love is murder." A state in which it seems like one person wins and another loses.

The way out of the separation from God, literally, is also through the undoing of the separation between you and your brothers. If you keep attacking them you are attacking God AND YOURSELF. If you keep accusing anyone of sin, including yourself, you are choosing to be separate. You literally PUT yourself into a hellish nightmare state of misery and depression by expressing a rage of attack, which tries to enforce the idea that you do not share ANYTHING with anyone.

"Atonement is a lesson in sharing" because we have to open up and learn how to share our SELF with others. That means literally, to become one with the identity of another. To join minds. To share souls. To be one. If I am you and you are me then anything that is in my best interests is in your best interests and our interests are now shared. If you are me and I want to remain unharmed, I cannot attack either of us. If I go into attack I am merely sabotaging my own happiness.

No one can be happy who is in separation. Happiness is a unified state which must be shared openly with everyone. It is light because it is not blocked from shining by dark walls of hatred. To rise above the battlefield is actually to cross over the divide between you and others and therefore straddle both sides of the gap. To transcend the gap, go beyond the walls of the body, and unite with your brother, who is your self.

The rejoining of minds, the healing of the separation between brothers, and the undoing of the sense of exclusion, brings about the closing of the gap, the closing of space and time, and undoing of the world, and the disappearing of the universe.

"Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

If there is a pain in my hand, and if I believe there is a pain in my hand, I will begin to experience reactions about the pain.

This is simply because I see there being some kind of causality coming from the pain. I think it has a power over me. I see it as happening to me. I seem to be experiencing it as though it has happened without me asking for it. And so it seems unfair, malicious, unwanted, unwelcome, as though these sentiments are somehow justified expressions of me being holier or more innocent than this.

And if this pain in the hand continues or increases, then I will likely increase in my perception of victim hood, and simply by the reversal of cause and effect, seeing cause as outside of myself, I am actively creating responsive conditions inside of myself which show up as reactions, having threatened my own self with my own mistaken perception of this pain.

I myself am creating my own reactions, including fear which begins to mount in response, as though the pain is causing me to be afraid - what does it mean, what is it leading to, why is it happening, but simply also the sheer apparent fact (albeit unreal) that it is even happening at all, is enough to provide an upset.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there." - ACIM

And so as my fearful reaction increases, so too does my conviction that this is a more serious problem than before, that it calls for magical curative measures which will attack it and manipulate it and try to make it go away. And the more strongly I feel passionate about the need to be rid of it, the more I will actually add empowerment to it, seeing it as being so strong and mighty as to deserve serious counter-measures.

These perceptions of the need for a counter measure, a retaliation, a reaction of any justified kind, a fear, or any sense of taking this seriously or treating it as real, simply shows the extent of my mistakedness and the fact that what I am ACTUALLY doing is CREATING THIS. I create it with my fear of it, I create it with my rejection of it, I create it with my desire to be rid of it, and I create it with my attempt to fix it.

And the more real of a problem it seems to become, the more certain I will be that I really need to get something done about this because it's very very serious indeed. And yet in perceiving it, describing it, envisioning it, interacting with it and making it be serious as such - believing in its appearance - I am merely choosing to manifest it, to give energy to it, to feed it.

The reason that we do this is because when we are using the mind incorrectly and are entering into illusions, false perceptions and errors, we start to experience the opposite of what we attempt to achieve. We think that we do not want pain in the hand, but this means that we will put it there. We think the pain in the hand should not be happening, and such intensify its happening. We think that it is making us very afraid, and as such we literally are causing it to become more monstrous.

We do not realize that as soon as we have stepped away from real truth and have entered into mistaken truth, we've lost our mind and our way, have become deceived, and are now operating our mental powers 'inversed' or back to front.

The ego is an entire thought system based on this back-to-front inversion of truth, and when we are in this mind, we quite literally ask for what we do not want, attract what we are trying to get away from, try to fix what is not even a problem, and generally compound the very issues that we suffer from, not realizing all along that we are inadvertently causing ourselves to prolong the suffering, simply because we're applying ourselves through an inverting filter, a reality flip, which gives us back the exact opposite of what we think we are asking for. And this is simply because once in the ego perception, we are in opposition to the real truth, and therefore are bringing about opposite effects.

Indeed the incorrect form of forgiveness correlates to the ego activities and behaviors of believing that you are sincerely attempting to rid the world of that which is wrong with it, by taking a purer or more innocent standpoint, all the while actually reinforcing, manifesting, increasing and generally adding to the conditions of sinfulness. Such forgiveness then becomes an attack rather than a correction of error, a judgement instead of a miracle.

True forgiveness therefore must entail the cessation of all of the above egoic behaviors, reactions, self-caused chaos, and general inversion of truth and opposition to it. All of these symptoms are expressing merely because you are using the mind backwards, expressing opposition and resistance instead of unity, order and health.

True forgiveness entails the complete UN-doing of all of these egoic thought patterns, attitudes that reinforce the reality of the monster, reactions to it founded in fear which really are created by your own self as part of your psychological reversal and belief in threat, and the cessation of "making real" this problem. To lend reality to it, to believe in it, dwell upon it, give it credit, think of it seriously, forget to laugh at it, mistake it for real danger (which does not exist), and to generally actually side with it while claiming and portraying yourself as doing the exact opposite, is simply to keep the problem and make it worse.

We need to learn to forget this world. As Jesus says, forget this world and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. To forget is to literally pay no further attention, knowing that the thing was unreal, and requires no upkeep to defend against it.

We need to learn to stop learning the wrong things. We keep teaching ourselves with the ego, we keep learning that sickness is real, that sin is irreversible, and that death is inevitable. This must all be corrected and undone and vanquished from the mind, replaced with the Holy Light of the Truth, which comes to set you free.

The truth does set you free, literally, actually, and in reality. Because the Truth is God and only Love is Real.

With A Course in Miracles, for most of us the journey starts in darkness. The lessons are designed to gradually lift us up out of the darkness into the light. As we read the text and learn of its instructions, we gradually piece together a clearer picture of what is true and real. Our learning begins to generalize. Things which made no sense before become internally supported and consistent.

Over time you move from the state of an intense focus on the form of the words, the surface layer, to the much deeper messages. You start to see the correlations between passages spread across different chapters. Gradually you get in behind the words and the clear-cut metaphysical basis for the course's expression comes into focus.

At that point you'll start finding yourself becoming more of a authority and more able to base things you express on the truth. As your intimacy with the truth increases you begin to come from it, built upon it, and start to act from the top down. That means you're beginning to shine your light and remember who you are, expressing from the inner awareness of love and from the higher plane of sanity.

Particularly if you look into the metaphysics of God's Kingdom you'll find there not only clarification about the end goal, but also clarification about where it all started. And as you understand better the mechanics of heaven you can really start to grasp the underlying basis for the entire systems of thought - both that of God and that of the ego. Seeing where it all originated and how it progressed and how it is then reversed gives you great perspective.

You're then able to let go of the "bottom up" approach and begin to fulfill your function more from the top down, acting on a basis of guidance and trust, remaining in the light, holding true to what's real, overlooking the lower rungs of the ladder through forgiveness. The mind and perception are stabilized and the root of your being begins to reveal itself.

You can now utilize this intimate knowledge of the underlying immortal Kingdom as a foundation on which ti build. On which to extrapolate. On which to base your expressions. And then once it has all become so much simpler and refined you are able to express in countless ways and words all of this stuff that emanates out from a forgiven mind, from a state of simpler love and wholeness and clarity.

What that essentially means is you have become the truth, aligned yourself with it, are expressing from it. Both through a metaphysical logical basis and through the extension of love and miracles. A mind that has aligned itself with its Creator now possesses the power of authorship, and that means you now speak for God just as the Holy Spirit does. This is where you have become a teacher of God, able now to be a representative of His Word and the light of the world. Heaven's emissary. An ambassador for eternal life. A messenger of peace. And a holy influence.

It may be the most counter-intuitive, impossible thing you can imagine, but if you are feeling like shit, the best thing you can do is to send love to someone.

That sounds like a tall order, in fact maybe seemingly the hardest thing you could do at the time. Because it you feel shit then you really don't want to love, don't have love, don't seem to be able to give anything, and are in no position to help anyone. You feel separate and cut off and probably angry at someone.

But that's just the thing. It's the lack of love in you that is really the problem, and when you SEND it to someone, you RECEIVE it. Giving and receiving are one.

As you effort to transmit love, even if it takes a while to rev up the engines, even if you don't feel loving at all to begin with, it lifts YOU up. You become healed along with them, it brightens you, it opens you and heals you.

The thing is, even if it seems like you have no love to give, if you TRY anyway, you'll find that you in fact have the ability to "get the flow moving". If you PUSH, express, send, flow, love like an energy, it actually gets the juices flowing.

You're able to move yourself from unlove to love, even if love seems absent, and even if it seems like you have no love to give.

The key that unlocks the infinite reservoir of love, even from "standing still" and being very unloving, is your little willingness. Your will has the power to direct the flow. Your will has the power to express and to cause the love to express.

So even if you are stuck, even if you feel very upset, you have the freedom of will that allows you to unstick yourself.

If at first you can't possibly feel any love, you just start to say some loving things. Even if you don't feel them. Express how thankful you are to God for creating someone's perfection and describe their perfect nature. Put into words what is true of them and you. It will lift you up.

Before long, you'll get the stuck-ness moving, and you'll start to tune into the love, and you'll start to feel it in your heart. Especially as you open up to sending/relaying God's love as an extender of love.

Love heals you when you share it. You are included in the healing. So you are giving it to yourself. That may sound weird that you can transmit love to yourself, but you can, provided it includes another.

Ideas are increased by being given away. To have love, give love. Giving it, you must have it, and so it increases in you and the other. You have the ability to express love at any time, and it has the power to melt all walls and blockages.

We're all holding hands. You either lift others up or you drag them down. And always you are included in which direction you aim. Be the light of the world.

"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

Intellect here is being basically equate with the ego thought system. Intellect is a device that separates and analyzes. It looks at things and separates them off and compares them. It judges them and evaluates them. This splitting apart is an emphasis on separation and increases the send of fragmentation of things. Things can become extremely complicated in the intellect.

As such, since the physical world is made from the idea of separation and the intellect similarly fosters perceptions of separation, the intellect can be said to be responsible for making the world. ie the ego mind of separation reinforces ideas of differences and contrasts and directly leads to physical matter showing up.

Jesus congrats this against real thinking, ie the thoughts you think with God, thoughts of love and creation, which are extensions of God's mind. Those create wholeness and spirit and eternal life because they are not based on separation. It's a way of thinking that doesn't dissect or analyse or judge or evaluate. It's a thought process that looks out from a loving whole state of mind and creates more of the same - the good, the beautiful and the holy. This extends the Kingdom of God (heaven).

"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."

You might notice also that when you move away from love and the present moment, the mind creates a sense of separateness from "what is" and moves into a kind of more fictional, theoretical, conceptualizing state. This produce a sort of "shift upwards" in the mind, or what we might call moving thought up into the intellect. In the intellect everything becomes theoretical and non-practical, or is a lack of application because it's a lack of real engagement and sharing. It could be thought of as a way of shutting down and separating off by trying to hide from immediate reality, going into fantasies and sidetracks.

"Intellect may be a "displacement upward"

The intellect can be somewhat useful perhaps for assessing things in this world and sorting out what to do and so on, but only as a temporary tool. It's easy to become lost in it and to be so involved in intellectualizing that your whole experiences becomes one big theory and not a whole lot of relationship. Then you can be sort of living in a cloud of "course thought" masquerading as "doing the course" but only really being good at talking bout it, around it, and indirectly referring to it. The truth has to be lived, and that means eventually the intellect will be transcended and used no more.

THIS IS HUUUUUGELY IMPORTANT!!!!

"To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"To have all, give all to all."

"Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

This is a MASSIVE and far-reaching truth, which is very simple but very profound. It is literally the means by which you can be healed and perform healing. It is the rule for how you are able to receive love.

The ego's laws are opposite to God's laws. It's idea of giving is loss. Here's how the ego thinks...

You are empty because you have nothing. You cannot give anything because you are lacking. If you were to give, you would lose even more of what you have. Since you have nothing, you cannot give anything. Giving anything means losing it. Giving fully means having nothing left. Giving is sacrifice and to be avoided otherwise you will deplete yourself. To give is to lose everything and to die. If you give all of yourself you will cease to exist. Therefore, keep everything for yourself and do not share it.

This is completely opposite to God's thought system, which goes like this...

You can only give what you have. When you give, it proves that you must have it. Anything worth having is shared by everyone. To prove you have something you have to give it. Giving it means you have it to give, which means you still have it after giving it. Giving it away gives it to another, while you retain it also, meaning you both now share it, and it has increased. Giving everything you lose nothing. Giving does not deplete you, it supplies you because it increases your supply. Giving away what you value makes it stronger in you and allows you to keep it. Giving brings you to life and resurrects others. Give all of yourself and you will gain eternal life.

God's system works this way because, strange as this may seem, in reality nothing is just "static". Love isn't just something that sits there glowing. Love has to be extended, it has to be given, it has to shine. Love is a kind of transfer and SHARING process. It cannot be for you alone and it must radiate and go OUT. If it does not go out, it is not SHINING, and without shining it is not extending, and without extending it becomes dull, inert, lifeless, darkened and depleted. Love by its very nature IS GIVING, otherwise it is not love.

Love to be what it IS must be shared and given. This is why God Himself HAS TO CREATE through sharing, so that He can maintain HIS radiance and continue being loving. He can't just sit there fiddling with his belly button. He has to extend and radiate in order TO SHINE, in order to give, in order to HAVE. If God were to stop giving he would cease to exist. Extension and creation are the natural function of all things real. They MUST be given and go out and increase. Otherwise they have no life and they cease to exist.

This is contrary to what we are used to in this world. We think that objects are concrete solid things which we transfer and lose, that giving them away we lose them and cannot keep them or share them. This is a highly unnatural state of affairs because all of spacetime was designed to function OPPOSITE to how God's world functions. We are used to the idea that everything in this world exists "in and of itself", separate from other things, and can exist independently WITHOUT sharing. In fact the ego asserts that the only way for you to have anything is to NOT share it. To grab it for yourself before anyone gets it, which is selfish.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness." (not sharing anything).

But the trick is, and this is a HUGE thing, anything REAL is totally opposite to that. You cannot HAVE anything real WITHOUT sharing it. Whether it be atonement, love, peace, happiness, life, joy, creation, power, unity, relationship, holiness, forgiveness, healing, ... whatever the attribute of truth and life, anything of God HAS TO BE GIVEN AWAY in order TO HAVE IT. And giving it away INCREASES it, and causes you to not only have it but to also have MORE of it.

It's kind of like, everything that's real is like a FLOW. You have to switch the tap on. If the tap is closed there is NO water. When the tap is open, the water flows out and it is now being both given out of one end and received in the other end. As giving happens, receiving happens. As you give anything REAL away, you GAIN it. As you share an idea, it is strengthened and increased. As you LOVE, you FEEL MORE LOVED. As you PROVIDE what others lack, you GAIN. This is God's law. This is how it works.

"By denying his mind any destructive (selfish) potential, and reinstating its purely constructive (sharing) powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

All things that are real are devoid of SELFISHNESS. All things that are real MUST BE SHARED. They cannot be ONLY for you. You cannot possess reality or love or happiness. If you WANT any of the divine properties or virtues, you HAVE TO be willing to SHARE them. You share them by EXTENDING them.

Even mind, the minds that God created, have only a single function. Their only function is EXTENSION. Mind HAS to extend. Mind does not just sit there in a box being a static observer. Mind must FLOW the spirit.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

The mind and the spirit's natural condition is one of GIVING AWAY EVERYTHING. In fact God, in His creation of you, gave you EVERYTHING that He had. The ego would claim that if God were to give you everything of Himself, there would be NOTHING LEFT! In fact, for God to FULLY create you, He SHOULD Have ceased to exist afterwards. But this is ridiculous. God did not DIMINISH by creating you, God INCREASED CREATION by ADDING YOU to Himself. And He did this by SHARING Himself.

"Nothing real can be increased except by SHARING."

Sharing is giving. Sharing is NATURAL. Sharing is the law of God and of everything real. Sharing does not JUST mean "I have it and so do you". It means GIVING. You supply what you want to have. You give what you want to get. You have to give in order to HAVE. This is a fundamental law. If you do not give what you want to have, you will LOSE IT. If you do not GIVE LOVE, GIVE LIFE, GIVE HAPPINESS, GIVE PEACE, you will LOSE IT!!

You are a LIGHT. Light must shine in order to BE light. It has to radiate and go out. It has to be given. If you do not SHINE, by GIVING your light to others, offering yourself, shining into their minds to join with them, to give illumination TO them, YOU will fail to shine. And in your failing to shine you will HAVE NO LIGHT. And if you have no light to give, it is BECAUSE you are not shining it.

The ego lays a trap for you. It suggests that if you are feeling alone, unhappy, unloving, darkened, weakened, lacking, needy, afraid, etc... there is no way to solve it. It insists that because you are "this way", you HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE. And therefore CANNOT shine. And therefore ARE NOT LIGHT. If you believe this, you are stuck. If you believe how things APPEAR when you "seem to be lacking", you will believe you CANNOT LOVE, because you NEED love and DO NOT HAVE IT. This is a lie.

What the ego does not know is that you have free will. And your will is capable of ASSERTING itself at any time, freely. And that means you can CHANGE your mind. And it also means therefore, that even if you SEEM to be lacking love, or lacking supply of anything real, and have nothing, and are empty, you CAN GET THE MOTORS RUNNING, you can KICKSTART it, you can GET THE JUICES FLOWING, by WILLING to do so. And you will to do so by having a little willingness TO love, TO extend, TO give.

When you do this, it applies the power and force of your mind to SHIFT the stickiness, the blocks, the lack, the appearance of nothingness, and starts to MOVE the "energy". You start to FORCE yourself to shine, in a sense. And thus you start to emit light and love. And as you do so, your supply increases FROM God. Because by giving anything OF God, it is increased and is strengthened in you. So if you assert yourself, by GIVING LOVE AND LIGHT to another, you will find that YOUR mood uplifts and YOU feel happier and YOU get healed.

"When I heal I am not healed alone."

"Miracles (supplying lack) benefit both the GIVER and the receiver."

See, your natural function is either creation or healing. In heaven you create by being an EXTENDER and GIVER of God. You GIVE what God has Given YOU, in order to INCREASE it and retain and share it. Similarly on earth your function is healing, whereby you are supposed to be HEALING all the time. And that means that as you GO TO HEAL, as you GIVE healing, offer love, send light, etc, YOU get healed as well. You receive what you give.

It's kind of like putting the cart before the horse, to the ego, because you have to GIVE FIRST, in order to receive. As you give, you receive. Opening up the flow, opens the flood gates and in comes the supply from Heaven. This is the ONLY way it can work. The ego says this is backwards and its impossible to give what you do not have. That's a lie. You only seem not to have it BECAUSE you are not giving it, and as soon as you give it, you become AWARE that you have it.

Everything real is GIVEN, SHARED and TRANSFERRED. You can only HAVE anything worth having BY giving it. If you want to be happy you have to give it. If you want to feel loved you have to love others. It is in LOVING THEM, that you SHARE the love, and thus FEEL the love. Love comes IN to fill the 'vacuum' of suction caused by your outflowing of love. Love is PULLED through you from Heaven, AS you give Heaven to another. God shines in you, as you GIVE GOD. This is the ONLY WAY IT CAN WORK.

It is not possible to be happy without giving happiness. It is not possible to feel God's love without giving it. It is not possible to be joyful without GIVING. It is not possible to HAVE anything real without giving it away. Sharing is the fundamental law. Even atonement has to be SHARED and GIVEN. Even your HEALTH has to be GIVEN in order to be received. Mind has to extend and not be arrested in its extension otherwise it will LACK health. Any form of lack is evidence of not giving and not extending.

We are not blobs that sit in isolation and possess things and surround ourselves with our hoard of treasure. To do this is to HAVE NOTHING. You can gain the whole world and lose your soul this way.

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?""

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

Selfishness is ego. Selfishness is holding on tightly to what you try to keep, causing it to slip through your fingers. Whatever you try to posses will leave you. Whatever you give you will retain. This is the law. There is no exception. If you want love you must give love. If you want happiness you must make happy. If you want health and healing you MUST BE A HEALER.

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal."

This is the secret to happiness. Share it. Give it. Supply it. Flow it. Emit it. Radiate it. Transfer it. Send it. Communicate it. Teach it. Extend it. And then it will be yours. Everything you give you receive. If you do not give it, you will not receive it. To give is to live.

This is tied to the GOLDEN RULE. How you DO GIVE to others, YOU DO receive. What you give them, you receive. What you give them, you have. What you make true of them is true of you. If you give hate you receive hate. If you fail to give you fail to receive. Give love to have love. Love doesn't hide in a cave. Giving and receiving are one!

"For giving and receiving ARE the same. "

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

Forget the world for a moment, and think only of heaven existing. You are in heaven with God.

Then we had this separation event where we dreamed of spacetime and made up a physical universe. This world was like a small area of heaven which we fenced off with police tape and tried to keep God out of it.

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

We blocked off heaven's light from shining upon it, we tried to insist that God was not inside the walls, we insisted on it being a barren empty desert, and used whatever means we could to make its seem like an area of darkness and death.

This little area of attempted lifelessness houses Earth and bodies and physical objects etc. But more to the point it's an area where mind rejects love and tries to keep God out.

To overcome this, what needs to happen basically is the walls have to come down, the flood waters of love have to be allowed to come rushing in, the light of heaven has to be allowed to shine on the barren wasteland, God has to be allowed to infuse and be present in the place where the illusion of a world was, and the entire area has to be resurrected into a state of heaven.

This means that while you are seeming to be a prisoner inside the walls, occupying the desert, you have to find ways to let heaven flood the prison. To let the light in, to have God be acknowledged in your mind, to grant access to heaven to occupy the seeming space where the world was.

And heaven will enter and shine upon the desert and seem to give it life, seen in a new light, forgiven and blessed. We uncover the light of God so that the light can shine upon the world, that we may be the light of the world, in order ultimately to shine the world away. To erase the walls, melt the prison cells, undo the separations, and cancel out the idea of a place where God can enter not.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

Along the way, this means we are in a sense bringing heaven to Earth, but more accurately we're allowing heaven to occupy the space that Earth was made to block. To let the light of Christ shine through the body. To bring as much of heaven to Earth as possible such that you may reflect heaven here and see through a more heavenly vision. To be a kind of walking emissary of God - a Teacher of God, a healer.

As this inner awareness of heaven increases, the outward projection of it increases also. God begins to be seen as though "in" all things because God is in your mind. This means God is becoming visible, and the world is becoming invisible.

The solidity of the physical is diffusing and fading into the light of reality, because light shines away darkness. And what once seemed solid turns transparent and eventually to nothing. At first seen with the love and light that we bring into this "space", and then replaced by that love and light.

Our goal is ultimately to return entirely to heaven, in which the world is no more. But to get there, we have to first uncover the light within, and secondly allow this light to shine without. We first go to God to let the light shine, and then we bring the light of God into the world to shine the world away. It's not about escaping the world, it's about replacing it with God.

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them."

"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."

"From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."

"And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God, to shine away the past and so make room for His Eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."

"Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

"Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone."

"In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone who would REMAIN in darkness."

"The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built, to come in and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way, and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them, where once a desert was. And every one you welcome will bring love with him, from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone."

"As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely, what has already BEEN prepared for loveliness."

"In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

In God, who is cause, He created Christ, who is Effect. Or "Father" created "Son".

At the "separation", the Son attempted to separate from the Father, thereby introducing a separation between Cause and Effect.

Cause and Effect in Heaven are ONE, unified and completely immediately intertwined. But after separation, a "distance" or "gap" arose (illusion of course) between them, suggesting that Cause had been robbed of its ability to produce effects, and that the effects had not been caused by God.

Essentially this means two things. It means God seemed then to not create the Son, making an illusion that God’s will has been stopped (ie the Son has power over God). And then additionally, that the Son has no Father and therefore has to INVENT a false God as a substitute.

What also then happens is, now that there’s a gap between cause and effect, it *seems* as though somehow the "effects" coming from a cause are separated off from the cause. Instead of them being One, they are cut off from each other.

This sets up the entire ego thought system which believes and perceives that you can cause something WITHOUT experiencing the effects. And this further leads to the belief that an external cause (aka God, turned into an evil God) can do things to make you an effect against your will.

The more that your belief in separation between cause and effect increases, the more you become an unconscious victim, aka dead. It heightens your false perception that "causes outside of you" are producing effects inside of you. This makes you suffer and makes you a victim in every way.

If you are "heavily steeped in ego", strongly projecting sin (cause), and are believing that stuff applies to others that does not apply to you or vice versa, or that you can cause effects in others without those effects being in you and vice versa, then you have belief that Cause (Father) is separate from Effect (Son). To the degree that you believe this, you will experience an intensified sense of *separation*, denial, disassociation, war, and unconsciousness.

As we apply forgiveness, we undo the belief in separation by recognizing that what we thought applied "separately" to others but not to ourselves, is actually our attitude about ourselves. What we thought was their own separate sin, is actually our own sin. What we thought happened against our will, must have been caused by ourselves. It also means learning that you cannot be affected by anyone or anything other than yourself, or against your will, in any way!

When finally cause and effect are reunited, Father and Son are reunited, mind becomes ONE and whole, what applies within applies without, what applies to you applies to the entire Sonship, your innocence is everyone’s innocence, you will see your Self in everyone, and you will know sanity again. It is the end of war. It is peace, and the final release from all forms of self-attack which were masquerading as attack by separate causes. It is the end of death.

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

"Their Father gave the SAME inheritance to both. Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."

Here's the facts.

God already gave you everything. He shared all of creation with you. You share with every brother. Everyone shares the total abundance of Heaven together. It is yours permanently because that is God's will.

You cannot make it go away. You cannot defile it or break it or diminish it. Nothing you do can make you unworthy of it. It is already yours because it IS YOU. It's built into what you are. You are an aspect of Heaven itself. You are the gift of God.

The only other option you have is to GO INTO DENIAL and pretend that you do not HAVE the inheritance that God has provided. This denial does not actually undo the inheritance, nor does it destroy it or make it undone. All it does is COVER IT UP with blocks to awareness.

Since you cannot change God's will, all you can do is block awareness that it is permanently true. You do this through denial which makes you unconscious. You attempt to shut out of awareness the unavoidable reality of your inheritance, believing that if you just hide your head in the sand like an ostrich you won't be "aware" that the truth is still true, and therefore "that means it's not there." This is self-deception at its finest.

All that is required therefore is the removal of the blocks to the awareness of love's presence. The love is still there. The inheritance is still there, and God kept it for you permanently. You don't get to cancel it, but you can hide from it. All you need to do therefore is remove the blocks to awareness, which is nothing more than DENIAL and a LACK OF ACCEPTANCE, which lifts away these barriers in your mind and increases what you are AWARE OF.

And in so doing you reveal to yourself what is ALREADY THERE and what is ALREADY YOURS. This is how you ALLOW yourself to reclaim your natural inheritance from God, which is always yours forever.

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.

When minds are separated, there is a gap between you and others. You become isolated. This prevents your mind from extending to and joining with other minds. It prevents you from recognizing your oneness with your brother, and so disrupts the holy relationship, induces separation, fosters specialness, and in turn increases body identification. You become anchored to the body and this increased fixation on the body causes it to become sick. It is under attack by beliefs in not sharing, selfishness and defensiveness.

"Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness"

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth"

"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the fear of awakening."

Sickness arises, physically, as a result of the "fear of awakening" to the joined nature you share with your brother. It defends against the truth that you and your brother are one.

Therefore, by resuming extension of the mind through the body, to connect with and join to the minds of your brothers, recognizing your oneness with them, your sense of self expands back out past the body to be inclusive of others, the gap between you closes, the separation is erased, there is nothing to split your mind away from your brother's mind, and thus unity results. This unity erases all forms of separation and sickness. The gap, the "wound", is closed up.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"Miracles unite you with your brother."

The inevitable result of this is that the body is no longer the focus of identity, the mind is not contracting itself into the body, the body is not being attacked by the idea of isolation and separation, love is flowing through it again rather than visions of hell, and in turn the BODY is now healed as an effect of the joining of minds.

"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision responsible for the condition of the body."

"The mind being sane heals the body."

All physical sickness results from and symbolizes the psychological sickness of contraction (fear) away from your brothers and the attempted severing of oneness with them. The restoration of that oneness is miraculous and forces the body to symbolize wholeness, healing, health, innocence, harmlessness, unity and freedom from attack. The body is induced into health as a natural byproduct of healed minds joining as one.

The body is a part of the equation. The body has not STATE of its own, it is ONLY a symbol, and not an end in itself, and it can only symbolize what the mind wants it to represent. It can either represent attack (sickness) as a result of separation of minds, or it can represent eternal life (wholeness, health) as a result of joined minds. Its condition is entirely an effect of the mind.

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

Where the mind is separating from others, it WILL induce physical sickness as a result of the fear of awakening to oneness, and as a defense against the truth of that oneness. When the mind is joining with others in love it WILL induce physical healing as a result of the overcoming of the fear of awakening and the disregarding of a NEED for a defense against the truth of your oneness with your brother.

Holy relationships heal the mind AND the body.

Special relationships cause sickness and death.

Fear is really resistance to what is. It's an attack on what is. It's a desire to make what is go away. It's the feeling you have when you a refusing to receive something. Per the golden rule, giving and receiving are one. If you refuse to receive, you also refuse to give.

Not giving is hateful and separating and selfish. Fear becomes a repression of self and others, a murderous attempt to destroy. Fear is a desire to separate and hold back and hold extension within and not extend God. It's what it feels like to want to not give anything, in order to try to not get anything, and it results in a sense of emptiness and lack and weakness and frailty, of vulnerability and limitation and eventually paralysis. As if you have nothing left to stand up to anything with and are overpowered (by your projected power).

Fear is the opposite of love because it is what you get when you try to deny the golden rule. If you are not willing to give, you will get a lack of love back, and it will appear as danger and threat and something you do not want. By giving "I don't want to", you receive things that you do not want, and they seem to loom over you as something you don't want. And the more you don't want them the worse it gets.

Fear is the ego's problem solving solution, the way by which it says you are "protected" from what you're getting. But really it's an attempt to be protected from receiving God. Fear is a defence against God and against love. It is an attack on love and is vicious and victimising, which is why it also appears like a victim role. Giving and receiving are one. If you give victimisation you get victimisation. Ego is really a fearful idea and is very afraid.

The antidote to fear is always through trust development and giving love. Love has to be extended in order to be received. Its safety comes to you as you give it away. In the extension of love there is no fear because you are only giving love and so are only receiving love. It is the way out of hell.

Resisting what-is represses your being and your presence. Resistance is fear and what you resist persists, because what you give you receive. When you stop resisting what happens you are saying "yes" to it rather than "no". This yes embraces it with full attention and presence, which actually counter-intuitively makes you feel stronger and more safe. It's how you shine your light, and that light dispels darkness, makes fear go away, and heals.

Strangely enough, what you are afraid of you are not really letting happen. It's the resistance to it that makes it difficult to deal with. And it would seem insane to fully embrace it, because the ego would suggest if you do that you will get more of it and will be consumed by it - why would anyone in their right mind want to go towards the thing they are fearing?

But when you confront it head-on without resisting it and just sit with it and watch it, radiating your fuller presence toward it, it becomes transmuted into love. Because then you are giving love and seeing from love. The thing you are confronting then starts to disappear and is shone away, healed away, by the presence of your mind and the extension of power. Dropping resistance increases exposure and darkness cannot remain in the light.

In ACIM circles a lot of said with regards to "the separation", and usually always in terms of the separation from God. Some kind of giant distancing which occurred a long time ago and is so vague and nebulous that no-one is aware of it.

What is less obvious though is that the separation also took place between members of the sonship. Individual brothers experienced separation between them, which became a kind of competition and war.

This separation now in fact plays out in ALL relationships on earth. Every way that you are considered separated off from others, are not them, are not joined with them, do not share with them, IS the separation playing out.

Jesus also remarks how when the ego uses projection to try to project blame/sin, it is trying to perpetuate the separation. This is because anything that increases the rift between you and your brothers IS increasing the separation.

It might not have seemed so obvious but the separation from God IS playing out between you and other people right now. It's not distant and vague or happening in the distant past. It's right in front of your nose right now.

The way that you consider yourself to be identified with your body, is one way that you separate off from others. The body is used as a kind of anchor to keep you away from other people. Only when it is used to allow you BYPASS the body and join with the minds of others, is it being used for a holy purpose.

So yes there was separation (belief in) between you and God, but this also affected all your relationships, including those with your brothers, AND also with your own creations. Your direct immediate way of relating to ANYONE testifies to whether or not you are still perpetuating the separation or are healing it.

This is why our brothers are so important or are considered part of our salvation. It is REQUIRED that we rejoin with others in order to undo the separation. There is no way to leave them out of it. We have to learn how to share again, which can only happen by transcending physical boundaries.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability."

"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."

"Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about ANYTHING, you have identified YOUR SELF with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALONE. This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not SEEM to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your brother. "

"How EASY is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No-one who has received it for himself COULD find it difficult. For, BY receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to RECEIVE together, and give as you received. Standing BEFORE the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

The world out there, or in which your body-self is located, is a dream. It does not exist. You are dreaming it. It is no different to dreams at night. It is entire symbolic and filled with symbols. To awaken must mean the dream comes to an end. This means the world must disappear completely.

"Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (--the physical world is just a dream you're having. You did not wake up this morning!)

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams." (--see, you're dreaming the entire world)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (--there is no love inside the dream of death, even if you see it with love - love is incompatible with dreams and would end them)

"They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams." (--recognizing the world is a dream is the key to awakening from it)

"Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see." (--dreams disappear when you awaken to the light of truth. In truth dreams do not exist and do not happen. They are unreal. There is no world. You can't be perceiving the world as real and be awake.)

"To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams." (--can you have the peace of God and be inside the dream? No. This means you are still dreaming and are not at peace.)

"Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes." (--the split mind has multiple wills conflicting with each other - persona and shadow, and must be chaotic. There is no perfect dream or perfect world)

"The miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence." (--miracles are applied to the dream world to undo it!)

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." (--dreams can become happIER, but when the happiest possible dream is perceived, its usefulness is done and it will disappear and dreaming will end)

"Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world." (--the world is a sorry place, a dream of death. Beyond it is God's reality, which is not of this world and demonstrates this world does not exist)

"A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release." (--all dreams (the world, the body) are dreams of weakness - the world is attempted suicide)

"Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams gone. Let truth correct them all." (--you cannot die, it's just a dream of death.)

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you." (--enough said - we are to stop dreaming entirely and help others to do the same)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate." (--the world is a place of sleep, unconsciousness, and unawareness. Its condition or state cannot continue if the state of awareness increases and there is awakening. The dream must end. The world is over. ONLY heaven is real.)

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

Every anger, every attack, every blame, every scapegoating, every projection, every accusation, all of them do ONE thing. They all emphasize that you are SEPARATE from another. They all say, "I am not you." "We are different" "We are not the same" "What applies to you doesn't apply to me."

The form that these expressions can take are extremely varied. The justifications for them are all over the place. They seem to depend on what the other person is doing, how they behave, what they look like, or whatever. As if this makes your expressions different, or valid for different reasons.

But the underlying truth is, that ALL of these expressions are ALWAYS designed to do one thing - emphasize the separation. They all are attempts to widen the rift between you and another. They are all designed to deepen the pits of hell and cut you off and make you isolated, so that you can pin all the sin and blame on someone "totally not myself." To abolish the idea of sharing and oneness completely.

Separation is really the ONLY gameplan the ego has. It does whatever it can in a million different ways to INCREASE the separation. The separation increases between you and other people. In every relationship, every conflict, every war, the SOLE PURPOSE is to attack, so that you are pushing someone away, and increasing the SPACE AND TIME between you. So that "the world" of spacetime is given greater weight.

Without separation there is no ego. Ego IS separation. It is the inequality and difference which comes about when some part of existence is split off and pitted against another. "You are not my self" it exclaims. "I am not part of you" it exclaims. "We are not one" it claims. And the more it hates another the more dissociated you become from that other and from yourself.

Every attack is an attempt to separate. Every anger is an attempt to claim you are not equals. Every hurt is an attempt to prove someone else did this and not you. Every wound testifies to the separation between wills. In every way, all sickness, all death, all war and murder, is all the ego attempting to increase separation. That is all it does. That is all it can ever do. Because its entire existence is rooted in the idea of being separate.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies."

We may think that when ACIM refers to the past it may be talking about 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago.

But when you think about it, the world seems to present a continuous unbroken stream of events. Objects morph from one state to another without any seeming gap in between. It's not like the present is "missing" in this sequence. Actually Jesus refers to it as a continuum, as in the continuum of spacetime.

In this continuum bodies and objects appear to constantly exist from one moment to the next, seamlessly. And yet, we're also told in the course, that at no time does the body really exist in the present. It is always slightly away from presence in the past and the future. We're also told that in holy instants the world may disappear, as happens in revelation also.

So the apparent illusion of a continuum of time in which we seem to think of the past as "a long time ago" and in which there seems to actually BE a present moment, this is not really the nature of time. Time is delay, denial and avoidance. Somehow there is a gap, of space, between the real present moment and everything that appears. And yet everything appears to always be present in this timeline, without a gap.

This MUST mean, that time is more of a vertical "immersion" or sinking down into density, away from true presence, which is above the battlefield. It must be a general sense of distance or avoidance of reality, which results in a more dense experience and a seeming solidity of matter. "The past" must not so much refer to certain measurements of time "ago", but rather to the general sense of how heavily you are in denial, and therefore how "darkened" your mind is.

Jesus describes in the course that with shorter distances we tend to think of it as space, and as distance increases we tend to think of it as time. This means distance from immediacy is spacetime. And without ANY distance there is no spacetime. Total stillness would eradicate it. Slight distance produces an illusion of a world which is slightly "laggy" and seems to gloss over the present with an illusion of a present.

"The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS (ego) DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time"

So the ego illusion actually produces a sense of past, seamlessly and smoothly transitioning into the present, and continuing on to the future, in a continuous stream. But Jesus is saying this is an illusion. And the "present" in this continuum of time is NOT really the present. In time we're not quite in the real present of eternity because it's always a bit removed from it, and filled with images that make it seem like there is no moment at all.

As such the ego has made time look as though it's a totally closed system and it hides the real eternity beyond it. The real eternity is the real present. It is not a state of change or transition or delay or distance or avoidance or denial. And it does not entail the imaginary images of "right now" that the illusion of spacetime shows to us. If you want to find out what the real present is you have to go to heaven.

In our special relationships, we think of a particular person as our savior, idol, bestie, or appointed partner. We adore them with very exclusive terms and special attention. Things that we reserve only for them and for no-one else.

This is the main mode of functioning of love in most people. Special love, for special people, in special ways. Or in other words, limited love, in exclusive situations, with a very small handful of individuals.

The ego in us loves this. It loves to love only a tiny subset of the Sonship. It loves to isolate and limit and constrain all love to one special chosen target recipient. It loves to really strongly play up how important and special and relied-upon that person is, because what this indirectly implies, is that everyone else sucks bigtime.

Special relationships therefore feed the ego 'persona' - the parts of life that it wants to keep and approve of - which is a very limited slice of reality - which it will eventually still attack and destroy. And while it feeds this persona, it relegates everything else to prison, which goes into your own mind as your 'shadow' self, filled with rejection and hate and attack. And that shadow self will attack your persona self and attack your special relationship and eventually try to destroy it. And as such romance turns to resentment. That's what the ego has in store for you when you play along with the special-love game. It ends in tears.

Ok so, being a bit dramatic ;-)

The point is, most people are stuck in this game, and there is a whole other way to experience life. And that means, bringing specialness into question, which is especially difficult when you have special relationships. It means that you will have to confront a sense of not depending on special people, but instead depending on God. It means you will have to examine why you can only love this one person and not everyone else, and also find out what it is within yourself that refuses to love everyone equally. Typically it's because you do not want to love yourself at all times, but only when you yourself are 'special' to yourself, which is probably not often.

Sometimes therefore special relationships have to go through a transition in order for the relationship to become 'holy', which means, the specialness (which is really a form of conditionality and limitation) has to be brought into question. And indeed, it may have to be released, which can be very painful, in order to make way for a greater expansion of love that overflows beyond the borders of the special relationship. How can you be unconditionally loving and uncondtionally yourself without letting go of the specialness that limits and imprisons you?

This doesn't have to mean the end of a relationship or necessarily its destruction, but at times it can seem that the special aspects of the relationship undergo a breakdown, to reveal a deeper unconditionality, a deeper more genuine more honest love, that doesn't put on a mask of pretense and perhaps doesn't play into the appearance of a typical special relationship. This means the relationship is becoming holy, in which the 'real selves' are starting to relate on terms of deeper honesty and greater willingness to love. Love actually increases, but it becomes in a sense less personally confining. It become more freeing, more allowing, more accepting, and that's different than how a special relationship typically starts out.

What remains then is a TRUE relationship, not only with another person but also with yourself, where you yourself are more genuine, where you are not dependent on the other person for the source of your love, where you are able to be of service, where you love them unconditionally, love yourself unconditionally, and also love beyond the walls of the 'relationship' unconditionally. What applies to you must apply to all. And as such, as you mature into unconditional love, you are maturing into a relationship with the entire Sonship, based on love instead of rejection and special attention.

This ultimately is the only way to love yourself.

The world out there, or in which your body-self is located, is a dream. It does not exist. You are dreaming it. It is no different to dreams at night. It is entire symbolic and filled with symbols. To awaken must mean the dream comes to an end. This means the world must disappear completely.

"Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (--the physical world is just a dream you're having)

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams." (--see, you're dreaming the entire world)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (--there is no love inside the dream of death, even if you see it with love - love is incompatible with dreams and would end them)

"They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams." (--recognizing the world is a dream is the key to awakening from it)

"Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see." (--dreams disappear when you awaken to the light of truth. In truth dreams do not exist and do not happen. They are unreal. There is no world.)

"To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams." (--can you have the peace of God and be inside the dream? No. This means you are still dreaming and are not at peace.)

"Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes." (--the split mind has multiple wills conflicting with each other - persona and shadow, and must be chaotic. There is no perfect dream or perfect world)

"The miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence." (--miracles are applied to the dream world to undo it!)

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." (--dreams can become happIER, but when the happiest possible dream is perceived, its usefulness is done and it will disappear and dreaming will end)

"Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world." (--the world is a sorry place, a dream of death. Beyond it is God's reality, which is not of this world and demonstrates this world does not exist)

"A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release." (--all dreams (the world, the body) are dreams of weakness - the world is attempted suicide)

"Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams gone. Let truth correct them all." (--you cannot die, it's just a dream of death.)

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you." (--enough said - we are to stop dreaming entirely and help others to do the same)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate." (--the world is a place of sleep, unconsciousness, and unawareness. Its condition or state cannot continue if the state of awareness increases and there is awakening. The dream must end. The world is over. ONLY heaven is real.)

"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms."

"How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"

The ego does not take one side. The ego takes all sides, and pits them all against each other. It pretends to be on one team, while simultaneously being on the other team. It plays the part of both victim and its own victimizer. It attacks itself.

The ego is the idea of self attack, self denial, inner conflict, a split-mindedness. It is a state of being "in two minds", undecided and certain of nothing. It is a state of disassociation, in which there literally seem to be two halves or selves, one against the other. It represents a divided will, where one part of mind wills against the other.

In all wars, all conflicts, all arguments, all political debates, all fights between teams and nations, every form of taking sides, and all the various ways that we buy into the illusion that one person is ego and another is not, the ego delights in playing both parties off against each other.

It does not care who wins anything. It does not care whether one side is victorious while the other suffers. All it cares about is that it is perpetuated and persists because it has attacked and destroyed part of self, leaving only part left as victor, who must therefore suffer being less than whole.

The ego will happily attack itself provided some portion of it remains. It will side with something which seems good, positive, uplifting and true, provided to side with it permits a sacrifice where the "rest" of what is denied, hated, repelled and rejected is regarded as not self.

The ego split mind is divided into persona and shadow. The person is the part that is kept in conscious awareness and seems to allow and accept only that which it thinks is good enough - and nothing is good enough. Systematically it strips away portions of your self, deeming them unworthy and imperfect, relegating them to the unconscious shadow portion of mind. It is never satisfied, prompting you to put on a facade of perfection in order to truly destroy everything about you that you cannot accept. That which seems so innocent and holy is murderous.

Self attack takes on many forms and all of them are deceptive. If you buy into one such appearance and think, this person is a hero or savior, while this other person is guilty and a sinner, you have fallen for the trick. The ego is BOTH OF THEM. And it has no problem attacking itself in order to perpetuate the illusion that there is a *separation* between the two. That they are not the same identity or the same self. That is its aim. To split the mind and emphasize the differences.

It does not want people forgiving each other and seeing each other as equals. It wants war not peace. It has no interest or care as to whether you win or someone else wins. It couldn't care less if you are right or someone else is. All it's interested in that that rift between the two is increased, differences are amplified, the gap increases, and equality is lost.

If you play the game, if you take sides, if you buy into the illusion that one is a sinner and another innocent, you have fallen for its tricks. You have bought into separation. Only when you can see you and your brother as being in the same boat, as both striving toward the same goal, and recognize that the EGO is the third party here, the enemy, who would come between you and drive you apart, then you can join forces to agree NOT to attack each other, so that the EGO will disappear and not each other.

This may not be popular.

True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.

By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.

Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.

Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.

You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.

This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.

All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.

More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.

"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.

Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.

Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.

For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.

Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.

Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.

And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.

You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.

In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?

The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.

Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.

Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.

Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.

In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.

Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.

This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.

At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.

In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.

The body is supposed to be used as a communication device. This is much misundestood. What it means is that the body is to be used in a way that reflects our function of extension in heaven. We (mind/soul) are a MEDIUM or "communication channel" of extension, through which God is hosted and extends. We are to pass on what we receive. And this produces a continuous outward expansion and increase of creation. This is also communication - the outward expression of love.

"Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will." That means, the body is supposed to, from a higher repurposing perspective, be used solely to extend and join and communicate, like a medium that you express THROUGH and BEYOND. Whereby you use it solely like a tool to give to others, placing no focus ON the body itself, or on the bodies of others. Because bodies become a LIMIT on communication if you make them real. They turn into brick walls.

The entire problem comes when you begin to focus ON the body, making it an idol, worshipping it, mistaking it for a THING in its own right, considering it an entity, dwelling on its form and function, and identifying with it as if it is your self. This converts the "channel" from being a channel, to being a roadblock in the channel. It turns the body into a blockage of separation instead of extension.

All of the minds attention is put ON the MEDIUM ITSELF, as if the medium itself is important. This separates the mind off because it now stops at the body's limits and does not go past it to join with other minds beyond their bodies. This increases the rift in the mind and induces all forms of sickness including death. It's a mis-use of the body - trying to use what's supposed to be a PIPE, as though it's a brick wall.

This is also why holy relationship is important because you're supposed to USE the body to relate BEYOND the body. It's only supposed to be used temporarily as a device for this purpose, and is not supposed to be used to exalt itself or to act as a prison or barrier. When you become body focused, you literally "lose sight" of your brother and yourself. It means we're turning a device for learning into the FOCUS of learning, as if trying to make the body BE something in its own right, which it isn't. The body is used for communication when the body ITSELF becomes NOTHING and invisible in the equasion.

"Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

"To confuse a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be meaningfully arrested at its own aids, and hope to understand them OR its real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your RELATIONSHIP, and NOT your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the BODY cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there."

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

"The Holy Spirit's temple is NOT a body, but a RELATIONSHIP. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here, the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love CANNOT enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who SEES the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can NOT be seen?"

"You are God’s Son. In IMMORTALITY you live forever."

"The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is IMMORTAL as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has IMMORTALITY."

"You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of IMMORTALITY."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God, and holy as Himself. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, IMMORTAL yet on earth."

"Salvation is God’s justice. It restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you perceive as broken off and separate. And it is this that overcomes the fear of death. For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is IMMORTAL."

"Yet time has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines with its IMMORTAL Love."

"Your present trust in Him is the defence which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only IMMORTALITY."

"To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in IMMORTALITY, and Heaven knows it not."

"Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of IMMORTALITY to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"Whatever is perceived as means for truth SHARES in its holiness, and rests in light as safely as Itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose GAVE it IMMORTALITY, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from YOU, a sign that you have NOT forgotten them."

" In your brother is the light of God’s eternal promise of your IMMORTALITY. See HIM as sinless, and there can BE no fear in you."

"Faith in the eternal is ALWAYS justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, IMMORTAL as itself."

"Yet for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the IMMORTAL die?"

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of IMMORTALITY upon it. This is the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this."

"In the temple, holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. For the Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the IMMORTAL assurance of their Father’s Love."

"For you will remember His guiltless Son, who did not die because he is IMMORTAL."

"You are IMMORTAL BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now."

"But the guarantee of your continuity is God’s, not the ego’s. And IMMORTALITY is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while IMMORTALITY is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless."

"IMMORTALITY is HIS Will for His Son, and His Son’s will for HIMSELF. Yet God’s Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM ."

"IMMORTALITY is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL."

Until you learn that what you do to others you do to yourself, and you can be at least a little convinced about this, you will continue to see no point in forgiving. It will have no value to you and you won't want to do it, because you see it only as a way to pardon someone else. If that is what forgiveness means to you - bestowing pardon - it reveals that you don't recognize how forgiveness benefits YOU, or how you are involved in and a recipient of your judgement of others.

You have to keep being reminded that either both of you are innocent or both of you are guilty, a lot, because you have been severely programmed to perceive contrary to this. You think what you do to others has no effect on you, and what they do to you has no effect on them. In this there is injustice and unfairness and mistreatment and victimhood. This way of perceiving has to be gradually eroded and corrected so that you can come to believe and recognize that it simply isn't worth condemning someone because, you know only too well, that your own peace has been lost along with it.

And so this really means that you need to also learn to value peace and love within yourself, toward yourself. Without believing that you are worth loving, you aren't going to see the vested interest in loving others as yourself. You'd maybe rather maintain hate or justified anger for a while because you think the feeling of hating and being angry is actually good for you. You like the rage and the attack and the sense of helplessness, provided someone else is suffering at the same time, so you can convince yourself you're at least not as guilty as they are. But its a losing battle. You have to forgive yourself so that you can learn your worth and value and lovability, otherwise you're not going to want to protect it at all costs.

Once you do establish, to some degree, that you deserve the love of God, and you want it and value it, and your valuing of the truth has been corrected enough, you will start to experience a kind of automatic yet different response to others. Instead of maintaining condemnation at all costs, you'll start to feel that you know better, and that you know that you don't really want to feel like this. You want to feel the peace and love and forgiveness that your own heart deserves. And so even if you get mad at others, the more you forgive and learn your own innocence, the sooner you will feel a kind of growing urge to forgive them sooner. You will lose your taste for the fight and will gradually develop a greater willingness to want to put down your attacks and admit to responsibility and move into truth, simply because it is more valuable to you.

Eventually you will cease to judge, condemn, criticize, attack or project blame or anger onto anyone, solely because you've become very clear that YOU do not deserve any of that. And you also realize that truth is shared and wholeness is equal and you can't access love without sharing it with everyone. There is a oneness to it. The rules that apply to them must apply to you. As you do unto others, you DO do unto yourself. So now you have shared interests. And in your shared interest, it's in your best interest to treat both yourself and others with love and innocence and acceptance and peace. And you'll just decide you no longer want to enter into conflict or separation. And then you'll just remain at peace.

I say some of this because I understand it theoretically makes sense. I am not by any means loving all the time or at peace. But I have begun to notice a growing unwillingness to maintain angst for a long period of time. There is an increasing ... something, in my mind, which nags at me a bit more loudly, a kind of knowing, a surrender, a willingness, that reminds me of a mutual truth. And as I work on surrendering to truth and love and healing this certainty increases and speaks up more loudly. I find myself wanting to forgive sooner, just because I don't want to keep being unhappy. It takes practice. The mind needs to undo all of its ego conditioning of separation and blame and that takes a while. But slowly I see the results of a continually clarifying alignment with Holy Spirit. One forgiveness at a time.

In ACIM there is a very strong theme, based on the Golden Rule, which describes a dynamic we are all supposed to adopt. It's the idea that giving and receiving are one.

"giving and receiving are the same" UrW225

In fact, that entire phrase appears SIX times in the course.

It is the backbone of the Golden Rule, which is a law of God, that what you do unto another YOU directly DO unto yourself. And this is on the basis that your brother - other people - are a PART OF YOU. And therefore, what you do to them, you literally are doing to the part of you that is SHARED with them.

But think about this for a moment, because it really makes NO SENSE AT ALL. Jesus presents it with what appears to be a nice voodoo-sounding phrase, which is laden with impossibilities:

"Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson: To HAVE, GIVE all TO ALL." UrT6F13

How on earth, can you give everything, to everyone, and still HAVE everything? This defies normal logic, does it not? It does not make sense. Ask anyone in the world how this is possible, they will probably be stumped. It seems totally false.

If I give you my dinner, I will not have my dinner. If I give you my car, I will not have the car. If I give you my money, I will not have the money. HOW can it MAKE SENSE, to say that if I give you everything, I will HAVE IT ALL? Or even worse, that I'm supposed to give what I have ***TO EVERYONE***? How is that even possible?

If you are savvy and paying attention, you should conclude that these kinds of statements MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL. They seem absolutely nonsense. They are totally out of line with what we experience in the world. How can they be true?

The big thing is... Jesus seems to be telling us that it is not only POSSIBLE, but the true law of God, that things which seem impossible to us are the ONLY possibility. That there is some WEIRD way by which something that makes absolutely no sense, IS in fact the truth.

He is telling us that we're supposed to "love others as ourselves" - as we would love ourselves, and knowing that they ARE a part of ourselves. How can this make any sense though? And be careful not to go into denial here and just PRETEND that "you believe it" because it sounds all magical and spiritual.

It seems ONLY to make sense to say that whatever I GIVE, I WILL LOSE. Yes? Have you ever experienced otherwise? Anything you have ever given you have lost. You have had to compromise. You have never been able to keep what you have given to anyone. Why is Jesus telling you that it is some kind of divine law or dynamic or way of relating to others that you're supposed to adopt? What nonsense!

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously." UrT1B18A

The thing is.. .. God's truth and laws are nothing like the laws of this world, or the dynamics of ego relationships, or the way by which physical objects interact and relate. What SEEMS to make sense to us here, is in truth absolutely nonsense. And that which SEEMS to be absolutely nonsense, is in fact the truth.

Now... that's a REALLY BIG CLAIM. Because now Jesus is telling us that something that seems to make NO SENSE, is in fact the truth! Nonsense is the truth?! Not only is it the truth, GOD HIMSELF apparently has a nature which makes NO SENSE.

Somehow, we're told, God gives everything to everyone, and yet keeps everything. And, supposedly we're supposed to adopt the same function, of giving everything to everyone, in order to have everything. And he even tells us that if we do NOT give it all away, we will have nothing. WHAT NONSENSE, SURELY?!

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." UrT3G15

Here for example Jesus is saying not only are there souls created by God (hold that thought), but also that EACH of them knows God COMPLETELY. Which means, that I can have everything, and you can have everything, and we can both have everything simultaneously. WHAT THE F?! .... How can that make any sense at all?

How can you have everything, while I also have everything, without either of us having to compromise or share or take turns? But he's telling us that's how it is. And he describes this dynamic as miraculous - it IS a course in the miraculous, after all.

So here's the big issue. It is CLEARLY evident that all of the things which are true of God, and all of the dynamics of his creation and reality and the workings of his relationships and so on, SEEM TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE.

They entail seemingly mind-bending possibilities, such as you handing over your entire inheritance and still having it all. Such that, in fact, when you give everything, the other person you gave it to now HAS IT ALL, AND YET... you ALSO have it all, which means the total amount HAS INCREASED. F me!

"God Himself created the law by creating BY it. And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did." UrT7C7

We're told that the entire Kingdom of God INCREASES, because when you GIVE ALL TO ALL, you still HAVE it all, and now everyone else HAS everything you gave, and now it is DOUBLED. So there is constant increase of everything real. This is a real dynamic in reality. How can this make any sense at all, that when you give stuff away IT MULTIPLIES?!!! What?

What it then boils down to, is that the ultimate truth is, God's nature, the nature of reality and oneness, what is possible, what is a fact, will always SEEM TO MAKE NO SENSE TO YOU. It will in fact seem like a collection of paradoxes. And it will seem like nonsense. And anything that is true WILL seem to be nonsense to your ego, and to your earthly way of thinking, and to the way that you REASON all your conclusions. They are all nonsense.

Here's the climax of my post. There is much debate about oneness and non-duality and so on. And people generally will say that whatever MAKES SENSE, must be the truth. Screw that! God has dynamics which DO NOT make sense to ordinary reasoning. Giving everything away in order to keep it, what?! What's given increases when you give it away, what?! It seems like nonsense. BUT IT IS TRUE.

So you should NOT be quite so certain, that God's reality and workings are supposed to fit nicely into what you think "makes sense". In fact, if you think that God's functioning makes sense based on ordinary reasoning, YOU ARE CONFUSED.

To normal reasoning, God's workings are supposed to look like paradoxes. They are SUPPOSED to look like contradictions. They are SUPPOSED to look like they make no sense at all and can't be true!! Because the reasoning being used to LOOK at it is itself BACKWARDS and false.

The people who thus claim ACIM is non-duality are using backwards reasoning to claim that "oneness" and "it's all God" and "you don't exist" makes perfect sense. That's a total fail. God is capable of BREAKING all your rules and TRANSCENDING all your little limitations and requirements.

ACIM clearly is teaching a transcendental thought system which, to the way that most people think, DOES NOT make sense. And this is supposed to reveal to you, at some point, that THE WAY YOU THINK IS WRONG. Not just what you think, but HOW. Not just the line of your thinking and the conclusions you come to that you THINK make sense, but the entire method and logic that you use to draw conclusions IS MISTAKEN. It is OPPOSITE to the nature of God.

This is why ACIM is not non-duality. Non-duality is far too absent paradoxes. It contains none of the mind-bending transcendence of laws and limits present in the Golden Rule. It has no recognition of the fact that God can do things which SEEM impossible, including the creation of multiple sons/souls who themselves are creators in reality, WITHOUT VIOLATING ONENESS. Which... you guessed it, seems like it would be "totally impossible" and "totally nonsense", BUT ISN'T.

So you should really get used to the fact that reality WILL NOT make sense to your typical reasoning. Your conclusions are all back to front and entirely within the separation-based thought system of the ego. Even non-duality and oneness are ego constructs resulting from a way of reasoning that doesn't even acknowledge the rule-breaking nature of God.

If you think this is not correct, think again. Think again about the facts we're being taught. We're being told to do something that seems TOTALLY COUNTER INTUITIVE. Which seems to run TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how your ENTIRE thought system works. To treat others in the knowledge that they are a part of you, such that what you do to them you do to yourself. That is not something that makes any sense to the world's thinking.

Don't be deceived that making sense of something means it is true. An entire system of thought can have internal consistency and seem to make total sense, and yet be entirely wrong. We are not here in the business of just being a sheep that follows the basic little conclusions the ego comes up with.

"It's all one therefore there can't be many"... nonsense.

"God couldn't create anything otherwise there would be separation" .... nonsense.

"If I exist then I must be an ego" ... nonsense.

"If there are many things in reality then reality is dualistic". ... nonsense.

The truth is FAR more mind-bending and waaaaaaaaay outside the box of how you think about things. If you have not encountered all the paradoxes and found a way to live with them, you are still squarely locked into the ego's thought system.

"ACIM is non-dualistic" is a conclusion drawn by egos following all of the ego's rules of separation-based reasoning, without showing the slightest sign of appreciation for God's PARADOXICAL nature, in which two completely opposite-seeming things can be simultaneously true, WITHOUT it being wrong.

If you think everything about God's nature has to sound like it makes nice tidy sense, you haven't even begun to recognize what God is like. God is a creator, and oneness DOES have real parts to it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that fact at all. If YOU see a gross contradiction, YOU have not escaped the ego's mindset.

Jesus redefines the meaning of fear. It is not some mere feeling that you have. In fact, He teaches that fear is the opposite of love. Love is essentially equated with the entire Kingdom of God and the nature of Creation. So fear really is another word for "the entire ego thought system."

Fear is the idea of love's opposite. If you are slightly unhappy, if you are sick, if you are dead, if you are at war, if you are suffering in any way less than experiencing eternal life, there must be fear present. The entire dream of death is a dream of fear. Fear is death. Fear is unwillingness.

I bump into this all the time. It just seems that I keep encountering some form of fear, over and over and over again. It doesn't always seem like fear, unless I look at it carefully and notice that it seems less than loving and has some kind of fearful resistance or reluctance or uncertainty running through it. All stresses, all upsets, all are based in fearful perceptions.

All of my efforts to awaken or be spiritual etc all seem to be this constant "battle" with fear coming and going, sometimes stronger than other times. It feels like trying to stay afloat or even to approach the surface where the light shines, only to be dragged down by these fearful anchors. If I could be released from fear, I would be in a state of love, therefore, and would be happy.

If happiness and love is what I want, and to be miraculous you must be expressing love, then it makes sense that all fear has to be undone. Fear is really the big problem. And fear is nothing but the illusion of the absence of love. It's the idea of darkness. Fear is seriousness. Fear is hell. Fear paralyzes. Fear is attack. And fear stops life.

All forms of hate and vengeance, all grievances, all self attack, all projections, it's all rooted in fear. All attempts to fix and solve and figure out and plan are based in the fear that something is wrong. All ego motivations and seeking to not find, is based on the fearful idea of loss and lack. Without fear there can only be love.

We must seek out and remove all traces of fear and the cause of this fear. Undoing fear allows you to relax. Undoing fear re-establishes trust. Undoing fear lightens you up. Undoing fear makes you happy and corrects your perception. Without fear you will see the shining face of Christ and be glad.

"All healing is essentially the release from fear."

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

"T-1.VI.5. All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. 2 To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. 3 In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

4 Perfect love casts out fear.

5 If fear exists, then there is not perfect love.

6 But:

7 Only perfect love exists.

8 If there is fear,

It produces a state that does not exist.

9 ****Believe this and you will be free.**** 10 Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them."

To the ego, in order to have something you must take it from someone else. To the ego, there is limited quantity because everything is considered to be finite. It has no concept of sharing. It only has a concept of compromise. If you are to have anything at all, someone else must lose. And by their loss, the ego believes that it can gain. This is part of the ego's laws of chaos.

The ego therefore is the belief that when you receive something, whoever gave it has diminished their supply. And this is also part of the belief that, if you give something, you will diminish your own supply, will increase your own lack, and will now suffer and be in need.

This is why everyone is so reluctant to let go of their possessions or money and tries to get as much "bang for buck" as possible, to get a deal or a discount or some great big receipt of value with the minimal amount of sacrifice/loss possible. And all commercial ventures play into this ego quality by constantly dwelling on how much more you will be receiving than giving, which is a lie, because they don't tell you how cheaply they got the shit for in the first place. Anyway...

So the ego only has this sense that there is an "exchange" or a negotiated deal or some kind of weighing up of what you will get vs what you will lose. It has absolutely no concept of something increasing, of two people being able to partake of the same thing without limiting each other's enjoyment, and it believes that there is a huge difference between giving and receiving. It in fact believes that giving is sacrifice, and that receiving is salvation provided you only receive from outside yourself and not from God.

The ego also is a murderous thought system and any time that there is an inbalance between giving and receiving there is "murder" happening. That is, either you are perceiving that you are having to give more than you are getting, meaning you are losing, which is a form of death, or you are taking more than the other person is willing to give, which means you are trying to destroy them.

To God, this is all nonsense of course and God's laws do not operate this way at all. Instead, anything real can be shared without it diminishing. All parties can experience FULLY what is being offered without anyone having to sacrifice or only get a small slice of the pie. There is no compromise. There is no limitation or finite amounts of anything. Everyone is able to share fully and equally. If I get 100% of God's love, it does not mean that there is no love left to go around. It means there is still 100% of love to go around. Everyone partakes in and SHARES SIMULTANEOUSLY in the same "stuff" without loss or sacrifice or hoarding or possessiveness of trying to "own" it or make it your own. This again reinforces the that God operates holographically because the 'whole' can be fully presence in more than one place at a time.

God's laws also tell us that in order to have anything we must give it and be willing to share it. Nothing real can be "owned" by egoic concepts of selfishness or isolation. You cannot section off a piece of God and claim it as yours without it also belonging to everyone. And when something real is given, it is not lost to the giver at all. In fact it increases. If I have unlimited light and I give some light to someone, my light simply shines more, it does not decrease, it brightens. To God, anything real that is given is increased, its receipt intensifies, sacrifice is reversed, there is no lack or loss possible anywhere, and there is an absolute unlimited abundance of everything which is only growing and increasing at all times, not diminishing at all. It is the perfect "economy" in a constant state of growth and abundance.

God's abundance is freely and fully given, is available to everyone equally, there is no limitation on its supply, it is infinite and unlimited, it can only be shared and increased, and there is no such thing as lack or sacrifice.

All of spacetime, and everything within the realm of relativity, is contradictory, impossible, insane, self-defeating, lacking and unwhole.

The reason is that it was made entirely by denying God, denying the absolute, denying wholeness, and trying to bring about something completely impossible - an opposite to God.

But as soon as you lack wholeness, you have things like separation, specialness, scarcity, contradictions, differences and lies.

The problem with such a system is that it contradicts itself. For example, anything separate seeks to destroy other things and to be different from that, so that it can stand out more and be distinct and exist.

It's the same with the ego, the ego wants to separate off and exclude and isolate, because the more contrast there is the more it has a seeming identity. Its identity is then made from the walls of separation.

The problem then is that even though the ego and the world define themselves based on what they lack about other things - what they do not have, and through the attempt to attack everything, they simultaneuosly need those things to exist in order to have any contast.

You can see this with ecosystems for example, where you depend on plants to create oxygen so you can breathe and yet you also eat the plants, thus depriving yourself. If you were have a population explosion that eats all available food, suddenly you would have mass extinction. So now "total life" contains "total death."

The reason is that a relative world is a denial of God's law of the golden rule - that giving and receiving are one. In relativity, this is denied and the rule is now that what you give you lose.

So each time you go to do anything at all in spacetime, you simultaneously get the opposite. Any gain is a loss, any advancement is a retreat from something else, anything you try to destroy you need for your own survival, if you don't share you end up with nothing, when you give what you have you don't get to keep it, etc.

Ultimately the binding rule in spacetime is that every single thing you do is thwarted by the fact that its opposite is also included. You literally cannot have wholeness. You have to choose what you stand to gain, and what you stand to lose, at the same time.

It's an extremely frustrating system because it means there is no whole truth, you can't win without losing, you can't gain without loss, you can't choose one thing without sacrificing the other things, you can't even breathe without reducing the oxygen that you depend on to live.

It's a totally self-defeating, self-destructive, contradictory, frustrating, impossible, nonsense, bullshit system in which nothing can really work and nothing is as it seems.

This is encapsulated by the idea of yin-and-yang, in which there are seeming opposites or polarities, but also you'll find some trace of the other opposite with each. As one increases the other decreases. As one is gained, the other is lost.

Basically, it means that no matter what you do in a relative system you can only partially win, and you must also partially lose, because every gain contains some loss, and every loss contains some win. Nothing is just one thing, nothing is just itself, and nothing is whole. It's all a mixture.

And that means on a physical level everything is a compromise, and a sacrifice, and a limitation. It means you can't have your cake and eat it. It means you can only ever partially succeed at anything, all the options available to you are lacking in some way, there is no way to pick one thing and be totally satisfied with it, and everything is broken in some way.

The ego depends on separating off from and attacking others in order to reinforce its sense of being special and different and unique, of existing at all. Its whole identity is increased by contrast. But at the same time, the very thing it attacks it needs to exist, and if it were to destroy it there would be no contrast and the ego would have no definition. So it cannot fulfill its own goal and must be frustrated in its entire functioning.

This is also why making choices in this world is utterly ridiculous, because no matter what you choose there will always be something lacking and missing, because nothing is perfect. You can't get the whole of anything ever. You pick one thing and you get that sinking feeling that you should've picked the other, because the other has some valid parts and yet not all the parts. And yet the other thing if chosen lacks these parts as well, and so you can't decide. Because every single choice the world offers you is between partial success and partial success, and never does it offer you a choice of completion, totality, wholeness or satisfaction.

How frustrating and stupid is such a system, founded on a belief in the impossible, an attempt to bring about the contradictory, and a state which totally denies itself in every way. While yin-yang is supposed to be a symbol of balance, it's really a symbol of complete dis-satisfaction and impossible inequality. All it really means is that every single thing is equally unwhole, not itself, contradictory and against itself.

"God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

A major way the ego tempts us to seek outside of ourselves and to not find what we are seeking, is to suggest that the truth really is out there somewhere. The belief that you can actually find it outside of yourself, is simultaneously the belief that it does not exist inside of you.

Establishing that the truth is not IN you already, fully and completely, or that you do not have it, is the entire foundation of the ego‘s thought system. Once this is believed, you will cease looking within for it, and start on a quest, which you might even call a "spiritual journey", attempting to "seek" for the truth.

This seeking can show up as very earnest and well-intentioned and an attempt to find the ultimate spiritual answer. BUT, because you are fundamentally looking in the wrong place, you are guaranteed never to find it.

The ego is very sneaky about this. It will tempt you to believe that reality, and truth, are outside of yourself. This means the entire world is real. It also means the world contains the truth. And this then justifies your seeking IN the world to try to find it. The ego has promised you can succeed at this, but it is utterly impossible. The truth is already inside you, where you are not looking, and where the ego will NEVER have you look.

Looking outside yourself CAN also include finding the truth within a book such as A Course in Miracles. Especially if the FORM of the book seems to be more of a truth than other forms. If the words seem to show symbols which don’t even look like symbols, but look like concrete pieces of the truth itself, which is the ego’s way of turning illusions into reality, you can become quite fixated on picking apart the tiniest nuances of what specific words say, become extremely specific, and pull apart even the tiniest of statements, which completely loses all sense of context and increases your insanity. The truth is NOT THERE!

You will go deeply into the Course words and the form of the words. You will not recognize them as mere symbols twice removed from the truth, and will not acknowledge the Course’s holographic nature. You will instead attempt to turn the Course into a linear, finite, concrete piece of "evidence", an attempt to PROVE that the truth is outside of you.

The result of this is an OBSESSION in trying to find the truth. You will feel compelled by the lack of truth in you. And yet, here‘s the problem. The more you seek for it, the more you dwell on what the Coure says, the more you become obsessed with the exact specific words of a given version, the more you dissect it and analyze it and try to figure out what it means based on its form, the more it will slip through your fingers! And the more you do this, the more desperate you will become, because you continue to fail to truly FIND what it is the ego promised you would find there.

The form of the Course IS NOT THE TRUTH. The truth is an inner experience of direct reality with God. It is not intellectual. It has nothing to do with study. It absolutely has nothing whatsoever to do with quote fests or throwing quotes at people to correct them. It definitely has nothing to do with pitting different FORMS of the course against each other. It’s completely nothing whatsoever to do with what exact words were said, who can find the best citations, or who can use the Course as a weapon.

THE TRUTH IS NOT OUTSIDE OF YOU.

There is nothing so blinding as sight of FORM!

The Course is ONLY there to help point you AWAY from the form of the Course and towards an experience of God, which is already in you, just covered up. The more you obsess over the Course’s words the more you are going to get lost in the intellect. And the more you do that, the more you will believe you are "finding" the truth, and are delusional.

The words are just symbols, *representing* a truth that is quite removed from those symbols. When we fight about which exact words are used where, or what they mean, or what they "say", we’re completely forgetting they are symbols and are trying to break the Course out into some kind of direct truth in its own right. This was never how it was intended. This is an ego trap.

Blocks to awareness of the fact that you are ALREADY WITH GOD need to be removed. That’s all. Period. This is nothing more than the undoing of denial and stopping searching outside yourslf, even within the course, for something which is not there. The Course if understood is telling you to do this. You are supposed to leave the Course behind at some point and go within to God with empty hands! You can’t do this, and you cannot experience the truth, while trying to make yourself RIGHT about what exactly the FORM says or seems to prove. There is NO PROOF in the Course. It’s an illusion.

Go within.

When you try to remove something from your life but you aren't genuinely ready and healed to the point of recognizing that you're already detached from it, it is like ripping it out and trying to enforce a state of compliance. That is the ego working overtime, taking over the spiritual path to try to be the enforcer of spiritual laws on a behavioral level.

You cannot let go of something while you value it or while you believe it is the truth. And regardless of whether that thing is good for your sanity or not, or even if it is making you suffer, the demand to remove it when you're not ready to brings about sacrifice. And usually it means you are "should-ing" yourself.

It is the ego's way of attempting correction without actually correcting anything. It wants to simply take an axe to anything in your life that has been deemed "unspiritual" or not in alignment with "the course" etc, as if doing so will make you more spiritual. And yet these so-called unspiritual things are OF the ego. So then it's the ego pretending to get rid of the ego, which it will attempt to do with great gusto. That passionate slaying of the dragon passes for what appears to be a valiant effort to be more spiritual, but really keeps and reinforces and increases the ego.

So sacrifice, while seeming to be a call for a reduction of ego, is actually a call for an increase of ego, masked by the illusion that sacrificing has the same 'goal' as true spirituality. If the course says you are not a body, the ego will come along and say "get rid of the body otherwise you are not being spiritual". Yes the goals are the same, but the reasoning and the consequences and the purpose of this information is different. Or rather, how the goal is obtained is different. Spirit would have you gently look at what makes you believe the body is real and to examine how beliefs you've held are in fact false, so that you can recognize you are not them, thus releasing them, avoiding the need for sacrifice. But the ego would tell you, ok, you gotta get rid of this shit, you are not spiritual enough.

The ego's intention therefore is to reinforce the sense that you are deprived, not good enough, not spiritual enough, and lacking, such that it will compel you to "sacrifice more" in order to become more spiritual in a short space of time. This really is a device to increase the sense of separation between what you are (love) and what you think you are (ego) by affirming just how in need of correction you are. What it means then is that underneath this attempt to sacrifice is some form of guilt which is telling you "you're not spiritual enough" and "you need to get more spiritual urgently", which compels a sense of panic and attack, taking the form of sweeping cuts to all kinds of things which you're not ready to relinquish.

Sacrifice then is the ego trying to be spiritual, trying to move too fast, trying to enforce the Course's truth before you are ready, trying to make out that you are in spiritual poverty and therefore need some horrific sweeping tools to correct you. This is not what the Holy Spirit asks of you. It is not what the Course asks of you. It is what the ego tries to make of the course, in the name of upholding its truths.

Holy Spirit asks only that you become willing, of your own free will, to have your perception corrected, when you are ready, so that you can SEE clearly what is true and what is false, so that you can recognize that what you thought was valuable is not, and what you thought was true is false, and thereby recognize that you no longer want the ego. Only then can you genuinely be willing to let go of it, or rather, recognize that it never really was something you had to begin with. Then it falls away without any fanfare or enforcement or effort. And certainly no sense of sacrifice or pushing or urgency. Holy Spirit is infinitely patient and kind in this matter and would never ask you to be ripped from the ego while you still believe it is who you are.

Be kinder to yourself today in recognition of what you still have left to correct and let Holy Spirit be the gentle corrector, according to your genuine willingness and readiness, and try not to impose artificial enforcement upon yourself asking for sacrifice. It's ok to take your time and it's okay to still be doing "all the guilty things" that are "of the ego" for as long as you need to, while you're still believing in them. Correction needs to take place at the level of willingness and readiness, not at the level of leaping ahead and skipping steps just to prove you are worthy of God.

I had no idea, that I had been spending vast majority of my life attempting to use the ego's persona in order to 'make life better'.

All the times that I people-pleased to try to make bad people go away.

All the times that I tried to fix everything bad that ever seemed to be happening.

All the times that I tried to appear to be innocent and yet was acting like a victim.

All the times that I tried to look pleasing to others so that they would maybe not hurt me.

All the times that I thought I had to give others what they wanted, and that I was not inherently wanted in a loving way - only in terms of what others wanted to take from me.

There was even a time in my life that was especially low where I felt so bad about myself, such low self 'esteem', ie shame and unworthiness, that I believed I did not deserve any love, and that the only people who would 'want me' were those who wanted to use me or take from me or have me be a slave to. It was tremendously disempowering.

Ultimately this was all because I had such a strong belief that my personas (personii?), were actually capable of IMPROVING my life, making things more palatable, protecting me or defending me from what I did not want. I wanted to simply shut out all the bad icky stuff and focus solely on the good stuff.

And I remember actually believing that I was becoming 'very spiritual' by rejecting even the everyday egos of other people, which I relegated and judged and condemned for 'being ego' or 'being selfish' etc. This sort of twisted double-edged idea of spirituality arose out of this in my late teens where I was simultaneously terrified and hounded by scary stuff in my mind, while thinking that I was also having deep spiritual insights. And maybe I was in a way, but it was strongly dualistic, and my mind was very split. There was a 'rift' in my life, a strong sense of separation, and that persona of exalted, lofty specialness, really holier-than thou, simultaneously felt like I was approaching death.

I used the persona to get rid of and attack everything that I was against, believing that what I 'kept' was all good and acceptable and allowed. BUT, the more that I got rid of... and believe me I included a LOT of stuff in the list of what I rejected, way above and beyond normal classifications (ie most of the world), the more what I had LEFT OVER got smaller and smaller. The more I found myself in a hole of isolation and loneliness. And the more I became depressed. I felt like this impending sense of everything coming to an 'end'. My whole reality just felt like it was saturated with a sense of impending doom, with no way out. Because I was hiding in the persona and not being authentic at all, even though I felt justified by my pain.

I was repressing so much and rejecting so much, perhaps in attempt to heal myself of strong wounds, which I had projected onto everyone else, that I was perhaps trying to find a way to get away from it all and at least 'fake' that I was healing, as a starting point. Very much fortunately, things gradually started to turn around at that point, massively fuelled by my meeting my beloved wife who came into the darkness like an angel of light. Then the healing commenced.

Now, looking back, I can see how my entire time was spent choosing the persona, putting on a fake image, trying to give people what they wanted, trying to please, trying not to upset anyone, trying to maintain status quo or 'peace' by never asserting myself or standing out, etc. It was a rough lesson! And all of that resisting, all of that... rejecting of life... merely diminished my own. Now I am learning that using the persona at all is an attack on myself. It is a way to buy into the belief that I need to cover myself up because there's something wrong with me. As self-love increases - genuine honest God-shared love - so too does the need for these masks diminish.

I am seeing clearer and clearer that all of the confidence, all of the fearlessness, all of the certainty, all of the clarity and strength, that I thought I was going to find by using rejection, separation, persona denial, etc... are actually already IN ME... it was being denied BY the use of the persona. I just needed to learn WHERE the truth is, what WHAT the truth is. I was looking in the wrong place for my whole life - outside of me, and was rejecting myself the entire time.

Now I see that if you stand with yourself in your truth and don't reject yourself, you don't even NEED any of the persona masks, because you already HAVE what God has given you, you already ARE powerful and safe and strong. You don't need to hide from people, because you are unconditionally loving yourself. You're saying, I'm going to ALWAYS be real, true and honest, in all situations and with all people. I am ALWAYS going to come from unconditional love no matter what. And in that, you not only drop all of the efforts to 'get rid of bad stuff', you also drop all of the efforts to 'choose only the good stuff'. And along with that goes all sense of depending on, or caring about, what anyone else thinks of you or what you do. It is a freedom. In a sense, an independence - being set free from the energy-sucking vampire that the ego is and being AVAILABLE now to God, to allow Him to live through you.

It wasn't getting rid of bad stuff that made my life better. Trying to do that made it worse. Accepting myself fully is the goal.

It's not where I thought life would go. But this is where it is heading for all of us. Back to our true selves. Back to love.

Where do you find a sense of certainty? A sense of something you can trust? A sense of actuality or correctness? Where do you find a truth, that is so acceptable and so full and complete that you have no doubt?

I find that as I try to find answers in, and with, the ego, i.e. with my own mind and faculties, I cannot come up with a satisfying answer. I instead come up with a multitude of possible answers, all of which are different and none of which really give me a sense of .... yes, this is IT, I found it!. .. Or at least, if I think I found it, then later I'll realize it doesn't quite fit. So none of the answers work. None of them.

In fact, the more that I get into 'I need to figure this out', or 'maybe it's this - maybe it's that', .. the more I try and effort to investigate and find "the truth" in this way, the worse the situation seems to become. Confusion increases. I move away from a sense of certainty, peace, truth or acceptability. I move towards increasing UN-certainty.

Key insight: Trying to figure out and explain what's happening using my own separate ego mind/intelligence creates MORE confusion! I'm barking up the wrong tree!

So I dig and dig and get clever about what 'might' be "the answer", only to sense that this answer is flawed in some way, it doesn't quite explain things, and I just can't get a feeling of 'absolute certainty' around it. It seems like it *might be* true, it's *possibly* a description, it's *could be* what's happening etc... but never a sense of .... "this is".

And you know what, the more I try to do this the worse it gets and the more confused I become and the less I have peace.

So, the lesson here is, clearly... I have made the problem real, and now I am reacting to it by trying to explain or justify or intellectualize 'why' it is happening... rather than IF it is happening. And that means, I'm using the ego, I'm trusting my own self instead of God, I'm looking for answers in the ego world outside of me, I'm trying to find ego proof of the truth, and basically am constantly coming up empty handed.

It can become... exasperating, trying to find the truth where the truth IS NOT. The secret truth is: EVERY ego answer is NOT TRUE! The ego does not and cannot KNOW truth AT ALL!!! All it can do is speculate and guess and wonder and deduce and pretend it has the prowess to figure this all out on its own. And it will never be able to find the truth. The ego cannot wake up to reality!

So the question becomes, where I am going to get my sense of certainty from? Where is the real truth? Where is a truth or an answer or whatever that I can really believe .... yes... this is exactly IT. And I can tell you, it's very possible to come up with numerous ego explanations or rationalizations that all say... yes... this is exactly it, that this is an exact match to the situation and it really seems to be 'this'... only to find loopholes, inconsistencies, doubts, and then some 'other' possibility comes along. This is all because I'm searching within the realm of relativity, partiality, differences, a lack of wholeness and a world of lies.

So where will I find THE answer? What is THE answer? Where will I get that sense of... certainty, peace, joy, and KNOWING, that comes from the 'real truth'.... something I can really get behind and know, this IS it.

What is the real truth? God IS it, of course! God is WHERE the truth is. God is the certainty I seek. God is the answer that I can actually TRUST.... to trust that it will be consistent and unwavering and complete. There is no sense of consistent truth like that in the ego's world. No matter what the ego's explanations or meanings are, NONE of them are the whole truth. And none of them bring the feeling of... ahhhhh yes... that God brings.

But then, you have to realize this... God isn't an explainer, as such. God doesn't spend time diagnosing, or figuring out, or doing any of those activities that the ego mind does in attempting to find out what it thinks is happening. In fact, God doesn't even deal in the realm of 'maybe'. God HAS the answer already, whereas the ego is SEPARATE from the answer so has to go SEEK for it!

"Seek and do not find!" - ACIM

And the harder you seek the truth, the further you get from the TRUTH! Doh!!! I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time :-D

So ... God has really no interest in spending time trying to discern what illusions are doing or what to do about them to 'fix' unreal problems. God doesn't make problems real then OBSESS over trying to solve them, not realizing that believing they are a problem IS the problem.

So as I go to God, I see that God's 'way' is different from the ego's 'way'. God's way is more to do with.... a constant, direct, immediate correction and healing, which solves the problem, instead of all of the dwelling on basically 'keeping' the problem that the ego loves to indulge in while disguised as a problem solver. Hah.

So again... this is about learning to trust He who KNOWS, versus being lost in he who 'thinks' he knows.

And perhaps it's not until we can really let go of all efforts to 'explain real illusions', that we will turn to God in surrender and trust and allow Him, instead, to bring healing to the situation FOR us.

Thank you God.

"If you can accept the ONE GENERALIZATION NOW, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons."

Effectively what the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you is ONE LESSON. This one lesson is to learn how to "teach only love", because you are only love. It's to have a single response of love in all situations, to use love's miraculous power to heal all sickness and to solve all problems. To recognize no orders of difficulty or hierarchies of illusion, to see all forms of suffering as the same effect having the same ONE cause. One problem with one solution to rule them all.

Over time, in the application of what may seem like more specific lessons, ultimately what you are LEARNING is really to simply be as God created you. To be loving. To be singular, or ONE. One in character and substance and nature and identity and attitude and response. One single way of always consistently being the same, in complete disregard for any illusions of forms or differences. Completely ignoring orders of magnitude or difficulty or importance or seriousness or size or duration or any other property.

As we gradually "polish" our minds from seeming to be fragmented, with different responses for different people, different relationships with different individuals, different reactions to different objects, different meanings for different things, we gradually GENERALIZE the learning and move into a much more ABSTRACT state of mind. A much more singular state of mind, whole and one and unified and undivided and free from conflicts. Being so one, this state of mind - miracle mindedness, houses the power of love and truth and sees all things from a single perspective.

This is the ONE LESSON which the Holy Spirit is teaching, behind all the lessons in the workbook, behind all the text material and all thoughts and life lessons/trials, behind all relationships and dramas, the simple movement away from complexity and multiplicities of action, towards simple unification, integration, wholeness and oneness. This lays the groundwork for one-mindedness, which is a state of complete abstract purity and wholeness, in which the entirety of everything acts as one with no conflict or difference or adjustment to conditions.

Unconditional love is completely ignorance of conditions. It ignores the form of problems, the shapes of bodies, the types of sickness, the reasons for their supposed causation, the worldly powers, the forces of nature, the laws of physics, the many rules and regulations. It doesn't even care to need to know how something came about, to analyze it or diagnose it or figure out the complicated pathways of cause and effect. It simply APPLIES ITSELF singularly by giving itself and sharing itself, to increase itself and to supply the lack - the lack of love, the lack of unification, or seeming unwholeness, which is the basis for all suffering.

Learn this ONE LESSON, and you are done with the curriculum forever. See past the illusion of separations, which gives rise to countless numbers of bits and pieces. Look to the one vision to show you the one true reality. And you will rise above the fragmented battlefield into the wholeness of light.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF." "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."

"My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit CAN be justified." "That is why you must teach only ONE lesson. If you are to be conflict free yourselves, you must learn ONLY from the Holy Spirit, and teach ONLY by Him."

"We said before that the message of the Crucifixion was teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE. This is the ONE lesson which is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson which IS one. And only BY teaching it can YOU learn it."

"As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. This becomes easier and easier, as the teacher of God learns to give up his own judgment."

"But the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies it to ALL individuals in ALL situations. Being conflict free, He maximizes ALL efforts and ALL results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal."

"Thus is YOUR healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs ONE lesson that has perfectly been learned."

"As you perceive more and more common elements in ALL situations, the transfer of your training, under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually, you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability IS universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the Laws of God. What is One cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation IS the reinstatement of knowledge."

"The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another."

"the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure" "Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world."

"The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in a spurious kind of generalization, which is really not abstract at all. It will respond in certain specific ways to all stimuli which it perceives as related. In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else."

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized ONLY by its RESULTS. Its GENERALIZATION is demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT.

God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light."

In heaven, in God's mind, all of God is in all parts of God. Not just that his left hand is on one side and his right hand is on another, so to speak, but all parts of him are simultaneously in all places.... if we can speak of it in terms of space. This is God's omnipresence. Not just that He is everywhere, but ALL of Him is in EVERY location at once. In this sense, God is kind of a "blur".

Similarly, when God has a thought, this thought is alive. It is a living being. His thoughts produce souls. The thing is, since God is whole, absolute, and omnipresent, when He creates or has a thought, it produces something which is also WHOLE, complete, omnipresent. This leads to the interesting and mind-boggling situation, that there are now TWO WHOLE THINGS. God and His child.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

His children are not partial children. They are not finite children. They are infinite, absolute, complete, whole, eternal, endless, unlimited beings. They are completely whole in and of themselves. Which means God, who is whole, and who is whole in every part of Himself, creates a part (a thought) which itself JUST AS WHOLE as God is. And now there are two wholes.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." (this is holographic - the whole in every part!)

Now, logically speaking, to the ego, this is impossible. It makes no sense whatsoever. How can there be two wholes? But heaven's nature has an attribute unlike spacetime which makes it completely possible. That attribute is the fact that everything OVERLAPS AND IS SHARED.

An analogy in spacetime would be that you literally occupy the same space as another person's body. That your atoms occupy the same space. They literally are right on top of each other, overlaid like two layers in one. This isn't possible in spacetime because it would cause atoms to explode, ie death would occur. But in heaven it's opposite - and life occurs.

God and his children are one, in that they are each a whole in and of themselves, and yet are so united that they SHARE and OVERLAP everything. One soul has all of God, full access, total unlimited complete "ownership" of everything God has. AND so does another soul. And another. And another. Each soul has everything.

In this world it's not possible to share anything because everything is finite. If I give you some pizza I can only give you half otherwise I'll have none for myself. But in heaven this doesn't happen. Both can have the whole pizza simultaneously. This is possible because they truly SHARE everything. They both simultaneously have full total access to everything. We both get the same full pizza. This unlimited sharing is oneness.

This same dynamic is actually what Jesus is referring to as "miraculous". This is the miraculous nature of the soul. It's able to have everything, while also sharing everything with others. And therefore there IS EVERYTHING LEFT for another soul to have everything.

Similarly when God creates you he does not "run out of" himself. Since God gives you everything, ego would say there is no God left over at the end. This is nonsense. God gives everything AND retains everything. He does not diminish by creating, he increases creation. This defies ego logic but is completely true and miraculous.

Actually it's not even possible TO create anything real, generally speaking, because if reality is already whole and infinite you cannot ADD to it. BUT, God HAS added to it, miraculously, not by "tacking on" extra being, but by SHARING HIMSELF. Making room, so to speak, within his own being, that he SHARES WITH His creations, so that no "extra room" is needed.

"Nothing real can be increased, EXCEPT by sharing."

This is only possible in a system where all the creations are sharing fully with each other, therefore overlapping fully, one with each other and cooperative. It doesn't require the cessation of individuality, only the cessation of conflict. Or more to the point, the absence of selfishness, which is the opposite of sharing.

All things that are real, are permanently miraculous. They are miraculous because they defy the strict boundaries, exclusions, boxes, limits and selfishness of the ego's thought system. In heaven it is not a problem for multiple individuals to have everything for themselves at the same time. This is impossible in this world. It was the selfishness and exclusion and attempt to NOT SHARE, that produced the entire ego thought system and all of space and time.

What that means is, in God's holographic thought system, every part of God, every individual being, is just as totally whole as God is, at the same time, without there being any issues of "no room" or "private ownership" or "hoarding" or selfishness. It's all totally shared. Shared so much that you are literally one with all your brothers. You are literally THEM, in a sense, because you SHARE everything with them. Yet you are still two, and are still brothers. There are many children of God who are all one.

What some people are calling a paradox, is actually MIRACULOUS. It's paradoxical to say many individual beings can co-exist and have everything at once. But miraculously they can. God is a miracle worker. "You are a miracle." "God's miracles." "Miracle are a universal blessing from God". God is ENTIRELY MIRACULOUS AT ALL TIMES. And being miraculous - having this nature - of shared minds, equality, oneness with others, is completely natural. It's how we're supposed to be all the time. It's why being a miracle worker is permanent.

This is also why miracles are not mere shifts in perception because the fact is that you are uncovering your PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS nature. Your soul is always miraculous. You are meant to be miraculous all the time, every day. This is why "miracles are natural, when they are not happening something has gone wrong" and "every day should be devoted to miracles." This is also why Jesus is STILL miraculous even after accepting atonement.

Miracles are not the healing EFFECTS that occur, or the shifts. They are a REMEDY, a cause of healing - a spark of life which resurrects. Healing or shifting is the effect. When you are done shifting, you are STILL miraculous. If shifts were miracles you would stop being miraculous when you reached the atonement. You don't. You are in the process of RETURNING TO being miraculous FOREVER, uncovering your miraculous nature, and resuming the nature of your soul. All beings of light are eternally miracles and eternally miraculous.

There is light, and then there is the absence of light. The absence of light is what we call darkness. But darkness isn't a "something". It a lack of a something.

When light shines and hits an obstacle, it forms a shadow. But the shadow isn't the PRESENCE of darkness, it's the ABSENCE of light.

There is a cause effect relationship. The light, the source, has power over its own absence. When the light shines, it shines away the darkness. The darkness DEPENDS on the absence of light and can only seem to exist WHILE the light is absence. The darkness is a SYMPTOM of a lack of light.

Darkness itself is not a something. It has no properties of its own. It isn't there of its own will and it doesn't cause itself. The darkness cannot come into a room and blot out the light. It cannot make the light go away. Darkness has NO power whatsoever over light.

Light has total power over darkness because light would obliterate darkness, since darkness is ONLY light's absence appearing to be "something".

Let's change the working slightly.

LOVE, shines like a light, and when it seems that LOVE is absent, there is a "lack of love", similar to a darkness or a shadow. But this ABSENCE of love, is not a SOMETHING of its own. It doesn't assert itself, it has NO power, and it cannot STAY on any conditions other than that love is seemingly absent.

A lack of love, is a lack of LIFE, because LOVE IS ALIVE. Just as light is another aspect of the life of love. These are aspects of creation. So when there SEEMS to be a lack of love, there is an illusion of "life's absence". This appearance of life's absence shows up as what we typically call physical SICKNESS.

Sickness, is darkness. It is a SYMPTOM of a LACK of love, light, life. It isn't a SOMETHING in its own right. It cannot CAUSE life to go away any more than darkness can make light go away. The darkness has no power over the light, just as sickness HAS NO POWER OVER LIFE. And similarly, the seeming absence of LOVE has NO POWER to remain when LOVE is given.

Light shines away darkness. LIFE shines away DEATH. Love shines away fear. It's all the same mechanism. It's the same state of logic. Light, life, love, are CAUSES OF EXPRESSION. When they are being expressed, through extension, love, light and life are PRESENT everywhere.

When they are BLOCKED, they seem to hit an obstacle and are "obstructed". There seems to be resistance or something in the way, some unwillingness or reason why it isn't being allowed to enter. This produces a SHADOW, or a darkness, or a seeming lack of life and love.

This lack of life and love, also of power, shows up as physical illness. It represents the idea that LIFE IS DIMINISHED or that the light is dimmed. It results from a lack of the extension of love.

"Extension is the mind's only function. Block this and you have blocked health because you've blocked the minds' joy."

Whether it be brain damage or cancer or a weak heart or a skin disease or a broken leg or paralysis or diabetes or whatever.... these are just FORMS of the same thing. They are just different forms of an illusion of a "lack of life", ie a LACK OF LOVE.

Sickness is not SOMETHING in its own right, they are the LACK of a something. And that's very different. If the SOMETHING were to return, these LACKS would be FILLED, with life and love, and the appearance of the something's ABSENCE would disappear.

"Miracles supply a lack"

"Miracles are energizing"

"Miracles mean life"

"Miracles are a spark of life"

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

Therefore, to HEAL SICKNESS in all its forms, you must recognize you are not looking at a "real something", it is not a REAL SICKNESS. It is a LACK OF HEALTH. And there is a major difference. Because HEALTH can be SUPPLIED, to address the lack. Health is LIFE, and life is the power of love, and it is light. You can GIVE LIFE to another person by supplying their lack.

This enables you to heal the sick and to raise the dead. Or in other words, to supply the LACK of life which is showing up as a withered, deformed, malfunctioning, broken corpse. And by SUPPLYING what was MISSING, which was the love/light/life/power of God, you therefore ADDRESS the actual problem.

The problem was that life was lacking and was blocked. You supplied life. There is now a PRESENCE OF LIFE. And the HOLE has been filled. And the light has been BRIGHTENED. And the love has been increased. And now the signs of life spring up and the body comes to symbolize HEALTH again, radiant and lovely and vital, representing the INCREASED HOLINESS/wholeness in the mind of the recipient.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

How do you supply a lack of life, love, light to another? How do you ENLIGHTEN them? How do you ENLIVEN them? How do you ENLOVE them? You do it by SUPPLYING IT. You receive it for yourself, through your own purification and healing, and the receipt of God's power and love, and then you GIVE IT. You SUPPLY it to another. You broadcast it, send it, radiate it, transmit it to them.

"Miracles are a spark of life". You GIVE the spark of life to another person. It resurrects them from the inside out.

And where there is life, there is health. And where there is love, there is healing. And where there is light, there is truth. And love and life and light have SHONE AWAY sickness because it WAS ONLY the absence of love and light and life.

There is no sickness, just as there is no darkness. There is only life/love/light of its seeming absence. And when the life/love/light COMES to fill the emptiness, to wipe away the blocks to life, LIFE INCREASES, and healing takes place, and now there is a miracle of resurrection.

"Did you see the holiness that shone in both you and your brother, to bless the other? That is the purpose of your holy relationship."

"Father, forgiveness is the light You chose to shine away all conflict and all doubt, and light the way for our return to You."

"And in its place the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."

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

"Let the holiness of God's Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours."

"Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it from you."

"Feel this one Self in you, and let It shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son of God Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you and His Love forever yours."

"Eternity will shine away the world."

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our egos counsel us to separate ourselves off from others. That means identifying solely with your own body, and not with or beyond the bodies of others. It also means seeing yourself as completely cut off from others. No-one else is allowed to occupy the same space as you. You share nothing with anyone. You are isolated, imprisoned and alone inside your body.

The ego the tells you that because you are separate, it makes total sense to suggest you can attack someone and remain separate from the attack. That anything you express, anything you do, will not hurt you but will hurt someone else. Anything you give, is not given to you. Anything you hurl at another, you do not share in. Any way that someone else is wrong, is in no way associated with you. And you are completely dis-associated from everyone.

In its rage and hatred, the ego has you trying to emphasize the separation between you and others as much as possible. To want nothing to do with another person is the ideal mechanism for increasing the separation. Wanting to be distanced from them, pushing them away, destroying them, and making sure all guilt and sin is loaded onto their plate alone, is its whole ambition. This increases the sense of being separate and guarantees that you escape all the consequences of their sinfulness.

As a strategy this seems to all make sense. On the fundamental premise that you are ONLY you and you share nothing with anyone else, it's obvious that you have a great opportunity. You can easily blame someone without being blamed, hurt someone without being hurt, shovel all your guilt into someone's hands and absolve yourself of it, and generally identify your "self" as "not them." This is the egos entire approach to everything. Separate and be saved.

But what the ego will also be careful not to tell you is that in order to be separate, you must also lose something. Having attacked everything other than separation, it hates all the things that you stand to lose by your attacks, and believes they are not worth having. But there is a long list of very worthwhile valuable things that you DO lose when you regard yourself as "not one with them."

You lose all sense of love, all relationship, all communication, all safety and trust, all peace of mind, all freedom, all sharing, all inheritance from God, all power, all life, all holiness and all happiness. It goes flying out the window as soon as you try to be special by making yourself separate from others.

As soon as you try to stop sharing, you become selfish. This selfishness is an attempt to gain something exclusively for yourself, but has the side effect of excluding you from what others have. You seem to gain, AND lose, at the same time. And everything you lose in your special separated state is everything worth having. You have to convince yourself that it's not even there, or valuable, or worth having at all, in order to justify being so separate, barren, bereft and empty.

In the effort to have everything exclusively for yourself, in your selfish egotism, all you end up doing is having nothing. In grasping to hold onto things they completely slip through your fingers. Possessiveness leads to lack and sacrifice. All efforts to make something yours alone makes it no-ones. This is the cost of being separate.

So when you are being separate and are scapegoating and projecting sin and guilt onto others, trying to have it not apply to you, to exclude yourself from, recall also what you are giving up. You lose whenever you think you win. You sacrifice whenever you think you gain an advantage. You become empty whenever you shut someone out. And you become not yourself, whenever your sense of identity is not shared with everyone.

The question then becomes, is it worth it? You have to first recognize that you are being separate. Secondly you have to recognize that this separation has a major cost. Thirdly you have to value the things that you've lost as a result of being separate. And fourth you have to want to regain them. Only in the awareness that separation brings with it a whole host of deprivation, suffering, unhappiness and lack of peace, will you have an incentive to turn away from it.

You are not solely gaining when you separate. You are not getting off scott free. You are not winning without losing. You are not acquiring everything and sacrificing nothing. You are not surviving while others are dying. You are not escaping consequences. You are not becoming more free or more happy or better off. And you certainly are not feeling good in any real way.

The ego doesn't want you looking at the COST of being separate because it doesn't want you being aware that you're missing out on anything. It doesn't want you thinking that there are any downsides to being separate. It doesn't want you being aware that when you project guilt in anger you are still attacking yourself. It doesn't want you to realize that by isolating yourself and being exclusive you are leaving yourself out of the greatest party that ever happened. Nor does it want you remembering that deep down inside you want to be reunited with everyone in love.

Your real identity is shared with everyone in and as christ. Your real experience is to have everything at the same time as everyone else has everything. God's generosity is the guarantee that everything belongs to everyone, and everyone IS everyone. You are literally one with and a part of and shared entirely with every other child of God. And accepting this is the acceptance of atonement. You are not just you. You are all of us. And you are never alone.

You might ask what does miraculousness mean, because God is also miraculous and all living beings in reality are miraculous in nature. There are references to "God's miracles" and "You are a miracle" for example, referring to creations in heaven. There is of course other context to do with miracles "in this world" or on this level, used for healing and such.

But miraculousness itself is a little trickier to describe. It has something to do with the golden rule relationship between multiple beings in a holographic system. It's the way by which for example God can create multiple sons and each of the sons contains the whole of God and is whole in and of itself and shares the same whole, yet is still a created thing absolutely created in its own right. That it can be one and many simultaneously - there is a transcendental nature to that which goes beyond non-duality and duality. It's what most people would describe as a paradoxical thing - seemingly impossible.

For example there is this line which mentions the miraculous power of the soul:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This is talking about a transcendental holographic ability of the soul in which even if it were to have literally everything for itself, there WOULD STILL be absolutely everything accessible to everyone else at the same time. Its possible for the soul to be the whole and have the whole and give and share the whole, and each soul can have the whole all at once simultaneously, without any sense of compromise or taking turns or lack or whatever else. The soul transcends these ideas because it's part of the holographic principle in the mind of God, in which the whole is in every part and every part is whole.

To boil that down, if you ask yourself about what makes it possible for God who is everything to create another whole being, whereby that being IS distinct and a whole being in its own right, yet STILL is 100% one with God and sharing everything with God, WITHOUT losing its distinctiveness. .... how those two things can be true at once - oneness and manyness. .... trying to put your finger on what that quality is, that possibility, that nature of God that allows this to happen, it is quite literally MIRACULOUS, and it defies absolutely all explanation.

Personally I believe it to be somehow related to the INFINITE nature of God which makes everything possible, such as in the will of God being able to do anything, even things which seem utterly impossible to us. The creation of many sons of God IS a miracle and is made possibly BY miraculousness - the miraculous nature of God. God is literally miraculous - and the miraculous-ness is driven by the holographic inter-relationships and symbiotic harmony of God and his creations, which are living thoughts, who are many and one at the same time.

Another aspect to this is that it's all about LIFE. Pure life. God is pure life. Life without the slightest notion of death or change or suffering of any kind. Pure immortality. God's eternal nature. Totally 100% life forever. The essence of life itself. THAT is GIVEN in the creation whereby God literally creates his children simply by WILLING IT, through an act of GIVING LIFE. He thus extends and creates literal beings that are ALIVE - souls, that are so immortal and alive that they live forever.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life."

On Earth, what we call miracles reflects that, something that kind of emanates out of the mind from a state of LOVE, in which there is unconditional giving - maximal service - where a person who is "more alive" or whose mind is more aware of being purely immortal, gives LIFE ITSELF to those who seem to be trying to play dead or who are in darkness or suffering. That giving of LIFE (could call it love, light, power etc), literally resurrects and heals and returns people to life, and can do the same to their bodies as well. Because there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do, literally.

Here from the CoA edition or Notes... "Remember a miracle is a spark of Life. It shines through the darkness and brings in the light. You must begin to forget and remember."

Don't think of miracles as a STATE therefore. There is a state of miracle mindedness and miracle readiness, but that is not MIRACLE DOING or MIRACLE WORKING. Working a miracle HAS to be an act of GIVING TO ANOTHER, or to CREATE ANOTHER. A spark of LIFE has to come out of you and enter another to enlighten their mind and heal it. It's the most open loving unconditional pure blessing that you can give to anyone. It literally reverses death and sickness and makes them impossible, REPLACING them with life itself. There is massive power in this because it uses the power of God.

You being in darkness and shifting your perception up to a greater level of "being alive" is in a sense a miracle that you work for yourself, but the purpose of doing that is purification so that you can become able to GIVE miracles to others.

"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

You can only give the miracles you have received, meaning that as you heal you become an instrument for healing, because you become more alive and more loving and more able to GIVE what you have received. The more you give the more you receive also and miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver by increase the total amount of love - which is through a similar mechanism to how the kingdom of God increases and how ideas of love strengthen when they are given away - giving and receiving are one - thats part of what miraculousness means.

Ultimately the performing of miracles CREATES LIFE that has eternal life and lives forever. You create your creations in heaven with God and your brothers through miraculous acts of life-giving power. On earth you can't use it to create because of the separation/ego etc, but you can use it to restore and heal which is a similar use of giving life. And this is what RESURRECTION is all about.

Recall this about miracles GIVING LIFE:

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

What you have to give, what is within you, is LIFE ITSELF. Pure essence of livingness, shared with and given by God. Awareness, presence, being, vision, creative power etc. You GIVE YOURSELF. You GIVE GOD. You GIVE LIFE to others. That is miracle working as a "creative energiser", which you become able to do when you have done sufficient purification through "working a miracle for yourself" ie focusing on resurrecting your mind and moving yourself back closer to identification with your immortal spirit.

The so-called "shift in perception" is a SIDE EFFECT of temporary changes in the mind, it is in and of itself not a miracle. "Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. It is purely a means, while any type of healing is a result."

A shift in perception may be called an EFFECT of a miracle, a healing result, it itself is not a miracle. A miracle is a spark of life from the power of God extended through you from God which has the power to extend to others through you, CAUSING perception to shift IF it is needed. Miracles have a whole lot to do with CAUSATION, not passive states of perception.

To transmit large amounts of love to someone, supplies a lack and heals them. All suffering is simply the illusion of a lack of love, ie belief in sin and fear.

But the ego will believe that this undertaking of exprsesion will exhaust you, threaten you, deplete you and will take a great effort to push this love outward. It believes that all expression is a SACRIFICE AND A LOSS. That you will have to burn yourself out to help anyone, expending great effort above and beyond what you are capable of. And that you will have to do all of this yourself without divine help.

The solution to this is the recognition that your proper function in the machinery of love, is in its EXTENSION, not its sourcing. All love is of God. You should ALLOW HIM to extend love through you, and your "effort" should mainly be in stepping back, opening the door to the light, and being a CONDUIT, THROUGH which the love expresses. This requires your own mind to be open to love.

If you think that you are the one giving this, you will become an unhealed healer and deplete yourself, because you are really trying to force there to be a power. And you who see yourself as finite and limited will see this power as limited, requriing you to force it more The power has to be acknoweldged as being OF GOD, and via the Holy Spirit, so that you ALLOW HIM to be the therapist.

"To acknowledge that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The thereapist merely lets healing be." "The Holy Spirit is the only therapist."

Our healing function is therefore to act as a PORTAL, open and free from fear or restriction or limit, which acts as a LENS, to allow the light of God to shine THROUGH. To broadcast and transmit to and be shared with another. To be this portal YOU DO have to be in a loving, spiritual, purified state yourself, not simply so that you do not interfere but so that you can reflect and RELAY what is being given TO and THROUGH you.

If you repeat something along the lines of "I extend God's love to you", this is a good place to start. You reach within or above, find the light, love and power of God, tune into the Holy Spirit, and with great willingness act as a RELAY STATION to extend HIS love to the patient. "I give God's love to you" would be another way to look at this. "I extend God's love to you".

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed." You receive the love by giving it and through your own healing. You express the love by extending it in which giving and receiving are one.

It is also true that if you believe you are currently lacking in love, which is highly likely if you are still working on your own atonement, you will recognize yourself as NOT having what it takes to heal anyone. You will fear healing. You will feel inadequate and weak and incapable. And you will try to depend on your own knowledge to make something happen, even though you have NO CLUE how to heal anything. This will make you feel TENTATIVE and HESITANT about even trying to heal.

But what you will find is that, as you step aside and plug yourself into the power source, and start to "get the ball rolling" by STIMULATING the flow of love through you, simultaneously your openness to the love will increase. As will its effectiveness.

The ego would say, if you start out with hardly any love, you have nothing to give. And it would say that because you lack love, there is no way to increase the love, and so giving it risks your own depravation. But you will in fact find that if you simply TRY, and start from wherever you are AT, and you start to "talk yourself into it", by at least efforting to extend God's love, you will find that your rusty pipes will open up, the flow of love will increase, it will BENEFIT YOU as it increases, and this benefit to you will also raise your own light and increase your ability to flow it.

"I will heal (myself) as I let Him teach me to heal (others)."From a stationary starting point, you can simply assert, "I love you [person]" or "I feel and extend God's love to you" or whatever. And as you repeat this over and over, you WILL start to tune into love, and feel it, and this will begin to heal you, and raise you up, and plug you in even more strongly. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver".

By giving, you affirm that you have it. By giving, you open up to receive even more. The more you give, the more it FLOWS abundantly. Giving even when you believe you have nothing TO give, starts the process and gets things moving. Your natural function here is to SHINE BRIGHTLY, to emit a large amount of intense light. And you can only do this by EXTENDING the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Not by "burning out" of your own resources.

Ultimately when your mind is very loving and giving and receptive to love, it shines brightly and the light shining THROUGH you from God shines INTO the other person's mind and energy field. This lifts them up as well as you. You will feel not only lighter but stronger, your energy will feel more intense, and you will feel more powerful. And you will feel noticeably happier. And if you had stuff to be healed as well, you will find YOU receive a healing as you attempt to heal others.

We fear to begin this process only on a basis of the apparent LACK of love that we currently experience. We think we are are just too WEAK to even get off the starting blocks. That we don't have enough to give. Or just feel too unloving, honestly, to really want to help anyone, because we sense that giving a lot of love to someone is going to bring healing to ourselves also, and that is going to entail a challenge to our ego and our own suffering. We literally stand in the way of healing until we have some willingness to TRUST and to OPEN UP and at least TRY, from whatever our starting point is. And to do what we have to be willing to BE healed as well.

This is why it is vital to be willing to at least ATTEMPT to perform miracles, to express love, even if you yourself are lacking, and even if you are not enlightened yet, because it is this OFFERING of love that UNLOCKS your own receipt of help and healing. And it is through this GIVING that you accelerate your own RECEIVING of illumination.

You can of course take your sweet time and simply wait until you are "naturally" expressing love consistently all the time, but being willing to EXPERIMENT with this and TRY to heal, even as an unhealed healer, will help you to move forward on your own path faster, AND begin to show you RESULTS through your efforts with others. And by these results you will see PROOF that you have the power of God in you.

Miracle working is an ABILITY to be practiced. "Doing them brings conviction in the ability". You are not yet convinced that they can even be done, because you doubt your natural function as light of the world and as co-healer with the Holy Spirit. But by ATTEMPTING to perform them you will learn and hone the ability, learn from your egoic interference and failure, and move more rapidly towards consistent miracle working.

This may sound like a sweeping generalisation but it is true. It applies to EVERYONE. EVERY sick person has REJECTED health, love and God. They do NOT want healing.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

When a person is out of touch with God, and with love, they enter into fear. Fear and love are opposites. In the fear they are confused and are now afraid of love. This requires not recognising love AS love, and instead framing it as an enemy. So now love is perceived to be "unloving" and a threat. Which also means something unloving (death) begins to be "loved."

In this state the person has a backwards perception and a split mind. They see God as harmful and evil as helpful. They see fear as something to trust and they won't trust real help.

They might be complaining that they want to not suffer, but at the same time they want to suffer. They might be saying they want healing, but they push it away. They see help as dangerous, especially to their experience of being weakened and unsafe.

Love and healing are now viewed as poison and an attack, something to stay away from, something to reject. The fearful person is saying NO to God, denying love and reality. They literally believe however that they are saying YES to what they believe is true - their allies in the ego, in the body, in fear and suffering.

Sickness and its physical symptoms are now defences against the truth - against love and God - to keep them away. Because God is misperceived as the enemy. The mind is sick because it is attempting to deny mind, causing self repression and self attack. This shows up in the body as symbolic physical symptoms of sickness and death.

The fearful person thinks that by shielding themselves from love they will be better off. To get away from eternal life is seen as a way to live longer. To be distanced from wholeness is seen as a protection. They say they don't want to die, but they do.

This places all healers in a somewhat difficult situation. The patient is ALWAYS in a state of fear, suspicious of help, afraid of healing, wary of their defences being removed. They don't want you to do anything at all in case it increases their suffering, even if what you're offering is relief. The sick person is always saying "help me, but don't help me."

This can especially be seen for example in someone who has induced tremendous bodily pain. The body can be so painful, and the person so consumed and overwhelmed by the pain, that they begin to not want anyone to do anything in case it might make things worse. They will reject sources of relief and will be fearful of even physical remedies and medicines.

So now the challenge for the "therapist" or healer is that the people in need of help are always rejecting help. Deep down they want it, but in their mind they do not trust it. How do you get through to someone who thinks that everything you're offering is going to make them worse off? How do you talk to someone who has lost their mind and believes the opposite of what is true?

Essentially, all sick people do not want to be healed. If they did truly want wholeness and love sickness would be impossible for them. They have not sided with love, they have sided against it. So at the same time they're now starting to experience the unfortunate suffering that comes with the ego insanity, while secretly wanting it. They want it because it serves a purpose, to protect them from their enemy.

So the issue maybe isn't so much that the person is having symptoms and is insane, it's more a matter of them not being willing to be mistaken or to receive help. To let themselves be loved. They don't want love to enter because it seems to threaten their sense of ego-identified self, suggesting the thing they cling to would be taken from them.

It's like a scared animal, hiding in a corner in the dark, terrified of a person approaching, barking and making noises to keep them away, unwilling to trust and very tentative about allowing the person to help them. Even if the person could be offering food and water and healing and support.

This is the unfortunate situation we're faced with. Sick people want to be sick and do not entirely want help. But at the same time, part of them does. No-one in their right mind would want to suffer, but in insanity it becomes appealing. The mind has to somehow be changed, its perceptions reversed, and its belief system upended. The fear of God, of love, and of awakening, has to be undone and the whole thought system reversed.

I think this probably applies to all of us, whether we consider ourselves healed or sick, sane or insane, far gone or a work in progress. We're all resisting God and love to some degree, which means we're all in need to being "talked off the ledge" a bit. Everyone who denies God is choosing death and is suicidal to varying degrees.

The way out of course is with a little willingness, a willingness to be mistaken, to want a better way, to open up to a light and a truth bigger than what was believed before. A desire to become closer to God, to forgive, to let go of the fight and the war and the resistance. Something in the mind has to change if there is to be healing.

"He has asked for love, but only that he might give it to you. You do not love yourself."

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

"Sometimes the illness has sufficiently great a hold over an individual's mind to render him inaccessible to Atonement. In this case, one may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the OUTSIDE is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-Right-Minded (or the sick) is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed to a straight and undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening."

"Anger is never justified." - ACIM

Anger is not natural. It is very common, but not natural or healthy. Anger isn't really a valid feeling. It's actually a device for projecting something. Usually we use it to project guilt or some other hurt. It's a way of hurling stuff out of the mind and trying to pin it on someone or something else. It's a form of irresponsibility.

Anger is also caused by something other than itself, so it's not like some kind of core feeling or inherent central nature. It's a reaction to something else, twice removed from the problem, and only comes about when denial is also being used.

If you have a pain or hurt or guilt or whatever and you try to deny it, you're trying to dissociate yourself from it, disown it, and want to get it out of your awareness/mind. You do that by projecting it and trying to associate it with someone or something else. And the main skapegoating device used to accomplish this is anger.

Behind anger there is always something else going on. Deeper than the anger there is some kind of hurt or pain or fear. It's very easy for fears and hurts and guilts to transform into what appears to be anger, but this ins't their true form. Anger is always a way of hiding something else.

Not because you actually have anger, but because denying deeper feelings leads to an attempt to project those pains or put them out of your mind, which hurls them outward in a kind of broadcast. If you deny being afraid, you will feel angry instead. If you deny feeling guilty you'll become angry. If you deny that you feel hurt or at a loss or deprived in some way it can turn into anger. But the anger always comes after a perceived attack.

The anger is not a primary core feeling, it's a secondary layer on top of it designed to cover feelings up. You first see yourself as hurt or attacked, you then justify that because you didn't seem to ask for it (weren't aware of how you chose it) you are justified in being angry, and then you use that justification to hurl the blame outward.

Ego likes to use anger because it splits the mind and increases separation and insanity. While you are in denial and projecting pain outwardly your mind is dissociating and splitting and trying to pretend that the pain is not inside itself. But ideas do not leave the mind that conceive of them, so it stays in the mind in a disguised form, hidden behind a layer of denial.

Essentially anger doesn't work. It's an attempt to get rid of something deeper while keeping it. It doesn't make the pain go away. It doesn't heal anything. All it does is disguise and hide and make it seem like it doesn't belong to you. It's just a projected form of denial that says "this is not mine."

Anger is always unjustified because it's always based on a lie. But while the lie is kept in place, it seems as though the only problem solving solution is to project the pain. This won't work, but the mind will believe it's working, but that it needs to intensify the projection in order to get more pain out.

By becoming even more angry your mind reasons that it will be saved, or that by pinning the blame for the wound on something else you can be alleviated of the pain. This leads to a closed kind of scenario in which it seems all you can do is rage more to try to induce more relief, and the more you rage the better off you'll be. But this doesn't actually work because the mind is just splitting and becoming more and more insane. Ans besides, rage is not peace and attack will never induce healing.

Anger never ever works. It is a faulty coping mechanism. It's an attempt not to solve the real problem and to keep it hidden. Behind the anger if you look you'll always find something deeper like some kind of feeling of hurt or loss or guilt or fear. Something that came before it. And all you're doing is using the anger to try to make it go away. Anger is like an absence of feeling, ultimately an absence of love.

Feelings of hurt and attack and pain are always based on faulty perceptions that something outside of you has done something against your will, and that you are suffering as a result. This can NEVER be true because you are an immortal being that is permanently perfect and can never be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

So it always starts off with your mind going into a self attack, insinuating that you are not invulnerable, disowning the power of decision and pretending you are not the one causing your own experience, projecting out that responsibility onto others and the world, accusing them of sin, resulting in a perception that they're attacking you and you didn't ask for it, leading to hurt and pain which your mind itself puts into you to correspond to the projection, which pictures you as a victim, which justifies being angry, so then you project out anger in retaliation against the feedback loop of your own projected belief. It's pretty convoluted and crazy and a bottomless pit of hell.

You have to get further into your mind and find out the real deeper causes of things, the root issue behind all problems. It's never to do with what the world has done to you and always to do with your choice to perceive yourself unfairly treated, hurt, attacked, vulnerable etc... some kind of victim role that isn't true of your immortal nature. In that sense you are always and only the one who attacks yourself, undermining yourself first and then blaming it on the world. "Only the self-accused condemn."

This is why anger is totally unfounded and completely irrelevant in all scenarios and situations. You simply have no reason to be upset if you are immortal being that can never be hurt, made guilty, caused to be afraid or hurt for any reason. If you are not happy or at peace you have made a wrong decision and have chosen to see yourself as deprived. And no amount of blaming that on anyone or anything will make it go away. But you can always choose again.

Someone who is in their right mind, who is sane, and who is correct, and who is not believing illusions, has a whole mind and recognizes what is true.

Their mind is filled with love because love is the quality of what is natural and correct. A natural mind, or being miracle minded, is a state of correct accurate perception. It's an awareness of the truth and a willingness to accept it.

If a person makes a mistake, produces an error, or slips into a fantasy, in which the truth is mistaken for something else, they go into illusions. Their mind has become incorrect. This is simply a mistake, an error they are making. It is not a sin.

In this state, the "curriculum" now becomes to "learn love" again. The aim is to restore the mind to its wholeness, to return to sanity, to regain right mindedness, and to recognize what is true. The only thing the student needs is the correction of the mistake.

A loving teacher, such as the Holy Spirit, recognizes that the student has simply made a mistake in their understanding or grasp of the truth, or what is real, and therefore needs a simple correction.This loving teacher offers and provides correction in a loving and gentle manner, which does not dwell on the error or make the student out to be sinful for making it, and especially He does not move into inducing guilt for having made a mistake. He is also not deceived by the illusion. He recognizes that all mistakes are simply innocent mistakes which do not call for any kind of punishment.

True correction, to such a teacher, is to restore the sanity of the mind. To return the mind to a loving condition. The curriculum thus is to re-learn love, and to accept what is true. To reintegrate the REAL ANSWER to correct the wrong one. And this real answers corrects the false conclusion which the student came to.

In order for the student to be corrected, they have to move upwards, back into the truth and into love. They have to become the truth and the love in order to BE correct. To be as God intended. To be real. They must become part of the atonement itself.

The movement away from the truth placed the student into a state of mistakenness, and since this seemed to be an investment in LACK of love, the correction is actually the SUPPLY of the lack of love to the student.

In other words, punishing the student for a mistake will not move them into a loving state. It will not correct them. What they need is to be treated with love and gentleness, and healed. The loving teacher needs to show the student a larger truth, a light, which correctly frames the mistake they made AS a mistake and not a true sin, so that they can SEE what the truth really is.

Upon seeing and recognizing the truth, the student can acknowledge it and move into it, accepting atonement. Their mind becomes whole again and they are restored to sanity and to love.

A miracle therefore, is the blessing of love and forgiveness given by the loving teacher, which could be any teacher of God, which recognizes the sinless innocence of the student, the fact they are temporarily mistaken, the recognition of the truth, and the offering of what the truth is. The truth is offered by being GIVEN to the student through an expression of love.

The truth, or love, must actually be GIVEN by the teacher, TO the student, or from the giver to the receiver, so that the student can HAVE what they were missing. The student must RECEIVE the love, the correction, allowing it to heal their mind and perception.

That which transfers from above to below, from "those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less", since "miracles supply a lack", is a blessing of love and life and clarity and power, which corrects the mind of the student and clarifies what is true. In this sense, a miracle falls like a drop fo healing rain from those who are closer to heaven, down, onto those who need resurrection, bring them back to life. We can thus say that ALL miracles raise the dead.

This is why a miracle can correct a mistake in the mind, undo level confusion, resurrect the dead, raise the level of communication, unite brothers, and intervene for their holiness. It is a blessing, an emitting of life and power, which is bestowed upon someone and shone into their mind, so that the person is reminded of what is true and awareness of light increases. Miracles correct the mistakes the student was making by shining a light which enlightens their mind.

"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."

"A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed."

"undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle.

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"

"Miracles bear witness to truth."

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.""Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels."

"I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.""Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions."

"The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears."

"A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.""Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

"The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false."

In A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is a movement away from believing that illusions are true and real, towards recognizing that they are in fact not true or real. This becomes clear when your awareness increases sufficiently to reveal a larger truth, which shows you the ways in which the "smaller truth", i.e. illusory lies, are in fact limited and untrue.

Forgiveness, as a process, is also a movement from unawareness, in which you don't see clearly or fully, to a state of expanded awareness where you see more of the whole picture and with greater accuracy. As you go through this, what seemed to be true of your illusions starts to be recognized as being not as true as the larger truth.

It's a matter of becoming clear about what REALLY is true, and what is actually false. Getting truth and illusions confused is the ENTIRE content of the ego, and the entire content of the separation from God - which is you trying to make illusions become reality.

As you become more aware of what the truth really is, and less convinced about what the truth is not, your discernment of true vs false becomes clearer. You learn to recognize the truth for what it is (not the illusion you thought it was), and recognize the illusion for what it is (not the reality you thought it was).

Through forgiveness you will eventually reach a truly, fully "forgiving" state of awareness, which recognizes ALL of the truth, which is that nothing has really happened, there is only innocence, and therefore there is nothing to forgive.

Now, there are a couple of pieces of the puzzles of performing miracles which I did not really get, but which certain Christian practitioners tried to describe. They would say that you have to a) believe in Jesus ("be a believer"), and b) have "faith". Since their belief in Jesus was heavily wrapped in Christian theology, I had trouble discerning exactly WHAT it was about Jesus that I was supposed to believe - such as that He died for our sins and such, which is not an ACIM teaching. I also have never really 'got' what faith means, because it was never explained in a clear context.

But I've become clearer on this now.

The only way that "believing in Jesus" and "having faith" become meaningful, is when you can discern that the ENTIRE WORLD IS AN ILLUSION. It is necessary to have a really strong clear distinction between what is TRUE, and what is FALSE. So as you go about your life believing in the world, (even if you're trying to learn not to believe in it you probably still do), while you're in this sort of in-between phase of "some of the truth is true, but some of it I don't get", you will also be similarly confused about what it means to believe in Jesus, and what faith is.

If parts of the world are real to you, in spite of what you might claim otherwise, this HAS to mean that you in part also believe that God is not entirely real. It also means that you have 'faith in' the ego, and faith in sickness and death.

Now, this isn't something that people want to admit but, the simple fact is, either you believe that God is real, fully, or in some way you don't believe it. And that displaced belief will be put into a conviction that the ego is real - that it is truth, and that everything it claims is true. That will go on to mean that when shit happens in the world and it seems real, part of you will be trying to look to God for a way out of it, but part of you will be attached to believing in it. And so you are now torn, or your faith is divided. And Jesus says faith cannot serve two masters.

So what needs to happen is, through proper forgiveness, we need to become REALLY CLEAR about the distinction between reality, and illusions. We can' have this mishmash of partial reality and partial illusion. It will confuse us and rob truth of meaning.

To be able to believe in Jesus, means that you believe Jesus is 100% reality, He is 100% love, He is 100% truth, 100% immortal, 100% innocent, 100% at peace etc. He shares this truth with God 100%.

IF that is true, if that's your definition of truth, then it HAS to mean, that anything not of God is not truth. So now you need to be very clear, WHAT is not of God? Because if you go on believing God created the world, and yet the world seems to be the place where things fuck up big time, then... well, now you are super confused. And of course you are confused because it makes no sense that God would create a world with sickness in it, because that means God creates sickness. So now if you were to follow that truth, and you were trying to find some healing or peace from experiencing sickness, how the heck would you have any kind of power to turn to if that power believes in sickness? You'd be hopeless.

So... to believe in Jesus means to believe in God, that God is the one and only truth, and only things which are completely in accord with unconditional love are of God. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else at all can be permitted to take up the label of "real" or "true".

So then you have to ask yourself, did God create the world? No. He did not. So that means the world is not real. And that's mind-blowing, if you really take in deeply. It completely undermines your entire view of reality - or rather, your mistaken view in which you think illusions are reality. Because all this time you've been thinking you're living in a 'real' world and now you find out, it's a tricking illusion pretending to be real!

But this is how you can then have faith. You can have faith because, now that you believe in God's truth, and you know that God's truth is the only truth, and that this world is NOT a part of God's truth, that means whenever any shit happens in the world, you can BYPASS it, OVERLOOK it (forgiveness), and HOLD STRONG to the truth as God would have it be. That means, NO MATTER WHAT is in front of your face, no matter what happens, no matter how serious it seems, no matter how final - even death, YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT, because believing in it would have to mean - you really do not believe in God all the way.

But if you DO believe in God, then.... no matter what happens, no matter how serious, you do NOT pay it attention, you do NOT believe in it, and you instead express and extend GOD'S REALITY in place of it. You cancel it out. You overwrite it. You clarify that the problem is NOT real, is NOT the truth, and you replace it with love. This shows the nothingness of the illusion, puts everything in its correct order, and corrects all confusion. It also produces miracles.

So you have faith by believing that God's truth is true, and that this is shared by Jesus.... and you have faith by holding true to that fact regardless of how the world seems to be. The only question of your faith wavering is when you believe the illusion enough that your belief in God's power wavers, and that means you've temporarily forgotten that God's truth is true. You've believed in the ego again. So you lose faith when that happens.

This kind of faith in God is not blind faith or just 'hope'... it is CERTAINTY, it is KNOWING, it is TRUTH, and it is CORRECTION.

Holy Spirit interjected while writing that the word "trust" is really what faith means. Trusting God. Trusting the real truth. Trusting that BECAUSE of what the truth is, that "this problem" is not insurmountable or irreversible. It is that knowing of the truth, that trust in the truth, which powers miracles.

So forgiveness leads you to miracle mindedness, a clarity about what is true and what is false gives you miracle mindedness, and a certainty about the truth being true (and that therefore the world is not real) gives you the foundation for faith. Your trust/faith in God's Way gives you miracle-working capabilities.

To get there you're going to have to question the validity of every way that you're trying to find truth in the world, because it means that you're looking for truth in an illusion. It means you're not clear yet about what is true and what is false. The world is false - head's up!. Entirely false. It is entirely an illusion that doesn't really exist or mean anything at all. Every time you 'seek' for truth in it, you will not find it, because it is not there. You need to learn to stop trying to do that and instead believe in God.

The miracles will flow from there.

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"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."

The golden rule is the nature and law of God. In God, everything is equal and shared. What applies to one brother applies to all brothers. What is true of me is true of you. But even moreso, because brothers are ONE, they literally share identity and soul. I am in you and you are in me. We are part of each other. We are irrevocably joined and share everything, even our selves.

We can describe this as the golden rule, in which what I do to you I also do to myself. There is no option or clause that your brother MIGHT treat you a certain way. You treat your brother a certain way SO THAT you are treated a certain way, because you ARE him, and so you are DIRECTLY treating yourself how you would wish to be treated.

There are no exceptions to this and it is impossible to violate or break this law or be outside of it. It is always operating, whether you are accepting of it and living by it, or whether you are attempting to ignore it and pretend it doesn't apply to you.

If we are one, then I have a shared interest with you. Whatever I do to you I do to myself. Whatever I give to you I receive. Giving and receiving are one. If I were to attack you, I'd be attacking myself. Therefore, it's in my own best interests to ONLY LOVE, otherwise I will make MYSELF suffer, and by my own hand. I have to INCLUDE you, otherwise I will suffer from exclusion.

"Ego" is nothing more than an attempt to oppose, deny and ignore this law. It is an attempt to pretend that it does not apply. That I am not you and you are not me. That we are not equal. That what applies to me doesn't apply to you, because we are different. If we are separate, we not one, and now I should have my own selfish interests - survival of the fittest.

It's like, were both standing on the same floor. Then there is a separation, like an earthquake. The floor cracks in two. I now seem to be on one side, and you on the other. But also the heights of the floors have shifted, and mine is slightly above yours. The two floors are now separate and different and not equal.

This is the separation from God, the seeming split in the mind, which suggests that instead of us all being one, we are now two, split apart, separated off, isolated in our own private territories, and kept apart. We can't seem to share because we can't span the divide of the broken ground, and everything we do is separate.

On this basis of separation, or not being able to share, the breakdown in unity, the collapse of oneness, the arising of exclusion, and the seeming imprisonment on either side of the rift, we get the denial of the golden rule. It seems possible now that because I am not a part of you, and am separate and isolated on my own island, I can only now think of my OWN interests. What I do to myself is done to myself alone, and if I throw a rock over at you, it hurts only you and not me.

While I might believe that what I do to you is NOT done to myself, or what is true of you is NOT true of me, it becomes possible to enter this state where we're trying to get away with murder. It suggests I could attack you, and escape the consequences. I could do something to you which is not done to me. I could give something that I do NOT receive, because I am not INCLUDED in it, because I've become EXCLUDED from you. As though giving and receiving are not one.

So the whole ego system is all about this sense of being exclusive, separated off, not sharing, not one, unequal, different, disconnected, dis-associated, and isolated. Our whole belief then shifts to it seeming to be plausible that we can attack without being hurt, or we can accuse without being accused, or we can make someone be guilty to take the guilt off our own shoulders. That no matter what we cause, we can escape the effects. I can hurt you, and not myself.

So this is then what the ego does, all the time. IT HAS ONE MODE of functioning. It's all it CAN do, because it is ONLY the idea of separation. Its aim is to emphasize, enhance, increase, and deepen the sense of being separate, so that IT increases. That's it's only goal. To attack ever more strongly and cause ever more disruption in equality. It's entire existence DEPENDS on the continuation of this inequality, this rift between brothers, and this sense that you cannot share anything with anyone because they're separated from you.

If the two floors or islands were to meet, and reconnect, and level out, and become one single unified space again, the two brothers could be reunited, and all sense of inequality and difference would melt. And ALSO there would have to now be an acceptance of the golden rule, because if we are sharing everything, then what applies to me now also applies to you and vice versa. We are now the SAME. We are one. So I cannot do anything to you without doing it to myself.

The interesting thing is that even when we're in an ego state of believing that we ARE separate, and are not a part of others, the golden rule actually still applies. We can BELIEVE that we are attacking something "not myself", and we can BELIEVE that the effects are being felt ONLY by that other separate person, and we can BELIEVE that we completely escape any consequences for it, BUT WE DO NOT. Because there are dire consequences STILL operating, consequences which are SELF INFLICTED, which CANNOT be avoided.

If you attack another, you STILL attack yourself, because you STILL ARE them. If you hurt another, you ARE hurting yourself. If you try to destroy another, you ARE destroying yourself. You may not REALIZE that you are, because you think of yourself as PROTECTED BY THE SEPARATENESS, as if the prison walls keep you SAFE. And so you think that attacking someone makes you SAFER. But it in fact erodes your safety because the more you attack the more YOU become imprisoned and weakened.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

You cannot be strong without your brother. You cannot be happy without your brother. You cannot be healthy without your brother. You cannot be loved without your brother. You cannot be powerful without your brother. You cannot be free without your brother. You cannot be innocent without your brother. You cannot be holy without your brother.

So if you try to attack in any way, to produce the separation, to make yourself MORE separate, emphasizing the ways that someone else is an inferior evil shit that you hate and who should feel terribly guilty for being so wrong, YOU ARE accusing yourself of this. So you might ask yourself, "would I accuse myself of this?" You will think you're NOT accusing yourself because you don't see yourself as A PART OF the other person, but you are still doing it.

There is a HUGE COST to attempting to ignore the golden rule. The cost is that your mind becomes split, you become self-destructive and suicidal, you become alone and lonely, you become weakened and live in darkness, the world becomes a nightmare of conflict and war, you lose all sense of peace and happiness, communication breaks down and you become unable to relate to anyone, it makes you question whether you even exist, and you will try to destroy yourself. That's a pretty major cost for believing something that isn't true, as if it were real.

You DO have a vested interest, because when you attack you DO experience consequences, even if you do not REALIZE that you do. You may not recognize that every time you attack you feel worse. You may not recognize that when you hate someone you feel awful and guilty.

You may not recognize that when you accuse someone angrily of being guilty of something, to make yourself feel better, you increase your sense of being separate and small and weak and alone. Or that anger hurts your mind and body. You have to recognize what the consequences of attack ARE, so that you will decide that you do not WANT to be murderous anymore, because it actually is not REALLY in your best interests.

The golden rule always applies. It is never broken or violated. You can deny it. If you deny it you will suffer. If you deny it you will be confused as to why your life sucks, and you will probably blame it on someone else, thinking that they are not you, and that therefore you haven't blamed yourself. Everything you do you to do yourself and to all your brothers, to the entire sonship and to God. This is also the secret of salvation. You are INCLUDED IN EVERYTHING. And inclusion is ultimately love.

Did you know you're living inside a giant hologram?

(this may take a bit to explain, so bear with me)...

Actually, that's only the half of it. There's a reason why you are inside a hologram, and there's a motive for making it that the ego wants to keep a secret.

The purpose of the physical universe, as a hologram (a holographic dream), is to profoundly obscure awareness of God. The ego has used it to create a way of experiencing which seems to be completely devoid of God. The physical universe was made to literally shut God out and to make it look like He does not exist. And it's done a pretty good job, because we all believe it. And you don't even realize you believe it.

As Jesus says in ACIM: "Nothing so blinding as perception of form".

So, how does this work and how does it obscure God, and why is form (physical matter) blinding? And what's this got to do with holograms?

Ok so bear with me as I try to explain, this is VERY hard to explain because it defies a lot of ego logic, so let me know if I lose you.

First we define what God is like.

God is oneness. God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere. And God is whole and completely equal everywhere. What this means is, if you could think of God as occupying 'space', no matter where you are in that space, God is *exactly* the same there as He is in any other part of it. Over here He is God, over there He is God. No matter where you are in God, it's exactly the same as everywhere else.

It's kind of like if you were to take a road trip inside God you'd be driving for a while and then remark to yourself, you know what, this place looks exactly the same as the place we just came from. Exactly. Then you drive some more and it still looks exactly the same. It's almost like you aren't going anywhere. Ok so God is the same everywhere.

Now there's another part to this. This may be hard to imagine, but ALL of God is in all *parts* of God. (NB: The ego will say this is IMPOSSIBLE!) As you think of God as occupying space, and you're driving in that car to different parts of God, and its all the same, you might still be tempted to believe each 'part' or 'location' in God is actually a DIFFERENT part, but just 'looks' the same. Like, as if the whole landscape is a giant set in a movie and its all painted in white paint. You're accustomed to thinking that the stuff 'over there' is not the same as the stuff 'over here', in some way. Its sort of similar with God.

ALL of the properties of God are everywhere. ALL of the awareness of God is everywhere. ALL of the attention of God is everywhere. So then when you ask yourself, what parts of God are 'here', in this location, the answer is, ALL of Him. And when you then ask yourself, well what parts are over there in that other part, the answer is also - ALL of Him. And what about those parts you were driving through 50 hours ago... ALL of Him was there.

To the ego this would have to mean, well, if all of God is here, then there's no other parts left to be elsewhere, so elsewhere there is no God. But in God's reality, in God's 'universe', somehow God is capable of being fully present in every single part of it at the same time. In this sense its almost as if God is PERSONAL, personal and local to every single part of existence, and yet, simultaneously personal to ALL parts at the same time. (Revelations speak of this intensely personal quality.)

You could kind of think of God as though there are trillions of copies of Himself, which the ego mind might be able to grasp. Except that in God there are no separations. Absolutely all of God's being, all of God's mind, all of God's identity, all of God's wholeness, is SHARED by all parts of existence. And when you try to think of this in terms of what you are USED TO, in the physical world, you can only relate to like a large stretch of land that you call 'The United States', within which there are many different distinct places. But if this land were God, everywhere would be the same and there would only be ONE of anything. Hard to get your mind around!

Now, this is where the ego comes up with a device to shut God out.

As we know, the ego's only tool is "separation". What the ego does, is it tries to take the omnipresent oneness of God and start to make it `look like` God maybe ISN'T the same everywhere, or ISN'T fully present everywhere. The only way it can obscure God, i.e. make it seem like God has gone away, or that God does not exist at all, is to go against the nature of God. So if the nature of God is, all of Him is the same everywhere, the ego's attack will entail the idea that only PART of Him is PARTIALLY present in each location. And this implies that God is riddled with contradictory differences. (The ego is contradictory, God isn't).

So now it's kind of like, you're driving in that car through God and you notice that, some of these hills are starting to take on a different shade of color. There's some slight differences in how things look over here than how they looked back there. At first, the separation isn't strong or well defined. In fact it starts out very subtly with just a 'hint' of differences. Then as you keep driving the intensity of the separation increases, and it really starts to stand out that different parts of God are different in quite noticeable ways.

What's happening at the same time is that the ego is now suggesting, by manipulating your perception, that maybe God is not fully present here. Maybe God has some parts of Himself which are sort of 'tied up' elsewhere, or occupied or busy with something else, so he can only be partially present. And also the ego is suggesting God isn't the same everywhere. The way God is over here is not quite the same as over there, and the over-there parts are somehow distracted from being fully present here.

This is how the holographic dream is born. A hologram is the concept that "the all is in every part" - which is pretty close to the way I described God being if God were a 'space'. i.e. All of God is fully in every part of existence. If you want a primer on holograms or whatever maybe check out The Holographic Universe which is quite an interesting book.

Anyway. Basically, at the early stages of the hologram forming, a lot is still shared and things are still almost-one. But the 'density', if you will, of the hologram, increases by continued ego belief in separation. The ego starts noticing and emphasizing the ways in which different parts of existence seem not to be the same. And as this grows stronger, it starts to seem more and more as though only a small part of God is still present here, because all the `other parts of God` are apparently quite different and have become quite finite and specific, and they're all localized to other parts of existence. So what exists over there maybe does not or cannot exist over here.

As this progresses, in the mind, the hologram 'solidifies' more and more. Or another way to describe it is that, formless reality in which everything is the same everywhere starts to 'descend' into localized properties, differences, separations, divisions, fragmented identities. The more separate and clearly defined these differences become, the more the awareness of God's omnipresence, God's total attention, God's total awareness, and God's equal presence everywhere, APPEARS to be shut out of awareness. If it seems true to you that differences are real, and that you start to look AT those differences and breathe reality into them, then you will become fixated on the ways in which God is NOT THE SAME ANYWHERE.

Not only is God not the same anywhere, but this also has a dire conclusion. If you really strongly believe in the reality of differences, you must start to fixate only on the appearance of what's left. All of the different 'forms' of difference. And those forms of difference is what we call PHYSICAL MATTER. The solidification of wholeness into locality, the contraction and density of 'energy' if you will, is what happens in the 'lower levels' of the hologram. The further into separation and differences you go the more 'solid' everything starts to look, and the less there is any evidence or awareness that God is present, even AT ALL. At a certain point you would be forgiven for even believing that God does not exist AT ALL because ALL you can see are the intense, real-seeming differences of physical matter. The physical universe 'stops' God from being able to be in all places at once, or in all places equally, or in all places fully, replaced with the idea that everything is separate from everything else.

So while holograms start out subtle, or what scientists call 'diffused', the lower levels of the holographic 'dream' are much more divided and separated out and form 'images'. When you see the little images on your credit card which look 3d when you see them from different angles - those are a form of holograms. You see an image, and yet when you look from another angle, you see another image. Its as if ALL of the images are somehow 'in' the one location, SHARED. But on the level of physical matter, you can only ever see ONE of the versions of the image at a time. You can't see the 'all'. You can't see all of the angles of the little dove or whatever it is in the hologram, because it is obscured by the rules of the physical universe.

So when the Course is saying, nothing so blinding as perception of form, what it's saying is, physical matter is a very dense level of a holographic interpretation of God, which has the effect of completely obscuring any trace of oneness or all-ness, so that you fixate on only one version of one image, in which it seems like NOTHING is shared and therefore there is no God. 'Sharing' is the same as 'Oneness' so if there is no sharing (co-existing in the same space) then God doesn't exist.

In the physical world, an object does not seem to have anything shared with another object. There is no sense of there being any unity between them. There is nothing 'the same' that is exactly the same in both. This defies the property of God that all of him is everywhere. And then because the stuff that is `in` one object is NOT the stuff that is `in` another object, defies the property of God that all of his same properties are in all objects at the same time. So if you look at that matter and you BELIEVE the illusion that it is trying to SHOW you, its statement of 'what is', you will be blinded from seeing God.

Physical matter LITERALLY was made by the ego to make the properties of God totally obscured and distracted away from. If you believe physical matter does not share anything, you do not have awareness of God. It blinds you. If you do not believe that physical matter contains all of something which is also fully present in other parts of matter, you are blinded to God. Matter, in all its forms, is a giant blanket of the 'undoing' of God's reality, God's omnipresence. It is a physicalization of the idea of separation, but even moreso, the idea that God's law-defying everywhereness is NOT what existence is like, and therefore God does not exist.

It is designed SPECIFICALLY to shut out the awareness of God's presence so that, IF your mind is aligned with it and IF your mind functions according to the 'laws of matter' then you WILL NOT SEE GOD. If you SEE MATTER, you do not see God. Not fully. If you do not see PAST matter, you do not see God. If you fixate ON or look AT matter, you will not see God. Your mind needs to become able to OVERLOOK (forgive) the ILLUSIONS that are presented to you BY MATTER ITSELF.

This isn't just a matter of fixing your mind and staying in the world and not seeing God. Your mind needs to go back `up` the hologram to the point of Oneness, eventually, so that your awareness is able to discern that a) God is fully present, b) All of God is here, c) All of God is everywhere, and d) All of God is the same everywhere. If you believe that MATTER IS REAL or MATTER IS TRUE, then you cannot be aware of God. If the form of matter dictates how your mind perceives or you believe in its ILLUSION, you cannot see God. Matter is BLINDING. That is its function. And it will never have another function until it is undone.

What the ego in your mind does, is it looks at matter and uses it as a 'model' for what is true about your mind and what is true in your perception. Its illusion infuses into your mind and you take it at its word and consider it 'reality'. You buy into its illusion, its way of obscuring God, and its statements of the ways in which God is not here, God is not everywhere, God is not ALL in ALL. That is matter's message. That is the 'state of existence' of the physical universe, designed solely to shut God out - IF you believe it is real.

This also leads to another way to say, the physical universe is just a holographic dream, and it is just an illusion designed to obscure God, and NEVER will it be Heaven (because heaven is formless), and THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. Matter is not real. Separate forms are not real. Bodies are not real. Planets are not real. Physical matter is AN ILLUSION AND NOTHING ELSE. It is the illusion that God is dead and can never be real.

These are all ways of expressing the idea that God is not God, and that can never be true. And this is why eventually the physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR.

I have no idea if I explained this well or conveyed what I wanted to. I had a profound experience a few years ago which SHOWED me an EXPERIENCE of this - I experienced what it was like to go up the hologram in my mind, back toward Oneness, and how this allowed me to be AWARE of God's presence - all of His presence in every part of the dream, and how this totally defied what 'form' was trying to telling me was the truth of existence. So I speak from experience, but these things really defy the ego's logic so it's very hard to put into words. Let me know if I need to clarify something.

All is not as it seems in this world. The physical world ITSELF IS the 'form' of the egos attack on God, and IS its defense. You think you only have defenses in your mind inside your body. But the physical universe as a whole is a giant defense mechanism - IN the larger mind of the Son of God. You're literally looking at the MIND of the Son of God attempting to shut God out. That's what this world is.

It's a deadly trap to believe that you need to get that person to love you in order to prove you are lovable.

You can feel very sorry for yourself because of how other people seem to mistreat you or how they don't love you enough.

You can get into a state where you see yourself as unworthy and unlovable purely because other people don't seem to love you.

Then you will be yearning for them to love you, will try to manipulate them into loving you, will secretly want to take love from the, and will try to steal it from them, in order to get some love for yourself.

You think that if they will love you, you will feel better about yourself.

Well here's some news. It doesn't work this way.

Love has to come from God and come through you and be shared. Love is sharing. You have to share in it in order to have it, and by sharing in it you must also share it, meaning you must extend it and give it.

Now, this also leads people to another mistake which is the belief that you should always give give give in an attempt to give everyone what they want, so that you might be able to get them to give some love back to you.

This is a deadly trap as well. If you're waiting for or are dependent on other people to be the source of love for you, or to approve of you, or to give you attention, or make you be okay, or accept you, then you're going to be waiting a very long time and suffer the consequences.

Other people are not supposed to be the source of love for you. Other people are not supposed to approve of you. Other people are not supposed to accept you. Other people are not supposed to give you attention. Other people are not supposed to love you more than others. Other people are not supposed to save you. Other people are not supposed to be your savior or your idol or your hero. Other people are not where you should be receiving love from.

You can't experience love unless you are in it. You can't be in it unless you are sharing it with God because God is the only source of love. You can't share in it unless you are willing to receive it from God. You can't get it into you unless you are willing to remove all of your false beliefs which say that you don't deserve it, can't receive it, aren't good enough, or that you are in need of it. You can't share it unless you're willing to let others also receive it just as much as you. And you can't have it unless you are willing to give it away.

To your ego, giving away love means losing it, which means you are sacrificing it, which means if you give give give you will end up with none for yourself. This won't coerce others into loving you, nor will it make them love you in return in order to have an equal or fair relationship. That's bullshit. That's not a relationship, it's a bargain. Your ego needs to get out of the way if you are going to experience love.

You need to realize that God's love is infinitely abundant and always available and is unconditional and freely given to all equally, all the time. That includes you. You must be included in the love and having the love, even when you give it. If you are overflowing with God's love, from WITHIN, having received it inside of yourself directly from the source (God), then you will be so happy to share it and spread it around.

And here's the little secret. When you share and receive God's love and are open to an unlimited supply of it coming into you from Him, which He has already put there, you will have so much that even if you give it away, it will not decrease whatsoever. The secret is, that as you give real love, unconditional love, you not only get to keep that love, but the love INCREASES.

You don't need, and cannot get, love from someone else. It must come from God to you to others, in that order. If you don't feel lovable or loved, YOU are not loving yourself and YOU are not letting God love you. It's an inside job.

You will not EVER find love outside of you, and you will not EVER be loved from outside of you. "Outside of you" means separate from you, and anything separate from you is impossible to experience. You can only experience love when it is NOT separate from you, meaning it's INSIDE you, meaning God put it there and you're experiencing it where it IS.

You already have it. You just have blocks to awareness which is preventing you from accepting and allowing it. Your ego is getting in the way. It's making you believe, falsely, that you do not have love in you, cannot have love in you, don't deserve love in you, and that you are not love. YOU ARE LOVE ITSELF. You are an extension of love. How can you not be love, when Love (God) created you like Itself? You aren't going to get this love by force-feeding it from the outside in. You aren't really lacking it! You just need to UNCOVER IT, because it's already been given.

God has already given you 100% of all the love in existence. If you are blocking it, you're going to go seeking for it outside of yourself, and it will stay outside of yourself, and you will never have it that way. It's not anyone's job to love you. It's only God's function to love you, and He already has. The only part left now is your WILLINGNESS to accept and allow it and RECOGNIZE it where it is, within you, where God already put it. You are already loved, unconditionally and eternally, so if that's not what you are experiencing, YOU are blocking yourself from being loved.

It doesn't even matter if other people love you or not. Other people could be loving you 100% unconditionally and totally all the time, but you could still be shutting it out, ignoring it, rejecting it, and not believing you deserve it. How are you going to get that love into you if your entire reason for trying to find it out there is because you don't really believe you deserve it? No-one can give it to you if you don't allow it to be in you, and to allow it to be in you is to accept it from God.

Love has already been shared with you. Love is already available permanently. Love is what you are really made of. You can't not be loved or lovable or loving. But you can pretend, and you can cover it up, and you can be in denial. That simply means you need to uncover all these ways that you keep love from yourself. It's not because other people are keeping love from you, it's YOU that does not really want it. You say you do, but evidently you don't, or you would accept it from God right now.

God loves you. Just so you know.

When we all love each other, it means that we have love within us, because we are love, and are sharing that love, NOT BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE NEED IT, because they also have the love coming from God within themselves. To love everyone is not to substitute for their belief in lack, or to love them FOR them, or to force love upon them. We all are responsible for and naturally function as extenders of GOD'S LOVE, because God is the only source of love that's real. Access your own unique connection to Him, your own relationship, and heal it, so that you can experience love again.

Let's just be VERY, VERY clear for a moment. Heaven and Earth are definitely TWO VERY DISTINCT STATES/PLACES in A Course in Miracles. If they were the same place there'd be no point Jesus referring to them as opposites or as two things. Or as "in heaven" or as "on earth". THEY ARE TWO PLACES. You cannot be in, or see, both of them, at once. THEY ARE OPPOSITES, diametrically opposed in every way.

This is important to realize, because Jesus frequently states how Heaven is DISTINCT from Earth and being IN Heaven is very different to being ON Earth. And yes folks, EARTH DOES MEAN THE PLANET EARTH, not some strange twisted metaphoric interpreted labelling of your inner ego interference "about" a world. The only way the Earth is "about" anything is in that it is an attack on Heaven.

Heaven and Earth. TWO PLACES. Earth has "place" because it is inside spacetime. Heaven is "not a place" only in that it has no FINITE LOCATIONS, because IT IS EVERYWHERE, and so transcends spacetime. It is STILL A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN EXIST AND LIVE!!!

If you EVER think that Earth is Heaven, you are stuck and have totally missed the obvious. Anyone reading theses statements SHOULD, using NORMAL LANGUAGE, get the impression and message that Jesus literally means TWO WORLDS, and that they can never be one because they are OPPOSITES. And only Heaven really exists. If someone reads these and doesn't get that? Read it again and take it literally.

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven, because IT WILL MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IT."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours. "

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here."

"The golden ASPECTS of reality which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

"Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. "

"Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you ARE in hell and misery."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"No one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses."

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

"I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus"

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven. "

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity."

"God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give. "

"His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them."

Ego's world is run by the egoic thought system, based on an EITHER-OR mindset of separation.

God's world is run by God's thought system, based on a BOTH-AND mindset of sharing.

EITHER-OR is based on the idea of separation - there is a separation between who has and who has not, who does and who does not, what is and what is not, etc. An object is this, but not that. It's either red or blue. It's either here or there.

BOTH-AND is based on sharing, something is equally true of both me and you, we both have everything, me and you are loved the same by God, etc. There is no separation in that. What exists is in all locations simultaneously, space and time do not place limits on anything.

Because the world of physical matter is entirely an expression of the egoic thought system, space and time and everything within them (bodies, planets, etc) are governed by this idea of EITHER OR. Living in such a world, the seemingly "natural" way to think about anything is to align our thought processes to the "natural world" and think in accord with it.

So now we "learn" to think in an EITHER-OR way. Either I will turn left or right. Either I will eat at 5 or at 6. Either I'm male or female. Either I am asleep or awake. Either I choose option A or option B.

We adopt this as an entire way of thinking about the world, of reasoning about anything, of what to do, where to go, what to choose, always a selective judgement based on either this or that. It seems to "fit" well with the way the physical world is structured and how it behaves. But it is completely unnatural and completely opposite to God's world.

In God's world, seemingly miraculous things are possible. Everywhere. All the time. Everything in God's world breaks all the ego's laws of separation, and therefore the entire basis of EITHER-OR thinking. God does not think, hey, either one son or another will get my attention. He thinks, BOTH of them get my FULL attention. Nor does he think, I will give 50% attention to one and 50% to another. He thinks, I will give 100% love to both at the same time. And this is done WITHOUT loss, without sacrifice or lack, and without compromise.

The true meaning of divine sharing is that everything applies to BOTH me and you equally, simultaneously, and always. If there were such a thing as a divine pizza, I could eat the whole pizza and you could eat the whole pizza. We both get everything. This is not possible in the physical world, but it is possible in spirit.

One of the tricky things about understanding ACIM is that we come at it with the ego thought system. We come at it with EITHER-OR thinking. And that's a serious problem. Because whenever ACIM speaks of ANYTHING to do with God, Heaven, Creation, Sonship, Holy Spirit, Laws of God, beyond spacetime, etc.... any of those topics, the laws of GOD are applying, not the laws of ego.

So then a statement like "I and my father are One", is completely misunderstood. It's a truth WITHIN the scope of God's BOTH AND system of thought. There, I can be one with God while still being an individual. I am both, myself and part of God. The course also states that God has only one son, BUT that the one son is also many sons. It literally states that BOTH statements are true, that there is one, and many. The Sonship comprises many children, who are ALSO one.

But to the ego this seems nonsense, it cannot fathom how there can be ONE AND MANY at the same time. It insists that it is EITHER one, OR many. And then it decides that many sounds like an ego thing, and one sounds "more spiritual", so it hacks out the many from the one and ends up with its version of what Heaven must be like. And it's totally bullshit.

To grasp anything of the divine nature of the Kingdom, on ANY topic "that side" of the separation boundary, anything real and true, anything to do with Sonship or Creation or God, you have to totally put aside the EITHER OR exclusive separatist way of reasoning logically, think WAY out side the box, and adopt a BOTH AND way of reasoning. THEN the things that Jesus says that sound totally contradictory finally make perfect sense, WITHOUT having to change anything or turn stuff into ridiculous metaphors.

"One brother is all brothers." "One mind is all minds."

Does not mean there is EITHER one brother OR many brothers. Nor does it mean there is either ONE mind OR many minds. Literally, the entire statement is true. There are many brothers, and they are all one. There many minds, and they are all one. And as soon as your thought process tries to "axe" the "many" part of those statements in favor of keeping only the seemingly unifying "one" part of the statement, you're off on an ego tangent of error.

We are one, but we are still brothers. We are the one son of God, but we are also PART of a sonship of many sons. I am a child of God, and so are you. I have individuality, and so do you, and yet simultaneously we share everything. I have everything that God is, which should to the ego mean there is nothing left for you, but you also have everything that God is, simultaneously, because we share it all. Sharing does not mean a collapse of individuality either.

The BOTH AND system of thought, which "runs heaven", is a completely miraculous thought system. It defies all ego laws. It breaks space and time. It ignores silly limitations and false conclusions. It allows to be possible that which the world of EITHER OR would find absolutely impossible. It ignores spatial limitations of all kinds. This is why God is omnipresent, meaning existing in all locations simultaneously. It ignores the idea that we must be kept apart in order to be individuals. And it defies every attempt to split it up and compartmentalize it into nice little prison cells.

The entire Kingdom of God and everything in it is miraculous because of this fundamental logical premise of the whole system. "Nothing real can be increased (God cannot create) except by sharing". As God SHARES, this is an AND scenario. God AND his creation. God AND his son. BOTH God and His son exist. His son is in his likeness because they BOTH are of the same Kingdom and nature.

When I give to you, BOTH of us have it, and I do not lose it. This is why sharing INCREASES the supply in heaven, while sharing causes scarcity in the ego world. When God creates you, God gives ALL of himself to you and yet loses nothing and HAS everything still - BOTH you and God now share everything and there has been an INCREASE. This is miraculous, it dissolves the idea of separation and exclusivity, transcending all ego concepts. The entirety of reality depends on it.

The system of God's mind, his thought system, how the Kingdom is run, is entirely based on this idea of simultaneous sharing, union at the same time as creation, multiplicity at the same time as oneness, having everything while also sharing it with others without anyone being excluded in any way. Heaven is not like this world. It's laws are totally different to the separated-out world the ego made to depict isolation and selfishness. There is no selfishness in the Kingdom, only self-fullness.

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

You have everything, and we all share it as God's family.

OK.

This is going to have to be pretty long because this is a very difficult subject to explain, so bear with me. Some of you may be willing to accept what I'm going to say, some will not.

Oneness. What does it seem to mean? God is whole. God is complete. God is "all there is". God is everywhere, omnipresent, lacking nothing. God is the same everywhere. So... if this is true in terms of ego logic, it means the following:

God has no son. God is dreaming this world. God is a murderer. God created death. God makes people suffer. The separation happened inside God. God is mistaken. God is afraid. God is all people. God is experiencing "himself" through and as all people in the world. There is nothing other than God. We are God. Separation is real. God created this world. etc.

Absolutely none of that is true. That is the purest most logically accurate definition of what non-duality means to the ego. It is the most precise conclusion you can draw from how the EGO understands oneness or what it means to be "one". If oneness truly means "there is only one", the God is responsible for hell. And it is grossly mistaken.

If God is one, then God cannot even create anything because there is nowhere for the creation to occur and nothing to add which wasn't already there and so, literally, "there is only God". This is the conclusion many many Course folk have come to. It seems to in some ways make sense TO EGO THINKERS and those who use linear logic who think that such linear logic is capable of encompassing and understanding the nature of God.

God is not like this. And oneness does not mean "there is only God". And non-duality, as the opposite of duality, does not properly describe the holographic creative nature of God or reality. Non-duality is CLOSE to being correct, and is more correct than duality, but it is still a concept and it falls way short, as you will see. If there is non-duality there should be just "one thing". In that, there can be no Son of God at all, no creation, no love, no extension, no sharing, no sonship, and no holy relationship.

In fact, what's happened widespread in ACIM folk is various false conclusions which have established themselves as if written in stone "what the course says". And yet the consequences of these errors are quite horrific. To believe God is all there is is to equate God with ego and death. To claim that God is all there is also denies and murders every Son of God.

OK.

Now, let's talk about how God actually exists and thinks and creates and the nature of His creation. If the strictest definition of oneness or non duality is true, then God cannot even create anything. And in a sense, PARTS of the Course speak to this. E.g. "God is". And also, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". So anything real, like God, is permanent, fixed, unchanging, does not increase or decrease, and therefore there can be no creation whatsoever. Which means no son. UNLESS, this thing called "sharing" happens.

Recognize that God is love, and because of what love is, it automatically goes out and shares and extends. It shares because it has no reason to hold anything back. It is fundamentally a state of sharing, including, giving, and this radiation of love is another way of describing the act of creation.

God in and of Himself is whole, complete, lacking nothing, needing nothing, and is already permanent. Like a solid rock. Unchanging. That does not really sound like something that can create, does it? It seems very fixed. Like absolutely nothing is happening or possible. That's strictly what most definitions of "oneness" imply also. That nothing else is possible besides God existing. That's false.

God loves, and in that love, God radiates, extends, shares, creates, miraculously. Ego logic will NEVER account for "the miraculous", and God's creative ability is truly miraculous, which is why YOU ARE A MIRACLE. To the ego, God CANNOT create, and the act of His creating defies ALL EGO LOGIC and demonstrates that God is a miracle worker. Something happens in God which defies explanation and seems impossible yet happens. God SHARES AND CREATES something "other" than Himself, out of nowhere.

If you think of God like a light bulb, God is the fixed light bulb which does not move or change really, but the bulb radiates and SHINES light. The light goes outward and illuminates. That "shining", that light radiating, that is creation. The light radiating is not necessarily the same thing as God Himself. God is complete and whole already, but God SHARES Himself by shining light and radiating and extending, and that which extends outward is creation.

It is in this way that God created the world of Heaven. Here is how the Course describes it is a NATURAL division:

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God. That is why everything that He created is like Him. Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

So God in and of Himself is complete and whole, but He "projects outward" (extends) and that which is projected forms a "world" (heaven). This world is, in a sense, "divided from" God in a natural way, in that it comes FROM God and is God SHARING, but God as its SOURCE still remains in a sense, beyond it.

This is because God is the "first cause" and what God radiates is the "effect" of God. His Thought/Shining is the effect of Him as the "thinker". The effect of God is not capable of turning around and "causing God" in reverse, or of making God its effect. The creation (the Son/sonship) is being constantly sustained by, projected by God, forever, is coming FROM God, and therefore the Son is ONLY "as God created Him" and cannot change what He is. The Son has no real say in what He is at all, He merely gives thanks for having been created perfect.

God is cause, not effect. God cannot be affected. This causal extension or "creating of effect" in a way puts up a kind of "wall" or division you could say, just on a causality level, which in a sense, separates the creation from God's own Self, but only in the sense that the created Son cannot cause God back. But the Son CAN share love with Him.

This is not the same thing as the "separation" that we are accustomed to thinking of as what the ego does or relating to the "separation from God" which was a different matter. The "separation from God" happened when the Son, who is only effect and not capable of causing God, attempted to cause God. That means the Son tried to will against God's will or to undo what God has created, trying to replace it with something else. That was an act of impossible denial, which brought about the separation and the "fall of man".

That's an entirely different thing to the "natural division" between God and His Son. The division between God and Son is NATURAL in that this is How God intended it, that the Son is imbued with the SAME WILL TO CREATE, the same love, the same completeness, the same wholeness, AND SHARING the WHOLE OF GOD within itself, as well as sharing THE WHOLE OF CREATION within itself. All of God is in the Son, shared with the Son, and yet the Son is in some way also "divided" from God as a creation of God or thought of God.

In nonduality and oneness concepts there is no accounting for God thinking anything at all, yet alone creating a son. It completely glosses over the fact that God is LOVE, and love radiates and extends and creates. When people tell you what the definition of oneness is they become very clinical and ego-specific in describing God as a kind of "single blob". There is no love in that concept, nor does it appreciate the NATURE of Oneness, which is to share, extend everywhere, create, increase, and to experience JOY. Do you equate oneness with joy, or power, or love, or creativity, or miracles? As a logical device, no. But God is joyful and creative and all powerful and miraculous.

Now, it is possible for God to create AT LEAST One Son, and the Course references the "one son of God" in various places. And due to misunderstandings, many people have come to believe God only has one Son. So now there are two camps - a set of people believing that God is one therefore has no son or "I am God", and a camp of people accepting there is One Son (somehow) but not more. It relates to how much of the nature of God is grasped.

OK. So holograms. Did you know God thinks holographically? Do you know what a hologram is or why this is totally different to how the ego thinks? If you are thinking about God's creation or oneness without thinking about holograms, then you WILL come to false conclusions, such as that there are no divisions in heaven or God has only one Son or no son, because non-holographic logic CAN ONLY arrive at these conclusions. Ego logic is FAULTY and limited.

The essential idea of a hologram is that the whole is able to express in many "parts" and yet each part contains ALL of the whole. This makes NO SENSE to the ego, because it thinks in terms of separated space, where it is impossible for all of God to be in one part AND all of God to be in another part simultaneously. The ego will wager, "there is not enough God for God to be elsewhere, if God is fully here". And that's why the ego is BLIND to the nature of heaven. It does not account for SHARING.

Here's what the Course says about the holographic nature of God and the Sonship - note how ILLOGICAL and CONTRADICTORY these all sound, at first:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

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

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other."

So Jesus is saying two things, which seem to clash. 1) God created One Son. 2) God created many sons. The conclusion here, to THE EGO, is either, a) God only created one Son, or b) The "many" or "multitude" nature of the sonship tells us that it is OF THE EGO and is therefore not real. Are either of these conclusions true? NO! They are both mistakes, and reveal the limitations of the ego's thought system when it tires to understand the EGO DEFYING nature of God.

In a hologram, the whole is present in EVERY part. Now, if you think in terms you are familiar with in this world, like physical objects and space, you think ok, if I take 1 gallon of water and I pour it into a 1 gallon container, there is no water left to fill another container. Yes? This is ego thinking. And ego thinking gave rise to this ENTIRE universe, including all physical forms, and all laws of physics, to paint a picture that attempts to PROVE that God's NATURE is NOT the way things are. And we have used physical form as a way to understand the nature of existence. This is a major error. We are BLINDED by sight of form, because forms express the EGO IDEA of separation, limitation, "measuring" how much of something there is in a finite way, and then concluding that there is lack and limitation.

When ALL of God is poured into one creation, how much God is there left to pour into another? ALL OF HIM! He does not run out. He INCREASES BY SHARING. The ego cannot believe this. The multiplying of fish and bread to feed 5000 people is a good example of this principle. Giving ALL to something does not diminish it AT ALL, it merely increases by being given away.

God puts ALL of the whole of his nature into His creation, in EACH thought. And what He creates is FULL, complete, and whole, AND shares ALL of itself with God, and includes all of God, and all of any other creation God creates. So then God has another thought, creates another WHOLE, and then another WHOLE, and another. You should get the idea then, spatially, even in ego terms, that adding more wholes INCREASES the sum total - and this is How the Kingdom expands.

To the ego, it is impossible that God be fully in one location and yet fully in another. This is completely impossible in terms of a physical object. However, bi-location is a miracle because it demonstrates that we are not bound by space or by instances or amounts. The Course says that God has many thoughts, INFINITE IN NUMBER. That amounts to an INFINITE number of Sons of God. And each Son of God is WHOLE and complete and perfect in itself, has free will just like God, extends and creates just like God (you have your own creations in Heaven), and radiates love just like God. This means each son is not just some "partial person" or limited or unlike the rest, it means EVEY son is FULL, whole, complete, absolutely unlimited, and shares EVERYTHING with God in perfection. And so do all the rest.

That God does not diminish when sharing himself fully to create a WHOLE SON, means automatically that God can create MANY sons without any diminishing of Himself at all. And all of God is in every Son. AND every Son is within every Son. And the ENTIRE SONSHIP is within every Son. This is entirely NATURAL AND NORMAL in Heaven. Heaven therefore contains INFINITE "naturally divided" (causally divided) INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - which are souls or Sons of God - each one holy and perfect.

Ok.

So now we need to talk about why some people are confused in constantly saying that God has One Son or there is "only oneness" or the Sonship is an part of separation etc. It's because people are getting PART of the picture and not the whole picture, because EGO LOGIC is telling them to EXCLUDE some parts of the holographic nature of God. They can "see" that God's oneness makes sense, but this seems to imply there is no son or at least not more than one. They can't see HOW God can have created many sons OR how a "division" is natural. And so they just can't get their heads around the nature of God or how it's possible for there to be a sonship at all.

And if you will go looking, ACIM contains specific quotes which SEEM to support the ego's interpretations by focusing on only one PART of the holographic picture, using that as justification for why "the course said this". For example, "God has but one Son", or countless references to "God's Son". Well, this leads God people to conclude that the Course is saying God doesn't have more sons. It's a mistake. With no grasp of God's NATURE - which is holographic, it makes sense people will be in error. And then they will say well, since God has only one Son, the sonship is a lie, or I do not exist, or I am God, or I do not have a self, or there is no-one here, or whatever else.

These are NON-DUALITY concepts which FAIL to appreciate God's nature. And you can see how, if it is true that God has many sons, these kind of "beliefs" are HARMFUL. They basically DESTROY the sonship, DENY the Self, and render God impotent.

When I finally understood how God thinks holographically and realized that non-duality is bullshit and a limited EGO concept of God, I felt great RELIEF about the simple recognition that "GOD CREATED ME". Me, as an INDIVIDUAL. Not me as an EGO, that's different, but that I have a HOLY SELF, which is sharing with other holy selves, and all of us are PERMANENT and INTENDED by God to have free will. When I saw this, I cried tears of joy, and also release of sadness, which had built up from the non-duality teachers, who have MISLED countless students and spread LIES ABOUT HEAVEN, resulting in the belief that "I do not exist", which can only lead to despair and depression because it DENIES GOD'S CREATION.

A course in miracles is NOT non-duality at all. The principle of Oneness is NOT that there is "only one and nothing else". Oneness truly means, sharing, creation, unlimited extension, INFINITE wholes, and a heaven filled with SOULS that live forever in a state of perfection and wholeness, sharing everything they are with ALL OTHERS including God. Why do you think Jesus refers to you as a brother? It's not just a temporary thing. You will ALWAYS be equal to and a brother of Jesus, AND at the same time, one with Him, and literally sharing everything WITH Him, AND still having your own soul, and still having your own free will which happens to be the same in focus as God's.

So now we have a very different picture of Heaven, and it has NOTHING to do with Earth or this universe. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY way." Heaven is a PLACE in the sense that it EXISTS as God's creation and you can experience it and BE there in it/with it. There are many references in the course where Jesus says "in Heaven" and also referring to Heaven as a "world" and as something God created. And given that THIS world - earth, physical universe, DOES NOT EXIST BECAUSE THERE IS NO WORLD - where IS there to BE or live or exist other than Heaven? In that sense, it IS a place, far more a REAL place than planet earth. Earth is not a place at all.

Heaven is within the mind of God. "The kingdom of God is you" is another reference to you being The Son of God and one of may sons of God. You are part of and all of heaven. Something you can be INSIDE OF and BE, and where there are infinite souls and angels, plus the Holy Spirit, plus an entire sonship of equal souls, all equal with Jesus, all individually a Son of God, AND also every one of those souls is THE Son of God as well. And each soul continues to CREATE MORE. There is nothing unnatural about this at all. All PARTS of heaven are of ONE ORDER.

Per Jesus: "The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order." (Here "man" is the same thing as soul or son of God, not humans.)

One final word then. Each Son of God, being a hologram of God, is whole and complete in and of itself, lacking nothing. And AT THE SAME TIME, is so OPEN and so SHARING, that it is wired into the ENTIRE CREATION of God. Picture it as your mind is so expanded that you are "one with" ie sharing in, the entire sonship. God therefore experiences ALL of his many thoughts, as ONE, while simultaneously allowing them to be many.

This is why there are many references to God having only one son. When it's speaking of this, it refers to how God experiences all Sons as though they are all the same and one, experienced simultaneously and so sharing that they do not seem "separate". Yet they are still divided. And then when the course speaks 250+ times about the many sons of God, this is not contradictory because God DOES have many sons AND one son.

God thinks holographically. All of God is in every son and all of every son is in every son. The whole sonship is in every son and every son in the sonship. You are the ONE SON of God, AND you are one of many. This is heavenly logic, not ego logic. When every individual PART of the sonship has returned to its true nature, all of the sonship as a whole communicates with God again.

The only other point to make I think is the difference between division and ego separation. In heaven you are divided from others and from God. But only in the sense that you are a loving family who shares everything together. Loving families are still individuals yet joined. The individuality does not go away. When walls are erected between family members, ie artificial separations are introduced, there is denial of the sharing, denial of the oneness, and denial of wholeness. This UNNATURAL DIVISION is the ego. This is what the course refers to as separation.

You have to get your head around the idea that you can be individual AND joined and that this is normal, natural and real. It is not your individual soul nature that makes you an ego. It is not that you are PART of a huge family of souls (sonship) that makes you an ego. What makes you an ego is that you withdraw your connection from God, withdraw your connection from the sonship, and become ISOLATED behind artificial imaginary walls of denial. It's got nothing to do with whether you are an individual or not.

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about ACIM is the belief that ego means separate self, and therefore means individuality, and therefore having an individuality is ego. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!! Individuality is not the problem. Cutting your individuality off from sharing with the whole is the problem. Trying to be a "part" of the hologram that does NOT contain the whole. Trying to not be an effect of God. Trying to cause God and change Him and affect Him. Cutting yourself off from the sonship. Believing you are not equal to all brothers. Being special. THAT is the problem and that is what the ego is made of, not your individuality.

Individuality does not mean you are separate from God, it means you are one of God's Son's. YOU DO EXIST. Just not as an illusion of an isolated self who has no connection to others. What is death but the end of all connection and the bringing about of total separation from Life? Joining with Life does not make you disappear! It's not about "you're not really out there". It's more like, "you are MORE than you APPEAR to be." You are God's Son and one of many sons. You are one with God and with all others and you SHARE with them all, one in sharing, not in number.

ACIM is not non-duality. And ACIM is not about the ego's idea of what oneness means. ACIM is not teaching that God only has a single son "separate from" the many sons. Heaven is a cascade of creation and miracles and light and souls and beauty and sharing and union and freedom. This is why YOU are responsible for everything YOU CHOOSE. Choose again.

When you are in the world and the world seems real, and you feel like life is meaningless and empty, instead of seeking truly within you tend to seek without.

The ego has asserted that the absence of meaning is real, and that the truth is not already here. You fail to look within for it, believing it is not there now. So you start to look outside yourself for a substitute. Surely the meaning is out there and can be found, in the world?

This sets you on a path of seeking, at which the ego is chuckling because you're now falling for "seek and do not find", trying to find something out there which only exists within you.

The ego then reasons that it will keep the world real, but that somewhere within the world there is something worth finding. If you read the "laws of chaos", the ego's laws eventaully result in a desire to find something "special" within the external or in others - special love - which is substituting for the belief that you don't deserve or have real love already. It suggests you can really find it and that it will be your salvation.

Keeping the world means that any quest to find truth must find it within that context, so "the truth is out there". This immediately means that you will start to try to make some aspect of this world special and spiritual. Some aspects of it or some attitude about it will seem to be spiritual while others will seem to be unspiritual.

This is really the ego split mind which is perceiving some parts of what is as good and some as bad, trying to emphasize the good and reject the bad, which increases separation. The ego then begins to claim that the good stuff is "not the ego" and the bad stuff "is the ego". In the pretend name of getting rid of that which is unspiritual, it over-emphasizes that which it deems spiritual.

The good stuff is what your persona likes to keep, and the bad stuff is what you put into your "shadow" which is unconscious mostly. This results in you starting to try to change your persona, your conscious self, to "make it more spiritual".

So the ego has this entire path laid out for you, to "become more spiritual" by seeking externally and trying to find some alleged truth IN the world. This leads many people down a path which very much seems spiritual and positive and "better than the dark crap" but is actually an ILLUSION of spirituality.

While the ego is busy trying to make it seem like you're becoming more spiritual, you're actually moving away from your spiritual self (which is within, and was there all along), and is trying to get you to "find yourself" outside of yourself.

This leads to a variety of delusions such as that there is something sacred about the world, or the divine cosmos, or the universe is conscious and helping you, or that certain special objects or music or clothing or foods are all more spiritual.

It also leads the person's persona to become quite lost in the conceptual intellect, which is attempting to pretend to be spiritual way beyond what it is actually experiencing. It's attempt to reach out to lofty spiritual ideals is so far removed from "actual experience" that it can't help but go into the head and turn into a concept of the truth. It then believes it can find the truth by searching in the intellect or using the intellect to find it. This is a dead end.

It also causes the person or persona to become quite fake and filled with illusions of being spiritual. The trouble is, that the persona is a device for getting rid of anything about yourself that it deems not spiritual enough, and the only way to become really ultra spiritual is to get rid of as many bad parts as possible.

This turns into self sacrifice and a false idea of being selfless where you practically sell your soul in trying to be holier than thou. And in this you lose yourself, thinking that you're meant to serve and obey and do things you don't want to do. You'll take it very seriously and try to be as lofty and heightened in consciusness a possible, which usually translates to having a lot of thinking and conceptualizing. You then lose touch with reality, or at least, you lose touch with what you are really experiencing, and go into a fantasy land.

This fantasy land is the ego's idea of spirituality. It believes it can attain enlightenment and yet stay separate from God, becoming a God of its own making. This is a trap for every seeker. Everything spiritual-seeming, every illusion of spirituality, is offered up as a temptation or bribe to get you to actually abandon yourself and believe in the reality of an external truth even more. Believing in an external truth also means believing in an external God. Yet God is within you.

Sometimes that ego bubble bursts as the persona breaks down and the repressed rage of the shadow comes screaming into awareness to ask you to please acknowledge your real self and your actual experience, instead of your fictional life of ultra-specialness. This can be very unpleasant and come across as a form of insanity, but in a way it is a form of healing which is attempting to awaken you to the fact that your very own spiritualized persona is what has been destroying you all along, with its attempts to "perfect you" and transform you, instead of accepting you as you are.

These are difficult illusions to overcome, largely because the mind is unaware of what the persona is doing, and is unconscious of what it's shoving into the shadow. Many are led astray by this ego illusion of being spiritual. It is not really spiritual at all. There is no wholeness to it. There is a lack of authenticity to it. There is no real personality behind it.

Beware then, that as you attempt to become spiritual, the ego has an entire bucketload of tricks and temptations and traps and false masks for you to wear, to dress you up and make you look like you're being spiritual, even to yourself. And the only reason you fall for it is because you yourself believe that the truth is not in you. You agree with the ego that it is somewhere else and that you need to find it, which takes you on a long pointless journey to nowhere.

Once a seeker always a seeker, until you stop seeking and see the futility of it. What you are trying to find is yourself, and God, and truth and love. It's already in you. It's just covered up with illusions that make it seem like it is not there and cannot be there. But it is there. It was there all along. This is why the course asks us to remove the blocks to awareness of it, instead of seeking to find love somewhere else. We don't need a replacement for love, we just need to realize and accept where the love is.

There are really only two modes of functioning of which you are capable. It really does boil down to a simple "this or that" decision. Either you are in love, or you are in fear. Love has only one nature, but fear masquerades as an untold number of illusions. All of them are fearful and they represent egotism. But they are all essentially a withdrawal away from love.

To love is an outward expression. It is extension. Love shines and radiates out of you towards others. This love seeks to uplift, empower, heal, nurture, strengthen, join, share, communicate, connect, give, supply, support, make whole. Love is always given/extended through you from God and goes out to your brothers and to the world. It is an outward transfer which entails you loving and joining with everything.

Love, and all expressions of love, are miraculous and healing. Love is powerful, it is happy and joyful, and it is peaceful. It is meaningful. Love is sanity. Love heals and resurrects. And love can reverse all forms of suffering. Love shines like a bright light, and as you give it, you receive it because it is shared and for all. As you give it, you shine, and in this shining you illuminate both yourself and others, and in this light you can see, and what you look upon is illuminated with love and is lovable.

The opposite of this is fear. Fear is separation, contraction, withdrawal, and inward focus. Fear is selfish, victimizing and victimized. In fear you feel afraid, angry, upset, hurt, weakened, sick, tired, stressed and damaged. In fear you pull way from others and the world, you hate and attack, you feel imposed upon and controlled, and eventually die. Fear is an attempt not to extend love, not to give life, and to be alone. In fear you will feel alone, cut off, isolated, imprisoned.

In fear you will feel like you've been taken hostage, all the happenings around you will seem like they are against you with no escape, all problems will seem insurmountable and unfair and cruel, and you will feel like you're in a dark pit of hellish despair that you can't get out of. It's as if you've been taken hostage by a tyrannical ruler who has imprisoned you and kept you in a dark hole in the ground. And everywhere you turn there will be enemies and haters and attackers and prison guards.

What it boils down to is a very, very simple difference between the two approaches to life. Each approach entails a different kind of seeing. Fear places you in false perception, where the whole world seems like a prison. Love places you in true perception, where the whole world is harmless and forgiven.

Love entails giving in order to receive. As you give love, as you shine your light, as you extend, you yourself are uplifted. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver." Even if you start out in fear and lack, efforting to love more will empower you and lift you out of darkness. To love is to fulfill your natural function. You are supposed to shine. You are supposed to radiate. You are supposed to give and extend and reach out to join with others in love. AS you do this you automatically are protected and saved and it raises you up into the light where you are happy and at peace.

When you don't do this, you must recoil and withdraw into fear. You will step back and not give. And it will now seem that the world has taken from you. A gap will form in between you and others. You will develop enemies and opponents. You will hate some of them and hate yourself for hating them. You will become weak, afraid, lost, alone, and suffer in the dark. You will feel isolated and sick and like no-one is on your side. The world will loom heavily over you as if it has power to make your life hell. And all the while you will be trying to get, to take, to have, to own, to possess, to be special, and you will feel selfish. And everything offered by love will be missing.

It really is as simple as if you have only one choice. Either you give love or you lose love. It's like there's an emotional beacon in you, in your heart, where either your heart is giving outwardly and energy and light are flowing out of you in support of others, or your heart is cold and empty and you are withdrawing and escaping as an enemy of the world. Either your energies express and extend outward, or you hold yourself back. Either you feel loving and warm and bright, or you feel hateful and cold and dark.

You get to make this simple choice at all times. You can switch on love at any time. You can feel it in your heart. Even in the midst of any other illusion of suffering. And yet the ego is expert at making it seem like there is no way out of suffering and love will not help. Can it be as simple as that your heart is not switched on? Of all the many seeming problems, stresses, upsets, emotions, can it be that simply loving more will cure it?

The ego would say no, it will tell you that each of these problems is unique and needs a separate solution. And what it thinks it needs it tries to get. And yet getting it does not make you happy. Underneath all the complicated forms in which fear arises, and all the ways you can feel unloved, there IS in fact only simple solution to all of them. Simply love more. It lifts you out of all upset feelings, it brightens you, makes you feel happier, stronger, more confident. It dispels fear and erases upsets. It heals you.

Being 'human' can seem so complicated but actually what's happening in your mind is incredibly simple. You are like a piece of machinery whose function is to extend the love of God to others. That is all. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." You are host to God and extend God. That is all. Your only choice is to continue extending God at all times, or separate yourself off into isolation and fear, in which you will experience all forms of suffering. And at any time you can switch back into fulfilling your function as the light of the world.

The only way to be happy is to fulfill your function. To love. To express love. It's completely natural and produces miracles. It is holy relationship. It is God's will. It is God's will that you love and be happy and healthy. Love makes this possible and guarantees your health and perfection. Either you extend God's love, or you will attack yourself and make yourself sick.

This is why Jesus says "teach only love for that is what you are." It's an extremely simple choice, between love or suffering. To love is to heal and to be happy. To love your brother is to uplift and resurrect him along with you. Your focus should not be on yourself and your needs, or your body. These vanish when you love your brother. Focusing on your body makes it sick because mind is supposed to extend PAST it to others. The light has to shine, to produce health. The light shines PAST sickness and bodies, because it is forgiving.

To love or not to love, that is the question. And only love can make you happy.

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of ***all illness*** because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY. "

"Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them. "

"You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE. "

"You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision, He beholds Himself. And seeing what HE is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you."

On of the most life-changing things I've learned from ACIM, is simply realising this idea that we "scapegoat" in order to get rid of our own guilt. That we start out first attacking ourselves, making ourselves guilty, and then we project that guilt through seemingly justified anger onto other people. This whole "blame game" is of finger pointing and finding people to be sinful, trying to enforce people's guilt through anger and attack, so that we can get rid of our own guilt and come off innocent.

Most people in the world are blameful and believe that who they are angry at is the one who is wrong. When I first got this idea that "the person who is blaming is the one with the PROBLEM", it was a 180-degree paradigm shift. It was a revelation that it's not the person being blamed that has the problem, it's the person doing the blaming. Because for the most part it is easy to believe that anger is justified, and the person we're angry at must be the one who is wrong. But it's always the projecting person who has a problem.

If more people could adopt this, relationships would be 90% healthier. In a vast majority of special relationships in the world, even marriages, there is rampant scapegoating, anger and blame. People essentially have unhealed wounds, inner guilts, unforgiven sins etc, which are triggered off, which lead to an eruption of emotion and a hurling outward of it to try to pin it on someone else. When it gets really bad, it's just one reaction after another back and forth, keeping score and trying hard to make sure the other person is guilty.

To realize that we have to take responsibility for what we feel and experience is key. Instead of it being other people or the world who are responsible for what we're feeling, we have to take back that power and recognize WE are the ones doing it to ourselves. WE are the ones who are "to blame" for this suffering. It's the secret of salvation. If they aren't the ones with the problem, it must be me. And that takes honesty.

If I am upset, something is wrong with me, not anyone else. If I am getting angry at someone, something is wrong with me and not anyone else. The more angry I get, the more I am in denial that I have a problem. The more I am in denial, the more I split my mind, the more I reinforce separation, and the more I dissociate my mind from itself. The more dissociated I become the more I believe something "not me" is to blame, and become extremely convinced that I am NOT the one with the problem.

The key is that we have to forgive ourselves all the guilts that we've piled onto ourselves. All the self-accusation and self-hate and self-destruction. All the hidden sins and hates and unworthiness and all the rest of the ways we attack ourselves. Without that guilt, we have nothing to project, and no reason to project it.

I think one thing I feel quite good about is that after all these 20+ years of working on this with ACIM, I've managed to heal quite a lot of guilts and shames and hidden sins and hates and all that - to do with myself, that I don't very often scapegoat anymore. You can't scapegoat unless you need one, and if you aren't full of guilt it's harder to be triggered by stuff. I have become more benevolent and softer and more loving, kinder and more peaceful, and that's a good thing.

I see a lot of relationships where this simple thing hasn't been learned. The absolute default for the ego is to just go into rage mode whenever someone triggers off some guilt. Then there's defensiveness and anger and hurling abuse and separation. There a war of words, broken relationships, abuse and all the rest of it, all springing from wounded people getting their insecurities and unhealed stuff triggered off. And not taking responsibility for it.

It's tough at times to keep having to come back to this idea that, I'm the one who is responsible for this suffering. But it's a vital practice. If I'm upset, it is never for the reason I think. If I am angry and I think it is justified, anger is never justified. The cause and reason of the problem is in my mind, not out in the world or in anyone else. No-one is doing anything to me or causing me to be upset for any reason. It's all an inside job. If the world could learn this we'd have absolutely incredible relationships and the end of so much conflict.

If someone or something outside of you is the cause of you, you are powerless to stop it affecting you and are playing a victim role. Only if you are invulnerable to the world are you no longer affected by it. Its a transition from victimhood to the impossibility of being a victim, from vulnerability to invulnerability, from mortality to immortality, from effect to cause.

And that means recognising your immortality. It always comes back to you being an immortal being, nothing can happen against your will, so if you think someone's causing you to suffer, you're deceiving yourself. You have to get really honest and own up to what you are doing to yourself and admit you are mistaken, be willing to have humility and step back with the blame game. To totally own your causal power and how you are using it against yourself, is forgiveness. Coming from a position of not being in conflict and at war with yourself, so that you look out from that peace onto others.

Blaming someone splits your mind. The mind hallucinates that it's talking to another separate person in third-person speak like "you're doing this" while the person isn't even in front of them. The more angry we become the more we enforce separation and guilt. That's literal insanity, to project guilt in an attempt to get rid of it, while causing it to get worse.

Anger increases separation and splits the mind producing mental illness and ultimately physical illness. It's in all our best interests that we learn to own up to who and what we are, take responsibility for our own shit, and stop putting it onto everyone else.

Whenever we feel compelled to look outside ourselves for a cause or will or power to explain why something is happening, we're lost. If we can totally take full responsibility for what we are, such that we no longer accuse anyone of being the reason why we are what we are, we will be completely forgiving and kind and benevolent - to ourselves and others.

The whole of ACIM is simply geared toward this goal of complete undoing of the separation in the mind, the removal of all guilt, the end of all blame, and the complete reversal of all conflict. And without guilt there is no ego.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." W5

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." UrT30G1

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts." W281

"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" UrW195L5

"It can be but myself I crucify." W196

"Only the self-accused condemn." UrT31C

"You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack." UrT31C

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further." UrT6C3

"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making HIM invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt." UrT11J6

What if the world is really a highly malleable dream, not some fixed objective place, and our minds have the power to change it at will? Then this perhaps redefines physical miracles.

If the state of objects, the events that happen, the people that show up, the things that happen, are all chosen and consented and actually put there by the mind, then the mind is in a position of orchestrating, arranging, organizing and putting in place the contents of the dreamworld. Literally projecting physical matter.

This then means that if the mind is changing, its current state is going to project and manipulate and steer the dream in different directions. If it is in fear and war it's going to produce more conflicting nightmarish dreams, and that literally means causing the physical world to have more fights, arguments, conflicts, and so on. Not merely that you're interpreting such events in a more negative way but literally the physical number of problems increases.

Then if the mind is moving into a lighter, higher perspective, it is projecting a broadcast of more tranquil "surroundings", it will outwardly picture its inner condition and make a world in which there literally is less conflict. Less fights, less arguments, less wars, less attacks. Not merely that wars and attacks are now looked up in a more loving way, but that literally the count of them decreases.

This would then mean that someone who is anti-miraculous will be tending to mis-create life scenarios, events, occurrances etc which are generally more conflicted and upsetting. And someone who is more at peace and in line with God will produce life scenarios which are literally, on the physical level, calmer and more cooperative and easier to deal with.

A miracle worker would then be someone of a high mind who literally "manifests" a more healed world. Not merely healed as in, on I'm looking at the same world in a happier way, but that literally a higher world is projected and made. A higher world is hallucinated. Not a projection onto the world, but the ACTUAL world itself is a higher kind of world, with more peace and less problems and less sickness and so on.

For example, Jesus speaks of this:

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?"

Jesus isn't merely speaking there of interpreting a warzone AS IF it were a beautiful garden. He is saying that literally it transforms INTO a beautiful garden, a physical garden. How else does "all around the signs of life spring up" when miracles fall like drops of healing rain?

We have to now ask ourselves, is Jesus referring here to vision being some kind of just "happier way of looking at the same stuff", in which there are still wars and conflicts and so on but you "read into" them more positively? OR is he LITERALLY saying, that terrifying scenes, harmful arrangements of objects, frightening events, and so on, are literally erased, and replaced with a different kind of "reality" where there is now literally a beautiful garden instead of a warzone? Not a warzone reimagined or reinterpreted, but a warzone REPLACED by a garden?

What if our attempted understanding of perception is totally fucked up, and Jesus is actually NOT saying that you have "perceptions about" a separate world "out there", but instead that there is NO objective world, there is only a wishful-thinking dream projection hallucination of a world, which takes on different literal FORMS, depending on the content of your mind? Because now we're talking about mind literally changing the physical content, the events that transpire, the people that interact, how relationships go, problems that arise etc, and not merely looking at them in a different way.

Perhaps Jesus has thrown out the idea of there being an "objective world" entirely, and is speaking solely to the fact that our minds are literally PROJECTING A WORLD in realtime? That the reflection of hell on earth isn't merely a darkened interpretation of earth, but an actual projection of a warring world? And that vision or true perception or sight of "the real world" may actually be a way to project a heaven-like illusory world where there is no more sickness or death or suffering? Not a heaven ON earth, but a dream of heaven replacing earth?

When you go back and re-read many of Jesus's statements about perception and what you see and so on, perhaps they take on a different light if you consider them as NOT referring to an objectively separate world. Such as when Jesus says "The world IS perception" and "The world is false perception." Perhaps he is literally saying that when the mind is in false perception it projects planet earth, and when it is in true perception it projects the real world which REPLACES ENTIRELY the "actual world"? That perceptions of the world are always SUBJECTIVE hallucinations.

There is no world to really project onto. There is only an outward picturing of your present inner condition. There is no perceptions "about" the world as such. Changing how you feel about the world actually changes the world, itself, into a different form of a world, a different dream.

You see, when Jesus says that your self is ruler of the universe and nothing happens without your consent, he's not giving any exceptions to that. He's telling us that nothing happens unless we consent to it. That means the events, the happenings, the people, the encounters, the relationships, etc are actually orchestrated by the mind. Not merely interpretations of a world. The mind IS the world. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

So now when you are a miracle worker, turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, these are not merely perceptual reinterpretations of things. Jesus didn't look at lazarus's body in "a happier light". He transformed the FORM of his body from a dead decaying corpse into a living healthy active form of a body. That is direct reality manipulation. That is mind over matter. That is changing the dream world with the mind. That is what we might call a "physical miracle".

I'm really starting to lean more now toward this idea that there is no objective world here, there is only a dream, and it does not exist without our mind dreaming it. Therefore its content is entirely mind driven, mind chosen, mind consented. What happens is what we desire. If the world is going to pot its because we're making a world that's going to pot. If events are improving its because your mind is improving. And this leads to the notion that eventually we will actually orchestrate a world state which is actually somewhat like "heaven on earth", before we ascend. Where things are PHYSICALLY more harmonious.

What if the world is not a mirror or a screen or something to project onto. What if it IS the projection? And what if there is no world without such dreaming? And what if you as the dreamer can dream any kind of world, and have it become physically manifest?

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and ***all the world must change accordingly***."

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and ***you maintain the world within your mind in thought***."

"***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

What if when people in this world make a mistake, there is complete and total forgiveness and unconditional love?

If as a group we are to uphold a shared condition of peace, love and harmony, then we need to have 'shared interests'. That means, it must be in everyone's best interests to treat everyone with unconditional love and forgiveness at all times, absolutely regardless of the seeming severity of anything anyone does.

Unconditional love would say to someone filled with hatred, "Even though you completely hate me, I completely love you."

Unconditional forgiveness would say to someone murderous, "Even though you have tried to destroy me, I find you to be innocent and completely forgiven."

Can you imagine our present day society treating people this way? No. Because by and large, they do not. Most people in this world are riddled with egotism and condemnation of themselves and others. Therefore we have a world where when someone makes a mistake, it is considered to be a 'sin' or 'crime', and that it calls for punishment. We don't believe it calls for forgiveness, at least not unless there has been a huge amount of suffering first.

Maybe we can throw someone in jail for 20 years and make them 'atone' by doing hard time, and then forgive them? We even have a hard time forgiving them when they get done with their allotted punishment. We just want to keep on judging and condemning and finding other people guilty left right and center. Goes to show you how much we all have bought into the 'mistakes call for punishment' system of the ego.

It does not benefit us as a whole, that when someone makes mistakes, we ask them to feel guilty or ashamed. We describe this as a guilty conscience, as though we are supposed to be guilty because it is directing us to learn from mistakes or is telling us how terrible of a person we are because we deserve it. And we believe that this guilty conscience is our 'guide' and trusted advisor, which will steer us clear of mistakes.

BULLSHIT!

It does not benefit us as a whole, to find someone guilty, to ask them to experience guilt, and to suffer and go into a state of profound negativity, following the making of a mistake. All that this does is we now add on an extra layer of even greater negativity. That person, who could've been a loving member of society, is now relegated into a 'bad box' and has to now curse the whole world with their moping around feeling guilty and ashamed, their negative self-talk, their broadcasts of angst and upset, and basically everyone has to now tolerate them failing to give love to others. As if making a mistake the first time wasn't bad, requiring people to follow it up with a health dose of suffering makes EVERYONE suffer.

Therefore we have a vested interest, and should step the fuck up as a mature society, to recognize that the ONLY course of action that is sane when someone makes a mistake is to offer them completely unconditional love and forgiveness and acceptance. ABSOLUTELY unconditional.

How do you think God thinks of people? Do you think He gets all pissed off and angry and sends down some suffering? Do you think he demands some punishment and condemns people to hell for 60 lashes of death and pain? And how long is long enough to suffer? How long is long enough for YOU to suffer when you make a mistake? 10 years? Are you going to carry around all your baggage of righteous self hate and self loathing and believing you should be ashamed and believing you don't deserve love?

Well guess what. When you believe you don't deserve love, you also stop BEING loving, and so you also believe nobody else deserves love, so now on top of the mistake you made which came from unlove the first time, you now add a healthy dose of more - perhaps worse - unlove on top of it. How is that helping anyone? It's completely ridiculous. Being guilty and ashamed and unforgivable and unacceptable is EGOTISM. It does not help anyone. It just pollutes the collective consciousness. Being guilty does NOT atone for a lack of love, it increases the lack of love for all concerned. Love does not equate to guilt and guilt does not offer a gift to those who have been wronged. It's really a slap in the face.

God loves unconditionally. You make a mistake, God keeps loving you. You make a really really really bad mistake on the far end of the 'hierarchy of illusions', and we're talking, sin and death people... you make one of THOSE mistakes.... and God doesn't even blink a fricking eye. He doesn't even waver. He doesn't even stop to think, hmmm.. maybe I should stop loving Paul, he's done a pretty bad thing right there. No. He just keeps on loving, loving, loving, loving, loving, all day every day.

That's called unconditional love folks.

Forgive your enemies. Love your worst nemesis. Otherwise you will not be able to forgive and love yourself when YOU become that enemy. What you do to others you do to yourself. You have to extend the same 'charity' to others that you would want also. You can't be loved unconditionally no matter what you do, unless you are willing to love others unconditionally no matter what they do. Otherwise your belief that 'love only happens if conditions are met' will apply to you also and you'll find YOURSELF unworthy of it. To stop this you're going to have to get out of the ego SYSTEM (thought system, social system), of attacking anyone when they make mistakes. Otherwise you'll believe that when you make a mistake, you're unworthy of love, and you deserve to suffer and die.

Unconditional love calls an end to all suffering. It calls an end to all punishment. It calls an end to all labelling as criminal. It calls for the person making the mistake to be LOVED to high heaven, FORGIVEN totally, and ACCEPTED completely without reservation. It calls for the person to receive correction and healing. And it calls for that person to be RESTORED to the fellowship of the One united brotherhood. Only then can the person actually return to being capable of offering love, which is for the benefit of all, rather than offering guilt and shame and fear and attack.

It is in all our best interests to drop the bullshit ego thought system of 'demands punishment' and 'guilty conscience is a good thing' and 'don't make mistakes or you'll get punished'. Because you know what, while you're waking up you WILL make mistakes, and you won't be able to help it.

Nobody in their right might commits a sin. Nobody in their right mind can be anything other than innocent. Innocence cannot sin. Only when you stop being in your right mind can you seem to make a mistake, and your mistake was leaving your right mind. So now you are unconscious and you are not really aware of what you are doing, so you are not really doing it entirely willingly or consciously, which means you do not know what you're up to. "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" applies to EVERYONE who makes a mistake of any kind!

All mistakes are forgivable. And sometimes you're going to have to claim this unconditionality of forgiveness for yourself, and for others, in spite of whether other people are willing to go along with you or agree with you. YOU deserve forgiveness and so does everyone else. Be one of the few (currently) who hold humanity to a higher standard of being unconditional in our love for each other, rather than buying into ego blame, suffering and punishment. This world has suffered long enough already, and it never deserved even one ounce of suffering to begin with. Let it be over with! Bring on the love!

Giving and receiving must occur simultaneously.

This means that in order to receive love and healing, you must give love and healing.

Which in turn means, that the only way for you to be healed, is to extend healing to others.

Which therefore means, that your willingness to heal your brothers heals you.

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

This is a key point because when you focus on "your" healing or "your body" that in fact is falling short of extension. As you fixate on "what is wrong with me", you are failing to forgive and overlook it.

What's needed is the re-establishing of your function of healing, which happens through extending PAST the body to others.

If you seem to be sick, it is because you have not loved yourself AND other enough. As ACIM says, those who are sick do not love themselves. But to love yourself you have to love PAST yourself because love has to be shared.

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

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. ***The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness***, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

As you become willing to give, you are praying to receive. You can only receive by becoming part of the giving. When prayer is asking to get and not give, it is asking for sacrifice. And when prayer is asking to give and not receive, it is asking for sacrifice.

You have to be included in the prayer that asks to receive, because you must be part of the functioning of giving. The "flow" through you as a conduit for God only works when you are willing to be part of the transmission of that which you want to affirm is in you and through you.

When the mind's extension is arrested ie held back, through the body, and begins to fixate on your body or another body, it is not fully joining minds. It is falling short. Love is being held back. There is resistance and fear. This induces illness.

Once illness is induced and you are deceived, the temptation is to continue believing that since you are sick, you need to address the sickness. But focusing on the sickness does not look past it. It is the sharing, extending, and looking past your body that re-establishes the proper functioning of the mind. Once mind is extending/forgiving past the body, it is shining a light, and that light heals your body indirectly.

So the trick to this is that if you need healing it is because you are not healing. To heal, you need to heal others. By being of service, you receive support. By extending love you receive love. As ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you block it is cannot extend. You must participate in the giving, to open up your vessel so that love can flow through.

Jesus tells us, "you are healed because you wished him well." As you wish your brother well it heals you. If you attack your brother you will attack yourself. If you try to accuse your brother of sin, you will be accused. If you prepare a list of effects and suffering that you wish your brother to endure, you can be sure that you will be the one who experiences them. You cannot be healed alone, nor can you escape the effects of your thinking.

It's important to realize then that not only is healing not "just you getting healed alone", but also sickness is not about "you being sick alone". Sickness is an attempt to come between brothers and to attack BOTH you and your brother, driving a separation between you, using the body as a separation device and attempting to increase the rift.

Making the body "more real" by focusing in it, increases its symptoms, in an effort to convey that it strongly comes between you. Your sick body acts like a solid brick wall blocking you off from others, attacking them keeping you imprisoned. Similarly healing cannot entail merely the repair of "your self", it HAS to entail the REJOINING and SHARING with your brother, to undo the rift that caused the sickness in the first place.

No-one is sick in isolation. In contagion do the sick seek to kill others. Sick bodies are accusers. If "you" seem to go into sickness it is because you are attempting to accuse your brother of your sins. Which means you believe you are sinful AND that your brother is sinful. And this means you see yourself in a sickened state AND your brother in a sickened state. It may well be that you seem to be the only one suffering but it is because psychologically you have separated yourself off from others.

No-one heals in isolation. Isolation must end for there to be healing. To be healed yourself, you cannot hold grievances against others, you cannot project sin, and you cannot find your brother to be guilty. By the Golden Rule, what applies to you applies to them. For you to experience healing, mentally and or physically, you have to be willing to see your brother healed. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother AND yourself."

The temptation is to think you are the only one sick. The belief in "I am alone" produces sickness because it ends sharing. Therefore the opposite, "We are joined", produces health because it acknowledges that in their natural healthy state, minds are joined as one. And you can only ever join in LOVE.

It's almost as though you should "ignore" (overlook) what seems to be "exclusive sickness" and focus more on extending love to others, which shines past the sickness and erases it. If your sickness is a barrier to sharing, sharing is the remedy. The sickness was an attempt to disable yourself so that you could NOT share. The solution is to share and extend love in defiance of the barriers you've erected so that they are shone away.

Sickness then is an attempt to isolate, to cut yourself off, to be exclusive and special, to be different, to not share, to hide and to be in the dark. Healing must then be a matter of joining, reunion, equality, sharing, coming into the light, opening up to extension, and allowing your brother back in. This means receiving all of the sonship again, developing holy relationships, and moving past the illusions of separation.

When Christ Mind is shining through a body in wholeness and love, the body is shone past, making it illuminated and healed and transparent, eventually to disappear entirely. Bodies are interference, originally made as devices for separation. To use them with the Holy Spirit is to UNDO them. "The body cannot remain without illusions."

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. And nothing that the body says or does but makes HIM manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him, in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for YOU. And such it MUST be that YOUR mission is for HIM."

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."

Ok let's break down this passage and find out what it's saying.

"A miracle is a correction."

Before the correction, your mind is in a state of confusion, darkness ego. You are on a lower rung of the ladder. The correction corrects your mind and raises you up to a higher rung on the ladder. The false belief, mistaken perception, block to awareness, denial etc is "corrected" ie healed, and your mind opens up to some light. This alters your perception indirectly.

"It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false."

Being "like drops of healing rain", miracles are a little bit like detergent or soap for your mind. The correction actually comes from a higher level, e.g. the eyes of christ or through Jesus or Holy Spirit. The miracle shines or blesses or soaks into the "corrupted thought", the illusion, the false belief, the darkness, and "fixes it". Cleans it up. Gets rid of the blockages and dirt in the mind. To remind your mind that illusions are false, it lifts your awareness up towards forgiveness, into the light, where you have the correct perspective ie the state of forgiveness. They heal you so that you can recognize what is true and false rather than being confused. It doesn't have to add anything to do this (other than love which was lacking - "miracles supply a lack" of love/life).

"It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits."

So this takes place in your mind within the range of perception between false and true perception. You start out perceiving and believing falsely and the miracle drips into your mind and heals the error, undoes the blockage or confused belief, and raises the mind up toward the atonement. It can't lift you up any higher than perception will go ie up towards atonement/forgiveness because all they do is essentially "remove ego."

"Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it gives."

Note that Jesus elsewhere states that "healing is NOT a miracle." Nor are shifts in perception, which are temporary effects. Miracles in fact are like nuggets of light, sparks, impulses, energy, love-power-bubbles, which come down from a higher level and heal the mind, lifting it up and returning it to life ie resurrection. Miracle are the REMEDY, which cause healing and shifting to occur, but miracles are independent of the healing or shifts. They are not the healing itself, they are the "healer" or healing agent. They prepare the mind for being in a state of salvation by gradually erasing all the ego junk and setting you free. They also can be transferred, given, sent, broadcast to others like a little package of life-force, causing resurrection.

"A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways."

For miracles to occur, or for you to "do them", you have to GIVE them ie to extend love. You cannot give miracles without receiving them also, and you cannot receive them unless you are willing to give them. Giving miracles to others, ie extending christ love, blesses both of you, and lifts you both up, and benefits both the giver and the receiver simultaneously. When you send love to someone, you will feel invigorated and lightened. You can't love without being loved. Nor can you perform miracles unless you are willing to also be healed. This is the opposite to the world's laws which say that you receive without giving or give without receiving, as in the unhealed healer.

"A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."

This is an important part about body healing. Perception is upside down or backwards, when what is true is mistaken for what is false and vice versa. Levels become confused, and e.g. the lower level is thought to cause the higher, or body causes mind, or world/dream causes the dreamer. This is corrected because the distorted beliefs are undone (victimhood etc) and the mind is healed, thus perception changes as a RESULT of mind healing. Note that what you perceive comes from what you project FIRST, which comes from what you believe and value as true FIRST. Perception has no causal power in it, it's passive, like reading a book. Note that "perception is a RESULT not a cause".

In addition, the "strange distortions that were manifest" includes THE BODY'S PHYSICAL SICKNESS, because an unforgiving mind FORCES the body into sickness and death. The body becomes "distorted" by the mind through kind of "mind-force fields", which act on the body when coming from unloving attitudes and "hurt" the body, distorting it into forms of sickness, away from the body's "natural" blueprint of healthy functioning. When the mind is having upside-down/backwards beliefs/perceptions, it is believing in sin and attack, is projecting onto the body, and is using the body as a weapon. Thus the body becomes sick. As mind is receiving/giving a miracle, mind is healed, the remedy is provided, perception auto-adjusts as a result, AND the "strange distortions that were MANIFEST (visible)" in the body are also corrected. They simply are reversed and disappear because the mind stops holding the body in a twisted formation and lifts away all attack from it, thus healing it and restoring it. "Now is the body healed by miracles."

So moving upwards towards forgiveness, receiving healing, being corrected, having false beliefs undone, moving into the light and love, heals the mind, fixes perception, and then ALWAYS results in the body being healed. Or rather, "un-attacked".

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain."

"It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

The miracles don't "do" something to the body so much as they CEASE the ego doings that were attacking it and which were BLOCKING love from shining on the body to heal it. And without constant ego distortion the body image "reverts" to its undistorted form. To me it's kind of like the body has a standard healthy form and then mind "twists, bends, distorts it" making it appear differently (as sickness), but if you remove the distorting/force-fields/mind-bending you're simply left with the healthy body showing up.

"Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified."

Once the miracle has done its healing, mind is corrected so perception is in line with truth and forgiveness is seen as the only sane way to see things. Unforgiveness is what has been undone. Remember "the miracle does nothing. It merely takes away..." (which is kind of a doing) and it removes the distortions... it does appear thus to DO something, it does heal the body as well, it's just that it does it by UNDOING the ego influence and cancelling the evil distortions.

"Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. "

Here Jesus is kind of shifting gears and is no longer talking about how miracles heal and move you up towards forgiveness, but is now talking about where miracle actually COME FROM - from the top down. e.g. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Being IN forgiveness, having RECEIVED a miracle, and your mind now being CORRECT, YOU now "deliver them" to all you look on and miracles become effortless EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE which have miracle-working capabilities, because love heals and undoes error. You can now bestow miracle onto others from a christ-minded state of love and GIVE the miracles you have received.

Note that this raises the question, who does or where does the miracle come from when you personally are in a state of hell? Apparently you are not able to DO them until you are loving enough and close enough to christ. "Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first." WHO bestows miracles on you when YOU are in the dark? Is it a healing that comes from the Holy Spirit? Does Jesus inject healing into your mind, like he says he does? "I inspire all miracles" etc. Certainly your distorted ego is not a miracle worker, nor is any beginner to the course. Yet you are able to find healing through forgiveness and purification work, most of this purification work is I think NOT a miracle.

"Miracles ENTAIL (require, before beginning to do them), a sudden shift into vertical perception." Vertical perception is christ vision. You have to be pretty advanced in your own mentally healed state in order to be able to DO them. In order to receive them you have to be able to GIVE them. So somehow you have to get yourself "high enough" first, and that takes purification work.

... skipping a couple paragraphs...

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

Miracles are resurrection devices. They heal the mind and lift it up towards atonement. They literally GIVE LIFE where it was lacking, reversing the signs of death. The natural side effect is the cessation of ego attack, which eliminates the present-moment projection of body distortions and thus immediately heals all sickness and raises the dead. Every miracle increases life. "Miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life". Every miracle is a resurrection. "Miracles raise the level of communication." "Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead". By giving/receiving loving healing through expression/extension of love, where "miracles are a spark of life", the SPARK or POWER inherent to love is given and blesses and CAN REVERSE DEATH.

The ultimate result of miracles naturally is that there is nothing left TO UNDO, because everything has been healed, and so their PURPOSE comes to an end as the world is undone and all sickness is eliminated and all death cancelled. Before this ending, bodies become healed and now symbolize ONLY LIFE and become incapable of death, because "the mind being sane heal the body." And now the body is used for Christ/Holy Spirit purposes, representing LIFE and HEALING, and is a walking demonstration of miracle mindedness, now able to give the same miracles to others.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

The body is not alive, and the body is not dead.

Life is eternal permanent life which sees no death.

The body seems to symbolise life by seeming to be what we call alive, for a while.

Then the body seems to symbolise what we call death.

But at no time is the body really alive, or dead. It is not permanent and does not last forever.

When it comes into being it is not really life or a life form. And while it seems to live it is not really alive. And when it seems to die it is not really dead.

But by not being really dead this does not mean that it is actually alive either. The body is not either alive, or dead.

The body is actually nothing, because it is an illusion in a dream. It sometimes seems like life, and sometimes it seems like death, but these are both made up meanings and labels given to something which is not really anything.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death."

A person (body) who is dead was not alive prior to the death. The death is not the end of life, because the body was not really life to begin with.

A body in a dead state is actually not really any different to a body in a living state. Even when the body was seeming to be alive it was not really alive, and it was not really the person.

"As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

The coming and going of a body says nothing whatsoever about the immortal spirit beings who temporarily use them from time to time. A person is no more alive or dead at any time because a person - a spirit being - can only be alive forever, and never dies.

"I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing"

In a world of bodies in which we are deceived and believe that bodies are people and bodies are alive and bodies must avoid death at all costs, we fear the end of the body. But we only fear its end when we are identified with the body and think we are the body.

Anyone who believes they are a body will be afraid because the body can be attacked, the body is always in a state of change and instability, and the body eventually will likely die. Or at least, will transform its form into a state that we have decided to arbitrarily call death. A death that we make out to be an enemy to be avoided at all costs.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams."

There is then a resistance against the "death state" happening, because it's in the interests of body-identified people to stay in their bodies for as long as possible. And to keep others in their bodies for as long as possible. Leaving the body or the world is seen as a "very bad thing".

There is then a fear of the death state and a resistance against it happening and an attempt to avoid it at all costs. This entails digging in heels, pulling all the strings, being in denial, living in fear, and trying not to "die".

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

But all this really does is increase a sense of separation between the state of the seemingly living body and the state of the dead body, which increases the belief that an illusory world is real. It comes from body identification and an unwillingness to recognize that bodies were never alive in the first place.

When you are constantly trying to avoid "the end", you're doing so to preserve you "being in a body", and the deadly ending is seen as the termination of your self. If bodies are real then a person dying is seen as their extinction, beyond which they stop existing. They go down with the ship. There is no hope there. And if you see a person AS a body that dies, you MUST experience loss.

But by identifying a person as a spiritual immortal being who can never die, and who lives forever in life, and never really was a body, and never could be "alive" as one or dead as one, your mind is lifted out of the hellish nightmare of fearing death.

To fear death is really also to fear life, because you can't do one without the other. And if you are fearing life you are not really living. And living doesn't mean being a body as much as possible. It means being a body as little as possible, and eventually not at all.

No one who appears to be a body has ever really died, or lived. Bodies are not alive. They are illusions of life. Your mindset should not be catering to the social norm of trying to preserve body incarnation for as long as possible.

It should be recognising that souls use bodies only so long as they are useful for serving the soul's long-term multi-lifetime goal of reunion with God. When the body is no longer serving that purpose, the soul should leave, and this should not be seen as a tragedy.

Bodies are not the central core or heart of a person nor should everything revolve around whether they are there or not. They are temporarily vehicles to be used as tools for a while and then put aside while the soul moves on to something else.

When a person leaves the body they absolutely do not end or die or stop in any way. They are immortal timeless endless beings who live forever, and were never really the encounter suits that they appeared to animate while they showed up here. Bodies are not real, they are dream figures in a dream world. People are not bodies. Bodies do not really exist at all.

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

"I am not a body I am free."

"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."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth CAN be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits."

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

To believe God created Earth or that Earth is worth keeping, is clearly in contradiction to what the course says about the earth, frequently contrasting it as being the OPPOSITE of heaven and not something worthy of the Son of God. The world seen with forgiving eyes might well be "lovely", but it’s still not heaven.

Here is how the Course speaks of the "Earth"... (with my emphasis and minor comments)...

"Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in HEAVEN, so on EARTH (does not mean heaven=earth, it means you have the power to create here). Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil HEAVEN of Your Love, where EARTH WILL DISAPPEAR, and separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God"

"His little life on EARTH was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the HELL YOU MADE (earth) to God."

"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in HEAVEN AND EARTH (separate places). My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision."

"God has one Son, and He is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH (separate places)."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is NO PARALLEL in your experience of the world (earth) to help you understand it. There is NOTHING ON EARTH with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly."

"It is our function to remember Him (God) ON EARTH as it is given us to be His own completion IN REALITY (not on earth). So let us not forget our goal is shared. For it is that remembrance which contains the memory of God, and points the way to Him and TO THE HEAVEN (pointed to away from the Earth) of His peace"

"Father, IN HEAVEN it is different, for there, there are no needs. But HERE ON EARTH (which is not heaven) the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? (references to earth) Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts BEYOND the worth of ANYTHING ON EARTH. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with HEAVEN’S treasures, WHICH ALONE ARE REAL (earth’s treasure are dreams and illusions). Thus is the law of love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You (reference to ascension!)."

"Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while HEAVEN’s Son is born. Let EARTHLY sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed DISAPPEAR."

"(speaking of true perception/real world...)EARTH is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world (earth) that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, ETERNITY HAS SHINED AWAY THE WORLD (illusion of earth), and only HEAVEN now exists at all."

"(talking about Holy Spirit) His Words will work. His Words will save. His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this EARTH (cus otherwise it sucks). His Words are born in God, and come to you with HEAVEN’S love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of HEAVEN, for these are the words which all merge as one at last"

"Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to HEAVEN’s GATE; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God (to take you home to heaven). How far are we progressing now from EARTH (something you do not want!)! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!"

""I will forgive and this will DISAPPEAR." To every apprehension, every care, every form of suffering repeat these selfsame words. And then you hold the key that opens HEAVEN’s GATE, and brings the Love of God the Father down to EARTH at last (extending Holy Spirit temporarily), to raise it up to HEAVEN. God will take this final step Himself. Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him."

"Forgiveness represents your function here (on earth). It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon HEAVEN (opposite to earth where forgiveness is needed)? Yet on EARTH you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your RETURN (to heaven) to be acknowledged, not to be complete. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the WORLD (definitely talking about earth here). It has no meaning here (earth is meaningless). Forgiveness is the closest it (heaven) can come to EARTH. For being HEAVEN-BORNE, it has no form at all. (Earth, place of forms, is not heaven)"

"All power is given you in EARTH and HEAVEN (two distinct places apparently). There is nothing that you cannot do."

"Repeat the Name of God and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name and all the tiny, nameless things on EARTH slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."

"There is one major difference in the role of HEAVEN’s messengers which sets them off from those the world (earth) appoints. The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like EARTHLY messengers (but only like, not the same as), they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of HEAVEN’s CHILDREN and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game UPON THIS EARTH And then we GO (to heaven) to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"HEAVEN remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to THIS STRANGE WORLD YOU MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with HEAVEN as the glad effect of one, and EARTH THE OTHER’S SORRY OUTCOME WHICH IS HEAVEN’s OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

"You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines IN HEAVEN so your joy ON EARTH calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you (in heaven) in God’s plan"

"How could there be a meeting place at all where EARTH AND HEAVEN can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? (Clearly they cannot both exist) The mind that sees illusions (earth) thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down UPON THE EARTH after HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is ETERNAL and has never changed. He was "called down upon the EARTH" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

"There IS no change in immortality, and HEAVEN knows it not. Yet here on EARTH (place that changes), it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things"

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into HEAVEN, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes HOME. The incomplete is made complete again, and HEAVEN’s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it."

....

I pulled the quotes from a searchable urtext version. There are MANY MORE references to being "in heaven" versus "on earth", making it clear and obvious they are both distinct and OPPOSITE, and that only heaven is real, only heaven is what you want, and only heaven is befitting the Son of God.

God did not create the earth. This world is not our home. There is no life outside of heaven! The world - earth - holds nothing that we want. There is no world (earth). A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world (earth) (beacuse Heaven is FAR BETTER!) :-) Heaven is EVERYTHING, Earth is NOTHING.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening."

Fear is not "just fear". It's not just "an emotion". It's not just "one thing". It's not just "a reaction". Everything that fear appears to be, it is that, and it is not that. There is much more happening that isn't obvious.

Fear is the opposite of love. Death is the opposite of life and life is love. Fear and death are therefore the same state - the end result of the ego's thought system of sin.

Fear is self deception. Let's look at how the ego thought system deceives us.

God establishes what is ACTUALLY true. This truth is reality. It is eternal life, love, happiness, safety, peace. This truth is always true. Nothing can change it.

Ego means nothing more than truth reversal. It's an attempt to oppose the truth through denial. Ego can't change what is true. But, in ego you can DENY it or "pretend" that it's not true.

To deny what's true, you believe it is false. God's truth, or the truth about you, becomes false to you. Simultaneously, things which are false and unreal start to SEEM true and real. You start believing UNTRUE things about yourself.

Jesus describes the end result of this process (the ego thought system) as "total confusion". It's a state where everything true has been confused with or mistaken for, everything false. And everything false has been confused with or mistaken for, what's true.

You could not be more confused than to have no idea what is ACTUALLY true or actually real. It's a state of not recognizing anything for what it is. A total loss of perspective. It is insanity. Fear and death are insane. Fear is paralysis, or the stopping of life, which is death.

When your mind is confused, it's because you believe something is true which isn't REALLY true. Something seems real that is not real. Something seems to be happening that isn't really happening. You think it is, but it's not. In this state, you are simply very MISTAKEN. And in denial. And unwilling to accept that a totally opposite truth is the real truth.

What is false? Death, sickness, suffering, unhappiness, fear, guilt, sin, attack, murder, threat and danger, darkness, insanity, delusion, disassociation, not knowing who you are, unreality, non-existence, etc. All of this is false because it is OPPOSITE to what is actually true - God's truth. None of it is real and none of it exists.

What is true? Eternal life, happiness, freedom, fearlessness, freedom from sin and guilt, immortality, being incapable of sickness or death, nothing to be afraid of, no threat or danger, total safety, peace of mind, invulnerability etc.

When you CONFUSE these two, and put belief into the false stuff, you "make it real". You try to invest it with reality and truth.

"Whatever you BELIEVE IN becomes REAL to you."

To do that you have to deny what's really true. This denial is a block to awareness. It makes you UNAWARE of the real truth or the big picture. It disassociates you from what you are believing in the big picture, and the consequences of that belief.

That means you are CAUSING things (making them through belief), which are producing EFFECTS, but you are no longer aware that you are causing them, so they seem to be caused by something other than yourself. Who wouldn't be frightened of an "alien will" (a will outside of your awareness of what your own will is willing) that seems to do things "against your will"?

It's the mere fact that you are unaware of what you are choosing, wanting, supporting, believing in, that results in "stuff happening" that you didn't SEEM to will. And this stuff is then experienced as being unfairly treated. Especially given that everything that happens in ego is a form of suffering. And who wants to suffer? No-one sane.

So then, naturally, you perceive that you are suffering not because you chose to, but because someone or something else separate from you caused it. You really caused it, but you don't see that, so you HAVE to pin it on some other cause, automatically, to try to make sense of where it came from. This is the root of all projection.

The simple notion that there is "another cause" besides yourself, is the root of all fear. Because if something can CAUSE YOU other than God, can change you, affect you, or hurt you, without you being able to prevent it, that is grounds for terror. The mere perception of "a separate thing" that seems cut off from your oneness is grounds for fear.

As you move further into the ego darkness, increasing fear, consciously you start to experience what SEEMS to be a greater unwillingness to want or 'own' what is happening. You want to get away from the danger, away from the source of threat.

Because in denial you believe/perceive more and more than it's got nothing to do with your own choice. That you are having absolutely no part to play in making things happen, did not choose them, do not want them, did not cause them, and don't even HAVE a choice. And death is an attempt not to choose at all.

The more this increases, the more you go into denial, the less aware you are that you're choosing to believe death is salvation. Here, false = true and true = false. If both the true and the false are false, and the true and the true are true, there is a total blurring of distinction and no difference between them, resulting in total confusion.

The threat of death seems to be on the increase, your conscious horror at this increase makes you squirm like you don't want it and try to avoid it, but unconsciously you are choosing it.

For example, if you believe in cancer, at all, you will become afraid. Believing it exists whatsoever, that it has power, that it causes death, that it even exists at all, places your mind into denial. Because in God's truth, cancer does not exist. Cancer is false, untrue, unreal, non-existent, powerless, causeless, nothing. Cancer is totally an illusion that has no effect on the Son of God.

But if you've moved into "I believe cancer exists", you MUST now be in denial. That means you believe in cancer, but you are not aware that you believe in it. What's left of your conscious awareness is now limited only to the scope of what you are AWARE of. You are not aware of your belief, BUT, your belief is moving you TOWARDS cancer. Because whatever you BELIEVE EXISTS, you WANT MORE OF.

Whatever you believe in, you try to invest it with reality. You try to MAKE it be true. You give it a sense of truth, power over you, an alien will, causality, strength, threat. The more you believe in it the bigger of an 'enemy' you make it, and the more your perception warps to make it seem large and looming and able to affect you.

So there's your mind believing "cancer is a very real danger", which puts you into denial of the truth, which makes you unaware you believe in a dangerous threat, which makes you confused about what is true and false, which makes you think cancer is real and true and your salvation, which makes you want it, which CAUSES IT.

So now there is an increase in your 'environment' of the presence of this illusion of danger, and your conscious awareness is becoming afraid because strange disconnected threats are looming on the horizon, and you are not aware of how they got there. It seems like they're happening "on their own", separate from your mind. And because they seem separate, you perceive that you have no control over them. This perceived lack of "ability to influence it" produces fear.

This is the general state most of us find ourselves in - seeming to have no power or control over anything external, anything that seems separate, or anything in the world. As if the world is causal, decides your fate, and you just have to suffer, or run away in fear. As if it has its own will, separate from yours, that you can do nothing about, making its ultimate attack unavoidable.

Whatever you believe in, you make it real. Whatever you believe in, you give truth to. Whatever you believe in, you value. Whatever you believe in, you want to see. Whatever you believe in, you will perceive. Whatever you believe in, you make happen. Whatever you believe, you'll defend with your life, because you associate LIFE with "whats true".

It is not possible for example to believe "cancer exists", while also claiming to believe you are not threatened by it. I do not have it but I am scared of the idea, purely based on beliefs in its existence. You cannot believe in a causal power outside you without feeling threatened. You are not immune to it just because "it doesn't seem to be happening to me". You will fear it even if it's not seeming to happen. And the unconscious masses have done a lot to amplify its "reality".

The only way to not have fear of cancer therefore is to not believe in cancer. AT ALL. ie, cancer does not exist, cancer has no power over me, cancer does not cause death, cancer isn't affecting me, cancer has not done anything to me, cancer cannot do anything to me, I do not believe in cancer, cancer does not exist, there is no cancer, cancer is a lie, cancer isn't real, cancer is an illusion I made up, cancer has no mind of its own, cancer does not exist at all, there is no cancer, cancer is nothing, cancer is not making me afraid, I have power over cancer. etc

That's what you have to believe in order to be free from it. And being free from the BELIEF in it DOES make you INVULNERABLE. That's what you have to believe in order to not put yourself into the state where you'll be afraid of it. And that's what you have to believe in order to not CHOOSE IT. Because if you "believe it exists but I don't believe I have it", you are trying to have it.

Whatever you believe in, you are CHOOSING. If you don't want to choose something, you must NOT believe in it. You can't believe in something and then claim that it does not apply to you. You can't believe in something and then claim to be free of it. Believe it, and you give it power over you instantly and are moving towards manifesting/materializing it into your experience. And fear and suffering then become the consequence of that.

The secret of salvation states that you are doing everything to yourself. That means, in your confusion about what is true and false, you keep choosing things which are FALSE, by believing they are TRUE. By mistake. Because you are mistaken about what is true. You keep choosing things which are unreal, by believing they are real. And that means you literally WANT TO SUFFER.

By believing in illusions or false things, things opposite God's reality, you are electing to make those things part of your reality. So that you can have a false experience of them. Beliefs are attempts to CHANGE WHAT IS TRUE into what you want to be true. But belief can also be used to line up with what is ACTUALLY true, so that you believe the Atonement truth, which sets you free.

In fear, which includes unawareness, you are consciously kicking and screaming to get away from what seems to be coming to you "on its own". Unconsciously, ie behind denial, you are actually MAKING IT COME TO YOU by believing in it. And that literally translates to, you are doing it to yourself. Or the adage, "what you fear comes to you" or "what you fear increases". This is literally true.

Jesus says "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This also means there are NO CAUSES OF SUFFERING BEYOND YOUR OWN CHOOSING.

"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."

And that then means, if you were to actually sort out what is REALLY TRUE, from what you THINK is true, ie that you WANT GOD, and learn to recognize the ACTUAL truth again, you would also simultaneously recognize that false things ARE false. You would recognize that cancer is an illusion that does not exist. You would recognize that there IS NO THREAT. Because then you have stopped threatening yourself.

All fear comes from self-threat. A sense of danger that results from YOU believing that you are under attack. Which is an attack on yourself. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

For example, if you believe you sinned, and choose not to forgive yourself, you'll believe you are guilty. But this isn't merely a belief in guilt. It's a belief that you ARE guilty and an acceptance that your guilt is TRUE. If guilt is true, you will WILLINGLY ACCEPT that you DO deserve punishment, because it it SUPPORTED by what you believe is true. You will not object to it. So instead, you will WELCOME suffering. But even more-so, MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS.

This now means you YOURSELF believe that you logically deserve to suffer. And this means you now ACCEPT that you MUST suffer. Which means you believe you should suffer. Which means you now have it in for yourself.

It means you are now seeking to attack yourself in order to punish yourself, because it is justified, and this is SELF THREAT. It is suicidal. And that is going to terrify you more than any external projection of "who is causing fear" or "how its going to happen".

Guilt leads to fear. Guilt leads to more self attack. Your SELF attack is what frightens you. YOU are the cause of your fear.

So then when you are in fear, you are trying to hurt yourself. You are scaring yourself. You might project it onto all kinds of external stuff but it's self attack. Ever notice that when you are afraid you start finding all kinds of EXTERNAL things or "causes" to pin the fear on? Many things around you start to become threatening? That's projection. Your perception is warping. It's the same as accusing your brother of your own sins. You accuse your brother of your own self attack and reasons to fear.

So fear is really a state where you are CHOOSING TO SUFFER, where you are wanting what you are threatened by, are trying to make it happen, to undermine your immortality. BUT you are disowning it so much that it SEEMS like you have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

You are in denial that the thing you thought was going to help you is actually hurting you. You are in denial that your savior is your attacker. You are in denial that what you WANT is actually working against you. You are in denial that your defense against truth is causing you to be MORE sick. And you are under the impression that death is going to save you from God's wrath.

Your internal conscious messaging might be "I hope that doesn't happen, it's scaring me". But your ACTUAL activity is "I hope that happens, I want that to happen, I believe in it, it's going to save me." Your mind holds visions of threats and dangers in front of its perception to attack itself.

This is why fear is such a slippery thing. It's so deceptive, back to front, inside out and upside down. It SEEMS like the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what it is. The experience of it seems like you totally don't want it, but this COVERS OVER the fact you are WANTING exactly what you are frightened by. If you are scared, YOU scared yourself.

You have to own up to this, look deeply at it and realize what you actually are doing, rather than what seems to be happening on the surface. All victimy persons, everyone who is afraid, all who are terrified, ACTUALLY are choosing and wanting everything that they are afraid of. AND they are the one DOING THE ATTACK. This is why victims are victimizers and victimizers are victims.

Fear is choosing with the ego, siding with deception.

In fear you secretly choose to suffer, by choosing something that does bring suffering (ie to God it is FALSE), but which you BELIEVE brings salvation. And this stems entirely from being CONFUSED about what is really true and what is false.

All the attributes of God's truth need to be given back to God. You need to re-associate aspects of truth with God's truth. God's truth is where the safety is. God's truth is where salvation is. God's truth is what will ACTUALLY help and heal you and give you life. God's truth is what will protect you from harm. God's truth will give you immortality. And by choosing it, you will GET what you EXPECT to get, rather than the total opposite.

Learning to RECOGNIZE that is the entire process of working on your spiritual awakening. The "sorting out" of true vs REALLY true. What do you REALLY WANT to believe in. What are you believing that isn't REALLY true. How might you be very mistaken in your conviction that death is real? How might you be mistaken in believing that cancer even exists? How might you be confused about whether you can even be affected by anything, given you are immortal?

Gradually you will side with the ACTUAL truth rather than siding with what you BELIEVED was true. And that's a really good thing. Because now your expectation is that the truth will help you and make things better for you, and it ACTUALLY DOES. And then you will develop TRUST in it. You can't trust the ego. It is all lies and deception. One thing pretending to be something else. It is two-faced because it contradicts the real truth.

Only the truth is true. Only the false is false. Only eternal life is real. Death is an impossible illusion and does not exist. In God's love there is NOTHING to be afraid of. "Nothing unreal exists." Nothing false is true. And recognizing that will bring you peace and freedom from suffering forever.

I've been looking at this closely because I want to find out how this course is supposed to be applied, without a bypass and without denial.

At first I recognised that there was a whole lot of spiritual bypassing going on. That is, trying to adopt thoughts, theories, concept etc far beyond where my 'actual experience' is, such that I am out of touch with actual experience and am living in a kind of mental fantasy. This becomes the spiritualised ego, getting lost in the intellect, 'bypassing' the experience and the feelings and pretending to be more advanced etc.

So then I thought ok, I am not supposed to deny what's happening, I'm supposed to accept it. So then I went kind of the other way, went more into feeling the feelings, having the experience, and it seemed like if I would attempt to avoid or invalidate that in any way it would be a bypass. But this led to just being swamped in the ego, continued suffering, false perceptions, and essentially no room for forgiveness.

Now I am asking myself, where does forgiveness come into this? If forgiveness is going to try to offer some kind of interpretation or way of seeing something that is different to "what it is" or "what's happening", surely forgiveness is a bypass? There has to be a way to move from "I am a body" to "I am not a body" without it being some kind of faulty application or an attempt to deny the body. One thing to recognize is that there are always two parts to experience - what stuff is physically, PLUS an interpretation of it, and the interpretation can be wrong while still allowing the physical/biological/emotional part to be there.

The overall approach seems to be that we should first acknowledge what we ARE experiencing, what we feel, the situation we seem to be in, without denying that we're feeling and experiencing it. We HAVE to admit first that we're suffering, that something seems to have gone wrong - which we tend not to want to do because it induces FEAR that something is "really wrong".

This is part of the "fear of healing", because we don't want to acknowledge that something very convincingly "bad" seems to have happened - and if it is real, it would be frightening, and we DO believe it's real. Admitting it is frightening and so we deny and avoid this step. But THEN, having removed the DENIAL of the situation, seek for a better way to look at it and to reinterpret the experience, or to question the foundation or cause of it.

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

We need to make sure we don't shoot for "it's not happening" BEFORE we've admitted "this seems to be happening" ie "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace". That is acknowledgement, not a bypass. And it means willingness to admit that things have gone wrong, you don't feel happy, you are suffering and THEN that there must be a better way.

The course does speak to this in a few places. e.g. admitting first that the separation HAS occurred - which we don't want to admit to because it implies its real and is horrible, but we DO believe it has occurred - but looking at this WITH the Holy Spirit makes it less frightening, and then having admitted "something's gone wrong" we can be in a position to then immediately seek atonement. But if we seek atonement WITHOUT admitting to the denied dark belief or feeling or ego scenario, we are bypassing.

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

Notice how it says we 1) stop denying that we've separated and made a wrong decision and are suffering 2) accept the error, the suffering, the feeling, on a temporary basis 3) having acknowledged the suffering, now seek for atonement ie a more right-minded interpretation with the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that it broadens the perception, admits to bigger truths, allows in God's light and laws, and re-frames the ILLUSION of what you seemed to be experiencing before as "bad".

As per the secret of salvation, you can then SEE and admit that you've been doing this to yourself, and seek to choose again and let the Holy Spirit undo the consequences through healing. This is the proper "application of forgiveness". If we skip the acknowledgement of "what's gone wrong" we are in a spiritual bypass. If we skip admitting to being in denial about how awful we've made ourselves feel, we're in a bypass. If we don't want to look at the GUILT, having first asked the Holy Spirit to help us to LOOK AT IT, and we skip ahead to "I'm innocent", then we're in a bypass.

You have to not pretend that everything's okay. Admit you're suffering, admit you're not happy, admit to your feelings, feel the feelings if you need to, AND THEN work with the Holy Spirit on a reinterpretation. When you then see it from a higher place, or remember its a dream, or affirm you're not a body, or recognize you're not a victim etc, that is indeed "contradictory" to what you were seeing and experiencing before but its NOT a bypass because it's changing the interpretation OF it, not trying to dismiss it. We should end up with a higher christ-vision view of what we were seeing from an ego perspective., but having acknowledged the state we were in fully first.

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I asked ChatGPT about this a bit, here's some AI commentary:

In ACIM terms, the process looks like this: Notice the upset Acknowledge the feeling Recognize it comes from a belief Offer the belief for correction Receive a different perception Step 1 and 2 are not bypassing. They are required. The ego says: “If you don’t validate the feeling as true, you’re bypassing.” But the Course says: “You can acknowledge a feeling without agreeing with its interpretation.” That’s the pivot. There is a difference between: Allowing a feeling Agreeing with the ego’s interpretation of the feeling For example: “I feel hurt.” → acknowledgment “They betrayed me and I was wronged.” → interpretation The first is honest. The second is the ego’s narrative. The Course invites you to question the second — not suppress the first. ACIM is not about: Emotional catharsis Endless processing Validating the ego’s storyline It is about changing the teacher in the mind. Bypassing says: “This pain isn’t here.” The Course says: “This pain is here because I chose wrongly — and I can choose again.” That is not bypassing. That is reclaiming authorship of perception. When you shift perspective, the ego feels invalidated. It reacts with: “You’re suppressing.” “You’re not being authentic.” “You’re spiritually bypassing.” But what’s really happening is: You’re declining to make the ego’s interpretation real. The ego equates: Not agreeing with me = denial. But correction is not denial. It’s reinterpretation. ACIM doesn’t say: “Sit with your ego forever.” It says: “Notice it, forgive it, and choose again.” If you never shift perspective because you fear bypassing, you’re actually preserving the ego. Ironically, that becomes a different kind of bypass: bypassing the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation. When you shift perspective, ask: Am I suppressing the feeling? Or am I gently allowing it while becoming willing to see it differently? In A Course in Miracles, there’s an important distinction that clears this up: Denial of error is not denial of experience. Statements like: “I am not a body. I am free.” “My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.” are not meant as psychological affirmations. They are metaphysical corrections aimed at the level of cause, not effect. If you use them at the level of emotion — to override fear, sadness, anger — they will feel like bypassing. Because they’re not designed to suppress feelings. They’re designed to loosen identification. When the Course says: “I am not a body,” it is not asking you to deny that a body appears to exist in perception. It’s asking you to question whether the body is what you are. That’s a completely different move. A metaphysical statement becomes bypassing when: It is used to escape emotion. It is used to spiritually inflate. It is used to deny the felt experience. It becomes healing when: It softens identification. It introduces curiosity. It reduces personal attack. It increases humility.

Mind in its natural state, experiences a sense of safety. This safety is based on the fact that the mind doesn't see itself as at the effect of anything external. It does not believe in being caused against its will. It does not have backwards/false perception. It also does not position itself as a victim or at the effect of the world.

This produces a kind of internally supported strength, in which the mind is not undermining itself and it recognizes it has nothing to fear. It feels "self contained", whole, and undivided. This internal unity is experienced as protection and as immortality. The mind doesn't see itself as vulnerable to anything because it recognizes it cannot be attacked or threatened.

Reality cannot be attacked because reality is permanent truth. It is inherently immortal and exists forever. Anything real, which includes you and your mind, has eternal life. Permanence is your natural condition. And the mind in its sane state is in touch with this permanence, and so recognizes it can never be altered by anything, rendering it invulnerable.

If the mind decides to move into ego, it is moving into positioning itself as a victim. It begins to see itself as at the effect of external forces, and made to suffer against its will. Perception reverses because cause is seen as coming from the world towards the self rather than the other way around. And this brings with it all manner of threat and danger, based on the idea that causes outside of you can do something to you against your will.

This then results in a change in the internal experience of the sense of safety and invulnerability. It's as though the mind "breaks open" its shell of protection, and develops a "wound". The wound seems open and bleeding, psychologically. This wounded part of the mind feels exposed, raw, accessible, attackable and threatened.

When this happens you feel like you are vulnerable. It's as though you open up a doorway and take off your protective armor, and now it seems possible that the things of the world can come into you, past your boundaries, and directly attack the core of your being. This is because your sense of identity has shifted from immortal spirit to the mortal body.

Your sense of self sees itself as self conscious and descended onto the battlefield, identified with a body, viewing itself as frail and weak and limited and incapable, and it now seems as if others have power over you. This produces a feeling like your insides are opening up, have become brittle and thin. And you'll feel like people have direct access to who and what you are as an attackable thing.

This feeling of being vulnerable to attack, living in fear, feels like being very exposed and unsafe. It's as though you, who are supposed to be walking around inside a perfect suit of protection, have lost your armor and are now a weak helpless thing that anyone can attack at will. This makes you afraid and threatened and there is a constant feeling of dread and stress. And the ego is in this state all the time.

You may also find that you then conflict with someone or they try to attack you. Because of your identification with that which can be attacked, as a victim, your mind actually believes in horizontal cause and effect. Out of the exposed vulnerable wound in the mind, you form a kind of psychological artificial "bridge" to the other person. Or maybe better described as a "bond" or "cords of fear." It's as if by believing that the other person is the cause of you, you are "tied to" their will power, causally and psychologically.

By believing that someone else has power to attack and affect you, your mind sees itself as being controlled by, caused by, influenced by, some external power. And that produces a sense that you are being tossed around on the waves. You'll try to forget about the encounter but you won't be able to drop it, because you haven't forgiven it. And fear thoughts about it will keep being generated by your mind in response to the perceptual belief that you are being attacked by them.

These fear cords will feel like areas of exposure within yourself, as though you have opened up a direct line to the person and they can cross that bridge and attack your insides directly. By hanging onto the belief in their ability to cause you, you maintain this bridge across which flows attack and keeps you in a constant state of fear.

These bridges of fear are dismantled through a correction process of forgiveness, in which you recognize and affirm that you are NOT at the effect of that person. They are not causing you, cannot attack you, have no power over you, and are not guilty of anything. This actually psychologically dismantles these horizontal cause-effect fear cords and you can feel them disappearing or "closing off".

The removal of this psychological "funnel of attack" seems to "close off" your mind to this idea of external causes. It's like sealing up a wound or fixing a mental leak. And as the sense of exposure and threat is closed up, the closing up feels like the formation of a barrier of protection. And then you feel safer because you are no longer "bleeding mind", and no longer believe that something external has direct access to your innermost self.

Through forgiveness then, the undoing of false beliefs in being caused by things outside of you, you gradually "close up" the exposed wounds, and the mind stops "bulging out" and returns to a "deflated" state, where you feel much safer and more protected. Fear diminishes and you feel like external things can no longer come into you. They can't access you because you are not on the battlefield, you are not an illusion or a body or an attackable thing.

Eventually with practice this should result in a "sealing up" of those psychological woulds, breaking down of those bridges of horizontal causation, and a growing sense of being surrounded by naturally protective walls of truth. Invulnerability increases and you feel more like you are "out of reach" of illusory attacks. You no longer believe the world CAN do anything to you, not even death or sickness.

You sort of, reabsorb into heaven, into God's womb, into a deeply immersive sense of safety, protection, harmlessness, integration, wholeness, peace and fearlessness. Because in spirit identification, in truth, you are actually unattackable and immortal. You resume your sense of being invulnerable because you see yourself as innocent and harmless. And the more you can feel this sense of innocence and safety, the less you feel like the world can even get anywhere near to what you are. And where there is perfect safety there is perfect peace.

"As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect Accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF."

"It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed. But a real sense of being CANNOT be yours while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen"

"Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. ... Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself: "I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

You are quite literally A LIGHT.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky."

Like a giant magnificent powerful light bulb.

You have a brightness. You shine. You radiate light.

You are a light being, shining brightly in heaven.

"Who is the light of the world except God's Son?"

"It is not humility to insist that you cannot be the light of the world, if that is the function God assigned to you."

""I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here.""

Light is what you can "see in", as in total openness and awareness of what is. But this light ALSO shines and radiates, similar to how photons shine and radiate. This radiance is extension and creation.

"And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet, in the peace of God."

"you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity"

"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love."

It is a mental light, not a physical light. But it also comprises true power, and it can reach everywhere. This light also dispels all darkness, which is healing.

Just as there are the "great rays". Just as you as a "perfect shaft of light". Just as "gone is the body in the blinding light of the son of God". Just as you are "the light of the world."

"You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of your will."

When you are in the dark, in the ego, you do not shine your light much. It is dimmed because it is blocked. Unlove is a block to light's extension.

Resisting God is resisting the light in you. It makes you seem dim and darkened. And then you are lost and cannot see. You need the light to find your way and to know reality.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

Love and light are the same, so the more you REVEAL the light in you, by removing blocks to its awareness, the more the light is allowed to shine or extend through you.

You become brighter. You become more illuminated. In fact, the idea of "enlightenment" is the pinnacle of this. That you are en-light-ened, or "lit" or illuminated by the truth of God.

Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. It is a recognition of reality, with no blockages or denial. It therefore does not block the light.

When the mind is free of blockages, light can radiate, and you literally become brighter.

This light that's in your mind, your soul, has a brilliant radiance. It extends to infinity.

Your mind is lit by the same lamp or spark as all God's creations. This light is shared and is sharing. It is relationship.

You are capable of SHINING LIGHT into another person's mind and healing it. You can extend light to another, and regardless of the darkness of their mind, illuminate their mind or "shed light" on them from within.

It is not just a matter of you sitting there shining and hoping that the person might "come around" at some point on their own. Your light LITERALLY can CHANGE the mind of another and heal it, providing HELP to those in need who cannot help themselves.

As you forgive and purify and heal, you become more actively a light in the world. Your "shining" of yourself, your giving of love, literally increases and brightens. And the more you give it, the more you are shining.

As you shine brighter, your radiance has more power and is more miraculous. It can dispel darkness, which includes therefore the dispelling of sickness and death. Ego cannot survive in the light nor can any illusion.

This is why illusions recognized must disappear - in the light, in the perspective of true perception, in which everything is seen in the light, illusions and fantasies of darkness are shone away.

You are a "light worker" in the world, in the sense that you are literally A LIGHT in the world, shining heaven's light INTO the darkness to shine AWAY the darkness.

The light that you are, brings light to the world of darkness and shines so brightly that no dark corner remains where sickness, suffering or death can lurk. Bodies are shone away in the brilliance of the Son of God. And even the whole world and the sun and stars will disappear in light.

Send light to people. It heals them. Radiate. Extend. Express. Shower them with love. Be the light of the world. Be a light in the darkness to show the way and dispel the darkness of others. The light of God is in you now.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

"Miracles are seen in the light."

"The peace of God is shining in me now. Let all things shine upon me in that peace,And let me bless them with the light in me."

"Once YOUR mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby TEACHES healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches LIKE me."

"My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive. Its shimmering and perfect purity is far more brilliant than is any light that I have ever looked upon."

"The light that belongs in you is the light of joy. ... The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating HIS joy upon it. Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it."

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

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

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

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"Like you, the Holy Spirit did NOT make truth. Like God, He KNOWS it to be true. He brings the LIGHT of truth into the darkness, and LETS it shine on you. And as it shines, YOUR BROTHERS see it, and, realizing that this light is NOT what you have made, they see in you MORE than YOU see. They will be happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing, and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which SEEM to bind them unto despair, they do NOT see as nothing, until YOU bring the light TO them. And THEN they see the chains have disappeared, and so they MUST have been nothing."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. This light can not be lost."

"Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time, by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and ENABLING THE WORLD TO SEE. For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet sight that makes them one."

"The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well. From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks. And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."

"What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.

In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you."

"Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is JOINED with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you, to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can YOU remain in darkness? You are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart, and which led nowhere. You have FOUND each other, and will light each other's way. And from this light will the great rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God. To shine away the past, and so make room for His Eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light."

If you are immortal, you cannot suffer. You cannot be hurt, damaged, offended, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, lacking joy, unloved, abused, made sick, killed, harmed, bruised, wounded, angered, nothing. You can only be immortal.

So what does that mean, in light of what seems to be "you suffering"? Even "your suffering" cannot be truly happening to you. YOU cannot be suffering. Your immortal self CANNOT be experiencing suffering. You cannot suffer. So who is suffering?

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

So when you seem to be suffering, let's say you feel hurt because someone called you a "stinky fart face", can it really be that you ACTUALLY are hurt? And if you FEEL hurt by this, is this "you feeling hurt" actually really happening? Even if you feel it, even if it seems "it applies to me", even if it seems it was targeted "at you", even if its "highly personal and reminds me of the time I kept farting in church", CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that YOUR IMMORTAL SELF is actually experiencing this or believing it?

It must be that even when under attack, "you" that feels attacked is some kind of fictional construct. It can't REALLY be your immortal self that is attacked. Your immortal self cannot be sad or upset or feeling betrayed or victimized. It's impossible for your real self to feel anything but joy and love and happiness. So when you have an "I feel hurt" moment, even if it involves HEAVY emotions, and terrible pain, and totally seems to be all about YOU and how you feel... CAN IT BE?

It cannot ever be really your true identity that is suffering. Even if you seem to "hurt yourself", you are not hurting yourself. You can't BE hurt. So who or what are you hurting? If you even decide to kill yourself, YOU cannot be killed. So what is dying?

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

WHO or what is being killed? Sure enough it is the body that is involved. But in addition, how is it that there seems to be a sensation that it's YOU that is going down with the ship? WHO or what is under attack? Is this taking place IN YOUR MIND?

Is it possible, that when there is a sensation of hurt or upset feeling or guilt etc, that the feeling ITSELF brings with it a kind of illusion or "sense of" "self"? Could it be that when you are feeling guilty, and you feel like a target, and it feels like everyone can see you and knows you are there, and you are "self conscious" in public, and you want to hide from everyone because you feel like they KNOW your inner guilty secret.... is it perhaps that the guilt ITSELF brings a sense of "centric identity"? Is not anything other than love, a sense of selfishness, and thus a sense of ego?

Some years ago some stuff happened and I had a large amount of guilt because of it. And because of this guilt, I felt ashamed and took it with me everywhere I went. And I felt constantly threatened. Anywhere especially in public, which I avoided, it felt like I had a target on my back, that EVERYONE knew that I was guilty, and they could see this guilty self, and MY experience of this guilty self was a feeling of being very "self conscious". Nervous about what I AM. Feeling like I am "evil" or "bad". Feeling certain that I AM THE GUILT. And that everyone was pointing a finger at me.

It would then happen that if people would attack me, or call me names, or accuse me or whatever, I would feel like "this guilty self" is vulnerable AND attackable. If they would accuse me of something, they were accusing THIS guilty self of it, and IT was self conscious, and IT felt attackable and vulnerable, and IT believed that it deserved punishment and that IT was the ACTUAL target of what people were putting out there. So when they called me by name, and then hurled an abuse, this "guilty self" felt like it was ABOUT IT, personally, and that they were directly addressing this guilty self.

But then after a time and much healing, this guilt was gone. And then I noticed that when these same people were being the same way they seemed to be before, it clearly did not appear to be ABOUT ME, and it was not targeting "that self", that guilty self, that was in me before. And that guilty self and its sense of being "self conscious" ie in fear, was not there to "receive" the attack. It did not exist, so they could not AIM their attack AT it. And so "I", my identity, which was no longer bound up with the guilt, saw myself as NOT being the target of their expressions. And so I felt invulnerable and could now recognize that they were attacking themselves. What happened to the sense of SELF that was present IN THE GUILT?

See, whatever you make TRUE of you you will believe is WHAT YOU ARE, and in effect WHO you are. So if you believe of yourself, "I am guilty", you will believe this DEFINES you. And now you ARE guilt. And this guilt has components of ego in it. And ego is selfish. Ego is a kind of "self centeredness", a self-important self-interest.

If the absence of separation means that there is pervasive light everywhere throughout the universe, then ego is a massive CONDENSING of that, down to a point, such as a star, so that all you are now left with is masses of darkness and a tiny CENTER of a point of light. And this "all that's left" little concentration of "self" now seems to be separated off and small and weak and vulnerable. That littleness is the sense of EGO, and it is experienced like a focus on yourself alone, in isolation.

Everything about ego is about becoming small, little, contracted, compressed, diminished, weakened, self-focused, self-centered, selfish, self-attacking, self-important, self aggrandizing, delusions of grandeur, etc. This condensing produces a kind of "sense" of "me", distinguished from the rest, broken off and separate. This sense of self is "self conscious" ie made of CONCERN for self and FEAR of its own weakness and littleness. The "self conscious" self is in fear and looks out frightened of the world that threatens it. The more EGO you have, the more ego stuff you have, baggage, dark feelings, guilts and hurts, the MORE you feel self centered and like this stuff "is a self". A sense of "separated me", cut off from the rest and not sharing.

It brings with it a kind of "focal point", a contracted little fearful corner of the mind, and the more this little corner withdraws and hides and tries to be even smaller and weaker, the MORE the sense of artificial "self" increases. Because the amount of selfishness is going up, the amount of self importance is going up, the amount of superiority/inferiority complex is going up, and this all produces what SEEMS LIKE a sense of "there is something here", "I am something", "I am all these feelings", "I am these thoughts". You become identified with FORM.

The whole egotism, the attitude, inherently has this bunching up, crunching together, condensing, tightening, contracting kind of thing about it, and this SENSE of this happening FEELS like the formation of a hot-spot in the mind that seems like "where something is, moreso than the rest", or "self interest". A sense of an island within the mind. A "self".

When the guilt goes, when the self attack goes, when the sin is gone, the egotism is gone, and all this tightened contracted littleness "dissipates" and stops being so focused, and without the focus on a tiny little huddled-in-a-corner-hiding sense of identity and truth, that sense of being "separated off" and "a separate identity" goes with it. It just disappears. But that isn't the end of YOU, because your sense of self EXPANDS and moves towards the UNLIMITED, universal, endless holy christ self that you really are.

So who is it that suffers? Who is it that can BE hurt and FEEL vulnerable? It is not your immortal christ self. It is not the real you. But it can seem to be a SENSE of "you" because part of your mind gets caught up in the contraction and withdrawal into "a center", into a little prison, a bodily identity, an identification with locality in space-time. And the more ego-stuff you have in your mind, the more intensely that your mind forms into a huddle of tightly-held-onto stuff, creating an IMPRESSION of you being kind of snagged or caught up on this collection of ego material. And being localized around a "point" it makes you feel like you are this little separated off dot of identity.

It is kind of like.... the suffering, ITSELF, suffers. Just as how fear is self-fulfilling. The guilt ITSELF brings with it a feeling of separate self. Any ego emotions, be it anger or sadness or grief or loss or lack or abandonment or unworthiness or sinfulness or fear or whatever, all brings with it SELFISHNESS, which is isolation and contraction and that attempt to GET AWAY FROM everything else, producing an increasing sense that you are "this something" in the middle of the ocean of mind. And this "sense of self" always feels vulnerable and threatened and unsafe. But this sense of self is PART OF the ego material that's in the mind, and without it your mind DOES NOT experience being a target.

Without the guilt, you cannot feel this. Without the unworthiness or loathing, you cannot feel this. Your mind is elastic and sort of snaps-back into its expanded, non-localized state, spread out evenly and smoothly instead of tightened and restricted and limited. When the guilt goes, YOU stop feeling like "you" are susceptible and attackable. You stop feeling like YOU are guilty. And that sense of "contracted self" goes.

Your sense of identity stops being "caught up in" the "truth" that the guilt expresses. Because if you believe "I AM guilty" then this will set you up to experience that you AND the guilt ARE ONE. And now you ARE guilt. And in the guilt is your "self", your identity. And you will not want to let it go if you believe that letting it go will be the loss of who and what you are. So there is a kind of addiction to the ego materials and an unwillingness to see YOUR SELF as being something NOT associated with, or identified with, the ego materials. e.g. with the guilt. "I am guilty" will feel like you are MADE OF guilt. That it is fundamentally your nature.

So who is suffering? Who is hurt? Who is it that is having loss? Who is sad? Who is unworthy? Who is afraid? THOSE THINGS, combined with your mind, produce a sense of identity, or identification WITH those things, that makes YOU feel and perceive that it is YOU that is those things. That they APPLY to you. Because you think they are PART of your makeup. But it is those things themselves that bring with them the sense of artificial SELF, that is the ego, the selfish self-centered self, the hoarding possessing self, the playing small self. And without YOUR CONSENT, without your BELIEF, that these things are true of you, that sense of little self cannot remain. Because true self is expansive and infinite.

You seem to suffer because you identify WITH and AS ego stuff. Which temporarily makes you believe YOU are being attacked and YOU are the guilty one suffering. But it is really "the ego", the non-existent fictional self, the selfishenss, that is the guilty one. IT feels like IT is guilty, made of guilt. And when you WITHDRAW your allegiance from THE GUILT, that sense of "its about me" goes with it. And then you recognize that your REAL self, your immortal self, was NEVER guilty. It CANNOT BE guilty. And your immortal self doesn't have that sense of self-consciousness, self-concern, self-importance and selfishness.

You can think you are suffering, but you aren't. In a way, it is the ego that is suffering. Ego = suffering. You can think you are "the little self that suffers", but it is NOT really you. Your mind can get CAUGHT IN the trap of the ego viewpoints, which bring with them a sense of self-focus and self-worship and vulnerability, but you are not ever really those things. It is the ego that suffers because the ego IS suffering. It is the ego that has guilt because the ego IS guilt. Without guilt there is no ego. Without a bodily identity there is no body. Without sin there is no world of sin. And without death there is no world.

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

So when you feel like "I am guilty" or "I am anything" other than as God created you, know that you are lost in the ego and are feeling ego stuff and ego stuff feels this way and the sense of artificial "me", self importance, being self-absorbed, selfish, comes with that territory. And it is that vulnerable, sensitive false self that seems to be the target of the suffering, NOT your immortal self. And once you dis-identify from that EGOTISM, the whole ego thought system, you let go of these false accusations and the falsely accused goes with it. And all that is left is your immortal spirit. Your true identity in God which can never be attacked.

The ego's problem solving solution is to separate. It will tell you that the way to forgive something and free yourself from suffering at its expense, is to separate from it and/or attack it.

The way you'll separate from it is to deny it, try to believe it's not real, to see it as not happening, attach a label of illusion to it, affirm over and over how God didn't create it, label it as duality, and generally weaponise various parts of ACIM against it to "make it go away."

This is what the course calls "forgiveness to destroy". It demands that either a) the thing itself changes so that you're not affected, or b) you destroy its existence so that you're not affected. Both entail you not really changing yourself, while increasing separation - but disguised as "forgiveness."

The main problem is sin. Sin is a combination of two things: form and meaning. Meaning or interpretation is given to a form and associated with it, but then it seems like the form IS the meaning and you're dealing with ONE thing. One object that is evil, one act that is bad, one person body that is sinning, etc.

The combination of ego interpretation and form, makes it seem like your only solution is to get rid of the form. You have to throw it away in order to free yourself from the meaning. This immediately produces the spiritual bypass in which experience is denied, feelings are repressed, guilt is not looked at, beliefs are not questioned, the world is denied, bodies are denied, and the person tries to "escape" from the world of form.

The insight that HAS to happen for proper forgiveness to take place, is to recognize that "the problem" IS a combination of two things - form and a meaning you're giving it. You have to recognize that YOU are contributing something extra to the thing, you're adding something to it, you're giving it a meaning. And that means that there is an ASPECT of the thing that you can change your mind about.

This then leads to the realisation that if you were to think differently, believe differently, undo guilts, change your attitude, interpret in a lighter higher way, or generally alter YOUR MIND, it would change how you experience the thing. We're not talking here about doing this to make the form of the thing go away, but we're talking bout making the FALSE MEANING go away by REPLACING it with a higher meaning.

What this then does is it acknowledges the continued possible presence of the form without bypassing, without denying it's there, without trying to make it unreal, without attacking it with quotes, without ignoring the body, without numbing the feelings, without pretending you're not unhappy, and without denying the guilt.

Instead of being a "shove this thing into the pit of hell so that it's out of my way", it's more like "I'll change MY contribution to this so that I see it in a better way". This entails an honesty and a willingness to question your beliefs, to consider that your interpretation might be mistaken, to have a little willingness to admit to being wrong, and certainly a willingness to stop denying what you are experiencing. In fact you need to acknowledge the forms that are taking place EVEN MORE, before you can properly move into forgiveness.

For example if you are full of guilt but are in denial about it, you will project that guilt onto forms. And then you'll associate it with the forms. And then you'll think that the form + guilt is actually just "formguilt", like it's locked in as one thing. In order to move away from this delusion, you would have to be willing to stop denying that you feel guilty, stop denying that you believe you are guilty, and look at the guilt with the Holy Spirit and find a better to look at it so that you can overlook it and see your innocence.

As no time are we looking to write off, ignore, relegate, label, attack, dismiss, deny, pretend, or otherwise "make go away" anything physical or emotional or mental. We just want a different ANGLE on it. As soon as we start getting into "I want to make this go away", we're very likely binding meaning with form and are trying to get rid of it all at once. And that means we're going to move into a "reaction to sin", with a counter-measure of forgiveness to destroy. And then we're in a bypass.

When we use high-level lofty truths, the proper use of them is NOT to deny form or experience, or to create another separation or rift between heaven and earth. It's to use it to steer the mind towards truth WITHOUT negating or attacking or denying the illusory world. If there is any hint of "separate from it" in your forgiving, you're got some ego in there.

For example if you say "there is no world" and you're using that to try to write off the world and make it go away, that's a spiritual bypass and an attack. If you are saying it with the purpose of affirming your true identity and increasing the recognition of what the world IS, that's a proper use of it. There's a subtle difference there, but it's also huge.

If we say for example "I am not a body" the purpose isn't to destroy the body or make bodies go away. The purpose should be to affirm your identification with spirit and shift your identification away from the body. This isn't to be used as a statement with a hidden meaning of "bodies aren't real" or "bodies don't exist." Because the truth is that you DO believe very strongly that bodies exist. Your aim is to dis-identify from them not destroy them and not see them, at least not until much much later when you're ready for that.

We have to therefore always be careful to check whether how we're USING the course is using denial properly. If we've got some "make it go away" vibes in there, we're introducing some ego. If we're weaponising statements in order to "defend against", we're got some ego in there. If we're trying to say I am immortal spirit in an effort to get rid of the body and shut it out, that's a huge bypass.

Overall, the best way to avoid bypassing is to adopt an attitude that you are in this world, in this body, and you will remain in this world in this body, even when you are very close to awakening. An attitude that you will find peace even here in this world, and not initially attempt to escape the world in order to find it.

An attitude that you will repurpose and re-use the body and express the love of God through it to others here in this world while you have it. That you'll use the body for teaching and healing, rather than trying to not have a body at all.

That instead of trying to attack the world away, you'll find a way to forgive it and arrive at the forgiven world, seen here in a body with christ vision. An attitude that you will STAY AND HELP, rather than trying to "escape from hell", that you will be a healer and a teacher of God and bring light INTO this world. To be the light of the world!

As soon as the course is being used in an effort to escape from the world, you're going to go into a spiritual bypass. As soon as you're trying to write the world off, get rid of the body, demonise death, repress feelings, deny suffering, or make the whole of spacetime out to be some defective sinful thing that you want nothing to do with, you're going to be bypassing.

This bypass results in escaping into the intellect, using very lofty level 1 statements to try to "write off" the world and the body, using non-duality ideas to invalidate everything you experience, makes you sacrifice and control and limit everything you do including anything you enjoy, produces a cold dismissive attitude of rejection, develops a sense of total separation between heaven and earth, and generally increases the ego.

Jesus suggests to avoid this "top down" sort of approach where we just try to hammer high truths into our minds or force ourselves to believe things. We're meant instead to work from the bottom up, from where we are at now, without denial of experience or feelings or suffering, and work with whatever we're open to as the next step, to question our current beliefs and consider a better way to look at things. So that we can work our way up from the bottom, instead of pretending to sit on the mountain-top hurling down judgements.

"And as a man, I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, so much as to CORRECT error from the bottom up."

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

"Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone."

"When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share this light with you."

"I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here."

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

To be a healer of another person's mind, you have to begin by forming a connection to that person. Somehow your mind has to be in a state where it has ACCESS to the other mind.

The only way to gain access to a brother is through joining in love. Only love can be truly shared, and love is communication. Love opens you up and plugs you in, facilitating oneness, union, connection and joining.

This means that at the very least, you cannot effectively heal someone if you have not connected with them through love. The gap of separation between you has to be surpassed first.

This leads to the question of whether you are being truly healing and helpful, or whether you are being harmful and attacking. If you are lacking in love in some way, there is an attempt to separate off your mind from another. If there is any belief in harm or hurting or scapegoating or making sins real, it's going to pull you away from their mind and erect walls that come between you.

This obviously tells you that it's not truly possible to even get access to the mind of another while you're in a state of attack. If you are not healing, you are hurting. "What is not love is murder."

In order to, on your part, cease contributing to suffering in the other person, you yourself have to be free from attack. When you are not in "attack mode", you are in healing mode. Attack mode separates you off, healing mode joins you together with your brother.

Love is a bridge, fusing minds together as one. In order to access the bridge you have to be sufficiently loving. A transmission of anything less than love places the bridge out of reach. But fully loving the other person is a very intimate, visible, exposed and embracing state.

So in one way or another, healing requires that you join with the other person in a fusion of oneness and love. Generally speaking this means you have to be in a loving state, generate love, or transmit and receive love.

The state of joined minds must transcend space and time. In fact you are able to do this at a distance ie remotely, for someone you are not even physically close to, because space doesn't enter into it. Your mind is able to communicate with another mind regardless of distance.

Which leads to realizing that the state of "sharing" places you more or less "in the mind" of the other person. You can visualize this in terms of you being physically one with the other person's body. You can visualize it as resonating with their frequency/energy. You can do it through feeling and empathy. You can also tune in by feeling that where you are, you are IN the other person or their body, as if you are where their body is, and your own body is overlapping theirs.

So there are two ingredients here. 1. Loving enough to activate a shared communication channel or bridge across which love can be shared. And 2. Transcending space and being one with the other person beyond bodies. In the sharing of space, you overlap with your brother and are in him.

This forming of a loving connection and sharing a space, now places you in a position to SHARE what you have to give. You can now offer and give and radiate and bestow love to this person in a blessing ("Miracles are a universal blessing from God"), feeling it within yourself, which is shared in intimacy with the person due to your overlapping oneness. What is yours is theirs and vice versa. What is happening in you is happening in them.

This sharing state of union now allows your mind to light up the other mind. To restore sanity to it. To supply a lack of love, life and energy to it. With your minds joined, in a oneness kind of state, you kind of now become "co-thinkers". A mutual team. Two minds acting as one. Kind of like siamese twins where the two minds have to cooperate to get anything done.

That now means that it requires for BOTH of you to agree to believe and express the same thing, in order for it to be possible. If one of the two does not agree, they are in conflict and the action is prevented. This means then that if the other person believes they are sick, and you do not, they are prevented from being able to believe in, strengthen and express that belief.

They are thus trying to assert various lies about themselves which are destructive. Their mind is weaker. You are asserting truth about them which is constructive. Your mind is stronger. Your mind can thus influence their mind and "override" their weaker belief. Or to put it another way, you can enlighten them by shining your light into their mind so that that mind is theirs and is strengthened in them, because you share the same light.

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

The simple task therefore is to "supply a lack of light" ("miracles supply a lack" "given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less".) To supply the lack of light, you must shine brighter than the other person in terms of the degree of love.

To SUPPLY it at all, to get that light INTO their mind, your light has to not only be bright enough, but your mind has to be loving enough, so that your mind can actually gain ACCESS to the other mind through a connection of sharing.

To be able to "amplify" the light in another mind, like kindling a fire and enhancing the flame, you have to at first see the light in the other person. You have to recognize that they ARE light by knowing the truth about them. Which means looking to their christ self and beyond their body and beyond their sickness. You overlook those things through forgiveness, which is facilitated by a loving attitude, and look to their innocence and holiness. And upon finding the light in them, you acknowledge it is there.

"The miracle-worker ****begins by PERCEIVING light****, and translates HIS perception into sureness by ****continually extending it****, and ****ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT****." - this is talking about a SUSTAINED TRASMISSION OF LIGHT to another person and acknowledging/accepting that it HAS been received.

"****Its EFFECTS**** (increase in light, healing etc) assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

In effect, your true perception, loving perception, allows you to forgive your brother and see the truth in him. See the light of christ or soul in him. And as you focus on constructively amplifying his truth, appreciating his light, his light is strengthened. The Holy Spirit in him is that light also.

"The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. It is strengthened ***by being given*** away. It increases in you ***as you give it to your brother***. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for ***this miracle*** to occur."

Here Jesus is literally saying that if you GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT (light) to your brother, it is PERFORMING A MIRACLE! Increasing your awareness of the Holy Spirit IN your brother, even if your brother has no idea that He is there, heals his mind.

This light that you shine, comes from God. God put the light in you, and you extend and express it. Your natural function is to "pass on" this light to others, to shine into them, to illuminate them, which shines away their darkness. The brighter you shine with love, the more sharing and connected you are, the more powerfully you will be able to "enlighten" them.

"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

This is clearly a simple matter of SHINING brightly at people. The higher the level of sharing in oneness, the higher the level of love and light and miraculousness and healing. High love plugs you into their mind and shares it with them, transcending the gap of spacetime and the bodies and the world. You dwell with them in union and joining and sharing of oneness. And as you dwell there brightly, you light up their soul for them to see.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad.""Miracles unite you with your brother."

"Miracles make minds one in God."

Most people have an idea of what duality means. Usually a world of many separate things. Separate objects, separate bodies. A count beyond one.

This however isn't a full enough definition. Duality is also a matter of NOT SHARING. It's a state of mind in which you do not want to be joined with, share with, or have relationship with, anything or anyone. It's also a state of selfishness, therefore, because it opposes sharing. It produces isolation and disconnection. The ego thought system - the world of duality - is all about selfishness.

"Selfishness is of the ego" T-7.IX.1:4

If duality really means selfishness, what is the opposite of selfishness? It is sharing. But this requires that there be someone or something to share WITH. It cannot mean that there is only you there, or only God. It also requires that in absolute reality, in God, there must be something other than JUST God, such as your brothers, to share with. For example:

"You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." T-11.I.1:6

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself." T-11.I.5:7

God wanted to share himself. In fact we're also told that SHARING is the natural inherent property of reality.

"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. ³That is why God created you. ⁴Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. ⁵That is what creation means." T-4.VII.5:2-5

We're told in ACIM itself, putting aside all interpretations by other well-meaning teachers and students, in Jesus's words, that God did NOT will to be the "only thing that exists". He did not will to be alone. He willed that there be ANOTHER, and CREATED at the very least one son.

He even goes on to say that God not ONLY willed to create at least one son, this son ALSO has the ability to create its own sons.

"God would not have us be alone because _He_ does not will to be alone. ⁷That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him. ⁸Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, as holy as He is." T-8.VI.8:6-8

Note also that it clearly states that God has SONS, not just one.

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." T-7.IX.5:3

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. ¹¹Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation." T-7.XI.7:10-11

It's quite simply stating that God not only created many children, but that even those children in turn go on to create more children. The Sons of God form the sonship, which shares the One Mind of Christ. And collectively as the One Son, we all co-create with God to produce our own creations.

This is in fact why Jesus refers to us as having BROTHERS. The term brother means an equal sibling of the same parent. Because God did not will to be alone, and did not will us to be alone, he created MANY OF US, so that we would have permanent brothers IN heaven forever.

"Return with me to Heaven, walking together with your brother out of this world and through another, to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it." T-18.I.12:4)

"Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. T-24.II.7:6"

There is also a holy trinity in reality. God the father, the Sonship as the One Son comprising many sons and their creations, and the Holy Spirit. These are not conceptual or ego inventions, they are permanent.

"The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity" T-3.II.5:4 "Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation." T-8.VI.5:3)

The Holy Spirit is also a permanent eternal creation who will continue to exist along with the many sons even AFTER the atonement.

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed there will be no Call to return. ⁶But what God creates is eternal. ⁷The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy." T-5.I.5:5-7

So what we have now is in fact a more fleshed out picture. Heaven, God's reality, comprises God, the Holy Spirit, the Sonshsip, which form the trinity. And the Sonship includes many sons, and many creations of many sons, who are also brothers. By the way there are angels as well, created by God.

Now, such a picture does not sound remotely like "non-duality." Someone came up with non-duality as an antithesis to duality, purely as a conceptual idea. It's an attempt to try to explain what the course is saying. Except that, it doesn't quite fit.

It fits in the sense that it may describe God himself, IF God were alone and willed to be alone. As a LOGICAL DEVICE, opposite to "many" means "one", a count of one. This is what non-duality logically means. There are many flaky and wishywashy definitions out there which have tried to glue toegether pieces of the course to make it fit with this, but the PUREST form of non-duality is that "there is literally only God."

This obviously does not FIT with what ACIM says, because it's told us that God is a creator, that he has created at least one child if not many, and that his child has has its own children. Not to mention also the holy spirit being created, and the trinity existing. All of this is not properly encompassed by the concept of non-duality.

Some people like non-duality ideas because they seem to suggest the antithesis to "separateness". As if it is the opposite of ego, the opposite of separation, and the way to undo all trace of the separation from God. But this is VERY BASIC logic and highly inaccurate in its representation of what JESUS ACTUALLY says.

The purest non-duality does not support God being a creator, or God sharing, or God having relationships, or God having even ONE son, or of God creating the Holy Spirit, or of YOU existing, or of you having any creations. It doesn't even allow for heaven to exist. All it does is reduce God to a singular blob, a very lonely isolated blob, which sits there all by itself doing nothing. That is NOT what God is like according to ACIM itself.

The problem is that many people have latched onto this non-duality "concept" and have tried to FORCE the course to fit into it, because they don't have a better OR more accurate model. And in many cases also because they don't recognize the shortcomings of this concept.

It's easy for anyone to say, well, if I get rid of all the separations which implied "many things", then I will get down to "one thing", and this is oneness, and it must be what reality is like. Except that, it isn't. Not by a long shot.

Not according to what Jesus has said about God ADDING to himself, and SHARING himself, and having REAL relationship with his Son, and HAVING a son, and CO-CREATING with him. Jesus's definition of ONENESS is not what you think it is. It is not the everyday definition. It's more to do with a SHARED WHOLENESS between two beings.

"This may appear to contradict the statement “I and my Father are one,” but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater. T-1.II.4:7

The urtext had a much fuller statement about this:

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

In fact we are told countless times that God is GREATER than us. We are supposed to have AWE of him, as his son. That God is the FIRST cause, and we are CO-creators as secondary causes. That "I am forever an effect of God". The whole notion of equating yourself with God is nonsense because this is what the whole authority problem is about. You are NOT at the same level or role as he is.

Urtext: "Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man. This is because God and man are NOT equal."

"God’s accomplishments are not yours, but yours are like His. ⁶He created the Sonship and you increase it. ⁷You have the power to add to the Kingdom, though not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom." T-7.I.2:5-7

There are so many aspects of ACIM that fly in the face of pure nonduality, and are contrary to the traditional idea of "oneness". It is NOT CORRECT to claim that ACIM is a non-dualistic teaching. And it is NOT correct to project an idea of "oneness" onto its statements. To be "one with" does not ERASE the fact that there are two things sharing that oneness. Heaven is all about sharing between many things, which is the opposite of many things which don't share.

In fact even individuality is an inherent part of reality. You HAD an individual existence as a soul BEFORE the separation from God ever came along. Individuality isn't even the problem. It's the unwillingness to SHARE that is the problem - selfishness is the problem. Not whether you HAVE a self.

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

Here ACIM has explicitly stated that God created a PLURAL OF BEINGS, in reality, who EACH had everything INDIVIDUALLY - as individuals, and who WANT TO SHARE so that THEIR collective joy increases. That is not in any stretch of the imagination a state of non-duality, or of "its all one thing", or "its all God".

What's needed is a much more accurate concept that maps to what ACIM actually says, and which supports and INCLUDES all of what it says, without trying to screen out stuff on the basis of making teh concept MORE right than the text. ACIM is a kind of "trans-duality", in which God has created many things which ARE still one. That the one and the many are coexisting through sharing. And that this is NOT duality, nor ANYTHING to do with the ego.

Heaven is in fact a holographic system. It is how God thinks. His whole creation and thought proceeds along holographic principles - where every part (son/creation) contains and IS the whole. This is NOT the same as duality. You have to open up to the idea that the many AND the one can COEXIST. That

the one IS many, and the many ARE one. This is stated here: "The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. T-16.II.3:3

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. T-9.VI.3:5 "Every child of God is one in Christ, for his being is in Christ as Christ’s is in God." T-12.VI.6:1

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

Perhaps we can be willing to stop talking about ACIM as if it's some kind of non-duality teaching when it is utterly riddled with statements to the contrary. God is a creator and has a FAMILY in reality. And you are part of that family. And God LOVES YOU personally and EQUALLY.

"You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you love them all and equally. ²Love is not special. ³If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal." T-13.X.11:1-3

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return." T-1.V.4:1)

Btw these are ALL quotes from FIP 3rd edition. Put aside what other well-meaning people have told you and listen to what JESUS is telling you.

Everything about practicing the Course could be described as moving "backwards". Accustomed to how the ego operates always "forwards" this can at first seem counter-intuitive and a difficult "direction" for the mind to operate in.

Purification and correction are entirely geared towards a backwards motion, such as retracing your steps, seeking inward rather than outward, undoing, reversing, collapsing, deflating ego, re-winding time, digging deeper to find the true inner cause, looking "behind", getting to the core of oneself, going within, taking attention away from illusions, becoming whole, acknowledging what already is, accepting what is already true, receiving what is already given, lifting away layers of false belief, recognizing things for how they are, taking back projections, claiming responsibility for yourself, re-owning yourself, coming back to center, un-ravelling, seeking back through time to when beliefs were formed, reversing the effects of sin, cancelling, deleting, removing, restoring to a former state, moving backward to before any sense of something happening, returning to innocence, becoming aware of love which is already present, listening, receiving, accepting, allowing, reversing sickness and death, resurrection etc.

Notice that all of these procedures take you from being externally focused to focusing within, in the direction of yourself. The truth is inside of you. All of these actions return you to yourself.

Now, the ego is the total opposite of this in every way. The ego wants to always add something, increase denial, hide stuff behind new layers of illusions, implement things, find success, seek outside yourself, lose yourself, forget who you are, move away from yourself and God, project, attack, point a finger of blame away from you, destroy others, fight with an opposing will, acquire, get, consume the external (food etc), implement magical solutions which undo nothing, add lie upon lie, twist and distort things out of recognition, get rid of sin onto others, disassociate from yourself, believe that cause is outside of you, see yourself as an effect of the external, positioning yourself as a victim of something separate, pursuing wild goose chases and dead ends, running away from God, becoming alone and isolated, losing your mind and sanity, fragmentation, making others responsible for your existence, trying to get someone else to choose for you, trying to get someone else to love for you or to wake you up, going to sleep, living in ignorance, becoming unconscious, entering darkness, achieve, strive for goals, develop an image, accumulate and build stuff that never existed, fill the emptiness with idols, idol worship, seeking external salvation, believing that things outside you can save you and solve all problems, being sick as a result of an external cause, dying by someone else's hand, listening to the ego's counsel, making things worse, an eye for an eye, waging war, murder, etc.

Notice that all of these actions are in an outward direction, away from yourself. They are all designed to disconnect you from God and put distance between you and God and therefore between you and yourself. They take you away from yourself and place every attribute of yourself outside of you into someone else's hands.

The main difficulty I find is that having been in the ego mindset for such a long time, my mind has sort of become very used to or unconsciously has formed habits whereby the mind moves in a direction away from myself. It pursues the external and thinks in externalizing ways. It's like there's all these arrows pointing outward and it seems to make the mind "flow" in that direction automatically. Even normal "thinking" processes seem to head in the direction of the external and these are just accepted as automatic or "normal".

So then when we come to the Course, our mind is coming up against a set of truths and techniques which are all INWARD pointing, and basically flowing in totally the OPPOSITE direction to the ego's thought system. They all point towards God, towards your true self, towards what is inside of you already. Even just the simple idea that you need not seek to find love or teach love because that is what you are but that you need to REMOVE the obstacles you've built against it. We are not accustomed to REMOVING anything. We're accustomed to believing that we LACK God and therefore need to go seek for specialness and ADD it to ourselves in order to "become" loving or spiritual. That's totally the ego, KEEPING its belief in sin and hiding it and then pretending to try to find solutions to it externally, where solutions do not exist, and thus building layer upon layer of denial and failure. It's all the authority problem, believing we can add to or change God's creation into something better or more true.

So it's quite difficult to get the mind to even move in the direction of thinking inwards, thinking upwards, thinking IN REVERSE, or thinking towards what ALREADY EXISTS within you. To think in reverse means to go from where your mind is at to what came BEFORE it, rather than going from where your mind is at and proceeding forwards to some kind of next step. It seems alien. It seems unnatural at first. It seems to take steps that bring all of the illusion into question, all assumptions are undermined, and all beliefs have to be examined and exhumed and tossed out, all values are brought into question, every attachment has to be surrendered, all external structures are collapsed, and your whole life is brought into question. And that's not what the ego wants at all, and it's not how we're used to thinking. To question everything, to question sin and sickness and death. To assume nothing, and to believe nothing that even our body's senses are telling us. To travel backwards up the chain of causality to where we came from.

You are already as God created you, you are already love, you are already perfect, there is NOTHING you can add to God's creation or Kingdom other than to increase what is already in it, which is perfect joy and love and happiness. And you are already WHOLE, already complete, needing nothing, lacking nothing. All of this other stuff that you keep trying to deal with by ADDING or CHANGING layers of illusions, are ego solutions and ways of dealing with this, really attempts to hide it even more.

So like, something happens and your ego steps in with a reaction and says, oh my God, this thing is so externally real, it is really happening, and the future is going to suck, so I better do something about this. I know, I'm going to do this and that... and then comes up with a long list of reactions and plans and solutions which it is going to DO, to tackle what it itself made real, as though something really occurred. It creates this entire "chain of thought" or train of thought, which goes from "here" to way off in the distance down all kinds of twists and turns, taking you away from presence. We need to stop the train before it even leaves the station, get off it, and then look backwards down the tracks to where we CAME FROM and go in THAT direction, undoing, backtracking, reversing and returning, inwardly and upwardly BACK to the truth, BACK to the answer to end all questions, and BACK Home to God.

To think with Holy Spirit is to think BACKWARDS. This requires us to initially STOP and put the pause button on. Freeze-frame things. Freeze the entire scenario and just observe what it contains, from a big perspective. And then start to REVERSE the steps we have already taken, to backtrack, to look at our real hidden motives (secret sins/hates etc), and to UNDO layer upon layer of false beliefs and projections and stuff that we basically tried to ADD to ourselves already, that has led to us witnessing a falsely perceived situation. But this seems awkward and counter-intuitive - or at least counter-ego. It's therefore essentially all about letting go and letting God, relinquishing attachments, surrendering to what is already true, accepting God as God is, returning to yourself, and becoming EMPTY of all the stuff that you "added" to yourself to try to make yourself become something you are not - different to how God created you (and how you still are, buried under the ego lies).

To question... "has this even really happened" - that's a totally backwards step which brings into question any ASSUMPTION that the ego has made, and digs way deeper into what is happening than to react to it and try to fix it or attack it with Course quotes or to deny it with fake positivity or to build a spiritual ego to defend against it (and keep it). To stop and go backwards, to ask, is this even real? Why do I believe this? Where is my perception coming from? Why have I chosen this? How did I put this in place myself? Who am I really underneath this? Is this really true of me? Not ACCEPTING stuff into your mind.

As Jesus says, whatever you accept into your mind, it becomes real to you. The ego automatically is just accepting everything "into" the mind like a black hole sucking the life out of everything. We have to learn to stop that, to think in reverse, and to cancel the ego, to go within, to reverse our thinking processes and develop this new "inward direction" which flows away from illusions and towards the PRE-EXISTING truth and love within us, which is already there and is already perfect. To ACKNOWLEDGE what is already true and accept it, rather than trying to REPLACE it or cover it up or deny it with stuff we MAKE (invent/add) with the ego.

At first this kind of backwards thinking is not at all easy for the mind to do. It seems like the mind has become "wired" to think forwards with the ego, outwardly. But gradually over time as you "practice" this and go through this PURIFICATION process, digging out and releasing old pain, getting to the bottom of things, finding yourself, taking back your power, returning to responsibility, accessing the power of choice, accepting atonement, it becomes easier because there is less of your own ego-aligned will working against you.

It's like you're literally learning how to reverse the direction of flow of a river. The mind has become separated from Spirit and is flowing out all by itself, broadcasting its own ideas and trying to replace God's creation with something of its own. That needs to be totally reversed and undone. We need to go back within and reconnect with God and plug ourselves back into the service of Spirit. It takes time to break out of the unconscious habits of flowing outward with the ego.

And there is a paradox here. Funnily enough, the more you go within and withdraw your projections away from the external and get to the core love that's already in you, THEN that's when love starts to radiate out from you. You don't become loving by trying to give give give without receiving.

You must receive inwards first. It's more like, you become a light bulb, the switch goes on, and you simply stay CENTERED and rooted in your true self, in Spirit, and you RADIATE from there, staying in that center at all times, instead of going away from yourself or abandoning or losing yourself. To the ego giving is a loss of yourself. To Spirit, giving INCREASES and you not only keep/hold onto your inner real self but you also SHARE that and it extends out on its own. Love extends because of what it is, without your help.

So to be more loving, stop dwelling on the external or on trying to sacrifice yourself or martyr yourself. Return inward to access awareness of love's presence and then simply SHINE from within. This is how God creates, by shining and radiating and sharing and extending, remaining true to Himself and still complete and anchored within Himself. He does not lose Himself in the process. This is how the Kingdom is increased. This is what it means to be the light of the world. To shine from within rather than to lose yourself. To become an intensely bright light which goes out from within. You have to BE WITHIN first in order to do that, and stay there. This outward shining is CREATION, and it is the same thing as sharing and extending. It is how God created you to begin with. And in that light you have never stopped being God's innocent child.

Here a beautiful and inspiring collection of short quotes all to do with going BEYOND. Beyond the body, beyond appearances, beyond forms, beyond sin, beyond the world. This is the goal of the course. To return home to Heaven.

"Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is."

"Beyond the body"

"Beyond this world there is a world I want. I choose to see that world instead of this, For here is nothing that I really want."

"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARDS it."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception."

"Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain."

"We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"I DO go before you, because I am beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego."

"Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see beyond appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality."

"Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one."

"And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. "

"Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist."

"You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity TOGETHER."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely. "

"NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you."

"One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty."

"The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world? You are a stranger here."

"Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation."

"Truth is so far beyond time, that ALL of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all."

"Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sounds and sights of this insane world. You do not live there."

"He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? "

"And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all."

"But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. "

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond everything that would hold you back."

"It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world. It is its holiness that points to God. It is its holiness that makes you safe."

"This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is."

"Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him."

"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."

"How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!"

"If they understood what is beyond them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."

"No-one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."

"Who, then, can say which one can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive?This is insanity indeed.It is not up to God's teachers"

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. "

"Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want."

"He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time."

"He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them."

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"Only joy increases forever. Joy and Eternity are INSEPARABLE. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. "

"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure."

"It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them."

"What lies beyond them cannot BE attacked."

"For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane."

"It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never died, but has been kept obscure."

"They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. "

"For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind."

"NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today s idea perfectly."

"The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."

"Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. "

"For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them."

"You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. "

"Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request."

"Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond."

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you."

"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."

"Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth."

"From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks."

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

"It is the world s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely."

"It is past the clouds, and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the light."

"Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release."

"But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved."

"There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever."

"Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own."

"You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love s "enemy" Christ s vision does not see."

"And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them."

"We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. "

"The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember."

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

"From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared."

"No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One. "

"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body."

"This One can teach you how to look on time differently and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin."

GOD's ONLY LAW: THE GOLDEN RULE - ACIM IN A NUTSHELL

In A Course in Miracles the "Golden Rule" is a fundamental LAW of God. It is true in Heaven AND on Earth.

The rule is a law of creation, a law of mind. IT APPLIES TO YOU ALWAYS! Since you share an equality of perfection with all parts of creation, with every brother, and with God, it follows that if anything applies to others, it applies to you equally. There are no special laws that apply only to some and not others. No-one including you is excluded from anything. Heaven is all-inclusive and so God's law is all-inclusive. God's INCLUSIVITY ensures that EVERY SON in the sonship SHARES EVERYTHING, what applies to one applies to all, and NOTHING IS EXCLUSIVE. This is the basis of the Golden Rule.

This is woven throughout the course and present in many many statements. The fundamental idea is that in heaven you recognize your brother as identical to and perfectly equal to yourself, sharing everything with you equally. What applies to you applies to everyone, or to no-one at all. If you deserve love, so does everyone. If you judge another as wrong, you are also wrong. This produces a law which doesn't simply say "IF you treat others a certain way, hopefully you MIGHT be treated in a similar way." Instead, it is perfectly absolute, ie:

You do to YOURSELF what you DO to others, because you share perfect equality with them at all times. So that means, literally, you CANNOT ESCAPE CONSEQUENCES of whatever it is you think applies only to others. You cannot do ANYTHING to anyone without doing it simultaneously and directly to YOURSELF.

You do not get to `opt in` or `opt out` of this law. It is ALWAYS APPLYING, even while you are dreaming, and even while you are in the ego. The ego suggests that this law *does not exist*, and so it thinks it can get away with murder. But it cannot. If you attack another you ARE attacking yourself. You cannot be hurtful toward someone without being hurt by your own hurtfulness.

This means that the Golden Rule is a permanent, inescapable law of REALITY, fundamental to existence itself, and applies to everything everywhere at all times. If you attempt to deny it or pretend it does not apply, you WILL HURT YOURSELF in your attempts to hurt others. You can think of it like direct self-inflicted karma. And this is why the secret to salvation is that "you have done this to yourself". You are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequences of choosing attack.

This applies at the level of the BODY also. Whatever you use the body for it becomes to you. It is a communication device. If you use it for attack to transmit attack, YOU will become attacked, because you are BEING attack, and your body WILL show signs of attack also. What you THOUGHT was applying only to the sinner you projected onto, APPLIES TO YOU, and so your projected sin ATTACKS YOU! The body thus will become weak and sick and die. But if you recognize at all times the Golden Rule, and learn that you *MUST* love everyone equally AT ALL TIMES, otherwise you are NOT loving yourself, then you are bringing God's Word to others and this *guarantees* your body will be perfectly healthy. ALL sickness and even death arises from DENIAL OF THE GOLDEN RULE.

So really ACIM is quite simple. It is simply saying that this Golden Rule exists, it is absolute unavoidable LAW, it doesn't matter if you're awake or sleeping it still is applying, and so you CANNOT escape the result of trying to make something to apply to others that you don't want to apply to yourself. You therefore simply have to honor the law and work WITH it rather than against it, learn to love EVERYONE EQUALLY and FULLY SO THAT you yourself are included in that and are loved fully, and therefore express love to others in the same way you would express it to yourself, because giving love INCREASES the love in YOU. If you comply with the law, you will be SET FREE from the ego!

The Golden Rule is also the basis of all miracles. Miracles are founded on the principle that there is union and equality with all brothers, rather that separation. That we are all equally innocent. That we all deserve unconditional love. And that when you recognize this in your brother you WILL recognize it in yourself simultaneously, because what applies to one applies to all. What applies to one son, applies to the whole sonship. So when you express from this all-INCLUSIVE love, towards your brother, emphasizing the love IN THEM that is YOUR LOVE, you heal them and miraculously help them.

At times, when we are in ego and we think the law does not apply, and are in denial, we also are unconscious of what we are DOING TO OURSELVES. And so we do not think a) that we did this to ourselves, and b) do not even SEE ourselves doing it to ourselves. Thus we think not only a) other people do stuff to us that they don't do to themselves, b) stuff applies to others than doesn't apply to us. These are ego lies. Underneath them the Golden Rule STILL applies. We are still DOING TO OURSELVES what we are ALSO DOING TO OTHERS. At all times.

And so this is where "shared interests" come into play. You cannot have someone be guilty while you are innocent, nor can you find someone unworthy while you think you are worthy, or be justified in anger that someone is is wrong and not you. Any time something is seeming to apply to someone else that does not apply to you equally, you are in DENIAL, and WHAT you are denying is the Golden Rule - the truth about all creation. You have to UNLEARN the ego's paradigm of it being POSSIBLE to have something apply to someone else SEPARATELY from what applies to you, and LEARN that what applies to you MUST APPLY TO OTHERS AS WELL. That means either BOTH of you are guilty, or BOTH of you are innocent, and there are NO EXCEPTIONS to this. So if you want to be happy and innocent, you MUST find your brother to be innocent also. To be loved, you MUST love. To be free of ego, you MUST overlook ego everywhere. To overcome sin, you MUST forgive your brother's sin.

"Forgiveness recognizes your brother has not sinned and in this view are ALL YOUR SINS FORGIVEN." This is the GOLDEN RULE!!! Comply PERFECTLY with the Golden Rule and you will be in the Atonement!

Here are just a handful of quotes relating to this...

"Consider the Golden Rule again. You are asked to behave towards others as you would have them behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate, since the Golden Rule is the Order for appropriate behavior. You can't behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior DEPENDS on lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion ALWAYS results in variable reality testing, and hence variability in behavioral appropriateness."

"Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically."

"Denial should be directed only to error, and projection should be limited to truth. You should truly give as you have truly received. The Golden Rule can work effectively only on this basis."

"As you release, so will you BE released. FORGET THIS NOT, or love will be unable to find you, and comfort you."

"And, as he loves them, so he looks upon HIMSELF with love and gentleness. He would no more condemn himself for HIS mistakes than damn another."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own."

"If your brothers are part of YOU, and you blame THEM for your deprivation, you ARE blaming yourself."

"Quickly and gladly is His vision given to anyone who is but willing to see his brother sinless."

"You choose between your brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him."

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

"Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

"In separation from your brother was the first attack upon yourself begun. And it is THIS the world bears witness to."

"My brother is my Savior. Let me not attack the Savior You have given me."

"Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? "

"As you see him you will see yourself. Whether this be through the use of psychological tests, or by making judgment in some other way, the effect is still the same. Whenever you have judged anyone, it is impossible for you not to make this judgment on yourself."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him Who knows of freedom."

"If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM."

"Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others, AND NOT YOURSELF, have done this TO you. You WILL receive the message you give, because it is the message you WANT. You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give YOU, but you HAVE judged them by the message you give THEM. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them, that could bring joy to YOU. It is the DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God."

"This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned. "

"The ONLY way to heal is to be healed."

(this will be a fairly long post, so please bare with me)

The ego thought system is based on separation. Separation resulted in space and time. In space, spatial relations are HOW the ego thinks. The physical universe IS its thought system.

This includes physical objects, which are separated out, where an object is EITHER HERE OR THERE, (but not in both places). This is a "natural" ego thought process. One thing seems to exist in one location only and not all locations. One thing is NOT something else, and all things are DIFFERENT, separate, and kept apart.

The entire physical universe is arranged according to this WAY that the ego thinks. It regards the entire thing as structured by SEPARATIONS. One object versus another. One location versus another. And then it draws comparisons, and has reasoning, and finds conclusions, based WITHIN the framework of separation.

So you, in your ego thought processes, then start to THINK this way. You think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. And this seems to make SENSE to you because it maps directly to how the world is arranged. It then becomes "second nature" to think of anything in the world in SEPARATE terms.

For example, I parked my car in the first spot, not the second. I ordered the fries instead of the onion rings. My car is red, not blue. This is my body, not your body. Earth is not Mars. etc.

Our whole WAY of thinking runs according to these rules, based on SEPARATING things out, sectioning them off, isolating them, keeping them APART, emphasizing their differences, and locking them up in little prison boxes. And we think this is a natural way to think, to relate, to communicate, to reason.

Then we go about USING this way of thinking, to think about EVERYTHING. Not just to think about things which ARE based on a thought system of separation, but even to think about things which are completely BEYOND the ego thought system.

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

This may not seem to present any problems when you use SEPARATION-BASED reasoning to discuss the things of space and time, but it COMPLETELY misses the mark when you think this way about heaven, God, creation, sonships, sons, souls, etc.

The Kingdom of God is a thought system, and God similarly has a WAY of thinking. His WAY of thinking is NOT based in the idea of separation. It is NOT based on the limitations of space or time or spatial relations. It does NOT separate things off, make them different, put them in SEPARATE BOXES, or keep them apart.

God's thought system/reality also does not demand that something HAS to be separate from something else. It does not require something to be EXCLUSIVE to one box and not another. Nor does it assert that everything that exists MUST be partitioned off into EITHER one state OR another. God simply does not THINK in terms of "either this or that".

God's mind, his creation, his way of THINKING, is actually based on a totally different kind of reasoning. This reasoning is INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive. It also completely embraces the idea of SHARING. The ego's thought system completely blots out ALL suggestions of sharing, overlap, simultaneity, unity or oneness.

In God's system, it is NATURAL for there to be one thing, which SHARES all of itself with another. It is natural for one thing to GIVE all of itself and STILL RETAIN all of itself without loss. It is natural for TWO things to BE one thing. It is natural for one thing to be in ALL locations simultaneously. It is natural for one thing to be in one box, AND in another box, at the same time. It is natural for something to SPAN and TRANSCEND separations.

The Golden Rule, the law of God and of equality, simply states that what is true of one thing is true of another. Whatever is true of God is true of His Sons. Whatever is true or me is true of you. This is equality. God treats all his creations the same way. The Golden Rule reflects this, because it is a rule based on INCLUSION. We are both included in the same truth. The ego however is COMPLETELY AGAINST sharing and inclusion. And so is this world.

In reality, God THINKS in a holographic way. In a hologram, the whole is in every part, and every part is a whole in its own right, and every part shares the entirety of the whole with the whole. ACIM confirms that this is the way by which God thinks, and NOT through a process of separation:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

This means for example that GOD IS WHOLE, being infinite. And God as a creator therefore extends and creates ANOTHER WHOLE. His Son, is a WHOLE SON. A full creation. As described here:

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

"There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

However, for God to BE whole, and to CREATE wholly, and thus to create another WHOLE.... becomes TOTAL NONSENSE to the way that the EGO thinks. And if you think in the same separation-based way that the ego thinks, this FACT registers to you as total nonsense. You will reason, "how can it be possible that there are TWO wholes, that makes no sense!". It makes no sense to a thought system of separation, yes. But God's reality is NOT based on that kind of system. God is not limited by separation or spacetime.

In order to recognize AND accept, that God's mind and creation DO NOT follow the ego's rules, and that God does not THINK or create like the ego would, and God's Kingdom is NOT spatially separated out like the physical world is, you will have to become willing to think massively outside the box. You CANNOT use separation-based logical reasoning to evaluate the truths or falseties of reality.

Let's look at what happens when you try to shove God into a box-based thought system. God for example gives ALL of Himself when he creates. His Son inherits EVERYTHING. But... if you are thinking with the ego, you SHOULD conclude that by God giving all of Himself AWAY, there SHOULD be nothing left. Thus God should snuff out of existence and only His Son should remain. This is LOGICAL to the ego because the ego believes in SACRIFICE AND LOSS, which is inherent to a box-based world. But it is complete nonsense.

Similarly, you could suggest that if God gives EVERYTHING to ONE SON, there is NOTHING LEFT to give to another Son. This is how the ego would think in finite terms. However, God has ALL of Himself left to give again to ANOTHER son, and another, and another, without any reduction at all in Himself. And this is how the Kingdom INCREASES. And by giving ALL of himself away, reality is increased. As stated here:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"To have all, give all to all."

You can see that if you think in exclusive, separating terms, you WILL come to FALSE conclusions about what's happening in reality. You'll conclude that if I have everything, you have nothing. But in reality, as Jesus describes in ACIM, me having everything DOES NOT prevent you from having everything also. How is it possible that we BOTH simultaneously have everything? Because we SHARE IT. And this sharing does NOT mean compromise or that we each only get half.

Sharing is the way by which God's Kingdom INCREASES. Because if it weren't for the ability to share, there would be no logical way for God to ever create anything more than just God, because he is already unlimited and everywhere. As this states:

"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."

If SHARING, INCLUSION, BOTH/AND is the natural thought SYSTEM of Heaven's reality, and it follows that thought PROCESS when it reasons anything, then SELFISHNESS, EXCLUSION, EITHER/OR, SEPARATION is the natural thought system of spacetime. And they are TOTALLY opposite. They are opposite because "this not that" is a direct reflection of the separation idea of "ego not God" or "death not life" or "non-existence not existence." The ego thought system is the NEGATION of reality.

If God creates two sons, who are brothers, and both are whole beings who have and share everything, co-creating with God, and then we look at this fact WITH THE EGO, we will see false conclusions. For example we'll say that there can't BE two sons. Or that if there are two sons, that's "duality", because now the two sons are KEPT APART in separate boxes meaning duality.

But this is not how it works at all. The fact that there are two, WHO SHARE, violates the boundaries of those boxes. One son is IN the other son and vice versa because they share everything. So there are two sons, who are ALSO each other.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."This also extends to the relationship you have with God. Those who think LIKE the ego, will reason that EITHER.... God is all there is, OR there is a separation. Or similarly, EITHER God and I are one thing, OR we are two things. Or that, if you get rid of all separations, you will end up with oneness.

There is a major flaw in that reasoning. The ego first establishes that you MUST think in a separating way, in which there is duality, and all things are kept apart. THEN it has you DESTROY all of the other parts except for one of them, by getting rid of the idea of separations between the parts. But it will not have you get rid of the ego thought process. Then it concludes falsely, that when you remove the separations, you end up with ONE THING. And this one thing is thought to mean "oneness", or to represent God.

This however is a false conclusion, because now "separate boxes" have been mapped onto God, and God has been shoved into a separate box, all by himself, and there is no creation and no sonship and NO SHARING. And the ego rejoices that it has imprisoned God this way, in the name of freedom.

When you look at what ACIM says, Jesus DOES NOT say that God is alone, or that he is separated off from creation, or that he has no creations. Instead it tells you in fact that God has a huge family and is simultaneously one with them. And that His oneness DOES NOT ERASE their manyness.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Children and their creations."

This does not mean the Kingdom is duality or that it contains separate boxes. It means it contains overlapping shared beings who ALL have everything and ARE everything, seemingly as OPEN boxes who are not in any way confined, yet are still many things. HOW that's possible, is due to heaven's miraculous nature.

Ego thought processes do not allow this to be true. Nor does ego thinking allow it to be possible that when you are "one with God", you still have an individual self. EGOS then become AVERSE to any notion of individuality, which is self destructive, which the ego loves. You being one with God, DOES NOT ERASE your individuality.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

There ARE STILL "separate parts" in the statement, AND in some ways God is NOT totally like His sons, in terms of function or role. Meaning, YOU still exist as a distinct entity, AND God exists as a distinct entity. And what you SHARE between you, is your oneness with each other, AS TWO BEINGS. That is what ACIM teaches. And its definition of oneness is not "one thing being alone", it is EQUALITY. Being of THE SAME KIND. And an equality which is more than just two separate boxes next to each other - an equality where you SPAN the boxes.

Similarly, the ego will falsely conclude that if God and His Son are TWO things, this is duality. It is not, because we're again jumping the gun and projecting separate boxes onto heaven. Just because they are TWO, does NOT mean they do not share, and does NOT mean there is no unity. The Father and the Son are one, but there is still a Father and a Son. Just as WE will ALWAYS be brothers even in heaven.

In fact, the way by which God is everything, AND YET, His children are also FULLY created beings, who are also everything, is the course's definition of MIRACULOUSNESS. This miraculousness is completely alien to the ego thought system and all separation-based reasoning. The ego has NO CLUE, how it is possible, that God could have even created ANYTHING, yet alone multiple beings who somehow have been added-on to an already infinite reality. Nevertheless:

"MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human (ego) thinking"

"Miraculousness", is the nature of God's reality. UN-miraculousness is the nature of spacetime. Everything in God's MIND and reality is permanently miraculous. It is miraculous because it makes possible what the ego says is IMPOSSIBLE. Just as the ego is the idea of impossibility.

For one soul to be a whole being, that shares everything with another whole being, as brothers, and with God, without a loss of self or individuality, and without ceasing to be "separate", and without being CONFINED to separate boxes, is miraculous.

This miraculousness is also reflected in THE MIRACLE. And in true perception. And in learning to THINK LIKE GOD, which the course asks you to do. In order to think like God, you have to TRANSCEND the "separating off and putting in boxes" nature of the ego and its thoughts. And that includes thinking of souls as separate bodies.

This entails overlooking separations and seeing unity beyond it. It requires you to not be blinded by perception of form, because form is anchored in separation. Your whole perception has to become similar to heaven's reality, which breaks all the ego laws. And this is also why miracles break all the laws of space and time AND of ego reasoning.

Becoming able to THINK LIKE GOD, requires you to align with the truth of the Golden Rule, in holy relationship, where what is true of you is true of all others. Where differences are completely ignored. Where no-one is IMPRISONED in a box. And where your whole way of REASONING is LIKE God's.... that is, based on "paralogical reasoning" - or AND/BOTH reasoning, rather than either/or.

We could say, THE ENTIRE COURSE is geared towards developing this BOTH/AND kind of perception, thought and experience, for all students. We are supposed to stop thinking with the ego, OR LIKE the ego. And we are supposed to learn that we are undo no laws but God's, and HIS laws are NOT laws of separation, exclusion, spatial relations, or limitations.

In order to fully grasp ANYTHING that ACIM says about the pre-separation state, God, the Kingdom, oneness, sonship, sons, souls, creation, extension, holy spirit, etc..... any of that non-ego stuff, you CANNOT USE the ego-based reasoning method. If you do, you will fail. Guaranteed. And you will see truth that is false, and what is really true will appear false to you. That's how BACKWARDS the ego thought system is.

Any conclusions you come to about God or oneness etc, if it's rooted in "either this or that", IS WRONG. Guaranteed 100%. Only when you start to think in terms of BOTH.... me AND you.... WE.... only then do you start to approach the NATURAL way of thinking like God, which is a miraculous state of mind. And ONLY by thinking that way will you understand and grasp the metaphysical facts of God's nature.

Non-duality for example is complete bullshit. It is bullshit because it is the result of an EGO thought process. The ego reasons, well, I believe all things are separate, so if we attack all the parts and end up with one victor, this ONE THING that's leftover, which is practically nothing, but is a single thing, symbolizes God. Because to the ego "less separation" is equated with spirituality or simplicity. So it will then map this "one thing" idea of oneness onto God and claim God is one thing - that there is NOTHING ELSE other than God. That God is SEPARATED OFF. That is NOT what ACIM teaches at all!

God is not only a creator and a father, God has a HUGE family of whole beings, all of whom are co-creators with each other. You and your brother co-create your creations. You and God and your brother co-create together. Even the holy spirit is a co-creator. And we all have this HUGE family of created beings in heaven. This is utterly incompatible with both the traditional idea of "oneness" and the idea of "non-duality".

And ALL of those beings are of ONE KIND, and SHARE EVERYTHING, and yet ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY. Because that is HOW GOD THINKS. A holographic thought system in which the whole has created many parts and each part shares the whole with the whole of the rest. That is what ACIM says! And in order to INCLUDE all of what ACIM says, WITHOUT EXCLUDING any material or any factual statements, you will ONLY be able to accept ALL of what it says if you think in a non-separating way.

As soon as you get the simple idea that heaven's reality is based on BOTH/AND, rather than either/or, it will all fit into place and become clear. Because everything real is based on a both/and system of reason and thought processes. Creation ITSELF is based on sharing between two. God SHARES HIMSELF, in order to create, and He does not will to be alone. The natural logical outcome of that is that WE, as many permanent brothers, in the sonship which God DIRECTLY created, are all "one" (equal/sharing) because we share everything.

If this does not make sense to you, it is because you are thinking with the ego. If it seems like nonsense, it is because the ego is projecting its separation ideals onto it. If you cannot follow it, either I explained it poorly or you can't get past your ego thinking. But either way, God's entire reality is NOT LIKE EARTH, and you have to learn to RADICALLY think WAAAAAAY outside the realm of boxes if you want to recognize its true nature. Heaven is not spacetime!

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

This is more than just another way to think or use the intellect. This ties into how you should PERCEIVE, how you experience the real world, how you tune into the miraculous state of mind, the nature of the miracle and the atonement, all holy relationships, living by the golden rule, holy spirit's thought system etc.. It's all based on heaven's nature which is NOT based on a world of separate boxes.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous."

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

"To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. 2 And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. 3 The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. 4 Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. 5 And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity."

"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. "

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded,"

"the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole"

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth.""If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.""Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

What we think passes for a special love relationship on Earth, is typically the exact opposite of how relationship should be in heaven. This is not something that the people of the world want to look at or hear about.

The special relationship is the ego's way of relating. The ego's thought system is insane and deeply rooted in separation, specialness and exclusion. It rejects wholeness in favor of some special part which is different and unique to all the rest. It uses its worshipping of these little parts as idols to shut out and reject everything else. It is not really a device for relationship, it is a device for shutting relationship down and reducing it to almost nothing.

The physical world, which is a projecting out of the insane thought system of the ego, is founded on the same thinking, on the rejection of wholeness and the emphasis of separations and differences. Special relationships then become ways for the ego to use physicality to serve ego purposes, because now bodies can be used to section off and isolate and exclude, to narrow the field down to the ultra-special chosen one, to the exclusion of all others.

As the ego pursues what it tells you is the most treasured relationship, it promises that this relationship will give you total freedom, liberation, a savior who will fulfill all your needs, will give you everything you want, do things to you that you prefer, and together you will join in triuph over everyone and everything. A power-couple, exclusive in every way, fighting against the whole universe.

Such a special relationship is founded on exclusivity, with special rights and permissions granted, commitment to the other held up with the condition that you be uncommitted to anyone else, loyalty it seen as defending and siding with the other against everyone else, and nothing is allowed to occur outside the boundaries of the relationship. Especially not the intimate sharing of the body, which is really the exclusive target of the sense of special love, in which the other is held up as an idol to be worshipped, so that you'll stay away from God.

The truth however is that by pursuing relationship on the basis of how exclusive it is, also guarantees that the relationship is a prison. Two come together to share a prison, bound by chains, and commiting to fight together against the hoards of the universe who are left outside. There are limits on what you can, where you can, who you can be with, what you can say and to whom. Break the terms and conditions and you are violating the trust and the commitment of this meeting of minds, this joining of bodies, and this attempt to merge into oneness.

In effect such a relationship is not a releationship. It is a way of using a tiny speck of relationship focused around a single exclusive separation-device body, in order to keep everyone else away. The more exclusivity is given to the pair, the less there is for others to share in. In the strictest and most controlling of examples this can turn into highly abusive "love" situations where every little act is controlled and monitored and inspected for violations. And of course this can lead to abuse and violence and all manner of anti-relationship, all masquerading as a relationship. A relationship made in hell, where rotting together in death passes for love. And how cute it is that the corpses die in each other's arms.

The ego thus attempts to merge with one special other, exclusively and only that one other, and not even the whoel of them, in order to in some way commit fully to identifying with your body and with their body. And by doing so the ego uses the body and sex to try to bind the mind to matter, to make the body out to be the mind, and to believe in the allure of the body itself. All designed to place so much focus on the physical that the relationship becomes mindless and love doesn't enter into it. The relationship can then be all about sex and no real love, no real sharing or communication, and simply the using of each other's form.

But the ego clings to this because it's like it's rock in the storm, the stronger it can bind to bodies the more it can stay away from God and define itself in terms of what the body is, separating self off from others and therefore forming a sense of identity and of existing as something unique and special. Thus the more the relationship becomes exclusively special the more the ego increases and sees this temporary ally as joining it in its fight against all others.

This results in a dependency on an external savior, a seeking outside of yourself for love, an attempt to find yourself in the other person by denying yourself, a giving away of power, all manner of sacrifices and compromises and people pleasing, losing yourself, and a high degree of dishonesty. It is a closed-off relationship based on a prison, in which the two are chained to each other in "monogomy" and "marriage" and this is held up as holy any good and God's will. A holy and unquestionale institution, which is really founded on the lie that as the two come together there will be love, when really there is love's prison.

What the ego will never tell you is that each person is never supposed to be in a dedicated exclusive relationship with only one other, in which being with them is a tool to exclude everyone else. To do this is to place someone in a prison and call it freedom, to say you love them all the wihle keeping them captive and making sure they have no life beyond what you allow. Everyone is supposed to love everyone, and equally. It is completely unnatural that a person be kept so isolated and exclusive and separated off that they're not allowed even the slightest relationship with anyone, lest there be jealousy and grounds for revenge.

That means it is completely natural in God that everyone would experience full and total unconditional love towards absolutely everyone simultaneously. That is the total opposite of exclusivity and specialness because it's based on inclusivity and openness and sharing. It is true freedom and it applies to all souls. This is what all souls want and know and trust and enjoy. You are one with everyone, not just one little individual, whose specialness is there to tempt you and keep you away from everyone else.

On Earth therefore bodies are not only separation devices and prisons, they are also used by the ego to bring exclusive bodies together on exclusive terms so that the body can essentially be used to keep both persons away from God. And in their specialness they will think they are being holy and better and rightous and above all others, whom them look down upon together.

This belief that we are all supposed to find one single person and "love them" but in such a way that this relationship excludes others and is not the same as what is shared with others, is an ego device to separate and destroy relationship. It also leads to madness, in the belief that you are completely dependent on this one other person for your salvation, and if they are gone or if they stop giving you what you want, you are desperate like some kind of stalker that just can't let go or grant freedom. The belief that you can only get your needs met by that one person is a recipe for disaster and for endless torment. You don't even really have any needs.

In order to be free from that turmoil, which is largely also the root cause of grief and loss when a person leaves or dies, the sense of exclusivity must be dismantled. The person can only be "let go" by giving them freedom and allowing the exclusive rules to be broken. And indeed when they are broken it will not horrify, but instead bring great relief. Relief from the sense of isolation, from the straight-jacked of special terms, from the obedience and worship and codependency, and from the sense of not being able to live or do anything without their approval. No more burden, no more distorting yourself with sacrifices to please them, and no more putting them on a pedestal in order to cut them down.

If the person were to for example "cheat" or go outside the bounds of the agreement, or in some way withdraw what they were giving, or the grounds of the relationship are attacked and undermined, leading to a breakdown in the specialness and the romance, then perhaps this is a good thing. Because then it can open the doorway to actually transcending the ego's attempt at imprisonment, the glorifying of the body, the desire to merge with the body, and the sense that only this one person in all the world can ever be good enough for you.

"I want you and nobody else", as many-a-song goes, becomes the ego's mantra for exclusive specialness. The special one, the chosen one, the other half of yourself, the perfect one, the ideal one, the one who does only what you want and gives you none of what you don't want, the seeming savior and oasis in the desert to keep you from the madness of others, that special someone who who can side with an gel with and connect with by way of proving how everyone else is wrong, that's the ego's goal. To use separation to masquerade as relationship, to use a reduction in communication with the whole sonship under the guise of increasing communication, and using body contact to substitute for the true intimacy of oneness and to keep it away from heaven. And yet the ego thinks this is heaven on earth.

None of this is easy stuff to look at because everyone's doing it and everyone wants this feeling that you get when you look into the eyes of that special chosen one, and how they seem to offend you the least, justifying your murderous attitude toward everyone outside the special inner circle. Relationship can be far far higher than this, much more unconditional, and far more open and sharing, but not on the egos terms, and not really in terms of bodies - only up to a point.

But let it be known that, as you grant freedom to your partner, you are also giving it to yourself. And the special relationship therefore has to be converted into a holy relationship, where the terms and conditions are no longer the ego's, but the Holy Spirit's. And where the loving becomes equal and unconditional, there isn't a foundation of neediness and dependency, and both parties attain wholeness within themselves as well as with each other. There is a way out of the ego's chains and its little prisons of isolation, but it will require a dismantling of everything you ever thought specialness was good for.

Ultiamately it means giving up the entirely egocentric belief, in the ego itself, that you or another can be everything, exlusively and alone, to the exclusion of all else. That there can be this one sole person that is capable of being so limited, isolated, controlled and imprisoned, that they are somehow made permanent and constant and always the same to you. A person who will obey your every wish, do everything you want, be everything you want them to be, and never leave you. An idol to merge with in oneness, to posses and to own and control. Setting the other free from this punishing demand sets you also free form the LIE, that anyone could ever be, or is ever meant to be, the only one you could ever love.

Allowing their love to overflow to others, begins the dissolving of specialness, and therefore also of the ego itself. It is the beginning of letting go, the giving of freedom, the allowing of the other to be with anyone and everyone they so please. So that you can also be free to be unrestricted and unlimited in your relationship to all whom God has created equal.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship 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."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

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

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."

"The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of BOTH worlds, has merely led to FANTASIES of both, and to the inability to perceive either one AS IT IS. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which UNION IS EXCLUDED, and the BASIS for the ATTEMPT at union RESTS on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek, and do NOT find?"

Let's talk a bit about this notion that all you have to do is transcend "what's happening" in order to be at peace.

The major assumption here is that stuff is happening "on its own". The world is ticking over, events are occurring out of nowhere, no-one is necessarily responsible for making anything happen, attack thoughts pop into the mind seemingly out of nowhere, shit just happens, suffering happens, sickness happens, death happens. Seemingly all on its own with no input from you. So then you try to escape it.

This assumption is only possible if you perceive yourself as having NOTHING whatsoever to do with "causing" the world to be this way, causing sickness, causing suffering or death. The viewpoint is one of total powerlessness, in which the world seems to be the CAUSE OF YOU, the dream decides your fate, things happen to you against your will, and you are entirely at the effect of the world. It's a position of victimhood.

But this for everyone is usually the kind of mindset that you start out with, in the ego, identified with a limited body, perceiving the world as a huge objective reality that does stuff on its own. And then you come to the course and start trying to digest its teachings WITHIN that kind of viewpoint without questioning it. Without questioning the assumption that the world is running on autopilot, or that the body gets sick because of outside influences, or that death will "happen to you" when it decides to.

Finding yourself in a world that's attacking you (causing you, making you affected), you seek for SALVATION or ESCAPE, and you think that you will find it by some kind of AVOIDANCE of what's happening. That if you could crawl into a hole and hide and get away from the causes, you would find some kind of peace. This is entirely an ego strategy. It keeps the attacking world real, maintains external causes, and keeps you at the effect of everything, but then persuades you that if you will step back and sit on the fence just enough maybe you'll be beyond the reach of its influence. That it's totally normal for a hideous disease to be ripping the body apart so long as you're smiling, or that somehow it's natural to still get angry but "observe" the anger from a detached viewpoint. Split mind anyone?

This leads many people along the EGO path of seeking for salvation by some kind of "transcending" of what is happening. That is, firmly believing that what happens is entirely permanently outside your control, you have no power over it, it will STILL continue to do what it does, and there is nothing you can really to do STOP IT. And that therefore your only solution is to "change your mind about it" or try to "see it in a different way" so that, perhaps, you can WELCOME IT, or not interpret it as an attack, or position yourself beyond it somehow.

And so then the entire effort to progress spiritually becomes about a kind of withdrawal from the world, an attempt to transcend it, an attempt to bypass it, an attempt to KEEP THE WORLD functioning the way it does, keep the attacks, keep the wars, keep the sickness, keep the suffering, and keep the death, but find some way to "be at peace with it". Or to be happy "in spite of it".

The thing is, there is SOME truth to this, because the world is in fact not real, it's a dream, and taking it seriously makes you unhappier. Believing in its illusions and temptations produces stress. Reacting to it increases suffering. etc. So you reason that you will find more peace if you will sort of calm yourself down, become tranquil, try not to be upset by it and thus reach some kind of peaceful state. While the world keeps being murderous against your will. And then along comes death, and what can you do to stop it? Hold up a peace sign? Throw some vitamin water at it?

What happens here is that people find a kind of escape from suffering through avoidance and "re-framing". It's perfectly legitimate to reframe the world because the world is a dream and not to be taken seriously. But at the same time, while people will take "causality" away from the world as if to say, you are no longer "at the effect of" the world, they still won't go so far as to OWN THE CAUSALITY. They won't admit to having power over the world, nor admit to DREAMING IT. It's like becoming a passive dreamer who is still unconscious of the fact that the world is coming from their own mind.

They see no purpose or power or ability to actually INFLUENCE it in any way. And this is a result of the ASSUMPTION that the state of major limitation you find yourself in is "normal" and natural. In this state there has been no transcendence of the order of difficulty in miracles. The hierarchy of illusions has not been dismantled or flattened. The power of the mind has not been admitted to or owned or mastered. Miracles are not being performed. Healing is missing. In effect, every way in which you would be THE CAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENS, is completely ignored.

So what happens is, we still believe the world is the cause of everything, the world still spins on its own, events still happen outside your control, people still attack, the environment still causes your body to be sick, the death still decides when your time is up. But supposedly you are happy and at peace. And yet you are powerless. Passive. An "observer". A fence-sitter. Sitting there on a cloud doing basically nothing to engage with the world, heal sickness, cast out death or overcome the LAWS that you made up to govern you.

If you are under no laws but God's, why are you pinned down by gravity? Why are you restricted by space and time? Why do you depend on air and food? Why when "sickness happens" do you not realise you PUT IT THERE? Why when death seems to loom are you not seeing that you HAVE POWER OVER SICKNESS AND DEATH BECAUSE YOU MADE THEM UP AND CAN ABOLISH THEM BOTH?

Being "not at the effect of the world" does NOT mean "I don't let the world affect me". It means YOU STOP HURTING YOURSELF. It means YOU take responsibility for CAUSING everything, and you choose to stop attacking yourself. It means you stop believing there even IS an outside cause or power or will or mind that can affect you against your will. It means you stop believing that the body EVER "gets sick" through any process other than YOUR MIND ATTACKING IT. And it also requires the recognition that even death has NO POWER OVER YOU, and therefore you DO NOT MAKE IT HAPPEN, and there is NO cause anywhere to make it happen against your will. Jesus: "SWEAR NOT TO DIE!"

This is the part of ACIM that so many poeple do not want to see or admit to or own up to. That the world is not simply "not causing you" to be upset, but that YOU ARE CAUSING IT. SOMEONE is responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. Nothing happens without a MIND CAUSING IT. The planet does not even EXIST without a mind dreaming it. Sickness does not happen unless a MIND decides to make sickness. Death does not occur unless some MIND CHOOSES to make death appear to happen.

It is not anywhere near enough to simply seek out being "at peace" in a kind of escape from "a real world that does stuff to me on its own". That is not mastery. That is not transcendence, it's avoidance. There is no power in that. It's a state of passivity and really not much different than laying down and allowing death to happen "on its own". Being not "affected by" something does not mean it still HAPPENS and you are "okay with it". You have to look at WHY does it even HAPPEN AT ALL? It happens because YOU are responsible for making it happen. That's a whole different ballgame.

It's not merely about what the world does and how you respond to it, it's about YOU ARE THE DREAMER WHO IS MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN. And therefore you can choose to NOT making it happen, or to undo anything you have made. It is a position of POWER. It is a position of being able to HEAL whatever occurs. It is a position of miracle working and supernatural power. It's not a state of contemplating your navel and becoming mostly peaceful then having the body "become sick and die" in a total display of victimhood.

You are to not be affected by the world. That does not mean the world still does stuff "on its own" to you against your will. It means realizing the world DOES NOT do stuff on its own, YOU DO IT, and then deciding to STOP DOING IT. So that the world CANNOT DO ANYTHING without your consent. Because you do it all to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. This is why there is no power or cause in the world capable of bringing oppression, making you suffer, sick, sad or afraid. The world is the EFFECT OF YOU. Which means you, in your unlimited nature, should be able to CHANGE IT any way you see fit. Because you are the dreamer.

It's also not enough to meditate and "watch thoughts come and go". WHO MAKES THE THOUGHTS? You do. Stopping making the thoughts is correcting the problem at its CAUSE, rather than allowing the thought-generation to continue and to then try to BYPASS it. That is not peace. A healed mind should not be GENERATING attack thoughts. There should be no need to "observe" thought processes, given that those troublesome thought processes should not even be HAPPENING in the first place. It's not your job to let attack thoughts keep occurring by try to sidestep or ignore them (actually a form of disassociation). It's your job to uproot those motherfuckers at their source and stop making them.

The course says not to seek to change the world, but to change your mind about the world. A lot of people SOTP THERE. But it goes on to say, that if you change your mind about the world, THE WHOLE WORLD WILL CHANGE. Because your mind has the power to CHANGE THE DREAM. That is a VASTLY different standpoint than one of "only" changing your mind "about it". You never really change your mind ABOUT the dream anyway.... as you change your mind, the dream changes. There is no "about", unless you believe that the world is a SEPARATE THING FROM YOUR MIND.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

"You made the world."

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

If your focus is to try to LET STUFF STILL HAPPEN and "just observe it", you are turning yourself into a fence-sitting inert powerless action-less miracle-less passive recipient of death.

Jesus states that "members of my party are ACTIVE WORKERS."

There is miracle mindedness, that is one thing. It's a state of true perception and readiness to perform miracles. But then there is MIRACLE DOING, or working, which is an ACT of CAUSING illusions to change or disappear. Miracle DOING is the part that so many are afraid of and do not want anything to do with. Because that means having power over the world and not just seeking out an escape from it.

"Your function on earth is healing." "You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."

If you want to be a miracle WORKER, not just "miracle minded" or "transcendent", it has to go WAY beyond passivity or trying to meditate or trying to let stuff keep happening without any ABILITY to do anything about it. Faith without works is dead. You must EXTEND LOVE, CAUSE HEALING, and REVERSE DEATH. This is not a spectator sport UNTIL the entire sonship is awakened.

Many people teach about the course in such a way, that it all seems to be about going up towards God.

This seems to make sense in many ways. We're told to take illusions to the truth and not the other way around.

We're told the world doesn't exist and that it's not our home. That we have added all these blocks on top of our love and need to remove them.

It all seems to focus on an undoing process. The whole "impression" you get of the course then it that it's ENTIRELY about this undoing and removing ego and going within and stepping back from the world.

But what is not taught enough, is the whole PURPOSE of doing this process.

The purpose of the course isn't simply to remove and undo. The purpose of the removing and undoing is so that LOVE CAN SHINE. The undoing itself is just clearing the way for EXPRESSION.

Everything about love shining is NOT in an upwards direction, nor is it in an inwards direction, nor is it to do with taking yourself away from the world, nor is it to do with simply reaching a "state" where you are sort of sitting on the fence just observing everything and waving.

What ACTUALLY happens is that as you remove these blocks to love, as you shift your perception seemingly "toward" God more, LOVE EXTENDS THROUGH YOU MORE.

Far too much emphasis has been placed on the process of the removal of blocks, to such an extent, all this focus on forgiving and purifying and undoing ego etc, that we can actually miss the POINT of all this. Which is that we're doing this SO THAT the love, which has been blocked, can FLOW FREELY.

Love flows OUTWARD. It is shared. It is given. It heals OTHERS. It produces MIRACLES.

Projection, as defined mainly in the course, is an act of denying the presence of love, which creates a sense of emptiness/lack/sin, which results in displacing that sin externally. So then people think that this was the only function of the mind. It's not.

The mind can either CREATE, OR project. And it has free will to choose which process. Miracles come from the creative/extending function of the mind, illusions/ego comes from the projecting function. We've become so busy with fixing the false projections, that we forget that the mind in its natural function actually is creative, expressive, giving, extending, radiating, healing, unifying, miraculous.

So it seems a bit paradoxical but, as you lift away blocks in the mind which seemed to project outward, it actually uncovers LOVE and then love extends outward. As you get closer to God, you become more loving. As you have more awareness, you become more miraculous.

Many teachers and students actually have adopted this kind of idea that the only point of the course is to get your ass out of here and go home. Like, you're only supposed to do the forgiving part, the undoing part, the fixing of your mind, the stripping away of ego and all this reducing. But this leaves a HUGE gaping hole in the rest of the story. It turns the atonement into a totally selfish goal that you "accept for yourself and no-one else".

And this is because THE EGO is a ONE-DIRECTIONAL thought system where giving and receiving are separated. The Holy Spirit's thought system is BI-DIRECTIONAL, meaning that giving and receiving are EQUAL. The EGO interprets the course to mean, we are only moving in the direction of God. Holy Spirit sees it differently. In fact, you could say, the only TRUE nature of spirit is that it INCREASES OUTWARD. That's totally opposite to what the ego is trying to do with the course.

It successfully also denies major aspects of the course which is the OUTGOING of love, and everything that comes from that. Which, VERY importantly, includes the PERFORMING OF ACTUAL MIRACLES. Miracles are such an outward expression of love that all this "taking back" and "going inside" and "returning home" malarky doesn't even touch on it. You can do all this retracting and get to a point of sitting on a fence having a personal peace experience with not a single miracle coming out of you. Something is wrong with that!

There are entire audiences now following various teachers who preach this one-directional movement away from the world and towards God. It SEEMS to make sense, after all we came from God and want to go home. But it is not in our NATURE to head in the direction of God. The only reason we're heading toward God is because we left. It's in our NATURE to EXPRESS AND EXTEND God. It's entirely an outward expression of love.

There's a really interesting section in the course which I posted about recently, which goes something like this. When the mind is naturally extending fully THROUGH the body, it heals the body and flows past/overlooks/forgives the body and flows OUTWARD beyond the body, extending to others and seeing the same love in others. This produces perfect healing of oneself and others, it produces miracles, it maintains the body in perfect divine health. ie the body is a MEDIUM through which love radiates and is used as a COMMUNICATION device to TRANSMIT.

But any time that you start to make the body the focus, any time there are blocks to awareness, any time you start identifying with being the body, or you start blocking the outflowing of love, the mind starts to "stop at" the body and, in a sense, collide with it. The blockages are like acts of will against the flow of will. This causes "attack", and the body thus becomes a kind of target. It thus becomes sick and weak and suffers, and eventually dies.

THAT DEATH RIGHT THERE is actually the logical RESULT of only fixating on the INWARD direction of movement away from the world. And that is PRECISELY why there are many gurus and others who have had a measure of awakening who LATER DIE without having performed a single miracle. Leaving the world is only half of the story. And if all your focus is on leaving the world, it CAN result in death, especially if your belief system is then really focused on NOT HELPING OTHERS and not demonstrating the overcoming of the world by BEING ENTIRELY CAUSAL. We are not asked to being NEUTRAL. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect or neutrality.

It makes the self too special. It's an imbalance between giving and receiving. When the blocks are removed, love NATURALLY flows outward because of what it is, and there is all this outpouring of LIFE and POWER and MIRACLES. There is this radiance, this shining, this blessing of yourself and everyone. The body becomes healed by the sane mind as the mind flows past it, carrying love with it, and flows it out PAST self to others.

So we really need to look at this and be careful about this. When ALL that we focus on is the "undoing", which in a sense is the same thing as "the ego getting what it wants without giving", we SHUT OUT any of the GIVING, because we equate it with some kind of "doing" which we think is sinful. Jesus says in the course that the undoing aspect of the miracle IS important, but that the DOING aspect is FAR MORE important.

The only REASON there is such a huge course book here which is helping to remove blocks to awareness of love, which seems to be a major point of the course, is to REVEAL the love and to let it SHINE. Because the course can't teach the meaning of love, and focuses heavily on the removing of the blocks to awareness, this leads so many people to think that "removing blocks" is the SAME THING AS being natural, or being healed, or getting out of this world.

The ONLY PURPOSE of removing blocks is SO THAT you can fulfill your function as the light of the world and so that the love IN you can EXPRESS and HEAL and BE MIRACULOUS. To essentially, "bring heaven to earth", supernaturally, while people are still calling out for love and struggling to get home.

And that DOES MEAN "bringing" the love and power of HEAVEN to this world, because it NEEDS IT. This is why "miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven", causing the "signs of life" to spring up. It doesn't say "suck it all in and you won't look so fat".

Major course teachers have pushed this agenda of "get out of here and screw the rest". You are actually to become PART OF the atonement PLAN, which is a plan FAR BIGGER than just your individual atonement. You become part of the atonement ITSELF when you accept it. And accepting it is accepting and receiving miracles, which you are to then GIVE TO OTHERS. Your job is not DONE when you've accepted atonement. That's so selfish and ego. Jesus needs our help to BRING healing and truth and light and love and miracles TO the world and those in the world, to HELP THEM to return to God as well.

Love shines. Love radiates. Love is miraculous. Love extends OUTWARD. Love moves PAST yourself and past the world. Love looks PAST bodies. It doesn't recoil. Jesus talks about how there is what seems to be a "state" you reach where you are miracle-minded and miracle-ready.... but reaching the STATE is only important so that you can get into "MIRACLE-DOING". We're not supposed to look at this whole process in terms of just "withdrawing" everything from the world. That is of course a majorly important ASPECT, but it is ONLY HALF OF THE STORY, and I would even say it's not even half.

The focus on being at peace about the world and accepting personal atonement and "there is no world so no point doing miracles" and "holy spirit has nothing to do with the world" and all this intellectualized "escaping" from the world, has really basically CUT OFF all mention of, teaching of, support for, any of the EXPRESSION which we are supposed to be DOING THIS FOR. That's the whole point - to return to BEING LOVING, to expressing love, to demonstrating miracles, to giving LIFE TO OTHERS, and being truly helpful beyond our own nose.

As Jesus says, "members of my party are ACTIVE WORKERS". As Jesus says, he told the disciples (and if you are an ACIM student you ARE a disciple) to be physicians of the lord and go out and HEAL OTHERS. Jesus also says to "listen, learn, then DO". Not just listen and learn. DOOOOOOOO. DO miracles. DO healing. Help people. Shine your light.

YOU HAVE TO GIVE LOVE FIRST TO RECEIVE LOVE

Love is in you, it is you, it is God given. God put love and light and power into you. You did not put it there and cannot produce it on your own. But if you believe love is not in you, you are unlovable, unworthy, are denying your real self, etc, love will be blocked. Love does not enter where it is not welcome.

Believing the love is not in you, you will see yourself as lacking love, and "in need". You will believe the love is separate from you and external to you. So you will go seeking for it. You will try to GET IT from anywhere other than inside yourself. That is, you'll try to acquire it, without undoing your belief that you don't have it.

The problem is even IF people give it, you will not allow yourself to truly receive it. Openness to receiving love requires that you NOT believe you're lacking it, and requires to TO believe that love IS IN YOU ALREADY.

It's not that you need to find a way to get the love you are lacking, it's that you need to learn that unless you GIVE or EXTEND it, you WILL NOT receive it. And this also means, no-one else can give you the love that you are unwilling to give yourself or to others.

If you fail to give love to others, ie you deny them love, what happens is you deny yourself love. In other words, if you find that you cannot love or aren't willing to, your "unloving attitude" towards others will also be experienced by yourself. You will find yourself lacking and needy and dependent on external sources.

How love really works, is that it must extend. It must be given. In order to have the love, you have to give the love. In order to receive the love, you must express the love. You must flow it, extend it. It's given to you BY GOD, and your natural function (when sane) is to extend it or "pass it on" to everyone else (and God).

When you do that, you acknowledge the love is in you, it's already being supplied to you, you are NOT lacking it, and therefore you HAVE it to give. If you feel like you're lacking it, you will also feel like you cannot give any more. The remedy for that is not to try to get more love from others, but to become more willing TO love. To give more love.

When you give more love, YOUR lack is supplied from within, and by giving your love away to others you RECEIVE it from God. This is the only way it works. This is how you love naturally. And that also means you MUST acknowledge that God loves you in order for you to be willing and able to love yourself and others. If you can't acknowledge God as the source of ALL love, it is impossible to experience real love at all. Sorry atheists but if you deny God you deny love.

Unless you are choosing to express love, you will not receive it. What applies to you applies to others. This is the Golden Rule in action. Love others to love yourself. If you unlove them you will unlove yourself. If you attack them you will attack yourself. If you are unforgiving in your attitude towards them you will find yourself guilty. If you love them you will love yourself. It's a rule of equality.

This also does not mean sacrifice. By giving love, you should not aim to only cause others to receive love, and omit yourself from receiving it. That too is egocentric. It's a form of sacrifice in which you believe others deserve love and you do not, so you try to give love but only in a way or form that ensures you do not receive or experience it yourself. You "burn out" that way because you are not getting fresh love input from God. You're trying to give yourself away and actually get rid of yourself. It's suicidal.

People who SEEM very giving and selfless can be the most denying of self love and unwilling to receive. This is the ego's illusion of love. Appearing to be loving or sacrificial in an attempt to look loving, when in fact all you're doing is creating a hole in yourself and denying yourself what little you have. This happens when you try to be the SOURCE of love, as an ego, rather than getting the love from God. Sacrificial selflessness is NOT unconditionally loving.

Similarly, if you are afraid, it is because you are failing to love. You are not fulfilling your function of extending God's being. Fear is what you experience as the absence of love. All suffering comes from that sense of lack or denial. You'll think, you are too afraid to love, you have nothing to give, you are empty, and this is terrifying you because you have no strength, nothing to stand up to others with, people are walking all over you and you have no confidence.

But what happens is, surprisingly, if you can will yourself to love, to express and extend genuine love, unconditional love, it immediately dissolves that fear. It gives you strength, it empowers you, it sets you up in the correct arrangement of being an extender of God's power in which He takes care of you, it protects you, it makes you sane, and it shines away all darkness. The ONLY way to make that happen is to extend love.

By giving it, even if you don't THINK you have it TO give, you INCREASE how much you HAVE and find yourself in a better position. It seems counterintuitive because you think you can only give what you seem to have already. But if you give and extend willingly, it simultaneously instantly increases your supply. You can ride that wave and become much "higher" on that love. But you must initiate the giving of the love in order to break out of the sense of lacking it. As soon as you get into the flowing of it, your situation improves.

To love everyone equally and fully is the goal. EVERYONE. And that means no exceptions. And that is not easy for us ego people. People who are conditional in their love. Who don't want to love everyone. And who find some people to be sinful. This also indicates that you are unwilling to love because you are unwilling to love yourself. If you reach the limits of how much you can love someone and you feel like you just can't love them anymore, or enough, it's because you do not love yourself. You are blocking love from being received because you don't think you deserve or want it. And that makes it impossible to give it.

Yet you have to move past those blocks, those beliefs in negativity towards yourself, so that you can come to recognize that you DESERVE God's love. And this is what forgiveness and the atonement are around. Learning to recognize the truth about you, that you never sinned and all is forgiven, such that you utterly deserve God's total undivided love forever. Accepting that you are innocent and there is no reason NOT to love yourself. Or others.

You can only give the love you have received. You can only give the miracles you have received. But once you receive it and accept it as true of you, you accept it as true of others, and become willing to love BOTH you and others all the more. Which also means willing to give miracles to others. That's the path towards enlightenment. Towards the recognition that there is only love. And that nothing else exists to block it. Nor would you want to. In your right mind, there is no reason to do anything other than love fully and maximally. All expressions of true love are maximal.

Give to receive. Give first, receive next. If you receive first before giving, that is conditional and blocks the receiving, leaving you empty handed, especially if you fail to get it from someone. You must "give away" the love that you want to keep, then it will increase, and you will not lose it. This breaks all the ego's laws of lack. Ideas are increased by being given away. Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver. If you want more love, love more. Find out the barriers you've placed against love and remove them. Become willing to love everyone, all the time, without exception. Then you're ready for God.

When everyone is willing to extend God's love, they share in that love together, but you don't give love due to other people lacking it, nor do you seek for people to love you on the basis that you lack the love yourself. Imagine if everyone already is full of love and everyone is extending love to everyone. The extension isn't done at this point in order to uplift those who are lacking (which is what miracles are for) but simply as a communication, an expression, a natural way of existing. You love the love that is already in everyone, not because it's not there, but because you acknowledge everyone is already love. Love then moves beyond its healing function and become simply a way of relating forever.

It is not your task to necessarily learn to "love more", however, because God has already in fact created you WITH love and AS love. Extending love is totally natural to you as a son of God and you are unlimited in your ability to do so. The only issue are your blocks to the awareness of love, your denial, which stops you from receiving unlimited love and stops you from expressing it. You should not be trying to KEEP your blocks and INCREASE the love. That will not really work. Keeping blocks while "trying to love more" will reach a limit fast. Instead, your job is to seek out the blocks you've made AGAINST love, remove them, and then love NATURALLY will flow at an increased rate. Effortlessly.

Because the fact is, if you didn't have insanity or blocks or denials, love would NATURALLY go out on its own because of what it is. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you don't interfere with it, love maximally extends through you all the time and its so natural and joyful that it's all you want to do. But when you erect barriers against it, in preventing yourself from being loved by God, you block the receipt, and try to cut off your mind from spirit. That SEEMS to reduce the love. It doesn't reduce love at its SOURCE (God), it only reduces your willingness to RECEIVE and flow it.

That's similar to the idea that you have a pipe, and God is flowing maximum love through the pipe, through you, and your tap is fully switched on so that the love just flows right through you and on to others (extension of creation). But when you turn the tap OFF, you reduce the flow to a trickle. Not because the source is limited but because YOU are limiting it. All you have to do is OPEN UP the flow and let love in and through you and be willing to love. Because actually it takes effort to not love. It takes effort to be unwilling. To resist. To deny. It takes deliberate belief and energy to PREVENT love. So when you stop all that effort (ego doing), you open up and the love just flows full-force on its own and it is effortless and very natural.

Be a channel for God, basically. Let him move through you. Let the Holy Spirit perform miracles through you. "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" "Do his works". Obviously you cannot do his works on your own, you do his works by working with him to extend HIS healing power THROUGH you TO others. Which means cooperating in not resisting, not getting in the way of, not putting up blocks against, His power through you. This is a miracle working principle. This doesn't mean you become uninvolved and "sit on the sidelines" in your ego. It means you become an EXTENDER OF LOVE, a relay, a device which forwards the love through WILL, and in that you and the Holy Spirit team up and you become part of the machinery of miracle working. You MUST ACTIVELY EXPRESS LOVE YOURSELF in order to perform miracles, but you get that love from God.

You're basically learning to plug yourself back into God. Plug yourself into love. Allow yourself to depend on God as the SOURCE of everything you are and have. By being willing to extend what you are given (your inheritance) to others, to share it equally with everyone. This entails learning to TRUST the Holy Spirit, learning to DEPEND on God, learning to make decisions WITH him (not just him, and not just you). Letting go and letting God. And fulfilling your function as spirit. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." Then you are being your natural self. You're being as God created you. And God created you to be an extender and expresser of miraculous powerful unconditional love all the time.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

The idea of separation is madness, because what it implies is impossible. It is not possible to be separate from God. But the mad idea was the idea that you CAN be separate from God, even though it is impossible.

To insist it is possible, must be madness, because to believe it you have to deny reality and truth and blind yourself to sanity and sense. This belief makes the mind insane, because it now believes impossible things are possible. This is why the separation from God was an entry into a state of mental illness, ie insanity.

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth."

"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."

The mad idea gave rise to a mad world, based on insane notions and crazy laws, devoid of meaning and empty of truth. And into this insane world we projected our insane beliefs, producing a mad and false world to reflect our inner madness. And all who participate in it are mentally ill.

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

What we've ended up with then is a fictional world which insane people believe exists. And it is populated with people who have insane beliefs about who and what they are. They do not know themselves, are out of touch with their own reality, and think they are something they're not. This especially is entwined with the belief that they are physical bodies, which their immortal souls could never be. And they see themselves as limited and lacking.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

Realize then that the world as we know it is populated by beings who originally were, and in truth still are, wholly immortal, perfect, innocent, loving, healthy, happy and completely invulnerable. Beings who God created to live forever in divine perfection, who lacked nothing and were capable of anything.

In the separation, these beings gave belief to impossible nonsense and thus moved their minds into insane states. This produced the anti-christ or otherwise known as the ego, which is an idea of what you THINK you are, as a kind of wishful thinking or denial of your true nature. Thus each person developed a SECOND self for themselves, which they identified with and as, and thought to be the whole of who they are.

"This is the anti-Christ; ... Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

So now you have a world seemingly populated by individual beings who strongly believe they are NOT as God created them. They've added an entire layer of lies on top of themselves, to cover themselves up. They've invented a second self to suit their preferences.

They have profound denial which means they actively resist admitting to the truth about themselves and each other, and instead participate in lies and fantasies about what they are. They want to be a body and they want to suffer and they want to die, and they think this is normal because they think the hell they created is heaven.

"He has come to save me from the evil self I made."

"They DO believe that Heaven is hell, and ARE afraid of love. "

"For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience."

This has thrown these individuals into states of mind that are distorted and unnatural. They are mentally ill. They believe they are something or someone they are not. They have associated with being a physical object. They think they came into existence with the body. They believe they are limited and lacking and insufficient and defective and broken and sinful and guilty and in need of fear. And they relate to others through specialness and selfishness and mistrust and victimhood.

"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt."

On the level of the world then it always seems that you're interacting with a whole person, who is egoic, and who has major selfishness issues, and who relates in special ways, and strikes bargains, and wants to get, and sees themselves as limited and lacking and defective. And it seems this is ALL THERE IS to the person. As if they ACTUALLY ARE a limited dysfunctional individual.

You see this appearance as the whole truth about the person, and people seem to really be in states of "becoming", of "growing", of transformation, learning, progression, acquisition and so on. As if they have started out with nothing and are lacking and little and weak and frail. And so the whole world seems to be populated with egoic individuals who are all far less than magnificent and most of whom find themselves to be unworthy of love or life. Which drives them all to self-punishment and suicide.

"...the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

"the delusions of the Separated ones."

"All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. This is because they BELIEVE in attack and rejection, so this is what they perceive and teach and LEARN. "

It seems then that we're living in a world where people represent varying degrees of ability, accomplishment, skill, confidence, and a very wide range of personalities and potentials. And in all cases no-one is perfect and everyone is lacking in some way. And everyone is trying to improve themselves because they all think they were created broken. And now there is competition and everyone fights to be better than all the other defective ones, while the defective ones lick their wounds and want to die.

If you take this at face value, if you think this is normal and natural, then you'll think that the EGOS that you interact with ARE people. That their egotism is NOT a mental illness, but is in fact just some normal psychological structure. A personality trait perhaps. And that it's completely normal for people to hate themselves, to attack others, to be angry, to worship idols, to take from others, and to seek for exclusive relationships. As if this is what completely natural mentally-sane people do. So normal because it's so common.

What we have to realize is that this is NOT sanity. And these ego people, the way they present themselves, is NOT really their self. It's not their real identity. They in fact are pretending to be something they're not. They present themselves as fictional characters, with traits and behaviors that aren't even natural. With beliefs about themselves that are unfounded and false. In denial of their own self and repressive of their own freedom.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick."

They don't even know who they really are. They don't know where they came from or how they got here. And they certainly don't even suspect that they even have a real self. And even think that maybe they don't exist at all, have no real creator, invented themselves, and maybe aren't even real.

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

What we're looking at, when we look at the world, is in fact a place where a very large number of mentally ill people are gathered together. And all of their mental illnesses are regarded as largely normal and natural, ie not an illness at all. We don't even recognize insanity when we see it. We think it's normal that people relate the way they do, think of themselves in such unnatural ways, and are completely lost and out of touch with their own reality. On a planet filled with suffering, how can you remember what it's like not to suffer?

If we don't suspect that there is a higher, larger truth about people, then it's going to make it seem like their ego self is REAL, that it is the WHOLE truth of them, and there is nothing more to it. And in that view you will relate to their EGO in terms of special relationship, and with no sense of forgiveness. Anything they do in insanity will be a sin, and you will justify holding it against them. Because you don't recognize they are mentally ill. And all their twisted behaviors are in fact part of their illness.

If you had only ever known someone in an ill condition, and had never known them when they were healthy, you would have great difficulty seeing past their illness. If you had only met them after they became dysfunctional, you'd have a hard time having any notion of what they are REALLY like when they're not sick. And if the whole planet is sick, how can you know what society is supposed to be like, when no-one can even remember a time when there was no suffering at all?

If we have no sense of the actual REALITY of each person, then this is what we're going to do. We're going to BUY INTO their illusions of who and what they are, fall for the same temptations, go into false empathy, join them in suffering, and compound their ego. This keeps them imprisoned and does not offer any kind of healing. And they need healing because they are not sane. Falling for this means YOU are insane, because you've failed to recognize that the illusion of sanity is not sanity, and so think that you are sane when you're not.

Everyone, when sane, is a loving, powerful, supernatural, immortal, eternal being of light, filled with joy and laughter and miracles. Such a person is invulnerable, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be upset, has no grievances, doesn't judge or blame anyone, is perfectly innocent and holy, knows God intimately, depends on God for everything, and has no authority problem. This is what EVERY person in the world was like when they were created. This is the kind of self they ARE behind their mental illness. And if their mental illness was cured, this is how they would be. A world of christs!

To not RECOGNIZE that people's egos are not their real self, is to fail to forgive. To forgive requires having in mind an awareness BEYOND THE LIES, of what the person's souls is really like, as created by God. The original self. The real self. The holy self. The higher self. That is their true self. And that self has no limitations or lacks or failures or malfunctions or depressions or sicknesses or lies about themselves or others.

So then we have to realize that we join with the Holy Spirit as therapists in the world, as healers, come to offer SANITY to those who are insane, and to lift them up and resurrect them to truth and light, so that they are restored to their true function and true abilities. To their real identity. To remember who they are, to know themselves and to live out from the love that God put in them.

"Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."

"your function in this world is healing"

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

The only way you can forgive someone is to know the real truth about them on a higher level. The bigger picture. Their true nature as established by God. And this truth has to STILL be true, even if it is covered up by their own mind, and obscure and hard to see. Even if they themselves don't know it's there, and even if they themselves deny that it's true of them. Because people are in fact out of touch with their own souls and don't even remember what their real identity is. It is our task to REMEMBER FOR THEM, so that they might remember also and wake up to their true nature.

"Remember for everyone your Father's power, that He has given them"

"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."

Since the ego is really a smokescreen of lies, it is not true of a person. Even if they are holding it up strongly in front of your face as an obstacle to peace. To forgive is to OVERLOOK it, and see BEYOND it, beyond their body, and beyond their false sense of identity. To recognize who they are in spirit, and to acknowledge the PERMANENT TRUTH about them. To hold them in the light and acknowledge that they ARE in the light.

This means in fact bypassing their illusory ego beliefs, their ego self, and realizing that on a higher level their mind is SANE. Only a small portion of their mind is insane and their soul is still perfect. By tapping into the higher self and truth of the person, you JOIN with them in love. This bypasses the ego and increases the wholeness within the mind, which in turn undoes the false ego identification - the sickness - the mental illness. Because "all sickness is mental illness." This is how miracles are performed.

Don't be deceived. People are not who they say they are. Everyone has an imposter in them. The Holy Spirit knows who we really are, and will awaken this truth in us if we will let him.

"Seek not to make the Son of God ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of Truth, and who will wander off. He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the STRANGER is made homeless, and YOU are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "who am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know."

The problem in your mind is that you have condemned yourself to be a sinner. You've accused and attacked yourself, claiming you are guilty. You cannot tolerate this guilt, so you want to make it go away, but your belief in the ego/sin is a desire to also keep it.

The ego then provides what seems like a solution. It suggests you can make the guilt go OUTSIDE of your mind, and the blame can then be pinned on someone who is completely separate from you. An external scapegoat will take the fall for you.

This of course requires that you identify yourself as separate from other people, typically on the basis of them being "a separate body". If you are body-identified, you will see yourself AS the body. So anything inside the body is you, and anything outside is not. This is how the body serves the purpose of a separation device.

The ego will say that if you push the guilt outside of you, and pin it on someone else, you will escape it. What it does NOT tell you is that this is impossible. You cannot take an idea or a thought or feeling or belief which is mind content, and make it exist OUTSIDE the mind itself. It has to stay in the mind, which is why "ideas leave not their source."

What happens is, you go into denial that the guilt is in you, and you deny that trying to make it go outside your mind is impossible. This forms a block to awareness. You then attempt what we call "projection", or the ego's use of projection, in which you try to displace the guilt beyond the outer limits of what you consider to be yourself.

Again, what the ego doesn't tell you is that this will not work, because you cannot make anything go outside your mind or your self. The whole world is inside of you. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." "Heaven and earth are both in your mind."

What you actually do is you split your mind into two compartments. You place the guilt into one compartment, and you IMAGINE that this compartment is OUTSIDE of the second compartment. The second compartment, inside the body, is considered to be the whole of yourself, or your whole mind.

So now what you're doing is you are actually increasing the belief in separation WITHIN your mind, are making a rift in your mind which hurts it, you are emphasizing separation within yourself, and you are dissociating from a part of your own mind. You now believe that part of your mind is NOT part of your mind, and is EXTERNAL to your mind. And you also believe this must be outside of the body.

So now it becomes easy to associate this guilt with anything external, whether it be the wrong weather, another human body, a group of people, some organization, an event, certain types of foods, belief systems other people have, body traits, or whatever. It's easy to believe the guilt BELONGS to them, because you believe the guilt is OUTSIDE your body - outside of yourself. It then MUST belong to someone else.

What you will then do is believe that your guilt is bound to the other person. You project it onto them, mixing them with it, as though it is an inherent part of what they are. A part of their sinfulness.

This is ESPECIALLY easy if the other person appears to make a mistake or do something wrong. It is certainly a blessing in disguise if they commit some kind of serious crime or sin. Because now you have a wonderful opportunity to seize their error, holding it against them as a sin, to AMPLIFY how guilty they are, on the apparent basis of what THEY did, as if to suggest they are guilty because of THEIR OWN sin.

This appears to exonerate you, because now you can point a finger at a "self-contained" guilty person and say, YOU are guilty, and I am not. While doing this, however, your mind secretly tries to ADD YOUR OWN guilt to what you think is theirs. You try to secretly slip your guilt into the situation while claiming it belongs to them, and is justified in being attributed to them. You give them YOUR guilt, and call it theirs.

The thing is, even while you do this, YOUR guilt IS NOT leaving your mind. You will, however, believe that it is outside of you and even see and experience it as if it is. In fact this dissociation can become very strong. You can become extremely convinced, and therefore perceive, that the guilt is entirely theirs and not in you at all. Look at what THEY are doing wrong! But this IS a state of tremendous self-deception.

What is really happening is your mind is PRETENDING that it has projected or displaced the guilt outside the borders of your self, it is convincing itself that it has succeeded in getting rid of it, it has convinced itself that the guilty party is NOT itself, that the guilt is NOT in the mind any more, and that YOU have been set free from it. This is all a lie, and is all a state of mental illness, because a mind AT WAR WITH ITSELF is insane.

When you are then attacking what seems to be the other guilty person for what you think is THEIR guilt, your mind IS in fact attacking ITSELF, WITHIN itself. It is attacking the portion of your mind that you have believed is "not a part of me", which YOU have attacked, causing a split in your mind, and the guilt that you think you're looking at IS STILL inside the limits of your mind. Your mind believes the guilty mind is SEPARATE, but it is STILL joined to your mind.

"It can be but myself I crucify." "You're doing this to yourself."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

So as you attack another in anger, attempting to make someone else - someone "not me" - seem guilty, you ARE in fact STILL ATTACKING YOURSELF, trying to make YOU NOT BE YOU. You only seem to be indirectly doing this because of the seeming separation IN your mind. You may think separation is now taking place BETWEEN brothers, ie between your separate body self and your brother's separate body self, but really it is taking place INSIDE OF YOU.

The guilt you see in them is STILL your guilt. The sin you are accusing them of you are still accusing yourself of, but are heavily in denial of that fact. The idea of guilt NEVER leaves your mind. You are SEEING your own guilt projected onto someone else. You BELIEVE if you can angrily attack them and find them to be extra guilty, then this will mean YOU are not guilty. But in fact it REINFORCES your own guilt.

This happens because not only did you start out with guilt from your OWN self attack, you have now believed that you have successfully attacked another, and justly, causing them to be hurt, which now induces even more guilt in you. And while you are busy BELIEVING that you are destroying your enemy, the enemy is actually part of your own mind, and your mind is destroying itself.

"Anger is never justified."

Each time that you become angry, you are projecting your guilt. Each time that you find ANYONE to be guilty of anything even slightly, you are trying to escape from YOUR guilt. Each time you find someone to be accused of anything, YOU NEED a scapegoat because YOU deep down believe you are guilty. This means you are running away from your guilt by trying to use DISSOCIATION to PRETEND that it is not inside of you.

The more you intensify your attack on another, the more you hate them, the more you seem to find them to be sinful, the more you want to separate from them, the more you think you cannot stand being around them and want nothing to do with them, the more murderous you become, the more YOUR MIND SPLITS. You THINK that you're finding someone else guilty but you are ONLY EVER finding yourself guilty.

In effect, the mechanism of denial, dissociation and projection, DOES NOT WORK. It does not heal you! The ego claims it will work every time, and you can convince yourself very profoundly that you are succeeding at doing this. But you ARE mistaken. The thought of guilt CANNOT leave your mind. It cannot exist outside the scope of a mind that thinks of it. And there IS nothing outside of mind, because mind is all-encompassing.

Therefore, everytime that you think you are successfully finding someone ELSE guilty, you ARE NOT succeeding in removing guilt from your mind. You are side-steppping and avoiding it, denying that you hate yourself. You are PRETENDING that it is not in you, by believing it is outside of you. And every attack you make upon it IN your brother, IS a direct attack UPON YOURSELF. And YOU DO therefore experience the consequences. The Golden Rule is always in effect.

This means every single time you try to get rid of your guilt this way, which really is an attempt to KEEP IT AND NOT HEAL IT, you magnify your guilt and run way from it. Your denial increases and you become ever more divided within yourself. You will sense yourself as being separated from your brothers, but even worse, you are separating WITHIN YOURSELF. This is self destruction.

Every time you accuse anyone of guilt, YOU ARE literally directly accusing a part of your mind of being guilty. You NEVER accuse anyone of their own sins, or their own guilt. You can't even really tell if anyone is guilty or not. You can only try to shove YOUR guilt onto them and accuse them of it. You ADD your guilt to their mistakes, turning them into sins.

You only EVER accuse anyone of YOUR sin and YOUR guilt. You try to MAKE others be guilty because of how guilty YOU feel. Which means you USE them as scapegoats so that YOU will convince yourself you are less guilty. Even if you're lying to yourself.

The ego does not want you ever looking within at the guilt that you think is there. It wants you believing its plan of "forgiveness to destroy" will work. Its plan is that if you will just place the guilt OUTSIDE yourself, someone ELSE can take the fall for it. But this literally is absolutely impossible. All you end up doing is making yourself worse off, increasing your belief in separation, and hurting yourself more.

Given that the ego's "magical solution" to the guilt is really an attempt to KEEP IT AND HIDE FROM IT, it simply DOES NOT actually make the guilt go away. It does not reduce it or heal it. You use denial to try to block it out of awareness, and you use dissociation to try to pretend it's not yours. But it remains in you, festering and unforgiven. Because it is always YOU that needs your forgiveness, because "all attack is self attack."

Your brother is NOT GUILTY. The guilt IS NOT THEIRS. YOU think you are guilty. You are in denial about it. YOU need to heal this guilt and actually undo it, because it is based on a lie. YOU are not guilty because sin is not real.

YOU don't NEED to project guilt because you are NOT a sinner. This is the forgiveness YOUR MIND needs in order to heal the separation. Because the separation is IN YOU. And it is in YOUR MIND that it needs to be healed.

"You but accuse your brother of your OWN sins."

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"But consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You PROJECT guilt to get rid of it, but you actually merely CONCEAL it."

"The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is ALWAYS to get rid of guilt. But, characteristically, it attempts to get rid of it FROM ITS VIEWPOINT ONLY. For much as the ego wants to RETAIN guilt, YOU find it intolerable."

"Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind."

"Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause."

"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you."

"When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that THERE IS NO GUILT IN GOD'S SON. And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness. For the IDEA of guilt brings a belief of condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by doing so, you cannot know that you are God's Son."

"Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can find and "love."

"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Would I accuse myself of doing this?

I will not lay this chain upon myself."

"Minds that are joined, AND RECOGNIZE THEY ARE, can feel no guilt. For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"See no-one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness UNTO YOURSELF. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God, lies the conviction of your OWN guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make YOU free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for ALL your brothers. For so you learn that IT IS TRUE FOR YOU. "

There's a technique you can try, to help with removing sickness. I call it cancelling. Sometimes Holy Spirit advises me to do this.Basically, you attempt to focus on the NON-EXISTENCE of the symptom or problem. To recognize it as nothing. Or more importantly, that it is already gone. You affirm in various ways that it is not there. That it is gone. That it never did exist. You need to recognize it is NOTHING AT ALL.

"What is understood as nothing must disappear." - Jesus

There is a catch to this though. If you focus on the problem itself or the physical symptom, this lends it some reality. And this actually is a way that your mind KEEPS it and maintains it.

"Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death."

So as you say something like "This pain isn't there", you are in fact making the pain real by your belief that you are addressing a pain. And that means you're believing the body is REAL and are trying to "fix it", which actually attacks it. It then seems very difficult, and sometimes quite subtle, to figure out how to focus on it not being there, without implying that it is.

So the question is, how do you work to recognize that something does not exist, without giving it any existence? It seems like a catch 22.

Ideally what you want to do is simply focus on what you want things to be like, and NOT on what you want them to not be like. Think of this is a choice. It's an attempt to choose a new reality. To choose a new condition. You want to focus solely on what you want the body or whatever to be like, and emphasis and energize that.

"Miracles are energizing."

"Mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

I've found it's also very useful to place the symptom in the PAST. Because your mind already strongly believes that when something is GONE, it is not here NOW, because it is in the past. Placing it in the past removes it from the present. So by talking about the symptom on the PAST tense, this helps you to not lend it much reality.

This is why the focus should be on the fact that the symptom is ALREADY GONE, is not here now, has passed, has ALREADY been healed, and has been replaced by health. Since it's in the past, you are not working on it NOW, you are simply focus on what is here now. This helps your mind to visualize and focus on the CURRENT condition that you want to acknowledge as being healthy and healed.

This is a form of PRAYER. In prayer, you attempt to visualize, feel and experience what it is what you WANT. Not what you don't want. You give mental attention, energy and belief to what you NOW CHOOSE as your new reality. If you focus on what you don't want with efforts too attack it to make it go away, you will only increase it and keep it. As in the common 'new age' concept that "what you resist persists" or "what you fear comes to you".

For example to make it rain, you might visualize a heavy storm cloud, hear the rain falling, see the splashes in your mind, etc. Or to make it stop raining, you might visualize the ABSENCE of a storm, which has been REPLACED BY what you DO want, such as a blue sky, the sun shining, feeling the warmth of the sun, hearing the birds singing again etc.

This prayer is a way of "asking for" what you WANT. And you always are asking for what you WANT, even when you focus on what you think you don't want. So you have to be careful NOT to target or dwell on what you DON'T want. You have to experience it as having been REPLACED in your mind. Just as atonement REPLACES sin with love and undoes it. Just as reality replaces illusions. And just as forgiveness replaces attack.

If you think of the sickness as being simply a mistaken choice, then the question arises, how do you undo the sickness? Do you undo the sickness by focusing on the sickness? If you do, you are not really making a new choice, you are dwelling on the old choice. This doesn't allow it to go. And you'll think that you NEED to focus on it because it's a real problem, and this will compel you to try to force it to leave, which WILL NOT WORK. If you think about it, shifting to a NEW choice, should really entail completely IGNORING what you chose before.

Believe me, I've tried the approach of trying to "intensely go up against" sickness to try to force it to leave, and it devolves into nothing but anger and aggression and ridiculous attempts to get rid of something that you're making real. It simply is a total fail and is unmiraculous. You can't make something "go away", you can only RE-CHOOSE a NEW CHOICE.

"I made the decision myself. I want to choose otherwise"

This means that to "heal a sickness" isn't so much to do with zapping a real sickness with healing vibes, but rather to simply shift all your attention to what you DO WANT. Visualizing how the body is, now that the sickness is gone. You want to shift all your attention to the here-and-now renewed state, literally to the extent that you don't even really focus on the state that you used to be in.

"Holy Spirit does not attack the ego." It's more a matter of TUNIGN OUT of the ego (form, separation, suffering), and tuning INTO the Holy Spirit, light, wholeness, love.

It may seem like this wouldn't work, because you're not even really doing anything "to" the sickness. You aren't even sending love to it or trying to shine it away. Instead you're "forgetting" it and "remembering health". If it was your mistaken choice and focus that made the sickness in the first place, the way to correct it is to choose and focus on something else. This is similar to the idea of getting out of the desert or leaving hell. You can't fix it by dwelling on it - you need to move to a different territory.

In China, there is a hospital where they don't use any medicine. All they use is basically this technique, in which they focus on affirming and FEELING the state you would be in when the sickness is GONE. This isn't a way to attack the sickness at all. It's simply a NEW CHOICE, to tune INTO the body being in a state of healthy, in which the OLD choice is in the past. And in this new state you should be experiencing gratitude and thanks and appreciation that you are IN HEALTH.

By focusing on this idea that "it's already gone", which really is a focus on "what's is here now" minus any energy or attention given to what was removed, you celebrate being healthy as if there is no ill health at all. And when they do this in that hospital with a few people doing it at once, cancerous tumors shrink in a matter of minutes. And they can watch this happening on an ultrasound and see it simply disappearing.

Holy Spirit can also help with this and its always worth inviting His Healing Help. In fact your willingness to move from making illusions real, to focusing on the truth, IS an invitation too Him. Ask him to help you to "shift" into a truer perception, where your focus is on health and wholeness and light, rather than on the making real of illusions that you find in false perception. So really this "tool" is an attempt to heal the MIND, of its false focus on making bodies real, and shifting to a more care-free state where the body isn't that important.

It's actually when your mind stops AT the body, that it induces illness. And then the illness seems to demand your attention and distract you with pain and symptoms. And now it seems hard NOT to focus on the body. But it is really the focusing on the body that MADE it ill in the first place. Jesus refers to this as "arresting the extension of the mind", whereby if you do not let the mind go out PAST the body and focus on joining with your brother's mind, and it gets hung up or blinded by physical form, this INDUCES illness.

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds, and does not arrest itself in its extension. This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind's function."

So he's telling you that if your mind doesn't go out and JOIN with others, if it doesn't overlook form, and if it starts to get hung up on form itself, then it stops going out all the way, stops extending all the way, starts to dip down and make bodies real, this turns the body into a separation device, it is a form of attack and separation, and this induces all physical illness.

The antidote therefore is to rejoin and re-extend and move BEYOND the body. And this means not focusing ON the body or making it real. So in "canceling" a symptom, the aim is to NOT give the symptom any reality. To NOT focus on it. To try to move past it to a more expanded, more healed perspective of mind, in which you have no NEED to focus on the body because it's not sick, as a result or side effect of being more open and connected spiritually.

You really want to be moving from false perception to trust perception, which means moving from body focus to ignoring the body. Placing the body's sickness in the past helps you to move your focus from it now, so that you focus on the absence of what you were dwelling on. Even if you still have some body focus while you do this, you at least have reduced the intensity of making the symptoms real.

The more you cancel this, the more you affirm in various statements and ways that "it is gone already", "it is healed already", "I am healthy and whole now", the more it should disappear.

I've found that some things which maybe in normal terms should've become a more developed problem, or lasted longer, are halted in their tracks, shortened, and sometimes completely reversed by doing this.

It also ties into what I've been focusing on lately regarding the power of your mind to choose, your free will, being totally responsible for what you cause to happen etc, the secret of salvation. You need to recognize that you chose the symptom and put it there, so you can UNDO IT, by the use of miraculous thinking.

"Miracles reflect the statement - I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Getting yourself OUT OF what you got yourself INTO, is a shift of focus, attention and belief, away from dwelling on the effects of what you MADE, and moving towards a future in which you no longer are choosing that. See yourself free from what you do not want, by NOT focusing on what you do not want, and ONLY focusing on what you do want.

This somewhat goes back to the 'new age' concept that "what you focus on increases."

As you experiment with this and try it out, and more than once, you'll start to notice the ways you imply or focus on the problem, rather than on a state in which there is no problem. You'll become more refined in your affirmations of health, and less likely to give any energy to the sickness. It is not healed by "healing it", it is healed by putting your attention back on the truth. Nothing can be forgiven or undone by making it real. It was making it real that made it show up in the first place.

In ACIM Jesus makes many clear references to a distinction between heaven and earth. He particularly uses the term "in heaven" as an opposite to "on earth". This clearly implies to most readers that heaven is some kind of place which is "not earth", which is "other than earth", which is "beyond earth", and which you can "be in" as an alternative to "being on earth".

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's Son."

Jesus clearly distinguishes that there are two places. You can be in heaven, and you can be on the earth. And they are not the same. Heaven is actually a vast realm of creation and living beings which earth barely has any awareness of. And heaven is a place you can "go to". Do not be deceived by statements such as "heaven is not a place", because this refers only to it not being localized in space. Heaven is everywhere, earth is nowhere.

It is also clear that heaven's properties are not like the properties of earth. We can bring some aspects of heaven "down" onto the earth, such as forgiveness which symbolizes heaven, and such as holy relationships which symbolize real relationships in heaven. Indeed earth can even "reflect" heaven. But it cannot BE heaven.

Jesus is clear that these are two states and two orders of reality and they are opposites. And even when earth is reinterpreted "as if part of heaven", it is still not the same. Nor is there any life outside of heaven, and earth is outside of heaven.

You can be on the earth, or in heaven. On the earth, your function is to forgive and heal to prepare your mind for God to take the final step, which literally takes you OFF the earth and INTO heaven. Back home to God where you belong. Heaven is your home. Earth is an alien world to you. Forgive the world and go home.

"Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"He was "called down upon the earth"

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"His holy will can never be denied, because his Father shines upon his mind, and lays before it all the strength and love in earth and Heaven."

"Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God's creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all."

"The gifts of God are in my hands, to give to anyone who would exchange the world for Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"For God's Will is done in earth and Heaven."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there."

"Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts beyond the worth of anything on earth. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with Heaven's treasures, which alone are real."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace. For it REMEMBERS Heaven. And now it sees that Heaven HAS come to earth at last, from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what has been GIVEN Heaven as its own."

"His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of Heaven, for these are the words in which all will merge as one at last."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well."

"Your will be done! In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."

"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."

"You become the symbol of his Father here on earth."

"No-one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its One Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses. It is to them that wisdom would appeal." "All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests."

"In Heaven, means and end are one, and One with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no-one here is this describable."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one."

"He denies NOT his own reality BECAUSE it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven BE?"

"It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God."

"Prayer is a ladder reaching up to Heaven. At the top there is a transformation much like your own, for prayer is part of you. The things of earth are left behind, all unremembered."

"Today's idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven's gate; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth!"

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him. They witness to what you do not know, and, as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. For never would He leave His own beloved Son outside them, and beyond Himself."

"How could there be a meeting place at all where earth and Heaven can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist?"

"He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is."

"And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate, and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven. God will take this final step Himself."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go BEYOND forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and constant he can barely stay, and wait a little longer with his feet still touching earth. Yet is he glad to wait 'til every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go with him. For thus is HE made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left behind."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming."

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

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."

Our traditional definitions of what the ego IS, may need a rethink, based on what it ACTUALLY says in the course.

Interestingly, the course tells us that we have a SPLIT mind.... and that this division - which IS THE SEPARATION - has produced what seems like TWO selves. And yet it does not say that either of these two selves is the ego.

"And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two."

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

"It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING."

"***The Separation is merely another term for a split mind.***"In a way, it more accurately uses "ego" to describe the effort WITHIN the split itself, to perpetuate and increase the separation.

Kind of like an "agent of separation" working to magnify the division or increase the gap between the two halves.It also tells us that the split ITSELF needs to be undone, so that the two parts of mind REUNITE as one mind. Because BOTH parts of mind MUST BE REINTEGRATED.

"They had already split their minds, and were bent on further dividing, rather than reintegrating. ****The levels they introduced into their minds turned against each other****, and they established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits which they produced."

This has absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the second portion of mind in order to "heal it", and in fact destroying part of mind is the GOAL of the separation. Healing is entirely to do with undoing the SEPARATION BETWEEN the parts of mind.

So the question then arises, where does the EGO come into it, or the idea of a false self?

Because in truth, the separated off second part of mind, IS NOT the ego. That second portion of mind is to be KEPT AND HEALED and REINTEGRATED with the first part. So we can't say that this second portion IS the ego.

We could more accurately say, that it is the DIVISION ITSELF which is ego. The division is what seems to arise, when there is a SEPARATION, which means there is an INEQUALITY. You can only have a seeming separation, in which there seem to be "two things", when there is something DIFFERENT about each of those things.

This difference, a kind of rift or inequality, produces a kind of "territory" in-between the two parts, a fence around a part of the mind, where we could say that it is "in between" the two parts, or is what defines the two parts as being distinct from each other. And we could call this inner seeming territory the GAP or the SEPARATION. Indeed, we can accurately call it SPACE TIME!

This separation GAP, which is kind of like the "pit of hell", seems to come in BETWEEN the parts of minds, which now appears to be inner and outer, or associated and dissociated parts of mind.

In fact, one part of mind then seems to be on "this side" of physical matter (e.g. inside the brain), while the OTHER HALF of mind seems to be BEYOND "the granite block of sin" or "the veil" that is physical matter - the illusion of separation. This is why you have to overlook (forgive) physical matter and see the face of christ BEYOND it, in order to REJOIN WITH the other half of yourself.

The part of mind you associate WITH, you believe is your whole self, which is the sunbeam believing it is the sun. While the sun is the metaphor for the REST of the mind, or the whole of mind.

The body, for example, becomes a SEPARTION DEVICE, which comes BETWEEN the associated part of mind, and the dissociated part of mind. It stands between you and your brothers, as do all forms and bodies, like a literal physical wall. It symbolizes our separateness, or rather, the separation between you and the rest of you.

But then the question then arises, where or what is the EGO?The course says that the WORLD is the symbol of the separation, and the BODY is the symbol of the ego. This almost suggests, and perhaps it does, that separation in general is not quite the same thing as EGO.

Through separation, we split the part of the mind which is in heaven from a part which seems to be in hell, just as we split the part that seems to be housed in a body from the part that seems outside of it. You could say that separation is a vertical split, while ego/body is a horizontal split. It's almost like saying that the ego is a symbol of separation INSIDE the world, which is itself a symbol of separation. Making the ego twice removed or "within" the realm of separation.

Either way, ego or egotism, is defined in the course as SELFISHNESS. It is synonymous with specialness, uniqueness, differences, favoritism and inequality. Why would we say that this places ego INSIDE the portion of mind that is in the body, and not the part outside? Perhaps because as ego condenses and possesses and claims exclusive ownership for itself, it tends to partition itself off and contract into a specific location in spacetime. Thus ending up AS or IN a body.

We can also though say that the WORLD, is the ego thought SYSTEM. That the whole system of ego thinking, based on differences, visualizes the physical universe. This would associate ego with the entire "realm" of separation ie separateness.

It's important to realize though, that ego is really something that comes BETWEEN, and emphasizes SEPARATION. It tries to INCREASE separation. It also thus increases inequality. So regardless of "where" we try to locate it, it is very much tied to the notion of separating. It might even be valid and useful to relate ego to the idea of "the devil", an attitude WITHIN THE SPLIT, that operates as active thought WITHIN the idea of separation, to lend reality and value to the separation.

Similarly the body, when it is made to be sick, doesn't simply testify that its host is sick, but that the body is trying to attack BOTH the host AND its brothers. "Sick bodies remain accusers". They are attempts to be contagious and to destroy others. So the sickness is bi-directional. Or in other words, the sickness is acting like a SEPARATION. And this happens when the body is being used AS a separation device. ie the more you emphasize the body as a SEPARATING WALL BETWEEN you and others, the sicker it becomes.Either way, for me, I'm finding it makes a lot more sense to think of ego simply as the same thing as SEPARATION in general, rather than thinking of it as ONE SIDE of a separation, or ONE PART of mind, or ONE OF the two "selves" which are formed BY separation.

Ego will in fact play BOTH SIDES of the separation. It takes positions on both sides of every conflict. Because ego is the idea of SELF DENIAL, and therefore self destruction. So it is literally against itself and is the idea of suicide. It has no interest in who WINS any kind of fight or competition, only that both sides are attacking and increasing the inequality and separation between them. It doesn't care how the game of death is played so long as you're playing it.

The thing to realize then is that if ego IS separation, and separation entirely depends on INEQUALITY, then the restoration of perfect equality causes ego to vanish. In fact, since ego is illusion or a shadow, a fake appearance, or a sense of a LACK OF light as in darkness, this lack is based on inequality. ie that one thing lacks what another has. And without this lack, there can be no ILLUSION OF the ABSENCE OF what the other part has. And so as you approach equality, you simply phase out separateness and erase differences, thereby completely undoing ego. And there is no ego AT ALL in an equal state.

To me this makes metaphysical and logical sense. It makes less sense to me, and perhaps is not even supported by the course, to say that ego is some kind of separate person, or ONLY the separate person, or one half of mind, or a made-up self.

The course does refer to a false self and a false self image, but this false sense of self is kind of a side effect of the division BETWEEN parts of mind. This separation - the split mind - results in both parts of mind being seemingly lacking or diminished. The half you associate with maybe takes on more of a sense of "artificial identity" - artificial identification or association. While the other half seems to become unconscious.

But really in the big picture, when you look at it, Jesus essentially just describes "the separation from God" and its undoing through atonement. It describes separation as synonymous with dissociation and the splitting of mind into two parts. So the undoing of this split, the removal of separation BETWEEN the parts, undoes the separation and restores the WHOLENESS of the mind. The unification or oneness of the mind.

One thing to bear in mind though is that in fact, in a split minded state, we do tend to DISSOCIATE a large portion of mind. The part of mind we DO associate with, which seems to be experienced as WITHIN us or inside the body or inside the bounds of its container, looks upon the other split-off part as "outside" of itself.

And this tends to project it and place it external to the body, which it identifies as symbolizing the "perimeter" of itself, making it easy to ASSOCIATE the second half of mind with other bodies. This leads to the effortless CONFUSION WITH other bodies, associating this other half of mind WITH other bodies, and thus believing other people are "where the sin is" or are "who the enemy is".

This then leads to our continued efforts to DESTROY this other half of mind, labeling it as the home of sin and guilt, projected externally, bound to others, as if accusing THEM of our own sin. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You then attempt to correct what seems to you to be "them", when in fact it is the OTHER PART OF YOURSELF that you are attacking.

This is especially true on another level as well, in that your brothers ARE you, in a oneness kind of way, and attacking them DOES also attack you. So as you split off part of your mind and label it "not me", by DISSOCIATING from it, you tend to split off the part that is IN YOUR BROTHER or one with Him. And so you then tend to target YOUR BROTHER as the home of sin and guilt.

But all the while, this is all still happening INSIDE the totality of your whole mind. One part of your mind is at war with the other part. And it is by INTEGRATING BOTH PARTS, which results by UNDOING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM, that restores the mind to health and wholeness. In addition to reawakening your awareness of the whole of your identity. Kind of like large "dormant" parts of mind coming online - coming into awareness, because they are no longer hidden behind walls.

What this tells you ultimately is that your egotism is an attempt to REJECT. And ACIM confirms that the separation was an act of REJECTION. And through rejection you rejected God's will and your self and your brothers, simultaneously rejecting the part of your mind which is ONE with and IN them. So it is through acceptance, the undoing of denial, that you are restored to awareness of the whole of yourself, one with your brothers and God.

Ego, or egotism, or selfishness, or specialness, or idol worship, or special relationships, or valuing illusory treasures, or elevating the body etc, is all different ways of EMPHASIZING DIFFERENCE, which is a primary ego function of INCREASING SEPARATIONS. Its only goal is to INTENSIFY the separation, to make you believe you are MORE separate, and to SPLIT your mind further.

All of the egos activities are so fully fixated on this "increase in separation", that you really can equate the two things. Ego is far less some kind of sneaky little devil entity hiding in the mind, and more of a SABATEUR, coming BETWEEN you and your brothers, interfering with relationship, breaking down communication, and trying to SPLIT YOU IN HALF.

You become more split as you REJECT. You become less split as you INTEGRATE. You become more split as you attack. You become less split as you JOIN. You become more split as you hate and hurt. You become less split as you love and heal. And it is really the RIFT between YOUR OWN PARTS OF MIND, that you are working on healing.

One part of your mind you see as an EXTERNAL VICTIMIZER, and another part as an INTERNAL VICTIM. The internal victim puts on "the face of innocence", while the external victimizer puts on the face of evil and sin and death. The secret of salvation tells you thus that your DISSOCIATED part of mind SEEMS to be attacking the ASSOCIATED part of mind. The "outer" self, is attacking the "inner self". And this takes place by backward perception ie the reversal of cause and effect - being at the effect of the "world."

But the truth is you are NOT at the effect of THE WORLD, you are at the effect of the part of your MIND that you have ASSOCIATED WITH the world, projected onto it. It is not some other person who is willing against you, it is YOU using your will AGAINST your own will, in a war against yourself. And this is all happening WITHIN YOU. Inside your mind.

So now you have to realize that the externalized "not me", really IS YOU. It is part of your mind ACTING AGAINST the rest of your mind. And this happens because you have a divided will, due to the SPLIT. It's like having two heads or two conflicting opinions in the same mind. You have to find a way to bring these two parts together into the light. And there you have to see the SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM disappear, so that the two parts are reintegrated as ONE.

This never involves the destruction of MIND or any part of mind. Mind is permanent. All it involves it the removal of EGOIC ATTITUDES,, which produce SEPARATION. The undoing of the separation from God is what atonement and forgiveness is all about. And once YOUR MIND is no longer split, you CANNOT BE ATTACKED.

In fact, it is SO clear that you need to reintegrate the dissociated parts of mind, and that these parts of mind are YOUR ONLY ENEMY, that once you realize that EVERY form of attack against you IS COMING FROM YOURSELF.... playing the part of an INDIRECT victimizer, you realize that you can be FREE from suffering forever if you will stop attacking yourself.

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

"It is but myself I crucify."

"Secret of salvation" .... "you are doing this to yourself."In this realization, that the externalized part of mind is WITHIN your mind, and the OVERLOOKING of the "differences" between the parts of mind, which results in UNIFICATION or reunion, you heal the mind's SPLIT and restore its sanity. And this means taking full responsibility for being the one who has been doing everything to you.

This sets you free because it acknowledges you have NEVER suffered except by YOUR OWN hand. No one, nor the world, has EVER attacked you. Every form of suffering has been self inflicted. And it has only EVER been YOUR MIND'S DIVIDED STATE that has produced illusions of suffering. You CANNOT suffer, without a split mind. This is also why it's true that everyone is SELF-destructive in this world.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer." Nor can it be sick, or attack, and NOR does it use the body FOR attack, OR as a separation device. And this heals the body and guarantees its health. So the healing of the SPLIT in YOUR mind is ALL you have to do. This is what it means by accepting atonement FOR YOURSELF. Which has NOTHING to do with other people, until you share and express it. And in the atonement, the ego - the SEPARATION - is erased.

The physical universe is not what it appears to be. It is a wall, constructed of a mad idea of sin, formed from lies, to tempt you to believe a great many horrible things are happening. It has been inserted as a gap of hell, in between you and yourself, between you and God. It depicts every form of suffering imaginable, is designed to tempt you to believe all of it is real, and deceives at every turn.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

"The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

So hanging in between you and God's Son, there is a three dimensional image, physical matter, "the world of bodies is the world of sin", depicting God's son as crucified, attacked, murdered, fragmented, suffering, vulnerable and sick. This is what planet Earth was designed to be. A giant holographic presentation of the idea of an attack on God and His Holy Son.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

All of its forms, all events, all occurrences, every interaction and movement, is all part of a shifting picture of change, in which every possible unreality except permanent perfection is depicted. Every car crash, every disease, every murderous war, every pain, every destructive habit, every unhappiness, all the tears, short and long term death, it's all designed on purpose to show you a picture of crucifixion.

Crucifixion is another word for death and this is a dream of death. And being an illusion of death, with stories of death running through it, it does not depict life and is not capable of doing so.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So here you are, in your human dream body, looking out upon what seems to be a world, which you are blinded by. The body was deliberately designed to use its own senses to attempt to self-prove its own existence and the existence of other bodies. Its eyesight is blocked by the surface of sin (flesh, matter) so that by seeing it you do not see past it to the light of truth.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"Theirs (body's eyes) is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing."

And so, every day, you wake up, and you see this world - the hell you made. And in it, things go wrong, all the time. You see someone you love in pain or suffering sickness and fear. You see animals being abused. You see wars waging on foreign continents. You try not to drive your dream car over the road kill. You see the dead deer on the side of the street. And the whole thing is one big pile of torture and terror.

The thing is, just the mere fact of "feasting your eyes" upon any of this worlds contents, immediately instills fear. Just the mere act of seeing it at all, means christ vision has become blocked and you are now losing sight of the truth. Illusions of a world rise before your sight, claimed as true and real by the body's senses. And now the world seems real to you. People seem to be suffering.

Things seems to be going wrong. There is murder and death on the news. And if that is true, if you see it, if it has become real to you, if you are experiencing it at all, it is because you now believe it is reality. And by virtue of equating this world with reality, you MUST now be horrified and afraid, because if suffering is reality, there is no way to exist anywhere in reality without suffering.

And if pain and misery are true, there is no way to exist in truth without pain and misery. And in this there is no hope and no light and no salvation, because if reality is now hell, there is no heaven. And all this occurs in a split second just merely by "sensing" this world. Just merely by seeing someone walking as a cripple. Just merely receiving signals that someone is crying in pain. Just merely witnessing bodies moving around. This is enough to produce an ego reaction of terror.

The instant you believe, are deceived by, witness as true, and fail to overlook this ENTIRE world, this picture of crucifixion and lies, your mind MUST now equate that reality is harmful. And this will instill a sense of being at the effect of harm. And this will incite fear. And now your mind will spring into action with "why is this happening" "how can I fix this" "how can I avoid this" "what's gone wrong" "what caused it". All based on the belief that IT IS HAPPENING AT ALL.

At this point we have already fallen for the ego's trap. The instant we are deceived by the world, tempted to believe "it's happening" or "there is a world", we've already slipped on the slope and are now descending into ego responses. And our entire struggle now becomes one of trying to escape, while falling ever deeper into a pit. With the walls of the world closing in. And no matter what we do, WITHIN that kind of mindset, it does not bring peace. Because now we're in the desert where there is no life or love, and we need to leave.

It's like, we're being bombarded night and day with visions of hell. A world of lies. Where not one single thing is true. Where the whole world is a temptation to buy into an illusion of a world, as if it's really here. As if events are happening. As if things are being threatened. It's a nightmare to believe this world is happening. It's a dream of death, and all dreams are of death. A dream of life is still a dream of death, because life isn't a dream.

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

So if there is someone in pain, if someone is suffering, and you see it or hear it or sense it, and you take this to mean "its happening", and you believe that, that alone means you are now tempted by the ego and are not forgiving. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". And "falling for the world" or "gaining the whole world" causes you to lose your soul.

Failing to recognize this is JUST an illusion, NOT something "really happening", NOT something to react to, is a failure to be in christ vision. It's a failure to SEE reality. The screeching sounds of the ego have blotted out the real world. Not only is form blinding, it's *extremely* blinding, and every single thing that this picture of crucifixion DOES or SHOWS, is an illusion. A lie. A not truth. A false witness. A testimony of death. An attempt to prove that sin is real and death is truth.

If you watch yourself you'll see this happen. The moment you "experience" anything in this world, where you see something seem to go wrong, watch how your mind instantly reacts with ego. Watch how the fear increases rapidly. Notice how you immediately slip into the context of "I accept it is happening, but what is causing it"? rather than realizing, or questioning, is this even happening? If I believe what my senses are telling me at all, I am deceived.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

If I just fall into "its happening" mode, I will automatically start having thoughts like "why is this happening", "what's making this happen", "how can I stop this happening". Which is all ego. We then turn into fixers, managers, controllers, resisters, trying to change what we believe is happening. Trying to change an illusion based on believing that the illusion is real. And this is not forgiveness at all.

Forgiveness is profound. It literally means that this world IS NOT HERE. It requires the recognition and acceptance that THERE IS NO WORLD. It entails seeing PAST this world entirely, not falling for ANYTHING YOU SEE. Not being deceived by the powerful tempting illusions of suffering. To literally completely IGNORE extremely loud shrieks of suffering and war presented as physical proof. To look past the world as if it's not there. To not believe for an instant that someone's appearance of sickness is REAL or TRUE or HAPPENING. To realize your brother literally did not do anything that he appeared to do, and there are no real events here.

"All events are nowhere."

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED."

Not just you thinking, well, yes he did something, he moved, he writhed, he suffered, he spoke, whatever... but that this wasn't real. It means being willing to pay NO ATTENTION to any of that, to ignore those signals, to not even TRUST your body senses, and to instead fixate on the light of truth beyond the body. Beyond matter. Beyond all physical objects and planets. Beyond the universe. A vision in the light so bright that it completely looks PAST (overlooks) and practically ignores everything in the world.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Anything the body does is not true. It's an extraordinary picture of lies.

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

We have to learn, this is a really profound lesson. This whole world was designed to deceive us. We have to learn to NOT believe its lies and NOT take its appearances as literal reality.

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

"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. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

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

"The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable.

No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems which confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem."

There is a world beyond this world. It's reality. This world, Earth, is a giant advertisement for everything OTHER THAN reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." Every aspect of this universe is a dream about "what is it like to be dead". "The world has disappointed you since time began." It will never satisfy us. "This world holds nothing that I want."

"Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

The escape from hell is the escape from this world, into the light of reality. Leaving behind every temptation, deception, denial, resistance, darkness, horror and hellish vision. To awaken from this dream of suffering and return to awareness of immortal reality.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."

Projection doesn't just mean you're trying to blame others. ACIM has a much larger definition, and blame is only a small part of it.

Projection is actually a natural function of ALL minds, including God's. Projection really means extension, whereby something that is IN the mind is extended or pushed outward, or in a forward direction. It really means GIVING, and is also a part of CREATING. Blame is actually a form of mis-creation, or an attempt to create destruction.

"Project (verb): to extend forward or out." - ACIM

"We said before that magic is essentially mindless, or the destructive (miscreated) use of mind."

"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"the miscreations of the mind do not really exist."

The mind HAS to give ie project/extend, in order to exist, because love has to be shared in order to be what it is. To love is to share, and sharing requires giving, which requires extension, ie projection, which creates.

In heaven before the separation, projection was PROPERLY used by God to create the Sonship, and by the Sonship to create their own creations. Proper projection is also used by the Holy Spirit, in the same way that God does.

"The Holy Spirit, as well as the ego, utilizes projection but since their goals are opposed, so is the result. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect. KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both." ... "this arouses love FOR both because IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION." ... "Perceiving equality, it perceives equal needs."

Proper "sane" projection, or the projection/extension of holiness, means that what is in you is seen as extending to and including others. You give love to your brother and recognize that that love is shared by him and is in him, as part of yourself. Thus you see yourself in him and love both of you equally.

Projection is actually a law of the mind which always functions on all levels. God and the Holy Spirit use it share what is true and loved. But the ego has its own distorted USE of projection, which results in trying to get rid of (or project away from itself) what it does not want, rather than giving what is loved.

"Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God."

"To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"Projection to the Holy Spirit is the law of extension. To the ego, it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it."

So there is a natural innate mind function of giving and extending what is inside your mind. This is always there. You give what you have, or are. When the mind is sane, it loves itself, and sees love in itself. It extends this love outward and sees it in others.

But if the mind is not sane, the mind first attacks itself. It regards itself as not loving or lovable. It sees a lack of love, and a darkness. It sees evil and guilt and sin within itself. It is trying to destroy itself. It is in a state of denial. The projective function of the mind then still operates, but now it is trying to "send out" this egoic content as a projected attack.

Since the ego content or insanity is a matter of separation, in a split mind, made of denial and attack, denial and attack are projected by those with egos. Since denial or attack is a way of "not wanting" yourself and God, or not wanting to love, a "not wantedness" is projected ie extended out of the mind, and you "do not want" the stuff you are expressing.

"A second fallacy is the idea that you can GET RID of something you do not want BY giving it away. GIVING it is how you KEEP it. The belief that by giving it OUT you have excluded it from WITHIN is a complete distortion of the power of EXTENSION."

"This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection (in the ego sense), follows automatically."

(note here that miracles are EXPRESSIONS ie PROJECTIONS FROM LOVE, whereas "ego projection" is a projection from fear or ego content - as such the proper use of projection is miracle working, ie the sharing and extension of love/life!)

This means that the mind projects or tries to "get rid of" what it does not want, rather than wanting to SHARE or INCLUDE others in what it does want. Since giving and receiving are usually one, projecting love indicates that you have it and keep it, and now both have it and the love increases.

But when this breaks down, we enter into the ego's rules of "either/or" and separation, where EITHER you have something OR the other does. You therefore believe that by projecting your self attack or "unwillingness", you can cause what you do not want to actually LEAVE your mind entirely, to be given but not received. That you can put your guilt, sin and fear onto someone or something else, and disown it.

This disowning is part of denial and also what we call dissociation. You dis-associate from it, by pretending that you can give it through projection and therefore LOSE it. That it can be placed outside of you, away from you. That you can put the blame for your internal "sin" onto someone else and escape it. So now you seem to be blaming your own self-attack, and your attack on God, onto something "external."

The truth is, however, that "ideas leave not their source". And projection does not actually make anything go outside the mind. It is because of the split in the mind, and its denial and its attempt to "destroy" what it does not want (its self-destruction), that there SEEMS to be a gap of separation between what's "inside" the mind and what's "outside".

"This is because their projections have NOT left their minds"

But at all times, all of this content is STILL within the mind. The mind is split, and has simply sectioned off a region within itself to "project" or dump its self-hate, in pretending to be free of it. It is now deluded into thinking that it has gotten rid of sin and guilt by putting it "outside" itself, but this is only because its sense of self has reduced to a sub-portion of the mind. The "outside" is really just the rest of the mind.

To perception, it then seems as if that which you used to destroy yourself, which has been projected outward, has somehow magically been displaced or given into some kind of "external" world, beyond the mind and body. The body seems to then act as the separation device or barrier dividing internal and external worlds, but really the mind encompasses both.

It's very easy then, in a state of dissociation, to believe that the guilt does not BELONG to your mind, being seen as "not inside it", and so it becomes logically sensible to associate it WITH someone else. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You bind other people to your projected self hate. You try to accuse them of doing what you are doing. And you see your guilt in them as if THEY own it or are even the source of it.

Since you have "not wanted yourself", and thus attacked yourself with unlove, you project what you do not want (really yourself) outward, and continue to attack it. You now seek to destroy it "in" another person, or condemn them for it. This is an indirect attack upon yourself still. But because you are projecting separation or dissociation, you see yourself as "safe from" the junk you have projected, which seems to exonerate you and render you innocent. This then produces the face of innocence.

"Anger ALWAYS involves PROJECTION OF SEPARATION"

"Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

So in its true sense, projection is a permanent part of the mind's nature, whereby it extends itself and gives or shares itself. The ego hijacks or distorts this by attacking YOU and then projecting FROM that distorted view of you. What is first seen within you as darkness is projected outward as darkness, and the attack continues.

In effect the ego projects TO SEPARATE or to keep emphasizing the dissociation or split in the mind, to try to "keep the guilt away" from you. Thus the more the mind believes its ideas HAVE left it, the more it thinks it is safe and innocent, but its insanity is increasing. The more it projects attack the more it splits itself, between the part it attacks (seemingly in others) and the part doing the attacking, both of which are ALWAYS in your own mind. Separating off from others or pushing them away deepens the internal rift between you and yourself.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. "

So there are some passages in the course where Jesus talks in the big-picture context of ALL minds projecting, the main projective or extending function. There are some passages where this is referred to AS extension and is contrasted AGAINST "projection" in the sego sense - where projection means the ego's projection of self-attack or an attempt to "push out of the mind" what you do NOT want. And there are also other passages where Jesus is talking ONLY about the ego's projection of self-attack. So it's important to be aware of the context.

Here's one final big thing to realize. In the separation from God initially, before there was a world here, and before the Earth, we had a split mind. We already had seen guilt and sin in our mind. Thus we entered into the ego's use of projection. The separation was the belief in the "lack of everything", or love's absence, or the lack of heaven and God - and the idea of death. We projected the "lack of everything", as the idea of heaven's total opposite, outward. This was a projection of the idea of emptiness and NOTHINGNESS. The projection of the idea of separation.

This projected THE WORLD, which "arose" as an attempt to DISOWN the separation, something you DID NOT WANT in the mind, in an attempt to get rid of it, because it was fearful to you. This projection of an illusion of nothingness took the form of a "screen", somewhat like a mirror, a meaningless neutral world, because it was a projection of insanity and meaninglessness. And it seemed to take on the form of error, or sin, producing space and time and bodies, as a natural consequence of the total opposite of God's laws. Planet earth and human bodies were the projected result - a mis-creation or a "world of destruction."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"the mad projection by which this world was made."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

We had "created" an ILLUSION of a world of emptiness, opposing all of Heaven's laws. A world made of the idea of death and of alienation and murder. We then ALSO in a SECOND STEP, projected our inner mental garbage ONTO that screen, which is where "projection makes percpetion" comes in. We project stuff ONTO the "neutral world screen", which GIVES it meaning, and the mind determines what to make of what the body tells us about it.

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him."

"If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

So in the separation we made an error and projected this error, and the world - spacetime - including all planets and galaxies, arose in an ILLUSION of a world, made of nothing appearing as something. This "world" is really nothing, and we then proceeded to PROJECT ONTO IT, the continued negative content of our minds. This secondary step of projection produces perception, a kind of feedback, in which we project either guilt or innocence, sin or holiness, and this changes how "the world" appears to our perception.

What I see in the course now is that "the world" itself was an initial projection of the separation, a world we made to attack God and heaven. And in the making of bodies we placed ourselves within it to "perceive it". And now we project ego shit ONTO it, either falsely perceiving it, or perceiving it truly. True perception shows you that you have GIVEN (projected) holiness and love and peace, and only BY giving (projecting) that do you see a forgiven world. If you project ego onto it you see a world of sin.

Once you cease to project ego ONTO the world, the "nothing world" - really the absence of heaven - is recognized as nothing, with no sin put ONTO it, and it is forgiven. In this view it loses all of the illusion of "real sin" or "existence" or "happening", and eventually disappears completely. We then wake up in God and resume our REAL PROJECTION of creation in the Kingdom. "It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

"All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

At first you will see a reflection of God in the world, a reflection of heaven, because the world ITSELF is just a screen and has no meaning of its own. It was a projection of nothing, acting as a neutral canvas on which TO project what you wanted to see. However, upon doing this, the world itself will ultimately give way to heaven, because its total nothingness is recognized.

"But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done."

"Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."

To understand the separation from God, consider the relationship between light and darkness.

At first, light is everywhere in heaven. Then in the separation, the presence of light is resisted by trying not to will that there be light. This "puts the brakes" on creation, as an unwillingness to extend love, and a selfish attempt to retain everything for yourself. This is kind of like a light bulb that does not want to let its light shine because it wants to keep the light for itself.

When the light is shining, all is well. When there is a blockage or a denial of the light, the light SEEMS to dim. And now a seeming shadow or darkness forms. The shadow appears darker, as though there is less light there. As if light has gone away.

If you look carefully, you may notice that the shadow totally DEPENDS on the light being blocked. When the light is not blocked, there is no shadow. When the block appears, the shadow appears. And the shadow has no say in this.

On the one hand, a discerning mind should recognize that the shadow itself doesn't really have ability to assert its own existence. It can't decide to stay on its own. It can't resist the light. Nor can it cause light to go away.

Really, the darkness isn't ACTUALLY darkness. It's the absence of light. These are not the same thing. Light being absent, and darkness being "present" are different. If darkness is truly present, then darkness actually removes light as light's equal and causes light to go away, or can resist it.

In the separation, all that we really did was block the light. We blocked it with blocks to awareness, which are forms of denial, unwillingness and resistance. By being unwilling to will with God, we were unwilling to extend light. These are attempts to stop light from shining, to hold back the extension of love, and to INDUCE darkness.

Having done this, it seems like we go into a darkened state of mind. What we're going into is the appearance of a "lack of light" or "absence of light". We don't actually go into an "actual" darkness. There is in fact no such thing as an actual darkness. Similarly to how there isn't really evil or hell.

"Just because "nature abhors a vacuum," which is true enough, it does NOT follow that "a vacuum is filled with hellfire."

"Those who have not yet "changed their minds" have entered the "hellfire" concept into it."

The sane recognition that darkness is only the seeming absence of light, produced by a blockage, cast as a shadow, is what it means to recognize that this blockage is just a MISTAKE or error. There is no real darkness there at all, ONLY an illusion that makes it appear light is absent.

When you fail to recognize that the blockage is just an illusion, you start to believe that the darkness is, itself, a "positive creation", something which can cause light to go away, some kind of "actual real evil".

This is also the difference between mistakes/errors and sins. A mistake is recognized as simply a "lack of light", whereas when the appearance of light lacking is given artificial attributes of reality, it is considered to be "real darkness."

We lend it the darkness reality, truth, power, causation, will, a mind of its own, etc... and now what is really only the ILLUSION of light being absent, is now interpreted as the PRESENCE of active living darkness. And now we believe that this darkness has the power TO HIDE something, to actually blot it out.

This is the insane egoic belief that darkness has power over the light, and can cause light to go away. That darkness shines away light. It is the belief in evil and in sin and of having POWER OVER GOD. It is the authority problem and is level confusion. It is the belief that separation is real, and that guilt is true. And it is also fear. And believing that darkness can hide stuff induces fear that something evil IS hiding in the dark, which you cannot see.

"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."

"It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet, it is only the hidden that CAN terrify, NOT for what it IS, but FOR its hiddenness."

By believing that what actually is only an ILLUSION OF light's absence, is actually the PRESENCE OF a "real darkness", is the entire ego thought system. It is the belief that sin is real and death is happening and impossible suffering can occur and that hell is evil and real. That the boogie man is hiding in the dark shadows. It's the stuff of nightmares.

When we denied the light of heaven, we pushed our mind into a darkened state. A state of the appearance of the lack of love and light and life. This was only really a state of the ILLUSION that light CAN be absent.

It's an illusion because light is actually permanent and can never be destroyed, and so DENIAL is the belief that it's not there, even though it is. Believing that light is not present, when it is, must mean that you believe something is true which is not. This is an ILLUSION. There is deception and temptation because something impossible seems possible.

This means also that so long as there is a state where light seems absent at all, there IS illusion. The state of light's absence is ITSELF an illusion, because it's not true that light can really be absent anywhere. So when it APPEARS that light is not present, in any way, this can't be TRUE, but it SEEMS true to insane minds.

The really big thing is this. WE MADE A WORLD OUT OF THIS DARKNESS - WITHIN the illusion of the lack of light. It is in fact THE lack of light. Another term for a lack or light or love, in ACIM, is error. The seeming lack of light appears to be an erroneous world.

"For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

Then, if this erroneous world is believed to be REAL, it is converted from the ILLUSION of light's absence, to the belief that it is REAL DARKNESS. That this world is in fact, the PRESENCE of a world. That there really is a world there, alive and willfull and with mind and power and causation. A world which has OVERTHROWN the Kingdom. This belief is a misperception of the illusion of the lack of light, and nothing more.

What this means is, the world we made, which includes the planet Earth, originally was simply the illusion of light seeming to be lacking. It WAS the 'absence'. It was a mis-creation, or a sort of failed creation. A limited expression, infused with unwillingness and denial. It was made in the thought of the denial of God, and as an attack on God. An attack on light, if interpreted as "actual darkness".

Then as we moved further into believing in it, we invested this illusion of light's absence with the qualities of God, such as reality and truth and power and life and will and causation. And now what merely was **IN TRUTH** an ILLUSORY WORLD, in the shape of the ABSENCE of light, was converted by our belief in it as "REAL DARKNESS" to a WORLD OF SIN.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh"

What this means is, a world which is in fact ONLY an illusion of light's absence, and exists ONLY so long as the light REMAINS blocked, NOT made of light, was invested with greater belief in order to ASSERT that it is in fact a REAL DARK PLACE - a real living hell.

The physical world is this world, a world made of shadows cast from blockages in the mind, invested with belief and given reality, to try to convince ourselves that hell exists instead of heaven. This is the world of bodies and of forms and planets and other objects. And this world exists ONLY WITHIN our false perception. ONLY IN THE LACK OF LIGHT.

"The world is false perception."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible."

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true."

Note that another word for sin is insanity. "Sin is insanity." Which means that investing darkness with the belief that it is reality, is insane. This is because darkness is NOT the presence of evil, or of ANYTHING. Nor is it s REAL darkness. Just as planet Earth is not really hell. But believing that the earth is real, IS a belief in sin, and DOES cause you to experience the Earth as though it is a REAL hell.

What we're now describing here is false perception, which really is the false BELIEF that an illusory world made of darkness is reality. It is the kind of perception which takes the physical world to be real and true and valid. It is a deceptive perception, in which something which IS an illusion is MIS-PERCEIVED AS a reality. Just as darkness ie lack of light is mis-perceived as the real presence of evil.

The Earth, in its original construction, was born of error, and projected outward, and believed in by insane twisted minds, which both produced it through their denial of light, and reinforced it through their belief in evil. This is why ACIM refers to it as "the hell you made."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."

"The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions."

The body was also made as part of the illusion of light's absence, masquerading as the PRESENCE of a "real something". But the body is really nothing at all, just as Earth is nothing at all. This is why there is no world and the body is not an actual positive creation. The body and the world DO NOT REALLY EXIST.

The body is given senses designed to reinforce the world of apparent SIN, ie Earth believed to be "real darkness", to give it reality, to make it seem real, and to give it all the meaning it has. This is in order to reinforce the idea that real darkness exists. This was its original evil purpose. This is why we "made it" by NOT creating reality.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."

To the ego, creation means taking something that does not exist and trying to give it life, in terms of taking the ILLUSION that light can be absent and reinforcing it to the point where it seems darkness has CAUSED light to disappear.

As such, Earth was made by us to seem to REPLACE the world of light that is Heaven, to blot it out and hide it and destroy it. Indeed to destroy the light of God and his children. "The world was made as an attack on God. A place where God (light) could enter not" etc. It was born from an evil thought - a mad idea.

What then needs to happen, is the UNDOING of all this distortion and lies. This confusion and hallucination and the belief that Earth (darkness) really exists. What we need is forgiveness. We have to re-trace the steps. This means that first of all, we need to recognize (as described) how we got into this mess, and what the mess IS.

The mess is, that we have denied God's light, which has produced the UNTRUE ILLUSION that light is indeed absent, which has taken the shape of A WORLD OF BODIES, and which has then been invested with reality and fear and evil thought to try to GIVE IT immortality and reality. To make it permanently replace heaven. However, this is not possible.

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that"

"Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

What we then need to do is recognize the facts. If we have belief in the world as "real", or existing, or causing, or happening, or being valuable, or having power over the light, or able to kill immortal beings, or capable in any way of enforcing darkness and suffering, then we DO believe that darkness can make light go away. And as such Earth is interpreted as REAL hell.

This is the belief that the world of bodies ***IS NOT an illusion***. Believing it IS NOT an illusion, IS A DENIAL of the FACT that it is. It's an inability to see and recognize that the world is made of light's absence, and CAN ONLY last so long as the light remains absent. It's even more heavily the belief that the world is actually real and has REPLACED the reality of Heaven.

If we believe this in any way, we need to look at this and undo this belief. We need to stop believing that the world IS real. That belief IS FALSE PERCEPTION and is a belief in evil. What we've put ONTO the world, given it is ONLY an illusion of light's absence, is the heaviness of sin and guilt and value and meaning. We've tried to turn an ILLUSION of a world into a reality, to convert "lights absence" into "darkness's presence."

All this projected meaning, the "perceptions about the world", the sin and hate and guilt we throw onto it, the condemnation of it, the false beliefs about it, is all part of our attempt to reinforce the idea that the world IS real and DOES have power over God and his Son. If you believe it REALLY IS sinful, then you are using it to stay in the illusion that darkness really exists. Which also means that to NOT do that, you have to STOP believing the world is real.

So then we set about withdrawing these projections of "real sin", and of reality, and of rebellion, and of attack and harm, and of guilt and fear, which we have put ONTO AN ILLUSION OF A WORLD. We have in fact laid illusions ON TOP OF ILLUSION, in an attempt to DENY that the world IS an illusion, so that we can MAKE IT REAL to us. This is a DOUBLE DENIAL.

"But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion."

"It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult."

When, through forgiveness, we lift away from the world our belief in sin and guilt, we in fact lifting away REALITY from it. We are withdrawing BELIEF in it. We are stripping it of value, and meaning, and all the heavy dark USES of the world to victimize and to attack. We are taking back our FUTILE attempt to PROVE that darkness can destroy the light, that death trumphs over life, and that the Son of God can be killed in the flesh.

Once we stop doing this, the world that we have been "attacking", in an effort to LEND IT reality, in order to keep it, begins to be RECOGNIZED FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS. Since a false perception of the world makes it seem REAL - because false perception is a CONFUSED perception, a true perception of it does THE OPPOSITE. It takes AWAY its reality. It strips it of its causal power. It diminishes it in your sight. And it reduces its value to you. It removes what it is NOT, and reveals what it IS.

At the end of this process, the world which lives in and is made OF the illusion of light's absence, is seen NOT as a world capable of destroying life, or of sinning, or of inducing guilt, or of making life into suffering, but instead it is RECOGNIZED as ONLY AN ILLUSION OF LIGHT'S ABSENCE. In effect, its TRUE nature, is not that it is real, but that it IS NOT REAL.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all."

"LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

Recognizing the world for what it IS - a FALSE appearance of the absence of God, does not mean recognizing that it IS real or true. Recognizing the truth ABOUT the world, does not necessarily imply that the world IS true. Only that we are looking at it WITH truth and seeing it "truly", to find out ***IF*** it is true. Seeing what IS ACTUALLY there. But it is entirely possible that what is ACTUALLY there, IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT a reality.

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

The world in fact ONLY exists as an illusory world. It is like a veil of shadows and darkness. It PRETENDS to be a world - a something. It is really, in truth, THE ABSENCE OF A WORLD. It is the seeming form that shadows take when light is blocked. It is ONLY the interior seeming contents and shifting patterns of the SHADOW cast by light's blockage. And as a result, the dark world is really ONLY an illusion. Believing it is real sin is a SECOND error designed to convert illusions into reality. This is like 3 levels.

1) Heaven/reality (no illusory world, only the world of light).

2) Illusory world regarded as unreal (true perception).

3) Illusory world regarded as real (false perception).

More to the point, the world is in fact, in its "true form", seen clearly and accurately, NOT a world made of "real sin", NOT a world that can cause anything to be threatened, but ONLY a world that IS FICTION. It is smoke and mirrors. It is the illusion that there is no light. It is MADE OF denial. It is the denial of existence, and so it denies ITS OWN existence.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

When the "lack of light", which can at most be an ILLUSION OF a lack of light, since light cannot be really lacking, is recognized for what it IS, it is NOT regarded as a "real" anything. It is not a real world, or a real darkness, or a real sin. Its TRUE nature is that it is an ABSENCE of anything real, and an illusion of LACK.

Like a shadow, the world then CANNOT LAST, IF the blocks to the awareness of light are removed. The world DEPENDS ON this "separation" in order to maintain its seeming existence. If you lift away the dark blockages and the denial, and the light comes in, the darkness IS GONE. This is because darkness can ONLY SEEM to exist PROVIDED light seems to be absent. It is a lack, and not a presence. Forgiving it brings light in, and makes the world GO AWAY.

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

The darkness does not TURN INTO light either. Light shines it AWAY, because darkness is just a sort of fictional label we give to "the part that seems lacking". A name for the lack ITSELF. But lack is not a positive creation, it is more like a "hole" in creation. A seeming place where light was not allowed to enter. A place where God was not allowed to dwell. Where life was denied.

When the light comes, that which is the absence of light and not the presence of darkness, SIMPLY DISAPPEARS. It at first appears to become lighter, because light is beginning to REPLACE it. It seems to be a mixture of darkness and light. It brightens and sparkles and seems fresh and new. Sin is lifted from it, guilt is removed from it, and REALITY IS WITHDRAWN from 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."

BUT, at the same time, the presence of the darkness is decreasing, BECAUSE the light is increasing. The LACK of light is going away. "Miracles supply a lack." As such, anything "made of darkness", or which was really merely the ILLUSION that darkness was present, is now shown to have been really NOT the presence of ANYTHING. Like it was just some dream that passed by. And so the shadow world now simply FADES OUT and vanishes and disappears and is gone forever, leaving NO TRACE. In truth, it WAS NEVER REALLY ANYTHING.

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"An unremembered world will leave no trace behind its going, when God's gifts have been accepted as the only thing you want."

"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

This is why ACIM teaches that "there is no world." The world, Earth, this planet, this physicality, is NOTHING pretending to be something. It is nothing other than a ILLUSION of a world, made of the LACK OF A WORLD, due to the REJECTION of heaven, masquerading as existence. It is what you end up with, limited and withering and half dead, when you try to BLOCK LIFE. It is a world of DEATH. It is made OF death and HAS no life.

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

"There IS no life outside of Heaven."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven (in the "darkness"), only the conflict of illusions stands (illusion of light being absent); senseless, ***impossible***, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven (interpreting the illusion of the lack of a world AS a SOLID world). Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."

"it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere.

There is no world, ie there is no Earth, because at MOST it is comprised of and DEPENDS ON maintaining heaven's ABSENCE. It REJECTS reality. It is not compatible with life. And it has NO REAL PROPERTIES of its own. It is utterly slave to the shadow projection, dependent on the maintenance of blockages, and dwells SOLELY in denial. It cannot exist WHERE there is light.

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. "

As the awareness of the light increases, the LACK of light decreases. The illusion that light is not HERE lifts, like a veil. The veil of a "solid world" becomes transparent. Heavy sin and causation and evil are lifted FROM the illusory world, SO THAT it is not believed to be real. And the more light infuses where it seems to be, the LESS it can be seen. The world fade OUT, and heaven fades IN.

Eventually, upon opening up to the FULL experience of the light, the face of Christ appears, "Gone are bodies in the blazing light on the altar to the son of God.", the Earth is literally SHONE AWAY by the light and REPLACED AND UNDONE FOREVER, it literally DISAPPEARS, and its NOTHINGNESS is truly apparent. There then IS no world. There is ONLY light, and "Heaven is all that remains."

"Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."

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

Earth is the ABSENCE of reality and the ABSENCE of heaven. It remains only so long as heaven is blocked. And once heaven shines, the world is shone away forever. When believing in real sin, earth reflects hell. When NOT believing in real sin, earth is recognized as a meaningless MIRROR in which heaven's LIGHT is temporarily reflected. And then the world VANISHES just as eternity is finally permitted its full expression, and where there was darkness now there is only light, and the world cannot be found.

This is why we are to be THE LIGHT of the world. This is why we are to see the REFLECTION of heaven's light ACROSS the CHAOS of the illusion of light's absence. And this is why ultimately the light itself will shine the world away completely.

"What SEEMS eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of man; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."