"But I am not a body. What am I?" W91

There are bacterias in your gut which process food and produce waste. Some of those bacterias leave the body within the waste. Every time you poop in the toilet billions of bacteria are being flushed. If you claim that you are your body, and you are all your body's cells, then you are also a bacteria cell, and each time that you poop you are flushing parts of yourself down the toilet. Can that even in any way whatsoever be remotely true of who and what you are?

If you are a body you are also your hair cells. When you cut your hair and throw the cut hair in the trash, you are literally throwing out parts of yourself if you are a body. When you cut your fingernails, you're clipping off parts of your extremity in self-mutilation. Over time your skin cells shed and turn into dust, effectively meaning parts of you are dying off and flaking off and scattering across the room, ready to be sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

Can it in any way be possible that you are a physical organism that gets gradually thrown in the trash and sucked up by a vacuum cleaner?

How did the body go from being the size of a baby to the size of an adult? Where did all the extra cells come from? What are the building materials that were used to make them? They come from food. The body is nothing but an accumulation of food. You eat the food and the body turns the food into more body. Which means that "you are the food" or you are what you eat. Literally then if you claim you are a body, you're claiming that you are a burger and fries, you are ice cream, you are milk on cereal, you are a potato chip.

Can that be even slightly remotely true of what you are? The food came from the supermarket and entered the body and turned into more body. So are you now being sold by a food company? Are you sitting on the shelves at the store waiting to be consumed? What if someone else buys you instead of you?! It's ridiculous to think that you are a physical body in any way.

There are 75 trillion cells in the body. Many of those cells work independently. There are little immune systems cells wriggling around trying to track down toxins and invaders. There's bacteria cells independently multiplying and eating food and processing waste and so on in the gut. There's independent blood cells swirling around carrying oxygen to the organs, just free-falling through the blood supply.

Mind is not really 'controlling' all these things. It's like one big giant system or community, with all kinds of tiny little things happening as part of a kind of ecosystem. You can't really claim that you are an immune cell, or a blood cell, or a neuron in the brain trying to form branches. Nor can you really say you are a dead cell which the body - supposedly yourself - is getting rid of. It's a whole collection of tiny little parts working together. It's really quite an illusion that the whole thing adds up to "a body".

It's more of a city than an individual thing. And you're not one of those tiny little pieces, any more than you are all of the pieces. The more you think about it the more ridiculous it seems to suggest you can be a body, or even part of a body, at all. So then the question is, what are you if you are non-physical? And the only answer can be, that you are spirit.

"On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or Spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the Spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes, and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more, except to heal and comfort and to bless."

"When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed."

If you are innocent, you recognize that everyone is innocent, because your innocence overlooks their guilt and looks to the truth about them. Truth is eternal and unchanging, so their innocence is permanent, as is yours.

If you are guilty, you will see everyone as guilty. Having lost sight of the truth you will not recognize it, and will mistake everyone's innocence for guilt. Seeing the guilt in them results from seeing it in yourself. Seeing them as guilty you will assume this means you are not guilty, which disguises this fact.

It works kind of like wearing either clean or dirty glasses on your eyes. When your own glasses are clean you will see a clean world free of guilt. When your own glasses are dirty you will see a dirty guilty world. And how you see them you see yourself reflected in the mirror.

It is not possible to accurately determine whether someone is innocent or guilty, from the perspective of ego. You are not sitting on a fence being neutral. You have no neutral thoughts. Either you are making everyone appear innocent or you are making everyone appear guilty. You are contributing to what you see.

If you think you can determine that someone is guilty, but you are innocent, you are mistaken. If you think you can call someone innocent while you believe in your own guilt, you are mistaken. You cannot see past what's in you own mind.

The ego counsels that you can find someone guilty and yet you can escape this guilt. This is impossible. Either BOTH you and your brother are guilty, or BOTH you and your brother are innocent.

You actually therefore are blind to whether or not your brother is innocent or guilty, independently. You cannot tell this independently because your brother IS NOT independent of you in a separate, compartmentalized way. You cannot section off his worth from your own.

The Golden Rule, the law of God, is always in effect no matter where you are or what you believe. What you believe is true of you is always believed to be true of others, even if consciously you think there is a difference between the two. You cannot find someone guilty without making yourself guilty first. And you cannot see your brothers innocence if you are not willing to accept your own.

This is how your brother is your savior. He does not actually save you in the sense of doing something for you that you have not done for yourself. He merely is recognized as reflecting back to you either your own innocence or guilt, depending on what you believe is true. If you regard yourself as innocent, you will regard him as innocent also. If you find him guilty, you have condemned yourself.

You do not have the faculty to be able to say, ok, my brother is the guilty one, and I am a passive observer, and I can tell he's guilty because I'm neutral and objective. There is no such thing as objective judgement. All judgementalism is inherently biased and pulls the judger INTO the judgement. Think not you can judge lest ye be judged.

Unfortunately, its not possible to find someone guilty, if you want to find your own innocence. It will drag you down. Maintaining enemies and scapegoats and pointing fingers at people keeps YOU in hell. You HAVE to find everyone to be innocent if you want to find yourself to be innocent. And so long as you find even one person to be guilty, you have relegated yourself to death.

The truth (about you and your brother) is always true, and nothing else is true.

If someone else is having a problem, and you feel concerned, there is something mistaken going on in your mind.

There is actually an ego reaction, based on the hierarchy of illusions, which says that based on the perceived severity of the situation, you should be having a certain amount of reaction.

Just even perceiving that someone ELSE is having a problem, seems to be enough of a belief in a "cause" happening outside of you, even if it not perceived as happening TO you, to produce a sense of "effects" showing up in your mind.

If it's you believing that someone else's body is under attack, this would seem not to be about you at all. But it is, because your mind is having the belief in attack. And even if it's someone "not me" seeming to be attacked, just the acceptance that it is occurring is enough to cause your mind to generate fear thoughts.

So then the question arises, is it possible when presented with situations in which other people are suffering, to be completely unmoved by it. Is it possible to not have a reaction, to not go into fear, or into diagnosis mode, or attempting to react to what seems very real.

And then this further leads to, is it OKAY to not react? Is it okay to remain calm and peaceful and seemingly "disconnected" from what is supposed to be a "normal reaction"? Is it okay to be happy when someone is upset, calm when someone is stressing out, peaceful when someone is in pain, etc. That basically, your inner state and emotion and mental condition becomes NOT DEPENDENT ON the external world.

Somehow this means transcending the hierarchy of illusions, orders of severity/difficulty, belief in seriousness, problems seeming to be real, other people's problems seeming to be real, and sinking into a kind of detached "insulation" or self-contained independently chosen state of being, that isn't always the EFFECT OF or a REACTION TO what's happening in the world. The idea of being in a state which the WORLD did not cause, is quite radically new.

Can I become not involved. Can I remain untangled from the illusions. In the face of dramas, can I not buy into them. Can I remain happy and peaceful at all times, which seems very very alien to the state of being constantly tossed around on the ocean waves like a rollercoaster of stressful reactions. Can I become independent of the world's causalities, immune to them, invulnerable to them, such that I am literally no longer AFFECTED by anything. And such that whatever state I experience *I* have chosen, and the world has not caused to happen in me.

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

With regards to your ego and the ego of your brother, everything about it is self inflicted and separate. What is in your ego is not in your brother's ego. They are two separate, private worlds. They do not connect or join or communicate or share.

Everything happening within your own ego is not happening because of or in connection with or caused by what's happening in someone else's ego. It's all happening entirely independently.

Therefore, where the ego is concerned, you need to be completely responsible for the self-contained world that your ego lives in, which is a closed world, closed to your brother. Everything about it, all of the ego experiences, feelings, reactions, perceptions, are all entirely within yourself and are yours. Own them.

You need to disconnect your ego from the egos of other people. You need to realize that two egos do not communicate. You need to realize that what another person's ego is doing (anything unloving) is not in any way shape or form a cause of anything happening in your own ego. And vice versa. You are not doing anything to their ego and their ego is not doing anything to you. Egos are separate. Egos are individuals.

However, there is something that you do share with your brother. The only thing you can share with your brother, is sharing itself. Sharing means love, joining, communication, openness, equality, freedom, truth. These things, you DO share with your brother. These things, happen to both of you at the same time. These things are mutual, shared interests. These things connect you to your brother and join you together.

So be clear about this. The parts of your experience that are ego, you need to become very clear that these are SEPARATE from your brother and have nothing to do with him. They are your own private hallucinatory world. Nothing goes outside of this world. Ideas leave not their source. Your brother's ego ideas do not leave your brother either. Neither of you causes anything in each other through the ego. Your egos are completely separate and disconnected. All they can do is make noises and postulate before each other, but it is up to each person to decide whether to use their ego or Holy Spirit in perceiving the activities of another.

If it's ego, its yours. If it's love, it's shared. Never do egos really communicate and never do egos really cause things to happen to each other. The idea of attack is entirely an illusion because attack is withdrawal into a private world. Nothing any ego says is ever about you. Nothing your ego says is ever about anyone else.

Only in the holy relationship is there any real sharing or real communication or real relationship because it is a relationship based in reality. Ego relationships are not relationships at all.

So often I believe I know. I think that I have the facts or the information. Or that I have experiene. Or that my assumptions are true. Or that I know better than someone else. Or that they are wrong so I must be right.

But I am reminded to ask myself, do I really, REALLY know? I mean, do I actually have direct knowlege that this thing is true, or even an ability to do so, or am I just making shit up as I go along?

The other day I was worrying about an outcome in a situation which I felt "sure" was going to go only one possible way. Holy Spirit said, "you don’t know".

At first I could not accept that I did not know. I thought I DID know. I thought I had a very good story or reason to explain what was obviously going to occur. But... I allowed myself to question that. Did I REALLY know, or was this just my best educated guess? Did I REALLY know, or was I just relying on my ego intellect or my past or my judgements to assume I know?

And gradually over the course of a few minutes, as I allowed myself to question this... to consider,... maybe I do not actually KNOW.... maybe I am just making a strong guess and passing it off as knowledge, gradually what at first seemed like a fact "orbiting" off in the distance poking fun at my convictions, became much more centrally accepted within.

I had to admit. I actually do not know. I do not know what is going to happen. There was, along with that, a kind of peace, because now the whole drama story of doom and gloom of what was "sure to happen" no longer had a basis. Without the assumed outcome I was trying to control and avoid to prevent its awfulness, maybe I didn’t need to do anything at all. Maybe I simply was mistaken and maybe there is in fact a possibility and a hope that I had not considered.

While I am busy focusing on depending on my own self and my own knowing and my own figuring out, I am not being open to the facts or reality. I am being closed off and not listening. Nor am I leaving room open for a miracle, for healing, or for completely unexpected outcomes. Possibilities that I had not even thought were possible.

While it’s important to recognize that I do not know "anything", the key here is identifying that I do not know anything *independently* from God. So if I am trusting my own know-how and pride, then I am not knowing the truth. If I put that aside and admit that the stuff I thought I knew, was not real knowledge, I actually become open TO real knowledge.

We are to give up fake knowing. We are to surrender trying to think we know things which are not really truth. We are to let go of false beliefs which masquerade as very certain convictions and definite consequences. But as we give these up, this fake knowledge, this fake certainty, this fear which pretends not to be fear, this prediction which is simply imagined and unreal, it makes way for revealing TRUE knowledge.

True knowledge is the ability to know God, to trust God, to not need to control things, to allow and accept reality, rather than trying to interpret it change it or form false beliefs about it. Be willing to admit you know nothing, and it will open the doorway to knowing everything there really is to know.

There is some small part in the course where Jesus talks about how, at a very high level, in the transition between ego and spirit, more or less upon entering heaven, that it becomes possible to literally directly know everything, experientially, rather than having to rely on your own "accumulated" scraps and memories and learning. We have taught ourselves a lot of bullshit which we have to become willing to give up, recognizing that it is just "made up". Stuff that we make up is not truth. We do not really *know*, when we are trusting these beliefs.

Beliefs are not truth. Beliefs are not knowledge. I do not know what anything is for. I do not know what anything including this means.

Every person is an equal member of the Sonship, meaning that everyone is your brother or sister. Everyone exists on an equal playing field, and the one "parent" is God.

This means that whether you are a parent or a child, and no matter the nature of the relationship between the two, everyone involved is still a brother or sister in the Sonship.

In order for this to express itself fully, it means that all relationships must end up where everyone is equal, no-one has power over anyone else, no-one is anyone else's property, no-one is controlling towards anyone else, no-one blames anyone else, no-one depends on anyone else, no-one expects anyone else to provide for them or decide for them, and no-one is more or less than anyone else.

This is the natural order of the family of God. We are all equals and all have the same inheritance. We all have the same parent and we're all identical in our true nature.

Typical chlidhood and parenting tends to lean much more towards inequality, control, protection, dependence, blame, manipulation and ownership. Those are not modes of relationship that are natural, and are rooted in the ego thought system.

When a child is born and begins to grow, they see themselves as completely dependent on the external world and on parents to supply their every need. And indeed the ego has set up this world so that it's practically impossible for a child to exist independently without starving to death. They have apparent "needs" and need help to survive. This doesn't mean the parents need necessarily own or control or be attached to them, but that's usually what happens.

Later, the child still believes they are dependent on the parent and that it is the parent's fault that so many things are the way they are. They will blame the parent, seeing them as causal, while at the same time attempting to break away from being under their thumb. "The thumb" is usually maintained far too long because the parents tend to form an identity around their role and don't want to let it go. They want to keep having the same relationship of parent to child, ie based in ownership, protection, control and so on. This generally works against the child becoming "independent" and an equal.

Often the case is that the child never really becomes an equal to the parent and there is a constant umbrella of control, dominance, shame and guilt under which the child remains, never breaking through to the light. The parent may not want to let go of the identity they've formed and it can be extremely painful to do so, especially if the raising of children has been the intense focus of their lives for many years and has entailed a great degree of self-sacrifice, leaving a gaping hole in their lives if the role were to end.

The child also will continue to blame the parents well into adulthood, because this is all part of the child's perception that they are a victim at the effect of the external world. They cannot really be independent until they have severed ties with their own ego identity, which means uncovering the true nature of themselves, healing all past hurts resulting from the dysfunctional relationships, and becoming aware of their true relationship to God.

It is, however, possible for the child to eventually stop projecting onto the parent and for the parent to stop projecting onto the child, and for both to give up on "specialness" which has kept the relationship strangled and suffocated in layers of denial and resistance and judgement. Special relationships can turn to holy relationship when forgiveness is used to undo the illusions of the relationship, which are many.

At some point it's possible for the child to become equal with the parent, which must also entail the recognition that the parent is a "temporary guide" who was there to help with lessons and adaptation to being in the world, but who ultimately is an equal brother/sister. Both child and parent are children of God, on exactly the same footing and terms. If the relationship between them can reflect holiness and forgiveness and equality then it has "matured" all the way that it can. If this doesn't happen, the fictional roles and dynamics of parent-child domination and submission will continue, and there will be further tension and conflict.

Acknowledging our equality in the Sonship requires acknowledging that God is the Creator/Father/Mother, and that what applies to oneself applies to all other people including our parents and children. When we go before God, we all go together and our relationship to God is direct, one to one for each of us, with no go-between.

We must learn to undo all of the illusions of the typical parent-child relationship, the entire social structure based on it, and learn that we are all equal under God. This could eventually result in a radically different kind of society, if this were understood and practiced on a mass scale. It need not be that children are property or that they are forced incessantly against their will to comply and obey, rather than being empowered and set free. It need not be that only two people are burdened with the entire upbringing of the children. We are all in this together.

"The ego equates:

Not agreeing with me = denial.

But correction is not denial.

It’s reinterpretation."

(ChatGPT)

"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."

I wonder if, as egos, we are not really very accustomed to looking for a different interpretation. The ego's main and really only device is separation. We are very very conditioned to USE separation to make things go away.

The ego operates on a horizontal axis of go towards, or go away from (desire/fear, gain/loss etc). It does not know anything about staying where you are and going upwards, or finding a higher ground, or a broader perspective.

This movement of forgiveness which looks for another way to look at things, is not 'natural' in the egos functioning. Perhaps thats why we all get a bit lost in using spiritual things to bypass, because we tend to "shut things out" as a problem solving method - ie separate from it, deny it, hide it, attack it, to solve it.

We're not being asked to separate from the world and problems as such, we're being asked to reconsider what they mean, to realize that we've added meaning and judgement on top of them, and that this layer of meaning and judgement can be changed independently of the thing they're projected onto.

This really entails breaking out of the idea of sin. Because sin, as false perception, associates guilt with form, with objects, with bodies and places and things. It locks it in. And once it's locked in we are not accustomed to breaking out of that, we just think a given person is guilty or that the sinfulness is inherent to what happened. We don't realize there's two parts to it - the thing and the interpretation of the thing.

"What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

To forgive we do have to recognize there are two parts, the "what seemed to happen" and the "what I made of it". And then to realize we can in fact change the "what I make of it" and see it differently. And this doesn't necessarily have to entail a bypass, a denial, an ignoring or a shutting out, of the thing being reinterpreted.

I think perhaps we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because having attached meaning to form we want to avoid or throw away the form in order to be relieved of its meaning. This is our mistake. This is how we bypass. We want to just get rid of the thing that we think is evil, instead of separating out the judgement of evil from the neutral thing.

The path of forgiving is a bit more subtle than our kneejerk reaction or out typical 'goto' for problem solving. It's a bit of a "twist" psychologically... to in a way 'keep and acknowledge' the feelings, the situation, the happenings, but alter the internal vantage point. We're not used to that "shifting" of perception. We tend to think perception if fixed (this is the idea of sin).

So the formula ends up being more like, keep looking at this but look at it differently ... rather than, don't look at this at all in order to pretend it's not there anymore.

It's not about attacking, denying, hurling quotes at, separating from, one-upping, or any other type of way that you'd treat a 'singular thing' in order to make it go away. Instead it's about changing how you see it, what you make of it, what meaning you give it, how you use it. And that means the thing doesn't necessarily go away, and isn't denied, but your experience of it is changed.

Trying to make the thing go away entirely becomes a murderous attack upon the body and the feeling and the world. This is driven by a perception that "it is one thing", ie a sinful thing. And if this were true, the only way to get rid of a wicked thing is to destroy it. But we're not asked to do this. We're asked to change how we look at it - who we look with, so that we see something different in how it strikes us and how we use it. The purpose that we see it for.

We end up with a re-interpretation, not a blanket of denial or an intellectual escape or a denial of feelings or a sweeping wave of destruction.

(And why the idea of only one son, one dreamer, one perceiver, no individuals, non-duality, etc are bullshit)

"Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

(This means God's will is not forced upon YOUR will, you CAN choose when to take the curriculum, or to delay it as long as you like, it's YOUR CHOICE. People have used this statement to justify a sense of "having no choice" and no freedom, as if the curriculum is handed down like a commandment from God. It should be obvious that your "freedom to elect" IS a use of FREE WILL. Even "the script is written" does not prove you don't have free will, because you have to CONSENT to it and are FREE to ignore it.)

"However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than Authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

(Having free will does not mean you are an ego, but when you attempt to imprison your will, that's when you produce ego. In other words, by trying to have a will which wills differently to your natural will, you create the illusion of there being an alternative "real choice" but simultaneously puts your will into a prison of UNWILLINGNESS. Yet, you are FREE to be un-willing - that is a USE of will).

"It is not your will to be imprisoned, because your will is free. That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will WITH you."

(See, the ego is the attempt to repress your personal freedom, not to establish personal freedom, but it makes an illusion of personal freedom to cover it over. Also notice, VERY IMPORTANT, "It is never God who coerces you." - meaning that YOUR WILL is not enforced by God, because you are free and independent!)

"Free will MUST lead to freedom."

(This also means freedom from a tyrannical ruler. God is not a tyrannical ruler, he loves you, and has given you a gift of freedom to choose for yourself to willingly want to will like Him, in unison, co-creatively).

"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

(Willingness is required in order to want to be with God. It is the EGO that lacks willingness and lacks freedom and lacks true independence. Ego means imprisonment and loss of self, not gaining of self. It is an illusion of gaining self while simultaneously losing it. It is also an illusion of willing independently while isolating your will. You can only be with God WILLINGLY, which means freely, which means no coercion and not being forced by God. Love does not enter where it is not welcome) .

"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

(YOUR free will was given you by God for YOUR own joy in creating the perfect.)

"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

(Ok so now not only do you have the position of co-creating with God, which means you COLLABORATE WILLINGLY AND FREELY AND INDEPENDENTLY, but also you co-create with your brother. Guess what happened when you co-created with your brother in an egoic way? You CO-DREAMED the dream!)

"It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

(God Himself has established you and others as co-creators with Him. That means it's not just God creating everything on His own, or that the son is just an effect of Him, or that the son is forced to do God's will like some kind of robot. We participate joyfully in sharing God's will, sharing the same interest, sharing the same desire to create.)

"And it is the AGREEMENT of their Thought that makes the Son a co-creator with the Mind Whose Thought created him."

(See, what makes you a co-creator and what makes you "do God's will" isn't that His will forces you, it's that you AGREE WITH HIS WILL FREELY. Doing God's will is VOLUNTARY.)

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."

(I think this is talking about YOUR creations. Note that it also says that the creation you create is a PERFECT BEING, and since it is LIKE YOU, you also are a perfect being.)

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

(This is clear. God's will DOES NOT BIND YOU. He created you as a WILLING, FREE-WILLED INDIVIDUAL, who is capable of desiring to and agreeing freely to will WITH God and in alignment with what God wants to create. He will keep YOUR WILL forever limitless, meaning that even Himself and His own will does not impose limits on your will.)

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it."

(See. Now, if God will not go against YOUR will AT ALL, ever, not even a tiny bit, this MUST MEAN, that you are effectively a SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL in heaven! It MUST also mean that your own will is FREE to choose WHETHER to will the same thing as God wills or not. Because it's only possible that you MIGHT do something God would oppose, by virtue of you being ABLE to will something ELSE. You can will to "try" to make something UNLIKE God's will would create, which is what produced the separation. And God does not OPPOSE your will to do that, although He offers help and guidance for you to return to Him and will like Him, freely. If God does not go against your will, YOU MUST HAVE INDIVIDUALITY. Note Jesus also says YOUR WILL is as free as HIS... meaning that THERE IS NOT JUST ONE SON, and you cannot oppose His will anymore than He can oppose yours, because you RESPECT each other's individual freedom!)

"Would God let this be real, if He did not will to be alone Himself?"

(God did not will to be alone! So He CREATED YOU! This is because nothing real can be real unless it is given, because it has to be given in order to have HAD it to give, so God automatically creates YOU!)

"They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live."

(Remembering that "there is no life outside of heaven", you have co-created WITH God, freely, all things that LIVE, because everything in heaven is alive, including your soul.)

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

(There you have it plainly and simply, God created "separate" distinct beings who have everything "individually", have their own free will, and WANT to share what they have in order to increase THEIR joy. Note is also says that nothing real can increase except through sharing - sharing means extension or creation, and also making sort of "room for" something ADDITIONAL, which is why God ADDED you to creation, increasing it, and He did this because it brings him joy to apply what He is - to create.)

"God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it. But it can still be returned BY that mind through its attitudes to other minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings."

(Information about revelations helps us to see that God communicates directly to individual PERSONAL selves, he does not and cannot communicate directly with an EGO, so it must be to the SOUL, and yet is personal, because there are OTHERS. Many sons, many brothers, many souls, many minds. "God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful.")

"The truly helpful are God’s miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom."

(God has MANY miracle workers!)

Clearly there is SIGNIFICANT PROOF here that God created many individuals who are independent and HAVE THEIR OWN FREE WILL.

This leads to having to re-evaluate many other beliefs and conclusions that people have FALSELY come to, such as that there is only one dreamer of the dream, that other people are literally you, that you are responsible for other people's choices, that your perception's correction makes it impossible to see other people's poor choices, that your acceptance of atonement undoes the entire dream for everyone, etc... these are ALL false conclusions based on the DENIAL OF FREE WILL and the DENIAL OF INDIVIDUALITY IN HEAVEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some very interesting passages from the section about "The Mind of the Atonement" plus a few others. It's talking about God creating the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit is FOR.

Do not underestimate or disregard what GOD HAS DONE! Do not throw away the opportunity for healing that the Holy Spirit represents and provides! GOD HAS GIVEN YOU HELP!

It is clear that God created the Holy Spirit as HIS ANSWER to the separation, and is the MEANS BY WHICH the separation will be healed. He does not need YOUR answer to the separation.

"****Resign NOW as your own teachers.**** THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, ****which you can neither provide nor understand****, you will become excellent learners AND teachers."

What this means is, you need to "resign as your own teacher" and stop trying to wake up by yourself. GOD HIMSELF has created the MEANS by which you will wake up to reality. That means is the Holy Spirit. The means IS NOT YOUR EGO.

We are asked to LISTEN TO HIM, and to LET HIM help us. In fact, we're even told that we should not attempt to forgive AT ALL without first asking for his help. And secondly that his FUNCTION is to FORGIVE US, which means, to bless us with HEALING, AND to remove our fear and hatred FOR us, AND to undo all the consequences of our wrong decisions FOR US.

That's a whole lot of HELP coming from the Holy Spirit to correct the separation, heal the mind, and undo the ego. That means that OUR PROPER ROLE as students, is to LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION by asking him for help, letting him literally HEAL US, and allowing him to change our mind FOR us.

This is radically different than the typical ego approach which entails everyone running around like headless chickens trying to convince themselves that a bunch of concepts are true. Our own individual efforts to HEAL OURSELVES WITHOUT HIM, are egocentric and arrogant. You are shit at waking yourself up!

God himself has GIVEN US the help that we need. The Holy Spirit has the power, the ability, the wisdom, the knowledge, the holiness, the innocence, the perception, the clarity and awareness, TO BE of help to us, to give us the help that we need.

We are NOT supposed to be doing this course alone or without him. We are supposed to be making FULL USE OF HIM, as intended by God. And when we don't do that, we are depriving him of his function and are saying "no thanks" to God.

We must ask the Holy Spirit to HELP US to see everything in a better light, in a more forgiving way, and LET HIM actually MODIFY our mind and perception for us, so that we then in fact start to see with Christ Vision. Not as something we go out independently and try to manufacture, but as something he is there to install in us, to BLESS US WITH.

The holy spirit is our healer, our therapist, our comforter, our friend. We should rely on him for our entire awakening process instead of all this "self help - self study" bullshit. Are you done with going it alone and trying to do this all yourself? Can you save yourself like God can?

You are choosing a GUIDE FOR HELP, and if you choose the EGO as your guide you will reject the Holy Spirit's help in fear and arrogance and try to do it all yourself. When you choose the Holy Spirit to be your guide to awakening, your awakening will accelerate and skyrocket in ways you had never dreamed of.

"The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, ****induces a kind of perception**** in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven Itself."

"****The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION**** for miracle-mindedness. ****It is the will to HEAL the separation**** by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. *****God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time.****"

"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. ****It is the call to return****, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons."

"The Holy Spirit was ****God's answer to the separation, the means**** by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating."

"When man made the ego, God placed in him ***the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound.****"

"That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. ****But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it****. The Holy Spirit IS in you in a very literal sense. It is the voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again."

"********Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function.******** Your part is ***only*** to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to ****LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.**** On your little faith, joined with HIS understanding, HE will build your part in the Atonement, and MAKE SURE that you fulfill it easily. And ***WITH Him***, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. I do NOT feel guilty, because ****the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.**** ****I WILL to let Him**** by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why ****the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist.**** HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore ****NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS.****"

"****The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist.**** He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. ****He needs no help for this.**** ****He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do****, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. ****Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.****"

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

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

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations).

The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom).

Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order."

Also...

"In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the FREEDOM OF THE WILL. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth."

When we have free will, and it’s really free (not under illusion) it creates like God creates, freely, independently. What we will is the same as what God would will. But it is still our free will which wills it. When we enter into illusions, the will becomes NOT free, because entering into separation is a denial of freedom and a denial of will. Therefore the ego does not have free will. The ego is the denial of freedom and will. The ego only has WISHFUL THINKING. And to wish is to not will at all. To have no will at all is to not will to live, which is the choice to die.

Because EACH SON has free will, each son INDEPENDENTLY gets the TOTAL FREEDOM to decide, whether or not to believe the ego and oppose God’s will, or to co-create with God. Blocking will means you are choosing to be against your own will. This creates the split ego mind, within which you have multiple conflicting wills. At the very least two (typically persona and shadow, or conscious and unconscious).

When your mind is split your will is split, and you will be in CONFLICT with yourself. At war with yourself. You will attempt to will one thing with a partial will, and another part of you will attempt to oppose it. Trying to oppose God’s will opposes your own will. This puts you into a tug of war between yourself and yourself. This cancels out the effects of your willing, because each time you will one thing, you also will to stop it and bring about an opposite. This puts a FREEZE on your will, making you POWERLESS, and incapable of willing anything at all. To use your free will against itself renders you impotent and UNWILLING. It also means you no longer will LIFE, and therefore make death as a statement of your unwillingness to live.

The ego has no will. It only has wishful thinking. Death is wishful thinking, because it is impossible to kill God’s son. The secret to salvation tells us we are doing this all to ourselves. That’s because we are the one WILLING against ourselves in a split mind. Willing against God’s will and against our own will produces an alien will which we fight against within ourselves.

When our will is split, we cannot perform miracles. When our will is WHOLE, we are SINGLE MINDED, with a single unified will which does not stop itself from expressing, and a whole mind is a miraculous mind. Miracles express from wholeness. Spit-minded people are anti-miraculous (anti christ). To be miraculous you must use your "whole heart", or whole will, not a partial will. Being "in two minds" (with two wills) means being in fear, and miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of fear. Whole mind has no limits to what it can create because when it wills, it does not oppose its own will, and therefore what it wills MUST be expressed and manifest.

Also since we all have our own FREE WILL, this does not mean we are necessarily contradicting each other. It does not mean we are willing against each other provided we all want the same thing. We are all willing the same thing. We all will to expand and create and share love and joy. It is ONLY when free will is used against ITSELF and against God, that we attack ourselves and go into a state of a split mind, where our will ceases to produce real effects.

This produces a private world of dreaming in which our will is divided and fragmented, along with our identity. We then seem to have a "separated will" which is attempting to implement the authority problem. It is an improper use of will. It is an attempt to will something that God would not will, a fiction or an idea of loss/lack/attack etc. Willing to "create death", is actually a will to create NOTHING, and so is an attempt not to will anything at all. This is why nothing real can be threatened - no opposing will can truly will anything.

Also because we have free will, this FAR MORE CLEARLY explains the workings of perception. In that, it is our task, each of us individually, to take full responsibility for what we are experiencing. It means as an individual son, *I* am responsible only for what *I* am doing to myself. It is not possible to do anything to other people against their will. It is not possible to be affected by anyone else’s will. Everyone’s will is equally powerful, which is why Jesus can’t force us to wake up. Whatever I am experiencing, I did it to myself.

Having free will means that I am responsible only for the INNER content of my mind, which is my state of self attack and conflict with myself, in which my own will is opposing itself. It also means I am responsible for my own mental and physical health. It also means therefore, because other souls have FREE WILL, the state of their mind and their body is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. Nor does the state of their mind or body have ANY POWER to cause me to be UNABLE to choose absolute atonement and awakening for myself as ONE SON in the sonship. Jesus has already proven this. We are not holding him back. If other people were part of his mind "lagging behind" he would not have been able to wake up because we would be holding him in hell "against his will."

No-one has the power to stop you from returning to God. No-one has the power to choose for you. No-one has the power to force you to be awake. No-one has the power to force you to heal. No-one has the power to make you be "not sick" if you want to be sick, and all sickness is the choice of THE INDIVIDUAL FREE WILL to select sickness for themselves. Each individual Son with free will DOES select and create THEIR OWN BODY. Bodies are not created en-masse like some kind of production line by a single "son" - EACH SON materializes their own body and they are responsible for it.

Other people’s sickness is NOT in my mind. The only thing in my mind is my additional layer of projected sin that I ADD to their pre-existing condition. Taking that projected sin OFF of them, which wasn’t even ON them to begin with because ideas do not leave my own mind, WILL NOT heal them. All it will do is it will allow me to PERCEIVE CORRECTLY and clearly, recognizing that THEY STILL are insisting, by their own free will, that THEY want to make themselves suffer. They also have to be willing, idependantly, to want to receive help and healing, otherwise there is nothing we can do. This is why every part of the sonship has to become WILLING to return to sanity on their own.

The idea that there is only one son, or no son, or the son is god, or there are not multiple sons, or no-one has free will, or there is only one free will, or the entire content of my perception includes all other people’s un-freely-chosen suffering, or that other people’s sickness is my sickness, or that other people are inside my mind, or that I cannot perceive other people’s free will choices (even the choice to be sick or dead), is ALL BULLSHIT.... derived from a basic fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge that God gave FREE WILL to every single Son/Soul he created, and He created multiple equal sons each of them ABSOLUTELY FREE to choose on their own, AND therefore each is 100% responsible for their own self, mind, choices, consequences, suffering, death, or choice to accept atonement.

Without free will it is impossible to properly explain the functioning of perception or the choice to be sick or how the mind works or what the course means on wide variety of topics. And without acceptance of multiple free wills, everything will just get lumped together into one big soupy MUSH ... which is the equivalent of putting the sonship in a blender.

YOU have free will. YOU are responsible for what you create. YOU are responsible for what you choose. YOU are responsible for what happens to you. YOU are responsible for accepting the atonement for YOURSELF. YOU are responsible for making yourself sick or well. YOU are responsible for extending God’s will or choosing to oppose it. YOU, one of many sons of God with free will, are NOT responsible for the FREE WILL CHOICES of other free-willing Sons of God. And their free will choices have nothing to do with you, nor can they do anything TO you, nor can you do anything TO them against their will.

You are NOT responsible for other people being sick. You are NOT responsible for other people choosing fear. You are NOT responsible for other people staying asleep when you wake up. You are NOT responsible for making others sick or well. You are NOT responsible for putting suffering into the world as though it is part of your own mind, when in fact it put there either by other people’s free will or as a collective decision. You are NOT responsible for fixing other people’s freely chosen suffering. You are NOT responsible for anyone else in any way, OTHER THAN.... to offer a SERVICE to them, by offering them miracles, and becoming open to SHARING WITH THEM.

Since you have free you can give miracles because you temporarily have more, and can give miracles to those who temporarily have less, to fulfill a lack - a lack which another brother HAS, but you DO NOT have. Their lack is NOT your lack. Their lack is NOT part of your mind. God created many sons, many free wills, and MANY MINDS. You must forgive and awaken IN SPITE OF the free will choices of others.

Here are some more statements about our free will which clearly tell us that we have free will as given by God:

"But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound."

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share."

(Please note, when this part says you share God’s will, that DOES NOT mean that God takes over your freedom and you have no freedom to will. It means you AGREE with God’s will and extend His will which is the SAME as your will in its character or attitude. You have the same KIND of will that God has. God is free, and so are all of his children.)

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

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

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

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail." (or a body).

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

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

What we can controversially conclude here, is this:

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

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

Your body was not the result of sperm and egg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most people believe that death occurs when something outside of your control happens to the body. Some external cause, an act of nature, some environmental influence, a contaminated food, some attack by some external thing or person etc.

This belief is very strong because it is none other than the belief in separation, it is the authority problem, it is the belief in magic, it is level confusion, it's what happens when you believe you can go against God's will - you start to perceive there is a separate will (God's) that is working against your will.

The belief in "inevitable death" is the belief in God's wrath and the inevitability of the consequences of SIN! The innocent have no reason to die!

It's fairly simple to explain that YOUR MIND IS RESPONSIBLE for absolutely everything that happens to your body!

"The mind is responsible for every condition of the body."

"The body is the IDEA (in the mind) of sin, made flesh and projected outwards (by the mind)."

The belief that the body is CAUSED BY something ELSE other than the mind... no matter what that cause seems to be, IT IS NOT TRUE.

The body is not COMING FROM the external world. It is coming from WITHIN. The mind within is projecting the body outwards. It is the ONLY CAUSE OF THE BODY.

The entire point of the course is becoming aware that you are 100% responsible, in mind, for every single thing you choose and everything that happens, such that there is absolutely NO wiggle room for some other stray "causes" to influence you, in any way, on any level.

"I am not a victim of the world I see" proves this. "The world is but an effect" proves this. "There is nothing that can bring oppression or make you ill or weak or afraid" proves this.

THERE IS NO EXTERNAL CAUSE OF DEATH. EVER.

That means the mind is 100% responsible for whether or not the body lives or dies. "No-one dies unless he chooses to do so." "No-one dies without their own consent." This is very clear. It's a BLACK AND WHITE decision. Either you choose to MAKE the body die by killing it with YOUR EGO, or you dissolve the ego and love the body and CAUSE IT to be healthy and alive and INCAPABLE of suffering.

Many ACIM people believe that there is some kind of separation between the mind and the body. And many popular teachers have taught that you must transcend the body and that it doesn't matter because it's not who you are. And this has also led people to believe that whatever state the body is in, IT DOESN'T MATTER, and therefore you can be at peace IN SPITE OF (and should) any sickness that is showing up. THIS IS BULLSHIT! Who the fuck put the sickness there?! YOU DID. "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both"!

This is nothing short of the belief that there is STILL an external cause that can produce effects in you and therefore influence the body AGAINST YOUR WILL, causing the body to BECOME sick and suffer and die. It is none other than the ego belief that the body becomes sick through ANY reason OTHER THAN that YOU CHOSE IT. It is the conviction that sickness and death arise "on their own" through some "natural" bullshit cause "separate from you" ie separate from the reach of your own mind. If that's the case, your mind is STILL IMPRISONED in the body because it has not fully opened to sharing and extending and BEING EVERYWHERE.

This is what we have to own up to. The body's condition is 100% totally UNDER YOUR CONTROL. Your mind projects it, makes it, makes it suffer or well. It has no mind of its own, no will of its own, and no say in the matter. It is JUST A TOOL. It's a teaching device and a communication device. That's all. It does not live or die of its own will. Nor does it get sick by itself or as the result of anything beyond your mind. YOU ARE responsible for whether it is sick or healthy, and whether it is alive or dead. And if you do not OWN that responsibility, you ARE CHOOSING TO DISOWN YOURSELF, and that IS AN ACTIVE DECISION TO DIE. And death will result.

There are no exceptions. The body literally cannot enter into sickness in any form without the mind attacking it or using it for attack. And when you stop using it for attack it becomes healthy. THIS IS GUARANTEED. People believe all too strongly that the body has some kind of permanent existence of its own, its own "history", its own continuation, its own identity, and that therefore it exists independently. IT DOES NOT. It is nothing but a SYMBOL in your mind. It has to OBEY YOU. If it dies, you must have commanded it to die. If it lives, you must have commanded it to live.

The body is a MEDIUM through which you communicate. If you send SHIT through it, it becomes clogged up with shit which interferes with communication and makes the body sick. If you send LOVE through it, the love breaks down and heals the shit and clears it away, restoring clarity. Mind that is extending love IS A HEALER, it heals the body, it doesn't just let it sit there suffering and dying. It ACTIVELY HEALS IT.

THIS HAS TO BE SO. It is the principle of resurrection. God's love HEALS, and restores to life that which HAD BEEN DEAD. In order to do that, love has to have a MIRACULOUS QUALITY of being able to RAISE THE DEAD, ie GIVE LIFE TO that which was dead. YOU, as a son of God, in a dream, could not even get back TO God, having sinned, unless LOVE was able to in some way HEAL YOU and UNDO the symptoms of separation. Love heals. Love shines away darkness and sickness and death are darkness.

LOVE RESURRECTS THE BODY and sustains it in perfect health indefinitely so long as it is useful. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

So it doesn't matter how much you made the body suffer and be sick and get close to death, THAT CAN BE REVERSED BY LOVE. And this is why the body's condition can therefore be restored to HEALTH (the ego opposes health in every way), and MUST and WILL automatically be restored to health when the mind is healthy.

YOU CANNOT STAY DEAD WHEN YOU APPROACH RESURRECTION!

Resurrection means ONLY LIFE IS REAL and death is an illusion and therefore you demonstrate THERE IS ONLY LIFE IN YOU and no death!

That makes the body a temporarily purified and HOLY device for communicating to your brothers and to bring God's love/word to them, which *guarantees* the body's health.

There is no other power or cause which can interfere with this mechanic. There is no such thing as an external threat or danger. The secret to salvation is that you do EVERYTHING to yourself, and if you do not CHOOSE TO HURT YOURSELF, you cannot be hurt. "You cannot be hurt unless you choose to hurt yourselves."

Therefore NOTHING ELSE besides you can cause your body to be sick or dead. And so if you do not choose sickness or death, THEY DO NOT OCCUR and become impossible.

How else, by making sickness and death impossible, could you ever reach a state of atonement and resurrection where you can NO LONGER DIE and you escape death forever? How do you think that is possible, other than for you to have TOTAL POWER OVER ALL CAUSES OF DEATH? Which means, simply recognizing YOU were the only cause of suffering EVER in your existence, and if you do not hurt yourself you WILL NEVER SUFFER AGAIN and will not hurt the body.

This is what "heaven is a choice I must make" means... you MUST CHOOSE NOT TO DIE by embracing a reality of ONLY LIFE. "Swear not to die you holy son of God!!!!"

And then there is nothing that can take that away from you. This makes the body INCAPABLE OF DYING, and therefore it will remain so long as you find it useful. You cannot make it go away by KILLING it, that is not an option. You cannot make it die in order to drop it! If you think it will just die in time "on its own" you are mistaken. YOU MUST ATTACK IT in order to make it sick or dead, and you WILL NOT attack it if you are sane. So how can it die?

You have to make it DISAPPEAR by shining it away with your mind USING LOVE. This is the loving end of the body and the dream of death is NEVER left by death, only by truth and love.

If you choose to die, that's your choice. It's not because of anyone else or anything else in the world. And it is failure. It is failure to reach resurrection and therefore is failure to reach the COMPLETION of the curriculum. Death is a mistake. It is a WRONG ANSWER to the question of what is the truth. If you come up with this answer, you MUST CARRY ON to learn what the real answer is. Death is never the answer. ONLY LIFE IS REAL.

1. DUALITY - is the idea of "real opposites". That there really is good and evil, black and white, up and down, male and female etc. The differences of objects are believed to be "real" and a first-hand reality. That when you see these things you are looking at reality. They I really am my body, that you really are your body. That there is no unity at all, no connection, no joining, everything really is separate. In the Course, this is equated with "false perception." And in fact Jesus says "the world is false perception", meaning that the physical objects/forms themselves ARE the idea of separation, without which they would not exist at all.

2. NON-DUALITY - the original form of the non-duality idea is that all of the objects present in duality "are there" still, but there is an underlying oneness/unity which joins them all together. It's as if to say, God is a limitless being who is "expressing as" various objects. As if a clock and a chair are "really" one thing, as if joined by a hidden energy field of field of mind. That "all things are one".

In this view, the world, bodies, Earth etc are actually "kept" and still show up and move around seemingly independently etc, but are thought to be all part of one overall single Mind's thinking, or its self expression. As if God is animating the world. As if God Himself is the world or is "in it", like in the background, pulling the strings. In this view, the world is retained but is reinterpreted as "one thing", wherein its various parts and shapes seem only to be separate things when the mind is unaware of the unity it springs from.

That you might in some way "experience it all at once" if an experience of oneness, a kind of transcendent unity in which "you are the airplane" "you are the car" "you are the house". Here, God seems to be in everything you see. This idea is actually not really in ACIM at all. Some people believe it is. But ACIM actually teaches that reality is BEYOND the forms, not AS them, regarding the forms themselves to be illusions regardless of how they are experienced - that even experience as "all one thing" is an illusion. This is often confused with "true perception" which is similar but not the same - in true perception see reality beyond forms, not as "their true nature".

3. PURE NON-DUALITY - as touted by several others, is a progressive form of non-duality, takes the aspect of non-duality that seems to still be "a world" with things happening, and says that all of these worldly things are literally 100% not there. Not even that they are reinterpreted or experienced as "one thing". Not even that you are "experiencing them all at once" - it separates the "oneness" from the "things" entirely and labels the things as absolutely nothing - non-experiencable. In pure non-duality, the idea is that there is "only God", and nothing else. Only the oneness. Seemingly the oneness alluded to by non-duality but dispensing entirely with the world of forms and all objects and bodies and happenings. This does tie in with the Course teaching that "there is no world". Not simply that "the world is one thing" but that it is NOTHING.

A pure state of "only God". Just an expansive eternity is sameness, no change, no movement, no creating, no increase, no individuals, no objects, no forms whatsoever, no differences, no appearances of any kind, just rock solid God on his own. In this view, logically, it should also mean that there is no Son of God and no Holy Spirit. Some people sometimes actually "go there". That we are God. That only mind exists. That even the Son doesn't really exist as anything other than God's radiance, still solely God.

Some have used this to justify that the Holy Spirit does not exist, that Jesus does not exist, etc. It's often associated with the idea of "Oneness". That there is only "one thing". Literally a count of "one". One box, one entity, one being, just God all by Himself. This view ignores creation, sonship, free will, souls etc. This view is really not in ACIM **AT ALL**, but many think it is. It's actually the result of the ego's reasoning, believing that if you remove all separations and get down "one" thing, it must be the final answer about what exists. This essentially boils down to the idea that God is alone and is dead because he is not extending, creating, sharing or loving. He just "is" ("God is"), WITHOUT anything having been created (no sonship, no souls, no creations). It logically becomes the idea that God is dead, because love has to be shared and has to create in order to exist.

4. TRANS-DUALITY - I don't know if there is really a word for this. It takes the idea of pure non-duality, in which there is NO WORLD (only Heaven exists and Earth is not it) but then acknowledges that "God did not will to be alone". That God is a creator. That God loves to ADD to His "solo" reality. That God has in fact created, not just one thing, but a great many things. That the Holy Trinity is real, there really are three parts, and the Sonship (as one of them) actually contains many souls that God created to freely create WITH him. This is much more closely aligned with Christianity.

All of these creations, together "the one son" in ACIM, aka "sonship", are extensions of His mind and being and have been fully created as essentially autonomous entities, with their own minds. However, this is not the same as in duality. In duality these individuals would be cut off from each other, ie separate. In "trans-duality", these entities share everything with each other. AND YET, do not lose their individuality. They share such extensive oneness with each other, you would think there is nothing defining their "self", and yet there is. God has fully created souls. It defies ego thinking. It is miraculous.

In this model, which is really the model of God being a creator who has created a Sonship (and the Holy Spirit) as eternal beings, "The Kingdom of God contains all his children and their creations", these beings are co-creators with God, and have their own creations, which are shared and celebrated by the whole. This is an extraordinary state where everyone shares absolutely everything with everyone else, including God. Total access. Total openness. No selfishness, no exclusion, no ego, no separation ideas, no thoughts of imprisonment or unwillingness or denial.

A family of God, sharing in love endlessly, celebrating and being thankful for having been created, joining with all brothers in a union which seems to transcend their self yet allows them to still have one. "The ego is the idea of selfishness, the soul is the idea of self fullness." It is the miraculousness of the soul that allows it to share everything without ceasing to exist. God created many children who are permanent brothers to each other.

God is a holographic thinker and creator - every part is a whole in its own right. He has created beings, "in number infinite". THIS IS THE TRUE MODEL OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES. It acknowledges God as Father and you as A SON, one of many. This is not non-duality, it is not pure non-duality, it is not duality. It is a state of "many and one" at the same time. It is God's family.

God's system is a system of inclusiveness, which is why all beings He created share everything. It's a system of AND/BOTH rather than the ego's system of EITHER/OR. All children of God are equal, per the Golden Rule, and are brothers. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds." This does not in any way mean there is only one mind or only one brother. Nor does it mean they are not joined as if one. It is a fusion of oneness and many-ness, without contradiction, and with no ego involved whatsoever. It is not a separation idea, is not duality, or non-duality. It is the Creation of an omni-present being who is fully present in all things He creates without limit, making each creation a whole in itself. It is a system of "many wholes", which defies all ego thinking.

This is what A Course in Miracles is teaching. This is reality.

When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.

In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.

Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.

However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?

It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?

If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?

Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."

You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.

Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.

Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.

"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."

True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.

So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?

The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ****It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. ****When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."

2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.

3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.

This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.

So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."

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

What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.

"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."

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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

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tl;dr ... but it's a forgivable mistake.

Heaven is an environment of spirit, of sharing and openness, of oneness and love. It permits the shared overlapping presence of many created beings. All of spirit PERMEATES each other and PASSES THROUGH each other.

Remember that "nothing real can be threatened." Heaven does not permit any part of the environment to act against any other part. It does not put up boundaries, there are no walls to keep things out or in.

Everything has access to everything at all times. There are no prisons, nothing to imprison, and nothing to attack the prison. There are no objects that are solid, with surfaces that collide, or which can attack or damage other objects.

In heaven, there is nothing acting against the freedom of will. There is nothing to oppose the will of God. There is no way to will against anyone. This produces an environment where there are no COLLISIONS between things, there are no hard surfaces that keep things out, there are no separate wills or forces which can act upon objects and cause them to change or move against their will.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of SIN. It's the idea that will can be used against will, that you can attack and affect something without be affected, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, that something can be hurt with no power to stop it. It's an idea of destruction and damage, of sickness and death.

This idea alone produced what we call SPACE TIME, a whole second order of "reality" rooted in the idea that one part can be separate from another, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, and real irreversible effects can be produced. Where one thing can act upon another thing against its will and change it forever.

"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."

SPACE TIME is an environment, a system of thought in mind, completely dependent on the idea of sin. The idea of attack. That one thing can act against another. That there can be a war, a conflict, and a COLLISION. It is a world of attack on the will of God.

"The world (spacetime) was made as an attack on God."

This is why we have here physical matter, with objects which can act upon other objects without their consent. A rock can fall down a mountain and slam into a tree. The tree didn't ask for this. The tree is changed irreversibly. This is sin. Physical sin. One thing acting upon another without its consent.

It requires that there be solid surfaces. There has to be a resistance that is strong enough to REPEL something. This is why physical matter has atomic forces. The repulsion, a form of unwillingness, PUSHES AGAINST other things. It allows two objects to push against each other, thus affecting each other, moving each other, changing each other. Without solidity, sin is impossible. Without OPPOSING FORCES (wills) solid matter cannot exist and cannot have any properties.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For without a body sin is impossible."

A body, a solid material physical object, be it human or animal or a mountain or a planet, is required in order to have sin. There has to be a separation, to keep the things apart. This takes the form of materials which seem to have mass and solidity. These two "separate" things can now act upon each other independently, not sharing a will, not sharing a mind, not sharing interests. They are in CONFLICT with each other constantly.

Conflict and war and murder and attack and sin are BUILT IN TO SPACE TIME. It is its fundamental nature. The entirety of spacetime is an hallucinated image, a PICTURE, of what it would look like if heaven (God's Son) were attacked against its will, complete with forces acting upon each other and opposing each other and conflicting and damaging and destroying.

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

One thing acting upon another thing against its will. That's the root of all of spacetime, the tiny mad idea, the violation of God's will, the attempt to oppose reality. The mere idea of FORCING something to happen TO something OTHER than (separate from) oneself. The idea of sin, of murder, and of death.

Because now if you can use power to cause/will a change in something else, and it changes, and the change is IRREVERSIBLE, that is the idea of sin. If I throw a brick through a glass window and the glass is broken and the brick is chipped, these are effectively PERMANENT changes. The broken window is now THE PROOF OF SIN, and testifies that someone DID throw a brick through the window. So long as the window remains broken, the proof is still there. And the window will never be the same again.

The ability to DAMAGE, to destroy, to attack, to rot and decay, to change anything at all, is the idea of sin. It's sort of like, we've tried to suggest that heaven can be attacked, hurt, changed, destroyed, and mangled into some new form. The entirety of spacetime is testifying to this at all times without end. Even when the objects are not touching. Even when they do. Even when the planets are far apart from each other. They are still at war.

It is an entire system of war, conflict, attack and death. The important thing to realize is that WITHOUT the idea that will can act against will, ALL of this is impossible. You cannot have WALLS, you cannot have OBJECTS, you cannot have BODIES, you cannot have PLANETS, you cannot have attack or murder or destruction, you cannot have MATTER, without the idea of sin.

Heaven is a system of total access. Spacetime is a system of denied access. Heaven is a system of everything being shared. Spacetime is a system of nothing being shared. Heaven is a system of nothing being separate or kept apart of unable to merge or overlap. Spacetime is a system where everything is kept apart and nothing ever joins or shares. They are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to each other in nature.

This also means that you CANNOT take Earth, bodies, space or time, INTO heaven, and keep it. They are absolutely incompatible. One denies the other. Sin is a "lack of love". You cannot take a lack of love INTO love and have it still BE a lack of love. Nothing about its LACK nature can be maintained if there is love. Just as light shines away darkness and REPLACES the darkness. You cannot take the darkness into the light and have it still retain its dark properties.

Earth, human bodies, space and time, are all ideas of sin and darkness and a lack of love. They will NEVER be that which they deny. They cannot be integrated into heaven because they ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE and DEPEND ON a LACK of heaven for their nature. As soon as you introduce the oneness, sharing, lack of walls, lack of hard surfaces, lack of collisions, lack of spatial separations, that is true of heaven's nature, there is nothing left to SUPPORT matter existing at all in ANY way. Earth DISSOLVES in the light and CEASES to exist. It is made of separateness.

You will not be able to "walk on the surface of the earth" in heaven's reality under heaven's laws. There are NO surfaces. There is NO gravity. There is no COLLISION between feet and ground. There is no SEPARATENESS to keep you from sinking into the planet. There is no POSSIBILITY of Earth or bodies whatsoever there.

What you CAN do, is you can adopt heaven's laws and viewpoint and look up the world of sin with forgiveness. It forgives the world BECAUSE of the world's limitations. It recognizes that the world (spacetime/earth) is not REAL sin, it is an ILLUSION of sin. And that really it is just A MISTAKE. Earth is a mistake. Spacetime is a mistake. It is FALSE. Not attacked, not condemned, simply nothing.

This is a key point which people need to really deeply realize. Spacetime is totally opposite to heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in EVERY way." There are no collideable solid material objects in heaven's reality. The world, earth, space and time, all bodies, must eventually be LET GO AND FORGOTTEN. Because they are nothing. And they cannot exist WITHOUT sin and death.

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

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings"

"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED."

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

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

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"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."

"I am forever an effect of God."

While it is wonderful to reflect on your truly divine attributes, such as your immortality, invulnerability, permanence and unchangeability, we should also recognize that the ONLY reason you have these attributes is because of something other than yourself.

It is purely because of God that you are immortal. God is the one who is causing you to be what you are. You are eternal because of him, not because of yourself. You are permanent and unchangeable because of him. You are protected and safe because of him. You can never die because of him.

You are an effect of God. God causes you to exist. His will puts you in place and holds you in place forever. He wills what you be, and you have absolutely no say in this. Nor can anything in heaven or earth ever change this fact of what you are. God's will cannot be opposed and nothing can ever act against it.

You did not exist when God created you, so you had no input into what you were created to be. God himself, and only himself, decided what you are and what he wanted you to be. He extended himself as thought and life to create you and gave you everything that you are. You have absolutely nothing that does not come from God, and everything you have is inherited. You have not gathered up extra stuff, made yourself out of other things, nor added a single thing to what God has created you to be.

Jesus: "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE."

You only have what you have been GIVEN by God, and you can only be what God has given you to be. You have been given AS a blessing to the whole Kingdom. God blessed creation by creating you as a gift. You are exactly what GOD intends that you be, and you can never change this. God creates you, causes you, maintains you, and keeps you going.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

The only reason you are immortal is because God has GIVEN you immortality and sustains your immortality for you. The only reason you are sinless is because "My sinlessness is guaranteed by God", meaning that God himself makes it impossible for you to be anything other than innocent. God gave you his own innocence and shared it with you, and so you must be innocent because he is.

Everything about you is inherited from your creator and is shared with him. This does NOT mean that God handed over some things to you and let them go. It does not mean God died off and you got an inheritance afterwards. Nor does it mean God was depleted by giving everything to you. What it does mean is that the giving to you is active and ongoing, that you SHARE IN what you have WITH him, all the time and always, such that while it is your inheritance, it is STILL HIS as well.

"I am forever host to God."

"Love created my like itself"

So love created you loving, immortality created you immortal, invulnerability created you to be invulnerable, innocence created you to be innocent, perfection created you perfect, peace created you peaceful, light created you light, eternity created you eternal, unchangeability created you unchangeable, the absolute created you absolute, holiness created you holy, and happiness created you happy.

It is because of God that you are what you are, and because of no-one else. This is why you naturally are completely grateful to God because you ONLY have what HE has given you, and he has given you everything.

"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."

The ego would like to claim that you are immortal, but it would like to do it in such a way as to say God has nothing to do with it. That you aren't immortal because of him, but that you are a standalone independently immortal being in your own right, and because of yourself. It wants to claim credit for God's work. In this way the ego aggrandizes itself and inflates itself pretending to be like the sons of God or God himself but without God's causation. Without acknowledging God as your father.

To recognize you are immortal, permanent and unchangeable, you have to also acknowledge God is your creator. You are protected BY God and he does not allow anything to happen to you. Not only are you invulnerable because God says you are, you are invulnerable because he causes you to be invulnerable, and because you share HIS invulnerability.

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything."

"And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"God is my strength. Freedom is his gift."

So because God is immortal and invulnerable, innocent and holy, perfect and permanent, unchangeable and absolute, so are you. He has created you by sharing himself with you, and you have inherited all his attributes. You are forever a host to him, and therefore he is in you. What is yours, is ALSO his, because it is shared with him. You have nothing exclusive of your own, you only have what you have been GIVEN. And you must share it in order to keep it.

This means that you have to give life and immortality and love and innocence and peace and freedom and unchangeability, in order to retain it in your mind. It must be shared. If it is not shared, you close it off to yourself and stop sharing IN it. God's gifts are given to you, as you, but also THROUGH you. Because YOU are a gift of God that is being given BY God TO OTHERS. What you have received from God, you have to pass on, as in the "pay it forward" idea.

This is why EXTENSION (of creation) is natural to all of God's creations. God extends himself to give himself to you, so that you can give God to others. Everyone shares in everything all the time. You are permanent because God is permanent and his permanence is yours. You are unchangeable because God cannot be changed. You are immortal because God is immortal. You can never die because God is eternal life.

Therefore you MUST still be exactly as God created you to be, originally and without flaw, without distortion, without degradation or decay. You must STILL be wholly innocent because of God's guarantee of your sinlessness, which is his own. You must still be perfect and immaculate and unharmed and unchanged. And not one single thing in all the world has ever altered what you are ever so slightly. You are the will of God, and what God wills lasts forever. "Lesson 326 "I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. 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."

There is a huge rift in the ACIM community.

It mainly hinges around a single assumption. Some people make this assumption and some do not.

Those who make it are very consistent in the consequences of that assumption, because it leads to massive level confusion. There is an entirely different interpretation of the meaning of almost everything the Course means, which arises based on that one assumption.

The assumption is this:

Everything about the course applies to "my identity" as I see it right now. It ALL applies to ME.

This is a MISTAKE!

And this happens because .... every course student has a EGO, which is a false sense of identity or self, which perceives that everything is about IT. It is an ego-centric interpretation of the course.

Here is a fact which you can deny or accept:

Sometimes the Course is speaking to and about an "individual son" as part of the "sonship." "A son", "A brother", "my brothers", "God’s children", etc of which there are many. And sometimes, the course is speaking about The One Son of God - "The son", "God’s son" etc.

These are two very different LEVELS OF IDENTITY. The scope of these levels is vastly different. What applies to one individual may not apply to another individual. What applies to the one son, does not apply to an individual son in isolation. The mind of the One Son is HUGE, it is the mind of Christ. The mind of an INDIVIDUAL SON, has its own individual free will choice and its own ability to independently deny God.

Confusing or combining these two levels, which is a confusion of identity, will lead to massive level confusion and false conclusions.

When YOU, as an "individual son", think that everything the course says about the One Son applies to YOU, you are making a massive level confused mistake! It does NOT apply to you! When you, as an individual son, believe that every teaching in the course is ABOUT YOU, as you see yourself as an individual right now, you WILL come to false conclusions. And these conclusions are radically warped in comparison to what they would be if you saw all the levels in their appropriate placement.

Some parts of ACIM are talking about an individual son, and some parts are talking about the One Son, which is a vast difference. Knowing WHEN Jesus is talking about WHICH LEVEL, is very important, otherwise you will just lump them all together and .... come to some very distorted conclusions.

To understand and accept this DOES REQUIRE that you believe that there ARE multiple sons. Some people refer to multiple souls as mentionedin earlier versions. Or the sonship, which even in edited versions talks about multiple sons. The sonship IS supposed to be a term that refers to MULTIPLE INDIVIDUALS. The sonship is NOT the One Son of God. The sonship IS NOT CHRIST.

If you confuse certain intentions of "which level of identity" Jesus is talking to or about, it will produce huge differences in what you think he means. If he says something which only applies to the One Son, and you think it applies to YOU as an individual, you will become mistaken.

This is what is happening throughout the course community. A kind of rift or difference of opinion, between those who take the course as "all one level talking about me as the only son" versus "multiple levels talking sometimes about me as an individual and sometimes as a shared single identity."

Those who believe the course always is talking at one level, who fail to see the levels or discern when Jesus refers to which identity, WILL come to the following FALSE CONCLUSIONS:

1) "I dreamed everything in the world, it’s all in my mind, therefore if I heal my mind, it will heal everyone else, because they are all part of me." —�- NO. This is only true of the One Son! It is not true of individuals. You as an individual are NOT responsible for what other individuals are experiencing!

2) "I dreamed the world myself"—�- NO. The One Son dreamed the world and you are INSIDE HIS DREAM. You are having an ADDITIONAL LAYER OF DREAMING within his dream.

3) "When the course talks about perception, he is talking about my pecteption." —� NO not always. E.g. When he says "the world IS perception", he literally means, planet earth is part of the perception of the ONE SON. It showing up is the One Son’s dreaming. You, as an individual, have your own INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTION *OF* the Son of God’s perception of a world. There are two levels here.

4) "I need only change my mind about the world to be at peace". —� NO. When you heal your individual perception OF the One Son’s perception, you will wake up IN the dream, but not FROM it. Many gurus have done this. Doing this will still result in death.

5) "If I change my perception, I will be able to transcend sickness." —� NO. If you change your perception of something which you think has been put there by someone else, in order to deal with it, IT will still stick around, proving that the One Son’s mind has not been healed.

6) "God created the world" —� NO. A person WILL come to this conclusion if they do not believe that there is a sonship of many individuals. This is because, somehow, they have to account for what the world IS or how it got there beyond their personal perception. Since they don’t believe there is a separate LEVEL of identity of the One Son, and they think they ARE the one Son at this level of individuality, they MUST conclude that the only identity LEFT who might be responsible for making the world is God! They do not see, that the One Son made the world, NOT their individual self.

7) "If you heal your perception you cannot perceive sickness in another." —� NO. This level confusion comes from believing that you, as an individual, are the one son. This means that everything you see in the world is "part of you". That then means that if sickness is showing up, like a person has cancer or some disease, it must be "part of your mind". And this leads to the conclusion - if I change my mind about this sin I’m seeing, that person will get healed. NO—�- it does not work. That other person is NOT part of your mind. You are an individual, they are an individual, and you both have free will. Believing that you are the one son of God at this level makes you delusional that a) you are responsible for other people’s sickness, b) they are sick because of you, c) if you withdraw your projection they won’t be sick. NOT TRUE. You are having an INDIVIDUAL FALSE PERCEPTION. And so are they. You are not the one son of God at this level. Other people are NOT part of your individual mind. They are part of the One Son’s mind, and that’s NOT your identity right now, not even if you reach true perception.

8) "What I project onto others affects them or is in them, so I need to take back those projections so they will be healed" —� NO. Your projections within the scope of your own individual mind, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. It only seems that these things are outside of you in another person. You have a belief in sin - an independent belief. Not the one son’s belief. This independent belief splits your independent mind. Your mind then has one area which seems innocent and one area which seems sinful. You will shift your identity to associate with the innocent part, and disassociate from the sinful part. This is internal denial. Your mind is at war with ITSELF. Your identification with the innocent part makes it seem like the sinful part is OUTSIDE of IT, but it is still within YOUR individual mind. You will hallucinate that because it seems "outside me", it is IN or belongs to or is doing something to other people. IT IS NOT. All attack is SELF attack. You NEVER attack others. Your projection DOES NOT leave your mind and go onto them. They HAVE NOT been affected by your projection! And when you take your projection back, it will NOT CHANGE ANYTING in terms of what the other person is experiencing. This is because both of you are individuals. Interpreting this whole part of the course based on the assumption it’s referring to "you" as "the one son" is a huge error.

9) "If I stop identifying with the body I will be free"�— NO. This is part of the belief that the body is there on its own, which is part of the belief that either God or the Son of God made it, and that if you just detach from it you will be free. The body is showing up because YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL are projecting it. What YOU, as an individual, use the body for, it will become to you, individually. Use it for attack it becomes sick, use it for love it is healed. This is about you as an individual son, not as the one son. You can’t disidentify from something that YOU are responsible for putting there. This includes all sickness in your body. YOU, as an individual son, made sickness and death, and therefore can abolish both.

10) "If I stop projecting sickness I will not see my brother as sick" —� NO. This is the erroneous assumption that everything "out there" is "in you". Therefore that you are the one son, not an individual son. This makes you believe if you correct your false perception of sickness, you will never again be able to SEE that someone is sick. You will think of people as just parts of your own mind, that their sickness is your own, and that therefore YOU need healing. THIS IS FALSE. You can get your individual self to a healed state and be whole as an individual, free of sickness, while other individuals continue to be sick. You will not be blind to their choice to be sick. Because at this LEVEL, they are OUTSIDE OF YOU. They are inside the One Son, yes. But you are NOT the one son at this point. Healing your perception heals YOUR perception, not anyone else’s. Accepting the atonement accepts it for you, it doesn’t force anyone else to accept it. Other people WILL NOT suddenly become cured when you see correctly. True Perception is INDIVIDUAL. You will still see the illusion of sickness other people are projecting, you just won’t believe it is real. People can stay sick in spite of you!

11) "I can be at peace with death" —� NO. You cannot. This suggests death happens regardless of you choosing the truth. Which suggests God is doing it to you. This is not true at ANY LEVEL of identity. If you are going to die, as an individual, it is because you, as an individual, have a belief in death. And it will not affect anyone else.

�—�—�—�

There are other examples but I’m out of oomph right now. We need to be careful to read the course, maybe even re-read it, knowing that there are TWO levels of identity. And we need to discern, when is the course talking about me as an individual, and when is it talking about the entire One Son. At times it talks about perception and seeing in terms of The One Son’s perception, not yours! And we have to recognize, while we’re in bodies, if we’ve awoken to the maximum limits of our individual mind, our individual identity in its most natural whole state, that mind is STILL MUCH SMALLER than the mind of the one son.

The mind of the one son can experience THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE at once. Recognizes that absolutely all individuals are part of itself. Knows that IT dreamed the entire universe. Knows that it has the power to create planets. That One Son’s mind is huge. To awake to THAT mind requires a TRANSCENDENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY where a single son in the sonship unites with God. Just like Jesus did. That happens AFTER you wake up individually in the dream! Becoming the Christ, is another whole level of awakening FROM the dream, that takes place after you as an individual wake up IN the dream. Becoming healed as an individual IS NOT the same thing as becoming Christ! You have to transcend the entire sonship to do that!

For me, the Course makes so much more sense, is much easier to understand, is clearer, more consistent, less confusing, and gives you much more relief of responsibility and guilt if you can recognize that there is MORE THAN ONE LEVEL in what Jesus is presenting. We need to learn the individual level first, then the second level later. That there are two levels in the awakening is clear, evidenced by some individuals who have woken up IN the dream, believe they are done, only to find they are NOT done. They still die. And they still do not perform miracles. Because they did not transcend the sonship yet to return the mind to Christ.

It’s a simple concept that there are two levels of identity. But failing to recognize which identity you have right now, and which identity Jesus is speaking about or when, WILL lead to huge level confusion. And many many false conclusions have come from this.

We hear people latching onto this phrase quite often and using it to justify inaction. But Jesus doesn't use it in this way in the course. He speaks of it more as a psychological state and a recognition of truth.

We are actually asked to first recognize that there is no NEED for US to "do anything", because in recognizing the truth we see that everything real is perfect and nothing unreal exists. However, we are also asked to remain in this state of mind and bring it with us INTO a great many BUSY DOINGS, which we are SENT to do.

"This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For, FROM this center, will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly." UrT18H10

So just because we might reach a recognition that nothing is really needed, it doesn't mean we are not acting, not doing something physical, not using the body, not changing anything in the world or not interacting with and helping other people through the body.

It just means that WITHIN, our mind is peaceful in recognition of truth, as we continue meander through the dream world TAKING ACTIONS, coming FROM a quiet centre.

We are also told that "I need do nothing" is something you will realize more or less in a very advanced state, toward the end of the awakening process.

"When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "I need do nothing." Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time."

This means that we shouldn't be using this idea as a way to say, I will DO NOTHING prior to this awakening. In fact, not only are we to do things in the world up to this point, but EVEN WHEN we recognize that we need do nothing WE STILL do things.

There is also an aspect to this that because we inherit everything from God, and God works with us and through us, we OF OURSELVES need do nothing. This is because God is going to be doing some things through us. And in order for God to do some things through us we have to not interfere with that and become willing vessels FOR DOING THINGS, allowing the BODY to be used by the Holy Spirit.

"And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self" UrW337L1

"I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest. I have invited Him, and He is here.

I need do nothing except NOT TO INTERFERE." UrT16A4

Now some people have a strange view of what it means to not interfere. This is because most people think in terms of either/or - either this or that. So they think, either I will do something or God will do something. This is not how it's set up.

We do need to acknowledge that God has all power. But in doing so, we also thus acknowledge that all power has been GIVEN to us, and that FULLY means that WE are now powerful beings. It just means that the power that we have, does not belong EXCLUSIVELY to ourselves, because it is a shared power. That doesn't mean it is not ours or that we in ourselves are not powerful or are incapable.

So as we approach God and approach the atonement and are aiming not to interfere with God's will, that doesn't mean WE are not willing something - our will LINES UP with his, it isn't TAKEN OVER by his. We become willing participants just as we are co-creators in heaven. God does not force anything or possess you or use you like a puppet. YOU still have to DO something.

This is why there is a lot of talk in the course about your being sent to people, and people being sent to you. Because you are actually required to help out in the atonement plan and to DO SOMETHING to help others in the world.

"Every busy doing on WHICH YOU ARE SENT."

"Everyone who is sent to you is a patient of yours. " UrP4A1

"And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you."" Ur6A6

"includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation." UrM4A1

So we're not really talking here about NOT DOING ANYTHING. The emphasis actually is on the absence of NEED for yourself. Just because YOU recognize that YOU do not need anything, and that in truth on the level of spirit others do not need anything either - because nothing is really wrong in reality - this DOES NOT APPLY in the level of time and space.

In the level of time and space there is a great need. There is a lot of lack. There is a great absence of love and wholeness and health. There is a great amount of perceived suffering. While it is not real in the big picture IT IS happening in time. And this is why anyone who has not fully embraced atonement DOES NEED HELP.

So even if you recognize that you do not REALLY need do anything, even if you recognize that the true nature of others as Christ does not NEED anything, you should also be recognizing that other people have mental illness, and their state of mind IS a need - they are calling out for love and help and healing and teaching. And that is why it is STILL your role to GIVE HELP as and where it is needed - as and where you are SENT TO DO BUSY THINGS.

This statement for example might seem to say that you should ignore all bodies. It doesn't mean that.

"To DO anything involves the body. And, if you recognize you NEED do nothing, you HAVE withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and ESCAPE from time." UrT18H9

What it's saying is that for you personally, if YOU recognize you need do nothing, you also recognize the body has no real function. But this doesn't mean you don't USE the body and it doesn't mean the body isn't repurposed. In fact the Holy Spirit repurposes it and guides you to use it for a higher purpose of healing and communication and teaching. Plus Christ needs your body to reach others.

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another." UrT1B40J

"My eyes, my tongue, my hands, my feet today have but one purpose; to be given Christ to use to bless the world with miracles." UrW353

In heaven there are no needs. In reality and in truth there are no needs. In your perfect soul there are no needs. In THIS world THERE ARE NEEDS. And thus in this world, YOU DO NEED TO DO SOMETHING.

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO. ... The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers." UrT1B23H

The great crusade which you are told YOU MUST JOIN - mandatory - is also in the FIP 3rd edition, in some form...

"As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. ⁷The power to work miracles belongs to you. ⁸I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing." T-1.III.1:6-8

Jesus is quite adamant here that even if you accept atonement you STILL have a duty. And it is a required duty. And the reason it is required is because - other people are a part of you, and even if YOU seem to independently accept atonement it doesn't mean other people have stopped their nightmares. A part of you is in them, and a part of them is in you. Your healing heals them in part, but their suffering also prevents you from TOTAL peace.

We are in fact asked to PROFESS CHRIST, and that atonement is our natural PROFESSION. A profession is something that you DO. It's an activity, a set of actions and doings. Something that you give to the world and share with others.

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me." UrT1B24A

By all means let's all steer towards affirming and acknowledging that there is in reality no true needs and requirement to do anything. But let's also NOT be ignorant to the fact that there has been a separation, untold numbers of beings are stuck in it, it could take millions of years for them all to awaken, and everyone single one of them is calling out for love and help and healing.

"You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper." UrT5F14

As claimers of needing to do nothing, as people with peaceful minds and open hearts overflowing with love it is our responsibility to CONTINUE TO DO THINGS to help others. You remain in a psychological INNER state of rest and peace and "no need" - which means no lack - within, WHILE you accomplish a great many DOINGS in the world. It does not mean that you just sit on a fence and be passive and literally do nothing at all.

This must not be used as an excuse or doing nothing, not helping, not being a teacher of God, not working miracles, not healing others, not helping, having total passivity and inaction, or dwelling only on your own apparent lack of needs. This is not a selfish course, it's a course in sharing. And many of us need to learn that we are TO SHARE what we receive, and GIVE the miracles we have received, and help our brothers along the way to God.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. " UrT9C3

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."

Jesus said this:

"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."

Here we’re told that God created "man’ (souls) and gave man (souls) the ability to create, when in his right mind (as God intended). All of this is taking place within God’s realm, the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven also IS God’s Creation and everything in it including the souls.

The souls together comprise "the sonship" and since they share oneness with all of Creation, they are all "the One Son" ie the one/united creation. At this point it has absolutely nothing to do with physicality or planet Earth or separation.

"The latter (man’s ability to create in his right mind) required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given."

So we know that it is natural to have free will, for each "individual soul", who is part of oneness, and who is also christ. Each individual soul is therefore "free" to independently dream or not.

At this point, pre-separation, in my opinion all of this is encompassed within God’s Kingdom, Heaven, which IS the sonship and IS creation and INCLUDES all souls. All as one Sonship, one creation, on being, on sense of identity yet still many parts. (I know I know, suspend disbelief).

All of this content, is what the Course originally refers to as WORLD. This was God’s world, God’s creation. What really exists. (Not the "real world"). This is the same thing as "the universe" of God.

God gave a world to His Son, spoken of here:

"The statement ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life’ needs only slight correction to be meaningful in this context; ‘He gave it to His only begotten Son.’"

I believe, the world referred to is simply the Kingdom of God, heaven. It is the only place where there is everlasting life. This is true in both versions - that "God gave His Son" = world (God’s created universe, not earth, God expressed/gave the Sonship), and that "God gave the world to His Son" = God’s creation, heaven, given "to" his Son to SHARE and be a part of as God’s Kingdom/expression. This has nothing to do with the physical universe, a world made by separation, or planet Earth in any way.

At this Level, Heaven, Creation, God, Sonship, The Son, The Sonship, Souls, Reality, Universe, World, Eternity, Oneness, Christ, Children of God, and Christ’s Creations, and the creations from Souls, are essentially all part of a single experiential realm or state of mind/being in which there is perfect sharing, multiple minds, yet all sharing and reflections of God’s mind as well.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as one."

"It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts."

ie, "the son" IS the sonship, which contains multiple sons of God, all equal, and perhaps there is no single "first begotten son" kind of identity. Just the multitude souls? Yet every soul is fully one with the whole sonship, sort of implying two levels or aspects to identity? "Soul-self" and "shared-self’? And that when the "sharing" is severed, what’s left is the soul estranged as a separated son, still having its own identity but seemingly disconnected from the whole.

Then there was the separation...

"All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that man has the ability to usurp the power of God."

Or to put it another way, each soul can choose to sleep (or they all slept at once?), and "dreaming" (authority problem, separation, sin, level confusion, fear) is the mis-creation of each soul’s free will. Each soul tried to "withdraw" from the unity of the whole sonship, going into a state of isolation with artificial walls around it (later to become bodies), seeming to no longer be part of oneness, no longer sharing, no longer connected.

Jesus says this:

"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, possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

Notice it says "the son of God". Given all souls form the sonship and together they are collectively "the son of God", along with whatever else God created (angels etc?), does this not mean that all (or some of?) God’s "Creation" collectively had the tiny mad idea? Ie we’re not just talking about a single son, but many sons "falling" together?

We’re also told this:

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

So we’re told there that when some parts of the sonship (souls) are blocking, the entire sonship is affected and so God then knows he needs to create the Holy Spirit.

Here is the version from the urtext, which is more clarifying:

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

When the sonship, or even one part of it, still believes in separation, is dreaming, unaware of the whole, or rejecting the sonship, the sonship is incomplete. In this state, what the sonship experiences now is the "fall" into, and the dreaming OF, collectively, the "second world".... the world of death and separation.

This second world comprises everything that is "inside" the tiny mad idea, all thoughts of sin and death, the entire physical universe which was made a "place" (actually a state of mind) in which God seems not to exist. This second "world" is the world in which we experience perception (of all kinds). This "world" is the entire physical universe. It may additionally comprise further fake universes in higher dimensions because the separation from God progressed through various stages.

So then there are two worlds. God’s universe/creation/heaven, and the illusory universe/what we made/physical universe which is artificial ("Earth is opposite to heaven in every way"). We typically think of world as the planet, but it means the entire realm in which we seem to exist. All of the "universe" we think is the universe, all planets and stars, all galaxies and nebula and civilizations. And all of the massive expanses of space and time. All of this is "the world" - the world WE MADE, which God DID NOT CREATE. A world of separation. And within this world, this realm, planet Earth is just one of many illusory locations.

There is a series of workbook lessons, I posted about this recently, which tell us 1) we’re experiencing a hell of false perception laid on top of the world we made, 2) true perception is then introduced as an alternative way to view "this world" (this fake universe), 3) we’re guided to experiment with discerning true from false, 4) we’re then told about how HEAVEN is ANOTHER world (a 3rd experience, beyond false and true perception) reachable when "this world" is left behind (the world/realm/universe we made).

The lesson "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth" specifically describes us leaving this "world" and returning to Heaven, to the realm of Creation, to God’s universe. Which is not the Earth or even the physical universe.

This also means that, the collective "Son of God" dreamed the fictional "world" which houses the fictional planet earth (there is no world). This also means then that if true perception shows you the "accurate perception" of the world YOU MADE (physical universe), to see accurately/truly the world you made is to see what THE SON projected. Since this "world", the physical universe, is the "One Son’s dream" or, the collective dream of the Sonship, which we all made together, and since the course says "The world IS perception", seeing this world with true perception is us perceiving PERCEPTION. Perception twice removed!

As individual souls we’re looking upon what the One Son projected as a fake universe. Within this context alone, we EACH have a false perception OF the One Son’s perception. A false perception of "the world" (and you can include Earth in that world). False perception ADDS a "personal layer" on top of the world we made, true perception removes that layer and reveals what is "there" without distortion. Yet this world we’ll see, the "real world", is STILL within perception. It is STILL the 2nd world, the one WE MADE, not the one God created.

We will disappear this 2nd world. This 2nd world is one we made up, invented, it is a DREAM. An illusory universe. It doesn’t really even exist at all. IT is the opposite to the nature of heaven in EVERY WAY. It is not a part of heaven now, and it will never be. Being an illusion, it must disappear entirely. Being literally NOTHING, it never was, does not exist NOW, and never will. It simply will vanish when recognized in the light of truth. The light will shine it away. It will be no more because it never was. We don’t need it.

God has created a "world" - Heaven - a "place" (as much as any, though different to the physical experience), "fit for a King" ... a realm of permanent joy and love and eternal life. It is EVERTHING, where the "world" we made is nothing. The world we made is not real. "There is no world" is a direct statement speaking to this - this world we made, which includes planet Earth and more, does not exist. "The world holds nothing that I want" ... not just the world of false perception, OR the world of true perception. The world we made, to replace God’s world, holds nothing that I want. The "real world" is an illusion, not a reality. God’s reality is the REAL, real world.

These are, to me, essentially the two worlds. And within the world we made, because perception is selective and has degrees, there is a really screwed up state of false perception (hell), and a much more preferable and closer-to-reality state of "true" perception. As clear a state of perception as we can possibly have while still being OUTSIDE of heaven. And "there is no life outside of heaven", because the world we made is not life.

I guess I’m just putting this out there. FInding my way to a clarity about this which makes sense to me. Take what you like leave the rest.

I had a re-read of much of Chapter 21: Reason and perception, to try to better understand the workings of perception. Below are some takeaways. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.

Typically, we look out upon a world which seems to be there independently, and however it looks to us, we take it to be how it is. If it seems like a horrible place, some kind of hell, we believe it actually IS that way. We don’t question it. We don’t for a moment think that there is something we are doing to make it LOOK that way.

But the Course is telling us that in fact, we are doing this all the time. It is telling us, there is a "forgiven world" right here in front of our faces, which has no guilt in it, no sin, which is shiny and sparkly and new, and even seems to have a reflection of heaven in it. But we’re not SEEING it, because our own minds have some kind of "gunk" in them which is making the world seem dim and dark and lonely and depressing.

In fact, it even tells us there is a reflection of Christ (the face of Christ) and God right here, that we can "See God" here, to a degree, if we have awareness of God in our mind. That we could look at flowers and tables and trees and such and see God twinkling back at us somehow. But that if we do not SEE that, due to some kind of "filtering" that is going on in our perception, the world becomes lackluster and dull and we don’t seem to see God at all.

There is a kind of perceptual trap, whereby if you believe that how the world looks, is how it IS, inherently, you will not realize that there is ANOTHER world hidden behind the one you’re seeing, that you COULD be seeing, if you were to change your mind. Since "projection makes perception", it produces CIRCULAR LOGIC in which a) you decide what you want to see, b) you project it, c) you see/perceive it, d) it tells YOU what is there, e) you believe what you perceive. Kind of a vicious cycle.

Not realizing that your mind has something to do with how things appear to you, you will just ASSUME that this world simply IS the way that you’ve always seen it to be. If it seems to really suck bad, if all your relationships seem strained by separation, if you feel lonely and cut off, if you are depressed and living in darkness, you may think that this is HOW THE WORLD IS, not realizing that you are actually MAKING IT look that way because of the content of your mind.

So in order to get out of that trap, you have to suspend belief for a moment, consider that what you are seeing is POSSIBLY not how the world actually is, that there is a world here you WANT to see - in which you’ll have to place some faith that it is here but simply hidden from view temporarily, and then take steps to change your mind so that you can finally SEE it. You almost have to IGNORE what you are perceiving now, stop accepting that you are stuck with the "results of past decisions", and that if you choose to believe differently, this shitty world will disappear and be replaced by a much lovelier version.

The course also basically says that when you are seeing the projected content of your own self-hate, sin etc, which makes the WHOLE WORLD look hateful and sinful to you, you are not SEEING correctly. Or rather, you are lacking VISION. Vision is the ability to see what is here, without distortion, without sin, without any dark content in your mind, so that you can see the forgiven world simply for how it IS.

Jesus says we need to become able to SEE, first, before we can RECOGNIZE what it is we are seeing as an illusory world. To see the "real world", relatively speaking, is to regain vision, ie to see without filtering it with your ego junk, such that you can simply look upon what’s there without adding or removing anything. This will show you clearly, correctly, what is THERE, without your contribution added to it, and in that clarity you will RECOGNIZE that even the real/forgiven world is an illusory world made as the opposite to heaven.

So right now, if you are having an experience that this world seems like a nightmare of hell, it’s not because it IS, it’s because you have a nightmare of hell happening in your MIND, which is making this world SEEM like it is hell. I’ve personally had experiences which at the time seemed like a horrible nightmare. Later, after much healing, the nightmare was over and the world did not seem so bad anymore.

The content of our mind massively influences what we see, because we will project that content out TO see, and WILL see it, overlaid on top of the "real world". It is imagined content, but it hugely influences our perception. False ego beliefs really have the "power", because we put faith in them, to greatly distort how the world registers with us, what we see it as, whether it seems harmless or harmful, and whether it feels like a happy place or a miserable place. It is not any of the things we project ONTO it. It is only what it is - a pretend planet that we dreamed, essentially neutral and meaningless.

"I have given the world all the meaning it has for me" is precisely talking about perception. You may not realize it, but your consciousness, your mind, your experience of "reality", can become significantly DISTORTED by any ego beliefs that you have, such that it will make you PERCEIVE things which are not even there at all. It causes you to hallucinate! To see imagined meaning or content where it does not exist. Your perception is capable of "shifting" from experiencing the "real word" as a nightmarish hell, to seemingly to be a reflection of heaven.

Have you ever had a day, where you are in a really bad mood... where you are perhaps having an emotional release of some heavy feelings. On that day, it seems to you as though everyone is in a bad mood! Everyone seems angry and intense and upset. Then you let yourself cry and you cathart this painful content. Suddenly, when you’re done, you feel better, but you also notice, what the heck happened to everyone else’s mood?

Suddenly other people don’t seem like they are unhappy at all? They don’t seem angry or stressed out or upset with you. You then find yourself wondering, were they really nightmarish figures who were against you and pissed off along with you or.... were you making that up this whole time? That all this time you thought they were also upset, they were actually happy?! That you just couldn’t see it and your mind was hallucinating that they were upset with you?

That’s because your ego beliefs that were in your conscious awareness were majorly distorting your perception of reality.

Jesus talks about how we get "stuck" in the circle of projecting then perceiving, whereby since we think that how the world looks is how it IS, that somehow IT decided to be the way it is, and that we didn’t MAKE IT BE that way at all, we simply accept it as if objectively real and then "make adjustments" to try to "live with it" or accomodate as though simply accepting it is really this way. We can spend a very long time living in a perceived "bad world" trying to cope with how it seems to be, making horizontal/linear adjustments instead of rising above it into "vertical perception", not even realizing that if we were to change our mind, our perception would shift UPWARDS, and we’d see a very different "higher vibrational" world that doesn’t call for any of those adjustments. ie, we don’t have to STAY in hell.

Another experience you might have is where you see the form of someone’s body, perhaps they have a broken arm or scars on their face from a fire. It will depend entirely on the content of your mind as to HOW you will perceive this, and what you will see IN it. If you believe in real sin and real sickness, and if that belief is heavy, when you see this person with theirs scars and a broken arm, you will not ONLY experience what’s there in form, their body in its condition, you will ALSO experience the content of your mind.

You might therefore be horrified, repulsed, upset, saddened, guilty, etc... seeing the disfigurement as something the person is stuck with for life, seeing sin in it like they must’ve done something wrong, holding it against them, fearing it like it will infect you if you get too close. The horror show in your mind has nothing to do with the person’s body or its form, it’s entirely to do with YOUR beliefs that you are seeing ON TOP OF what’s there. They still have a "broken body", but you are seeing "YOUR sickness" added to it.

If you then go away and do some forgiveness and undo these beliefs in real sin and real sickness, you may later be walking around and see that person again. And their body may well be in *exactly* the same condition, form-wise, because that’s something that they still believe in and they are still putting it there.

But instead of seeing it as attacking you, or repulsing you, or threatening, or being ugly, or judging them for it, or seeing it as irreversible, or hating them for it, you may instead see them with love and freedom and recognize, they are not bound by this, they are not this form, they are not this body, and you could offer them a miracle. *RECOGNIZING* what is there, versus failing to recognize what is there (seeing your own added shit), is the difference between true perception and false perception. Both of them perceive the form, but true perception does not ADD sin to it.

Someone close to me has paralysis. Her left arm can barely move and hardly any movement in any fingers. She had a stroke. When this first happened, each time that I saw this I was very upset. Or I should say... each time that I saw this form and ALSO some dark content in my own mind, I was very upset. I saw sickness as real. I believed in it. And this had apparently already been established in my belief system before this event happened. Instantly it would trigger off deep upset and guilt and grief whenever I saw it. However, it wasn’t the form or the tragedy or the paralysis that was actually upsetting, it was what I saw IN it.

Over time, I forgave this and more or less HAD to use this as a way to learn that sickness is not real, that I am not the cause of the sickness, that I am not guilty for otherse being sick, and that there is no TRUTH in that sickness. My personal perception of that person now, is that when I see this paralysis that she STILL HAS, and which has not changed whatsoever, I am not upset by it. I don’t see it as tragic or despairing. I don’t see guilt in it. I don’t see it as something having gone very wrong. I don’t see it as unfair or unchosen. It does not trigger me into deeply hurt feelings. All of that has been healed in me, and therefore in my perception. And yet, I still see - perceive - this person, and they stil have the symptoms of this stroke. They are still paralyzed. I simply do not see it with the ADDED content of my own personal beliefs in sin.

Quite possibly at some time, if I choose to really thoroughly excavate all trace of belief in sickness from my mind, maybe that will offer healing to her and undo that sickness. But if she is not ready to receive it, or if that would be frightening, it would not be appropriate to force it. This too is a lesson, that often the sick do not want to be healed against their will or readiness. My perception has changed of "what is there" and I now see it more squarely for what it IS... an illusion of sickness that doesn’t mean anything and has no power of its own. Of course this is still an area of experimental miracle-working so we’ll see what happens in future.

Regarding another’s sickness, since you are no longer believing in irreversible sin, you would not be holding their form "against them", or believing that they are stuck with it, or seeing them as victimized by it. You would not see it as "real sickness". It will strike you as an ILLUSION of sickness. Fake sickness. A simple choice to pretend to be hurt. You would not believe it has the power to stay on its own, and you could offer to heal it. It depends on the person as to whether they can accept and receive the healing, however. They have free will and their will is just as powerful as yours. Similarly Jesus cannot remove stuff from us that we are unwilling to give up because our will is as powerful as his.

One other thing I want to touch upon is the kind of experience you will have when in false perception vs true. In false perception, since you believe heavily that separation is real, and since you project what you will later perceive, you project separation. When you perceive it, you’re going to perceive that you are seeing something that has separations in it. The world is going to look to you as though it is separate from "you". It will seem like it has causal power, a will of its own, a mind of its own, and that it is not an effect, and therefore that because it is cause not effect, "you" surely did not cause IT.

You can see how this is a vicious cycle because if your mind has separation content in it, you will project that separation content onto the world, it will appear to be separate from you, and this will justify your belief that you DID NOT project it or cause it. This undermines the awareness that you projected in the first place, and somewhat "locks in" the idea that how the world appears to you is how IT IS inherently. That you are not contributing to how it appears at all. So false perception is its own trap, making it harder to tell that your mind alone determines what things look like to you.

The counter to this, is what happens in true perception.

There, your mind does not have a belief in separation. You don’t believe in real sin, or level confusions, nor do you see yourself as at the effect of anything outside of you. You recognize yourself as cause, and even see yourself projecting. Therefore, as you project, you are practically not projecting ANYTHING "onto" the world, or are not adding to it or removing anything from it, and so when you then PERCEIVE what’s there, you see it only for what it inherently IS. It shows YOU what is there, and you may even see God in it. This shows you the "real world", real in the sense that, in comparison to your unreal world of false perception and hallucinated hell, it is "real-er".

In true perception then, you will not be experiencing that the world is its own thing, that it has a will, or a mind or a power over you. You will not believe it has cause in it. You will recognize it as EFFECT only. And you will recognize that you are CAUSE only, not effect. Seeing God "in it" also will not mean that this world is "cause". God is cause, so seeing God "in" the world does NOT mean God IS the world or that the world is a cause! In this awareness, whatever the world ‘is’, MUST be coming entirely from you, and you see God IN it because God is IN your mind, not really out there. This means, you will also recognize, not simply what the world inherently IS (an illusion you made), but that EVERYTHING it is, is coming from YOU. You are dreaming it!

At this level, you are capable of manipulating it in any way you see fit simply by changing your mind, by adjusting your desire, or shifting your focus. "The word is only what you gave it" indicates that in false perception, there seemed to be you AND the world, and in true perception, there is only YOU. At this level, being aware that you are THE DREAMER of this world, reveals to you that it is 100% illusion, that the real world is an illusion, that even its forms are coming from your mind, and that therefore..... drumroll please..... THERE IS NO WORLD APART FROM WHAT YOU WISH. Meaning, there is literally no world there, just a bunch of wishes.

There is no world here because it is ONLY the content of our mind being projected. There is no world because even the real world, the "happy dream", is but a dream. When perception is perfected, it shows us there is NO SEPARATION between what is within and what is without. That planet out there, is inside our mind. It’s just an idea that has not left its source. "The real world is still an illusion". We made it up and are dreaming it, it’s not really there at all.

As dreaming ends, the entire content of this dream, this made-up world, this projected fantasy, will simply cease to be. It is not changed, it is simply unprotected. It does not live on, it simply vanishes. It is not converted into reality or heaven, ONLY THE TRUTH REMAINS and everything else NEVER REALLY EXISTED. Hence there is no world and Earth does not exist beyond our dreaming of it.

The big secret behind the ego's illusions, is that the ego is entirely a mode of SELF-attack. And this exactly ties into the revelation that "the secret to salvation is that you are but doing this to yourself."

The ego mind and its entire thought system is not just a separate chunk of regular mind that is split off from God. The ego's only weapon is separation. The purpose of the ego mind is to attempt to destroy the Son of God.

To the ego it is not enough to simply separate from God and be some kind of "self-contained identity", like a whole individual.

The ego mind is a state of mind of constant self-attack. It is a mind of division, separation, fragmentation and splits. Within itself it attempts to break down the Son of God by constantly dividing and separating the mind into as many disjointed pieces as possible.

That means, this ego mind is in a constant state of self-attack. Within itself, there is a war waging, between various aspects of the ego mind. It is not just at war with God, it is at war with itself.

The ego mind doesn't just set out to attack you or be your enemy. It is actually attacking only itself.

When there is a war in the world, whereby some group of people seem to be the evil attackers and some group of people seem to be the helpless victims, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an argument happening in a special relationship, where both people believe they are right and that the other person is wrong, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an apparent victimizer doing something terribly abusive to someone and the victim seems to be innocent, even then, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

Simply by virtue of the fact that the ego split mind is riddled with multiple separations, these separations produce the ILLUSION that there is opposition. Based on appearances, it then seems that one part of the ego mind is one identity and the other part is another identity, usually identified by some kind of "difference" between them, or a difference in form.

These differences make it SEEM like there are two separate individuals, at least, and these individuals will inherently be against each other. This is why people identified with separate and different bodies are INHERENTLY racist and sexist. To not be so would threaten their identity as a separate individual.

So take a look at the world and you'll see various examples of parts of it which seem like its "good" and parts that seem "bad", and you might only think the ego is the bad parts. The ego is all parts of this world.

The ego takes both sides of every argument. It takes both sides in every war. It is rooting for both people to be destroyed in every conflict and delights in the fight. It wants both victims and victimizers to hate each other. It believes in all its parts and identities that it is right and all others are wrong, even though those others are part of itself.

The ego has this very "sick" twisted mixture of self-attack and violence against itself. It actually tries to hurt and destroy itself, while at the same time enjoying doing so. It takes "pleasure" in producing "pain" within itself, which is why both pleasure and pain are a part of the same self-attacking mind. It is both the sick person who seems to prey on the innocent, and also is the "innocent victim" of such attacks.

It does not care whether one particular side of any situation is better or worse than another. Its only aim is to get all split parts of the fragmented ego mind to be separate from each other, different from each other, at war with each other, and wanting to destroy each other. Its plan of attack is that by destroying "Self". .. which really does mean "itself", it will destroy the Son of God.

This is simply because the ego IS the Son of God's attempt to destroy His Self. This is self attack. This is how the Son of God is doing everything to Himself, and why underneath ALL of his claims to be an innocent victim He is always secretly wanting it.

It is why behind all fear there is a choice and a desire to be punished. It is why behind all sickness there is a decision to be sick and to use it as both a defense and an attack. It is why victims are also victimizers, why the weak would seek to destroy, why death is both feared and welcomed, and why people are perverted and sadistic.

You are not looking at a world where some parts are pure and some parts are impure. You are not looking at a world where the "good guys" are trying to genuinely be free of the "bad guys". You are only looking at an ego world, which is INSIDE the shared collective ego group mind, the entire ego dream of death, which is RIDDLED with self attack all over the place in every way imaginable.

It always LOOKS like there are many separate individuals operating independently, when in fact it is ONE ego mind operating against ITSELF.

The ego loves to hate Self. The ego loves to destroy Self. The ego loves to pit self against self and be against itself. It should be fairly obvious how this is INSANITY, to be both for and against oneself and to be actively trying to destroy yourself. This is why the ego is suicidal and this is also why all death is a choice to die, in which your "ego self" will both avoid it and cause it, and both want it and be terrified of it.

It is ONLY your own self-attack and desire to destroy yourself that makes you afraid of anything. You are not afraid because of what others might do to you, but because of what YOU plan to do to you through your belief in your deserving of punishment. You are your own attacker and you plot your own death, even if you are kicking and screaming to escape it at the same time.

A split mind is having a battle of wills, because there are multiple conflicting wills operating against each other within it. It wants one thing but also wants another. It always wants everything that it does not want, and does not want everything that it wants. It cannot make up its mind or be decisive or make a genuine decision at all, being an attempt to STOP being decisive and certain or committed to wholeness in any way.

Taking sides is falling for the ego's lie. Participating in an "argument" is separating yourself off from your brother. Your brother is simply another part of your Self as Christ. Christ is the non-split, non-fragmented, non-self-destructive Real Mind of which we are all really a part, and not "apart".

So be careful not to fall for the ego's LIE, the ILLUSION, that one side of a story is right and another wrong, or one part of the world is spiritual and good and another is evil. The ego does not care whether you support the good guys or the bad guys. You are not winning against it by siding with only the good and positive. You are also not winning against it by siding only with the dark and negative.

The ego has no preference for whether you choose to believe that a "cause" is righteous or that your hated political party is "wrong" or that your opinion matters. Your opinion does not matter whatsoever because opinions are a symptom of ego insanity, in rejection of the One Shared Truth. The ego couldn't give a shit who wins an argument or what side of a war is victorious, because those things are NOT what drives the ego.

The ego is driven by SEPARATION. Its ONLY tool is separation. It seems only to separate, within itself. It seems only to split the Son of God up and make him be multiple selves - multiple personalities, and multiple personalities within personalities.

Think not that a regular human being has a "single mind". ... a regular human being has a large COLLECTION of pieces of mind, of sub-personalities, often which are actually in CONFLICT with each other. The ego mind is very complicated and self-contradictory. Even within one person there are countless separated aspects of identity which are not even consistent from second to second. People are different in different scenarios, experiencing constant shifts in persona based on the situation.

Only a whole mind is a sane mind, and a whole mind means Christ mind, which is not a mind that has won or a mind that defeated an opponent, but is a mind in which OPPOSITION does not exist. It is a mind free for a war with itself. It is a mind that has recognized that, this whole time, it has ONLY ever been at war within itself.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself. Your own mind, as ego mind, is attacking itself. It is in conflict within itself. It has been split up into parts and different parts of it are opposed to each other and are not even communicating well. Many parts of your mind are in the dark, many are experienced by other parts of you as an "enemy", and you actively fight with your own hallucinated demons and opponents within your own sense of fragmented self.

It is this state of self-attack and self-conflict and self-war and self-denial that we are healing from, so that we can return the mind to a state of PEACE. Peace is only possible when you are not playing ANY of the ego's games, you are not falling for the illusions or appearance of differences, you are not taking sides, you are not buying into good/bad or right/wrong, and you do not believe any longer in a SEPARATION between victims and victimizers.

You are doing this all to yourself. The whole world is doing this to itself. All wars are self attack, by the one "human race". This is the condition of the ego. The world is destroying itself and always has been and always will be until it disappears, having been recognized as unreal. This is why peace on earth is not possible, because peace would reveal that the earth is not a "real separate thing". Even the idea of separate planets is an ego idea of self conflict.

Beware the ego's intention to get you to fight with someone else, which is really the temptation to fight with yourself. This is all about what you're doing to yourself, and has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing to you. Wake up and see the ego for what it is. It is nothing more than a mind at war with itself, and in that war it is playing every side, because it is a mind of self-destruction.

In the ego's war, nobody wins. There are no survivors. There are no victors. It is always the "Self" that dies. It is always sanity and wholeness that is sacrificed. It is always the ego mind that wins and loses. It is always both parties who suffer. Anyone who plays the game of opposition or righteousness or judgement or rebellion or justification or revenge or any other ego modality, has already FAILED to recognize the ego's diabolical plan. It couldn't care less for winning or losing because in its perception, EVERY part of itself loses. In a war with yourself, YOU MUST LOSE YOUR SELF!

The only way to escape this is to return the mind to wholeness, overlook the ego's illusion of self-attack, own up to the fact that your mind IS attacking itself and that there has not BEEN any other form of attack, and that therefore you have another CHOICE. A better way. A way to be free from your own self destructive dream. A way to be permanently free of the ego, and of all symptoms of suffering and sickness and death, which are merely expressions of self attack.

If you cease attacking yourself, you cannot die. There are no other causes of death but this.

Be free.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power." - ACIM"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIMI want to be clear about this, because this is an often misunderstood matter. It's a question of who does what, who has the power, and who should get the credit. Is God the miracle worker? Are we? Both?First of all, let's tackle this term "of myself". Of yourself, you have and are nothing. This does not mean you do not exist. It means that what you are, YOU did not put there. You did not create yourself. What you have did not come from you. You did not originate it - it wasn't "of" (from) you. But this DOES NOT in any way mean that you HAVE NOTHING or that you can do nothing. Far from it.For example, children do not create themselves. Of themselves, they did not give themselves life. But they have life. They have life because their creator SHARED their life with them. Their parent EXTENDED life and GAVE life to them, creating them as a standalone life joined with the parent's life. The child is not devoid of life or incapable, but what they have was inherited.God extended his own will to us to create us. He shares the Kingdom with us. He put everything he HAS into us. He invested us with HIS POWER. His light is our light. His love and joy are shared with us. It's in us. We didn't put it there, but you sure as heck HAVE it. We are HOST TO GOD but this doesn't mean "only God exists and we do not".

God does not create weak beings who can do nothing. God creates POWERFUL beings of light. In fact, unlimited, holy beings who can do literally ANYTHING. They are fully equipped to CREATE. They are unlimited. They have been GIVEN the ABILITY to accomplish anything.

In fact, God has established his children as CO-CREATORS, which does NOT mean that God is the only one doing the creative act. It's not just God sitting there creating "through His children with His children doing nothing at all. His children MUST collaborate, MUST be included, MUST share, MUST exercise free will, and MUST CHOOSE to co-create with and like the father. BOTH of them produce creative ACTS together in collaboration.

God created the sonship, and the sonship is fully equipped with the ability to ADD TO the Kingdom. They create additional beings - "children of my will". But they create them WITH their brothers, AND with God. This doesn't mean any individual part of the Kingdom "does all the work". EVERY part of the Kingdom does all the work. Even the Holy Spirit participates in co-creation. So who gets credit? They all do.

So when we say that of ourselves we can do nothing, we have to be very careful not to imply that we do the OPPOSITE of doing something. Because it is absolutely NOT TRUE that we "do nothing" or that God is "the doer" through us, excluding us from the process. Without us God CANNOT act through us.

This is why ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin" and why "Love cannot enter where it's not welcome." YOU have to participate, not merely in an act of getting out of the way and allowing, but ACTIVELY WILLING in accord with God's will.

God has GIVEN YOU His power, making you a powerful co-creator with a powerful mind. That means there is stuff you can do. Not only is there stuff you can do, there is nothing you cannot do. You are unlimited in your power. YOUR power. But YOUR power is ALSO HIS. You don't OWN it exclusively, but you DO own it.

The point Jesus is making is not that you can't do anything or that God does everything. He's making the point that your symbiotic relationship with God means that anything you CAN do is BECAUSE you and God are working TOGETHER in unison. You are sharing in God's power. You are extending HIS love, AS your own. How could you even experience the ability to love another if you could not YOURSELF be capable of loving? YOU love others, along with God.

We need to be careful, indeed, not to believe that our power is "of ourself". This is an ego belief that everything we are and can do is because we independently have superpowers that do NOT depend on God, or that are not shared or accessible to all. It would be egoic and arrogant to claim that everything we do, we do WITHOUT God. We would be merely bragging at our prowess with our limited "skills."

This is why Jesus deferred "ownership" of miraculous acts to the Power of God through Him. But he did not mean that HE Himself had no power or did not participate or merely sat on the sideline and watched. Jesus's mind was powerful. HE was a powerful miracle worker. It's just that in terms of WHO does the act or WHO makes it possible, ownership is SHARED with God. Of Himself Jesus HAD nothing and WAS nothing. He was not OF Himself, He was an extended creation of God. But he definitely HAD power and DID acts. HIS mind was miraculous.

Here for example, Jesus explains that ownership to God does not mean "God gets all the credit and we get none". To Him, ownership is about SHARING, meaning that ALL created beings HAVE the power to USE as they see fit. And while God DOES deserve "full" credit, He is not the ONLY one who deserves credit. Omitting credit from yourself omits it from one of God's extensions, which in turn omits it from God.

"It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him."

This makes sense because anything created is FULLY given EVERYTHING that its creator has. Through extension, what is God's IS YOURS. This is YOUR INHERITANCE!!! Which means you are a divine, holy, powerful, creative being, because God has created you to be this. It's just that your power isn't yours ALONE, exclusive to you, special, different, or something that God doesn't ALSO SHARE. God has equipped and enabled to you to be miraculous WITH him.

So what we need to say more clearly perhaps is, what we have did not come from ourselves. Of (from) ourselves, we have and are nothing. There is nothing IN us that WE put there. We didn't create ourselves. God made everything that WE can do possible. God gave us the power TO perform miracles, because HE is miraculous and is involved in the miracle. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God". Yet WE are powerful miracle workers as well.

We should be very careful not to transition from the ego position of "everything I have is mine alone", to "I have and do nothing. And we should be careful not to transition from "I believe I am powerful" to "I have no power". It is in fact the EGO that thinks this way, jumping to what seem to be opposites. To go from one state of exclusivity to another, because it does not understand inclusive thinking.

It is NOT an improvement to switch from the ego position of "I exclusively have power" to "God exclusively has the power". That is NOT correct. That's an ego conclusion. God does not think this way. God thinks INCLUSIVELY. We need to transition from "I exclusively have power" to "WE SHARE ALL POWER WITH GOD."

It would be ridiculous to say Jesus, a Son of God, had NO power. Jesus was immensely powerful and strong minded with an undivided constructive will, aligned with God's will, working in unison with the Holy Spirit. His own mind was miraculous BECAUSE he shared His mind with God. It's fine to have the humility to not "claim exclusive ownership" of miracle working, but this does NOT mean Jesus himself had no power or ability.

In order for a "separate God" to work through us, and for us to be a passive conduit, which is also NOT how it works, you'd have to be NOTHING. You are not nothing. You become loving in order that love can move through you. This means still that YOU have to be loving. This is why you are NEEDED by love so that it can go out. On its own it is blocked if you do not cooperate. God sends the love, you must RELAY it by ALSO loving like and with God, amplifying the signal. Your will must ACT and be INCLUDED, FREELY.

"Miracles are expressions of love" and "All expressions of love are maximal" and "Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first" is telling us that miracle can only function "through you" with YOU being miracle minded and miraculous, by YOU entering a state of WILLING TO LOVE in a maximal and powerful way, SO THAT you are OPEN to RECEIVE love from God, acknowledge the love that is IN you because God put it there, and in turn willingly EXPRESS it as miracles. YOU have to be miraculously minded AND maximally loving in order to perform them. If YOU are not, YOU are not "doing your part", and then the miracles do not happen because "something has gone wrong" (ie you are blocking love).

We need to drop the idea that we merely "step aside". Yes we need to get our EGO out of the way, but not our SELF. We need to get our selfishness out of the way, but not our soul. We need to BE very loving in order to BE miraculous. And WE MUST have miracle mindedness in order to perform miracles. But miracle mindedness does not mean "a mind that cannot do anything." It means a mind that cannot do anything WITHOUT God, and CAN do EVERYTHING WITH God.

By being open to receive and admit and aknowledge and allow God to work THROUGH us, it does not mean that WE aren't doing something. That again is ego exclusive thinking. "God or me" is EGO thinking. "God AND me" is divine thinking. "God does it all" is TRUE, but NOT if you make that exclusive. "God does it all and no one else does anything" is an ego conclusion. You are a CO-CREATOR, not just a medium.

We need to acknowledge that we didn't give ourselves the power to heal. But we do have it, and we need to acknowledge that also. We need to admit we cannot heal WITHOUT God, but this does not mean that WE do not do anything. Our function is to SHARE in the state of power. And that means WE have to be powerful, healed, whole beings of love and light, which in their own right are very capable.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength."

"Now must you share His function" "You share His function only by judging as HE does"

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest ***THROUGH you***. ***Do His work, for you SHARE in His function.*** As your function in Heaven is creation, so ***your*** function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit ***shares His*** with you on earth."

Your function is not "be passive". It's not to "just let God work through you". God CAN'T work through you unless YOU DO SOMETHING AS WELL. Your function is to be a miracle worker, a DOER, to DO HIS work WITH Him. To SHARE His function, not to have Him do all the function. Your mind's condition is VITAL and IMPORTANT in the equation of how miracles happen. Your WILLINGNESS is absolutely required. Your power to love is mandatory. You choosing to DO miracles WITH Him makes them possible.

This is not about giving God 100% credit and giving us zero. That is false humility and false thinking. We must give God 100% credit AND give ourselves 100% credit. This flies against ego thinking. What we can do did not come from us, but we nevertheless are powerful beings. Thinking it is ours exclusively IS ego. Thinking we have NO power is ALSO ego and is NOT true humility. The children of God are not puppets. YOUR strength, shared with Him, enables miracles to happen. Miracles express from YOUR mind. YOU are the miracle worker.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." (a shared state of collaboration)

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless" (God's children have unlimited power)

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF." (Each of us HAS all of the power of heaven to use as we see fit)

"All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His." (YOU deserve glory, not just God. The ONLY problem is you claiming the glory without sharing it)

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS." (see, ALL power is yours. YOU are powerful - it's just that it's not ONLY you that's powerful)

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: ***All power is given unto you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do.***" (There is nothing YOU cannot do because all power has been GIVEN to you).

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and ***MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE*** to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and ***DO***." This means:

Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and ***DO something*** to correct it.

***The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers.***

***The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you.*** I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But ***you must be ready and willing to do*** them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability***. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE (shared function). Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

EGO: I have the power, God does nothing. I gave myself this power, it's special and exclusive.

HOLY: God and I share all power and together we can do anything. What I have God has, and we perform miracles together.

In A Course in Miracles, there is a significant theme of allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfill his function, without you interrupting it, and without you attempting to take over his role as healer and therapist. But it may not be obvious how far this goes and what this implies. So let's look at what your role in this world is supposed to be.

As an ego, you stand in the way, you direct everything, you control everything, you make all decisions on your own, you tackle all challenges alone, and you believe you have the power and capabilities to succeed independently and with no reliance on spirit. It's kind of a state of "I don't need you God, leave me alone."

In this mode, we are trying to be God. We have an authority problem. We hold life by a tight grip of attempted control and brace ourselves against difficulties believing we do not want any help.

We're unwilling to acknowledge that we might not be capable, that we are too weak, that we cannot succeed, or that we need anyone. It's an attempt to be "independent" in a separated way, attempting not to depend on God at all. It is actually a form of isolation, imprisonment, desperation and failure.

As we attempt then to become more spiritual, there will at first be a transitionary phase in which we try to keep our selfish egotism while trying to turn it into something more spiritual. This is the ego's "seeking" and not finding, which results in a spiritualized ego. The spiritualized ego is quite capable of regarding itself as a hero, a savior, a fixer, a healer, a rescuer, a saint, and exalts itself to a very high level of what it thinks of as holiness.

"All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness, in one form or another.

In this phase, the person will attempt to be the one who heals others, to be the one who has power, to be the one who can perform miracles, to be the one who still relies on themselves but with a higher demand of achievement and perfectionism. The ego self can still adopt a mode of trying to be like Jesus, but it is the trying part where it all falls down.

You might take on various healing modalities or start to tap into forms of guidance, but these will likely be limited because there is still much ego interfering. The ego still wants to be the center of attention, the doer, the one who causes the results. And in fact the ego will even use aggression, anger, forcefulness, intensity, loudness, as "tools" that it believes will cause miracles to occur. And it's fairly guaranteed that these will not work.

But it's important to try to do this, and to fail. Because in the failing you may become more willing to give up on the effort to go it alone. You will recognize what does not work. You will give up on this false hope of being a superhero, and begin to seek a deeper surrender to something larger than yourself.

As you go beyond this phase, you begin to surrender to the holy spirit, ask for help, seek guidance, and reach out beyond yourself for love, support, comfort, healing and guidance. This means a willingness to put aside your self-driven ego efforts, your "going it alone", your "being the one who does it". It means getting out of the way, not merely sitting on the sidelines but removing the ego self that would need to sit on the sidelines. It means opening up to the spirit, to the spiritual eye.

This overall entails a deepening of trust, of allowing there to be something not of you, that is there to help you. It means putting aside the idea that you will be powerful in and of yourself, and no longer being the central figure. Instead of being self-reliant, you must become willing to rely on HIM to HELP you, knowing you cannot go it alone. In a way, it's like you turn more into a medium or channel through which something "not of you", something prior to you, operates. And you want it to, and trust it to, because you know you cannot do this alone.

So what does this really mean? What is our proper role in this world? Everything points to a state in which we ourselves become an open window, a portal, a doorway, through which THE HOLY SPIRIT functions. And in this role, WE do not get to be heroes. And as this doorway, "we need do nothing" is very literal in that it applies to our own self. We no longer need to source or cause things, to be the one who does things, we merely need not interfere with WHAT HE does through us. And he WILL act through us if we will let him, which includes allowing Him to heal minds and bodies.

We're told that he will direct us everywhere we go. We're told that we will be told very specifically what to do. We're told that he will heal through us as we allow him to heal us. We're told not to place limits on what Jesus/HS can do through us. We're told that what HE allows "us" to do, ie what he does through us, is not of this world - meaning it is capable of doing things WE have no clue how to do.

We're told that WE do not understand anything, and HE knows how to heal because that is his function. We're told HE is the only therapist, not us. We're told that OF ourselves we have no power, but there is a power in us that works THROUGH us FOR us.

We're told the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of our wrong decision (all effects, symptoms, errors, manifestations, sicknesses, problems) if we will LET HIM (allow him to ACTUALLY DO IT).

We're told not to assume his function. We're told that when he heals he never fails because he knows how to succeed and cannot fail. We're told to not interfere, to not get in the way. We're told to let him literally SPEAK through our mouths to let HIM to talk others, which means literally channeling him. We're told to let HIM use our bodies, to allow our body to be a device for HIS communication and healing.

We're told to adopt His Christ Vision and to see WITH him how HE sees, so that His vision becomes shared with us - that we tune into it, but do not originate it. We're told this vision is GIVEN to us, we did not create it, so we need to accept it. Were told the atonement is GIVEN to us, and needs only our acceptance and allowance, which means we do not MAKE IT or define it.

We're told that we had everything before the separation and we must now re-receive INHERITANCE FROM GOD. What God wills that we have and be, not what we make of ourselves. We're told that we're still as God created us and that because He created us, we do not MAKE ourselves or redefine ourselves, so must stop trying to be the gatekeeper who decides what is true and false but to instead accept HIS definition of us. We're asked to make NO decisions on our own, relying heavily on guidance. The list goes on.

This all requires a laying down and surrendering of our entire ego effort for control and definition of who and what we are, what the truth is, what we have, and what God would have us do. A willingness to ACCEPT as our own, that which GOD HAS DECIDED we should have and be and share in. And to do so willingly and joyfully, knowing and trusting it is for our highest good to take on board HIS provision, decision, mind, will, power and safety. We are to EXTEND creation, we are not to invent things which are not in alignment with what God has already created.

All of this points to a clear picture that in our natural God-given state, we are not in the business of being something "of ourselves". We're not inventing or reinventing. We're not trying to make something as substitute for what God already created. We're not trying to give ourselves a function that God did not give us, some kind of heroic role that makes us look good or that we think is better than the "chore" of doing God's will "against our will".

Our only function in heaven is creation, our only function on earth is healing. We're more or less asked to completely surrender all control and resistance and unwillingness. We're asked to do GOD'S will, rather than our own separate interests. And to settle into returning to being ONLY what God has decided is true of us.

So our proper function, our natural way of being in harmony with Creation, is basically to be what God defines you to be, to act in accord with HIS will, to create WITH him, to extend FROM him, to communicate and share what HE would have us know, to perform the miracles HE directs, and to have complete total trust and dependency on him for EVERYTHING. To be in a kind of symbiotic relationship of happy dependency. "God and his miracles (you) are inseparable."

Learning to adopt this position allows you to become "a miracle worker". But not because you are a powerful independent superhero, but because you have let go and let God, you have surrendered deeply all efforts to BE God, you have given up "trying" in favor of trusting Holy Spirit's supernatural power which never fails, and you have become a conduit through which HIS POWER can move to cure all ills, solve all problems, and correct all suffering. And that means you are now allowing God to operate THROUGH you in the world.

It is humbling. We do not get to be the center of attention. We do not get to be the false savior. Our inflated spiritualized ego needs to be dissolved and replaced with SHARING. And we simply settle into being OF SERVICE to God, trusting Him in all things, doing what He bids willingly, listening to and following his instructions, and being a representative of His Will. Nor does this mean you are some kind of slave, unwilling worker, coerced victim or person who is being forced to do what they do not want to do. You must be WILLING to recognize and trust that His will is for your good.

So the question is, do you want to be on team ego, or do you want to be on the Holy Spirit's team? Are you willing to adopt HIS function, shared with him in trust, or do you want to keep being the hero of the dream? And are you willing to allow a supernatural power to move THROUGH you, in this world, to perofrm miracles which are not OF you, and which are not of this world?

Are you willing to be a FOLLOWER? A disciple? A willing participant in the great crusade and a professor of Christ?

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"ANY attempt you make to correct a brother (which includes attempting to heal him), means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

"Accept ONLY the function of healing in time, because that is what time is FOR."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true."

"the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"All miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan of God, which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone, but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy" and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."

""Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance.""

"I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I do."

"Only then will your MIND will to follow me. Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation."

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"I must found His church on you, because you, who accept me as a model, are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him."

"RELEASE yourselves to Him Whose function IS release. Do NOT assume His function FOR Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how LITTLE is your part, and how great IS HIS."

"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

"Yet what makes God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body.As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source.From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body's purpose really is; the only use there really is for it."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that he can SOMETIMES heal and SOMETIMES NOT, the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting INconsistency. He is therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict.

Can ANYTHING of God NOT be for all and always? Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."