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We are infinite beings. We are immortal. We are invulnerable. We are pure and perfect and holy. We are completely innocent. We cannot be harmed. Nothing can happen to us. We are permanent and we cannot change in any way.

So I ask you then.. how can such a being come to believe that there is, in any way, shape or form, anything that can or has happened to you that you are victim of? How is it possible that you believe you have been hurt and changed and upset by anything or anyone?

The only way for this to be possible is to NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I repeat, you are an absolutely immortal innocent permanent being that is completely invulnerable to ALL illusions and events. Literally you cannot be changed in any way whatsoever. So WHO is this 'me' that is so certain that they are so damaged and upset?

Who are you? Or rather, who, as someone who cannot be harmed, are you pretending to be? What harm are you pretending to endure? What victimhood role are you PLAYING at? What disguise are you wearing as a mask to portray yourself as not who you are?

Nothing that God created can be affected. Nothing that God created has been affected. You are created by God. Ergo, you cannot and have not been affected. Who you really are, that is.

This other self... its strange. It believes it is vulnerable to attack, being ganged up against, can be hurt, has been hurt, is weak and frail and diseased and sure to die. What a bizarre character to play the part of, given you are permanently invulnerable.

Ok so right now you are experiencing some shit. Crappy day. Noisy neighbors. Dog shitted on your grass. Something went wrong. Something broke. Someone attacked you. Whatever. Drama. All this crap is an illusion. The suggestion that it is happening to YOU is false. YOU are not even affected by this whatsoever, not even one tiny bit. How can YOU, who are created by God as perfectly joyous and happy and complete, be in any way less than totally beaming with light all the time, oblivious to and impervious to the entire ego world drama?

Our entire problem is that we believe we ARE the person who is attacked, that we CAN BE an identity other than the one that is our real identity, that we have BECOME someone who is affected and modified by all manner of fuck and shit in the world. All of this is ultimately completely impossible.

Somewhere under WHATEVER the fuck your drama is today, someone underneath MY drama today, and beyond our ridiculous made up identities - characters in a play, there is a completely healthy, absolutely immortal, totally happy, joyous vibrant loving peaceful whole complete being, to whom nothing has ever occurred and never will.

So if you can just sense that a little bit even for a moment, or even just imagine it, maybe it will frame your whole stupid drama in a different light and help you to recognize, that ALL of the ego's experiences are a complete FARCE. Even a comedy. A fiction. Happening to a fictitious character that is NOT you.

You are NOT the person who is being attacked. You are NOT the person who is vulnerable. You are NOT the person who is upset. You are NOT the person that is struggling and suffering. That's not who you are at all.

You are pure love.

What God creates must be permanent because He is permanence and can only create like Himself.

Therefore, if something is not permanent, if it changes at all in any way, if it is born or dies, or if it comes and goes, or transforms, or isn't always the same forever, then God did not create it.

Since God is reality, being the consistency and constancy needed for there to BE a "reality", some state which never wavers and is completely reliable, then anything that wavers or changes is not REAL.

Therefore, the physical world, the physical universe, everything in it, all bodies, everything you see here, and all forms of perceiving it, cannot be real.

Since what is real actually exists, permanently, and since what is unreal cannot possibly exist because it is not permanent and always changes, what changes cannot be REAL.

Therefore, because the physical universe is constantly changing, it CANNOT be real, and it MUST be an illusion. God cannot have created it, and it cannot really exist.

It is as plain and simple as this.

God is infinite. Infinite means in-finite, not finite. Finite means limitations, and limitations allow multiple possibilities. Infinity does not mean 'all possibilities'. It means all REAL possibility, but in terms of number, there is only ONE possibility. Infinity means oneness - one possibility, one reality, one way. This is how God is infinite. Infinite does not mean that God creates all kinds of forms and many multitudes of different things. God only creates ONE state of being and nothing else.

Nothing real can be threatened, because nothing unreal exists. God cannot be threatened because the physical world and all of its weapons of separation does not exist. This world is nothing but an ILLUSION that a world exists, and if you believe it and perceive it then you have fallen for the illusion and are not awake.

"There is no world." This is the central thought the course would aim to teach. - ACIM

W283L

Lesson 283 "My true Identity abides in You."

W283L1

"Father, I made an image of myself, and it is this I call the Son of God. Yet is creation as it always was, for Your creation is unchangeable. Let me not worship idols. I am he my Father loves. His holiness remains the light of Heaven and the Love of God. Is not what is beloved of You secure? Is not the light of Heaven infinite? Is not Your Son my true Identity, when You created everything that is?"

W283L2

Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us. And so we offer blessing to all things, uniting lovingly with all the world, which our forgiveness has made one with us.

T5H

Section 8 - Time and Eternity

T5H1

The CONTINUING will to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we did not emphasize the destructive results of this decision at that time. ANY decision of the mind will affect both behavior AND experience. And what you will you EXPECT. This is NOT delusional. Your mind DOES create your future, and CAN turn it back to full creation at any minute, IF IT ACCEPTS THE ATONEMENT FIRST. It will also turn back to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its thought DISORDER, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.

T5H2

God in His knowledge is not waiting. But His Kingdom IS bereft while YOU wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it IS tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than in eternity, and have therefore changed your belief in your status. But election is both free and alterable. You do NOT belong in time. Your place is ONLY in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.

T5H3

Guilt feelings are the PRESERVERS of time. They induce fears of FUTURE retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will remain like the past. This IS the ego's continuity, and gives it a false sense of security through the belief that you cannot escape from it. But you can and MUST. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you will to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for peace, viciousness for love, and pain for joy.

T5H4

My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way. And as its maker, you KNOW what it can do, because you GAVE IT the ability to do it. The mind does indeed know its power, because the mind does indeed know God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of it cannot BE lost. The mind that was in me IS in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?

T5H5

What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations are unnecessary until the first one has been made, and speaking itself was unnecessary before the ego was made. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower court's decision about the laws of this world.

T5H6

The ego's decisions are ALWAYS wrong, because they are based on a complete fallacy which they are made to uphold. NOTHING it perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the ego, because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it interprets it fearfully. Having made YOU afraid, you do not appeal to the higher court, because you believe its judgment would be AGAINST you.

T5H7

We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego's interpretations have mislead you. A favorite ego quotation is "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Another is "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord." Still another is "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and the fourth generation." And also, "The wicked shall perish." There are many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit re-interpret these in its own light, they will suffice.

T5H8

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap" merely means that what you believe to be worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy DOES make it worthy for you.

T5H9

"Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" is easily explained if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance CANNOT be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not BELONG in your mind, which is part of God.

T5H10

"I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt to guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all it really means is that the Holy Spirit in later generations retains the power to interpret CORRECTLY what former generations have thought, and thus release THEIR thoughts from the ability to produce fear ANYWHERE in the Sonship.

T5H11

"The wicked shall perish" is merely a statement of fact, if the word "perish" is properly understood. Every loveless thought MUST be undone, and even the word "undone" is fearful to the ego, which interprets "I am undone" as "I am destroyed." The ego will NOT be destroyed, because it is part of YOUR thought. But because it is uncreative, and therefore unsharing, it WILL be re-interpreted entirely, to release you from fear.

T5H12

The part of your thought which you have given TO the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay. It does NOT involve the concept of police at all, although the ego welcomes that interpretation. You CAN delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you CANNOT introduce the concept of ASSAULT into it.

T5H13

When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share this light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that we said "Do not look there." It is still true that "Where you look to find yourself is up to you." The Higher Court will not condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can BE no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself.

T5H14

Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him, and therefore speaks truly. It WILL dismiss the case against you, however carefully YOU have built it. The case may be fool-proof, but it is NOT God-proof. The voice for God will not hear it at all, because it can only witness truly. Its verdict will always be "Thine is the Kingdom," because it was given you to remind you of what you ARE.

T5H15

Your patience with each other is your patience with your selves. Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience, because my will IS that of our Father, from whom I learned of infinite patience. His voice was in me, as it is in you, speaking for patience toward the Sonship, in the name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience CAN produce immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite Love, and by producing results NOW renders time unnecessary.

T5H16

To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return YOU to eternity and remain to bless YOUR creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is so truly blessed. And because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.

W233L

Lesson 233 "I give my life to God to run today."

W233L1

"Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. Be You the Guide, and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite, nor Love Whose tenderness I cannot comprehend, but which is yet Your perfect gift to me."

W233L2

Today we have one Guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all. This is His day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us.

The body is a separation device. It was made to section off and fence in a SMALL PORTION of mind, which seems then to find itself housed "inside" the body, while the larger portion of mind appears to be "separated off" or unconscious, outside the body. The sense of being isolated, separated, limited, partial, not whole, thus belongs to the "inside the body" experience, which is an experience of being only PART of yourself. To return to wholeness you have to thus transcend the body, erase the body, have no separation devices in the mind, and therefore collapse the gap between the outer and inner. The body symbolizes the split in the mind and once the split is erased the body is erased.

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

Since the body itself is a separation device BETWEEN parts of mind, designed to keep one part of mind sectioned off from the other part, it can only seem to EXIST at all while there is a sense of separation. If the mind is split, the split shows up as a body coming between "you" (within the body) and the rest of you (outside the body, in others). The body is thus a symbol of separation in the mind, and when the mind does not have separation in it there cannot be a body at all.

This is why God cannot enter a body, because that's like saying you can keep a separation device, something which sections off inner and outer, and keeps them apart. It's like saying the whole of God which is everywhere (within and without) can be stuffed inside a container which is less than everywhere, and all of God can thus be housed inside a box and be ABSENT from the outside. This is utterly impossible because God is unlimited and infinite and all encompassing.

Thus God, all of God, cannot enter a body or dwell in a body entirely. Nor can you, who find yourself to "be in a body" or rather, who have a split mind which shows up AS a body coming between you and the rest of you, join with God fully while maintaining a body. The body can only be there IF there is separation in the mind. If the mind has NO belief in separation it utterly not only transcends the body but ERASES the body. There can be no body at all without a belief in separation. Total wholeness wipes the body away completely. Meaning that to truly be whole you cannot be inside a body. And you therefore cannot fully MEET, join, be one with all of God, while there is a body present. You have to leave the realm of bodies entirely to be infinite and unlimited.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although ***what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.***"

This is similarly why you cannot be Christ in a body, IMO. Christ is similarly unlimited and whole and infinite. Just as is your soul. Your soul cannot enter a body either. "The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you who are life." Christ cannot directly in a first-person way be CONFINED in a body or sectioned off and found to be isolated to one place and not another. However, I believe ACIM is saying that you can "channel" Christ in a body, to some extent. You can be close to Christ and you can extend His love and miracles, but it's like he is working "through you" once removed, not directly.

I don't think Jesus was thus "Christ in a body" because if Christ could be in a body, fully, with no limitation at all, bodies could coexist with Christ and be his equal, and bodies would then have to exist in heaven as creations. Christ is unlimited, infinite, everywhere, and bigger than the universe. In ACIM Jesus lets us know that he "was a man who remembered his soul" and he remembered it in the atonement and ascension to heaven. And prior to that, he still had some trials and lessons, not least of which was the crucifixion. He BECAME identified fully with Christ, but not until getting out of here.

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body’s nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

Actually think about why this makes sense. God is infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, He exists in a totally expanded abstract state in which He is everywhere. Totally spread out to infinity. He is not localized anywhere. There is no way that God can be "only" in one location, and not another.

The idea of a body, is the idea in SPACE and TIME to being spatially and temporarily separated out from the whole. It's the idea of limitation, confinement, imprisonment. "The body is a device for separation". The body was made to represent the idea that you are NOT everywhere, and therefore your mind is trapped in your brain. That you are "located" inside the body, not outside the body.

God, however, who is everywhere, cannot be squeezed down and inserted into the insides of a body, in exclusion of being also outside of the body. He cannot separate off a part of himself and put it "into" a body separately from being outside the body or in all other bodies also. Being everywhere means NOT being in any specific location to the exclusion of any others. Nor does that mean he is in all bodies. He cannot be in ANY bodies.

"God cannot enter a body"

Similarly, you who are trying to be One with God, to experience God, to express God, so long as you confine yourself to a body, limit your awareness to only the body's senses, regard yourself as being "in" or "having" a specific body, or in any way are not experiencing yourself as being infinite, unlimited, larger than the universe, all-expansive, all-encompassing and omnipresent, you are NOT experiencing the fullness of what you are.

And the fact is that God is not going to ever narrow himself down and put himself into a body. He remains in an expanded, abstract state at all times. The only way for you to MEET him and to be in total communion with Him, is to expand your self, expand your awareness, to go beyond the size of the universe, to infinity, to such an extent that you become just as ever-present and transcendent of space, place, location, or time, that you exist EVERYWHERE with Him.

That is the only way that you can be One with God. That is the only way that you can commune with Him, join with Him, be IN him, and experience Heaven. You literally cannot do that by being in ANY WAY limited, in any way less than WHOLE, in any way smaller than the entire magnitude of infinite creation. You are vast, unlimited, and only complete when you are EVERYWHERE. Not confined to your little body, not confined to only one body, not confined to ANY bodies. Larger than the planet. Larger than the solar system. Larger than the galaxy. Aware of EVERYWHERE simultaneously. That is who you are.

So I hear some people saying, believing, thinking, interpreting, that they are having experiences of being one with God in a body, being awake in a body, experiencing the fullness of God in a body. They are mistaken. It is literally impossible to have a FULL complete total experience of God while maintaining the body. Because the body is localization. It is limitation. You cannot keep localization and be infinite and unlimited. You cannot be finite and specific and located in space or time and be simultaneously infinitely abstract.

"The body cannot stay without illusions." "The body cannot remain." "To be WITHOUT a body is to be in your natural state." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "You are not a body." "The body is a limit."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

You can approach God, you can get closer to God, you can feel the warmth of the light, you can radiate love and joy into the world as though joined with God, but you cannot FULLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY immerse yourself in God while maintaining isolation, localization, temporal separation in one moment of time. To be eternal is transcendent of time and space. It means you not only exist EVERYWHERE you also exist EVERYWHEN. You exist in and beyond all moments of time. It makes you a time traveler, transcendent of the temporal order, not merely "I'm in 2019".

Do you really how VAST you are? Do you realize how VAST God is? How totally utterly unlimited? Then look at the body, look at how it IS a limitation, and that having one, using one, seeing one, or believing one exists at all, is causing you to NOT BE WITH GOD.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"God did not create the body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

You HAVE TO LEAVE THE BODY to be with God. You have to leave the body entirely, permanently, never again to need a body EVER. You have to overcome reincarnation. You have to overcome death. You have to overcome the NEED to be in a body AT ALL, if you want to be with God. You cannot KEEP the body and maintain that kind of abstract infinite knowledge. "You cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." You cannot STAY HERE in this fictional world, and be totally joined with God. You can perceive him perhaps, you can see him perhaps, you can love with him perhaps, but you cannot be ONE with Him in a body.

Is Jesus in a body? Nope. I rest my case.

Everything in this world is little, because it is made out of littleness. Littleness is the opposite of magnitude. You, who are created by God in His likeness, are magnificent in that you are infinite and unlimited and everywhere. To contrast that against being VERY SMALL, being little is the antithesis to Heaven.

This entire world therefore was made FROM the idea of being very small, little, confined, limited and isolated. This is why the "building blocks" of matter, particles and such, as so extremely tiny. They are the idea of the total extreme of being as little as possible, in OPPOSITION to the nature of Heaven, where everything is infinite. You made a world on the FOUNDATION of the idea of being as small as possible!

Human bodies, as large as they seem to be, are still extremely little, in contrast to the universe and to spirit. You might think therefore you are just this "little" person on a huge planet. This could not be further from the truth and is TOTALLY backwards, in defiance of God's will. You are gloriously magnificently massive, and this "bleak little world" is absolutely TINY in comparison to what you are. This is why "the body cannot contain you who are love." To remain in a little tiny body, confined to it, when you could spread your wings and envelop all of Creation, is a condemnation of what you are.

"T-15.III.1. Be not content with littleness. 2 But be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never be content with it. 3 Littleness is the offering you give yourself. 4 You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it. 5 Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you. 6 When you strive for anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. 7 Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. 8 You will always choose one at the expense of the other."

Also, in this world, things which are truly small are blown way out of proportion, and things which are large are made to look tiny. This world is a REVERSAL of the laws of God and the nature of Heaven. You who seem tiny, are really huge. What seems huge - this world, is really nothing.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is FREELY GIVEN."

God has unlimited presence and enjoys complete freedom.

God is creative.

God creates in his own likeness.

Therefore God creates things like himself, which are also free. If God has a son, His son MUST have permanent freedom. This "freedom to be free" is a "natural division". It is not separation.

In order for God to give his creative ability to His creation, which he shares with His creation fully, he HAS to give His creation freedom.

That freedom automatically means, his creation is FREE to will on its own.

That freedom also automatically means, the creation’s freedom is never REVOKED by God, nor is it possible for that freedom to be lost. God guarantees it because God’s creative expression which creates the son is CONTINUOUS and permanent.

Therefore the creation (son) has permanent freedom.

This makes it impossible for the son to "become God".

If the Son were to become God in the literal sense of "oneness" as it’s usually understood, it would ALSO mean the son can ACTUALLY develop the authority problem in reality. That he can replace God with HIMSELF.

This is never possible because God has permanence and permanent freedom, and so does the son.

The son’s permanent freedom, free will, will never be undone by God. It makes it impossible for the son to become "uncreated". For him to be literally "one" with God, as in, there is only God, would UNCREATE Him. This is impossible.

The son(s) of God we’re FREELY GIVEN. And freedom was given TO them. And they are free. In this sense only, they are "free of God", so to speak. But in their freedom and joy, they subsequently SHARE everything they are, lovingly, with God.

Oneness then does not mean one big mushy blob of a single identity and no parts. A Course in Miracles is not non-duality or pure non-duality. God DID CREATE many sons each with free will. His freedom is his Gift, from God, and to his own creations.

There is nothing unnatural about many "free" beings being free together, but sharing a love so deep and full that it seems almost as if they are "one". Sharing can be extremely maximal, to the point where only the "free will" itself seems to stand between them. The soul. And souls are permanent.

The son only figuratively disappears into the father because he cannot stop being free. Yet the unity between Father and Son is so great, essentially nothing can come between them other than the honoring of that freedom. Freedom does not mean separation. Especially given the Son lovingly wills to share his love and joy as fully as possible with the father and with all other creations.

The people who are touting "oneness" and non-duality as the core truth of ACIM, are not acknowledging that God - the infinite - has FREEDOM. And because it is infinite, there are no limits, meaning it is natural for infinity to "expand" permanently and unlimitedly, which is "Creation". And infinity must also mean sharing beacuse sharing means unlimited giving and unlimited receiving. And therefore God is both creative and free and creates freedom.

ARTICLE:

You are free

You have free will. "All loving creation is freely given." God has given you freedom. You can choose. There was nothing to really choose "between" in reality, until you dreamed of an alternative.

God did not stop you from dreaming. He didn’t frown at you. He didn’t judge you. He didn’t tell you you were wrong, sinful, and shouldn’t be doing it. He allowed you to.

You are free. You can stay in illusions as long as you like. Or you can wake up. "God does not coerce". ACIM speaks of the fallen angels... "they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." God isn’t even stopping them or judging them for wanting to not be with him.

In fact, God doesn’t even have an ounce of "shoulding" you. You are completely free. If you don’t want something, you don’t have to have it. If you want it, its yours. God isn’t pressuring you to wake up.

Your will is free. You have to WILLINGLY WANT to awaken in order to do so. No one comes to the atonement except willingly. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

God is merely asking, do you want to come home now? If you say no, then so be it. God isn’t mad. He has INFINITE patience because he KNOWS, that at some point, you WILL willingly return. It is inevitable because no one can tolerate hell forever. Everyone at some point seeks for a better way.

God’s door is open. You are welcome, to come and go. God knows its in your best interests, for your happiness and peace, to return to Him. But if you say, I don’t want happiness and peace, I want to suffer, that is allowed.

If you are for example between lives, and you approach God, and take an honest look at what you learned in your life and what you now believe, it may be revealed that you *actually* want to still be in a body. And so be it. If it is actually true that you want to stay with God, then so be it. Nothing is keeping you in a body any more than anything is keeping you from being with God. It’s up to you.

You are where you are because you want to be. You could keep going through 1000 lifetimes still not really wanting to awaken. God asks, are you ready now? You answer, no... and off you go on another adventure trying to find yourself.

There is no guilt involved. God is not judging you. He respects the TOTAL freedom that He has given you. He will not condemn you for not wanting Him. He Loves you. This is why you need to have a little willingness, and eventually total willingness. You need to be sure that Heaven is what you want, above all else.

God, Holy Spirit and Jesus all have infinite patience for your process. Whatever you want to do, you are free to do it. But you must also accept the consequences of your choice. Whatever you want, you receive. Nothing happens against your will. This is the key both to causing your own suffering, and finding salvation. Accepting this freedom and using it to choose Heaven, takes you home.

"My self is ruler of the universe."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains." UrT2E10

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power." UrT21D3

This is literal. Your mind, has the power, to move an entire physical mountain, from one location to another.

BEFORE DENYING THIS OR WRITING IT OFF ..... look at where your skepticism is coming from. Try to be open minded.

The mind is EXTREMELY POWERFUL.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. " URT2E8

Not only can you move a mountain, you can invent entire worlds.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free." UrT9K9

Your mind has the power to CREATE WORLDS!

In fact, your mind ... YOUR mind .... made this entire universe of space and time and all the galaxies.

That is how powerful your mind is. And this is a small feat for such an INFINITE UNLIMITED POWER.

Because you have the power of God in you.

"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do." UrW38L1

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. " UrT14F7

If the POWER OF GOD, which is unlimited, engenders MIRACLES .... then surely MIRACLES (real ones) MUST be POWERFUL ACTS! A shift in perception is not a demonstration of INIFNITE POWER.

"The power of God IS limitless." UrT14F7

You, have a power in you, which is limiteless, infinite, without measure, so vast and so incredible, that it is capable of creating entire kingdoms. "I have a kingdom I must rule." UrW236L1

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created. It has not ceased to create because your ego has set you on the road of perception." UrT4D3

You are an incredible powerful being, and the idea of you healing the sick and raising the dead IS A SMALL FEAT for the power that you have in you. It is the power OF God, but it is also given TO YOU TO USE, and IT IS YOURS, beause you SHARE IT with God.

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power." UrM30A4

Why aren't people USING INFINITE POWER? Why are people profoundly skeptical of miracles that can MOVE MOUNTAINS, raise the dead, end physical suffering and heal minds?

"You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE." UrT14G1

Just because your power is obscured does not mean you do not have it. And the goal here is to uncover and remember and re-access this power so that you can WORK MIRACLES WITH IT.

Because real miracle working - which CAN cause the moving of physical mountains - FOR WHATEVER REASON .... and not knowing the "purpose or sense" as to WHY you would do this is NOT an excuse for writing it off and rendering the power inept ..... is perfectly capable of wielding the unlimited power of God which has been GIVEN YOU in order to GIVE YOU THE POWER to work miracles. Not merely the power to "change your mind a bit" which is a TINY change.

"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. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose." UrT1B23K

Notice that it says that you have a POWER to work miracles. This is not "the power to shift a perception" or "the power to only fix your mind" or "the power to change your thinking a bit". It is a POWER. A power which is potentailly unlimited and vast and unstoppable and capable of having dominion over the entire universe. Especially given that...

"My Self is ruler of the universe." --- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253

What happens is what you desire? You desire someone's arm to be healed? It's done. You deesire a mountain to be moved to another location? It is done. You desire to raise the dead or walk on water? It is done. UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are meant to be becoming EMPOWERED PEOPLE, as miracle workers, as children of God, beings with the power of God in us, a power so vast that it can create entire worlds, create living beings, can stop floods, can end wars, can do ANYTHING AT ALL.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it." UrW38L5

We are playing at being small and little, helpless victims, powerless little self-helpers, studying in a nice quiet corner, disturbing no-one, doing nothing, having no CAUSATION, demonstrating nothing, having no proof of the power of God, no evidenec that the Holy Spirit is working through us, nice and queit and safe and tidy. Where is the POWER? Where are the REAL MIRACLES? We are better than this, bigger than this, mightier than this. We are sons of God!

"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." UrT11h4

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made." UrT28C11

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. " UrT6F9

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is." UrT11H3

W320W11

Question 11 - What is Creation?

W320W111

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done.

W320W112

God's Thoughts are given all the power that Their own Creator has. For He would add to Love by Its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed to be forever one will still be one when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.

W320W113

Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness.

W320W114

We are Creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.

W320W115

Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His own creation shares; Whose holiness is still a part of us.

W58L

Lesson 58 These ideas are for review today: (36-40)

W58L1

36) "My holiness envelops everything I see."

From my holiness does the perception of the real world come. Having forgiven, I no longer see myself as guilty. I can accept the innocence that is the truth about me. Seen through understanding eyes the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself.

W58L2

37) "My holiness blesses the world."

The perception of my holiness does not bless me alone. Everyone and everything I see in it's light shares in the joy it brings to me. There is nothing that is apart from this joy, because there is nothing that does not share my holiness. As I recognize my holiness, so does the holiness of the world shine forth for everyone to see.

W58L3

38) "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save. What is there to be saved from except illusions? And what are all illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me. In the presence of my holiness, which I share with God Himself, all idols vanish.

W58L4

39) "My holiness is my salvation."

Since my holiness saves me from all guilt, recognizing my holiness is recognizing my salvation. It is also recognizing the salvation of the world. Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid. And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world.

W58L5

40) "I am blessed as a Son of God."

Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son.

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Question 12 - What is the Ego?

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

W330W122

The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it "sees" the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its enemies who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them.

W330W123

The Son of God is egoless. What can he know of madness and the death of God, when he abides in Him? What can he know of sorrow and of suffering, when he lives in eternal joy? What can he know of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack, when all there is surrounding him is everlasting peace, forever conflict-free and undisturbed, in deepest silence and tranquility?

W330W124

To know Reality is not to know the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. In suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare its feast of death.

W330W125

Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself. And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His Son, His dwelling-place, His joy, His love, completely His, completely one with Him.

God has created you as an infinite, immortal soul, who is perfectly complete and lacking nothing.

There is nothing that you need to add to yourself to improve yourself or to make yourself in any way better than God created.

You are lacking nothing at all. You are perfect.

God created you as a beautiful soul filled with love and joy and perfectly creative. Fully equipped to exist in Heaven and to extend love forever. You need nothing else.

When Jesus says "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else." he is talking about the fact that He is simply being ONLY the Self that God created. He has not added anything or taken anything away. He is being his normal, natural God-created self.

This perfect self is hiding underneath every idea of imperfection, lack, separation, limitation and death. God already has created you with perfection, to be perfect, forever. You are flawless.

And since you are created from creativity and from love, you are endowed with creativity and love. You are permanently miraculous. There is nothing that you cannot create with the power of the mind, in accordance with God's will, to increase the Kingdom.

Somewhere inside you, you know this. There is a place in which your soul is already within you, perfectly holy, undefiled, unchanged, unaffected, perfectly sane, happy and at peace. It's already there. God creates only permanent creations which cannot change.

Your soul is divine, forever. "Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

This world only exists within the space-time belief. Space time IS a belief, and it is a false belief. All beliefs will end. Earth cannot exist without space or time. Spacetime is what holds it apart from itself and animates it. When there is no space - as in infinite reality/heaven, and there is no time, as in eternity, there can be no Earth! Unless you prefer your planet to be like a bowl of cosmic soup. ;-) Anything based on spacetime (such as planets, starts, etc) DOES NOT EXIST.

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."

God created you by using his infinite power, and you therefore inherited his infinite power. And that means you are infinitely powerful. You have the power of God in you, and there is nothing the power of God cannot do.

Having power means that you can CAUSE things to happen. You can create life. It means there's an expression of a kind of "force" that comes out of you which is so strong that it can cause anything to occur.

This in turn means that you are not something that is just passive. You are not some observer or some fence-sitting person that just watches stuff. The idea of the mind being passive was the state of consciousness produces by the first split in the mind at the separation from God. It made the mind a perceiver, as though things happen to it and tell it what exists, rather than as a creator which simply chooses and causes what to exist and puts it in place. What you say goes, and no thing else goes.

"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."

The truth though is that you are not a perceiver, you are a knower. And knowledge is power. You do not need senses to sense the world and report back what they find, as though you do not know anything at all and have to wait to be told. Instead, you are the cause of what exists, you put it in place, you will it with your mind, with the power of God that you share.

You should think of yourself as an extremely powerful, causal, creative force, which has the power to create entire worlds through will alone. You mis-created space and time, and the planets, and the bodies.

There are no neutral thoughts. Your thoughts have power to produce effects. You are not alone in experiencing the effects of your thoughts. Your mind has the power of God in it that can part oceans, raise the dead, heal the sick, convert objects, move planets, without limit.

The course is geared towards you learning to take back your power, and to reclaim your inheritance from God, which includes the power of God. This means regaining the ability to do anything through your holiness. You should think of yourself as a powerful causal being, so strong (God is your strength) such that things only come out of you, they do not come into you from the outside. You are cause, not effect.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. --- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and FROM God, and therefore God-like."

"Therefore, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled."

"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."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"God is my strength."

"Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

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

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself"

There's a bizarre contrast between the absolute unchangeability of your real self, versus this entire realm of spacetime and matter in which everything seems to change.

Given you are completely changeless, permanent, eternal, always and forever, it is starkly UNBELIEVABLE how the world of change has absolutely NO EFFECT on you at all.

It's like, there you are this completely fixed motionless immovable mountain that is absolute and permanent and infinite in its consistency. And there's this entire world of changes, transitions, alterations, adjustments, modifications, things causing other things, and NOT ONE SINGLE SPECK can even come close to touching you or affecting you.

So that means that everything in this entire world that CHANGES, which is all of it, is LYING TO YOU when it says that it IS changing something real. You are real, it is not changing you at all.

This means we are faced with a "world of change", maximum change, and yet for all that changes NOT ONE SINGLE THING about you changes. So every single "change" that the world appears to undergo, that seems like an ACTUAL change, is NOT a change at all.

So here we have a world which is entirely made up of comings and goings, beginnings and endings, changes and transformations, everything becoming something else, and all of this is a LIE, suggesting that massive change is happening to reality, when in fact NO CHANGE AT ALL is taking place.

Not one single change in the world has any power whatsoever to cause a change in ANYTHING real. The weather, the natural disasters, the armies, the tides, the seasons, the environments, the temperatures, the erosion and destruction, the murder and death, NOT ONE SINGLE PART OF IT CHANGES YOU.

Every single thing in this entire "universe" is FAKE CHANGE. Fake news. Utterly an ILLUSION of change, appearing to be a change, when in fact it is ABSOLUTELY NOT CHANGING ANYTHING.

When you contrast the sheer degree to which this world seems to suggest that change is absolutely normal and maximal and everywhere, against the fact that nothing real EVER CHANGES, it becomes clearer just how much of an illusory dream this world is. How FALSE it is, how much of a LIE and DECEPTION it is. Nothing happening here does anything whatsoever to anything in reality.

Change is in fact IMPOSSIBLE. What God creates can never change. God never changes his mind. Creations never stop being creations. There is no suffering or sickness or death. There are no beginnings or endings. There is no growth or decay or maturation or degradation. There is no destruction or dismantling or starting over. There is no sickness or malfunction or damage or hurt. There is no dying and no death.

Not one single thing in the entire seeming history of space and time has EVER DONE ANYTHING AT ALL. And YOU have never been altered even slightly by a single part of it. You stand like a beacon of infinite power and light and truth and certainty in the midst of the deceptive waters of spacetime, and nothing happens to you.

"(mind) .. it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere." UrW167L9

"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes." UrP3B2

"For this one thought would be enough to save you and the world, if you believed that it is true. Its truth would mean that you have made no changes in yourself which have reality, nor changed the universe so that what God created was replaced by fear and evil, misery and death. If you remain as God created you, fear has no meaning, evil is not real, and misery and death do not exist." UrW110L1 (I am as God created me)

"Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes which you think are part of human destiny." UrW127L6

"God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him." UrT24G3

"Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge." UrT26H2

"The shifts and change are what the dream is made of." UrS3D2

"Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur." UrT17C4

"dreams are what they are BECAUSE of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become PERFECTLY apparent that they had no effect on reality at all, AND DID NOT CHANGE IT." UrT17A1

"All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust." UrW189L9

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change." UrT30I1

"But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about." UrM2A4

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found." UrT29F7

"Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a change toward HEALING the separation. They ALWAYS perceive it as a change for further separation, because separation WAS their first experience of change." UrT4B6

I would like to propose that TRUE miracle working entails the USE OF the POWER OF GOD. And nothing less than total absolute unlimited power!!!!!!!!!!

A miracle is thus not a mere small shift in a perception, or a slight change of mind. True miracle working is GOD'S POWER working through you.

God's power is unlimited. It is an absolutely massive strength so strong and so intense that it can EASILY do anything at all - even move a mountain, part an ocean, calm a storm, create a world.

Intense absolute unlimited infinite power ENGENDERS miracles.

If you read carefully you will find the course is very obvious about this. Quotes are below. Miracles entail the use of the power of God. The power of God and not of you engenders them. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. NOTHING. Because the power of God is in it, and his power is UNLIMITED POWER.

This is something SORELY missing from so much ACIM teaching and teachers and views of the course and interpretations of what a miracle is. True undiluted miracles wield the absolutely unlimited and unstoppable POWER OF GOD.

This power can heal the sick, it can reverse death, it can move mountains, it can convert objects into other objects, it can multiply food, it can calm storms, it can create entire worlds. It its the true power of your mind which can DO ANYTHING.

We are SO used to seeing ourselves as small little tiny little humans, powerless little victim humans, weak and afraid and vulnerable little specks of nothing. Such that we are extremely OUT OF TOUCH with the power of God. But A Course in Miracles is actually teaching us to get back in touch with that power and to facilitate the power of God to move through you.

I have experienced once, so far, the immense enormity of this power, and it DID produce an instantaneous healing miracle including a total reversal of all symptoms in the body and a healing of the mind so strong that the person forgot they were ever even in pain. This power is immense, and you COULD be intimidated by it. We ARE afraid of it. It is the power of God. And until we can stop being afraid that God is so incredible powerful, we will not be able to work with this power or do the holy spirit's works.

Miracles VIOLATE THE LAWS OF SPACE AND TIME and break ALL THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. This is not just about your mind or you waking up or you shifting perception. There is nothing your holiness cannot **DO**. There is nothing the POWER OF GOD cannot **DO**!!!!!!!!!

We must stop talking about miracles like they are these powerless little shifts and changes in the mind. There is a reason that Jesus talks over and over again about how they use the POWER OF GOD. There is no "power" in changing your mind a bit or being a bit more loving. You have to think more in terms of an absolute infinite immoveable force SO strong that nothing in all the universe can move against it. That is God's power.

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the ***power of thought***, and real avoidance of miscreation." UrT2E18

""It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them." UrT2E10

"The ***power of God***, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE ***the power of God*** in you." UrT14F7

"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." UrT1B23K

"***Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest.*** Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is ***nothing the power of God cannot do.***" UrW38L1

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because ***the power of God lies in it.***" URW38L5

"It is therefore ***in my power to change every mind*** along with mine, for ***mine is the power of God***." UrW54L4

"Then ***let the power of God work in you and through you***, that His Will and yours may be done." URW69L7

"It is only your weakness that will depart from you in this practice, for it is ***the practice of the power of God in you.***" UrT15C7

"There is now ***no limit on his power***, because it is the Power of God." UrM24A2

"***The power of God***, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is His." UrT14G15

"Behind the dark doors which you have closed lies nothing, BECAUSE nothing CAN obscure ***the gift of God***. It is the CLOSING of the doors, that interferes with recognition of the ***power of God*** that shines in you." UrT14D10

"Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say ***who can be healed of what***, and what must remain beyond ***God's power to forgive***?" UrM23A7

"***The power of God***, and all His Love, without limit, will support you, as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love." UrT16H10

"***The power of God* will support every effort you make on behalf of the magnitude of His dear Son." UrT15D5

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for ***miracles violate every law of reality***, as this world judges it. ***Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended***, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is." UrT11H3

"I could not atone for MYSELF ALONE. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show YOUR BROTHER anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. NO MIND (implying there are many) holds anything but Him (therefore he created many minds)."

"Miracles make MINDS one in God. They depend on cooperation because the SONSHIP is the SUM OF ALL THAT GOD CREATED. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"God speaks for you in answering your question with these words: I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and ALL THE MINDS WHICH GOD CREATED ONE WITH ME"

"ONE CHILD OF GOD (implying there are many) is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach ANOTHER (there are many!). One Teacher is in ALL YOUR MINDS, and He teaches the same lesson TO ALL. He always teaches you (one such mind) the inestimable worth of EVERY SON OF GOD, teaching it with infinite patience born of the infinite love for which he speaks."

"The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return which God blessed THE MINDS OF HIS SEPARATED SONS. This is the vocation of the mind."

"Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this INTO THE MINDS WHICH YOU CREATED AND WHICH YOU LOVE. Amen."

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I don't know about you guys-n-gals but it sounds to me very clearly that there are MULTIPLE SONS and MULTIPLE MINDS. And that the presence of multiple minds is completely natural and normal because God CREATED THEM. Therefore EACH ONE has its "own mind". Each mind may well be "one" or in harmony with other minds, but there are still many minds, and each still has its own potential to choose whether to do God's will or not.

This is why some parts of the Course refer on ONE LEVEL to the ONE SON OF GOD, and on another level to the MANY INDIVIDUAL SONS (or souls).

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References to BROTHERS who are one with God:

"You are afraid of God because you fear your BROTHER. This BROTHER who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger."

"Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only BROTHER to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a BROTHER he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."

"To know your BROTHER is to know God."

"Miracles unite you directly with your BROTHER."

"One moment of real recognition makes everyone your BROTHER."

"Any BROTHER with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate."

"Don't deny yourself the message of relief that every BROTHER offers you now."

"It is not up to you to change your BROTHER, but merely to accept him as he is."

"In your BROTHER is the light. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you."

"The miracle enables you to see your BROTHER without his past, and so perceive him as born again."

"Your BROTHER does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for the miracle to occur."

"What you acknowledge in your BROTHER you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen."

"The miracle acknowledges everyone as your BROTHER and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God."

"Because the miracle worker has heard God's Voice, he strengthens It in a sick BROTHER by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share." (again confirmation that your brother can refuse healing even if you are healed)

"Where there is love, your BROTHER must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are." (similarly again, you give love to those who lack it)

"How willing are you to forgive your BROTHER? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form."

"Trials are but lessons you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one. In every difficulty Christ calls to you and gently says, My BROTHER, choose again."

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your BROTHER when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. There are no strangers in God's creation."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your BROTHER did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is the will of God."

"Not one does Christ forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you. But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his BROTHER is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come."

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It seems to me what the One Son of God, as Christ, is considered a BROTHER to the MANY SONS, who were also created (souls?) as extensions of him/god, ... and that at times the course refers to them on an equal footing because they are made of God-stuff equally, even though Christ appears to be a "larger" identity than the individual sons. But Christ+the individual sons make up "the sonship". So the sonship is not just the individual sons, it also includes the one son, and all are considered equal brothers in that sonship.

If you are not being absolutely immortal, then you are trying to be a victim. Victims are not just those who seem to be overtly attacked by another. Victims are those who believe they can be CHANGED AT ALL BY ANYTHING.

There is a wide range of victimhood, or what you might call "victim consciousness", from mild to extreme. But everyone's doing it. We're all trying to make out that we're something that can be affected. That we can be hurt or suffer, made to feel something, caused against our will, converted and transformed and modified by the world.

The bizarre but factual truth is that the world does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to you. It is not the cause of you, God is. There is not a single speck of anything in the whole of spacetime that has ANY ability to change what you really are at all. You are changeless and eternal and you do not have the ability to change.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." UrM6C3

We all entered into a grand charade of pretending we can die. Pretending we can be mortal, that we can suffer, that stuff can happen to us, that we can be affected and changed. Even that we can change ourselves against God's will. None of this is true.

"You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation, weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of your self; a self divided into many warring parts, separated from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray." UrW95L2

"You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you." UrT22G11 You cannot change what is permanently changeless, but you can BELIEVE you can. This belief is a mistake and a lie. Everyone who believes they can be victimised, attacked, hurt, damaged, destroyed, is lying. Anyone who feels they are suffering or weak or threatened or afraid are lying. Anyone who claims that someone did something to them is lying.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9

This can be a harsh truth especially when it seems so real and convincing, especially when some other body comes along and performs a physical abuse or harm upon your body or feelings. Especially when it seems to blatantly obvious that someone "not myself" is wholly responsible for "causing changes in me."

And we've all been through shit. We've all experienced what we call suffering. We've all had pains and hurts, sicknesses. We've all died many times over. We've all gone through every form of misery possible and every form of unhappiness and every kind of horrendous nightmare. And even in spite all of it, NOT ONE SINGLE BIT OF IT IS TRUE.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8

We CANNOT be victimised or attacked or hurt or damaged or threatened or changed at all. God who is immortal maintains us forever in his mind by his infinite immortal will to be immortal beings forever. We are absolutely incapable of change or of being change or of changing anything. There is NO CHANGE in reality.

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently." UrT10D1

We must remind ourselves frequently when tempted to believe we have BEEN changed, or CAN change, that we HAVE NOT done this. IF we believe we have done this, we will believe we have sinned and are guilty, deserving more fake punishment. We cannot BE punished. We cannot become guilt, or turn into evil, or transform into the anti-christ.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. " UrW152L1

Beyond all lies and all deception and all fake suffering and all pain and sickness and all death, beyond space and time, we are all absolutely infinite beings that are so absolute and so always the same forever that we have not even BEGUN to change into anything else.

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5

All that's happened is we have gone into DENIAL about our permanent reality, our permanent perfection, our permanent Christhood. And have PRETENDED to be something that changes. We have damaged the body, damaged the emotions, damaged the thinking, but we have not damaged the soul. What we are can never be changed.

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One." UrT29G1

All that's required then in awakening to the truth is to ACCEPT THE TRUTH, that nothing has EVER happened to us, nothing CAN happen to us, and there is not even a world that could be accused of doing such in the first place. Attack does not exist. There is no pain or suffering or sickness or death. We are the sons of God and we are free from suffering forever.

"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear. UrM29A4

Ego is a narrowing and an excluding of wholeness. We began in wholeness, into which a tiny mad idea of "not whole" was thought. An idea of limitation or something less than whole - as if lacking something.

In order to be not whole, some part of the whole has to be excluded. This introduced the idea of exclusion or exclusivity into what was originally entirely inclusive. And this also means a sense of being excluded from or separate from God and each other.

This is the idea that something can apply to you alone, and not apply to others equally. And so was the beginning of inequality. When things are not equal, unconditionality is lost and we now have conflict, and ideas of better than or less than.

It was actually a request to God that you be treated differently and in a special way, compared to others. As though having special favour with God, being more important than your brothers.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son." UrT12C11

Entering into this idea of "not whole" is entirely ego. It's a whole different kind of "thought system" or way or thinking, seemingly excluded from God's system of wholeness and oneness.

Everything about this system is egoic in some way, and while it persists the "ego", or egotism, persists. Another way to describe this is selfishnesss - something which applies only to you, and something which you do not share with others.

The separation from God was thus an entry into egotism, selfishness, and not sharing. It was an attempt to hoard, to have something that belonged solely to yourself, and to defend it against others so that they would lack it. As though exclaiming, "mine."

As mind progresses into this ego idea, a whole dynamic of relationship and identity and meaning unfolds. A sense of self shifts from being one with others, to being "only myself". What you have shifts from "shared with God and everyone" to "mine alone."

We begin to take credit for what God created, claiming God did not create it. We decided God is not our father and we try to be father (cause) to him, going against his will forcefully. We try to be more than God, usurp his will, overthrow heaven and exist excluded from infinity.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. " UrT29I6

Egotism depends on exclusion. It depends on being less than whole. It depends on having enemies, lacking something, gaining something, and being always unfulfilled. It requires ongoing attack and guilt to maintain a sense of separation. And without this it cannot be there.

Egotism then turns to self interest. Our egos are only concerned with ourselves because we see ourselves as existing stranded on an island separate from everyone. We think of everyone else as outside of us beyond the perimeter, and therefore cannot possibly need to consider their interests.

It is very natural therefore that as mind narrows down from wholeness, seeing the boundary of infinity shrink down to the body, or even less, that its scope of interest shrinks also. And so it becomes concerned only with itself in isolation, trapped in a body, confined to a self-made prison.

As egotistical people we then have concern only for ourselves. We need constant recognition from others, wanting them to worship us and adore us for our artificial sense of power and pride. We need constant validation because the ego is unreal, have no real sense of worth because we've thrown infinite worth away, and are permanently insecure.

As egos we can't escape from some fundamental experiences which come as part of the package of being exclusive. Anxiety and depression, loneliness and fear, threat and attack, vulnerability and suffering, it's all part of the dynamic of being less than whole.

"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." UrW41L1

The return to God very simply entails the expansion of the boundaries of Self to be wholly inclusive of the whole of the Kingdom. To share everything with everyone and to be one with everything. To have no concern for exclusive rights or self importance or specialness. And to recognize that we have nothing other than what God has shared with us, which is equally shared with all.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace." UrT18G16

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you." UrT1B40Y

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly." UrT9C6

'In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration of your release. GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid." UrT4D21

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?" UrU3A6

"Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me."

"God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it."

"YOU are the work of God, and
His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."

Worth, is really a question of value, but even moreso a question of whether something QUALIFIES or "deserves". It's also related to appropriateness. Is it right, that you be loved. So we're also talking about your "rights", or what you are entitled to. Which also relates to what you are allowed, or what is yours, or what belongs to you inherently.

When we form any idea of having sinned, believing in separation, we are actually saying that we no longer qualify. If we have become sinful or guilty, instead of innocent, we have kind of "dropped out" of the running. We've positioned ourselves as not worthy or not capable or not of a quality sufficiently high or appropriate enough to meet the "requirements". By changing the premise to "I'm sinful", the logical conclusion is that you are no longer worthy. And the only sense of unworthiness is a sense of sinfulness against God.

Those who are innocent do meet the requirements of heaven, and so are entitled to heaven. They are entitled to the inheritance of God, and everything belongs to them. But when they attack themselves, they undermine their authority or "permission to access" the benefits which correlate to innocence. By stepping out of innocence we step out of deserving the love of God. At least, we believe this is the case.

If you believe you have sinned, are criminal, are evil or guilty, have done something wrong, messed up, or failed in some way, you will regard yourself as a failure. This is a view of yourself as weak and frail, powerless, hopeless, lost, alone, valueless, incapable, ineffective, not deserving freedom or love, and generally feeling horrible about yourself.

Feeling "unworthy" is kind of a logical conclusion based on the supposed evidence of what you think you did, or what you failed to do. If you see yourself as innocent you see yourself as deserving all of heaven. If you see yourself as guilty you see yourself as deserving all of hell.

This ties in very strongly to the victim role. If you feel unworthy, you will feel deflated, defective, lacking, having nothing much to offer, having very low "value", having no rights and no freedoms. You will feel like a prisoner, as though everyone else gets to decide your fate, as if you have no say in your own life. You'll feel like a kind of slave, undeserving of having any of your needs met, yet feeling very much in need.

Impoverished and empty, you'll regard yourself as not worth being given any attention, or anything. You'll also be afraid all the time because you'll see the whole world as defining your fate on a whim. Secretly this is an attempt to project self-blame onto the world, believing it is blaming you. The world will now seem like it's taking everything away from you and having power over you, because that's what YOU are doing to yourself.

If your value is so low, you will regard yourself as having failed, and therefore as being a failure. If you are a failure, you will feel like there is no point in trying to do anything, because not only do you see yourself as very likely to fail, you'll believe you have already failed before you even begin. This will stop you from doing many things on the basis that you "can't", rooted in some belief that "no-one wants me." Secretly this is your belief that YOU don't want you, projected and reflected back at you.

Of course, being unworthy, you have to believe no-one loves you. That everyone is against you and can "use you" for whatever purposes they see fit, for their own gains, with no regard for yours. This of course is a state that also results from such things as abuse, violence, attack, sexual assault, trauma and so on.

It can leave you feeling helpless and powerless and very "low", like you don't mean anything and have no value. That, even in your own eyes, you don't deserve anything because you aren't worth anything. Like something to be discarded and thrown away which no-one wants. Of course this is how YOU feel about yourself, because it's really you who has decided you are worthless. But by asserting "you're not worth anything" to the world, it reflects back to you from the outside in. A projection of self-hate.

Clearly when you're in such a state, although it feels unfair, and imposed from outside of you, much more likely you are actually the one who has decided that you are unworthy. You have in some way depleted your own idea of your own value. And we're not so much talking here about self-esteem as we are about God-esteem.

The only real value is the value God has of you, regarding your true nature. And so really the only thing in your mind that you care about is whether or not you qualify or meet God's "standards". Whether you are worthy of his love. Whether you deserve forgiveness or punishment. If you believe you are a weak and miseable valueless sinner who isn't worth anything and should be punished and hurt, then you are trying to decide for God what God thinks of you.

You'll do this on the basis of what you think you did. ie, which sins you think you committed, the reasons why you are guilty, the faults and lacks and insufficiencies of your personality or body or mind. The various value systems you yourself have invented and then judged yourself harshly by. Systems which God doesn't even use, because he simply ALWAYS finds you worthy of him.

If you are feeling unworthy, it's really kind of a severe case of a pity party. It's self-inflicted, just as the secret of salvation says. It might seem like it was induced or enforced by someone outside of you but really you went along with it and believed it. You allowed it to affect you and decided to comply with it, because deep down something far worse than other people condemning you is YOU condemning yourself. Only you can hurt yourself so deeply. And it's really just a matter of a lack of self-love.

We have to own up to this because really it's not God who is thinking of you as a miserable sinner or a worthless piece of shit. It's you. It's your self-talk and your self-attack. It's your self-destructiveness. Which when you think about it is quite weird because there you are, feeling utterly shit about yourself, while simultaneously having the total freedom and power to choose to feel that way. And you must've made a wrong decision because you're not at peace.

Taking ownership of your decision to reject God's evaluation of you, and your attempt to overthrow his will, and to ignore his unconditional love, is the only way out of it. You have to be willing to see that you are the one who has decided that your value is extremely low. That you're so worthless you pretty much just deserve to die, because no-one would want you. But hey, even if it seems true that no-one DOES want you, that's their problem and not yours. And it has nothing to do with whether YOU want you.

While you may think well, I can't do this or that because I am a failure and no-one would want me or anything I do, it's really you telling yourself this. It's you not wanting what you do. It's you being hard on yourself. And you shouldn't even be giving other people power over you to decide for you whether you are worthy or not. It's none of their business. God is the only one in the privileged position to determine your real value, and he finds you to be permanently worthy forever. It's not even really up to you.

You can't therefore really obliterate your value or worth, or decide that you deserve to die against God's will. You can pretend to do this, and you can believe in it, but even underneath your utter self-hate there is total self-love. You can't change what is really true of you, no matter how hard you try to destroy yourself. God has guaranteed your sinlessness forever. Your value is inestimable and infinite. And you are worthy and qualify for everything he has to offer. You qualified in your creation!

So if you're feeling low, down, bad about yourself, unworthy, not good enough, undeserving, a failure, weak, powerless, barely worth wiping a shoe on, recognize that this can't be true of you. It's absolutely not true in God's eyes. And it doesn't even matter what other people think of you or how they fail to properly value you. Everyone should be loving you, unless they themselves have failed to love themselves. It says nothing about your worth.

You have to decide to accept your perfection, your innocence, your value, your worth to God, your infinite credibility, your integrity, your divine honor, your holiness and your entitlement to the Kingdom of God. And that means you have to put aside all of the abuse and hurt and pain and misery and reasons "why" you deserve suffering. God does not will that you suffer, and nor should you.

"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be."

"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."

"But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."

"He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks."

"The Atonement is the only gift which is worthy of being offered to the Altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the Altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely without His SOULS, and THEY are lonely without Him."

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

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

"Your creations ARE the logical outcome of His premises. HIS thinking has established them FOR you. They are therefore THERE, EXACTLY where they belong. They belong to your mind, as part of your identification with HIS. But your state of mind and your recognition of WHAT IS IN YOUR MIND depends, at any given moment, on what you believe ABOUT your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises which will determine WHAT YOU ACCEPT INTO YOUR MINDS."

Jesus talking about the fact that you MUST have your own creations in heaven (and plural), because they are the logical consequence/outcome of GOD's premise. Since he is a creator, and creates in his likeness, YOU MUST be a creator who creates in your likeness and his. Thus you MUST have your own creations in heaven.

"His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father."

"A co-creator with the Father (one or many of his sons) must have a Son*. 2 Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. 3 A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind."

This is indisputable fact. You have children in reality.

Not only do you have children in Heaven, you also created them WITH YOUR BROTHERS.

"Accept your brother in this world, and accept NOTHING ELSE, for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

And because your brother is a CO-CREATOR with you and with God, your brother MUST be a permanent INDIVIDUAL BEING in heaven. You and your brother and God create multiple individual beings in heaven.

"In number infinite" - ACIM

"My self is ruler of the Universe: It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

God is very very clear about what is real and what is an illusion.

In this clarity, God is wholly sane. Sanity means there is no distortion that denies the truth.

For example it is absolutely impossible to be separate from God because God is infinite and is everywhere real. It is not possible to go anywhere else because there is nowhere else. To then believe that there IS somewhere else to go, MUST be insane, because it is literally impossible. You would have to be totally faking it and kidding yourself. You'd have be believing in a lie, and deciding that illusions are reality. That is hallucination. That is insanity.

For God, the truth is true and nothing else is true. He has no self-deception or denial, and is 100% clear on what is real. There is no unreality in Him. There is no distortion. There is no insanity and therefore He is not mentally ill.

Mental illness accounts for every illusion, every form and every way in which you can seem to be separate from God. All sicknesses, all problems, all guilt and fear, and all death, is all a form of mental illness. It comes about by believing that an illusion is in fact reality, or that a lie is the truth.

Most people in this world are insane. It's just a fact. They are insane (me included) because they believe illusions are reality and that an illusory world is not only possible but happening with serious consequences. In God's reality this world CANNOT exist. It is a picture of impossibility. All who believe in it existing and happening for real are deluded, and thus are mentally ill and insane.

We need to learn what is absolutely true per God's Will, and what must therefore be unreal. And then we must be willing to withdraw our sense of "reality" from that which is not real, and RECOGNIZE that it is an illusion. Currently our failure to recognize illusions for what they are is the entire foundation for all suffering and death.

OK.

This is going to have to be pretty long because this is a very difficult subject to explain, so bear with me. Some of you may be willing to accept what I'm going to say, some will not.

Oneness. What does it seem to mean? God is whole. God is complete. God is "all there is". God is everywhere, omnipresent, lacking nothing. God is the same everywhere. So... if this is true in terms of ego logic, it means the following:

God has no son. God is dreaming this world. God is a murderer. God created death. God makes people suffer. The separation happened inside God. God is mistaken. God is afraid. God is all people. God is experiencing "himself" through and as all people in the world. There is nothing other than God. We are God. Separation is real. God created this world. etc.

Absolutely none of that is true. That is the purest most logically accurate definition of what non-duality means to the ego. It is the most precise conclusion you can draw from how the EGO understands oneness or what it means to be "one". If oneness truly means "there is only one", the God is responsible for hell. And it is grossly mistaken.

If God is one, then God cannot even create anything because there is nowhere for the creation to occur and nothing to add which wasn't already there and so, literally, "there is only God". This is the conclusion many many Course folk have come to. It seems to in some ways make sense TO EGO THINKERS and those who use linear logic who think that such linear logic is capable of encompassing and understanding the nature of God.

God is not like this. And oneness does not mean "there is only God". And non-duality, as the opposite of duality, does not properly describe the holographic creative nature of God or reality. Non-duality is CLOSE to being correct, and is more correct than duality, but it is still a concept and it falls way short, as you will see. If there is non-duality there should be just "one thing". In that, there can be no Son of God at all, no creation, no love, no extension, no sharing, no sonship, and no holy relationship.

In fact, what's happened widespread in ACIM folk is various false conclusions which have established themselves as if written in stone "what the course says". And yet the consequences of these errors are quite horrific. To believe God is all there is is to equate God with ego and death. To claim that God is all there is also denies and murders every Son of God.

OK.

Now, let's talk about how God actually exists and thinks and creates and the nature of His creation. If the strictest definition of oneness or non duality is true, then God cannot even create anything. And in a sense, PARTS of the Course speak to this. E.g. "God is". And also, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". So anything real, like God, is permanent, fixed, unchanging, does not increase or decrease, and therefore there can be no creation whatsoever. Which means no son. UNLESS, this thing called "sharing" happens.

Recognize that God is love, and because of what love is, it automatically goes out and shares and extends. It shares because it has no reason to hold anything back. It is fundamentally a state of sharing, including, giving, and this radiation of love is another way of describing the act of creation.

God in and of Himself is whole, complete, lacking nothing, needing nothing, and is already permanent. Like a solid rock. Unchanging. That does not really sound like something that can create, does it? It seems very fixed. Like absolutely nothing is happening or possible. That's strictly what most definitions of "oneness" imply also. That nothing else is possible besides God existing. That's false.

God loves, and in that love, God radiates, extends, shares, creates, miraculously. Ego logic will NEVER account for "the miraculous", and God's creative ability is truly miraculous, which is why YOU ARE A MIRACLE. To the ego, God CANNOT create, and the act of His creating defies ALL EGO LOGIC and demonstrates that God is a miracle worker. Something happens in God which defies explanation and seems impossible yet happens. God SHARES AND CREATES something "other" than Himself, out of nowhere.

If you think of God like a light bulb, God is the fixed light bulb which does not move or change really, but the bulb radiates and SHINES light. The light goes outward and illuminates. That "shining", that light radiating, that is creation. The light radiating is not necessarily the same thing as God Himself. God is complete and whole already, but God SHARES Himself by shining light and radiating and extending, and that which extends outward is creation.

It is in this way that God created the world of Heaven. Here is how the Course describes it is a NATURAL division:

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God. That is why everything that He created is like Him. Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

So God in and of Himself is complete and whole, but He "projects outward" (extends) and that which is projected forms a "world" (heaven). This world is, in a sense, "divided from" God in a natural way, in that it comes FROM God and is God SHARING, but God as its SOURCE still remains in a sense, beyond it.

This is because God is the "first cause" and what God radiates is the "effect" of God. His Thought/Shining is the effect of Him as the "thinker". The effect of God is not capable of turning around and "causing God" in reverse, or of making God its effect. The creation (the Son/sonship) is being constantly sustained by, projected by God, forever, is coming FROM God, and therefore the Son is ONLY "as God created Him" and cannot change what He is. The Son has no real say in what He is at all, He merely gives thanks for having been created perfect.

God is cause, not effect. God cannot be affected. This causal extension or "creating of effect" in a way puts up a kind of "wall" or division you could say, just on a causality level, which in a sense, separates the creation from God's own Self, but only in the sense that the created Son cannot cause God back. But the Son CAN share love with Him.

This is not the same thing as the "separation" that we are accustomed to thinking of as what the ego does or relating to the "separation from God" which was a different matter. The "separation from God" happened when the Son, who is only effect and not capable of causing God, attempted to cause God. That means the Son tried to will against God's will or to undo what God has created, trying to replace it with something else. That was an act of impossible denial, which brought about the separation and the "fall of man".

That's an entirely different thing to the "natural division" between God and His Son. The division between God and Son is NATURAL in that this is How God intended it, that the Son is imbued with the SAME WILL TO CREATE, the same love, the same completeness, the same wholeness, AND SHARING the WHOLE OF GOD within itself, as well as sharing THE WHOLE OF CREATION within itself. All of God is in the Son, shared with the Son, and yet the Son is in some way also "divided" from God as a creation of God or thought of God.

In nonduality and oneness concepts there is no accounting for God thinking anything at all, yet alone creating a son. It completely glosses over the fact that God is LOVE, and love radiates and extends and creates. When people tell you what the definition of oneness is they become very clinical and ego-specific in describing God as a kind of "single blob". There is no love in that concept, nor does it appreciate the NATURE of Oneness, which is to share, extend everywhere, create, increase, and to experience JOY. Do you equate oneness with joy, or power, or love, or creativity, or miracles? As a logical device, no. But God is joyful and creative and all powerful and miraculous.

Now, it is possible for God to create AT LEAST One Son, and the Course references the "one son of God" in various places. And due to misunderstandings, many people have come to believe God only has one Son. So now there are two camps - a set of people believing that God is one therefore has no son or "I am God", and a camp of people accepting there is One Son (somehow) but not more. It relates to how much of the nature of God is grasped.

OK. So holograms. Did you know God thinks holographically? Do you know what a hologram is or why this is totally different to how the ego thinks? If you are thinking about God's creation or oneness without thinking about holograms, then you WILL come to false conclusions, such as that there are no divisions in heaven or God has only one Son or no son, because non-holographic logic CAN ONLY arrive at these conclusions. Ego logic is FAULTY and limited.

The essential idea of a hologram is that the whole is able to express in many "parts" and yet each part contains ALL of the whole. This makes NO SENSE to the ego, because it thinks in terms of separated space, where it is impossible for all of God to be in one part AND all of God to be in another part simultaneously. The ego will wager, "there is not enough God for God to be elsewhere, if God is fully here". And that's why the ego is BLIND to the nature of heaven. It does not account for SHARING.

Here's what the Course says about the holographic nature of God and the Sonship - note how ILLOGICAL and CONTRADICTORY these all sound, at first:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

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

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other."

So Jesus is saying two things, which seem to clash. 1) God created One Son. 2) God created many sons. The conclusion here, to THE EGO, is either, a) God only created one Son, or b) The "many" or "multitude" nature of the sonship tells us that it is OF THE EGO and is therefore not real. Are either of these conclusions true? NO! They are both mistakes, and reveal the limitations of the ego's thought system when it tires to understand the EGO DEFYING nature of God.

In a hologram, the whole is present in EVERY part. Now, if you think in terms you are familiar with in this world, like physical objects and space, you think ok, if I take 1 gallon of water and I pour it into a 1 gallon container, there is no water left to fill another container. Yes? This is ego thinking. And ego thinking gave rise to this ENTIRE universe, including all physical forms, and all laws of physics, to paint a picture that attempts to PROVE that God's NATURE is NOT the way things are. And we have used physical form as a way to understand the nature of existence. This is a major error. We are BLINDED by sight of form, because forms express the EGO IDEA of separation, limitation, "measuring" how much of something there is in a finite way, and then concluding that there is lack and limitation.

When ALL of God is poured into one creation, how much God is there left to pour into another? ALL OF HIM! He does not run out. He INCREASES BY SHARING. The ego cannot believe this. The multiplying of fish and bread to feed 5000 people is a good example of this principle. Giving ALL to something does not diminish it AT ALL, it merely increases by being given away.

God puts ALL of the whole of his nature into His creation, in EACH thought. And what He creates is FULL, complete, and whole, AND shares ALL of itself with God, and includes all of God, and all of any other creation God creates. So then God has another thought, creates another WHOLE, and then another WHOLE, and another. You should get the idea then, spatially, even in ego terms, that adding more wholes INCREASES the sum total - and this is How the Kingdom expands.

To the ego, it is impossible that God be fully in one location and yet fully in another. This is completely impossible in terms of a physical object. However, bi-location is a miracle because it demonstrates that we are not bound by space or by instances or amounts. The Course says that God has many thoughts, INFINITE IN NUMBER. That amounts to an INFINITE number of Sons of God. And each Son of God is WHOLE and complete and perfect in itself, has free will just like God, extends and creates just like God (you have your own creations in Heaven), and radiates love just like God. This means each son is not just some "partial person" or limited or unlike the rest, it means EVEY son is FULL, whole, complete, absolutely unlimited, and shares EVERYTHING with God in perfection. And so do all the rest.

That God does not diminish when sharing himself fully to create a WHOLE SON, means automatically that God can create MANY sons without any diminishing of Himself at all. And all of God is in every Son. AND every Son is within every Son. And the ENTIRE SONSHIP is within every Son. This is entirely NATURAL AND NORMAL in Heaven. Heaven therefore contains INFINITE "naturally divided" (causally divided) INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - which are souls or Sons of God - each one holy and perfect.

Ok.

So now we need to talk about why some people are confused in constantly saying that God has One Son or there is "only oneness" or the Sonship is an part of separation etc. It's because people are getting PART of the picture and not the whole picture, because EGO LOGIC is telling them to EXCLUDE some parts of the holographic nature of God. They can "see" that God's oneness makes sense, but this seems to imply there is no son or at least not more than one. They can't see HOW God can have created many sons OR how a "division" is natural. And so they just can't get their heads around the nature of God or how it's possible for there to be a sonship at all.

And if you will go looking, ACIM contains specific quotes which SEEM to support the ego's interpretations by focusing on only one PART of the holographic picture, using that as justification for why "the course said this". For example, "God has but one Son", or countless references to "God's Son". Well, this leads God people to conclude that the Course is saying God doesn't have more sons. It's a mistake. With no grasp of God's NATURE - which is holographic, it makes sense people will be in error. And then they will say well, since God has only one Son, the sonship is a lie, or I do not exist, or I am God, or I do not have a self, or there is no-one here, or whatever else.

These are NON-DUALITY concepts which FAIL to appreciate God's nature. And you can see how, if it is true that God has many sons, these kind of "beliefs" are HARMFUL. They basically DESTROY the sonship, DENY the Self, and render God impotent.

When I finally understood how God thinks holographically and realized that non-duality is bullshit and a limited EGO concept of God, I felt great RELIEF about the simple recognition that "GOD CREATED ME". Me, as an INDIVIDUAL. Not me as an EGO, that's different, but that I have a HOLY SELF, which is sharing with other holy selves, and all of us are PERMANENT and INTENDED by God to have free will. When I saw this, I cried tears of joy, and also release of sadness, which had built up from the non-duality teachers, who have MISLED countless students and spread LIES ABOUT HEAVEN, resulting in the belief that "I do not exist", which can only lead to despair and depression because it DENIES GOD'S CREATION.

A course in miracles is NOT non-duality at all. The principle of Oneness is NOT that there is "only one and nothing else". Oneness truly means, sharing, creation, unlimited extension, INFINITE wholes, and a heaven filled with SOULS that live forever in a state of perfection and wholeness, sharing everything they are with ALL OTHERS including God. Why do you think Jesus refers to you as a brother? It's not just a temporary thing. You will ALWAYS be equal to and a brother of Jesus, AND at the same time, one with Him, and literally sharing everything WITH Him, AND still having your own soul, and still having your own free will which happens to be the same in focus as God's.

So now we have a very different picture of Heaven, and it has NOTHING to do with Earth or this universe. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY way." Heaven is a PLACE in the sense that it EXISTS as God's creation and you can experience it and BE there in it/with it. There are many references in the course where Jesus says "in Heaven" and also referring to Heaven as a "world" and as something God created. And given that THIS world - earth, physical universe, DOES NOT EXIST BECAUSE THERE IS NO WORLD - where IS there to BE or live or exist other than Heaven? In that sense, it IS a place, far more a REAL place than planet earth. Earth is not a place at all.

Heaven is within the mind of God. "The kingdom of God is you" is another reference to you being The Son of God and one of may sons of God. You are part of and all of heaven. Something you can be INSIDE OF and BE, and where there are infinite souls and angels, plus the Holy Spirit, plus an entire sonship of equal souls, all equal with Jesus, all individually a Son of God, AND also every one of those souls is THE Son of God as well. And each soul continues to CREATE MORE. There is nothing unnatural about this at all. All PARTS of heaven are of ONE ORDER.

Per Jesus: "The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order." (Here "man" is the same thing as soul or son of God, not humans.)

One final word then. Each Son of God, being a hologram of God, is whole and complete in and of itself, lacking nothing. And AT THE SAME TIME, is so OPEN and so SHARING, that it is wired into the ENTIRE CREATION of God. Picture it as your mind is so expanded that you are "one with" ie sharing in, the entire sonship. God therefore experiences ALL of his many thoughts, as ONE, while simultaneously allowing them to be many.

This is why there are many references to God having only one son. When it's speaking of this, it refers to how God experiences all Sons as though they are all the same and one, experienced simultaneously and so sharing that they do not seem "separate". Yet they are still divided. And then when the course speaks 250+ times about the many sons of God, this is not contradictory because God DOES have many sons AND one son.

God thinks holographically. All of God is in every son and all of every son is in every son. The whole sonship is in every son and every son in the sonship. You are the ONE SON of God, AND you are one of many. This is heavenly logic, not ego logic. When every individual PART of the sonship has returned to its true nature, all of the sonship as a whole communicates with God again.

The only other point to make I think is the difference between division and ego separation. In heaven you are divided from others and from God. But only in the sense that you are a loving family who shares everything together. Loving families are still individuals yet joined. The individuality does not go away. When walls are erected between family members, ie artificial separations are introduced, there is denial of the sharing, denial of the oneness, and denial of wholeness. This UNNATURAL DIVISION is the ego. This is what the course refers to as separation.

You have to get your head around the idea that you can be individual AND joined and that this is normal, natural and real. It is not your individual soul nature that makes you an ego. It is not that you are PART of a huge family of souls (sonship) that makes you an ego. What makes you an ego is that you withdraw your connection from God, withdraw your connection from the sonship, and become ISOLATED behind artificial imaginary walls of denial. It's got nothing to do with whether you are an individual or not.

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about ACIM is the belief that ego means separate self, and therefore means individuality, and therefore having an individuality is ego. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!! Individuality is not the problem. Cutting your individuality off from sharing with the whole is the problem. Trying to be a "part" of the hologram that does NOT contain the whole. Trying to not be an effect of God. Trying to cause God and change Him and affect Him. Cutting yourself off from the sonship. Believing you are not equal to all brothers. Being special. THAT is the problem and that is what the ego is made of, not your individuality.

Individuality does not mean you are separate from God, it means you are one of God's Son's. YOU DO EXIST. Just not as an illusion of an isolated self who has no connection to others. What is death but the end of all connection and the bringing about of total separation from Life? Joining with Life does not make you disappear! It's not about "you're not really out there". It's more like, "you are MORE than you APPEAR to be." You are God's Son and one of many sons. You are one with God and with all others and you SHARE with them all, one in sharing, not in number.

ACIM is not non-duality. And ACIM is not about the ego's idea of what oneness means. ACIM is not teaching that God only has a single son "separate from" the many sons. Heaven is a cascade of creation and miracles and light and souls and beauty and sharing and union and freedom. This is why YOU are responsible for everything YOU CHOOSE. Choose again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a fairly simple question that can be asked to determine if planet Earth is real, exists, or is God's creation.

There are machine guns in this world. Machine guns full of bullets. The bullets are projectiles which shoot out of this gun and may penetrate other objects. Upon doing so it is capable of ripping holes in things, and if those things are biological organisms it is capable of mowing them down and destroying them and killing them.

Now, that's simply physical fact. That's what the gun does. That's how it functions. That's what it's capable of.

It does not matter if you forgive the gun, it will still function this way. It does not matter if you see it with false perception and hate it, or see it with true perception and love it. It will still function as a bullet-launching death machine, capable of seriously damaging and destroying anything it touches.

Your healed perceptions of the machine gun do not stop it from launching bullets. Nor does your perception change the shape of the gun from being still in the form of a gun. It still has a barrel and a set of machinery and metal bullets. It doesn't matter how many years you've been doing ACIM spiritual practices, it in no way changes a single fact about how that object functions.

Now you have to ask yourself, whether God in his infinite mercy and wisdom and gentleness and love, would EVER conceive of such an object? Because if that machine gun exists, and has reality, then it MUST be of God. It must be part of God's will. It must be what he wants. And God himself must endorse it. In fact God must have designed it himself and co-created it.

How does that sit with you? Even if you forgive the machine gun and send it love and do not blame it and do not project sin or guilt onto it, does it still have a design and capacity for mowing down citizens? Yes it does. Even if you are high on a cloud of spiritual consciousness, does the machine gun still operate according to physical laws? Yes it does. Is it still capable of murder regardless of how spiritual you become? Yes it is.

So you have to ask yourself, would God create such a device? Would God's world, which should be heaven, contain such a device? Could God have willed that such a device be possible? That there can be scenarios in which some of God's other heavenly-created objects are capable of being utterly ripped apart and destroyed in a matter of seconds? Is such a thing allowed and possible and sanctioned in heaven? Is it even a POSSIBILITY, that in God's perfect absolutely infinite immortal reality, that there can be things mowed down with metal bullets?

You have to come to terms with this because the answer is quite important. The ONLY WAY that planet Earth, the physical planet, the solid matter, all of space and time, can have come from God or be in any way God's will, is if God is a maker of weapons. And even if we lift away labels such as weapons and say "that's a lovely beautiful piece of machinery isn't it" in some kind of blissful state of rose-tinted-glasses, we STILL are going to have to accept that IF IT IS PART OF THE KINGDOM, GOD WANTS OBJECTS TO BE BLASTED APART.

So we're really asking now, what is God's nature and will? Can you sleep at night knowing that God is a God who facilitates and supports and contributes to the making of weapons of mass destruction? Is that within God's laws? Does God allow AND support such a thing? Because if he does, what kind of a God is that? And how would a loving, beautiful, gentle, kind, happy God, come up with a design for a very effective "killing machine" as part of HEAVEN?

I think MOST sane or semi-sane people in the world would have to agree, that if God is loving it is HIGHLY unlikely that God could ever be conceived of as personally willing the creation of a machine gun. Not even if the gun is radically forgiven, which has no real effect on the fact that it is still capable of being used to mow bodies down. And regardless of how beautiful and shiny the paint is, regardless of how lovely the sights and sounds of bullets flying are, the fact remains the machinery still functions to attack and destroy. Is is okay with you that God's kingdom, immortal and unattackable, indestructible, has items in it which can in fact still destroy things? God would be contradictory would he not? And heaven would be full of holes.

The only sane conclusion we can come to is that either God is murderous and is responsible for personally willing the making of machine guns and bullets and death and destruction, OR God is not that kind of a God. And if God is not like that, NOTHING like that can exist. Because anything that does exist, HAS to be a part of God's mind and will. Part of his heart. God has to love it and create it otherwise it is nothing and nowhere.

Either, machine guns exist and are real and God created planet Earth and physical bodies and space and time and all the galaxies, which means God must be murderous and cruel, OR, God would never sanely allow, make possible, condone, or contribute to, the making of such objects. And therefore, if God did not create machine guns, planet earth is absolutely unreal, bodies do not exist, destructible objects are absolutely nothing, human bodies don't exist, and there is no world.

Personally for me I can only accept that God's most-beloved Kingdom of heaven CANNOT EVER CONTAIN such objects. Not in any way. Not with any kind of perception or repurposing. Not merely that they don't exist, or haven't been created yet, but that even the POTENTIAL for them to be created does not exist. It must be IMPOSSIBLE for weapons to exist in God. I absolutely cannot bring myself to ever accept or conceive of being able to be at peace and loving with God with the loophole that he is a maker of murderous articles. They simply CANNOT EXIST in heaven's reality.

To me, this is so clear and black and white, there is absolutely no way that there is ANY OTHER way for the machine gun to exist and for it to simultaneously imply that God is benevolent. Either God is loving and exists and is real, OR, machine guns exist and God is murderous and self destructive. That's the choice you have to make. Either earth and bodies exist along with machine guns, OR THEY DO NOT. And quite frankly, we should ALL be recognizing by now that THEY DO NOT.

There will be no machine guns in heaven. Not today. Not ever. And similarly, there are no bodies, and no planet Earth. That is A Course in Miracle's teaching. There IS no other interpretation.

P3B

Section 2 - The Limits of Psychotherapy

P3B1

Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. But psychotherapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who believe this. It may be they will not get much further, for no-one learns beyond his own readiness. Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. Be assured of this; each will progress. Retrogression is temporary. The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.

P3B2

Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. When we speak of "the saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense. "Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of "progress" and "growth." These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.

P3B3

Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist as well as of a patient. Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts its aims. Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions of the ego on the therapeutic process. But He will wait, and His patience is infinite. His goal is wholly undivided always. Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely reconciled as one until they join with His. Only then is all conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.

P3B4

Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. And this will one day come to pass for every "patient" on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized Teacher of God. He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. They cannot take more than he can give for now. Yet they both will find sanity at last.

If their ego is strong, or they are afraid, sharing the truth with them may be grossly misinterpreted.

Your belief in the truth is admirable. Your conviction and faith in it is well placed. And you wish therefore that everyone would simply see this same truth and be set free.

However, this is assuming that people are PERCEIVING CORRECTLY, and that just by sharing truth they will "get it".

People are not perceiving correctly when they are "in need" of help. Therefore if you share truth with them, they will see their own misperceptions in it, will interpret it as an attack (at least at first), and will reject it.

People WANT to be unconscious and asleep. People WANT to be sick. If you try to take that away from them when they aren't ready or willing, or push them too fast, you will just continue to scare the shit out of them.

This is an error I have made many times. Allowing someone to stay in suffering is quite a challenge, especially if they do not want to be helped. It's a challenge to accept them unconditionally regardless of their willingness to change.

If someone is insane and hallucinating and you show them something that is true, they will not see it as it is. They will see what they mis-perceive in it. They will see their ego reflected back. This will frighten them. They will react to this frightening perception by blocking it, making them sick.

Jesus warns us against trying to perform miracles all of the time because, in some cases, the person's reaction to something "miraculous" happening could frighten them even more than the amount of fear you were trying to heal.

This is perhaps also why God doesn't just rush in and scoop everyone up "forceably". Love does not force. It has infinite patience. So we need to learn to be discerning and allowing, letting people have their chosen suffering even if that's all they can accept for now. Slowly and eventually they will come around.

The more you try to help, save, fix, heal, liberate, etc, the more you may be pushing someone into reactions and defenses which are making them sicker.

If you try to shove Course truth down someone's throat when they are unwell or afraid, it may make them even more depressed. Mis-perceptions are the problem, they interfere with communication, they impose a "learning disability", and make it harder to correctly reach someone.

Unless perhaps you are Christ or Holy Spirit and know exactly what is most appropriate. But even then, the person has to have willingness to allow themselves to be helped. If you step away from their help, they will not force it on you.

T29I

Section 9 - Christ and Anti-Christ

T29I1

What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power which they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared, and worshipped, both, BECAUSE you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother, which you would value MORE than what he IS. Idols are made that HE may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this which NEVER is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.

T29I2

Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way you believe they will complete your little self, and let you walk in safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value which you do not have. No-one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus must seek BEYOND his little self for strength to raise his head and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty, and for a quiet calm which liberates you FROM the world, and lets you stand apart in quiet and in peace unlimited.

T29I3

An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ which constitutes a gap BETWEEN the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real, and seen OUTSIDE the mind. Yet they remain ideas, and CANNOT leave the mind that is their source. Nor is their form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His Face like a dark veil which SEEMS to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. Yet the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the Light Itself.

T29I4

This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ BECAUSE its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where IS this place, where What is everywhere has been excluded, and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God's way; whose voice could make demands He enter not? The "more-than-everything" is NOT a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. Christ's enemy is nowhere. He can take NO form in which he EVER will be real.

T29I5

What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed BEFORE it seems to come to life, and GIVEN power that it may be feared. Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what HAS life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has NOT put out. It merely LIFTS the veil, and LETS the truth shine unencumbered, being what It is. It does not NEED belief to be Itself, for It HAS BEEN created, so It IS. An idol is ESTABLISHED by belief, and when it is withdrawn, the idol "dies."

T29I6

This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die.

T29I7

WHERE is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can INTERRUPT eternity? A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, HAS no place to be. An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything EXCEPT His Will to be. Nothing and nowhere MUST an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere. What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR? This is the only question which has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked.

T29I8

The world BELIEVES in idols. No-one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does NOT contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his SPECIAL deities will give him MORE than other men possess. It MUST be "more." It does not really matter more of what, - more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth; or even more affliction and more pain. But MORE of SOMETHING is an idol FOR. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something ELSE. Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes. An idol is a means for getting MORE. And it is THIS that is against God's Will.

T29I9

God has not many sons, but only One. Who can have more, and who be given less? In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace. It is for HIM the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols HAVE no purpose here. For MORE than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within why would you seek for idols which would make of Heaven less, to give you MORE than God bestowed upon your brother AND on you, as One with Him? God GAVE you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did He ALSO give the same to every living thing as well. And thus IS every living thing a part of you as of Himself. No idol can establish you as MORE than God. But YOU will never be content with being LESS.

The nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body.

Mind is inclusive and expansive. It is everywhere and is shared by everyone. Everyone is one in mind. Mind is collective and joined. It reaches out and extends and creates. It knows no limits and isn't confined to any location. It is endless and immortal. Your mind is shared with other people's minds and they're all joined together.

Body is exclusive and restrictive. It is only in one place at a time and is not shared by anyone. One body is separated off from another body and kept apart by space and time. Bodies are singular and not joined, and they never can join. Bodies cannot create or extend themselves. They are limitations and are limited. The body is mortal and finite. The body is not shared with anyone else's body and all bodies are separate.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

The strange predicament that you have is that you seem to have both a mind and a body. This can go one of two ways. If you narrow your mind, move towards selfishness, believe in separation, exclude or isolate, imprison yourself or others, have an attacking attitude, move away from wholeness, deny your immortality, or in any way reject God, you are attempting to turn your mind INTO a body. To exclude and isolate and separate it off.

You're trying to separate yourself off and achieve the goals of the body. If you are trying not to share, to be selfish, to hoard, to possess or own, to be unlike, to be different and special, then you are forming a sense of self that is no longer infinite and unlimited. It forms a sense of self that is very reduced and isolated, excluded and cut off from others. And that is going to make you picture yourself AS a "body" - a limited self. And this produces the body.

This is body-identification. It's you aligning yourself with the idea of being a prisoner, isolated to a small speck of existence and kept away from everyone else. This happens when your mind is believing in what the body suggests is true, sees itself AS a body, and shares the "truth" of the body. By believing you are body-like, that your mind is physical, you are in a state of level confusion and delusion. The mind is trying to be forced into a tiny little container to limit it and shut out the wholeness of God.

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is."

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

Mind cannot function properly when you do this. Mind's natural state of completely expansive and infinite. It is shared and is everywhere at once. It has no limits and there is nothing it cannot do. But if you try to identify your sense of self as limited and mortal and restricted and partial and taking sides and being cut off from relationship and so on, you are trying to force the mind to be like a body. This is very unnatural for the mind. It does not belong in a little vessel of death.

The problem then is that on the one hand, you seem to have a body temporarily, and live in a world of separation. The physical world is entirely based on separation ideas. Thoughts of "here and not there". Thoughts of "this and not that". Thoughts of distance (space) and the past (time). Where even the presence of bodies can at times be rare and unusual. Where no two things are alike and nothing can really share anything.

So if you live a "life" as a body, in a body-oriented world, thinking in separate terms of "me not you", isolated and alone, not sharing minds or joining beyond the limits of the prison walls, then you are being limited "by" the body. Or rather you are choosing to use the body as a template for limitation so that the mind can see itself as a prisoner of spacetime.

It may then seem that in the world of bodies there is a certain "nature", that it's totally natural and normal for "body people" to live a certain kind of selfish lifestyle, where the body is the hero of the dream and the central figure, where everything revolves around one's own body and not others, where your whole experience is one of loneliness and isolation and wariness of other bodies. But this seems natural and normal and commonplace because "everybody" seems to be experiencing the same problems.

But this is wholly UNNATURAL for the mind. The mind is not designed to function as separate. It is not designed to NOT share. It is not designed for selfishness or limitation, for being locked into one place and not another, to be capable of only doing what the physical body can seem to do, or to have no powers or abilities that transcend the body's limits. Mind is not comfortable when it is limited to the body.

"To be without the body is to be in your natural state."

So you've got mind which is totally infinite and unlimited and shared and whole, trying to be forced to live in a a little tiny body which is finite and limited and unshared and unwhole. It's a very awkward situation. Now you seem to have to drag the body around to do a very limited amount of stuff, as if your mind has no power beyond it.

The challenge then becomes, while you're having a body, how do you transcend the body? How do you let mind return to being its natural expanded state? How do you let mind be free and not "a body", to not identify as a body, or see itself as limited BY the body? How do you get the mind to reach out and join and share with someone, in such a way that it HAS to DEFY the body? That it has to work AGAINST and DENY the body in order to be true to itself? The mind can only be natural when it is not allowing the body to limit it at all.

You can't achieve any kind of spirituality on a physical level. Bodies cannot join. The atoms will not allow it. Atomic forces will keep the two lumps separate. There is no oneness of bodies ever. Bodies do not communicate. Bodies do not share. Bodies testify to the ego's mantra of "I am separate and alone". They are prison-houses designed to separate off.

At best the body can be transcended and its limitations no longer limit the mind. But to do this the mind has to learn that it is NOT a body. It also has to realize therefore that the body is false and has no power OVER it, to cause it to be limited. This essentially means the body has to be recognized as NOTHING, and as MEANINGLESS. Either the mind is real or the body is real, and it cannot be both.

But really it means the mind must stop regarding itself as BODY-LIKE, must dis-identify FROM the body, and must extend outward, join, share, and experience oneness. It must unite with everyone and resume its natural function of equality and sharing and wholeness and love. It can only do this by not regarding itself as having any limitations, by not believing the body at all, and by not being tempted by anything in the world of bodies. To not believe it is finite or limited or mortal or alone.

So your mind has to decide whether to regard itself AS A MIND, or AS A BODY. It has to choose one or the other. Either it is unlimited or limited, either it is immortal or mortal. Either it is locked into a specific space and time or it is endless and eternal and everywhere. Either it shares with everyone or it is alone.

This is why waking up can seem so difficult, because you're living in an entire world of separateness while trying to NOT be separate. Trying to share and join and love, which has to BYPASS the body. Trying to have a vision which does not DEPEND on the body for sight, because the body CAN NEVER see reality. To be identified with spirit and not with flesh. To be in the world but not of it, and not LIKE it. To be opposite to the NATURE of the world, to the nature of the body, and to the nature of space and time. To be under only the laws of God, and not the laws of the physical.

It is therefore very awkward for us to have bodies, because they function totally opposite to how our mind functions. Their nature is totally unlike the mind's nature. They get in the way. They are obstacles which keep wanting to testify to truths which are completely false, and keep wanting to follow pathways toward death which are contrary to the mind's goal of life. The body's ways HAVE to be denied at some point through the proper use of denial, if mind is to be allowed to relax and be true to itself.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." "Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and ****separate minds are seen as bodies****, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality."

"To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

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

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS. You meet at a mistake; - an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an ILLUSION of yourself you SHARE with it. And yet, illusions cannot join. They ARE the same, and they are nothing."

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

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

This section of the course is fairly explicit about how God created many sons. It also uses the term "one with him", which does not in any way undo the fact that there are many sons, showing that "one with" does not mean "there is only one".

As I type this, Jesus is clarifying for me that oneness means "joined". Multiple individuals who are joined. Notice also at the end of this section it says God’s holiness is *PART* of us. That means some part of us IS God Himself, and some part of us is a distinct creation with its own free will. Being JOINED to God therefore does not mean we are ONLY God. God has CREATED sons!

Are a mother and her baby, "joined" by an umbilical cord, "one" self? Birth is after all a SYMBOL of creation, followed by a SYMBOL of separation.

"Creation is the sum of all God’s Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain.

Forever and forever are God’s Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done. God’s Thoughts are given all the power that Their own Creator has. For He would add to Love by Its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed be forever one will still be one when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.

Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God.

We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God’s memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God’s Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.

Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His own creation shares; Whose holiness is still a part of us."

If we realize that we are immortal beings, we must also realize that we are perfect. Being immortal means living forever, which is only possible if you never change. Being changeless is part of reality, and it's what makes it impossible for anything to happen to you to persuade you away from eternal life.

But upon realizing this you may also come to realize that you are immortal because of God. It is God who sustains you permanently in his mind. It is God who protects you with his infinite power and permanence. It is God who gave you eternal life in your creation. And it is because of God that you live forever.

Then you can go further to recognize that if you need merely acknowledge and accept your true nature, to know thyself, as God created you originally without modification, then it becomes obvious that God already gave you perfection.

When you were created, you were already given everything to make you live forever, be happy forever, be whole and healthy forever, be invulnerable forever. Every one of your immortal attributes is a gift from God.

Then you come to realize that in acknowledging your immortality, you are also therefore acknowledging that you are ONLY immortal because of God. And this goes further to realize that you are ONLY what God wills that you be. It is because of him that you are what you are.

And in this acknowledgement there is the recognition that God created you, God gifted you and gave you, and everything you are and have is from God. And that means, ultimately, that God is you creator or father. So by acknowledging your true nature you automatically start to become aware that you are not only perfect, you are perfect because of Him, and you we already created to BE perfect from the start.

Then it's a matter of appreciation and gratitude to God, acknowledging God as your creator, and realizing that you don't need to DO ANYTHING in order to become perfect. You merely need accept a perfection that God already put in place, and surrender all your attempts to redefine or improve yourself. You need only be as God created you to be and simply be true to yourself.

That's an act of acceptance of the atonement, because now you're simply settling into accepting that you've been perfect from the start, because of God. It's like saying, instead of getting my perfection from the world, I now realize it comes from God. And instead of having to do something to earn it or turn myself into it, I just need to be as God intended.

God has already given me my perfection. I need but accept and receive it and allow it to be wholly true. And accept nothing else as a substitute. I don't even need to do anything to make it true, I just need to let go of trying to make it false.

Jesus clearly refers to the physical body dying. He remarks about how the physical worms eat the physical body. Which is indeed true. Go dig up a freshly buried corpse and look at the worms. Just as the body is destructible and can be destroyed, so too are the worms destructible and can be destroyed. What do you suppose the worms would eat if this world was heaven and there was no destruction and no way to take anything away from anything?

The worms wouldn't even eat, because eating is part of the devouring aspect of destruction. And human bodies wouldn't eat or digest either because all that means is they harvest chunks of the world and kill them off and destroy them and shit them out.

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."

When people suggest that planet Earth is God's creation and is real, it sets off my immediate bullshit alarms. There is absolutely no two ways about it, and no way to twist it around. We could say, well, the world is totally neutral, it doesn't have any meaning, so if an animal seems to die and we strip away all meaning, we could say that's totally neutral and means nothing and its not really death and its not really life. We could smile on it and love it and be joyful even as it happens and clap our hands as human bodies are mowed down my machine guns and bombs which we celebrate along with God as the children are savagely killed.

We could celebrate happily as the bodies are blown up. And if the bodies were real, that would indeed be quite insane. Who would be able to feel joyful about people's bodies getting killed off if the bodies are really people and the world is real? If the world is real all those victims are horribly mistreated and destroyed against their will and it is all terribly upsetting. There is NO WAY to be happy about that, if it is true. The mind HAS to suffer because of its belief that it is true.

We could say, well, if you lift away all judgements and all meanings and sense of guilt and attack and calling some things bad or wrong and labelling some things as horrible etc, then what are we left with? A strangely neutral meaningless world in which, even so, the machine guns are blazing and the bombs are ripping through the bodies and all the nice creatures are snuffing it still. Can this really be completely natural and normal and sane and the way things really are? Can this really be the hallmark of a completely loving creator?

Can it be, in all honesty, the will of a loving creator God, to create a world which is simultaneously regarded as perfect and harmless and holy and innocent and joyous and eternal and safe and free from all attack, smiling upon it like it's an absolutely beautiful creation, while simultaneously the actual forms of the world continues to fight and kill each other and suffer? While the pain receptors are still firing and the bombs are still destroying the houses and the bullets are still ripping holes in people's bodies. If you are totally forgiving toward it and seeing it with love and holiness then it could perhaps reflect heaven. But this heaven would have to be still separate from the things that occur.

It would be quite ridiculous to suggest that God in his infinite love would simultaneously love AND attack, or create beautiful things AND cause them to not last and to destroy each other and to change their forms such that none of them have long to exist at all, becoming unrecognisable and forgotten. Does it really make sense to suggest that even a world loved and forgiven that continues to have creatures falling down holes and weather freezing bodies and starvation and pain and all manner of limitations and difficulties, that this would make Earth BE heaven? It simply cannot be.

Who wants a God that is so contradictory that he produces a chaotic world while laughing about it? Who wants a God that in his infinite unlimited unconditional love produces environments for his creations to live in which simultaneously attack them and make their lives difficult? Who wants a God that "allows death to happen" as though He Himself condones and causes and sanctions and lives it? And who wants a world created by such a split-minded freak? Surely anyone with half a brain can at least see that the idea of God creating this world is utterly nonsense.

Some people will take this obviousness - that the suffering in the world is ridiculous and no-one can love it if it's real - and draw a conclusion. Either you could conclude the world is real and therefore life is bullshit and God is an asshole or doesn't exist at all. Or you could conclude that God does exist and is not an asshole and instead the whole world is not his creation. Either the world is real and God sucks, or the world is not real and God is great. Those are the only options. And thankfully God's reality guarantees that the suffering can end forever.

The strange twisted unforgiving loveless difficult limiting world of Earth and space and time is not of God. You can look upon it without judgement and forgive it, you can project the meaning of love onto it, you can transcend its separations and overlook its differences of form, you can bypass its behaviours and its faults and shortcomings, and remain in a happy state in spite of it. But to think that this means the world IS heaven is a huge mistake.

Heaven, the Kingdom of God, the world created by a truly loving and benevolent creator, could never even so much as CONCEIVE of forms and shapes that conflict, of scarcities that require feeding, of such things as weather which threatens existence, of wars and war machine and weapons, of having any such bullshit as a part of his pure perfect divine holy mind and life. Regardless of forgiving these things, of lifting away the demonising of these things, or labelling them as sinful, regardless of shining happily upon them as the light of the world and blessing them with love and healing, EVEN THEN the machinery of spacetime marches on its dismal chaotic endless tirade of destruction and uncertainty and constant indecision.

God could never create a world such as this. And if he could, he could not be a God, nor could he live, because his own nature would be to be partly alive and partly dead. He would be literally devouring parts of himself, destroying parts of himself only to make up new parts that were nothing like the ones that came before. This constant shifting and changing and fluxing of reality would mean that nothing is real AT ALL because there is no stable reality or constant state or perfect dependable anything. If God created the Earth, God is fragmented and deceptive and has multiple personalities and is at war with himself and is insane.

Anyone with half an ounce of sanity should recognize that a world such as the physical is absolutely in all ways and to all degrees utterly removed from what God could EVER be capable of creating or condoning. It is NOT his will that you live in this environment, in this way, with these objects, around these things, with these happenings. The world is insane and God wants better for you than this. God has created an environment for you in and as heaven which is so perfect you would laugh hysterically at even the suggestion that Earth could match up to its qualities.

This has nothing to do with hating Earth, or judging it or attacking it, or condemning it, or dwelling on its negativities, or amplifying its faults. It just is what it is. It is a flawed mistaken world made from insane minds that thought they could do better WITHOUT God. It just is what it is and nothing more. It simply is far short of the divinity of heaven and the perfection of real creation. A beautiful mistake at best, a half-hearted effort at best, and a rather confused strange twisted mistaken effort at best. But you can do better, and you deserve better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."

God created you as a holy child of God. He gave you an individual soul with a mind and a free will. God has many creative children, forming the family of God.

"The soul is the idea of self fullness." It's the idea that you are fully a self, and that the whole of your soul/self is shared with the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

The idea of separation is simply an idea of denial. It's an attempt to deny and block reality. In a way, it's an attempt to disown what you are. Its a refusal to accept yourself as God created you. It's an attempt to NOT will, moving into unwillingness and imprisonment.

This means, "the ego" is not really the production of an additional self, or the manufacture of a first-and-only self. It is in fact the idea of NOT HAVING A SELF. It is self denial.

The ego is also the attempt to not be yourself. Being a denial of your soul, it's a withdrawal away from the awareness of what you are. As a rejection of light, this throws you into what seems to be the illusion of darkness.

Generally speaking, your soul is infinite and unlimited. It is everywhere, like God, sharing all of existence with Him. God occupies all "space" in the Kingdom and so does your soul in an "overlapping", sharing union.

In the idea of denial of self, you become withdrawn from being everywhere. You attempt to isolate yourself, to not share, to close down, to possess some small part of yourself which you claim is yours alone and NOT shared with the rest. It's the idea of having something exclusively yours which is unique and different and not accessible to anyone else.

This really is the idea of selfishness, the desire to have something special that no-one else has.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness." An idea of selfishness is NOT the idea of A SELF, it's the idea of a self having a poor attitude and not wanting to share with others.

But we have to frame this correctly. The ego is not a self. The ego is the idea of what you are NOT. It's the idea of NOT HAVING a self. It only SEEMS to be "a something" that you made, when in fact it is NOTHING. The belief that it has existence IS a state of deception, believing illusions are true. The ego is NOT really a self at all.

The ego, or egotism, is really the idea of self destruction, which is why the entire system of thought is centered on and leads towards death - the destruction of your self.

In death you are attempting to finish off the intention of becoming completely unwilling to exist. This is a selfish act. And it is there that the so-called ego reaches its climax. In essence, by trying to be selfish, a soul/mind tries to have private ownership, and ends up losing everything instead.

So it's not so much that we really made an ego. We didn't really invent a separate self. We didn't start out with no self and come up with a new self. We HAD a self before the separation and WILL have a self afterwards. Every soul that God created has individuality and eternal life.

The problem is not a matter of whether or not you have a self or are an individual being. The problem is a matter of whether you are willing to SHARE EXISTENCE with all of the rest of creation.

To be the fullness of the soul, you have to expand infinitely and unlimited. You have to be open to allowing access to YOU by everyone else, and to have access to everyone else. To join minds, to share all that exists, you cannot be closed off, isolated, excluded or imprisoned.

So by "going into egotism", we basically "made an ego" but only in the sense that we really did NOT create anything. Th ego has not been created, and in fact it does not exist at all. Not only is the ego the idea of what you would be if you did not exist, it also does not exist. In essence, "the separate self" is total fiction and DOES NOT EXIST. The belief that you ARE IT, is a mistaken belief and needs correction.

So you really can't be the ego, but you can believe you are. You can't be not yourself, but you can pretend to be. You can't lose your soul, but you can think you gain the whole world and lose it all anyway. You can't stop being as God created you, but you can dream of being something you're not.

The ego isn't the idea of a self. It's not a separate self. It's the idea of NOT a self, of NO self. An illusion that appears o be a something, but is a nothing. Believing that the ego is a self, or that you have an ego, is an upside-down belief. It suggests that in reality there is no self, and in illusions there are selves. This is an EGO perspective, having bought into the illusion that the ego state is a state of existence, not recognizing it as NON existence.

If you think that awakening means the end of self, due to the end of ego, you are thinking upside down. Selves ONLY exist in the Kingdom of God, NOT in the world of illusions. All illusory selves DO NOT exist, all REAL selves do exist.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His children, and their creations."

The Kingdom of ego death contains NO selves. Selves attempting to destroy themselves and ending in death.

This world of ego perspectives is merely a world of pretend selves, blocking and covering up the world of real selves. Trying to end self is just another extension of the ego's suicidal approach resulting in SELF DENIAL. Rejecting the soul results in death, not life. The ego does need to be "let go", but since it was never who you were to begin with, this is a loss of NOTHING. You give up nothing, to gain everything.

Recognizing that this no-self does not exist, and that you are the self God created, is the atonement. The ego doesn't have to "die" because it never existed in the first place. All we really need to do is stop pretending to be OTHER than the self that God created, or opposed to our self in any way.

Jesus also clarifies that our sense of self will EXPAND as we awaken. It will expand to INCLUDE all of the brothers and creations that we tried to deny. And it will expand to include the infinite immortal soul that you forgot is who you really are.

Losing the ego isn't the end of you. It's a return to your self. It's a reclamation of your immortal identity - still a God created you.

The separate self is really just the idea of being a SEPARATED self.. a self that had a self before the separation, which BECAME separated due to a lack of sharing, and will RESUME sharing and cease being separated after the atonement. This is why Jesus refers to such selves as "separated ones", NOT "separate ones". Just because you are separated does not mean you throw out your self when the "separateness" ends.

Awakening is a return to your real self. An acceptance that you are as God created you. A remembering of your soul.

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

"Separation" does not mean that which allows there to be many. It means that which keeps many things from sharing anything.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

We are all permanent beings in the heart of God.

We do not recognize an illusion when we see one. Since birth we've been looking at this world believing it's real. It seems real enough. But "there is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

The problem is, we don't have something MORE real to compare it to. There is no frame of reference to evaluate it or contrast it. If you could see something truly real, it would frame this world AS an illusion, it's illusory nature would become obvious, and you would be able to tell that this world is clearly false and unreal. But you have to have a sense of what true and real things are like in order to be able to compare and contrast, that this illusion is opposite to that.

Think for a moment then about reality, about God, about Heaven, about the nature and quality of infinite immortal being. Contemplate what God is like. The eternal nature, the endlessness, the freedom from sickness and death, the inability to create anything less than perfection. Then ask yourself, is this thing you are looking at, THAT? Does it match up? Does it correlate? Does it seem like something God would create, something immortal, unlimited, perfect, beautiful and pure?

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

With something to compare it to, it becomes more obvious that the things of this world, the stuff you've been looking at since birth, MUST BE an illusion. It must be something manufactured, artificial, pretend, fake, unreal, deceptive. It cannot really exist. There is no cancer in God. There is no insanity in God. There is no dog shit in God. There is no crying in God. There is no attack in God. There is no fear or threat or danger in God. Can this appearance of sin and attack exist WITHIN God's perfect being? Not even slightly. So what is it you're looking at?

It has to be something that is not really there. It has to be a lie, an illusion, a deception and a temptation to believe in something unreal. It's some kind of hallucination. It's make believe fairytale dreaming. It can't exist. It can't really be there at all. It seems to be but it's not. It is really nothing, pretending to be something. The impossible, pretending to be possible. It can't exist in God. It has no real cause. It hasn't been created. Remind yourself of this, and it will become clearer and more RECOGNIZED, that what you're seeing is an ILLUSION, some kind of invented puff of smoke masquerading as something else. It can't be real. It can't exist. It's not there. It's gone.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

There is only God and His Kingdom. "Only the creations of light are real."

Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing correctly.

It means recognizing that illusions ARE illusions, and not falling for them.

It means overlooking illusions and seeing past them, rather that taking them at their appearance and thinking they are real.

This extends all the way to the illusion of death, which is where the Son of God in all HIs divine freedom and power creates the ILLUSION that He has absolutely no freedom or choice left, or that things can happen to Him against His will.

This is of course impossible, so it is an illusion, bit it APPEARS on the surface to be an unwanted death, happening to someone who didn't seem to ask for it. But the Son of God is faking it.

If and when you can recognize and see that this is in fact an illusion of death, not a real death, then you are now over-looking and not falling for the trick. Believing it's real is a complete mistake.

You will only believe illusions are real when you forget to forgive, which puts you into so-called "judgement", which is really to do with attacking appearances and making them out to be the truth.

Illusions are not the truth. Death is not truth. But as soon as you are convinced that it's real you've become blinded, you've been tempted and you've succumbed to the deception. You didn't notice that it was the Son of God, infinite and immoral, who was pretending He can die.

And so because you didn't look past the ILLUSION of death, to see its Author, which would reveal to you plain as day - this is absolutely pretend - so you enter into the illusion yourself and go unconscious.

All you need realize then is that all you need to do to 'wake up' is to see correctly, ie have your perception corrected, so that you are not falling into the lie, are not believing the trap, and didn't go along with the story. It means fixing your vision on the truth, on what is really going on here, not buying into any form of victimhood or suffering or accidental events, and staying very certain that the immortal Son of God cannot be harmed. Death cannot be real. And nothing is really happening.

To overcome an illusion, ie "forgive", you must learn to see past the deception that you've fallen for, remember the truth, and stop taking it seriously. It's like some old trick that someone keeps playing on you and finally you figure out that someone is behind it and it's not just some random bizarre thing going on, his cover is blown and the illusion is broken, and now you can no longer fall for it. That's all it is, just learning to recognize and see the truth and stop being deceived by appearances.

All false appearances are your interpretation of the 'illusion of separation' as though it is not an illusion. Behind this misinterpretation there is still an illusion being created by the Son of God, but it has no power to convince you it's real unless you choose to play along with it. Then it's just something you can't believe anymore and you know is false. As such you escape death, because death is just part of believing that illusions are the truth.

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD (and why many sons)

Understand omnipresence and you will understand how God created many sons.

The course appears here to contradict itself, saying there is only one son, and yet that there are many sons, in the same paragraph. But it is not contradictory...

"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."

Here it is further clarified that God has one son AND many sons (souls) all of whom make up the sonship....

"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. "

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The question is, how it is possible for God to have one son AND many sons and for both facts to be true at the same time, without contradicting?

God is omnipresent. What does that mean? It means God is fully present everywhere. But let's draw some analogies to what the ego thinks that means, to show why it is not what the ego thinks it means.

A cloud .... may seem to be the same everywhere. Today here the sky is overcast and gray, as if one cloud. But there are particles of cloud "over there" which are not "over here". All of the particles are separated out and cut off from each other. It is an illusion of oneness, simply a gathering of many separate parts huddled together. This is not what omnipresence means.

A human body - may seem to be "one body", joined together with its arms and legs. But the arms are not the legs. The hands and feet are separate. A hand is not a foot or vice versa. All of the parts are separated out. They seem to share to some degree but there are clear separations between parts. What is in the hand is not in the foot. What is in the eye is not in the knee. This is an illusion of a "blob", or semi-oneness. A collection of parts again huddled together to make an illusion of a whole or sharing, but where there is no sharing at all. All of the body's cells and particles are separate. It is a collections of separate parts. This is ego.

Omnipresence is not like this. Omnipresence defies every single property of matter. It transcends space time. The laws of omnipresence totally ignore every single law of physicality and physical limitation.

In omnipresence, it is possible, for the entirety of God, to be entirely present in one location. This sounds reasonable to the ego so far. But what does not sound reasonable is this additional fact: While God is being fully and completely present in one location, showing up with all of his being and all of his attention in that location, He is ALSO SIMULTANEOUSLY fully showing up and fully present in another location. ALL of His presence and attention and being are in that other location AT THE SAME TIME.

To the ego, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It can only think in terms of finite amounts or volumes. To it, if God is fully present over here, there is nothing left to be present over there. Or rather, this is the idea of conditional love, in that there is only so much "amount" of love to go around, so if all the love is showing up in one place or given to one person, it must be exclusive, and there is no love left for anyone else. This is not what God is like.

God loves unconditionally. A part of unconditionality means that God can FULLY LOVE every single PART of existence. Without reservation. This does not mean He is spread thin, either. He has no limitation. It does not mean He has a really great big huge amount of love, like a 10 gallon container of water, and happens to be so much "bigger' than a row of glasses that he can fill all of them and have some left over. That's more ego logic. What really happens is, God puts ALL of Himself into every glass, to the point where there should to the ego be nothing left to put in another. And yet, there's God, fully present in the other glass. And all the rest equally. ALL OF HIM, IN ALL LOCATIONS, SIMULTANEOUSLY. This concept is completely alien to the ego.

If you can get a sense of this in your mind, it will help you to understand the metaphysics of God's creation, and will allow you to make sense of HOW it is possible that God has MANY SONS, and how all of them are also simultaneously one.

If God shares ALL of Himself, in order to create "the first son", the ego will then say, well, God just used up all of what he has, and now there is nothing left to share with any other son or to create again. But this is not true. God has not reduced whatsoever by sharing Himself. He has in fact increased. "Creation is increased only by sharing". AND, his omnipresent nature means He is perfectly capable of putting ALL of Himself into A BILLION SONS, without diminishing in any way, and without lacking anything, and without "running out" of Himself. Every single one of them has ALL of Him.

And here is the crucial point, as to why God creates MANY Sons and not just one...

When God shares all of Himself to create the first son, this in no way - due to his omnipresent nature - confines him or limits Him. He is able to be FULLY PRESENT and to create wholeness, EVERYWHERE, simultaneously. The creation of one son is merely the radiation of God in "one location", and... there are a lot of other locations! Other locations can simultaneously express all of God, to create a Son, in EVERY location. Simultaneously.

Here is an analogy.

A single point of light may seem to create a single photon. That photon is one created son. However, if the light source spans a large volume of space, such as a fluorescent tube, or an array of LED's, then it is capable of producing, simultaneously, an extraordinary number of photons i.e. creations. This is completely NATURAL to the nature of God, to simultaneously create MANY instances/wholes, because God is actually INFINITE in His ability to be present fully in every location. It is totally natural to God to create INFINITE SONS and to create each of them unlimited.

It is not natural for God, to claim that He can only therefore "create one son" and, be confined to that. That's as if to say, He uses all His creative juice, because the fullness of him is a limited "amount" (ego logic) and therefore if He puts all of Himself into ONE son, there is nothing left. BUT THERE IS. Not only is there something left, EVERYTHING IS LEFT. God has not reduced AT ALL. And as such, God goes on CREATING MULTIPLE SONS... perhaps INFINITE SONS.

That is his Omnipresent nature. To create many children, not just one. If there will be creation at all, given the massive expanse of God, and given that God will create in ALL locations simultaneously, and that He will give ALL of Himself in EVERY location, he will create WHOLE SONS in every single location.

Each son is a WHOLE, because ALL of the Father is shared with Him. Not just some parts. Not just a little bit of God. ALL of God is shared with every created soul. And every single soul has EVERYTHING, lacking nothing, because it does not lack ANY of God. The fullness of God is in every part of His Sonship. His entire creation thus contains many, many, many sons, each one of them is experiencing ALL OF GOD, simultaneously, and yet each one is therefore a WHOLE in and of itself. It must be, because God is a whole and can only create more wholes. Again, this makes NO SENSE to the ego's way of thinking, but it makes perfect sense holographically. The all is in every part and every part is a whole.

There is no "unnatural division" in this (ego separation). There is only "natural division".

The so-called "one son", aka Christ, is simply the entire "sum total" of all the individual free-willed Sons that God created. Yet it is more than just a sum of its parts. Again this is to do with holographic creation. Since ALL of God is in EVERY Son, adding up the number of Sons does not tell you what is there. The sum total of all Sons is not the totality. Since every sons SHARES ALL OF GOD, there is MORE to each Son than just "himself". He is SHARING GOD. So the Sonship, is more than the sum of its parts, because they are all sharing and extending a wholeness which is far bigger than any of them - the One Father.

To God, since he is IN all of the sons fully, shared with them, one with them, yet they are distinct, his experience of "all the sons" is simultaneous. As such he experiences the total as "one son" or "one unified experience". Another word for this one son is Christ. It is a sense of, every son sharing one parent. Of every son having ALL of God in them. That unity, that, connectedness, is "christ". But the christ is not just "one son", it is the immediate shared experience of the fact that ALL of God is in every son. Every son experiences and shares the whole of creation.

So it then is true to say, that each individual son, is in fact

1) A distinct son, a whole, containing the whole of God or made from the whole of God

and

2) Also intimately connected to and sharing God with every other son, as christ.

Therefore every son is christ. He is both "the whole sonship" AND "one son" simultaneously. The all, and the part, simultaneously.

Every creation of God also inherits God's omnipresent nature. Every single son, every being of light, every angel, every son of a son of a son, is OMNIPRESENT as well. It can be everywhere. And it can manifest multiple occurrences of images of an identity simultaneously, at any point in time or space, if needed. For example, angels are capable of being with MANY people simultaneously. This is only possible because they are omnipresent, otherwise they'd be jumping all over the place trying to keep up. This is true of them and it is also true of every Son.

Jesus is able to appear to MANY people individually, simultaneously, because he is EVERYWHERE, and is OMNIPRESENT, and is not limited in these finite ego-logical ways. Jesus can be FULLY present here with me right now, and be FULLY present with you right now wherever you are. This is NATURAL for all creations of God. This is part of our divine nature.

It is only this world of FORM and matter and time and objects and bodies, that APPEARS totally the opposite of this. In form, it is suggested that what is in one location IS NOT in any other location AT ALL. Matter also suggests that there *IS* no "all" in ANY of the parts. That all parts are separate, all parts are NOT JOINED, none of the parts are SHARING at all, and there is NO ONENESS. That was the POINT of making this universe of illusion, to be the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the nature of Heaven, God, and the Sonship.

Every single object in this world testifies that there is no God and that every son is separated. Every single body demonstrates this. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The planet itself, Earth, is a physical expression of the idea of separation, in which it is "OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY", because it does not demonstrate ANY omnipresence whatsoever. It does not appear to be a hologram (though it is), it does not show that the all is in any of the parts, no two parts share anything, there is no true joining, nothing overlaps, and basically every single physical particle of matter says "God is not here".

This is why this world is a bullshit lie, and no matter HOW you look at it or perceive it, its FORM is fundamentally in opposition to the nature of Heaven and God and the Sonship. It is NOT divine. It opposes divinity in every way. Every single particle of matter or energy is an expression of the idea of separation. Every subatomic particle. Every wave. Every quantum. However you deep you want to go, this universes is the OPPOSITE of omnipresence. And that was on purpose. The ego MADE THIS on purpose to try to create a picture of SHUTTING OUT GOD.

This is also the meaning of "this world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son". In every way, the separateness of matter is an attempt to claim that the son is CUT OFF from his father, because he no longer shares anything with the whole and no part contains ANY of God. That is an idea of the DEATH of God's Son, portrayed as physical particles which make up a demonstration of the Son being so completely devoid of God's presence that he must not be alive at all.

This is why we are not to make this world SPECIAL, or to worship it, or to want to keep it, or to try to have it somehow turn into heaven, or to put it on a pedestal, or to suggest God created it, or that it will be a permanent part of Creation. It CANNOT BE, because ALL that it is made of is this suggested idea of being UNLIKE HEAVEN. So there is no way that it can BECOME like heaven and still exist. Its entire NATURE is to be OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN. It exists AS "what God is not like". ... so it can't be IN what God is like and still exist. It cannot enter heaven or be part of it. This is why ... "THERE IS NO WORLD."

God's creation is one of holographic omnipresence. Every one of his MANY sons is a holographic omnipresent creation. Every single part of God's creation is the same everywhere and fully present in all parts. This is utterly IMPOSSIBLE to be expressed in form or matter, although any of God's children DOES have the ability to materialize illusory forms in any and MANY simultaneous locations if they choose to do so.

Time and eternity are opposites. The eternal is always existing, always is here and now, and is forever. There is no beginning or end. There is never a possibility of change, or of what has always existed ceasing to exist. There is no death, and only eternal life is real.

Time is an attack on eternity. It is the idea that what has always existed no longer exists, what is here now is not eternal, and what is here now will end. It is the idea of change, and of the idea of loss and therefore death. It is an attempt to insert a delay in eternity and to crease a distance from the here and now. It is avoidance of presence and avoidance of God.

Spacetime is a completely artificial construct and is completely false and unreal. It is nothing like eternity and has no permanent reality. It had a seeming beginning and it absolutely will have a seeming end. Endless time is an impossibility. Infinite time is an impossibility. Time is not real, and neither is space. Delay or distance from the ever-present unceasing and forever permanence of God is nothing more than denial.

Space is an attack on the ever-present existence of God. It suggests that God who is everywhere always, is nowhere ever. That nothing is ever whole, or wholly existing. That what is here is not there, and what is there is not here. That everything is limited and nothing is unlimited. That everything is separate and nothing shares anything.

Given that God is everywhere always, space attacks God by suggesting that there is nowhere that everything exists. And nothing exists everywhere. Meaning the everything exists nowhere, and God therefore does not exist. This is why in spacetime it appears that God has no existence whatsoever. It is false and untrue and completely opposite to reality. Both space and time are nothing but a false belief, believed by insane minds, dreaming of exile from the eternity of truth.

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary." UrT1B41AR

"Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. A timelessness in which is time made real; a Part of God Which can attack Itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind WITHIN a body; all are forms of circularity, whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause." UrT27I6

"Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured." UrW75L7

"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer." UrT2F1 "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." UrU5A5

"the Holy Spirit KNOWS it is not true. He stands at the end of time, where YOU must be, because He is WITH you." UrT11J8 "And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7

"T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

**** This is a very important part of the Course. ****

Jesus is telling is clearly here that the physical world of FORM, all objects, all matter, the physical universe, the world, are NOTHING, it is the way that we experience a 'wall of sin' which stands between us and God, and we are quite literally incapable of seeing God while we use the body's eyes to see.

It is also telling us that the physical universe is not reality. Perception of 'form', which means, physical materials, objects, people's bodies, the planet, etc... if you are seeing that, you are seeing an illusion.

This is very hard for many people to accept even intellectually yet alone to experience this truth. "There is no world" fits right in here.

So it's one thing to wake up to the point of still seeing the physical world and yet somehow 'seeing God in it' because God is in your mind. Okay, that's a step closer. BUT... that's not going all the way.

Jesus is telling us from a CHRIST perspective, that we have to become able to recognize that ALL FORMS ARE ILLUSIONS and that there is a REALITY that is beyond form, formless, in which you not only live your real life with God but you also are completely infinite and unlimited.

It's not enough just to find a different way of perceiving form. It's not enough to learn to not judge form. It's not enough to overlook your personal judgements or mental distortions or guilty attitudes about the world or yourself. That is not the end of the story.

We are asked to really go ALL THE WAY.... to go beyond form entirely. To go all the way to IMMORTAL SPIRIT. To transcend all forms and all physical matter and all of space and time. To go all the way to the complete and total and permanent awareness of the ONE REALITY. That reality is completely abstract and has NO FORMS IN IT. None. No objects. No bodies. No physical universe. No planets.

So that means, it's important to learn at some stage how even the body's senses are misleading you, how you are deceived by the appearance of differences and objects, how the physical world is actually set up to BLOCK you from God, and how the world PHYSICALLY STOPS YOU from being with God by completely deceiving your awareness.

You need a vision which transcends form. A vision which sees Christ. And that doesn't just mean seeing Christ in your brother or seeing Christ in the body-self of your brother. It means seeing past ALL FORM to the Christ and ONLY SEEING THAT.

Not just to see and be aware of God, but to see and be aware of NOTHING ELSE as well.

As Jesus says, "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you." - ACIM

Pure heaven.

W28L

Lesson 28 "Above all else I want to see things differently."

W28L1

Today we are really giving specific application to the idea for yesterday. In these practice periods you will be making a series of definite commitments. The question of whether you will keep them in the future is not our concern here. If you are willing at least to make them now, you have started on the way to keeping them. And we are still at the beginning.

W28L2

You may wonder why it is important to say, for example, "Above all else I want to see this table differently." In itself it is not important at all. Yet what is by itself? And what does "in itself" mean? You see a lot of separate things about you, which really means you are not seeing at all. You either see or not. When you have seen one thing differently, you will see all things differently. The light you will see in any one of them is the same light you will see in them all.

W28L3

When you say "Above all else I want to see this table differently," you are making a commitment to withdraw your preconceived ideas about the table, and open your minds to what it is and what it is for. You are not defining it in past terms. You are asking what it is, rather than telling it what it is. You are not binding its meaning to your tiny experiences of tables, nor are you limiting its purpose to your little personal thoughts.

W28L4

You will not question what we have already defined. And the purpose of these exercises is to ask questions and receive the answers. In saying, "Above all else I want to see this table differently," you are committing yourself to seeing. It is not an exclusive commitment. It is a commitment which applies to the table just as much as to anything else, neither more nor less.

W28L5

You could, in fact, gain vision from just that table, if you could withdraw all your own ideas from it, and look upon it with a completely open mind. It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe.

W28L6

In using the table as a subject for applying the idea for today you are therefore really asking to see the purpose of the universe. You will be making the same request of each subject which you use in the practice periods. And you are making a commitment to each of them to let their purpose be revealed to you, instead of placing your own judgment upon them.

W28L7

We will have six two minute practice periods today, in which the idea for the day is stated first, and then applied to whatever you see in looking about you. Not only should the subjects be chosen randomly, but each one should be accorded equal sincerity as today's idea is applied to it, in an attempt to acknowledge the equal value of them all in their contribution to your seeing.

W28L8

As usual, the applications should include the name of the subject which your eyes happen to 'light on, and you should rest your eyes on it while saying:

"Above all else, I want to see this ____ differently"

Each application should be made quite slowly and as thoughtfully as possible. There is no hurry.

G5

Chapter 5 - The Father's Love

G5A1

There is a secret place in everyone in which God's gifts are laid, and his to Him. It is not secret to the eyes of Christ Who sees it plainly and unceasingly. Yet it is hidden to the body's eyes, and to those still invested in the world and caring for the petty gifts it gives, esteeming them and thinking they are real. Illusions' gifts will hide the secret place where God is clear as day, and Christ with Him. Oh let this not be secret to the world so full of sorrow and so racked with pain. You could relieve its grief and heal its pain, and let the peace of God envelop it as does a mother rock a tired child until it sighs and slips away to rest.

G5A2

Rest could be yours because of what God is. He loves you as a mother loves her child; her only one, the only love she has, her all-in-all, extension of herself, as much a part of her as breath itself. He loves you as a brother loves his own, born of one father, still as one in him, and bonded with a seal that cannot break. He loves you as a lover loves his own; his chosen one, his joy, his very life, the one he seeks when she has gone away, and brings him peace again on her return. He loves you as a father loves his son, without whom would his self be incomplete, whose immortality completes his own, for in him is the chain of love complete - a golden circle that will never end, a song that will be sung throughout all time and afterwards, and always will remain the deathless sound of loving and of love.

G5A3

Oh be at peace, beloved of the Lord! What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love? What is your purpose here but to recall into His loving arms the son He loves, who has forgotten Who his Father is? What is your only goal, your only hope, your only need, the only thing you want, but to allow the secret place of peace to burst upon the world in all its joy, and let the Voice within it speak of Him Whose love shines out and in and in between, through all the darkened places to embrace all living things within its golden peace?

G5A4

You are My Son, and I do not forget the secret place in which I still abide, knowing you will remember. Come, My Son, open your heart and let Me shine on you, and on the world through you. You are My light and dwelling-place. You speak for Me to those who have forgotten. Call them now to Me, My Son, remember now for all the world. I call in love, as you will answer Me, for this the only language that we know. Remember love, so near you cannot fail to touch its heart because it beats in you. Do not forget. Do not forget, My Child. Open the door before the hidden place, and let Me blaze upon a world made glad in sudden ecstasy. I come, I come. Behold Me. I am here for I am you; in Christ, for Christ, My Own beloved Son, the glory of the infinite, the joy of Heaven and the holy peace of earth, returned to Christ and from His hand to Me. Say now Amen, My Son, for it is done. The secret place is open now at last. Forget all things except My changeless Love. Forget all things except that I am here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I was trying to understand the true nature of oneness as given in ACIM, Jesus kept substituting the word "sharing". I didn't at first understand why that would be the same thing, but now I do.

We're told first of all that...

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it."

If you think on this, you'll realize why. God is infinite and unlimited. He is everywhere. He is the first cause and the first and only whole. He is the whole of everything. There is nowhere else unoccupied to put anything new. God cannot create anything unlike himself that we might call "different". And everything that exists already exists forever.

On those terms, it should be IMPOSSIBLE for God to create anything anywhere. He is already the "one whole". He is already perfect and complete. Nothing can be added to that, or can it?

There is a clause, you see, which Jesus gives - "EXCEPT by sharing it."

IF God were to SHARE himself, this bypasses the initial rules of reality and of wholeness, and allows an "increase" to occur. God can ADD something, provided that it obeys the rules of sharing, and doesn't violate any of the previously mention rules about everything existing already.

To be shared, something has to inherit ALL of what exists already. It cannot have anything new or anything unlike what already exists. What exists has to be entirely inherited as its own and as itself. What it has, it has to receive from God. It has to receive ALL of God. AND it has to give everything it has received.

In effect, God is capable of "adding sharers" within himself. These sharers MUST have a nature like his own of being fully wiling to SHARE everything they have and are.

They have FULL access to everything, at the same time as God does. How is THAT possible? You might think that if a created being has everything, this deprives God of everything. Or that only one of them can have everything at a given time. As if a son and a father are in competition. But in reality it is possible for this son to simultaneously have what the father has, and without limits, provided they SHARE IT WITH HIM.

Another way of describing this sharing is OVERLAP. The two of them are literally sharing the same space. They both have access to the same ONE WHOLE. Yet there are two of them. God has extended himself, giving all of himself fully, because that's the only way he can give. He gives ALL to FULLY create a son. And this son, IS a second being. BUT, this son can only exist so long as it SHARES all of God, sharing the SAME WHOLE at the same time.

This sharing between the two of them, is what oneness means. Oneness means direct simultaneous FULL access to the same one whole. This sharing does not allow the son of God to be "separate", in the sense of EXCLUSIVE, because any kind of exclusion is not an idea of sharing. The son is not excluded from God. The son is INCLUDED WITHIN God. He can exist BECAUSE God can share, and he can only exist SO LONG AS sharing is possible.

"real creation gives everything since it can only create like itself."

"In the state of being, the mind gives everything always."

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

If God can share himself once, ADDING a son within his own being, which shares and HOSTS him and has everything that God has, and shares the SAME ONENESS with him, there is no reason why God cannot share himself again and again and again. In fact God is unlimited in how much he can share. He can share himself INFINITELY.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

What has happened then is that God has created many "separate beings" who ARE many fully whole creations, whole and complete in and of themselves, but only because they ALSO SHARE THE ONE WHOLE. There IS one whole - which you could call oneness - but that whole IS SHARING, and HAS SHARED itself, producing many. We could almost say there are "many wholes", but each of these wholes shares the ONE whole.

This is precisely and exactly the definition of the holographic principle. In a true hologram, there are parts, and each of the parts contains THE WHOLE, and therefore IS fully whole in its own right - fully existing. But at the same time, there is only ONE ultimate whole, which each of the whole parts share and contain (host), and this produces a holographic relationship.

Holgorams SHARE a single whole with the same one whole, and yet are many. That is reality's nature. Because God is a creator and HAS created many wholes, who share the same whole. Each whole is a son of God - a soul, a member of the ONE SON, and thus the whole of the sonship - which is the whole kingdom. This is the truth in ACIM. That God has many sons who are simultaneously one because they are FULLY shared.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. "

This IS fundamentally different to the idea of "separate selves". A separate self is a part of the whole which DOES NOT SHARE with the rest of the whole. A separated off part. A part which does not want to share, and is therefore selfish. A part which was whole but decided to disconnect itself from wholeness. A part which now sees itself as only partly whole, partly existing, and APART from everything. This selfish self does not want to share because it is the idea of the OPPOSITE of sharing - the opposite of reality. That is what we call an ego.

God does therefore have separate sons, many creations, many minds, but at the same time they MUST share ALL of God, sharing the same one whole, which is why they are ONE. They are one AND many, just as in a hologram the many whole-containing parts are each THE same whole, even though they are many parts. This is a transcendental idea which ignores the rules of spatial separation.

These "separate sons" are not separate in the EGO sense because they are not separated by a lack of sharing. They are not SELFISH separate beings. They are SHARING separate beings. That is the ONLY difference between the nature of the Kingdom and the separation from God. In the separation all that happened was that individual SHARING beings who shared everything with each other and with God, became selfish, and tried NOT to share, thus "separating themselves off" - seemingly fragmenting away - from the holgoraphic shared union of the sonship.

Ending the separation, therefore, is actually a return to SHARING. "Atonement is a lesson in sharing." To resume relationship and communication is to return to a state in which EACH OF US SHARES EVERYTHING at the same time. Where we OVERLAP with each other. Where we return to being ONE WITH each other, sharing ONE identity as Christ, while still being many beings. It is the end of SELFISHNESS, not the end of SELF.

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

This is why the movement away from selfish egotism towards holy union and sharing, is a movement towards resumimg being a MEMBER of the sonship. It is also an EXPANSION of identity, because now a part of God which tried to see itself as NOT WHOLE, by denying the parts of itself it SHARES with others, now has to reintegrate OTHERS into itself and SHARE with them in oneness and equality. The sense of identity has to expand to INCLUDE OTHERS within itself, WITHOUT destroying the fact that God has many sons.

A return to your SOUL is a return to the sonship. "The sonship is your soul." The WHOLE sonship is your soul, while your soul is also YOUR soul. You are a part of God and all of God. You are a part of the sonship and all of the sonship. You are a part of the kingdom and all of the kingdom. You are part of heaven and all of heaven. That is the SHARED nature of reality. That is ONENESS in A Course in Miracles. It is not the end of yourself, but a return to BEING ONE WITH the father and with your brothers, SHARING everything with them forever.

"You who are host to God, are also host to THEM."

"I trust my brothers who are one with me."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self." "I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers, and my Self."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are an immortal being but you keep trying to prove you're not.

In sickness we attempt to prove we can be hurt.

In fear we attempt to prove we can have reason to be concerned.

In suffering we attempt to prove something can happen to us.

In death we attempt to prove we are not immortal at all.

In sin we attempt to prove we are not innocent.

In guilt we attempt to prove we are capable of malfunctioning.

In all our "human" ways, our egoic ways, we simply keep trying to prove and demonstrate that "it is true" that we're not immortal.

That is what this whole world is about. That is why we made it. It is a dream of MORTALITY. A dream of death. A world where the immortal beings come to pretend to suffer a while, wither and die, to prove they are not immortal. To destroy God's immortal Son.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."

"For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you."

"And I behold the world that Christ would have me see, aware it ends the bitter dream of death; aware it is my Father's Call to me."

"My brother, child of our Father, this is a dream of death. "

We made this world in an attempt to prove there IS no eternal life. That we CAN be hurt, attacked, threatened, even destroyed. This whole place is one big lie. It's a huge cover up. Immortal beings attempting to die. Invulnerable beings attempting to be victims. Eternal beings suggesting their continuation is threatened.

All we need to do is own up to who and what we really are.

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

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

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

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect. "

"For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is immortal. It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him."

"But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as itself."

"its likeness shines with its immortal Love."

"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love."

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now.""But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless.""In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"Are you a Spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? "

"No trace of anything in time can long remain in minds that serve the timeless."

Oneness does NOT mean you do not have a self or free will.

ACIM quotes:

God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. (T-4.VII.5:1)

God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. (T-6.II.8:1-2)

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite. (W-pII.11.1:1)

God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. (T-3.III.7:9-10)

In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. (T-2.I.1:2)

The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:7)

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." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

When the Atonement has been completed [and we are back in Heaven], all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. (T-1.V.3:1)

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. (T-5.I.5:5,7)

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (T-5.II.1:2)

God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. (T-9.VI.3:5)

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. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

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.

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. (W-pI.161.4:1 8)

When you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. (T-16.II.3:2-3)

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done." W320W111 urtext.

Many people have an idea in their head, before they even come to ACIM, that reality must be some kind of "oneness". It's based on their idea of God as "one great big giant thing". But A Course in Miracles has a very different definition of God and reality, so this idea of oneness has to be thrown in the trash if you want to do ACIM.

ACIM's model is that God is a creator. God is a cause. God creates many things. God has children. God has created an entire sonship comprising many sons. God's children are also creators who cause the creation of living beings. And God has also created a permanent Holy Spirit, and angels.

Without the idea of God as a creator of many things, there is no notion of God having ANY sons. There is no way to explain the authority problem or its undoing. God is now the one who separates and has to atone. There is no way for mind to be in the service of spirit. There is no way for you to be as God created you. There is no way for you to have permanent brothers to share with so that you're not alone forever. And without God as cause, you cannot have an inheritance.

ACIM's model is very very fundamental on this. God HAS to be thought of as your creator, the source, out of whom not only you but also others are created. God has to be acknowledged as your father otherwise you cannot share his power or give his gifts. God has to be seen as the cause of you and of everyone else, otherwise you are at the effect of your brothers. God has to be fundamentally acknowledged as having created A FAMILY.

This flies in the face of the idea that reality is just one thing, or its one giant expanse of energy, or there is only God being alone, or God doesn't cause anything, or that there is a kind of oneness that is all just a great big "one" without anything in it or any parts or anything to share with.

If you like, A Course in Miracles is a kind of "creationist" teaching, not that God created the Earth and bodies but God IS a creator of something. And that makes it impossible that reality just be one big blob or some void or some kind of giant emptiness or expanse of singularity. This fundamental idea of reality being "a oneness with nothing in it" IS NOT what ACIM teaches.

If someone wants a path that teaches that God is just sitting there on his own and that you are him in his entirety, then you really are barking up the wrong tree by taking this course. ACIM is not for you if you want to believe that God has no family. Or that YOU in turn are not a co-creator with your own creations. Your mind HAS TO EXTEND in order to live and to be healthy, just as God's does, which automatically implies that creation is the only true nature of anything real. Without it God is dead.

ACIM is a teaching on cause and effect, with God as cause of his effects, who inherit everything from him, and in turn become causes with effects. Reality has to be accepted as a very large "place" within which God hosts a great many things he has created. And which is forever increasing. An entire Kingdom of souls and beings and life. A Kingdom of unlimited thoughts and power and creation.

If that's not what you "like" or you think reality is not like that, then you probably should chose a different path which frames God as an inert blob. Trying to force ACIM to BE that path is just mangling its teaching, creating denial in your mind, splitting you away from the truth and producing a fairytale about not existing with no brothers to relate to. It's a shame that some people consistently assert that they have no self and there is no one else. If that were true, God has no creative power whatsoever.

God has a mind. God has awareness. God has many thoughts. God has creations. God has a Kingdom. God has power. God has a will. God has love. God feels. God knows. God be's. Gid us an author. God causes. God shares himself. God communicates. God has relationships. God is far more than just some expanse of existence.

When I am upset, feeling unhappy, having a cry, feeling guilty or afraid, or whatever, Holy Spirit is gentle and compassionate. He often says, "I know". Sometimes I feel a hand on my shoulder from Him or Jesus.

They are compassionate in that they know that *I* believe I am experiencing something upsetting, that *I* feel sad or whatever. They are there for me, and they don't judge it. They don't even use the opportunity to push me towards some kind of forgiveness or greater awareness. They just hold me and hug me.

However, the fact is that all upset feelings come from a mis-perception that I chose. And I chose that mis-perception so that I could further my separation from God.

So for example, I might feel upset because I saw myself victimized by someone. I might feel sad about how someone rejected me or whatever. And those feelings seem genuine, it seems like I really feel this way and that it's very sad and unfortunate. But, once I'm done with feeling, at some point I need to find the willingness to move beyond this.

I've witnessed how, in particular, when old hurts come up from the past, to be healed, they always feel like how it felt at the time. They're always based on how I was perceiving when I was younger and less aware. Even though at the time I did not understand what was going on, or what it meant, how it made me feel at the time based on that perception is now the feeling that I need to work through and release. But I've also seen how obvious it is, that these feelings were just how I felt 'within' the framework of a certain way of looking at life, and there is usually some kind of mistake in that.

I saw myself as hurt because I didn't perceive correctly. I saw myself as unloved because I didn't recognize my infinite lovability. I saw myself as unworthy because I devalued myself sort of 'by accident' because I didn't know what i was doing. And so I created feelings of unworthy and unlove and so on, which I must 'heal' and release, but even though these feelings seem like they reflected some kind of 'truth', they're not really the ultimate truth.

I need to become willing to admit that, once I've allowed myself to feel and release the 'energy' produced by a false perception, that the perception ITSELF was faulty. And it was the fault perception that LED to faulty feelings. Unhappy feelings come from unhappy perceptions. So I need to now be willing to see differently, to look for a greater truth, to own up to the part that I played in choosing to suffer, to take back my power, to claim responsibility for doing this to myself, and to realize that nobody involved was doing it without my will.

So there is a 'forgiveness' process that needs to occur, above and beyond unhappy feelings, to correct the perception that led to them. And even though Holy Spirit knows this, he seldom prompts or forces me to 'go there' especially not right when I'm feeling how the feelings felt. I let myself fully feel because this releases the energy, even though it's a FALSE energy, to clear it out. To cathart it. THEN my mind is clearer and can have a cognitive shift, as well as being more willing and able to now apply a 'forgiveness' to change my perception.

It's important to let yourself feel and let out the trapped negative emotions, but recognize also that they are only there because of a mistaken way of looking at life, and that mistake needs to be corrected at some point. When you are ready. And not before. And nobody is pushing you or forcing you to have to do that, especially not when you're in the middle of a deep release. Trying to rush someone out of feeling into truth isn't compassionate.

So it's possible to have compassion for someone who is feeling upset even if you know that their upset is false, and there really isn't a need to be upset. Holy Spirit knows that nothing has gone wrong and there is ONLY reason to celebrate, but to tell me that in the middle of me believing heavily that I've been wronged, isn't entirely helpful because I can't hear it until I'm ready and willing. We really believe we've done something terrible to God and deserve to be punished for it, and as we work through those feelings, Holy Spirit is very patient to give you time to 'process' the consequences of a mistaken decision. And then at some point, when you're ready, you will undo the belief that caused it.

Identity is completely tied to how much awareness you have.

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

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

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

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

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

Your sense of self expands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In heaven, we are powerful creative beings and co-creators with God. The proper use of our creative power is constructive and cooperative and aligned with God's will. We create only perfection, beauty, happiness and eternal life.

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

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

God gave us freedom to create, but that freedom includes the potential ability to TRY to use freedom to imprison freedom, to create something without extending God, to will that we be unwilling, and to deny reality.

This mis-use of creative power that essentially runs against the very nature of creative power itself, produces what's called a "mis-creation". It results in nightmarish hallucinations of impossible things happening, a world without God, a place of suffering and mortality. These "creations" are the result of mis-guided, insane, contradictory, amateurish and childish uses of creative power.

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

"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not."

The stuff we mis-create (make), which includes spacetime and Earth and bodies and death, is like a lower and more primitive form of expression. It's really an attempt to create a dead-end, or a world which cannot co-create and cannot live forever.

We use our infinite power to create an uncreative world that we do not want. We're still being essentially creative, but we're creating stuff that isn't ultimately real or true or alive. The "content" that we come up with isn't aligned with God's nature. Like we've "devolved" somewhat and everything we create is lacking in some way (lack of love=sin - a world of sin).

"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."

"The instinct for creation is NOT obliterated in miscreation. That is why it is always invested with reality."

"You are much too tolerant of Mind-wandering, thus passively condoning its miscreation."

"While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."

"Both the Separation and the fear were MISCREATIONS of the mind, which have to be undone."

So essentially mind has one of two "modes", it can either create constructively in line with God and love, or it can mis-create which produces fearful things which seem to lack perfection and do not last.

If we completely leave out any sense of judgement about miscreation being wrong, or a sin, or something to be guilty for, or to attack the miscreation or condemn it in any way, we would see that it is simply a mistake. It is just a mis-use of the mind by someone that doesn't recognize the futility and self-deception and pointlessness and confusion that is inherent in trying to create the uncreateful.

We could look upon such miscreations, such as Earth, without any judgement. We could think of it as like the creation of a child that has not learned or perfected or mastered its abilities yet. It makes things which are broken, primitive, don't work, contradict themselves, are full of limits, are ugly, designed to malfunction and to fall short.

And then we could consider what God's attitude would be as a loving parent. God would not condemn or hate or judge harshly what had been mis-created by the child. He would recognize the shortcomings, the mistakes, the limitations of what had been made, but would see it as at least a "good first effort" by his children, with potential for improvement. And he would encourage them to continue perfecting the use of their creative power.

"It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."

If we think of the world therefore as "somewhat bad, not all that bad, a good try" ... recognizing it for what it is and is not, realizing the mistakes inherent in its making, we can be what we call "forgiving" toward it.

Forgiveness could be described as a loving attitude that you have towards something unloving. A less limited viewpoint towards the limited. A more inclusive mindset towards something made to exclude. A less judgemental or attacking perspective on something which was made as an attempted attack on God.

Instead of the world being seen as a horrible hellscape, or as a half-empty cup, we can see the half-full cup and at least give the son of God credit for "trying" (lol). Even if that trying involved some failing. We can let the world be the limited broken thing that it is, while being mindful to "do better in future". To master our creative power and to create greater higher works of art that are more aligned with God and more in-keeping with sanity and harmony with eternal life.

God doesn't condemn or judge our mis-created world. But he would rather that we return to co-creatorship in heaven with him to create only the eternal and the loving.

"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

It sounds like maybe we have a guilty conscience for what we think we've made, doesn't it? A guilt over an attack on God, a guilt about having mis-created, a hatred of what we mis-created, a sense of shame and fear that the hideous thing we made is lurching at us and trying to kill us, even though we are its maker. It's like we made a terrible mistake (a supposed sin) by mis-creating, and it induced guilt, and now we're living with the fallout of believing God would hate us for it.

Jesus also warns us that if we somehow regard the world as a sin, something to be hated, even destroyed, then we're actually denying the fact that we have very powerful minds that can create entire worlds. We need to acknowledge what we HAVE "created", even if it was in a spirit of fear and murder (unmiraculous creation), as being a not-entirely-evil "first attempt" that at least demonstrates the sheer power we DO have to create, even if WHAT we created falls short in so many ways.

"...it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the un-mindful (physical). There is little doubt that the mind can miscreate. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of its power, one is also denying the power itself.)"

Earth and its surroundings, spacetime, is simply something we've mis-created in a mis-use of our divine power, in a form which is unlike what God would create, and of a nature which tends to attack itself. It is seemingly partly creative and partly destructive, partly good and partly evil, partly light and partly dark. It's an expression of the belief that an opposite to God is possible, even if such a belief is mistaken.

What we created (made, dreamed, hallucinated) is not real and cannot last. But for what it is, it at least shows that we do have infinite power and we did come up with something. And we keep mis-creating horrible nightmares as we go along. It's just that we need to create higher, better, and more loving creations. We need a higher prayer, a higher song, a better way, a more beautiful content.

Meanwhile, in our forgiveness of what we did mis-create, we must find a way to acknowledge and respect its maker. Even if we did "a shit job of it", it at least reveals some of our qualities, here and there. There are aspects to the world which are symbolic of light things, as well as dark things.

There are some forms of beauty, forgiveness is an earthly form of love, bodies can be repurposed to serve the mind, and perhaps the decrepit shit-heap that we came up with isn't entirely devoid of traces of the son of God's perfection. Even in subtle ways perhaps there is a trace of beauty, of order, of health, of cooperation, of peace, and of love, intermingled with the mis-created forms.

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection."

We made a chaotic universe, complete with every imaginable form of limitation and difficulty and problem and struggle. A world whose nature and laws are not the perfect unity and harmony of heaven, and which indeed attempts to be as opposite and lacking as possible.

But we still must look on the brighter side and find the proper higher interpretation of it. The way God would look upon the rudimentary and somewhat laughable deformities made by an inexperienced child. The world is what it is, complete with all its faults and partial symbols of heaven. And it will end, because it mis-created as an idea of limiting existence and life.

In heaven perfection is even greater, even more broad, even more natural and ever-present. It is the absolutely perfectly divine expression of a perfect creator. And it is your true home in which you co-create absolute perfection and beauty with God.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."

In ACIM Jesus sometimes says things which SOUND contradictory, but they are not. He will claim one thing, then claim another, sometimes in the same sentence. And it will sound like the two things are totally opposite. So then you'll tend to conclude only one of the two statements can be true. But this is a mistake.

Here are some examples of logically cryptic-sounding self-contradictory statements:

"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."

"I and my Father are one."

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

"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son."

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

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

The reason they sound contradictory is because they simultaneously take two logically opposing positions. For example he tells us God has one son, but in the next breath tells us God created many sons. Or he tells us there's "I" and "my father" and then says they are "one". Then he's talking about brothers, suggesting more than one, but is talking about how they are seemingly one thing. Or how God created "everyone" within heaven, but then refers to them as a seemingly singular "one son". Even to suggest that God has one son, but that he knows "them all" as one.

So then you find yourself asking, how can it be possible that God is having one son AND that God is knowing "them all" as one? And USUALLY what almost everyone does, who thinks the way most people think, is to SIDE WITH one or the other of the statements, and DISMISS the other. Because that "seems to make sense". Because if you can turn a blind eye to the contradiction, you seem to "solve" the problem. But this is a TOTAL FAIL. Here's why.

The ego thought system is based on separation. The separation always suggests that something is true of one thing which is NOT true of another. It is the opposite of an equality-based system. It reasons that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone. That something is either true of this OR that, but not both. The whole ego approach is to differentiate and make un-equal everything it refers to. This results in ME VS YOU, ie war.

Examples of this are e.g. "I am innocent, you are guilty". "I parked in the first parking space, not the second". "I bought the red one, not the blue one". "Its either male or female". "You can go north or south". "I took the left door, not the right door." "I am Paul, not Jim" etc.

The whole PHYSICAL world, and all of space and time, was MADE based on this thought process or "way of reasoning". In fact you can say the physical world IS the ego thought SYSTEM. And so when you THINK this way, in terms of "EITHER THIS OR THAT, BUT NOT BOTH", it maps very very well to the physical world. It doesn't seem to produce contradictions either.

I'm either in America or in England but not in two places at once. I can go north or south, but not both. I am old or young, but not both. I can have the salad for supper or the beef steak but not both. I can buy the house or the condo but not both. etc. I can go left or right but not both. etc

The trouble is, God's Kingdom is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to this way of thinking, being opposite to THIS WORLD.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

The whole system is completely unlike it. And what's POSSIBLE in God's system is IMPOSSIBLE in the ego's system. And what makes SENSE in God's system appears to be utter NONSENSE in the ego's reasoning.

And the thing is, pretty much everyone in this world, whether you're into ACIM or not, and even if you are, USES the ego's reasoning system to draw conclusions.

That's fine, if you're talking about the physical world. But the instant you start talking about God's Kingdom, his laws, his nature, his creations, you are now in TOTALLY inappropriate territory for that way of thinking. That way of thinking is NOT how God thinks, so it WILL NOT map correctly to God's Kingdom or draw correct conclusions about it. And HIS world is not broken up into pieces of "either this or that."

The key difference is that God's Kingdom and system of thought, logic and reason, are based on INCLUSION AND SHARING. Whereas the ego's system is based on EXCLUSION and SEPARATION. This can be simplified to two simple equations or formulations:

God: BOTH THIS AND THAT ARE EQUALLY TRUE.

Ego: EITHER THIS IS TRUE OR THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT BOTH.

You can also see that since God's Kingdom is reality, and the ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE of God, the ego is a logical "operation" of NOT GOD, or the negation of God. And if eternity is "always", the ego's opposite is NEVER. ie "always never."

Which is why its whole system is based on this notion of "This is true, but that is not". ie EITHER this is true, OR it's false, but not both. Or this applies to ME OR YOU, but not both at once. There is no simultaneous, at-once, sharing, or inclusiveness, in the ego world. And that limits its thought process.

In God's thought system, God shares all of himself with his creations. This SHARING, fundamental to his nature, means that his creations HAVE everything God has. Without limit. Without compromise. Without one person having something and having to wait until the other is done with it. They SHARE it, like simultaneous access. And they OVERLAP each other, which is impossible in the physical world without causing an atomic explosion.

Similarly, the Golden Rule which describes God's thought system, applies here just the same. What is true of one brother, is true of another brother. What is true of one of God's creations, is true of ALL creations. Every thing God creates is EQUAL in its nature and its wholeness and its perfection and its LIKENESS to God.

So now you can say something which sounds bizarre like, if what is true of ME is true of YOU, then it is true of BOTH of us. It is true of ME *AND* YOU. Which means if it is true that I am me, it must also be true that YOU ARE ME ALSO. And now there are two things, me and you, which are ALSO simultaneously BOTH one thing, while still being two things.

THAT is the "oneness" that is taking place in reality. And it's this oneness of sharing that many do not understand because it DEFIES exclusive thinking. I am INCLUDED in my brother, I am INCLUDED In God, and my creations are INCLUDED in me.

In God's system, a whole bunch of seemingly bizarre things are possible and true. For example Jesus talks about how when you GIVE in reality, you SHARE it, and now YOU have it AND the other has it. Because now both of you share the same thing. And instead of having to LOSE the thing, you now allow another to GAIN it while you RETAIN it. Which means it has INCREASED. This defies the ego's reasoning.

"Ideas are increased by sharing."

It would be silly to suggest that when God creates, he sacrifices himself and there is nothing of himself left, given that he GAVE ALL of himself to his creation. But that's what the ego would conclude. The ego would also conclude that if YOU have everything, NO ONE else can have ANYTHING, because there is nothing left to have that is not already yours.

Ego produces a FINITE system because it does not want to share anything and so sees everything as LIMITED in its amount. This also leads to conditional love, like love is a scarce commodity to be traded. The ego would say if you have all of God, no-one else can have any of God, because the ego is based on SELFISHNESS, which arises naturally as part of a system of exclusion. As Jesus confirms:

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

In the ego system, when you give something, you lose it, the other gains it, you sacrifice, and there is no increase. If I have a pizza and I want to "share" it with you, I have to SACRIFICE AND LOSE half the pizza. This is compromise, not sharing. We both have less than wholeness. But in heaven, its the total opposite. I can have the whole pizza, you can have the whole pizza, because we share it. We OVERLAP. We merge together and are one in our having of the pizza. And now we BOTH have THE WHOLE.

Similarly when you think about sons of God, the EGO's way of thinking would say you have to put things in concrete boxes and keep them SEPARATE. Which leads you to conclude, EITHER I am in my body, OR I am in your body, but not both. But God's law would say, I am in my brother and in myself at the same time. What is true of me is true of him. Therefore there are TWO brothers who ARE ONE. Their oneness or union DOES NOT IN ANY WAY overthrow or erase or undo or cancel, the fact that there are STILL TWO. And this applies clearly in cases like "one brother is all brothers", and "I and my father are one." Jesus confirms:

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND.""

"Every mind is in all minds."

Notice here that he clarifies that there are STILL TWO PARTS in the statement. There is still ME and GOD. Two entities. Yet, they are ONE. Which means logically, 1=1 and 2=1. This makes no sense to the ego. But it is true. And accurate. And correct. This is how things are in reality. God has created a son, SHARED everything with him, so now THEY BOTH have everything, and thus they BOTH AS TWO ... are one. Their oneness does not undo their twoness, and their twoness does not undo their oneness. None of this has to do with the ego or "the separation".

The ego on the other hand, or those who THINK WITH the ego, tend to think about God's kingdom in EITHER OR terms. This is a complete logical failure. It results in false conclusions all over the place. If AIR, let's say, is in one box AND in another box, the ego would have to say, the air can only be IN one box OR the other box, not both. But the air is in both boxes. Similarly, a son of God is in his own box, BUT he is ALSO in the boxes of all the other sons. And in God's box/being.

If you use ego reasoning to draw conclusions about the inner contents of the Kingdom, YOU WILL come to a false conclusions, guaranteed. God's Kingdom is not made up of SEPARATE (un-shared) BOXES. It's made of SHARING boxes. So you can't say "either this or that", or "either one son or many", or "either God or God and a son", or "either oneness or separation" or "either one or many". That's all ego thought. It's a mistake. You have to THINK LIKE God to "get" what God's system is really like. And that way of think is to think WAAAY outside the box.

Once you recognize that God's system is based on a totally different kind of logic, basically "BOTH AND" rather than "EITHER OR", *EVERYTHING* Jesus says no longer is a contradiction. It is no longer contradictory to say "God has but one son knowing them all as one". It does not mean He only has a count of one son, because that ignores the fact he has many. And is does not mean that by having many they are "separate" in the ego sense, because they DO SHARE EVERYTHING and therefore transcend their boxes and thus ARE one. Their oneness and manyness coexists.

If all you do with these kind of statements is to TAKE SIDES with one PART of the statement and relegate the other to "the ego", that's a total fail. Because now you will relegate perfectly legitimate multitudes of creations of God to the realm of EGO, or multiple minds are now considered fragments of one mind, or multiple sons is considered an illusion. WHICH IS WRONG. It is completely a total failure of logical reasoning because the wrong kind of logic is being used

You can't just say "well it says I and my father are one, therefore I don't exist.". That's BS. That's what the EGO concludes. That's not God's conclusion, nor is it true. It is still true that YES, essentially, in truth, you and God ARE ONE THING. But, this oneness DOES NOT in the traditional sense mean or imply that there aren't ALSO two things. God IS a father and DID create a son.

I want to just make it clear that this is also NOT the same thing as"duality". Some people will argue that God having many of anything is duality. It is not the same at all.

Duality is the ego's idea of separateness. That is, that something is EITHER this OR that. This denies sharing. When you change the "OR" into an "AND", to correctly map to God's nature, the statement becomes THIS AND THAT. Which now suggests that there is sharing between TWO or more things. This is no longer duality, but it is also NOT THE END of individuality or many-ness. In any "contradictory" statement Jesus makes like that, THIS (part A) AND THAT (part B) are BOTH true. Without cancelling each other, and without opposing each other.

God's Kingdom is not duality. Duality means separate boxes WITHOUT sharing. As Jesus confirms:

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

Those RELATIONSHIPS, are the SHARING nature of the Kingdom. You need more than one of something to have relationship. It's what joins you with God and the Christ mind. But these relationships also do NOT undo your individuality. Nor does it imply that you having a self is unholy.

God who is whole, creates additional wholes beings. He cannot create partial beings. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created, there is no lack in it." So now if God has a son, which he does, because he's a creator, and a father, His son MUST BE A WHOLE, yet to ego logic you can't have two wholes.

If God is all encompassing, there is NO ROOM FOR ANY SON AT ALL. To the ego, anyway. Because "two wholes" is nonsense to the ego. Yet many proponents of oneness and non-duality like the idea of there being at least a son still, which is COMPLETELY illogical in any thought system.

Ego thinkers who struggle with logic will conclude this. But the truth is God does have a son, and there ARE TWO WHOLES. The reason this is POSSIBLE is because of sharing. The two wholes SHARE everything, and therefore ARE ALSO ONE WHOLE. EACH SON therefore is a WHOLE SON, has everything, and shares it with the WHOLE of the rest. As Jesus confirms:

"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS created "separate" beings, who have EVERYTHING individually, and want to share it to increase their joy."

This is a statement of divine logic. God is whole, and yet, he SHARED himself to create MANY "separate" beings, INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - souls, sons, who HAVE EVERYTHING because they share all of God, and they WANT to SHARE it. This statement was taken out of later editions btw, probably due to ego thought processes that deemed it "nonsense" or "suggesting separation", appearing to be a contradiction when it IS NOT. God created separate beings who are share as one.

Technically God should not have a son, or be a father, or a creator, if God is everything. Because what is all encompassing cannot have an opposite, thus cannot create a division or separation. BUT God DOES that, not by SPLITTING, but by SHARING. He allows within his own being the presence of additional beings provided they SHARE ALL of what is, thus NOT invalidating their individuality OR the wholeness of the system

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

Even to the ego the idea of God having even ONE son makes no sense. It implies separation and two-ness. And that is against the EGO'S spiritualized concept of "oneness" meaning "a count of one". Ego reasons, if you remove all separations, you must end up with ONE BLOB. One perfect blob, which we'll call oneness or God. And thus IT concludes THIS is what God is like. But this is the logical outcome of EGO thought processes. And it is COMPLETELY WRONG.

Or perhaps we can say it is partly right, because God IS one and his whole creation IS one, BUT.... it is also many. And it is this "one AND many" which the ego CANNOT comprehend. It can reason there is one, OR many, but not both. And BOTH is true. Because God IS a creator of many sons, and has a FAMILY. And his nature is to share, and be inclusive, which means BOTH me AND God exist.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return"

AND, you have your own creations, which further adds to the sonship. AND God created the holy spirit. AND the angels. The Holy Trinity DOES have three entities. And "The Kingdom of God includes all his children and their creations." AND "Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite." Infinite creations is a LOT MORE than "one". But the ego would balk at this as if it's some kind of "duality", or separation, or ego. EGO concludes that God is ego-like!

So if you really want to grasp HOW and WHY Jesus is NOT contradicting himself, and WHY his seemingly opposite statements are NOT against each other, and why ALL parts of his statements are true simultaneously, and why God did create multiple children who are BROTHERS, and why separate individual beings does not mean ego or duality, you have to adopt a whole different way of reasoning. A thought system LIKE how God thinks.

"Either this or that" is ego and DOES NOT work when used to think about ANYTHING in heaven. And this one "default" way of reasoning is what almost EVERY acim student uses, because we don't recognize that we're basing all our thought on a false permise and assumption. It's an assumption to believe that two things cannot be one thing, or it's "natural" for two things to be separate and not share anything, or that you can never have two things being one thing. You have to question this.

Such thinking has led to countless horrendous manglings of the course material and its meaning. Relegating Jesus's TRUE statements to PARTIAL truths and partial falsehoods. Which has produced interpretations of the course which fall way short. People then either conclude WRONG things about heaven, or they give up and exclaim its not possible to undestand it because they can't see HOW to think outside the box. BOTH are ego reactions to ITS failed logic.

"No-one who looks upon this "reasoning" EXACTLY as it is could fail to see it does NOT follow, and it makes NO sense. Yet it SEEMS sensible"

To the ego, the truth is UTTER NONSENSE. But what is nonsense to the ego, makes perfect sense to God. To him it is completely natural to create an infinite number of creations which all are whole and coexisting in total harmony, sharing everything without selfishness or egotism. And God's creations DO NOT think in terms of "me or you", but in terms of US. You have real holy brothers and always will.

"We are creation, WE, the sons of God."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the simple LAW OF GOD’S EXTENSION.

1. God can ONLY create (cause) that which is LIKE HIM (as the source), made OF HIM (same substance), with the same inherited abilities.

2. What God creates must be able to do what God does. It must SHARE all of God’s properties, AND pass them on fully to its own creations.

3. God does NOT create ANYTHING that is NOT LIKE HIM. He can only create based on Himself, using Himself, expressing Himself. He can ONLY create in his own likeness.

4. What is not LIKE God’s true nature is NOT OF HIM, and MUST be an illusion. What is not eternal, permanent, perfect, powerful, everlasting, holy, loving, infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, etc CANNOT BE HIS CREATION.

5. What God does not Create does not exist, has no reality, is not alive, and must be false. Anything you attempt to create NOT LIKE HIM, MUST be all illusion and CANNOT exist. Or be real.

6. God cannot create trees, or buildings, or bodies, or planets, or galaxies, or mountains, or food, or humans, or animals, or planet Earth, because He would HAVE TO BE LIKE THEM IN EVERY WAY. God has no end, does not decay, has no form, is NOTHING LIKE this world. Therefore God cannot have created it.

7. God cannot create planets because God is not a planet. The planet cannot inherit its nature from God. The planet is not n extension of a "God planet". God is not a planet. God does not create planets. The planet is not a creation of God. There are no exceptions to this law of perfect extension. God only creates more God!

"The world you see (Earth) is an illusion of a world. God DID NOT CREATE IT. For what He creates MUST be eternal as Himself, and the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"Earth, Heaven’s opposite in every way". Earth is therefore NOT LIKE GOD. Because Heaven IS like God. And so are you.

"what God creates is eternal."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father."

"His will is like His Father's"

"God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His."

"The Son's creations are like his Father's."

"And He is like His Father."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore will not die."

"I see my own thoughts, which are like God's,"

"Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father."

"God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit". Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable"

"God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them."

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

"Anything that God creates is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone IS perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself AND Him"

"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"What is the same as God IS One with Him."

"We have said many times that ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real existence."

"It is BECAUSE he is God's Son that he must ALSO be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"God created nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him CAN exist? Nothing BEYOND Him can happen, because nothing EXCEPT Him is real."

"There is no death because what God created shares His Life."

"No accident or chance is possible within the universe as God created it"

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real."

"Everything God created KNOWS its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished, by the Creator, and by His creations."

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

"The Son that God created is as free as God created him."

"I and my father are one."

When you decide to use your persona, you are actually striking a deal with the ego. The ego has an all-or-nothing clause, where if you want to use the persona, you have to also use the shadow right along with it. Usually you don't realize you're making this deal, because you focus on the parts of the deal you want and like - which is what the persona is all about. The shadow part is just a... technicality, we need not mention.

The ego offers you what seems like a lovely glowing possible answer to all your problems, and forgets to remind you about the steaming pile of shit that will be coming right along with it.

So as you enter into the persona, you're entering into a deal, where you are saying to the ego, okay, I'll take the risk of possibly getting what I want through your persona mechanism, knowing that I might not get it and I might have to deal with some pain instead. It's sort of a 50-50 chance. But you take the odds because you're desperate.

What then ends up happening is that in order to wear the persona mask, you have to now 'serve' the ego. You have to serve the persona itself which is part of the ego, by worshipping everything it values. You make it your idol, your goal, your cherished beloved artificial self.

This means you're now in a vulnerable position of being exposed to what seems to be coming at you from other people, who seem now to be able to affect you. You attempt to screen out their BS with your persona by relegating it to your shadow. But now you're also concerned that you may or may not 'get' what you were trying to get out of the deal.

Part of being in the persona means you will be very 'self conscious' about what other people think of you, because part of the use of this persona was to get other people to think 'good things' about you, which you seem to think are valuable opinions.... ego strokes. You want people to feed your ego, not detract from it. But this also means you have to put on a bit of a 'show' - a people pleasing performance - in order to 'get' that attention, that narcissistic adoration or that special love.

So now you're basically an 'entertainer' for other people, like some kind of ego puppet, dangling from the ego's strings, singing and dancing and trying to win people over in order to suck their energy. So while you're using the persona, it HAS to mean that you have accepted the ego's rules, you're playing the ego's agenda, you're doing what the ego wants, you're serving the ego's ultimate goals, and you're basically all caught up doing what you think everyone else wants you to do. You're not being yourself.

When you realize that the 'game' of playing with the ego persona, which seems to promise tremendous rewards but often brings suffering and sickness, always produces pain in some form eventually, you might eventually realize it is not worth playing it. And especially if you come to realize, that what the ego was offering you, you did not even NEED to begin with. You only thought you needed it because you bought into your own ego lie that you were somehow defective or lacking or separate from infinite supply.

So if you take off the ego mask, drop the persona and the shadow, and stop trying to 'get' the benefits of the persona's promises, you're going to find that you are much more empowered. You'll realize that you no longer 'serve' the ego, i.e. you're no longer tied to having to give 'other people' what they seem to want to 'get' from you. You no longer have to entertain people or put on a show that you don't want to provide. You no longer have to suffer underneath a fantasy life image that covers up all of the pain that this very same persona generated in the shadows. And you also no longer have to suck up and people-please anyone for any reason whatsoever. So now you find yourself somewhat empty-handed as to who exactly you are now going to serve.

Well... if you're not serving the ego... and the only other mind you can be part of is Holy Spirit//God mind, who are you going to be working with now? You're not going to be looking to the ego for 'what to do' or 'what to say' or 'how to present yourself' or 'what facade to put on' or 'what to write/publish' or whatever else. Instead, you now stand apart from the ego masses, essentially 'free', independent of the entire ego game, ready and willing to come empty handed to God. And then it's merely a matter of you saying, well, here I am God, I'm here 'alone', I don't want to work with the ego any more, what do you want me to do?

P.S why did every episode of Scooby Doo have to have someone in a costume? lol

God is omnipresent. What this means is, the entirety of His being is fully present in every part of His being.

If you could conceive of God as taking up "space", then this means that in one particular location, the WHOLE entirety of God is fully present. And yet, simultaneously, in another location, the WHOLE entirety of God is present. This should give you a sense of how God is SHARING or is "stretched out" between these two locations, as though he completely DEFIES all sense of spatial limitations.

And when God is fully and completely present in one location, this does not detract from His presence in another location. He is able to be everywhere simultaneously and fully. This UTTERLY defies the entire ego's way of thinking and its world of separation, in which nothing can share with anything, an object cannot be in two places at once, and everything shows you a picture of there being some things in one place that are not in another.

For God to be able to be fully in multiple locations at once, defies absolutely all ego laws. God simply is UTTERLY UNLIMITED by any concept or law or structural or spatial construct. Jesus says that ALL of Him is in EVERY PART, fully and equally. And this is why every PART has been expressed as a SOUL, which is an entire WHOLE within itself because God expresses His wholeness in every part of Himself and creates WHOLE BEINGS.

The closest I can come to conceiving of God's nature is some kind of absolutely massive network of connections that share every part of Himself everywhere. Every part of God is EVERYWHERE. In God there IS no space or time. He is instantaneous omni-present and fully present in every speck of existence.

Similarly, God utterly transcends absolutely every limitation or difficulty or restriction or space-time concept that you can ever come up with. He quite literally, is INFINITE and UNLIMITED in every way. This is absolutely ego defying. Totally law-breaking and COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to this world.

This world was made as an attempt to shut out God by presenting a picture of what God is NOT LIKE, a world where nothing is shared, nothing is in multiple locations, there is no omnipresence, every location lacks something or has compromised with others, there is severe finite limitation placed on everything etc. This is totally unlike God.

In our development of trust, we ARE to learn to start TRUSTING and putting FAITH IN God's totally unlimited nature, in defiance of this world's totally LIMITING framework. We are to learn to OVERLOOK the limitations of matter and form, to NOT BELIEVE the sight of form, because "nothing is so blinding as sight of form". Form literally was made by the ego to create an artificial, unnatural "nature" that operates and looks NOTHING like God's nature. We have to learn to NOT BELIEVE IT, look past it, and recognize the sheer POSSIBILITY AND FREEDOM present in God.

This freedom breaks absolutely every law of this universe, because this entire universe is in OPPOSITION to God's nature. And so God's nature completely DEFIES every conceivable limitation. That means we have to learn, literally, to put our FAITH and trust in a God who can DO ANYTHING, a God who IGNORES orders of difficulty, a God who is completely FREE of all limitations and problems, and a God for whom NOTHING is impossible.

That means shifting our allegiance away from the ego, not just in our mind and perception but also in terms of what we think we are "stuck with" or what is "assumed" or "cannot be changed" or " is a given" in this world, including the so-called inevitability and irreversability of death, which is nothing more than one more ego statement that "This has the power to prevent God's will, and kill His Son, and He can do nothing about it." That is the ego's motto, and we've fallen for it.

Now it is time for a new thought system. A new way of looking at the world, and a new POWER to place our trust in. This is the foundation of all MIRACLE WORKING, which IS SUPERNATURAL, which defies and breaks all ego laws and proves that NOTHING CAN RESIST GOD'S POWER, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, and therefore show that this world is EASILY changed because it is merely an illusion.

If we are to be miracle workers, we can't be sitting on a fence looking happily upon a dying world. Our task is to demonstrate that to God anything is possible, and therefore that is NOTHING that cannot be healed or reversed, and even death - the consequences of sin, all torment and sickness and disaster and world-wide or even universe-wide problems CAN be reversed. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do", not even the most radically extraordinary things you could ever imagine being possible.

The limitations of this world are a total lie. We are to demonstrate this fact by performing miracles which place total faith in GOD'S COMPLETELY UNLIMITED NATURE. If we trust that HE CAN DO ANYTHING, then we too can do anything in cooperation with His Will.

When I first began with the Course's forgiveness, it was much more focused on taking back my projections. The particular projections to be taken back revolved around other people and what they seemed to be doing to me. If things were not going wrong necessarily, I would lapse and not do any forgiveness.

People would say you only have to forgive the stuff that upsets you. And that's more or less the mode that I'd been in for some years. It seemed some part of me wanted to just get on with "my life" and have those assholes just sort of go away as a result of my becoming more honest and less blaming. When people appeared to not disturb me, I wouldn't seem to have any reason to forgive.

The radicalness of the Course, however, asks that we recognize not just that we have psychological issues "about" the world, but that the world ITSELF is also an illusion. That's a really HUGE leap in terms of beliefs and perceptions. That's a seemingly far bigger challenge to even comprehend yet alone overcome.

It isn't just telling me to stop projecting my shit onto people. Ok yes that's part of it. That's a good start. It isn't just telling me that I need to heal my past and let go of blocks to love and so on. Again yes, that's part of it. But there is more.

The body itself is an illusion. The world itself is an illusion. Other people's bodies are illusions. All forms are illusions.

So now, this is a much bigger endeavor. This isn't just a matter of undoing small mistakes in perception so that I can see this world better and feast my eyes on its form with a more loving attitude.

We have to realize that because this world is an illusion, IF you are truly waking up from this illusion it HAS to mean that we're going to not only overlook the world but that HOW it looks is going to change radically. Also what it means is going to shift. A sense of belief in it, or the notion that it is even REAL, is going to change.

If we're moving toward the real truth of God, and if this world is an illusion, its illusory nature is going to start to become apparent. The sense of it being real is going to start to dissolve. The appearance of form as irreversible and causal is going to be radically turned on its head. Our mind is going to move into a very different, very ego-law-breakaing state of awareness.

So then at some point, we have to move out of the "forgive people" mode and into the "forgive everything" mode. And by forgiveness we mean, recognizing the truth and using that truth to overlook and not be deceived by illusions. We might not be recognizing just how deluded we are, and just how deceived we are, that this physical world is REAL, that bodies are real, or that we're really actually "living" here.

The truth is far more radical than this. The truth is that this world is not reality AT ALL. It is literally nothing. A total illusion from top to bottom. Everything in it, all supposed life "forms", all sickness, all death, all suffering, all of the weather, all of the ways that objects affect other objects, all of the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, every property of matter, ALL OF IT is an illusion.

Believing that this stuff is real is a problem. It's insanity. It is not true perception. And if you perceive that this world is real, then you will not be able to perform miracles. Miracles completely defy all of the laws of this universe, coming from outside of spacetime, sourced in God's infinite love. If you're believing the world is real, there is no way that you're going to be able to overthrow the laws of this world. Your wish for it to be "true" - a real world - holds it in place, disabling you from having power (dominion) over it.

So this is a huge shift. Take the next step. Be willing to be open to the idea that there is no REAL sickness, no REAL death, and that this world is not really real at all. Then you will start to sense the power of God to have authority over all illusions and to perform miracles. It's one thing to do little forgivenesses here and there, it's another to realize you have to forgive the entire universe. That then this forgiveness doesn't just mean to see 'a real universe' as innocent, it means to see CELARLY and CORRECTLY, which MUST show you that it is an ILLUSION, not a real world. Otherwise you are not seeing at all.

Heaven is vertically opposite to the Earth. Heaven is love, yet love has no opposite. The earth is the opposite to love and does not exist, hence "there is no world."

"Never was love in the world."

"The truth is simple; it is one without an opposite."

"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."

"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."

The Earth is made of fear, guilt, and sin. It is an illusion. It is the idea of the opposite to love, and opposite to God. Yet, an opposite to love does not exist.

If you take heaven an earth and put them alongside each other, seemingly with a separation between them, you are suggesting that you can evaluate them as though comparable equals. This is dualistic, horizontal logic. Heaven’s relationship to the earth is NOT horizontal.

Heaven, love, God, creation, do not HAVE an opposite. They are ABOVE, on a higher level. Earth is BELOW, on a lower level. Their relationship is not horizontal, it is vertical.

Heaven is infinite. Earth is finite. Heaven is reality. Earth is illusion. Heaven is truth. Earth is a lie. Heaven is everywhere. Earth is nowhere. Heaven is all that exists in God. Earth is nothing that exists anywhere but in a fiction.

You cannot compare them like apples to apples. You also cannot suggest that if you remove the separation between them, then they will BECOME ONE. That would only happen in a horizontal logical comparison, which is how the EGO THINKS about oneness.

Compare them vertically, and what happens?

Vertically, because love has no opposite, it means:

1) There is no world. It does not exist ANYWHERE.

2) When the "real world" disappears, and the supposed "separation between heaven and earth" is dissolved, this does NOT mean that they blend together into ONE state that includes them both. IT DOES NOT. It means, that which was EVERYTHING REAL - heaven - is all that will be left. That which was NOTHING REAL - earth - will be recognized as ceasing to exist.

3) Earth is not a part of heaven. It never will be. There is no world. Not even the "real world" exists but as a dream. Dreams end and what was dreamed ceases to exist anywhere.

4) Earth does not "Translate into heaven" as a way for it to BECOME heaven, to be included in heaven, to turn into heaven, or to blend with heaven. What was thought to be there, as a world which DOES NOT EXIST, disappears entirely, being recognized. Jesus teaches "Illusions recognized must disappear", not "illusions recognized are kept and transformed into part of heaven."

5) The removal of the separation between heaven and earth does NOT MEAN that heaven ceases to exist afterwards. Opposition is the idea that exists only in the illusory earth. Heaven does not oppose. Heaven does not participate in the separation or in becoming one half of a duality. Heaven recognizes there is ONLY heaven. "There is no life outside of heaven." When the idea of separation disappears, the CONTENT OF THAT IDEA will disappear, which was entirely ONE SIDED! The ego’s opposition to Heaven was NOT part of Heaven’t opposition to the ego. Heaven does not attack or separate. Heaven is not a PART OF the separation idea. When the separation is undone, vertically, ONLY THE WORLD DISAPPEARS, NOT HEAVEN. What remains is ONLY HEAVEN.

6) This is the meaning of "nothing unreal exists" - the earth DOES NOT EXIST. Trying to find a way to make it continue to exist "in God" or "fused with Heaven" is DENIAL, based in fear. Heaven/God/reality is all that exists. Ego/separation/earth/illusions is UNREALITY and does not exist. Never do the two become one. Only one of them is TRUE. The world is FALSE. Never will "what is false" be converted into or kept or become a part of heaven or ANY state of oneness no matter what you call it or how you try to read into it.

7) There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. It is an extremely radical idea. It threatens the ENTIRE ego thought system. Resistance against it is the sum total of ALL of the resistance of the entire ego thought system. No-one with an ego wants to admit it is true. It means nothing in the world, no forms, no bodies, no pretty animals and rainbows, no lakes and mountains and oceans, no special relationships, no bodily relationships, NONE OF IT EXISTS.

That’s why this threatens so many people. Believing YOU are made of or are a part of the ego world (earth) makes you certain that IF it does not exist, NOR DO YOU. And that is interpreted like a threat of DEATH by the ego. And then the person will put up *defenses* against the truth, moving into sickness in an attempt to explain why the world is real and part of God’s creation. It is nothing less than the fear of death.

It takes WILLINGNESS to accept that this is true and that Jesus is literally telling us there is no world here at all. This is also why Jesus repeatedly says that "nothing you see means anything" and "the world you see does not exist". Literally, planet earth does not exist. NEVER will it be a part of heaven in any way under any circumstances or interpretations whatsoever. Love has no opposite. What is not love does not exist NOW, even if it’s showing up as a fake planet. And it will not begin to exist LATER, after the universe disappears.

Only love is real.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ACIM is not really non-duality, or duality. It's sort of both. ACIM makes this clear statement about the nature of God and reality:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you" UrT16C3

This is the holographic principle. There is a whole (God) which has parts (sons of God), and each part contains the whole (oneness with God). The one whole is shared by the whole and the parts (brothers, inheritance etc).

Most people think of reality as sort of "one thing". Like one large area or an expanse or some kind of bigness. But that's more or less the same as the idea of spacetime or the universe. God is not actually like that. God is holographic.

In a holographic system there is a singular wholeness, which we call God. But there is also a characteristic of this wholeness - the entire wholeness is in every part. Every part of God contains the whole of God. ALL of God pays FULL attention to EVERY part simultaneously - because God is infinitely transcendental and can do this even if it sounds impossible.

God is also a creator and is capable of fully absolutely creating secondary beings who are like himself. But he cannot add-on anything outside of himself, so instead he adds on INSIDE of himself.

He does this by SHARING himself entirely with that which he creates, and that means that his creation has to also SHARE all of itself with everything. This is a kind of "internal expansion" of the Kingdom. It does not involve creating OUTSIDE the kingdom or beyond be pre-existing totality of God.

This sharing produces fully-created beings who inherit everything from God and share everything with God. They have a oneness with God. But they ARE fully created individual beings. They are completely full in every sense of the word. They contain everything like God does. Which means they absolutely exist, and yet at the same time are one with the absolute.

This results in a holographic system in which God is the main whole who creates "additional wholes" that share everything with him and with each other. Each part of God has the whole of God in it. Each son of God contains the whole of God and everyone else. We are all unified and merged and fused together.

This doesn't mean we lose our duality. It doesn't mean we lose individuality, or that we can't tell where we end and God begins. We DO have a discrete independent existence as absolute beings. But we ALSO have total oneness with the whole.

This seems like a paradox to most people. But it is actually miraculous.

Because a holographic system has wholeness to it, we identify that wholeness as "oneness" and might call it "non-duality". However, a holographic system ALSO has parts to it - whole parts, which share the whole and yet are whole in their own right. These "parts" might be called "duality".

This means that IN REALITY, the nature of God as a holographic system comprises BOTH ... non-duality AND duality, fused together as one. Everything is God, but God has parts which are living beings in their own right.

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. And it means that there is material which in a certain CONTEXT is focusing on the non-dual aspects of the hologram, such as the oneness and the "God is" and "there is no opposite" and all that. But in other contexts it also speaks of God's infinite creations, the many sons of God, your own creations, your own kingdom, permanent brothers and so on.

ALL of these aspects of the course are simultaneously true. Even if they sound contradictory. If God's reality was NOT holographic they would indeed be contradictory and you'd have to resolve that by separating off some parts as "ego" or "separation" or "illusions". That's what many people do, in error. Because they don't realize reality actually is a holographic system not a "blob".

Ultimately then ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. But it is PARTLY non-duality and PARTLY duality. The two are fused together in a kind of "trans-duality". Transcendent of both exclusive-oneness and exclusive-separateness. God is not EXCLUSIVE anything - God is INCLUSIVE. Which is why the "non-duality" INCLUDES "the duality".

By duality here I do not mean spacetime. Spacetime is duality WITHOUT the non-duality, ie exclusively dual. That's not the same as the trans-duality of God in which every part is the whole. In space time, every part is PARTIAL and incomplete. The opposite of duality is not-nonduality, it's transcendental of the whole "either this or that" mindset.

"The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception." UrT8H2

"There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible." UrT8H2

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." UrT9E5

"Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole." UrW320W113

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small." UrT10G10

"It shines in every part of Him, as in the Whole." UrT17E16

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS." URT5F9

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." UrT7J6

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness." UrT6B13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this: Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell and hold your brothers there." - ACIM

ARTICLE:

Good news!

Nothing has gone wrong.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You have not sinned.

You are immortal.

You cannot be hurt or suffer or be sick or die.

God created you eternal and holy forever.

You are sustained by the love of God at all times.

You have never sinned.

There is no real sin or guilt in you.

Any consequences of sin are utterly make-believe.

You are perfectly pure and forever innocent.

There is nothing you have ever done or can ever do which can make God decide to turn you away or judge or condemn you.

Your innocence is incapable of being defiled.

You are immortal and all forms of suffering and sickness and death are fiction.

No-one has ever died and no-one has ever really suffered.

You cannot die and you already have eternal life.

You are already in Heaven with God right now, right here, and always have been.

You are not lacking anything and there is no loss in you.

You have no needs whatsoever, and you are already complete and whole.

There is nothing that you want beyond what God has given and your only desire is to extend and share joyfully in the creation of more love.

You cannot be in error and you cannot be lost.

It is impossible for you to be separate from God in any way or to make Him unaware of you.

There is nowhere to hide and you have no secrets.

God is aware of everything about you.

God knows everything about you and always has.

He knows you are eternally guiltless and sinless and could not sin if you tried.

God did not create beings capable of sin or separation.

You have not malfunctioned or gone off the rails or hurt anyone or hurt yourself.

You are not too far gone, you have not gone anywhere.

There is nothing you can do in reality or truth besides extend love and create happiness.

You are always happy.

You are always perfect.

There is nothing being held against you and there is nothing you could ever do to turn God's love away.

God has not changed His mind about you at all and still regards you as perfect because He still creates you as perfect forever.

You have never caused anyone to suffer and no-one has ever caused you to suffer.

You are incapable of being damaged or threatened in any way.

You are real and exist forever in Heaven with God right now.

There is light everywhere within you because you are made of light and shine forever with a radiance of love.

You have not rejected God and God has not rejected you.

Your spirit is immortal and nothing can happen to it.

Who you are, your identity, has not changed and cannot change.

You are permanently real and permanently as God intended.

You have not wavered and nothing has altered the divine perfection that you are.

Nothing can be added to you and nothing has been taken away.

You share the absolute infinite abundance of all creation and could not possibly lack or need anything beyond what has been supplied fully.

You have no sickness and have never been sick and can never be sick.

It is impossible for you to be evil or sinful or dead.

You are an immortal soul, supremely perfected by the Perfect Creator and you are everlastingly immaculate.

Not one single note has been lost in Heaven's song and not one single note has been lost in Heaven's Son.

All is well and there is nothing to fear.

There is only love and only love is real.

There is no real reason to worry about anything.

Everything is absolutely perfect and always has been.

There is no fictional world and only Heaven is real.

Heaven holds everything your heart could ever desire and you want nothing else, nor have you ever traded it for anything else.

Heaven is your natural inheritance and you are worthy of it now.

You know deep inside that God loves you unconditionally at all times and there is absolutely no reduction in His measure of love for you, nor will there ever be.

You are eternally worthy of unconditional love at all times and it is impossible for you to offend God or to make Him angry at you.

He is incapable of hurt or attack or anger or fear or revenge, as are you.

You are like God in every way and always will be.

You are immortal and invulnerable and invincible and immune and innocent and fully identified with the whole of yourself.

You have never become something you are not, nor are you capable of being someone you are not.

You have never dreamed a real dream and you have never entered into a real separation.

God's love is the only love you ever will need and you have it fully.

You are absolutely complete and already completely yourself, needing no spiritual path and no seeking and nothing has been denied you.

You are incapable of real denial and it is impossible for you to reject God.

You are 100% the same as you have always been in every way, and need do absolutely nothing because there is only cause for celebration and gratitude.

You have been created perfect, and there is nothing you can do to change this.

You are worthy of all of the love of God, endlessly and forever, and you are receiving this love right now.

God loves you, and the truth of Heaven is your permanent Home.

The truth about you is simply that you are STILL EXACTLY as you were created by God. Absolutely perfect, immortal, permanent, changeless, eternal, powerful, innocent, holy, happy, loving, joyful, peaceful. There has not been even a slight change in what you are.

This you that is altogether perfect in every way, is still "in you", buried under layers of bullshit lies which you have placed sort of "between yourself and yourself" to try to pretend that you are NOT the perfect holy immortal innocent being that God created.

The fact that you don't seem to experience yourself AS a perfect immortal innocent spiritual being is simply because your mind has chosen to believe in a whole bunch of things which are DISTORTING your view of yourself. So much so that it makes you believe that your perfect self doesn't even exist, that deep down in your core you are corrupt and evil, and that there is something very wrong with you - as if you have literally transformed into a guilty mother#($*#)(.

These are ALL LIES. They are lies that we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Lies which attempt to slander and accuse God's perfectly innocent children and make out that they are faulty, flawed, malfunctioning, corrupt, damaged, evil, and have been changed into something totally unrecognisable. And recognition really is a huge part of this because if you COULD recognize precisely what is REALLY true of you, you wouldn't doubt for a second that you are EXACTLY as God created you, and not some hideous creature that you made up.

The issue then is that God has established the truth about you, which is ALWAYS true and is STILL true right now. But then you have attempted to throw away this truth - which is a matter of dishonesty and not accepting/admitting the truth - a matter of denial, in which you are trying to be something you are not, are claiming things are true of you which are not, and are generally trying to make yourself into a "false self" - or an ego as we call it.

Ego then is nothing but a cloud of lies that swirls around the perfect undefiled perfection of your being like vultures waiting to feast upon your corpse, swarming such that their numbers seem to blot out the light and make it seem like you are not even in there anymore. And yet at the core of this scene you ARE STILL exactly the perfect loving light-filled being that God created, shining away without the slightest dimming of your perfection.

So the ego lies are all designed to basically HIDE THE TRUTH, not that they have any power to actually cause the truth to go away or change or stop existing, but to simply COVER IT UP to make it SEEM like it's not there. And this then leads to believing that you HAVE literally changed into something corrupt and full of sin, because you have lost sight of yourself. But YOU ARE STILL IN THERE!

Believing things that are not true of you is madness, and is the insanity of what we call the ego thought system. A kind of delusional twisting of the truth, a mis-perception of your reality. YOU REMAIN exactly perfect as God created you right now and forever, you are just DENYING that you are perfect. You are a perfect immortal being PRETENDING to be mortal and imperfect. Trying to convince yourself that there is something horrendously wrong with you WHEN THERE ISN'T.

Listening to the ego means nothing more than simply listening to your own lies. The ego is nothing more than a part of YOUR BELIEF ABOUT YOURSELF, which means a FALSE belief about what is true of you. IF you could just stop lying to yourself about yourself, you would rediscover the truth about you and melt into a state of being much more calm, relaxed, happy and peaceful. Simply because all the lies ever do is stir up shit, create drama, intensify contrasts, enforce separations, magnify tensions, amplify war, and make out that some kind of nightmare is happening to scare the living daylights out of you.

The ego is the idea of the anti-christ. It is anti - christ ... ie AGAINST Christ. You are christ. It is AGAINST YOU. It is the idea of being something opposite to what you are. It is A LIE. The ego is a lie, the body is a lie, the world is a lie, space and time are a lie. This is why we call them an illusion - a claim to be something they are not. And all the ego can ever do is LIE ABOUT YOU, while trying to pass it off as truth. A lie which is has been confused with truth is a sin. A lie which is recognized as false is merely an error.

You are unmoved, you are peace itself, you are permanence, you are fixed and eternal, you cannot change in any way, nothing in the world HAS EVER changed you, nothing the world believes or says about you is true, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS A LIE, and YOU are the living truth of God expressed forever. It is only ever then a matter of, when will you be willing to accept that there is nothing wrong with you whatsoever?

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

"Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

ACIM: "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end." (clarification of terms, chapter 5, paragraph 1).

Other religions that teach that the physical world is nothing but a dream/illusion...

1. Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta)

Concept: Maya (illusion) – The material world is an illusion created by ignorance (avidya), and ultimate reality (Brahman) is formless and unchanging.

Teachings: The Upanishads and Adi Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy teach that individual identity (atman) is identical to Brahman, and the world of appearances is like a dream. Only through knowledge (jnana) can one realize this truth.

2. Buddhism

Concept: Śūnyatā (emptiness) & Māyā (illusion) – All phenomena lack intrinsic reality and are conditioned, much like dreams.

Teachings: The Buddha compared the world to an illusion, a mirage, and a dream in texts like the Diamond Sutra. The Madhyamaka school (founded by Nagarjuna) and Yogacara school (which emphasizes "mind-only" reality) both argue that what we perceive as reality is shaped by mental constructs.

3. Platonism & Neoplatonism

Concept: The Cave Allegory – The material world is a shadow of a higher, true reality.

Teachings: Plato described the sensory world as mere reflections of the eternal Forms. Neoplatonists like Plotinus argued that the material world emanates from the One and is a lesser, dreamlike version of true reality.

4. Gnosticism

Concept: The material world is a deceptive prison created by an ignorant or malevolent demiurge.

Teachings: Gnostic texts (like The Gospel of Thomas and The Apocryphon of John) describe the world as an illusion that traps the soul. True knowledge (gnosis) allows one to awaken from this illusion and return to the divine.

5. Taoism

Concept: The relativity of perception and the dream-like nature of experience.

Teachings: Zhuangzi’s famous parable of the butterfly dream questions whether reality is absolute or a shifting illusion. Taoism often portrays distinctions between waking and dreaming as fluid. 6. Sufism (Islamic Mysticism)

Concept: The world as a shadow or veil obscuring divine reality.

Teachings: Rumi and Ibn Arabi describe the world as an ephemeral illusion, with God (Al-Haqq, "the Real") being the only true existence. Sufi thought emphasizes awakening from worldly distractions to experience divine unity.

7. Christian Mysticism & Idealism

Concept: The world as a temporary illusion compared to eternal divine truth.

Teachings: Some Christian mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme, emphasized that the physical world is fleeting and that true reality is found in union with God. Later, philosophers like George Berkeley argued that reality exists only as ideas in the mind of God. 8. Sikhism

Concept: Maya (illusion) – The world is transitory and deceptive, keeping people from realizing God.

Teachings: Sikh scriptures, including the Guru Granth Sahib, emphasize that attachment to worldly things is an illusion. True reality is found in devotion to God and spiritual awakening.

9. Hermeticism

Concept: The material world is a lower reflection of the divine mind. Teachings: The Kybalion and other Hermetic texts describe reality as mental in nature ("The All is Mind") and suggest that the physical world is a projection of higher consciousness.

10. Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism)

Concept: The material world is a lower, imperfect manifestation of divine reality.

Teachings: In the Zohar, the world is described as a series of emanations from the Ein Sof (Infinite). The material realm is an illusion in the sense that it veils the deeper truth of divine unity.

11. Rosicrucianism

Concept: The physical world is a veil hiding spiritual truths. Teachings: Rosicrucian teachings, influenced by Hermeticism and Gnosticism, describe reality as a temporary, symbolic projection meant to teach spiritual lessons.

12. Manichaeism

Concept: The material world is a trap created by a lesser, evil power.

Teachings: This ancient dualistic religion, founded by Mani, teaches that the physical world is a deception created by darkness, while the true realm of light exists beyond it.

13. Jainism

Concept: The material world is impermanent and a source of bondage.

Teachings: Jainism teaches that the soul is trapped in illusion and karma. Liberation (moksha) is achieved by transcending attachments to the physical world.

14. Some Indigenous and Shamanic Traditions

Concept: Reality is fluid, dreamlike, and shaped by spiritual forces. Teachings: Many indigenous traditions, such as those in Native American, Aboriginal Australian, and Amazonian cultures, describe reality as a dream, a shifting landscape influenced by spirits, ancestors, or cosmic forces.

15. Pythagoreanism

Concept: The world is a mathematical illusion.

Teachings: Pythagoras and his followers believed that reality was structured by numbers and harmony, with the material world being a lesser, imperfect reflection of the perfect, mathematical order.

16. Theosophy

Concept: The physical world is an illusion created by spiritual ignorance.

Teachings: Helena Blavatsky and later Theosophists describe the world as maya, emphasizing that true knowledge comes through spiritual enlightenment and connection to the higher planes.

17. Catharism (12th–14th Century, Medieval Europe)

Beliefs: The Cathars, a dualist Christian sect, saw the physical world as an evil illusion created by Satan. They believed that the true, divine world was purely spiritual, and human souls had to escape material existence to reunite with God.

18. Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm (Byzantine Christianity)

Beliefs: Some interpretations of Hesychasm (a mystical tradition within Eastern Orthodoxy) suggest that the material world is not truly real compared to the divine presence of God, which can only be known through inner contemplation and prayer.

19. Christian Science (Founded in 19th Century)

Beliefs: Founded by Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science teaches that the material world, including sickness and death, is an illusion. True reality is purely spiritual, and healing comes through understanding this truth.

20. Some New Age and Esoteric Christian Movements

Some modern Christian esoteric groups, influenced by Theosophy or the New Thought movement, teach that the material world is a mental construct or illusion, similar to Hindu maya.

You'll often hear talk of how "my ego this" and how "the ego" that. A lot of clout and blame is pinned on "the ego" now. It's used to describe all kinds of stuff in the world and in life.

People have even turned it into a kind of enemy that they fight with and blame and try to accuse for doing stuff. The label is thrown around like there actually is an ego, and then you'll hear explanations for why it doesn't "really" exist except in a dream.

There are widely common interpretations that Jesus is describing "the ego" in the course and therefore "the ego" is a thing or an entity or a something, that is responsible for some bad stuff. And this sets up a whole premise of being at war with it.

This is all confusion. Jesus is NOT trying to suggest that the ego exists AT ALL, not even fictionally in a dream. So let's put aside any belief that there is such a thing as "the ego", and we'll start from scratch.

God's world, heaven, reality, has various qualities, characteristics, properties etc. It has a nature. For example it's immortal, alive, permanent, perfect, whole, innocent, etc.

"Ego", is nothing more than, a CONCEPT OF, the "opposite to all that is".

Someone had a thought in their mind, like, "What if the opposite to God's Kingdom is true?" And so began the tiny mad idea.

This is ENTIRELY conceptual. It's someone sitting there just wondering, imagining, theorizing. Asking themselves, "what is the opposite of all this?" Or indeed, "what if I OPPOSE all of this?"

We simply tried to use our free will to oppose free will, or to "create" (will) that there be an outcome OPPOSITE to what God wills. A "mis-creation" or a "mis-use" of will. That is all.

This was a silly idea, ridiculous in fact. To try to use will, to make yourself NOT will, is obviously circular logic and makes no sense. It's impossible to will to be unwilling. But this is what you tried to do. You tried to put your will to sleep, to disempower your creative powers, and to strip yourself of what you are. To oppose yourself.

So ego is just this idea of opposition. What would it be like if there was an opposite to everything real? The opposite to life would be death. The opposite to permanence would be impermanence. The opposite to happiness would be unhappiness. The opposite to existence would be non-existence (death).

Now it's important to also put BELIEF on hold because I'm not even talking about BELIEVING IN this concept yet. At this point we're happily sitting in heaven just theorizing. Asking a question. "What?" Questioning everything, which is an attempt to oppose it.

What you come up with conceptually is, the idea of "non-existent impossibility." This non-existence, by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. It's not some real place you can go and visit. You can't live there. You cannot be its nature. It's ENTIRELY theoretical. Non-existence DOES NOT EXIST. It's the idea of being OUTSIDE of and completely SEPARATE from, existence. And existence is God.

So we started out with just a conceptual notion, an idea of an opposite to God's nature. An idea of NOT existing. And fundamentally we could never actually DO that. We could not LEAVE God and go where God is not. We couldn't get outside of God to go to that "non-existent" place. It's impossible. Literally totally impossible.

For example God is infinite and is everywhere. So you cannot go be somewhere and expect him not to be there also. Everywhere you go, God is there. He is omnipresent. So this idea is an idea of, what if you could go and be somewhere that God is not? Which is obviously a totally ridiculous idea, and no sane person would give two seconds of thought before laughing at being outside of infinite unlimited boundaryless reality.

So first we came up with this theoretical notion of "an opposite to what is". This was prior to believing in it. And at this point we were still sane. What made it a MAD idea, or turned us mad, was that we then attempted to CLAIM or assert, that you actually CAN go where God is not, you actually CAN be opposite to his nature, you actually CAN be unwilling.

You BELIEVED IN IT by denying its obvious impossibility, thus making you unable to RECOGNIZE it for what it is, and thus losing sight of the fact that it IS impossible. You became confused and lost.

This obviously was a form of denial and confusion and being totally mistaken. The logic shows that its impossible, but you insisted anyway. To insist that something is possible that is patently impossible, is essentially "nuts". BELIEVING IT in spite of its ridiculousness, became the only problem.

It was only when you forgot to laugh at the ridiculous notion of not existing, that you took it seriously. And you became deceived, tempted, and you "fell" into delusions, denial, hallucination, confusion, mistakenness, and all manner of fantasy nightmares. You lost track of WHAT IS TRUE AND REAL, and so went insane.

What were you trying to do? You were trying to MAKE non-existence be TRUE of you. Whatever you believe is true of you, you regard as your IDENTITY. Your truth describes you, defines you, establishes WHAT you are. And originally this was God's truth about you. But now you were attempting to assert that some OPPOSITE truth was true of you. And so your sense of WHAT I AM, your identity, became CONFUSED WITH, or caught up in, identified WITH or "matching" this notion of being opposite to what you are.

You did not actually make an ego as such. You did not accomplish the making of a non-existent self, because it is impossible. You did not ACTUALLY get outside of God's existence. You did not reach non-existence. You did not cease to exist. BUT, you BELIEVED YOU COULD. And so you DREAMED OF "the ego". A dream of the ego concept is NOT the same thing as ACTUALLY being it or bringing it into existence.

So when you believe that "the ego concept" (impossible non-existence) is POSSIBLE, your sense of IDENTITY shifts to align with it, to reflect it, to mirror it. You try to BE LIKE it. To be one with it. To merge with it and make it true of you, thus redefining your whole sense of what you are. And so by putting belief in "opposites to reality", your sense of WHAT IS TRUE changed, and thus your sense of WHO I AM changed.

Your sense of identity shifted from your soul, to an IMAGINED idea of what ego might be like. This did not actually make "the ego". You never created a "real ego". You just BELIEVE what is BEYOND your dream on the other side of oblivion. You believed in not existing. You believed in impossibilities. You believed in being opposite to what you are. That is all.

So there is no EGO doing anything whatsoever. There is no EGO taking responsibility for making ANYTHING happen. There is no ego to pin stuff on. There is no ego to say "the ego did this". There is no ego PERIOD. So every time there's someone teaching that "acim says" there is an ego, they are mistaken.

NON EXISTENCE DOES NOT EXIST. THE EGO DOES NOT EXIST.

Not even in dreaming do you go there. Not even in your wildest fantasies can you ever CREATE an ego. You never have. All you've done is TRIED to exchange God's reality for UNREALITY. Which means, taking everything true about God and trying to make it false. And taking everything untrue about God and trying to make it true. This results in CONFUSION (insanity) and that is all.

If you believe something is possible which isn't, you are not sane. If you believe you are IN the non-existent realm outside of God, you are insane. If you think you DID become separate and thus are OUTSIDE God, you are insane. But that IS what you believe, and that BELIEF is the tiny mad idea. The notion that the ego concept is OPPOSITE to what the ego concept IS.

Earth is just a neutral fantasy ABOUT non-existent realms, an attempt to REFLECT hell/ego/impossibility, as an "image" in the mind IMAGINING what having no imagination is like. Thinking about what having NO thought is like. Being unwilling to will anything real.

Let's put this another way. If the ego concept is non-existence, impossibility, death, nowhere-ness, lovelessness, emptiness, etc... in your BELIEF in it, you have tried to assign it the attributes of heaven, reality, truth, and God. You've tried to BRING IT TO LIFE. You've tried to turn hell into heaven, you've tried to claim that non-existence exists, you've tried to assert that immortality can be killed, etc. You've produced an entire hallucinated world based on this attempt to oppose life and make NOT LIFE appear to "live."

The body is nothing. The world is nothing. But in our BELIEVING (spacetime), we have TRIED to make it APPEAR AS IF bodies live, worlds evolve, there are "life forms" etc. it is NOT LIFE. It is an illusion. it is nothingness pretending to be something.

"There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

So there literally is no ego. We need to stop blaming "the ego" for stuff. EGO IS NON-EXISTENCE. It does not exist even in dreaming. There is no ego anywhere. Evil is not real. An absolute opposite to everything does not exist.

"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."

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

So what does happen? What does happen is OUR MIND keeps on trying to turn itself into "the ego". It keeps trying to get CLOSER TO the CONCEPTUAL idea of "being ego", which is non-existence and impossibility and total limitation and death and a void and emptiness and lack and darkness and lovelessness. We keep trying to BECOME it, as if reaching through the outskirts of God's being to another world. But we can't. And we NEVER will. So it's all wasted effort. We might as well just accept the truth.

This is why the secret of salvation tells us that we MUST recognize that WE are doing this ALL to ourselves. Not the ego, not the world, it's us. We do the shit, we must undo it. It is NOT the ego, ever. It's part of our own mind running rogue and opposing the rest of our mind. It's us TRYING TO BE opposite. Working against ourselves. We are the dreamer. Miracles reflect the idea that it's this thing I have done and it is this I would undo. ME. My mind. Not "the ego".

You cannot give your power to the ego either. EVER. All you can do is BELIEVE that you are giving your power to "it". And thus YOUR MIND now goes into a distortion, against ITSELF, pretending to be opposed, pretending to BECOME an ego, and acts ego-LIKE, and now you blame "the ego" for stuff, but its PART OF YOU doing stuff to yourself. So now you are disassociated and projecting and trying to make your ideas leave your mind. That is all. Take responsibility for that. Never blame ego for anything. It does not exist whatsoever.

And when I say that I don't even mean, ok, this is a dream, so ego doesn't REALLY exist, cus none of this really happened, but it seems to, and so in the dream it does exist. IT DOES NOT. Ego doesn't even exist IN the dream. It's ENTIRELY just a theoretical concept and label for "absolute opposition". It's BEYOND God completely and even this dream is not THERE. It not here, it's not anywhere, and you can never make contact with it. This is why the Holy Spirit and "the ego" never communicate.

If you could actually leave God completely, and go to where existence is NOT, you've meet "the ego". But you can't and you never will. And all your dream life is about is imagining that you ARE or HAVE or CAN, when you AREN'T and HAVEN'T and CANNOT. It's wishful thinking at best. Ego is nothing but a theory. Which is why when it's gone, it's recognized as nothing.

Replace "the ego" with "I". Your mind is either whole or split. There is nothing else.

"The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

God is the state in which there is perfect healing all the time, not that there is 'something to heal' due to there being sickness, but that there is `pro-active healing` which PREVENTS there from being sickness, all the time. So God is in a state of health and grace forever.

God is also the source and creator of who I am as His Son. So, I extend from God. And everything I have must therefore have been given me BY God. Jesus says that the only difference between Him and us now is that he does not have anything OTHER than what God gave Him... meaning that the rest of us cling to what we think is 'other' stuff that we got from somewhere 'else', because we made it up separate from God. And none of it has any power.

Love inspires miracles and miracles are all based on love, and therefore they are expressions of love, and therefore they are expressions of GOD. They start in God. God is perpetually in a state of CHOOSING health by pro-actively always creating health. And by health I mean, a healed state in which sickness is impossible because there is only love. All true healing must then either flow from God or involve us entering INTO God to share in what God is.

So it comes down to a matter of what seems to be, two vantage points. 1) Healing flows FROM God TO where we are, and 2) We go TO God in order to share IN healing.

Most of what we seem to attempt to do in our awakening process is to go TO God in the knowledge that as we get closer to God we open up TO the healing state that is in God, so that we can share in health. However, God also is coming to us :-) God is extending constantly, and wants total health at all times, and shares total health at all times. He has no desire to 'make sick' or to 'keep sick'. And, given the chance, he would immediately flow His health to us and share it with us, healing us of all sickness.

When some portion of ego 'meets' God, God transmutes it into love and healing, or rather, health, is restored. It seems however that we live in a world where there is all kinds of sickness happening which appears not to have been 'corrected' by God yet, as if somehow it has some kind of power over God or that God for some reason does not attempt to 'heal' it or correct it. And this can lead to confusion as to exactly how it's possible that God is total health but the world is full of sickness.

Part of the issue is that we each have written 'agreements' i.e. 'scripts' before each lifetime, which were essentially sequences of events that we would 'allow' and which we would be at least a little willing to use as learning devices, to bring us ultimately closer to God, WILLINGLY, rather than necessarily being 'forced' into love. And because we did not want healing, having rejected God in the separation, it seems we now have to go through the plans that we lay out to learn our lessons and become more 'receptive' to God's love. And that can take time, and it can also seem to mean we 'have to suffer'.

However, God has no intention of making you suffer or of it having to take a long time to heal. God's Spirit works NOW. God is spontaneous and immediate and has absolutely no reason for delays of any kind, being of absolute confidence and certainty. He would heal the world in an instant. He does, however, honor the wishes of each of us to dream and pretend, up to a point. However, let's be clear, that our scripts and our excuses as to why we will not accept healing, is OUR issue, and not God's. God is not the one who keeps resisting healing or the provision of it. God wants to heal ALL THE TIME.

Because of this, I do believe it is possible that God is perfectly open to 'bypassing' your script, if an appropriate request is made. I asked Archangel Raphael about this and was surprised when he said "there is a process", and that a "petition" must be made to God. Because, how everything is sort of 'set up', we have all these agreements over many lifetimes to go through various processes to gradually awaken. God doesn't really care how long that takes, having infinite patience and knowing we're not really separate. But God is also still very immediate and instantaneous. AND, God only wants to LOVE US all of the time.

So since God is in constant love with us, and wants for us ONLY to return to Him as soon as possible so that WE can experience love and not suffering, as an act of compassion, God is perfectly capable of bypassing the script and enacting 'gifts' or 'blessings' or 'miracles' which are capable of healing someone or bringing them closer to Him 'in spite of' the ego contracts. It is possible for Holy Spirit, who has the power of God (!), to enact miracles of healing and restoration of health on all levels, at any time and to any extent. As we awaken and open to love we become co-facilitators of this and miracles become more common and natural. However, Holy Spirit is not held back by us and does not depend on us to be able to heal.

It is possible to pray for someone and to request healing for them. And this prayer basically entails you going to God in some fashion, with whatever amount of openness you currently have, and first of all emphasizing the nature of God, which is to be grateful for what already is. Grateful that God loves us, grateful that God already loves the other person, and grateful that healing and health are natural and are ALREADY TRUE. "Thank you God" is very appropriate, up-front.

We thank God profusely for having already accomplished our full and total healing, which may not be apparent in TIME but has already been accomplished in eternity. And then we might take action to EXTEND God's love (which we then are feeling) to others. We might simply ASK God/Jesus to heal someone, acknowledging and being thankful that it is DONE ALREADY (you could call this having faith), and you could even command this healing occur now.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are then perfectly capable of healing ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, and that means, correcting you FOR you, or correcting another person FOR them, without them necessarily knowing HOW to correct themselves or being capable of enlightening themselves. It is an 'intervention', a blessing and a gift. It is an extension of love. If healing is possible, it has to mean that it can occur IN SPITE OF the ego and TO UNDO THE EGO, meaning we are not really required to necessarily become miracle-minded in order to receive a miracle... IF someone else is willing to request the miracle for us. We can even request it ourselves and receive more than we asked for.

God loves us very much. We do not need to suffer. And unconditional love has NO CONDITIONS that prevent its extension.

I was asking God sincerely last night, that He heal a specific person. I explained that this person had been limited for a long time with suffering and needed help. I went to quite some lengths to detail the things they were experiencing and why it was all so unnecessary. I finished with a definitive question, can you please just heal them? What do you think God's answer was?

No.

I wasn't very happy about this. I confessed that I'd been trying to get healing for this person for a long time and just wanted to be helpful, so how was it possible to be helpful?

I was then told that when someone is ready, they will receive it.

Then Jesus popped in, and what I was shown was that everyone is choosing* everything* that happens. Even down to the suffering they experience or the things they seem not to want. It's all chosen, deliberate, intentional.

This then revealed the question, is it then possible to help anyone if they don't choose something themselves? How can anyone get any kind of help when they are not able to choose their own healing?

Jesus then spoke to me about how there were several villages which He had to pass by where He could not perform any healing whatsoever. He said the people were so adamant in rejecting Him that they did not want anything He had to offer. He had to respect their decision and move on.

He then told me, clarifying, that love isn't forceful. That you can't force someone to heal against their will. You can offer love and love has tremendous power to heal, IF there is some amount of willingness to receive it.

There is a correlation between how 'open' someone is to receive, and how much they may receive. Not because there are orders of difficulty in miracles, but because to truly RECEIVE the benefits, the person has to be WILLING, otherwise love cannot enter where it is not welcome.

Jesus reminds me now of the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I also was then reminded of a couple of parts in the Course where Jesus says, that if you are ready and willing Jesus will help you, but if you are not, he will wait until you are. I also was then reminded that God has infinite patience and while He is willing to welcome us immediately, we may not yet be willing to allow it, putting up defenses against it.

God's love is powerful and it is unconditionally given, and it can heal miraculously. But people can choose whether they want to accept it or deny and reject it. Being on planet Earth we've for the most part rejected it, which is why we're asleep. It's not that a tremendous miraculous power isn't being given, it is given all the time. It's that we don't want it.

I felt sad about this, because it means that certain people are choosing not to want to be helped. And that meant, I was going to have to let go and "allow them" to suffer for longer, due to their own unwillingness to receive help.

But then Jesus commented that their situation was a lesson, meaning that it wasn't a loss or necessarily an unfair suffering as such, it was actually an educational tool which was being used to help the person learn the truth, no matter how it looks. In that sense, it is helping them, but also in that sense, they "need" the lesson in order to learn to be open to receive healing.

Our desire to take away people's lessons, given the ultimate truth that no-one needs to suffer for any reason, can compel us to want to fix and heal and help and to stop people's suffering. But there is some lack of wisdom there. Time is needed. The person may simply not be ready or willing yet to be able to accept the help.

It's not that you help can't help, or that it can't do something for the person that they must do themselves. A person with serious disease could approach Jesus and have some faith and ask Jesus to help, and He could remove the disease - something which they didn't seem to be "able" to do. Miracles are gifts from those who temporarily have more given to those who temporarily have less.

This means that a person doesn't have to necessarily "choose" the entirety of the healed state all on their own. If they have enough willingness or a little faith, or even just a little willingness, the "open door" can be used to bring in much more help and healing than the person could muster on their own.

We can get help from outside, which really brings us to the point that the Holy Spirit is here as our Divine Helper. He can help in powerful, "supernatural" ways, IF we are willing and ready to receive that help. And that actually often entails surrender, more than a 'doing', in order to be open to receive the help.

Help is available, love loves to love, and love heals. But if we reject it and don't want it, it will not "hurt us" by doing something to us that we don't want, and even healing and help can be experienced as unwanted.

This is a difficult lesson for me and probably for many. We want to take away the suffering of the world. People are dying. Bad things are happening. But these are our own illusions and our own issues and reactions to perceptual errors that we need to correct.

There is a plan in place, the plan of the Atonement, which Jesus is in charge of. He knows who is ready to receive miracles and He can direct us to those people at the right time.

The idea that we can use our EGO to go around healing people "against their will" left right and center is really the ego's attempt to use the Power of God for its own entertainment. I'm not in ANY way saying not to perform miracles for people, just that they need to be properly framed in service to God and respecting "free will."

This does mean realizing that you might not be able to help a whole group of people if they are not really willing enough to be helped. Which means that miracles aren't imposed upon people against their will, they must be receptive to them, and if they're not then.... you don't get to work miracles for them.

I was also then told by Jesus that something I needed more of in order to be more miraculous, is to trust God, and the key point that God must be involved for miracles to happen. Holy spirit - God's Voice/expression - is the mechanism of miracles. He must be a part of it. And that means, miracles don't come from ourselves as some special power that we gain, although it is an "ability" which we can develop.

"Although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives."

Notice how this implies that forgiveness is a RESULT OF LOVING, rather than that the forgiveness 'does' something on its own.

Forgiveness is often taught to be some mechanical process or series of mental actions that attempt to undo ego activities. But these are in fact still largely a part of the ego's framework.

It is in fact the LOVE OF GOD that produces a healed and FORGIVING mind and perception.

The healing of the mind's distortions is difficult to bring about through techniques, reciting affirmations, applying logic and so on. Slowly you might be able to change some belief but this is really an attempt to do it yourself without God.

Seldom do I hear people saying or teaching that forgiveness means love, but "forgiveness is an earthly form of love." And ACIM is quite clear that GOD'S LOVE is the BASIS of forgiveness. Only when God's love is in your awareness are you BEING forgiving.

I've been finding that if I allow myself to RECEIVE God's love, acknowledge it, and then be grateful for what God has given, there is a rapid shift in mood away from fear and misery toward happiness and strength. It is a FELT experience, as the effect of allowing LOVE to enter.

This love of God literally shines away the darkness. This is its power. This is how it HEALS the mind. This means allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfil his healing function. And it means allowing him to LOVE YOU and FORGIVE YOU FOR YOU. To actually do something to you to change you, and thus for you to receive it.

This isn't then about "you doing forgiveness" or "practicing forgiveness" its more about you allowing God and the Holy Spirit to operate on you FOR you, and in turn THROUGH you. The course even says that you do not know how to perform miracles and you do not understand them. But the Holy Spirit does.

God's love is what you are, what you are made of, and how you function correctly. It is not YOU that puts it in place, makes it what it is, operates it, causes it to be, or decides how it should function. You have NO CLUE what love actually is or how it works. It is a property of God's infinite intelligence and nature.

In order therefore to return to a healed state of mind you have to let your mind open up to what GOD HAS GIVEN ALREADY, which is then re-received as your inheritance and you merge back into it. As the course says, we seek to remove the BLOCKS to this love, but we do not seek to IMPLEMENT this love.

Too much forgiveness work focuses on trying to basically "self help" yourself into a better state. That is not the course's teaching at all. God has already done everything, and atonement means love, and your real self is love. This love is already there. You just have to have a willingness to receive it, feel it, identify with it, and realise that it is WHAT YOU ARE.

This is why Jesus goes on about the vision of christ, the eyes of christ, that only christ forgives, miracles come from christ's vision, and so on ... this Christ is YOU AS LOVE IN GOD, your real self. And salvation comes from that one self. It is what you need to get back into and align with it and take on as your FELT experience. Without the presence of love you are NOT forgiving. It is the love ITSELF that PRODUCES a forgiving attitude.

Ultimately, ONLY the love itself can contain the necessary "remedy" for fear and separation and ego and death. The love is the end result of the problem having been UNDONE. It CAUSES the undoing. It REPLACES fear with love. It replaces darkness with light.

"1.) Know first this is fear.

2.) Fear arises from lack of love.

3.) ****The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.****

4.) Perfect love IS the Atonement."

The ONLY remedy - for a lack of love (sin, fear, guilt, death, sickness, egotism etc) ... is PERFECT LOVE. LOVE IS the thing that CAUSES you to adopt a forgiving attitude and perception. The EYES of love SHOW you innocence and perfection. Without that love, you see with the ego's eyes of fear and are unforgiving.

God bestows a universal blessing of a miracle upon you and you receive it and it heals your mind. God knows how to do that. It's not your recitations and quotes and judgements and techniques that produce this change. You can't put in place what God has already put in place - thats not your function. Acceptance and surrendering to what is already true is your function. Admitting to the love that is in you and is you as part of God.

If you are not IN that love you won't be able to "act as if" you are. Nor will you be able to BE forgiving. Forgiveness isn't some learnt skill, it's a natural expression of God's nature through you. It's what happens and how you relate when you have the love of God in your awareness, in recognition that you are that love and that you share it with him.

"Although God does not forgive, His Love is nevertheless the basis of forgiveness. Fear condemns and love forgives. Forgiveness thus undoes what fear has produced, returning the mind to the awareness of God. For this reason, forgiveness can truly be called salvation. It is the means by which illusions disappear."

"God is the love in which I forgive."

"Each lily of forgiveness offers the world the silent miracle of love."

"Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here..."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It's the reflection of God's love on earth."

"As forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness..."

"This is the world the love of God reveals."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE this Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

There are many things often quoted from the course, perhaps loosely from memory, something that stuck in your head when you read it. But which really is not well thought out or deeply considered. "Heaven is not a place" is one of those things, which has been widely misunderstood.

See, places, in general, are an aspect of spacetime. In space, there are many places. Over here, over there. My place, your place. Many places. There are places in spacetime because space separates everything out, based on the idea of separation and lack. But you have to remember, that spacetime itself is nothing but an illusory ego belief. Space time, does not exist.

Now, when Jesus says that Heaven is not a place, he is merely referring to the fact that SPACETIME does not exist in Heaven. There is no localization or confinement to one area, in heaven. There is no cut off piece of it that is kept apart from others and labelled as if it's not the rest. It's all joined. It's one. Heaven is one huge infinite unlimited PLACE, that has no separate places within it. Everything is everywhere.

It's perfectly legitimate to say it is not a place, while still not contradicting the fact that Heaven IS A SOMEWHERE, a locale, a home, somewhere that you can actually BE, live, dwell, and experience reality. It is actually a something, a somewhere. It's just that it is not limited. It is all things real and everywhere real.

But heaven is not an isolated place. It's not a United States. It's not a Russia. It's everywhere without limit. That's why it is "not a place". It's not a separated off thing with a label to distinguish it from the rest.

Especially if you consider the fact that space-time is a belief that is unreal and an illusion. There is no space or time. Both are made up. Which means ALL PLACES within space and time do not really exist. So every single PLACE that you ever thought of as being a place, is not REALLY a place. In fact, it is not a place at all. It's a nowhere. Spacetime is the idea of NOT EXISTING FULLY ANYWHERE, which is why every "place" within it is NOT THE WHOLE.

So when you throw out spacetime and shove it in the trashcan, what are you left with? You are not left with places. You are not left with isolated boxes and confined locations. You are only left with the only REAL SOMEWHERE, the only ACTUAL REALITY, the only REAL PLACE that you can be. And that is Heaven.

Absolutely. Heaven is the ONLY REALITY, the ONLY REAL PLACE you can truly exist. That's why "You are at home in God, dreaming of exile". You can't leave Home. You can't leave heaven. But you can DREAM of being OUTSIDE of it in another WORLD, full of places, where none of those places are really anywhere.

Where is Jesus? He is IN HEAVEN. There are so many references in the Course to being IN heaven, in stark contrast to being ON the earth. Jesus makes it clear that there are two WORLDS, they are two PLACES, they are OPPOSITES. "Heaven remains the one alternative to the strange world you made" for example. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "Heaven is all that remains."

When the world disappears, which it will, where will you be? When there is no world, where do you live? When space and time collapse into nothing, where are you then? When the world spins "into the nothingness from which it came", and "gone is place, as well as time", where will you be? How will you exist SOMEWHERE, in a real SOMEWHERE, without any PLACES to exist? You MUST have a home, a real somewhere that you can experience. Where is that? Where is Jesus, in his home, not of this world? He's is in Heaven.

Heaven absolutely 100% is a PLACE. You can GO THERE. You already are there but you don't realize it because you're sleeping and pretending not to be in Heaven. When the dream world stops existing, you will wake up IN HEAVEN. It's reality. It's a REAL PLACE. It's where God lives. It's not "merely" an "awareness of perfect oneness", as if to imply you will KEEP THE WORLD and have some kind of heavenly mindset at the same time. Newsflash... not possible. "You cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."

There is no world. Central lesson. The world is NOT A REAL PLACE. When there is no world, the ONLY PLACE LEFT, to live and experience and be real, is Heaven. Heaven is THE ONLY PLACE THAT EXISTS. There is no other place. All other places are illusions.

So absolutely, it is false to interpret Jesus as saying that Heaven is NOT A PLACE. That's not what He means. He means only that it is not SPATIAL. And in that He also acknowledges that ALL SPATIAL PLACES ARE ILLUSIONS, which is why Heaven is NOT AN ILLUSORY PLACE. It's real.

It's your home. And it's the ONLY place that you can ever really exist.

Notice the quote also ends "Nothing OUTSIDE this Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within." Which means heaven as a place does not coexist with THE ILLUSORY WORLD. There is NO WORLD outside the oneness of heaven, the place of heaven. The world you THINK exists right now, is an illusion of being outside the Kingdom. It does not exist. It is not HERE NOW. You are not in a place NOW. You WILL be in a place when you wake up to reality.

Real Love, is not like anything else in this world. Love, to be experienced, must be shared by all.

Love is a presence that exists everywhere and extends everywhere. It radiates. It flows. It overcomes all separations. It does not and cannot belong to any one individual without simultaneously belonging to everyone. Nobody can put a wall around it and deny it to everyone else.

So if you want to experience love, you can't do it by locking love in a box. You can't do it by being absent of love yourself and expecting someone else to give their portion to you. Love it not limited and finite, or lacking or scarce. It's not like some kind of substance or material or object or commodity that someone exchanges for something else. It's not money used to buy a favor.

The ego believes that if you give something, you will lose it. It thinks that giving produces sacrifice. That you're going to be worse off, and have less, if you give. And especially if you share, there is no way to share with anyone without loss.

To the ego, sharing doesn't exist. It doesn't see how you can share, in any way, without diminishing what you have. And it's enacted this belief in the way that all physical 'forms' appear to behave.

If you want to share your apple, you're going to have to cut it in half and give half away - sacrificing half, and now you will only have half an apple. And you will experience that in the ego as loss, and unworthiness of having the whole. You might think you are sharing the half in kindness or generosity, but to the ego you a secretly jealous and bitter at having 'taken a hit' for the sake of someone else.

And then, to the ego, this form of sacrificing becomes equated with giving. It says, if I give half of this apple, and I do it in spite of the fact that I believe it is a sacrifice, then I am doing some kind of 'good for others'. This then leads to guilt that you are not giving ALL of what you have to others, and that even more sacrifice is called for. Ultimately it would have you give all of your apple to others, and having nothing for yourself.

That is the culmination of its belief system - that you are left with nothing, in total sacrifice and loss. Such is martyrdom. Such is what we commonly think of as 'giving selflessly' when in fact it usually is the ego sacrificing. To the ego, you should just give everything you have to others in order to be 'good' so that you'll meet God's graces, which is bullshit. It is a death wish. If you still have an ego and you are giving in this way without giving equally to yourself (receiving), that's not being a saint, it's being a martyr and an idiot. And it's also not what giving means.

Where in the ego's form of giving is there anything other than sacrifice? How in the ego's world is there anything even remotely similar to real sharing, other than loss? How can the ego give without losing what it has? It can't. Because the ego's idea of what it HAS is an illusion, a false value, and its idea of sharing it is the same thing as NOT sharing it. To the ego, sharing means posession and a transfer of ownership.

Real love is not like this. Real love does not diminish when it is shared or given. Real love doesn't call for sacrifice. Real love doesn't give give give, endlessly from your ego self, in the guise of some kind of 'atoning' or being 'selfless'. Real love cannot be owned by you exclusively, and you cannot give it away without you keeping it. Real love can't exchange hands and be in one place and not in another place at the same time. Real love doesn't leave you empty and lifeless. Real love doesn't ask you to be a martyr or to please everyone else except yourself.

Real love is like a giant vast ocean of love. Love's rule is that you can share in it by opening up to it and allowing it to be in you, but you cannot possess it or own it exclusively. You can participate in it and enjoy it and experience it, but this does NOT prevent others from doing the same. And there is an infinite supply, so there is no way you can have it all to 'yourself' and deny it to others, nor is there a need to get it FROM others because they too have their own access directly from God.

So unlike the ego, where you must 'get' love from others, because you think you lack it, you can't actually experience it even if you could get it, because you're trying to deny it to the other person. You want them to love you, sacrificially, by giving you what they have so that they don't have any left. That bleeds them dry, just as you trying to be an ego saint bleeds you dry. The only way you can experience love, is to get in line with how God has arranged things.

Simply, as ACIM says, "to have all, give all to all". Which means, to experience love fully, fully GIVE LOVE to everyone unconditionally, by EXTENDING what God has given you (unlimited love). In this you receive love from God in unlimited supply, and you extend it to others. But notice this key point:

If you do not extend the love to others, YOU cannot have it either. If you do not radiate the love to others, YOU cannot feel its radiance. If you do not SHARE love with others, YOU cannot share IN it either. Love has to be shared to be experienced, otherwise it is stationary. It needs to be extended and amplified to be what it is, like a radiant shining light. It has to shine outward. So you need to shine it outward, not from a limited supply of your own, but from God. Extend God's love. Extend God's healing miracles.

Simply...

God... help me to love [person's name]. Help me to extend your love to them and see them as lovable.

You will then feel love in your heart, for the other person, and you will feel the love and share in the love. It is the privilege of the loved to be loving.

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.

The 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.

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."

When you are willing to step aside and let the holy spirit work through you, making sure not to interfere, or to even think you need to be the one who makes something happen, this open conduit is a channel through which HE can express healing miracles. As soon as your ego takes over and tries to interfere by trying to "be the one" who is causing the healing, it interrupts the process. Similarly by actively stepping back and allowing and letting go, the Holy Spirit can best utilize your body to heal through.

The exciting challenge we have is to really realize that the Holy Spirit IS HERE as a HEALER AND THERAPIST, and we are supposed to seriously LET HIM fulfill that function , to let HIM do profound things through you, to get out of the way and be nothing more than a conduit through which he performs HIS miracles of healing.

That’s a very different role and function than believing that healing originates with your egoic forcefulness. And it can take a while to learn to stop trying AT ALL and allow and TRUST him to do the miracle. This doesn’t mean "not doing anything at all", you still have to participate. He needs to use your body to move THROUGH to reach others. But HE is the one with the power to cause things to happen, so our job is to be willing to LET HIM do the profound healing work THROUGH us.

This means, standing there with your hands on someone, plugged into the Holy Spirit, trusting him, allowing HIM to do stuff through your body, and recognizing you are doing NOTHING to interfere with HIS expertise. HE knows how to heal anything. YOU DO NOT. You haven’t the first clue how to repair a body. So you don’t be the healer. You just be a doorway through which a true healer moves through you. You let HIM do the work.

This is humbling because it means giving up all effort to BE the one who heals someone. Ironically, paradoxically, when you stop trying to use your ego to heal, trying to force it to happen, and failing, and you give up that entire desire and identity, you are then willing to surrender enough to ALLOW HIM to perform miracles through you.

This means dropping the spiritualized ego, the hero, the performer, the savior,the rescuer, the fixer, the resister, and getting rid of all ego attempts to be a miracle worker. To try doing it yourself and to fail at it, so that you can open up the door to a supernatural power not of this world, and not of you. In a way, you be a miracle worker by letting HIM be the miracle worker.

"BUT DO NOT INTERFERE. The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."

"The holy do not interfere with truth."

"Purification is of God alone (the Holy Spirit), and THEREFORE for you. Rather than seek to prepare YOURSELF for Him, try to think thus:

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him.

He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be.

It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need ADD nothing to His plan.

But to RECEIVE it, I MUST be willing NOT to substitute my own, IN PLACE of it.""

"We thank You, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end. Help us not interfere, and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for every trial we think we still must meet.""

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The Holy Spirit is the MECHANISM of miracles." (He does them!)

"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."

(this will be a fairly long post, so please bare with me)

The ego thought system is based on separation. Separation resulted in space and time. In space, spatial relations are HOW the ego thinks. The physical universe IS its thought system.

This includes physical objects, which are separated out, where an object is EITHER HERE OR THERE, (but not in both places). This is a "natural" ego thought process. One thing seems to exist in one location only and not all locations. One thing is NOT something else, and all things are DIFFERENT, separate, and kept apart.

The entire physical universe is arranged according to this WAY that the ego thinks. It regards the entire thing as structured by SEPARATIONS. One object versus another. One location versus another. And then it draws comparisons, and has reasoning, and finds conclusions, based WITHIN the framework of separation.

So you, in your ego thought processes, then start to THINK this way. You think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. And this seems to make SENSE to you because it maps directly to how the world is arranged. It then becomes "second nature" to think of anything in the world in SEPARATE terms.

For example, I parked my car in the first spot, not the second. I ordered the fries instead of the onion rings. My car is red, not blue. This is my body, not your body. Earth is not Mars. etc.

Our whole WAY of thinking runs according to these rules, based on SEPARATING things out, sectioning them off, isolating them, keeping them APART, emphasizing their differences, and locking them up in little prison boxes. And we think this is a natural way to think, to relate, to communicate, to reason.

Then we go about USING this way of thinking, to think about EVERYTHING. Not just to think about things which ARE based on a thought system of separation, but even to think about things which are completely BEYOND the ego thought system.

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

This may not seem to present any problems when you use SEPARATION-BASED reasoning to discuss the things of space and time, but it COMPLETELY misses the mark when you think this way about heaven, God, creation, sonships, sons, souls, etc.

The Kingdom of God is a thought system, and God similarly has a WAY of thinking. His WAY of thinking is NOT based in the idea of separation. It is NOT based on the limitations of space or time or spatial relations. It does NOT separate things off, make them different, put them in SEPARATE BOXES, or keep them apart.

God's thought system/reality also does not demand that something HAS to be separate from something else. It does not require something to be EXCLUSIVE to one box and not another. Nor does it assert that everything that exists MUST be partitioned off into EITHER one state OR another. God simply does not THINK in terms of "either this or that".

God's mind, his creation, his way of THINKING, is actually based on a totally different kind of reasoning. This reasoning is INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive. It also completely embraces the idea of SHARING. The ego's thought system completely blots out ALL suggestions of sharing, overlap, simultaneity, unity or oneness.

In God's system, it is NATURAL for there to be one thing, which SHARES all of itself with another. It is natural for one thing to GIVE all of itself and STILL RETAIN all of itself without loss. It is natural for TWO things to BE one thing. It is natural for one thing to be in ALL locations simultaneously. It is natural for one thing to be in one box, AND in another box, at the same time. It is natural for something to SPAN and TRANSCEND separations.

The Golden Rule, the law of God and of equality, simply states that what is true of one thing is true of another. Whatever is true of God is true of His Sons. Whatever is true or me is true of you. This is equality. God treats all his creations the same way. The Golden Rule reflects this, because it is a rule based on INCLUSION. We are both included in the same truth. The ego however is COMPLETELY AGAINST sharing and inclusion. And so is this world.

In reality, God THINKS in a holographic way. In a hologram, the whole is in every part, and every part is a whole in its own right, and every part shares the entirety of the whole with the whole. ACIM confirms that this is the way by which God thinks, and NOT through a process of separation:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

This means for example that GOD IS WHOLE, being infinite. And God as a creator therefore extends and creates ANOTHER WHOLE. His Son, is a WHOLE SON. A full creation. As described here:

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

"There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

However, for God to BE whole, and to CREATE wholly, and thus to create another WHOLE.... becomes TOTAL NONSENSE to the way that the EGO thinks. And if you think in the same separation-based way that the ego thinks, this FACT registers to you as total nonsense. You will reason, "how can it be possible that there are TWO wholes, that makes no sense!". It makes no sense to a thought system of separation, yes. But God's reality is NOT based on that kind of system. God is not limited by separation or spacetime.

In order to recognize AND accept, that God's mind and creation DO NOT follow the ego's rules, and that God does not THINK or create like the ego would, and God's Kingdom is NOT spatially separated out like the physical world is, you will have to become willing to think massively outside the box. You CANNOT use separation-based logical reasoning to evaluate the truths or falseties of reality.

Let's look at what happens when you try to shove God into a box-based thought system. God for example gives ALL of Himself when he creates. His Son inherits EVERYTHING. But... if you are thinking with the ego, you SHOULD conclude that by God giving all of Himself AWAY, there SHOULD be nothing left. Thus God should snuff out of existence and only His Son should remain. This is LOGICAL to the ego because the ego believes in SACRIFICE AND LOSS, which is inherent to a box-based world. But it is complete nonsense.

Similarly, you could suggest that if God gives EVERYTHING to ONE SON, there is NOTHING LEFT to give to another Son. This is how the ego would think in finite terms. However, God has ALL of Himself left to give again to ANOTHER son, and another, and another, without any reduction at all in Himself. And this is how the Kingdom INCREASES. And by giving ALL of himself away, reality is increased. As stated here:

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

"To have all, give all to all."

You can see that if you think in exclusive, separating terms, you WILL come to FALSE conclusions about what's happening in reality. You'll conclude that if I have everything, you have nothing. But in reality, as Jesus describes in ACIM, me having everything DOES NOT prevent you from having everything also. How is it possible that we BOTH simultaneously have everything? Because we SHARE IT. And this sharing does NOT mean compromise or that we each only get half.

Sharing is the way by which God's Kingdom INCREASES. Because if it weren't for the ability to share, there would be no logical way for God to ever create anything more than just God, because he is already unlimited and everywhere. As this states:

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

If SHARING, INCLUSION, BOTH/AND is the natural thought SYSTEM of Heaven's reality, and it follows that thought PROCESS when it reasons anything, then SELFISHNESS, EXCLUSION, EITHER/OR, SEPARATION is the natural thought system of spacetime. And they are TOTALLY opposite. They are opposite because "this not that" is a direct reflection of the separation idea of "ego not God" or "death not life" or "non-existence not existence." The ego thought system is the NEGATION of reality.

If God creates two sons, who are brothers, and both are whole beings who have and share everything, co-creating with God, and then we look at this fact WITH THE EGO, we will see false conclusions. For example we'll say that there can't BE two sons. Or that if there are two sons, that's "duality", because now the two sons are KEPT APART in separate boxes meaning duality.

But this is not how it works at all. The fact that there are two, WHO SHARE, violates the boundaries of those boxes. One son is IN the other son and vice versa because they share everything. So there are two sons, who are ALSO each other.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."This also extends to the relationship you have with God. Those who think LIKE the ego, will reason that EITHER.... God is all there is, OR there is a separation. Or similarly, EITHER God and I are one thing, OR we are two things. Or that, if you get rid of all separations, you will end up with oneness.

There is a major flaw in that reasoning. The ego first establishes that you MUST think in a separating way, in which there is duality, and all things are kept apart. THEN it has you DESTROY all of the other parts except for one of them, by getting rid of the idea of separations between the parts. But it will not have you get rid of the ego thought process. Then it concludes falsely, that when you remove the separations, you end up with ONE THING. And this one thing is thought to mean "oneness", or to represent God.

This however is a false conclusion, because now "separate boxes" have been mapped onto God, and God has been shoved into a separate box, all by himself, and there is no creation and no sonship and NO SHARING. And the ego rejoices that it has imprisoned God this way, in the name of freedom.

When you look at what ACIM says, Jesus DOES NOT say that God is alone, or that he is separated off from creation, or that he has no creations. Instead it tells you in fact that God has a huge family and is simultaneously one with them. And that His oneness DOES NOT ERASE their manyness.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Children and their creations."

This does not mean the Kingdom is duality or that it contains separate boxes. It means it contains overlapping shared beings who ALL have everything and ARE everything, seemingly as OPEN boxes who are not in any way confined, yet are still many things. HOW that's possible, is due to heaven's miraculous nature.

Ego thought processes do not allow this to be true. Nor does ego thinking allow it to be possible that when you are "one with God", you still have an individual self. EGOS then become AVERSE to any notion of individuality, which is self destructive, which the ego loves. You being one with God, DOES NOT ERASE your individuality.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

There ARE STILL "separate parts" in the statement, AND in some ways God is NOT totally like His sons, in terms of function or role. Meaning, YOU still exist as a distinct entity, AND God exists as a distinct entity. And what you SHARE between you, is your oneness with each other, AS TWO BEINGS. That is what ACIM teaches. And its definition of oneness is not "one thing being alone", it is EQUALITY. Being of THE SAME KIND. And an equality which is more than just two separate boxes next to each other - an equality where you SPAN the boxes.

Similarly, the ego will falsely conclude that if God and His Son are TWO things, this is duality. It is not, because we're again jumping the gun and projecting separate boxes onto heaven. Just because they are TWO, does NOT mean they do not share, and does NOT mean there is no unity. The Father and the Son are one, but there is still a Father and a Son. Just as WE will ALWAYS be brothers even in heaven.

In fact, the way by which God is everything, AND YET, His children are also FULLY created beings, who are also everything, is the course's definition of MIRACULOUSNESS. This miraculousness is completely alien to the ego thought system and all separation-based reasoning. The ego has NO CLUE, how it is possible, that God could have even created ANYTHING, yet alone multiple beings who somehow have been added-on to an already infinite reality. Nevertheless:

"MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human (ego) thinking"

"Miraculousness", is the nature of God's reality. UN-miraculousness is the nature of spacetime. Everything in God's MIND and reality is permanently miraculous. It is miraculous because it makes possible what the ego says is IMPOSSIBLE. Just as the ego is the idea of impossibility.

For one soul to be a whole being, that shares everything with another whole being, as brothers, and with God, without a loss of self or individuality, and without ceasing to be "separate", and without being CONFINED to separate boxes, is miraculous.

This miraculousness is also reflected in THE MIRACLE. And in true perception. And in learning to THINK LIKE GOD, which the course asks you to do. In order to think like God, you have to TRANSCEND the "separating off and putting in boxes" nature of the ego and its thoughts. And that includes thinking of souls as separate bodies.

This entails overlooking separations and seeing unity beyond it. It requires you to not be blinded by perception of form, because form is anchored in separation. Your whole perception has to become similar to heaven's reality, which breaks all the ego laws. And this is also why miracles break all the laws of space and time AND of ego reasoning.

Becoming able to THINK LIKE GOD, requires you to align with the truth of the Golden Rule, in holy relationship, where what is true of you is true of all others. Where differences are completely ignored. Where no-one is IMPRISONED in a box. And where your whole way of REASONING is LIKE God's.... that is, based on "paralogical reasoning" - or AND/BOTH reasoning, rather than either/or.

We could say, THE ENTIRE COURSE is geared towards developing this BOTH/AND kind of perception, thought and experience, for all students. We are supposed to stop thinking with the ego, OR LIKE the ego. And we are supposed to learn that we are undo no laws but God's, and HIS laws are NOT laws of separation, exclusion, spatial relations, or limitations.

In order to fully grasp ANYTHING that ACIM says about the pre-separation state, God, the Kingdom, oneness, sonship, sons, souls, creation, extension, holy spirit, etc..... any of that non-ego stuff, you CANNOT USE the ego-based reasoning method. If you do, you will fail. Guaranteed. And you will see truth that is false, and what is really true will appear false to you. That's how BACKWARDS the ego thought system is.

Any conclusions you come to about God or oneness etc, if it's rooted in "either this or that", IS WRONG. Guaranteed 100%. Only when you start to think in terms of BOTH.... me AND you.... WE.... only then do you start to approach the NATURAL way of thinking like God, which is a miraculous state of mind. And ONLY by thinking that way will you understand and grasp the metaphysical facts of God's nature.

Non-duality for example is complete bullshit. It is bullshit because it is the result of an EGO thought process. The ego reasons, well, I believe all things are separate, so if we attack all the parts and end up with one victor, this ONE THING that's leftover, which is practically nothing, but is a single thing, symbolizes God. Because to the ego "less separation" is equated with spirituality or simplicity. So it will then map this "one thing" idea of oneness onto God and claim God is one thing - that there is NOTHING ELSE other than God. That God is SEPARATED OFF. That is NOT what ACIM teaches at all!

God is not only a creator and a father, God has a HUGE family of whole beings, all of whom are co-creators with each other. You and your brother co-create your creations. You and God and your brother co-create together. Even the holy spirit is a co-creator. And we all have this HUGE family of created beings in heaven. This is utterly incompatible with both the traditional idea of "oneness" and the idea of "non-duality".

And ALL of those beings are of ONE KIND, and SHARE EVERYTHING, and yet ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY. Because that is HOW GOD THINKS. A holographic thought system in which the whole has created many parts and each part shares the whole with the whole of the rest. That is what ACIM says! And in order to INCLUDE all of what ACIM says, WITHOUT EXCLUDING any material or any factual statements, you will ONLY be able to accept ALL of what it says if you think in a non-separating way.

As soon as you get the simple idea that heaven's reality is based on BOTH/AND, rather than either/or, it will all fit into place and become clear. Because everything real is based on a both/and system of reason and thought processes. Creation ITSELF is based on sharing between two. God SHARES HIMSELF, in order to create, and He does not will to be alone. The natural logical outcome of that is that WE, as many permanent brothers, in the sonship which God DIRECTLY created, are all "one" (equal/sharing) because we share everything.

If this does not make sense to you, it is because you are thinking with the ego. If it seems like nonsense, it is because the ego is projecting its separation ideals onto it. If you cannot follow it, either I explained it poorly or you can't get past your ego thinking. But either way, God's entire reality is NOT LIKE EARTH, and you have to learn to RADICALLY think WAAAAAAY outside the realm of boxes if you want to recognize its true nature. Heaven is not spacetime!

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

This is more than just another way to think or use the intellect. This ties into how you should PERCEIVE, how you experience the real world, how you tune into the miraculous state of mind, the nature of the miracle and the atonement, all holy relationships, living by the golden rule, holy spirit's thought system etc.. It's all based on heaven's nature which is NOT based on a world of separate boxes.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous."

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

"To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. 2 And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. 3 The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. 4 Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. 5 And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity."

"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. "

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded,"

"the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole"

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth.""If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.""Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

When we look at the nature of reality, of heaven's laws, we find that it's kind of a combination of "oneness" and "multiplicity." We're told in ACIM there are many creations of God, plus our own creations, plus the Holy Spirit. There's a permanent trinity. So there's many things going on. But at the same time, it is all one.

The thing that's really super difficult to conceive of is how it's possible for one thing to be two things, while still being one thing. Like, how one son of God can be an individual, and another son of God can be an individual, but still at the same time there is effectively no boundary preventing them from being completely one.

I think that what this implies is reality really is paradoxical. The special "something" that allows one to be two, and two to be one, transcends all possible explanations. You can talk about one aspect of it at a time, such as focusing on the one. Or focusing on the many. And you can sort of tie them together by describing their holographic relationship. But there's no way whatsoever to blend those two into a single 'theory'.

Jesus actually refers to the special "something" that allows each soul to have everything simultaneously, as "the miraculous power of the soul." Somehow there is some way, in reality, without breaking any laws, for God to create many beings, WITHOUT in any way reducing or limiting the fact that they are STILL completely 100% one with him. They are joined, but they are not joined, and yet they are joined. He calls that "miraculous power".

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." I think that truly, what this reveals is that first of all, as you approach God you're approaching a transcendental, omnipresent, paralogical and paradoxical state, in which all rules and limits just fly out the window. This actually literally forces it to be IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a "universal theology".

I think it may even be correct to say there will NOT EVER be a "unified theory of everything", scientifically speaking. When you approach reality everything becomes everything else. It becomes a kind of infinite blur. It is specific, yet abstract. It is personal, yet impersonal. There are many parts, yet they are all one, and each part is the one whole. And it also means one number equals all numbers. You can't even do math at that point.

So really the nature of reality is that it literally cannot ever be explained. This isn't actually a matter of whether people are smart enough, or whether they can study it, or whether there are things they can or cannot say about it, or whether words or formulas are satisfactory. It's simply that the NATURE of God is so transcendental that it utterly defies any attempt whatsoever to pin it down, limit it, confine it, label it, put it in a box, or break it up into nice little pieces. It's nature is just so incredibly "everything at once" that you just can't MAKE a concept about it.

I think also that this "true nature" of reality is very appropriately described as "miraculous". It seems as though its nature is utterly impossible. Yet at the same time, it is possible. It seems impossible that one thing can be two things, or two things can be one thing, while still being two things. But somehow this is the nature of reality. Every son of God is the whole kingdom. And yet there are many sons. And what makes that possible at all is so beyond and defying all possible explanations that you really have to just say, it is miraculous in the true sense. It utterly defies explanation.

Because of that, I think we can say that it cannot EVER be understood. Not that it can't be KNOWN, or make sense to those who experience it, but there can never be a theory accurate or encompassing enough to describe it. You will never find a full definition of "what makes it possible" in any text book.

An extension of that is, that quite possibly, even after years of trying, the answer may be that we CANNOT UNDERSTAND MIRACLES. They have a nature which transcends all logic. Even very advanced paralogical reasoning simply reveals that reality is more than just "one or two", it's BOTH one AND two at the same time, and there will not ever be a way for anyone to get their head around that. This is why I think in ACIM Jesus says that you do not understand miracles.

So I think we've spent so much time and years trying to understand what a miracle is, how it works, what makes it function, how to do them etc, and ultimately it's actually a fact that we cannot ever understand them. The Holy Spirit knows them and so dose Jesus and perhaps when we reach a state of total enlightenment it will dawn on us that WE simply ARE miraculous and our natural way of expressing in that state of sharing has miraculous qualities. But HOW that's actually possible I think may remain so transcendental that no-one will ever be able to truly explain it.

I think in some ways we can get close to it, we can come up with models and symbols to try to reveal some of its properties. We can see that it seems to be a paralogical, paradoxical, omnipresent, holographic kind of a system. Where seeming impossible things become possible. But I don't think we can get much closer than that. Which means if you really want to be intimate with it you're going to have to live it, experience it, and be it.

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it." "Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand." "A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand." "Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do NOT understand it. Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him."

The idea is simple. There is only one lesson. This one lesson sets you free from every form of suffering. It's simply this:

Take full responsibility for everything that you are experiencing.

What is this based on? It's based on the fact that you are an immortal being that cannot be changed by anything, because you are the will of God.

This means that nothing in this entire "universe" of spacetime, nothing in the world, can do even the slightest thing to CAUSE you in any way.

You have never changed, you have not changed yourself, God has never changed you, and you will never change. You are always the same and always perfect.

Because of this, it's not POSSIBLE for anyone or anything to do anything to you. This is the basis of forgiveness. Recognizing that sin cannot happen, guilt is impossible, and everything is perfect still.

If you are immortal then the ONLY way by which something can SEEM to happen to you, is YOU using your own mind and free will to put in place what seem to be illusions of suffering.

Because the truth is that you cannot suffer at all. Not even slightly. You yourself have to literally warp your own mind and dream your own dream and invent your own suffering, which is even fake suffering, in order to experience what seems like suffering at all.

It cannot be put in place by anyone else because no-one else has power over your infinite will. It cannot be caused by the world or anyone in it. Nothing that seems to happen can be the reason why you are experiencing what you are experiencing.

So it goes back to the secret of salvation, no matter how it looks, no matter who seems to be the cause, no matter what anyone appears be trying to do to you, no matter what reactions you seemed to have that you thought they caused, it is NEVER true that anyone BUT YOU is the cause of your suffering.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

This means you can never pin blame on anyone or anything other than yourself. You can never truly believe that anyone or anything is the cause of you, other than God. God is the ONLY cause of you in all existence. There is NO OTHER POWER that can cause anything at all. Whatever happens is what you desire.

"My Self is ruler of the universe." It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

This is all tied together. You are ruler of the universe because anything that happens is by your will alone. Forgiveness is based on your immortality and the fact nothing can happen against your will. The secret of salvation reminds you that you can be saved only by admitting that YOU are the one willing it. And only by identifying with Christ can you fully claim responsibility for what you really are.

If in any way you are believing that what you are experiencing now, right now, is the result of, something other than yourself in any way, you are mistaken. You are deceived. If you think any person did this to you you are wrong. If you think the world or the body or the emotions or thoughts are doing it to you, you are wrong.

ONLY YOU can make yourself suffer.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself."

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Father, Your Son can not be hurt. And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one Identity we share with You."

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind. I am mistaken when I think I can Be hurt in any way. I am God's Son, Whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God."

"Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?"

"For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear."

"The Son of God could NEVER sin, but he CAN wish for what would hurt him. And he HAS the power to think he CAN BE hurt. What could this be EXCEPT a misperception of himself?"

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."

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

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

"Your Name replaces every thought of sin, and who is sinless cannot suffer pain."

"How can he fear or doubt or fail to know he cannot suffer, be endangered, or experience unhappiness, when he belongs to You, beloved and loving, in the safety of Your Fatherly embrace?"

"Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed."

"Love CANNOT suffer, because it cannot attack."

"Joy is the inevitable result of gentleness. Gentleness means that fear is now impossible, and what could come to interfere with joy? The open hands of gentleness are always filled. The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

I can't stress enough right now that God has ALREADY created you perfect in every way, there is NOTHING you need to do to make yourself "better" or improved or to become anything.

The path of "awakening" is NOT about adding something, producing something, searching for something, making something, or becoming something.

It is ONLY about becoming aware, AGAIN, that YOU ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING GIVEN YOU. There is nothing missing, nothing wrong with you, nothing broken, and no needs of any kind.

It is not about you trying to make yourself whole again. GOD has guaranteed your wholeness forever. It is ONLY about you being willing to recognize and accept that you are ALREADY WHOLE.

The wholeness, holiness, innocence, love, happiness, purity, joy, peace, it's all already in you, and it HAS NOT LEFT and it HAS NOT CHANGED and it IS NOT LOST.

Is is all still there as God created it RIGHT NOW, regardless of whether you are in denial of it, can't see it, are not aware of it, don't believe in it, don't want it, deny it, or fear it.

To awaken to it is merely to recognize IT IS THERE ALREADY. And enlightenment IS simply recognition of WHAT ALREADY IS! This takes no effort whatsoever other than to be willing to accept reality and truth as God created it. To admit you are Christ already, right now, and are just pretending not to be.

"I have already chosen what You will."

"then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well."

"God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine"

"In You is every choice already made. In You has every conflict been resolved. In You is everything I hope to find already given me." "I merely choose to recognize what is already there. Salvation is a decision made already."

"And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already."

"The answer to this problem is already given me, if I will accept it."

"And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other is ALREADY given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen."

"The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. But the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized."

"What I ask have You already given me"

"God has ALREADY given him all that he REALLY wants."

"For here the final question is ALREADY answered, and what you ask for, GIVEN."

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now."

"No one needs practice to gain what is already his."

"There is no sickness not already healed. No lack unsatisfied, no need unmet, within this golden treasury of Christ."

"True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. Ask rather to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there."

"ou do not PUT the Spirit in them by inspiring them, because that would be "magic," and therefore would not be real healing. But you DO recognize the Spirit that is ALREADY THERE, and thereby REAWAKEN IT." "He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function"

"the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction."

"The Soul is already illuminated"

"Yet, if God gave an Answer, there MUST be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done."

"THIS recognition is wholly WITHOUT effort, because it is ALREADY true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God." "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."

"Revelation induces a state in which fear has ALREADY BEEN abolished."

"Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us."

"So do we clear the way for Him today by simply recognizing that His Will is done already, and that joy and peace belong to us as His eternal gifts."

"I have already been forgiven."

"With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given them."

"But, through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen ALREADY forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself."

"BECAUSE reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid of fear."

"He has never failed to answer this request, because it asks only for what He has already willed."

"Prepare you NOW for the undoing of what never was. If you already UNDERSTOOD the difference between truth and illusion, Atonement would HAVE no meaning."

"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real. Know, then, Who abides with you, merely by recognizing WHAT IS ALREADY THERE, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you."

"We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so."

"Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."

"Ask not to BE forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask rather to LEARN how to forgive, and restore WHAT ALWAYS WAS to your unforgiving mind."

"According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, ONLY God's Purpose IS accomplishment, and it is ALREADY accomplished."

"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished"

"Glory be to God in the highest, and to you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been given. "

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

"He would make a restitution though He is complete; a gift to you although He knows that you have everything already."

"What idol CAN be called upon to give the Son of God what he already HAS?"

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve."

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."

"Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already?"

"He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him, and learned of what He had already given."

"There are many answers which you have already received, but have NOT YET HEARD."

"Who would "go" anywhere, if peace of mind is already complete?"

"But your minds are ALREADY continuous, and THEIR union need only be accepted, and the loneliness in Heaven is gone."

"We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you."

"For here is only healing, ALREADY complete and perfect. For here is God, and where HE is, only the perfect and complete CAN be."

"In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back."

"To remember is merely to restore to your mind WHAT IS ALREADY THERE. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what has BEEN made AND REJECTED."

"I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them."

"Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recall this about miracles GIVING LIFE:

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

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

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

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

Innocence is goodness. If guilt is equated with evil, then innocence is equated with good. In order to forgive someone or something requires looking for the good in them - looking for their innocence. Seeing their harmlessness, their gentleness, their holiness and their perfection.

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

"The good" is also combined with love, and light, and power, and strength. It is the realm of miracles. In effect, evil is a breakdown, malfunction, failure, weakness and a loss. So its opposite, good, is all that can actually work, solves all problems, repairs all sickness and resurrects.

"The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all."

The Holy Spirit also represents the state of forgiveness and the miracle, as the power of God which performs miracles, as the healer as the resurrector. Therefore seeing the good in your brother for example also equates with seeing the Holy Spirit in him.

"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further."

Jesus encourages us to find the good in things. To "look on the bright side". To make of the world a forgiven world where all is seen as innocent and harmless and guiltless and sinless.

"Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated the GOOD efforts, and OVERLOOKED mistakes?" Indeed forgiveness puts you in touch with your true nature, brings you closer to God, aligns you with your soul, and reawakens the power of God in you. It is your natural divine function to create the good and to do only good.

Ultimately "the good" is God, and anything of God is good. The world, as an illusion, is not good, and can at best only reflect God's goodness. Moving away from evil takes you toward the good of God. And in God, everyone and everything is good.

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

""I am blessed as a Son of God."

Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God."

"And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him MORE than just a body, for the "good" is NEVER what the body seems to be."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good.""

"And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him." "ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions except in the ego's judgment."

"Man will ultimately look upon his own creations, and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself once looked upon what he had created, and knew that it WAS good."

"For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me."

"God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was."

"Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship."

"And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use."

"We look on everyone as brothers, and perceive all things as kindly and as good."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist."

"What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it?"

"But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites, and CANNOT meaningfully join in ANY way."

"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good." "Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected."

"There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good."

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."

"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer.""

"He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain."

"The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it. Coming from God, He uses EVERYTHING for good, but does not BELIEVE in what is not true."

"Out of Love he was created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father."

"You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do."

"To the ego, THE EGO IS GOD."

"The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

"The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it "sees" the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its enemies who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them."

"If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible." ... "According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT."

"A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice."

"Therefore, you have used the world to COVER YOUR LOVE, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the CLOSER you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion." Jesus is clear about this. The ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE TO GOD. The idea that God is separate. That is, a seeming autonomous, separate entity, which stands alone, which rules its own kingdom, which is self sufficient and depends on nothing outside of itself, which has its own power, which does not need God for anything, and wants to be as completely distant from God's nature as possible. It wants to share nothing and have everything for itself selfishly. It wants to be the only thing that exists.

"Sin is the "grand illusion" underlying ALL the ego's grandiosity. For BY it, God HIMSELF is changed, and rendered incomplete."

"Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven."

"For the ego's destructive urge is so intense, that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it."

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."

"The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships."

"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."

"The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."

"Possession for its OWN sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself."

The ego is like the anti-God. Just as it is also referred to as the anti-Christ. It is the illusion of a separate self, a little isolated cut-off self, disconnected and alone, imprisoned in a body, unrelated to anyone else, not communicating with God whatsoever, suspicious of everyone, having no trust of anyone, and completely backwards in all its perceptions.

"The ego's opposite in every way,--in origin, effect and consequence--we call a miracle."

"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God."

"Peace is the ego's greatest enemy, because according to ITS interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival."

"Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is COMPLETELY savage, and COMPLETELY insane."

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

"LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, NOT God's."

"BECAUSE the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

It sees God as everything the ego really is, believe itself to not be the ego at all. The ego actually believes it is sane. It regards its insanity as sanity, it regards its hell as heaven, it regards death as life, and punishment as atonement. It has everything completely backwards and upside-down. It sees God as evil and vengeful and sinful and attacking. It sees heaven as hell and holiness as blasphemy and innocence as guilt. Everything that is true is sees as false, and all that is false is regards as true. It is the complete anti-thesis to everything real.

"To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL."

"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT?"

"In a sense, the special relationship was the EGO's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's Answer to the separation. For, although the ego did not understand WHAT had been created, it WAS aware of threat."

"Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body."

"They provide STRIKING examples, both of the ego's INABILITY to tolerate reality, and your willingness to CHANGE reality on its behalf."

"Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL."

Each of us has this ego thing in our mind somewhere, and it has to be turfed out and catharted and undone. It is the central core of what keeps us in hell, and is the origin of all our guilt. It believes that everything sinless is sinful, that all of heaven is guilty, and that the Son of God is murderous. It tells every lie imaginable. It is twisted and dark and delusional and insane.

God has created a Home for you. He is sharing with you everything He is. All of his property is yours. He is offering you eternal life, endless joy, infinite happiness, and perfect peace. He is willing to protect you forever. He is on your side. God wants to help you to know you are safe and loved.

God has established a Truth, which defends you and protects you and can cause you to be permanently happy. It is the most wonderful gift available. God has created the Truth.

You might presently believe that you have another truth. You may believe there is something else that you want. You maybe believe something else is more valuable or important or true. You also want to hold onto your own seeming ability to make your own truth.

Having gone off on your own, lonely for God, you have pretended that you can give yourself everything God was offering. You’ve tried to make your own home. You have tried to keep yourself safe. You have tried to determine what the truth is. And you have tried to defend your life. But you’ve struggled, and suffered, and have been unhappy.

Something is missing. What’s missing is love. What’s missing is God. What’s missing is your inheritance. What’s missing is God’s gift to you, which you seemed to throw away.

God has fortunately kept for you the very gift he has given, because it is permanent. God has kept your home spotless and perfect. He has protected everything about you that He created, ensuring it can never be harmed or changed. He is simply waiting for you to claim your inheritance.

To receive your inheritance, it’s going to have to mean that you surrender your own separate efforts to do everything for yourself that God wants to do FOR you. You don’t need to establish what the truth is - God has already done that for you.

You don’t need to create a safe place to live. God has already done that for you. You don’t need to protect your life or defend yourself to try to survive. God is offering perfect protection and everlasting life. You don’t need to sustain yourself through food and water, God can sustain you and nourish you at all times. You need nothing that God cannot provide FOR you, and he WANTS to provide ALL of what you need FOR you, if you will let him.

The only thing that needs to happen here is that you be WILLING TO ACCEPT what God has given, rather than what you have tried to give to yourself. You’ve tried to do EVERYTHING that God has done FOR you, on your own, without Him. You have tried to be God.

The world you made is nothing compared to the world God has created for you. And His gift to you is ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, given with no strings attached and given fully. Unconditionally. And without you having to earn it or prove you deserve it. You are ELEGIBLE for God! You are WORTHY of God!

The truth you invented, and your desire to be the one who invents it, is nothing compared to the truth God has already established. You are trying to do everything on your own without Him, in place of Him, and this is not working very well. Living without God is unhappiness.

All we need to do here is become willing to LET GOD. To allow God. To accept God’s gifts. This means letting God be the one who defines the truth, putting aside your ego’s special abilities to figure truth out on its own, and simply ACCEPTING the truth that GOD created FOR you.

This is nothing short of putting aside your "wish" to have a SEPARATE WILL, and to instead accept God’s Will for you. To the ego this is interpreted as what you do not want, because it seems imprisoning to your separate will, as though taking away your freedom. But accepting God’s Will in place of your own, is FREEING you to be who you really are.

It is our job to give up our little protest against God, our little corner of imaginary existence, and our wishful thinking. It is our job to give up our separate authority. It is our job to stop relying on ourselves for everything and to MAKE ROOM for God in our lives. To make a space where God is managing some area of life FOR us, where we accept HIS decision, and carry out HIS will. And He assures us, His will for us is REALLY GREAT, and we will LOVE carrying out God’s will.

We need to learn to TRUST, that God’s will, God’s truth, is acceptable, WITHOUT our ego first figuring out if its true or needing to be the one who decides whether to comply or not. This stand-off we’re having with God needs to end. We need to learn that God can be TRUSTED to CHOOSE FOR US in every area of life, to speak for us, to think for us, to show us the straight way to heaven. Putting the Kingdom of God first makes everything easy.

Letting God be in charge, is not what the ego wants. Listening to guidance from Spirit, is not what the ego wants. Trusting God in major life decisions in spite of what circumstances suggest is not what the ego wants. Allowing God to HEAL YOU FOR YOU is not what the ego wants. Did you know that God wants to heal you of every sickness and problem, to melt away all suffering, to end all fear and to restore you to perfect happiness forever?

The Holy Spirit is here to carry out God’s will on Earth as in Heaven, while Earth seems to persist. It is his function to heal. It is your function to heal here also because you share his function. But this healing, this miracle working, does require that you be willing to trust Him, to LET HIM do the healing, to be open to RECEIVE God’s truth rather than being the one to create it, and to trust that God KNOWS what is best for you and everyone.

Letting go of our ego is literally an act of ALLOWING a power larger than yourself to work through you, to decide everything for you, to heal you for you, to heal others through you, to accept the truth as it is with no protest or desire to change it, and to TRUST that God knows what he’s doing. It takes time to develop this trust, but miracles arise from allowing God to be God through you, extending miracles of love and healing to all. This is God’s Will.

God loves you. Will you let him love you, heal you, bring you back to life?

"I want 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 choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

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

"Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS" UrT11J13

Let's look at the really big picture.

You are an immortal being with eternal life that lives in God forever. You cannot change or be changed. You are permanent and fixed. You cannot be altered, you cannot suffer, you cannot be affected, you cannot be hurt or damaged, you cannot be sick or die. Nothing can ever happen to you or disturb your peace. You are real, and nothing real can be threatened.

The so-called separation from God was an attempt to BE MORTAL. To invent death. It is a belief in EVERY single form imaginable of something OPPOSITE to your immortal nature. An insinuation, a lie, and a denial, that you can in fact "be changed", that you can be affected, victimised, hurt, damaged, broken, or even made to be sick, or even destroyed completely by death.

The entire world of space and time and everything in it was entry into a "dream of death", in which every single aspect is part of the attempt to believe that you are NOT immortal.

Even the slightest hint of fear is evidence of believing that you might not live forever. The slightest twinge of sickness is an attempt to PROVE that you can be hurt. The merest disturbance to your total peace signals a sense that somehow, in some way, your eternal extension and permanence MIGHT be in question.

And so as we entered into the separation, the tiny mad idea, we thought to ourselves that MAYBE we might not last forever. Maybe we could be changed, maybe we could alter ourselves even, maybe we could be changed by something other than ourselves. And maybe this would bring into question who and what we are, questioning even our permanence and eternal life.

This gave rise of course to fear, because the merest hint of a belief that you might not live forever induces a sense of threat to your existence, which frightens you. So we entered the "detour into fear", the "dream of death", an attempt to play a game of mortality.

We made this world, came to this world, to question our very NATURE. To draw into doubt what we are, and whether we can be what we are. We undermined ourselves. We attacked our own invulnerability. We tried to make ourselves into something that COULD be attacked, could be hurt, could suffer in some way.

So now when you look at the world and you look at ALL the massive number of forms of suffering, all fears, all victimhood, all sense of threat and danger, all sicknesses and mental illnesses, all death and destruction, every problem, all conflicts and competitions, all war and disagreement, every single nuance of body identification and believing you might be affected by something, is ALL merely a symptom of "trying to die". Trying to NOT BE IMMORTAL.

The solution to all this madness - the acceptance of the atonement - requires us to RELINQUISH DEATH in all its many forms. It requires us to ACCEPT once again that we are PURELY AND ONLY immortal beings with eternal life. It requires us to completely reject EVERY single little speck of a belief that says anything to the contrary.

All victimhood, all fears, all attack, all guilts and sins, all sense of suffering, all sense of threat and danger, all bodily identification, all belief in separations and conflicts, even the belief in change, all of it has to be questioned and let go. So that ALL that remains of you, all that you ARE, is your PURE immortal eternal self - the Christ - the soul, which resides in heaven with God PERMANENTLY safe and permanently alive.

You are life itself. You are eternal life. You are immortality. You are extension. You are the openness to never-ending. And because you know deep in your being that you are absolutely BEYOND all possible threats to your eternal nature, you are in a state of absolute peace and happiness. Not a single hint of threat, no danger, no concerns, no problems, no doubts, no suffering, no possibility of changing, not even the slightest hint of death in any form whatsoever.

You continue on. You are the immortal son of God. You have lived forever and you will always live forever. This is the central CORE TRUTH that the course is leading us to. Wake up to KNOW THYSELF AS YOU ARE IN GOD. The perfect pure immortal eternal being that is utterly beyond every form of death and every form of suffering forever, in total peace and absolute certainty. There is no death, the Son of God is free.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die." URT29I

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." UrW191L9

"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination." UrT20I7

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One." UrT29G1

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are." UrW139L6

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8

"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love." UrT14E4

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now." UrT11J12

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect." UrT25H5

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. " UrT19J7

"And we will sleep no more and dream of death. " UrW191L10

"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." UrU5A7

God is wholeness, or Holiness. He is the whole of everything, everywhere. There is no lack in Him. He is unlimited and infinite. He is omnipresent. He is the all in all.

"The mark of Wholeness is Holiness"

"God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him because He IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him because YOUR being IS His."

Every part of God contains all of God. All of God is everywhere. All of God is shared, within Himself, with all of Himself. All of God has access to all of God. And all of God is God.

"The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things."

God cannot access anywhere that He does not exist, and there is nothing outside of God. He already exists everywhere, so there is nowhere to be added, and no space to add into.

"Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

God cannot create an external space, nor can he add a separate thing outside of Himself. He cannot "tack on" any kind of a creation to the outside of Himself.

The internal nature of God, however, is one of sharing. God fully shares with Himself. He is fully open. He loves Himself, and therefore gives Himself to Himself.

"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."

Within God, within His mind, within His being, there is total unlimited sharing. This sharing is a transcendence of space and time and limitation. It enables God to be a host, and to share Himself by giving Himself.

"Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."

"You cannot separate your SELF from YOUR Creator, who created YOU by sharing HIS Being WITH you."

"I am forever host to God."

God wants to give Himself because it is His nature to share everything. This giving is what we call love, or life. It also leads to what we call projection, extension, or creation. Love loves itself.

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son"

"God shares His function with you in Heaven"

"Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him."

God is able to share Himself, within Himself, and can extend Himself as what we call Thoughts or Creations. These thought-creations can only occur provided they inherit the whole of God, and in turn share His will to share the whole of themselves.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself."

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

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." "ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father"

"the Children of the Father inherit from Him"

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

Any thought-creation of God can only share what they are given, and can only give what they inherit. They also must create by sharing, and can only create by sharing, by hosting within their own being.

"By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. YOU are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you ARE like Him."

"accept the Thought of God as its inheritance."

"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."

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

Creation, therefore, really occurs as a kind of internal expansion, or a giving inward. God shares the whole of Himself, which produces creative thoughts, which must inherit the whole of God, and be wholly like God. "The Father and the Son are not identical, but you CAN say "Like Father, LIKE Son."

"GOD gave you the function to create in eternity."

"God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love"

"God GAVE you Heaven"

"God GAVE you all there is."

God also can only share wholly, or fully. He cannot only partially give, or partially create, or partially share. When He shares, He creates wholly, and creates only wholeness. And anything He creates must be completely whole. "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." "which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

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

This means that any creation of God, any extension of God, MUST be a completely whole creation. It must be fully given, fully established, fully sharing, and fully created.

"This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

This leads to the FULL creation of living thought-beings, ideas of children, which are the living thoughts of God. Each is a miracle, and each inherits absolutely everything from God. Each HAS everything, and IS everything. "You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven"

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

"God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

Absolute wholeness is passed down and is SHARED by every creation. Therefore, two things become true. 1) Every thought-creation is a completely autonomous being who is a whole fully-created being, and 2) Each being shares AND IS the whole of creation.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

This results in a scenario where each Son of God literally IS God, and is PART of God, and IS EACH OTHER. There can only truly be one whole, which must be shared by EACH whole. And therefore each whole is the one whole. This is what oneness really means.

"The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

This means that each Son of God IS the other Sons of God, as well as being an individual Son of God. "Individual" does mean "undivided". And thus each brother is all brothers. And every soul is part of God. And every child of God is every other child of God. And all of them share the same whole - all of themselves - with all the rest.

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

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself."

"to know your brother IS to know God."

This produces the Sonship, which is the family of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. And having inherited everything from God, as His perfect extensions, each Son of God is a fully created being and has SO much freedom and autonomy that they are established as TRUE co-creators - free-willed "separate" beings.

"the Sonship is your Soul"

"you are part of God, and the Sonship is one"

"in a relationship in which ALL the Sonship is together blessed"

"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." "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."

This doesn't merely mean that they just do God's bidding, or that he dangles them like puppets, or that they are slaves to His will. They have been WHOLLY created, and therefore do in fact have free independent will. But remember that, at the same time, this will is ALSO shared with everyone. And to remain free it has to be shared, yet still retain freedom.

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

Blessed with free will, in a sense "free from God", or as "separate beings", individuality has been established. They are individual because they are whole in and of themselves. Yet they are one because they share everything.

"For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us"

"every member of the family of God must return"

They now proceed to naturally share everything that they have, because this is their one nature. They can only share everything because it is by the sharing of everything that they exist at all.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

So in turn they create their own creations by sharing everything and hosting them within their own mind and being, just like and with God. And as such the Kingdom continues to expand internally as a continuous line of extension and creation.

"all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." "As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"YOUR creations belong in YOU, as YOU belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it DOES NOT STOP. It creates forever"

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN"

Wholeness, within wholeness, shared by the whole, in which each whole is the one whole, and all wholes are one. And yet at the same time, there are many wholes because God constantly shares itself. And all living beings therefore continually create and extend and think and give, and the increase of the Kingdom is endless.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

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

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them WITH you."

"for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you."

The simple fact that God, who is whole, gives the whole of himself, wholly, to wholly create whole beings, who share the whole of himself, alignes exactly with the holographic principle. That the whole is in every part, and every contains and IS the whole, and every part is the SAME whole. And therefore all the wholes are one.

This is why heaven is a truly holographic structure. Not holographic in the sense of 3d projected images - which have nothing to do with holograms. But in the sense that the whole of God is in every creation of God, and every creation of God IS the whole.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

This is what heaven is like. It is not some singular blob that sits there by itself. It is not just some kind of singular oneness which doesn't create or extend. It isn't populated by God alone. It is not devoid of individuality. Nor is it devoid of relationships or free will. It is host to an entire family of unlimited thought-beings, and every part of it is part of God, and part of you, and of your own spirit-children.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually"

"Each Soul knows God completely."

"By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM."

"God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it."

"TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING"

"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other."

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

This is why certain other conceptual models of reality are not a good fit. Traditional ideas of oneness don't quite cut it, because they fail to acknowledge that oneness MUST share itself, MUST extend, and MUST be given to create.

Ideas of non-duality don't cut it either, because God is a creator and HAS to create whole expressions of Himself, forming a divine family. He does not will to be alone, or that you be alone, or that you will beings that are alone. All of heaven is about creation and sharing and openness and inter-dependence.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"the Holy Family"

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"The Kingdom is forever extending, because it is in the Mind of God."

"Your gifts TO the Kingdom are like His to YOU."

"God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit."

"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created."

"I have a kingdom I must rule."

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you"

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal."

"For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

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

"My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."

So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.

The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.

This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.

When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.

Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.

"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE."

So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.

The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.

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

"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.

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

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.

If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.

This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.

"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."

The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

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.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS."

The entire problem of the people of the world is that we're very confused about what is true. God, who is truth, has been deeply misunderstood. We've tried to replace God with a false God of vengeance, which we want to have nothing to do with.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

God has been framed as a murderous evil tyrant that wants us dead. We've associated him with all the properties of that which is not true, including darkness, evil, enemy, hateful, destructive, murderous, vengeful, sick, and death itself. We've even tried to make out that God is non-existence.

This "anti-christ" attitude is part of the separation idea of being opposite to God. In order to be opposite to God, we've made God out to be opposite to himself. We now believe God is nothing like he really is. We've turned him into a false God of war.

At the same time, we've mistakenly misbelieved and misunderstood and failed to recognize all false things for what they are. We think that non-existence is existence, that death is life, that hell is heaven, that suffering is atonement, that murder is justified, that fear is safety, that sickness is saving your life.

So now we have this worldwide problem that we're trying to move away from God, on the basis that we believe God is what we do NOT want. And we try to move toward the world of illusions, on the basis that we believe it IS what we want.

To put it another way, we now see God as an evil enemy to be feared, we want nothing to do with him, we do not want his affections or help, and we do not want to wake up to exposure to the fact of his existence. We are running away from him. We think that God is death and that we're running towards life. But we are confused, and we are actually running away from life towards death.

So now we have a state where we're all choosing to suffer on purpose because we are afraid of God. We're afraid of what we've made of him, what we think he is like. We don't want to go toward him because we think we'll stop existing. Even though moving away from him was an attempt to stop existing.

When we move away from God we are moving away from happiness and wholeness and love and peace and health and sanity. We'd rather choose suffering and unhappiness and despair and pain and sickness and death. We then want to keep our suffering and NOT let it be healed, because we literally believe it is defending us from God. We'd rather die than let him heal us with his poisonous offering.

This is the state of the world. A hugely common belief that we want the opposite of what God is offering. Even if that means we actually end up choosing to make, and maintain, even more suffering. Because we do not recognize it AS suffering, and do not think it's an insane thing to tolerate pain, and are quite content to put up with all manner of misery for as long as possible.

Not to mention the guilt, which we adore and cherish and want more of, and will preserve in an attempt to keep us and others stuck in bodies and suffering in order to protect us from God. The world actually believes that people leaving their bodies means they've move into the forbidden realm to be swallowed up by death. Something to be avoided at all costs.

The world is incredibly backwards. It has become acceptably normal to not question death, to put up with pain, to reject help, to not want healing, to fear questioning the reality of the world, on the basis that these are all threats to the protection it offers. The only reason we think the world is saving us is because we a very very mistaken about it and do not recognize it as a picture of crucifixion, with nothing to offer and no power to do anything.

It all boils down to this one simple thing. We're afraid of God and we don't want to go home. We think God will never forgive us, and we would rather die and be weak and helpless than admit to being mistaken. We are most afraid of the very thing we mistakenly believe is true, because it is false. And the very things we think are false, are actually true, and yet we hate them and want nothing to do with them.

Our minds have been reversed, our entire reality has been opposed, our sanity has been turned upside down, and our whole sense of what we want has done a 180-degree flip. Trying to convince the world to let God help is quite a challenge. The insane and fearful are heavily suspicious and mistrusting. The sick want to die. The lost want to stay lost and rely on their confusion for navigation.

But there is hope and a light because the reality of God's loving truth in heaven has sent its witnesses and its teachers and its healers and its power to resurrect the dead and lift us into the light. A light which at first we do not want and fear and dread, but which later we might come to trust as our salvation. It is only a false fear, which is a lie about God, that keeps us from happiness and health.

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's justice. They believe He shares their OWN confusion, and can NOT avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice MUST entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the wrath of God in Him."

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

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you." God has given you freedom. This cannot be revoked. You are free to create, or to mis-create. God cannot oppose your will because it is part of his own freedom.

This means that you have to decide to go back to God, of your free will. You can't be forced, coerced, manipulated or made to do anything you don't want to. You have to willingly choose heaven again.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

"But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth"

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Does this mean that you can take forever? Does it mean that you can decide NEVER to return to God? Does it mean that you could stay in separation and never wake up?

Given that you have total freedom, it should mean that you can take as long as you please, and even to never return.

The thing is, that while God wills that you be free forever, he also wills that you be one with him forever. And here we have signs of a "natural limit" placed by God.

"Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose."

The way I read this, "will" always has an element of freedom to it, even when will is being USED to try to be unwilling. You cannot escape willingness. You will always have some willingness even if you are highly unwilling, which means that you will eventually will to be back with God.

"He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

God has also placed a limit on spacetime, ie the separation. It has been repurposed as a classroom to learn lessons, which involves consent. And we have all willed freely to participate. In effect, there is a guarantee that we will wake up eventually.

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die."

Another thing is that trying to be away from God is painful. It is a rejection of happiness and love and ease and joy. A rejection of health and wholeness. It is a state riddled with suffering. And eventually this is intolerable, especially when it becomes extreme.

The more extreme the separation, the more it hurts. The more you try to be evil, the worse your life gets, and the more you become insane. The harder you try not to exist, the more you repress and hate yourself. And it does not feel good. Some people have extreme tolerance levels but not unlimited.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way."

This is part of the fact that there is a safeguard built into free will. Basically, in order to fully will something, you have to be fully willing. If you become unwilling, ie try to use will to NOT will, you are arresting the will. This causes you to shut off access to your power to create, and you become "weaker".

Effectively, if you oppose God's will, you become powerless. If you deny your freedom, you imprison the will. It all gets automatically shut down because by choosing separation you're literally denying freedom and power.

""Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."" ... "If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The end result is that you cannot use will to attack will, or to attack or change God. Or to change the truth or anything real. When you try to, there is a lack of will, which shuts it down and causes nothing to happen. You might hallucinate that the nothing is something, but nothing is really created.

Also the Holy Spirit has been created to guarantee holographically that the whole is always in the part, and thus no matter how many times mind tries to split itself the whole of God is still there. You cannot leave eternity or really separate.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

So God has naturally caused a number of things all which guarantee you are not only protected and safe (immortal) and have not really done anything, but also has the side-effect that when you choose away from him you do not like it, and inevitably choose against it. It's almost like saying the impluse to return is built-into the attempt to leave. And you never did quite leave in the first place.

"I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

We could say then that, we are always free, and can choose when to return to God, but at the same time staying away from God is fundamentally unpleasant, and eventually you will seek to return.

Another aspect of this is that God is so certain and so powerful, and the Holy Spirit shares his infinite power, such that he CANNOT FAIL in helping us to return. In his repurposing of the world we made, he guarantees that we will return to heaven. There are no loopholes in God's plan for salvation.

The Holy Spirit has effectively already finished the job.

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose."

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus gives a new definition for what is life, and what is death. He does not mean that life is "the stuff in this world" and that death is "when bodies are totally dead and lie on the ground decaying." He has a totally different view of life and death because he recognizes what things ARE, not what we think they are.

"Life" is equated ONLY with eternal life. That which lives forever, cannot be attacked, never becomes sick, does not age or grow old and cannot die. Life which extends forever and produces more life through miraculous creation in the extension of God's being, which is the ONLY function of Spirit. That is real life. And such a life is only possible in what Jesus refers to as HEAVEN. And Heaven is considered to be completely OPPOSITE to Earth and a totally different place to exist. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Death" is equated with anything that is NOT that or which opposes it in any way, which includes dreams, and includes this world (Earth). It includes any state of separation, any dream world, any dream body, any thought of attack, any even minor upset, even a slight grievance, all forms of sickness ("all sickness is but a little death"), all levels of suffering, and the "final" death itself. In other words, everything in this world and universe is considered to be DEATH. It is a dream of death. The entire thing is made of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world."

This is why "there is no life outside of Heaven". There is nothing ETERNAL in this world, because all things visible will end and all things that perish are illusions. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for everything He creates MUST be eternal as Himself." And let's face it, without denial, nothing in this world lasts forever. This world is the idea of being outside of Heaven, it is founded on separation, and it is founded on denial of life. Which is death.

Jesus states, this world is "at best an ILLUSION OF LIFE, at worst, death". Even if this world is seen with forgiving eyes, even if it is seen through true perception, even if it is supposedly loved, it is STILL an illusion of an opposite to Heaven and it STILL entails the idea of death, without which it CANNOT seem to exist at all.

This is what Jesus means by life and death. Life is Heaven, Earth is death. Life is eternal. Anything limited is an illusion of life and is made of the idea of death. Anyone who has perception still needs healing because they're still inside a separated state and are inside the idea of death. Anyone who is a teacher of God, using the body for a holy purpose, is still inside a dream of death.

Until you GO HOME TO HEAVEN, you do not have access to eternal life. Even though it is permanent, and hiding behind this world's illusions. Until you are IN HEAVEN, and have forgotten this world Earth, you have not CLAIMED eternal life or gone beyond that which perishes and ends. Earth IS NOT HEAVEN. It cannot be heaven. Its laws and the spacetime belief that it is based on a TOTALLY OPPOSED TO LIFE. The things you see in this world which you THINK are life, are NOT. They are illusions of life.

Even the "real world" is an ILLUSION OF LIFE. It may reflect or seem SIMILAR to or like Heaven but it is NOT the same thing. And nor is LOVE, in this world, the same thing as LOVE in Heaven. Because love means LIFE and CREATION and that is ONLY POSSIBLE in Eternity. Outside of Heaven, LOVE IS AN ILLUSION OF LOVE, a REFLECTION, which appears like a picture, an image, symbolizing love. It falls short of the full love of God which can ONLY be experienced beyond this universe, beyond the world, beyond the body, beyond ALL illusions of life.

This is why RESURRECTION HAS MEANING. When you get to the end of the curriculum, it ENDS IN THE RESURRECTION. It ends there because resurrection means LIFE. And that means, that every state you were in BEFORE the resurrection, WAS NOT LIFE. Resurrection is the RETURN TO eternal life. Before that, you did not have awareness of eternal life. You only had awareness of dreams of life. The body has absolutely nothing to do with LIFE.

"The body does not live or die, it is nothing at all." To think that EVEN the human body is alive, is a mistake. It does not live, because if it lived it would have a mind and a will and a soul and THAT is the level confusion that produces sickness. The body does not CREATE. Believing it creates is SICKNESS. It does not CAUSE anything. It has no ability to EXTEND LIFE. Its production of other bodies is an ILLUSION of the extension of life. Baby bodies are no more "life" than adult bodies. They are all illusions in a dream world.

"The body is the central figure in dreaming." It depends on the dream, without the dream it does not exist, and the dream cannot happen without it. Dreams are not REALITY. They are not REAL LIFE. If you endow the body with the properties of Christ, ie eternal life, mind, spirit, extension, etc.... you are making an illusion real and you have false perception. It IS FALSE PERCEPTION to believe that this world is ALIVE. It is false perception to believe that physical objects EXIST. It is false perception to SEE BODIES. It is false perception to look with the body's eyes and senses and believe that what they show you EXISTS AT ALL OR IS EVEN HAPPENING. These are illusions. "To sense is not to know."

This is an imaginary universe designed to block your awareness of LIFE. It is a dream state. And ALL dreams are based on the one central dream from which all illusions stem - death. It may seem to entail a spectrum, ranging from what what seems like life, to what seems like death, and it may seem to you that a living body is "more alive" than a dead one, but they are ALL THE SAME ILLUSION. NONE of them have eternal life, and they are all ILLUSIONS of life and death. They are not real. They do not exist.

ONLY the creations of light are real. ONLY the extension of God's spirit/being is real. ONLY unlimited infinite love is really love. ONLY Heaven is ALIVE. It is the LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT. It is absolutely nothing like this illusory world of darkness and death. And if you think that death is ONLY the state where things are do decayed that they are laying on the ground "lifeless", think again. That is merely the extreme end of a spectrum ranging from death to death.

You, RIGHT NOW, in your body, imagining you are living, are NOT REALLY ALIVE. You are NOT RESURRECTED. You are half dead. Asleep. That is what UNCONSCIOUSNESS means. Until you are FULLY CONSCIOUS, fully awake and aware of Heaven, you are unconscious and asleep and dreaming, and in your dream you imagine a world that you think is alive, even though it is being manufactured by a mind that is RESISTING LIFE and AVOIDING BEING ALIVE. We are all just zombies, "the living dead", walking around a world made of death, without which there is no world.

Heaven is life. Earth is death. Heaven is heaven. Earth is hell. Heaven is eternal. Earth will end. Heaven is reality. Earth is a dream. Heaven is immortality. Earth is mortality. Illusions of life do not turn into life. They disappear and reveal the life that they were trying to hide. Heaven on Earth is "heaven on an illusion". Not going to happen. Illusions recognized disappear. "A forgiven world cannot last." You will not find even ONE example of eternal life IN THIS WORLD, YET ALONE being able to say that ALL THINGS in this world have eternal life. Not even ONE LITTLE THING lives forever here, and anyone who thinks that's not true, is clearly in denial.

"Where God created life, there life must be". IN Heaven.

Everyone has free will. If someone uses their free will to choose to be mistaken, that's up to them. If they use their free will to try to be a sinful evil-like person, that's up to them. If they use their free will to be angry and violent and abusive, that's up to them. If they use their free will to wage war and murder, that's up to them.

It's actually not a 'right' of ours to judge that the choices people have made are sinful. The choices they have made might be very mistaken, very ineffective, very backward or confused, but it's still their free will to make that choice. We don't actually have a right to hold their mistakes against them or to decide that they are sinful because of what they've chosen.

This means that we have to allow people the freedom to be very wrong, the freedom to attack, the freedom to hurt and damage, etc. That is their free will right. This is not to say that they are sane in those choices, or that it's 'morally right' or justified or loving behaviour etc. But it is still their freedom. If they want to suffer, if they want to produce suffering, that's their freedom.

We therefore have to find a way not to judge such choices as sins. We have to be more like, okay, if that's what you want, then you're totally allowed. Whether or not there are actions or counter-measures or defences or protections or whatever after that point, is another matter. Whether there are consequences of legal actions or imprisonment or whatever, that's another matter. But the person does have the free-will right to do what they want.

What this means is that regardless of how someone is different, regardless of the form it takes, what choices they make, what they seem to want, we have to have an attitude that these differences don't define them as guilty sinners. We can't be judging them for it.

If we start going into modes of like... you did this thing, it's a bad thing, therefore you are sinful, therefore I'm justified in blaming you and shaming you and punishing you .... now we're on shaky ground.

What it means is that we actually want people to have poor choices so that we have an opportunity to see them sin. If they sin, then we can find them guilty. Then we can project our own guilt onto them while making out that they're the guilty one, and it'll all seem nice and tidy and covert. We ourselves as "with sin", and we are trying to cast stones at people we want to be sinful.

As Jesus says in the bible "He who is without sin should cast the first stone." In other words if we're busy judging people and hurling stones at them to punish them for 'sin', we should be a bit more honest and look at the ways we ourselves are being sinful before finding other people to be sinful. We don't really have a leg to stand on. And only those who are forgiving and sinless would be in a position to judge, and would refrain from doing so.

In effect, if we are judging people for making poor choices, seeming to suggest that we think that shouldn't be acting that way, we actually DO want them to act that way, because we get a great opportunity to scapegoat. And that means we can shove some of our guilt onto them and justify it on the basis that they are the one who deserves it, and our anger is justified. Thank God they chose to sin so that we could have a chance to be innocent.

To be more honest we have to stop judging people as being sinners for what they've chosen. But this also does mean that even in the face of people seeming to do what we might classify as horrible things, abusive things, evil things, we have to STILL find them not guilty. We have to still not judge them as evil or wrong or bad people. They are just mistaken.

Criminals, murderers, rapists, child abusers, terrorists, war-mongers, thieves, bullies, you name it... yes they are making quite poor choices but they are not sinful for it. Nor are we supposed to be pointing a finger of blame and saying they are the guilty ones. Or holding it against them, or shaming them, or wanting to counter-attack them, or punish them for it.

If we're doing that, trying to use the things in the world that seem less than holy as justification for revenge and hate and accusation, then we're in our ego. Because the ego loves to judge harshly and find guilty and make wrong. That means we are being "judgey". As "judges" we act like "judge and jury", some kind of God or authority that has the 'right' to determine who is innocent and who is guilty, and to sentence the sinners to death.

We're judgemental and unforgiving. Instead of being forgiving toward them for their mistakes, we step out of forgiveness and go into judgement. We reason that we're not being forgiving BECAUSE the person is judged to be wrong. The judgement tries to justify NOT forgiving, by pointing out how the person is obviously sinful and MUST be judged. So then we're justifying unforgiving attitudes on the basis that people are doing wrong all over the place, which is itself the perceived result of not forgiving them in the first place.

Bottom line is, we are not supposed to be judging anyone or anything. Judging is just another form of attack and projection. At times it can seem to not be angry, maybe just a subtle annoyance, but it's still a way to project guilt. All the things we judge against, we have to find a way to stop doing that. All the ways we say people are wrong, and hold their acts and choices against them, we're being unforgiving.

So ultimately it means that in order to be forgiving, we have to forgive everyone and everything. There mustn't be anything that we single out for punishment, no-one that we call names, no one that we hate or are offended by, no-one that we see as deliberately evil, and no-one that justifies our anger or revenge.

People in their differences need to be allowed to be different. It doesn't mean differences are true or real, but if people are choosing to be different that's up to them. If in any way we categorise their choices as wrong, we're being judgemental. No matter how weird their choices, how strange, how unnatural, how fake, how immature, how selfish, whatever.... we have to still let them have the freedom to make those choices and not accuse them of being stupid, sinful, evil, bad, wrong, guilty, or any other negativity because of it.

We don't have to agree with the differences, we don't have to choose the same things, we don't have to condone it or support it, we don't have to go along with it or let ourselves or others be in the line of fire. We don't have to go into inaction or being carpeting or a martyr or letting people walk all over us etc, but at the same time we must not be having such unforgiving attitudes towards them.

It requires infinite patience. And it requires a willingness not to be at war. In judgement we are unforgiving and cold and heartless and unloving. Only in forgiveness - an earthly form of love - can we be kind and supportive and truly helpful.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is." UrW220W14

"I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me. All that I do, I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me."

If you get angry or start blaming and pointing a finger at someone, you perceive as if it really is "about them". You see them doing something, you judge "them" for it, and your mind starts attacking them. But here's the truth.

When you do this, ideas do not leave their source. You might perceive that you're successfully attacking a "separate person out there", but the attack is actually taking place INSIDE your mind. It isn't leaving you. And this has two key parts to it:

1) The attack is taking place inside your mind

2) The "target" of the attack is also inside your mind

So both the attacker and the one being attacked are IN YOU.

You might have a tremendous sense of disassociation in that it seems you are just blaming xyz person for something, casually and easily, but you may not be realizing that even when you're hurling abuse at someone who obviously is "in the wrong", you're basically having a PRIVATE SELF ATTACK, inside a private bubble, in your mind.

So all that attack that you're trying to get rid of through projection and blame, although it doesn't seem like, is actually part of your mind attacking another part of YOUR mind. Which means that you literally are attacking yourself. You think "that asshole cut me off in traffic". Well, your mind there is saying to ITSELF, that it is an asshole.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins". It's simple and easy to say, but may not always be obvious to recognize as what you're doing. In every case, every way that you seem to be "able" to attack someone else without experiencing the seeming effects and consequences, you MUST be in denial, MUST be mistaken, MUST have disassociation happening in your mind, AND you are attacking ONLY yourself.

So this is the thing. Your angry attack on another is NOT really an attack on another. The idea does not leave your mind. The thought does not leave your mind. The source of the attack (the attacker) does not leave your mind. And the thing that is attacked does not leave your mind. So while it SEEMS like you're "not targeting yourself", YOU ARE. In every case.

Underneath the illusion that it's not about you, it's always about you. Always. 100% of the time. Every time you think you can "get away with" having someone else experience the effects of what you're causing, without you participating in those effects, you are mistaken. Not only do you participate in the effects, ONLY YOU participate in the effects

If that other person chooses to be innocent and invulnerable your mental illness attack has absolutely no effect on them. If they choose to laugh in the face of your attempted attack, it has no effect on them. Whatsoever. You could be sitting there screaming at someone thinking that you're successfully attacking ONLY THEM, they could be totally happy and at peace and immune to it, and YOU are the only one suffering. And it's not simply that you are suffering because you're being angry, you're suffering because you are actually the THING that you are angry AT. You are RECEIVING the attack. What seems to aim "outward" actually goes inward.

See, your mind isn't only inside your body. Your mind is everywhere. Infinite. Bigger than the universe. And when you have a split mind of self attacking conflict, you position part of your mind seemingly "outside of your body". You disassociate from it and believe it is not inside you, is not your self, and is in fact another separate alien willed person who is doing stuff "Against" your will. Well, it's actually your will against your will. Your will is in conflict with itself and having a war. That "external" target is squarely YOU, INSIDE your mind.

This is sobering. Because simply put, it means that it is not possible to even attempt to attack anyone without attacking yourself. It's not possible to blame without hurting yourself. It's not possible to be angry at someone without accusing yourself of sin. So at some point you have to realize, it's got nothing to do with anyone else ever doing anything to you. It's ALWAYS about you doing stuff to yourself. Each time you attack and project and THINK it's not about you, it is. Each time you are annoyed about someone, it's YOU that you're annoyed about. And each time you retaliate, it's against yourself.

Which means that you've been hurting yourself, all this time. And it's never been about anyone else. And every single time in your life that you thought you were simply justified in reacting to someone else's bullshit, you NEVER WERE, you were hurting yourself. Nothing ever left your mind. Every argument was with yourself. And the question is, are you tired of hurting yourself? Do you want to keep doing it?

If you would simply be aware of this, and realize and recognize it, you'd realize the simple Golden Rule. Whatever you try to do to others you do to yourself. Whatever you think is true of others is true of you. It has nothing to do with whether they reciprocate or not. You do to yourself what you would have yourself do to you. Others never do anything. They are never the cause of you. Ever.

If you realized that you could not ever make a single effort to attack "someone else" without it being 100% an attack on yourself, you would not do it. It would be insane to do it. If you knew that it's not possible to attack another without hurting yourself, you would not do it. It hurts too much.

If you knew that you can NEVER get away with murderous behaviors without hurting yourself, you'd see the sense in never even considering attacking, knowing that to do so would hurt yourself. It's a kind of self regulating thing. All you need is the awareness that you are in fact INCLUDED in, and the ONLY one included in, receiving the effects of whatever you're trying to cause.

So the question simply is, if you are aware of this and can stay aware of it, do you really want to keep hurting yourself? It is in your best interests to only love. It is in your best interests to only ever be loving toward yourself and others. You can't have one set of rules that apply to others and another for yourself. You can't have it be that you are loved while others are hated. Its BOTH, or NEITHER. Either both you and others are loved or both you and others are attacked. There is no escape. And the ego is the thing that suggests there IS a way to get away with this without any consequences.

There is no escaping consequences. Whatever you do you do to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. All you need is awareness to SEE that any slight mis-step against "another" is REALLY a mis-step against yourself, and you do not want to do that because it hurts you. And it splits your mind. Which makes you disassociate from yourself and imagine an enemy, which makes you project, which doesn't REALLY project at all. External enemies are indirect self attack from your mind to your mind.

You've never attacked anyone but yourself. No-one has ever attacked anyone but themselves. You've never been attacked by anyone other than yourself. You have the power not to attack yourself. To not attack yourself you must also not want to attack others, because the fantasy of being ABLE to attack others will make you hurt yourself under the belief that it's having no effect on you. Secret of salvation. You're doing it all to yourself. Stop hurting yourself. Love yourself. Easy peasy.

Have a look at this picture. It seems like an image of a person. You can see a hand waving. You can see the person's head and shoulder. There's a person there, isn't there?

Well actually, take a more discerning look. There is no person in the image. It's a wall with a shadow on it. Look at the shadow, what is it? Is it a thing in its own right? In fact, the shadow isn't really a thing at all. It's really nothing other than "the absence of light."

It's not as if "a darkness" came along and put itself onto the wall, forcing the light to go away. It's the reverse. It's merely a seeming appearance of light not being present. And that's not even remotely the same thing as "darkness being present". Even in this physical world, by the laws of physics, light dispels darkness, darkness does not dispel light.

So there is light, and there is the absence of light. People think of the absence of light as "real darkness", as if it's a something, has substance, exists. It doesn't really. It's just a lack of light. What happens when the light shines brightly? The shadow disappears completely, because the "lack of light" has been supplied and filled up with light. Then there is no more shadow, no more "illusion of darkness."

Believing that the shadow or the darkness are a real something, that they represent a life form, that they are alive with a mind of their own, that it is doing something, that has will and power and causality, that there's an entire "something happening" there... that's all totally illusion. Total fiction. It's nothing other than light's absence. It's an illusion that "light is not everywhere", which can't be true because real light is infinite and omnipresent. In the light of God, there is no darkness.

And so you can't call the darkness "real evil". It's not. It's absolutely nothing more than what appears to be light's absence. As soon as light shines, light shines away the darkness. The "darkness" that seemed to be "its own thing" has no defense whatsoever against this light. Light dispels it instantly. The shadow can't say to the light "I will not be shone away". It vanishes. It has no power, no mind, no will, no decision, no say in the matter. Because it literally is nothing.

Believing otherwise is as if to say, a fictional illusion of darkness chooses of its own free will to scream with a voice that says "I shall not be removed", which has absolutely no effect and has no power whatsoever unless YOU believe in it. And this is why Jesus says the ego (darkness) is nothing but a tiny mouse. And the darkness HAS no power unless YOU give it power. And it's only YOU trying to MAKE the darkness "be something" that makes you delusional and believe that something "dark" is happening (suffering, death etc).

This world, the world we made in the "separation" from God, is nothing other than a shadow. A seeming illusion of light's absence, in which the shadow itself SEEMS to take on shapes and forms and to do things. There even seem to be events, living creatures, and stuff happening to them. But ALL of it is fiction. It's entirely just "darkness" pretending to exist. And all of this darkness, what holds it in place in the mind (by the mind), is simply an attempt to DENY THE LIGHT. To block it, and to try to give "light's absence" some kind of reality or truth that it does not and never will have. You can't make an illusion real.

When you're looking at the shadow and thinking, that's really a "something", now you've lost your mind and gone into the ego - the belief that darkness really exists and can oppose the light, or do something to the light, or cause the light to stop shining. The belief that "darkness can hide." Darkness cannot make light go away, anymore than the shadows under a tree can determine for themselves that they continue to stay put when the sun moves its location.

There is a very subtle fine line between *recognizing* that all of this shadow stuff is JUST light's absence, an illusion of darkness, versus starting to READ INTO IT and believe that the darkness actually has its own properties, a life of its own, that it is making stuff happen. That's when you fail to recognize the illusion for what it is. That's when you're going unconscious and hallucinating that illusions are real and darkness is real evil and terrible things are happening.

Look at it. This world is nothing but a shadow. It's nothing but a blob of the appearance that light is absent. It is NOTHING on its own. It has no reality. No substance. No real solidity. It's not really there. The instant the light comes to shine upon it, it must VANISH. Darkness has no defense against the light.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

The ONLY reason that it seems as though the world of darkness persists or SEEMS able to RESIST the light, or choose against it, or deny it, or block it.. the only reason you SEEM to be even ABLE to have a "block to awareness" to PREVENT light from shining upon you and keeping you in the light "against your will"... is because you HAVE free will. You can choose, and you can believe in things, even if they are not real. And it's your free-willed, God-given free will attempt to DENY THE LIGHT, by choice, that is "causing" what seems to be a situation where the darkness is "persisting". That you seem able to "block God". That sin seems possible.

All you are doing is choosing to deny the light with your mind, and hold onto the dark shadows, to try to KEEP the light from shining away the world. And this takes mental effort. It requires active denial. Because the instant that you surrender and let go and stop resisting the light, the darkness must be dispelled.

This is also why Jesus says that "illusions recognized must disappear". The instant you *recognize* that that thing you thought had reality/mind/causing you etc is NOTHING but an ILLUSION of a shadow, seeming to be a "something", but is literally NOTHING other than light's absence, the minute you stop believing there is REALLY a "living scene" with a person standing there waving, you have RECOGNIZED it's just an illusion.

You see through the illusion - which is what FORGIVENESS means. To forgive is to overlook - to overlook the darkness and NOT BELIEVE IT IS ANYTHING. You recognize - that's just light seeming to be absent. And this recognition transcends whatever FORMS the shadows are seeming to take. And you see clearly, without interpretation, there is nothing there, just light seeming to be a little absent. That recognition DISPELS the illusion that the darkness "was alive and doing stuff." And so the illusion is broken. The light of awareness shines upon the illusion and shines it away. The illusion - the darkness - DISAPPEARS.

Look at that image again. It's just light and its absence. Think of this world. It is just light's absence. Just a shadow, a nothing. In heaven, from reality's perspective, there is no world. There was just a brief moment of seeming "lack of light", and then through willingness the light was allowed to be recognized as NOT absent, and thus the darkness was dispelled. Recognizing Heaven's truth makes it impossible for darkness to remain. And what is that darkness - it's the ego. The ego is just another word for "what does not exist." It's just another way to say, "light seems absent, but it's not".

When the entire universe is recognized as being NOTHING other than a mere shadow on a wall, in which NOTHING is happening whatsoever ("all events are nowhere"), and the only NEED is to supply the light, the light will come.. and the universe will vanish. The Earth and all the planets and stars and galaxies will vanish in this LIGHT. And "Heaven is all that remains". Because there is no Earth, no world, no universe. There is only the Kingdom of God. The living world of light. Pervasive light that is everywhere WITHOUT shadows, where darkness DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.

MY SICKNESS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY

OTHER PEOPLE'S SICKNESS IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

YOU CAN’T WAKE PEOPLE UP FOR THEM

Jesus has the power to undo all sickness in a brother right now, BUT WILL NOT if they do not want it. Love cannot enter where it is not welcome!

I am responsible for everything I experience. Other people are responsible for everything they experience. This is directly supportive of the secret to salvation, that "we are doing this to ourselves".

All sickness we are experiencing is something we are doing TO OURSELF.

Right now, God is 100% awake, and because of this, it IS IMPOSSIBLE that there be sickness in any mind anywhere. In reality anyway. However, Sons of God have the illusory "ability" to DENY GOD. When they do so, they put denial in place, which is a block to life, which implements sickness. This is a FREE WILL CHOICE.

Love does not force anyone to be healed of this against their will. Jesus will simply WAIT for us until we are ready to accept the truth.

This is also why we must have A LITTLE WILLINGNESS, because only when we are WILLING to receive the truth, can the Holy Spirit take the opportunity to heal us. And he WILL take any opportunity we give him, no matter how small. But if we do not give that willingness, we will stay in our illusions of sickness for as long as we choose to against His will.

If we are not willing with God, doing God's will, we are willing against God. That's the entire point of the separation, the idea of sin being that we willed against God (yes, its fiction). If we BELIEVE it, individually, we will enter into a dream of suffering and death. And sickness will feature heavily in that dream because it is what we choose. It won't be real sickness at all, but we'll believe it is, using it as a device for keeping God's love at bay. Sickness is a DEFENSE against the truth. A block to awareness.

To understand this correctly REQUIRES that you believe that there are multiple sons of God, each with their own individual free will. Because if you don't, it will not make sense. To be able to have "your own choice" as to whether you are WILLING to receive healing, your own choice as to whether to ALLOW LOVE IN, is necessary in order to have a "separate will" which acts against God's will. There are many separate wills.

This is also required in order to understand how Jesus could wake up completely and yet that the rest of us are dragging our feet in snoozeville. We do not have the free will to set the curriculum ("learning to love"), but we DO have the free will to DELAY it or to choose WHEN to take it. That means we can choose NOT to accept God's will or God's healing. We can deliberately KEEP sickness if we want to, against God's will, and against Jesus's will. And it is true that there is NOTHING they will or can do about this, except gently lead us to see the error of our ways over time.

Jesus tells us that our will is AS POWERFUL as His, and that this is why he cannot forcibly take away our fears or sicknesses against our will. If we want them or hold onto them, he cannot take them. We have to be WILLING TO LET GO. Just because we are using our powerful will to make an illusion of being weak and little and powerless, doesn't mean our will is diminished at all. Mind retains its creative power at all times. Jesus CANNOT and WILL NOT go against this.

This means that even though AWARENESS OF LOVE can be complete in one brother (e.g. Jesus), it can be highly absent in another, at the same time. "Miracles are gifts given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." This is because IT IS POSSIBLE in illusions for some individuals to be MORE AWAKE THAN OTHERS. That means, it is NOT TRUE, that one person's healed perception automatically heals everyone. It does not. It OFFERS healing to everyone, but other people CAN REFUSE IT. And they CAN retain forms of sickness as long as they want "against your will."

Awakening to the awareness of love's presence cannot extend to the entire sonship UNTIL the sonship is FREELY WILLING to receive it, every single "individual son" has to choose it and be willing to accept it. IF they do not, the sonship remains incomplete, and there's nothing it can do about it other than to keep OFFERING love and waiting patiently for the rest of the sonship to wake up. Love is not forceful. It has INFINITE PATIENCE, which would not be NEEDED unless people weren’t so resistant.

It is true AT SOME LEVEL that your mind is ONE with the mind of others. That you share a mind. You share a mind with Jesus. However, awareness of that sharing can only be fully experienced when both of you are completely purified and healed. And then you will SHARE that state of love.

But until then, it is perfectly possible within illusions for you to REJECT that union, to deny reality, and to choose against God's will. Thus you will retain your own freely chosen sickness and problems, regardless of whether you are surrounded by infinite love and healing or not. God surrounds us RIGHT NOW with unlimited healing, and yet we STILL keep projecting images of sickness in order to REFUSE IT.

This is also why it was possible for Jesus to go around giving a GIFT OF HEALING to those who were suffering, sick, missing limbs, blind, even dead, unable to help themselves due to their own unawareness that they were doing this to themselves, and yet who had enough FAITH in HIS ability, enough trust, enough willingness, to ALLOW Him to heal them for them. You do NOT need to be fully awake in order to receive a miracle! And you CAN only receive it if you TRULY WANT IT.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it.."

Having enough FAITH i.e. trust and WILLINGNESS to receive HELP, from outside of yourself, from a brother who has more love than you do right now, who is more ABLE to help right now, is enough to RECEIVE help from beyond your own current abilities. All you need is ENOUGH trust to allow the Holy Spirit HIMSELF to perform the miracle FOR YOU, from beyond your awareness, showing up as demonstrations of TANGIBLE CHANGES (witnesses), which helps you to learn that HE REALLY IS THERE, and HE REALLY CAN HEAL. This develops trust.

Jesus went around performing miracles for those who temporarily had less, who temporarily were blind, who temporarily were sinful, who temporarily were UNAWARE of the whole truth. He did NOT do this by having a mind which was "pure yet contained sick people". His mind could NOT have been WHOLE, if it was "one with sick people", or had "sick parts" in it. The presence of sick parts in his mind would've rendered him UNCONSCIOUS, just as the presence of ego persona/shadow in our own mind right now renders us UNABLE to be aware of the WHOLE of our identity. Mis-identifying with ego BLINDS YOU. Jesus was WHOLE MINDED, and yet could still perceive the "unwholeness" others were experiencing, without their unwholeness affecting HIS.

Jesus had true perception. Jesus could SEE. He was aware of the truth. He was able to RECOGNIZE that sickness is a complete illusion, not real, and posing no problem whatsoever. This gave HIM this ability to extend the HOLY SPIRIT who is the mechanism of miracles, to perform a healing WHERE it was welcome. And where it was not welcome, HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES. He had to leave entire villages in suffering because their minds were too resistant to receive healing. His state of awakening did not FORCE anyone else to wake up!

Even if He saw those other people as one with Him, even if He knew them to be "himself" or "ourself", even if He was connected to the entire Power of God, there was NOTHING he could do to help those, at that time, who DID NOT WANT IT. This is because, YOU are responsible for YOUR sickness, and for your willingness. If you are unwilling, healing will not "happen to you". Sick people, with broken limbs and defective organs, will not be healed by your true perception, UNLESS they want it. And thinking that you are "healing yourself" by healing what is showing up "as their sickness" is NOT going to work if they do not want it, because IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. THEY MADE IT, NOT YOU.

You are responsible for choosing the atonement for yourself. You are responsible for being WILLING to REJOIN the sonship's oneness for yourself. You are responsible for every sickness you experience within yourself, NOT outside of you in others. You are responsible for your own belief in sin. You never attack anyone else, you never affect anyone else, you never do anything to anyone else. And the reverse is true. No-one ever affects you, no-one ever does anything against your will. You are not at the effect of the world. And no-one is at the effect of you. Your attack does not affect others whatsoever, and nor does your love, unless THEY CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL EXPEIRNCE.

Love can be shared, WHEN it is welcome, and when it is welcome, the person is effectively giving it to themselves. It can be given to those who have a "lack" of it, BY those who have an abundance of it, BECAUSE people are in different states of perception simultaneously. This IS possible because people have an individual will and mind, even if at the highest level they are the One Son. Jesus’s resurrection DID NOT CURE EVERYONE because they did not want to be cured. YOU MUST CHOOSE IT.

Trying to bring about healing by assuming that other people are "you" and therefore their sickness is "your sickness" and that if you undo "that sickness" it will heal the other person, is a twisting of what happens. First of all, it's true that you and your brother are one, yet you are BROTHERS, with your own free will. Secondly, "their sickness" is THEIR CHOICE, not yours, and it is NOT PART OF YOUR MIND, and it is NOT YOUR SICKNESS OR SIN.

When you project YOUR sin, it DOES NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. Ideas leave not their source. IT stays inside of you. You become split minded and perceive this sin as a separate attacker, attacking some other split off part of yourself. You interact with it as though it is outside of this part of you, as though not yours, but it is ALWAYS IN YOU. It never ever even leaves you and goes over to someone else.

It does NOT put sickness into other people against their will! To suggest you can heal someone else’s sickness "because its really your own" is actually to suggest YOU CAN MAKE SOMEONE SICK AGAINST THEIR WILL AND TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN. This is FALSE! If someone else were choosing never to be sick, your attempted projection of sin could not put sickness into them. And if someone else was choosing never to be sick, YOU COULD STILL be believing that you are a sinner and STILL be trying to project your sin and STILL seeing it in the other person. Your projection has NOTHING to do with other people’s state of mind. Withdrawing your projected sin WILL NOT HEAL THEM, if they have chosen to be sick on their own and want to keep it. Go ahead and try to heal someone who does not want to be healed. It will fail!

Otherwise, if someone could be causing someone else to be sick against their will, which is an EGO BELIEF, someone's sickness would INFECT JESUS by the power of their will. This is an extension of the idea that we CAN sin and hurt God, which is impossible. Our sickness is OUR CHOICE against ourselves. Thirdly, just because you RECOGNIZE that their sickness is entirely an illusion, that does not disappear it FOR THEM if they continue to WILL TO KEEP IT. You cannot override their will. You getting healed WILL NOT wake everyone up. You will wake up FROM them, FROM the illusion, FROM the ego, INTO a state of awareness, but if other people choose to stay in the ego, THEY WILL.

The ACT of attempting to undo that sickness, by cancelling it or not believing in it or asserting it is not there or pushing it away or shining love onto it or whatever, that ACT of trying to FORCE IT TO GO is actually the EGO attempting to have power OVER something it made real. This is the attempt to "heal to destroy", to first make real then try to undo what you made real. That’s you fighting with your own sin. It won’t heal the person’s sickness or yours.

The Holy Spirit MUST BE INVOLVED in all miracles, because He is the mechanism of miracles. HE is the one who heals. HE is the one who is capable of raising the dead. He must be the one who performs the healing of the mind because healing must come from outside of separation. While He does not perceive sickness as REAL, He still nevertheless KNOWS that people are experiencing nightmares and that they NEED HEALING, in spite of the fact that HE is already in a state of TOTAL AWARENESS AND LOVE. He will not FORCE himself onto anyone, and just because HE is healed/healing it does not mean PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE HIM. This is why we have to CHOOSE to be willing to listen to his voice rather than the ego. It’s up to us.

It is difficult to accept that some people DO NOT WANT TO BE HAPPY. It is difficult to accept that some people WILL AGAINST GOD AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT LOVE. It is difficult to accept that PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE SICK and that they want to keep being sick to protect themselves. It is difficult to accept PEOPLE DON'T WANT A MIRACLE, and they DON’T WANT YOUR HEALING. And that's their right. And their freedom. And we are to respect that and be patient in waiting for them to BECOME willing. Love isn't forceful. Miracles don't happen to people against their will.

Believe me I've tried... I've tried many times to heal someone who is very sick, and who was not ready to heal, and it did not work. It was very upsetting to me that I could not heal it. It was a difficult lesson personally, but a necessary one, because until we can see how healing might FAIL (be blocked by the recipient), we may not come to LET GO of the belief in sickness for ourselves.

I eventually asked Jesus why this wasn't working. Despite many prayers and attempts at miracles. Even one time I did a miracle-working act where angels came to help and I felt it was very powerful, and Jesus said that "it was fully given". But.... just because it was fully given, DOES NOT mean it was fully received. I asked Him, why didn't it seem to work.

Why was the person still sick?! And I don’t mean... why was I still believing in sickness... the question was, why did that person still maintain an illusion of symptoms of sickness.

His answer simply... "they are not ready to receive it."

This was discouraging, because I used to believe, like many, that it SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to HEAL EVERONE if I just learn HOW. But it does not work that way. It was, however, encouraging to me to also be told that at some point THEY WILL become ready to receive it, which is heartwarming, but we still have to learn, just because WE are waking up to love and are willing to be miraculous, it does NOT mean other people will suddenly stop being sick or unloving. It is their lesson. It is their choice. We have to allow other people to be sick IF they want to. It's not God's will, but it's that person's will. God does not condone sickness, he offers to HEAL IT RIGHT NOW, but people refuse.

Trying to heal everyone, or to "perform miracles indiscriminately", is what Jesus tells us NOT to do. He knows WHO is willing and ready to receive them, and He will send the appropriate WILLING people to us. This won't be EVERYONE. It will only be those who are ready to receive. Some people are, some people aren't. We won’t get to be hero saviors or "ego healers" because other people are NOT playing along with our fantasy.

And just because Jesus COULD POTENTIALLY heal everyone in an instant, THEY DO NOT WANT IT. I asked Jesus time and again to heal someone and do you know what he said, "I cannot". And I asked why - why would someone so powerful and capable and miraculous NOT be able to heal it. "They don’t want it."

Sorry to say... this is why TIME is still ticking over with events happening and lessons being learned RATHER THAN God simply snapping his fingers and waking everyone up RIGHT NOW "against their will". God ALLOWED US to have our free will dream illusion of separation, knowing that at some point we would return to him unscathed. It is not happening because God wills it. If God had his way we never would’ve even DREAMED of separation. But WE had the free will to choose to pretend it’s possible, and it’s still our free will to keep doing that, EACH OF US, if we want to. Individually.

So please let's get off this perspective that if you heal YOUR perception, everyone else will suddenly be free of sickness. That if YOU don't perceive "sickness", you will not SEE anyone suffering with sickness. That if you gain true perception for yourself, you will be incapable of seeing anyone suffering. Or that their sickness is part of your own mind and therefore you need healing. You are only responsible for what YOU DO TO YOURSELF. And even though at a HIGHER LEVEL they are one with you, THEIR CHOICE is their own.

You will still see the form of people’s bodies being projected with sick characteristics, because that's the will of you brother! But you won't see it AS real sickness, you'll see THROUGH it, and recognize it is JUST AN ILLUSION. Just because you don’t believe sickness is REAL, doesn’t mean you will be incapable of seeing that OTHER PEOPLE still think it is real, or that they are still projecting bodies that are sick. Jesus was perfectly CAPABLE of SEEING people who were in need, people who were suffering, and people who were dying or dead, EVEN THOUGH His perception did not INTERPRET those things as reality. Your recognition of it being an illusion WILL NOT BE SHARED by them until they are WILLING AND READY.

Believe me I've tried many many times to heal indiscriminately and to alleviate suffering and it's not necessarily because I can't, but because the people involved were not willing to be healed. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO REFUSE LOVE. They already HAVE refused love. They already DID reject God's eternal life and totally healed condition. They already HAVE attempted to block miracles and to reject life. (Yes, its an illusion) Even GOD did not overthrow their free will to do this. (yes I know its an illusion, didn't happen)... but God RESPECTS free will and will ALLOW people to keep being sick IF THEY WANT TO. And so did Jesus.

This unfortunately is a hard lesson to learn, that some people simply do not want to be well, want to be sick, want to keep being sick, and there IS nothing you can do about that right now. All you can do is keep praying and offering and extending love that MAYBE they will accept and receive it BY their will, and therefore CHOOSE to be well BY THEIR OWN WILL, and therefore CONCUR with the will of God, and thus RECEIVE the love that heals them. Receiving is a choice. You can still attempt to perform miracles, but even if you give a bucketload of love, it STILL won’t produce effects if it is not welcome or goes against the person’s will.

Until you can receive the atonement or even a small piece of atonement on one particular issue you will not be willing to RECEIVE LOVE AT ALL. The first time that I did a really thorough forgiveness and took it all the way to the atonement principle, becoming WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE that I was innocent on a particular topic, I became willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD finally on that topic, and Jesus said to me "Now you will be able to perform miracles". Because I had be WILLING TO RECEIVE for myself. "You can only give the miracles you have received".!

We can offer healing. We cannot force it. We will not undo everyone’s suffering just by undoing our own. Even if we go to Heaven as Jesus did, knowing sickness is impossible, brothers will STILL be dreaming of sickness for as long as they want to. We can but OFFER love to them and pray for them and send miracles to them, but it’s up to them to let go of their resistance, to CLAIM the healing that has already been given.

God has ALREADY GIVEN ALL HEALING, He has already given eternal life, and yet we refuse it. It’s our choice

W72L

Lesson 72 "Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation."

W72L1

While we have recognized that the ego's plan for salvation is the opposite of God's, we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on His plan, and a deliberate attempt to destroy it. In the attack, God is assigned the attributes which are actually associated with the ego, while the ego appears to take on the attributes of God.

W72L2

The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it. The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is.

W72L3

Although the attempt to keep the limitations which a body would impose is obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation. But let us consider the kinds of things which you are apt to hold grievances for. Are they not always associated with something a body does? A person says something we do not like; he does something that displeases us; he "betrays" his hostile thoughts in his behavior.

W72L4

We are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, we are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. We are doing more than failing to help in freeing him from its limitations. We are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one. Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as well. A creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable.

W72L5

If God is a body, what must His plan for salvation be? What could it be but death? In trying to present Himself as the Author of life and not of death, He is a liar and a deceiver, full of false promises, and offering illusions in place of truth. The body's apparent reality makes this view of God quite convincing. In fact, if the body were real, it would be difficult indeed to escape this conclusion. And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death, projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it.

W72L6

To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body. Very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation. This is the universal belief of the world you see.

W72L7

Some hate the body, and try to hurt and humiliate it. Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt it. But while it stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are attacking God's plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and His creations, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome it as Friend. Your chosen Savior takes His place instead. It is your friend; He is your enemy. We will try today to stop these senseless attacks on salvation. We will try to welcome it instead.

W72L8

Our upside-down perception has been ruinous to our peace of mind. We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from our awareness by the body's limitations. Now we are going to try to see this differently. The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body that is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever it is accepted it is accomplished already.

W72L9

Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this goal, we must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack it, we cannot understand what God's plan for us is. We are therefore attacking what we do not recognize. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside, and ask what God's plan for us is:

"What is salvation, Father?

I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand."

Then we will wait in quiet for His answer.

W72L10

We have attacked God's plan for salvation, without waiting to hear what it is. We have shouted our grievances so loudly that we have not listened to His Voice. We have used our grievances to close our eyes and stop our ears. Now we would see and hear and learn. "What is salvation, Father?" Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will find.

W72L11

We are no longer asking the ego what salvation is and where to find it. We are asking it of truth. Be certain, then, that the answer will be true because of Whom you ask. Whenever you feel your confidence wane and your hope of success flicker and go out, repeat your question and your request, remembering that you are asking them of the infinite Creator of infinity, Who created you like Himself:

"What is salvation, Father?

I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand."

He will answer. Be determined to hear.

W72L12

One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for today, since they will be somewhat longer than usual. The exercises are as follows:

"Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

Let me accept it instead.

What is salvation, Father?"

Then wait a minute or so in silence, preferably with your eyes closed, and listen for His answer.

T17H

Section 8 - The Need for Faith

T17H1

There is NO problem in ANY situation that faith will not solve. There is no SHIFT in any ASPECT of the problem, but will make SOLUTION IMPOSSIBLE. For if you shift PART of a problem elsewhere, the meaning of the problem MUST be lost, and the SOLUTION to the problem is INHERENT in its meaning. Is it not possible that ALL your problems HAVE BEEN solved, but you have removed YOURSELF from the solution? Yet faith MUST be where something has BEEN done, and where you SEE it done. A situation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems are perceived, it is because the thoughts are judged to be IN CONFLICT. But if the goal is TRUTH, this is impossible. Some idea of bodies MUST have entered, for minds can NOT attack.

T17H2

The thought of bodies IS the sign of faithlessness, for bodies CANNOT solve anything. And it is their INTRUSION on the relationship, an error in YOUR thoughts ABOUT the situation, that then became the JUSTIFICATION for your lack of faith. You WILL make this error, but be not at all concerned with that. The error does not matter. But do not USE the error to what SEEMS to be to your advantage, for that DOES matter. Faithlessness brought to faith, will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used AGAINST truth will ALWAYS destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it be restored WHERE IT WAS LOST, and seek not to have it MADE UP TO YOU elsewhere, as if you had been unjustly DEPRIVED of it.

T17H3

Only what YOU have not given CAN be lacking in ANY situation. But remember this; the goal of holiness was set for YOUR relationship, AND NOT BY YOU. YOU did not set it, because holiness can NOT BE SEEN except through faith, and your relationship was not holy BECAUSE your faith in one another was so limited and little. Your faith must grow, to meet the goal that has been set. The goal's REALITY will call this forth. For you will see that peace and faith will not come separately. What situation can you be in WITHOUT FAITH, and remain faithful to each other? EVERY situation in which you find yourselves, is but a means to meet the purpose set for YOUR relationship. See it as something ELSE, and you ARE faithless.

T17H4

USE NOT YOUR FAITHLESSNESS. Let it enter, and look upon it calmly, but DO NOT USE IT. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and wholly faithful to its master. USE it, and it will carry you straight to illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you. It interferes, not with the goal, but with the VALUE of the goal TO YOU. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers, but look upon its offering, and recognize it IS illusion. The GOAL of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness, as faith to truth. If you lack faith in ANYONE to fulfill, AND PERFECTLY, his part in ANY situation dedicated IN ADVANCE to truth, YOUR dedication is divided. And so you have been faithless TO EACH OTHER, and USED your faithlessness AGAINST each other.

T17H5

No relationship is holy, unless its holiness goes with it EVERYWHERE. As holiness and faith go hand in hand, so must its faith go everywhere WITH it. The goal's reality will call forth, AND ACCOMPLISH, every miracle needed for its fulfillment. Nothing too small or too enormous, nothing too insignificant or too imposing, too weak or too compelling, but will be gently turned to its use and purpose. The universe will serve it gladly, as it serves the universe. BUT DO NOT INTERFERE. The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you.

T17H6

And you can use THIS in perfect safety. Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. But think on this, and learn the CAUSE of faithlessness; you think you hold against another what he has done to you. But what you REALLY blame him for is WHAT YOU DID TO HIM. It is not HIS past but YOURS, you hold against him. And you lack faith in HIM, because of what YOU were. Yet YOU are as innocent of what you were, as HE is. What never was is causeless, and IS NOT THERE to interfere with truth. There IS no cause for faithlessness, but there IS a Cause for faith.

T17H7

That Cause has entered ANY situation that shares its purpose. The light of truth shines from the center of the situation, and touches everyone to whom the situation's purpose calls. IT CALLS TO EVERYONE. There is NO situation that does NOT involve your WHOLE RELATIONSHIP, in every aspect and complete in every part. You can leave NOTHING of yourself outside it, and keep the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole relationship, and derives its meaning FROM it. Enter each situation with the faith that you would give each other, or you ARE faithless to your own relationship. YOUR faith will call the others to SHARE your purpose, as this same purpose called forth the faith in you.

T17H8

And you will see the means you once employed to lead you to illusions, transformed to means for truth. Truth calls for faith, and faith makes room FOR TRUTH. When the Holy Spirit CHANGED the purpose of your relationship by exchanging yours for His, the goal He placed there WAS extended to every situation in which you entered, or will EVER enter. And EVERY situation was thus MADE FREE of the past, which WOULD have made it purposeLESS. You CALL FOR faith, because of Him Who walks with you in every situation. You are no longer wholly insane, NOR NO LONGER ALONE. For loneliness in God MUST be a dream. You whose relationship SHARES the Holy Spirit's goal, are SET APART from loneliness, because the truth has come. Its call for faith is strong. Use not your faithlessness against it, for it calls you to salvation and to peace.

T12D

Section 4 - Healing and Time

T12D1

And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. For this is a course on love, because it is about YOU. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here, and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. While it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.

T12D2

Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which YOU made up, and you are bent on DEMONSTRATING their reality, TO ESTABLISH YOURS. If THEIR reality is questioned, you believe that YOURS is. For you believe that ATTACK established your reality, and that your DESTRUCTION is the final proof THAT YOU WERE RIGHT.

T12D3

Under the circumstances, would it not be MORE DESIRABLE to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you WERE wrong? For while it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there WAS life, no one would claim that it proves there IS life. And even the PAST life, which death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and NEEDS this to prove that it WAS. You question Heaven, but you do NOT question this. You could heal and be healed, if you DID question it. And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.

T12D4

The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that the questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity, by MAKING THE FUTURE LIKE THE PAST, and thus AVOIDING the present. By the notion of PAYING FOR the past in the future, the past becomes the DETERMINER of the future, making THEM continuous, WITHOUT an intervening present. For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition TO the future, in which it brings the past TO the future, BY INTERPRETING THE PRESENT IN PAST TERMS.

T12D5

NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of PAST hurts, and it reacts to the present AS IF it were past. For the ego cannot tolerate RELEASE from the past, and though it is no more, the ego tries to preserve its IMAGE by responding as if it were present. Thus, it dictates reactions to those you meet NOW from a PAST reference point, obscuring their PRESENT reality. In effect, if you FOLLOW its dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were SOMEONE ELSE, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them AS THEY ARE. And you will receive messages from them out of your OWN past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to LET IT GO. You thus DENY yourself the message of release that every brother offers you NOW.

T12D6

The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must ESCAPE. For they are not real, and have no hold over you, unless YOU bring them WITH you. They carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack in the present, in retaliation for a past that is no more. AND THIS DECISION IS ONE OF FUTURE PAIN. For unless you learn that PAST pain is delusional, you are choosing a future of delusions, and losing the endless opportunities which you COULD find for release in the present. For the ego would PRESERVE your nightmares, and PREVENT you from awaking, and understanding that THEY are past.

T12D7

Would you RECOGNIZE a holy encounter, if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your OWN past? For you are meeting no one, and the SHARING of salvation, WHICH MAKES THE ENCOUNTER HOLY, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet YOURSELF, and the encounter is holy because YOU are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your PAST, and because your dreams WERE not holy, the future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. And the reason is equally clear, for they perceive the GOAL of time as diametrically opposed.

T12D8

The Holy Spirit interprets time's PURPOSE as rendering the need for it UNNECESSARY. Thus does He regard the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. HIS emphasis is therefore on the ONLY aspect of time which CAN extend to the infinite. For NOW is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. And it is in the REALITY of now, without past OR future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is HERE, and IT presents the opportunities for the holy encounters, in which salvation can be found.

T12D9

The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself IN PLACE of eternity. For, like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you FROM it. And it is HIS interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept, if you would share His goal of salvation FOR you.

T12D10

You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time AS HEALING, you will emphasize ONLY the aspect of time in which healing can occur. For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as DESTRUCTION, you will lose sight of the present, and hold on to the past TO ENSURE A DESTRUCTIVE FUTURE. And time WILL be as you interpret it, for OF ITSELF it IS nothing.

God is a being of Spirit. God extends through Creation, producing the Sonship, and the Sonship in turn extends God's being as a co-creator. The Sonship is within God's being. The sonship's extension further creates more spirit beings, within each of the Sons's being, within God's being.

This creation of eternal life and extension of eternal life is spirit's ONLY function. All Spirit ever does is extend God's being. It never is involved with making worlds, planets, bodies, animals, forms, "life forms", sandwiches, or death. Spirit only creates spirit. It never creates objects or bodies.

"Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself. Spirit yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being. ... The extension of God's Being is spirit's only function."

God creates only in the likeness of Himself according to His own nature, characteristics and laws. God is unlimited infinite being. God is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere at once, and God has Eternal Life.

When God extends Himself in His Divine Application, He merely creates more like Himself. His Son is given spirit/being/soul, mind, eternal life, the ability to create, and omnipresence. Just like the Father. The Son has everything the Father has, lacks nothing, and is exactly identical in nature. This identically is what "Oneness" or "One With" means - being of like kind.

It is not possible for God to create something unlike Himself or unlike His nature. Nor is it possible for the Son to be unlike God's nature or to create something which is unlike God's nature. The son's creations are just as much like God as the Son is, following all the same characteristics of perfection and divinity and wholeness, and with just as much ability to extend creation.

Eternal life is eternal BECAUSE it is permanent and cannot be changed. Nothing real changes or wavers or fluctuates. Anything that changes is not real. "Reality is a constant state." Eternal life requires the total absence of anything that can change or be changed. Change itself is the idea of what exists no longer existing, and is the idea of death.

The idea of "spacetime" is exactly opposite to the nature of God's creation, and God could not, and did not, and cannot create it.

Space is in direct opposition to the nature of omnipresent creation. Omnipresence means everything that exists is everywhere at once. Space means whatever exists is NOT everywhere at once. Space goes on to assert that everything is not everywhere, nothing is fully anywhere, anything that is anywhere is not everywhere, nothing exists everywhere, and therefore everything does not exist anywhere. It is the ultimate statement that everything, God, does not exist anywhere. It is in total opposition and violation of God's will, God's laws, God's nature and God's creation.

Time is also in direct opposition to eternal life. In eternity everything is permanently the same, nothing changes, everything extends forever and there is no interruption or alteration to what is. In time, time suggests that nothing is EVER THE SAME, that all things are constantly changing, in a state of flux and uncertainty and fear, that what existed no longer exists, and what is to come will obliterate what is here now. Time is a direct attack on God's nature, Kingdom, laws and nature, just as space is. And together they form the foundation of the ego's manifestation of HELL - the exact OPPOSITE OF HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY.

Now, everything you see with the body's eyes, and the body itself, is directly and totally dependent on this system of space and time, which is totally and UTTERLY OPPOSED to God's nature and Kingdom. One part of the body is over here, but not over there. One part of the world is over here but not over there. This planet is not where the other planet is. My body is not occupying the same space as your body.

This is a system of the total ABSENCE OF SHARING of any kind. In God's Kingdom, everything is always shared everywhere by everyone simultaneously. With no ownership, no possession, no exclusivity, and no special rights. Within spacetime, there is no such thing as sharing. Space asserts that what is here, is not there, and so it is isolated, and in fact not whole, because wholeness means being everywhere and so nothing in space is whole. Time asserts that what just was, no longer is, and so it does not extend or share into the present or future, killing it off and turning it into history.

The planet Earth, is entirely dependent on space and time both for its apparent existence. In order to even be a three dimensional object made from particles which do not share space, and which are all spread out in different locations, and whereby England is not America and Australia is not the North Pole, nothing is everywhere and so everything is nowhere. It is an illusion of place and time, shift and change, destruction of reality, attack on God's Kingdom, and TOTAL DENIAL of the laws of God. This planet entirely goes against the nature of God and therefore is against YOUR nature. "The laws of this world go against your nature."

Without being separated out in "space", or changing over "time", there cannot be a three dimensional planet taking up space. Continents cannot be kept apart. Bodies cannot be maintained. Animals and plants cannot retain their shapes. Particles of matter cannot exist independent of each other. Drops of water cannot move as an ocean. And sunbeams have no capability of shining. All of this stuff is THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM, made as an ATTACK ON GOD. "The world was made as an attack on God". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

If you can grasp the nature of God's Kingdom, God's law, and God's ways, you MUST recognize that everything in and of spacetime is absolutely bullshit. It is TOTALLY NOTHING LIKE GOD'S NATURE, it is absolutely utterly OPPOSED TO LIFE, and is a PICTURE OF CRUCIFIXION. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of the Son of God." It is crucifixion simply because it is the idea of what God's Son is NOT LIKE, it is the idea of how God's Son would look if he were SPLIT APART, it is the idea of God's Son being in a state of constant change and insanity, and it is the idea of God's Son PERISHING AND DYING. It is NOT a pretty picture of God's creation, it is NOT EVEN REMOTELY HOLY, IT IS NOT GOD'S WILL, and it IS ***NOTHING LIKE GOD***.

Thankfully, God's ACTUAL creation, heaven, is not like this world. This world, is "the world you made" and "the world you see" with the body's eyes, which see nothing but illusions. God's creation is entirely a LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT, not even remotely in the shape of any kind of object or form or planet or body, FREE OF SPATIAL SEPARATIONS, FREE OF TIME AND CHANGE. It is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the world you see.

Anyone here who is claiming that God COULD, WOULD, SHOULD, or DID create this world, is not comprehending why that is an utterly ridiculous idea. That means you do not RECOGNIZE exactly HOW this world is attacking God, HOW and WHY spacetime is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature, why the laws of this world are entirely EGO LAWS OF CHAOS, and why God is NOT LIKE THIS AT ALL. If you really think God is LIKE THIS WORLD, you really, really, really do not know what God is like. To accuse Him of creating it, labelling it as sacred or holy, or regarding it are real, is nothing short of blasphemous.

God can only create LIFE. And that life MUST EXTEND LIFE. And so if that which God creates does not in turn CREATE LIFE OUT OF NOWHERE, through a MIRACULOUS CREATIVE ACT, then it is not life. Look now at the world YOU made, Earth, this universe, in which NOTHING extends life through miraculous creation, NOTHING creates in its exact image and likeness, NOTHING lives forever, NOTHING is permanent, NOTHING is free from threat because what is UNREAL CAN be threatened, and NOTHING is even remotely God-like. To believe this world is God's creation is to believe ILLUSIONS ARE REAL, which is FALSE PERCEPTION. It is delusional. And failure to recognize this is INSANITY.

C-4.1. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. 2 God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. 3 Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. 4 Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. 5 But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.

C-4.2. The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. 2 And so they do. 3 For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. 4 While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"C-4.4. The world stands like a block before Christ's face. 2 But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. 3 It is seen at last for only what it is. 4 And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. 5 Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

In times when I am moving into uncertainty about whether it's true that this world is unreal, I refer back to some key statements in the course which seem very clear to me. One of them is "the body is a dream".

This anchors the truth that the body, and therefore everything the body is made of, and therefore by extension anything ELSE in the same environment which is made of similar stuff or is covered by similar laws, MUST ALSO be a dream.

This then implies logically that the whole world and universe is a dream, and the body is merely one part or character within that dream. And the course similarly backs this up. The body is the hero of the dream, and it cannot exist WITHOUT a dream.

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

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

The body IS a dream, and can only exist INSIDE a dream, and DEPENDS ON dreaming, and cannot exist WITHOUT dreaming. Which means that it REQUIRES SLEEP in the mind in order for a DREAM to be taking place in order for a body to show up. It exists WITHIN perception and NOT in knowldge. There can be no body without this sleep, and there can be no dream without this sleep.

Even those who seem to have "awareness of dreaming", who seem more awake than others but still are in bodies, are still having DREAM bodies. And these bodies are STILL dreams. And these people are STILL dreaming. Awareness that you ARE DREAMING is not the end of dreaming, it is merely a point of perspective on the fact that you are NOT AWAKE. And this perspective on being "awake in the dream" is NOT the same as BEING FULLY AWAKE, never again to dream a single dream.

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when ****he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real.**** He would have seen at once that ****these ideas are one illusion****, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be!"

The metaphysics of this is very simple and clear. When mind is FULLY AWAKE in heaven's reality, there is NO dreaming, NO sleep, and therefore there CANNOT BE BODIES. Bodies are dreams, and unless you are dreaming you cannot dream of bodies. Bodies are made up in the mind as part of the dreaming process. They are characters in the dream. Just as trees and houses and cars are characters in the dream. And none of them exist when you truly wake up to Reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life (heaven - "there is no life outside of heaven") 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."

It is also very simple and evident, therefore, to realize that WITHOUT SLEEP, you cannot have a body. You cannot BE IN ONE and be fully awake. You CANNOT be in the full awareness of heaven, in which you are FULLY AWAKE, and at the same time claim that "you have a dream body". Dream bodies ONLY seem to exist for those who are asleep and dreaming still. The body cannot enter heaven because heaven is a waking state, not a dreaming state, and the body REQUIRES a dreamer.

This is also why you CANNOT be "Christ in a body", or "God in a body". Or "awake in a body". Or "in heaven in a body." And also why Jesus was NOT "christ in a body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.""Love was never in the world of dreams."

To suggest this is possible, is to suggest that you can be in the full awareness of the Christ WHO IS IN HEAVEN, in the WAKING AND NOT DREAMING state, while simultaneously BEING ASLEEP AND DREAMING and therefore materializing a body. It is simply impossible. If/when Jesus shows up as a body now, to Earth people, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. A temporary image within dreaming, used to symbolize something that is BEYOND the dream. Because Jesus is permanently in heaven.

"Christ has never slept."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit"

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him."

Either you are squarely in heaven 100% in total awareness of God and reality. Or, you are in some way ASLEEP, having perception, dreaming of a world and inventing fake bodies. The only special exception to this is the Holy Spirit who spans the waking and dreaming states as a bridge, temporarily, to offer you a SYMBOL of heaven within the dreaming state - the real world, to prepare you for a full and gentle awakening.

The body is a dream, a fiction, an imagined fantasy, an image, a fake symbol, not an end in itself, a representative, an avatar, a depiction of something it can never truly picture.

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is not possible for your body, or anyone's body, to FULLY REPRESENT what you are as spirit. You are INVISIBLE to this realm. You cannot be seen by the body's eyes. The body CANNOT SEE REALITY or spirit.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."So for example if Jesus were to show up here, his body would NOT BE HIM, because he is not body identified. His spirit would NOT be seen. And the body would be nothing but a SYMBOL, vaguely approximating an appearance that you might find appealing or reassuring, for some purpose. And the body that shows up is NOT HIM. It is merely a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Even if it looks just as 3D and real as other bodies. Because Christ cannot "be a body" any more than God can.

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

You will not ever see GOD directly in a dream. He is not a body. He does not have a body. He cannot be IN a body. He is not in your body or in anyone's body. Even the idea that "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" is an idea of seeing the REAL world BEYOND bodies, in which there ARE NO BODIES. God in his unlimited infinite nature will not EVER be reducible to a finite form or shape or appearance. Even "visions" of God are perceptual illusions.

"PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

So you see, if you follow what ACIM says, it is very clear and consistent. Bodies are dreams which only exist inside of dreams for those who dream of them during sleep. And while you can become more aware of the dreaming state, this too is only preparation for true awakening FROM the dream state. And to awaken FROM the dream state you CANNOT maintain a body, or be in one, or have one. It cannot go with you to heaven. And as soon as you stop dreaming the DREAM BODY made of DREAM STUFF has to disappear entirely.

"The body is a dream. Like other dreams, it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

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

"I am as God created me.

I will remain forever as I was

Created by the Changeless like Himself.

And I am one with Him, and He with me."

The truth is that you are incapable of change. You cannot change yourself. No one else can change you. The world cannot change you. Even God cannot change you. You are exactly and precisely as you were created to be, and have never changed at all.

You have dreamed that change is possible, and this has produced dreams where you changed into something you're not. Dreams where you transitioned from innocence to guilt, from wholeness to destruction, from eternal life to death. But all of these must be a fantasy if God's will be that you are unchangeable forever.

It is because you cannot be changed by anything, that you are immortal. You are permanent and you will live forever. Since you cannot be changed, you cannot be attacked or hurt, threatened or destroyed. You cannot become corrupt or turn to evil. Nor can you alter your real identity and nature. Unchangeable, unchanged, and unchanging, you must still be exactly as God created you to be. You must still be exactly the original self that was given, without the slightest degradation or aging or decay or transformation. Without growth or withering. Without a change of any kind.

Your complete lack of change guarantees permanent peace. If nothing can disturb you, your peace cannot be disturbed. If nothing can attack and change you, you have no reason for worry. If there is no power in all of existence capable of redefining you, you are not in danger of being overthrown, rewritten, altered, abused, hurt or forgotten.

You are absolute and fixed. You are infinite and unlimited. You are immortal and endless. You do not falter, you do not fail. You do not have good days and bad days. You do not cease, and you do not begin. There is nothing you can do to destroy yourself or anyone else. And nothing in all existence can ever bring an end to your life.

"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking your SELF, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and ONLY this, can BE attacked by you. What you THINK you are CAN be hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. The destruction is no more real than the image, but those who make idols DO worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness."

This is what you have to remember and attune to if you want to be at peace. Only the immortal can afford to rest eternally, certain of their endless indestructibility and invulnerability. Sure of their absolute perfect protection by the laws of God. Convinced that nothing in the world of dreams can alter them in any way, upset them, disturb them, horrify them, harm them or destroy them.

You are completely unchangeable. The only meaningful change possible, now that you have dreamed of change being possible, is to change your mind about the belief that change is possible. This means learning to accept that you really cannot change yourself, and you have never changed yourself. That you cannot change others either, except to restore to them the full awareness and expression of who they already are as given by God.

Forgiveness looks upon the unchangeable and changes it not. It is a direct recognition of reality and truth. It sees only the truth that sin has never been possible, because to sin is to change. If God's creation were capable of being changed, in effect attacked, this indeed would be a sin. Believing such a change has been accomplished must be a mistake. God's Kingdom has never even for a moment lost anything, nor has it been even mildly influenced.

Real life is always real because reality is changeless. It is precisely because it never changes that it has reality at all. To change is to be conditional and to depend on something other than what is. The truth never changes and this is why it is true. It withstands all assaults and all attempts to modify or define it. You cannot define what is true. What is true is of God. You can but accept its changelessness and be at peace.

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both."

"BECAUSE reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid of fear."

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen."

"Nothing is asked of you but to ACCEPT the Changeless and Eternal that abide in him, for YOUR Identity is there."

"Who uses but Christ's vision finds a peace so deep and quiet, undisturbable and wholly changeless, that the world contains no counterpart."

"Give thanks as well that you are changeless, for the Son He loves is changeless as Himself."

"What is timeless IS ALWAYS THERE because its BEING is eternally changeless."

"You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as Your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing."

"If you could realize NOTHING is changeless BUT the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you."

"This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as GOD created it. But YOU think that you HAVE changed it, as long as you learn through the ego."

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom."

"When ANYTHING threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself "Has God changed His Mind about me?" Then ACCEPT His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about YOURSELF."

"Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere."

"Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists forever, changelessly."

"Teaching aims at change, but God created ONLY the changeless."

"The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. NEVER changed from what It IS. And YOU are Its effects, as changeless and as perfect as Itself."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

"What is in him is changeless, and YOUR changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment."

"His changeless state is BEYOND time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack, and without variability."

"The Christ revealed to you NOW has no past, for He is changeless. AND IN HIS CHANGELESSNESS LIES YOUR RELEASE."

"Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever WITHOUT alternative. And so it is."

"Yet in your mind is One Who KNOWS it is unbroken, and forever changeless."

"It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless. The miracle ACKNOWLEDGES His changelessness, by seeing His Son as he always was, and NOT as he would make himself."

"His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever."

"The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

Immortality stems from being absolute. Everything about God is absolute. Absolutely existing, absolutely forever. There is no sense of endings, interruptions, or even changes. Something that lasts forever. Always there, always the same, always permanent.

That‘s what your real self is like. It just keeps on being the same. Forever without end. Always you. Always completely endless, ongoing, eternal. You have eternal life. You were created by God who has eternal life to be like God. You will live forever and will always be perfect.

Because of your changeless nature, there are no kinds of changes that can happen to you. You can’t even begin to have anything change you, not through external causes or even by yourself. You have no power to change what you are, because God absolutely defines what you are. You are solely what he wills you to be forever.

Your permanence gives you immortality, which is the absolute inability to become something other than what you absolutely always are. This means there can never be even the slightest hint of a change in you.

There can be no suggestion that you might end someday, or stop existing, or somehow be affected in some way. There is no point at which you might have something happen which changes you, such that you might no longer be absolute, or that your permanence might turn into something temporary.

In this absolute state you are absolutely totally at peace, because you know that absolutely nothing can happen to you. You are so fixed, so certain, so completely created, so whole and defined, so sustained by God forever, that not a single thing on any level in any way can alter you even slightly. And because you know this, you have permanent peace.

There is no attack in you. There is no malfunction, no distortion, no fluctuation. There is no contradiction or split mindedness. There is no uncertainty, no fear, no sense of being wrong somehow. There is no sin, no guilt, no reason to be punished, and nothing to do the punishing.

Your absoluteness makes it impossible for you to ever end. You can’t even be slightly changed. Nothing can happen to affect you in any way whatsoever. There are no forces or powers that can do anything to even mildly hint at influencing you, distracting you, making you be one way or another, diverting you, causing you, or doing anything at all to you. You are absolutely invulnerable.

Because of this permanence, and the total inability to change at all - the opposite of a shapeshifter - you can never become anything. You can’t lose anything, you can’t gain anything. You can’t degrade or transform or shift or adjust.

You can’t become sick or fall ill, or develop a disease, or become corrupted or broken. You can’t even have the slightest dent or bruise or sense of harm or hurt in any way. Pain is utterly non-existent for you. And because of this you can never die. You will exist forever and ever and ever endlessly extending life. You are life itself, pure life, pure immortal livingness.

You are so bullet-proof that absolutely nothing can even remotely begin to modify what you are. The infinite unlimited power of God sustains you in his mind permanently forever as an absolutely perfect thought and idea. You are so devoid of malfunction and breakage and deformity and disruption that you are utterly beautiful and spotless and immaculate in every way. You are cleaner than the cleanest clean, forever.

The things of the physical world, are formed from ideas of separation and difference, ideas of attack and competition, of opposition and defenses, of a sense that somehow something can be changed. The world is made of ideas of vulnerability and susceptibility, of danger and threat, of things happening to you against your will to change you and define you. A world of change and transformation, of instability and uncertainty, of hurt and suffering and death.

But the world cannot even reach you or touch you or have any influence on what you are whatsoever. You are not physical, and no physical thing, no force, no energy, no atom, nothing of this entire universe can even begin to approach you. You are transcendental and everlasting and never-ending. Utterly safe, utterly beyond threat, utterly incapable of being attacked, utterly transcendent of all danger and powers and causations.

The separation from God is merely an attempt by you, as an utterly immortal being, an eternal being with eternal life, to formulate a massive lie and to pretend that you are something which is NOT immortal. Something mortal, something that can be changed, something that can be affected by the world and the people in it, something that can suffer and be weakened, something breakable and destructible. Something that can be sick and die and cease to exist.

All this world is, is a mad idea in the mind of trying to die. It’s a realm of suicide in which immortal beings are in denial, pretending that they are something they are not, identifying with forms and objects and bodies and worldly things and thoughts and emotions, to try to label themselves as something other than an immortal spirit. Because these things can be attacked and hurt, they can suffer and can be destroyed, and so you pretend to be them so that you can pretend to be destructible as well. You are trying to stop existing.

But you are immortal and eternal, and you will never stop existing. You will last forever, longer than the world, longer than time and space, endlessly continuing to always be what God created you to be, with no escape and no way to change the fact of what you are.

You are an immortal soul. You will never ever ever ever ever end. You can’t even begin to die or be really sick. You can’t even have real suffering, or real death. All you can do is pretend and make-believe and fake it and lie In a state of denial - a state of dreaming and wishing. You can’t in any way be a victim of anything, at the effect of anything, hurt or attacked or damaged by anything. It is absolutely impossible for you to be threatened or hurt or changed in any way.

There is nothing in the world that can oppress you, hurt you, attack you, threaten you, change you, define you, make you feel anything, or cause you to be something other than perfect. There is no power in all this universe that can have power over you, to cause you in any way at all. You are beyond this world. You are not even a part of space time. You are not a body.

You are free. Free from suffering, free from attack, free from threats and dangers, free from death. You have eternal life already. Nothing in the world is doing anything to you. No-one has ever hurt you. You are not hurtable. You are not vulnerable. You are not weak but strong. You are not doubtful but certain. You are not afraid but all powerful. You remain exactly as God created you.

You are immortal. You are eternal. You are always and forever.

“But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless.” UrT11J13

“The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One.” UrT29G1

“I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today.” UrW84L2

“Your will is His Life, which He has GIVEN to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM.” UrT10B11

“You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do.” UrT9K8

“Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal.” Ur Special messages 19 “You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now.” UrT11J12

“What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect.” UrT24H5

Anything to do with the body, and what's inside the body, is thought to be "mine only", and not yours. We describe ourselves in terms of what is exclusive to ourselves. As if to say, I have my own this, and that, my own attributes, stuff that belongs solely to me and is not shared with you.

My body, my mind, my face, my personality, my feelings, my thoughts, my life, my power, my abilities, mine mine mine. This is how our egos think of ourselves. But this is completely unnatural and not at all how God set things up.

Believing you are separate from God and others, you exclude them from yourself and see yourself as not sharing anything. The body becomes a device for separation, and our egos tell us we are cut off and cannot share with anyone. Like we're alone on an island, and afraid because we depend on our own (lack of) power.

But what we really are is a part of God himself. Like, you are cogs in his machinery. God is everything, so if we say we are separate from God, we're saying we do not have everything. And that leaves us with nothing left. That means if we are without God, we are nothing. A lack of God is a lack of life, which is death.

God created us not by separating us off and setting us apart to be nothing like him or each other. Not did he disconnect himself from us when he extended our being. In the creation of our souls he literally put himself into us, so that his own attributes would be shared with us. He went into us and stayed there BEING our attributes.

God cannot actually create anything outside of or separate from himself, just as ideas cannot leave the mind. That's because he's already infinite and everywhere. But he can share himself internally and include more within what already exists. So he extends and shares what he already has.

This means anything you have has to be inherited from God, but also must still belong to God. You can share it, but you cannot have it exclusively. You cannot steal it away from God and call it "only mine." But so long as you share it with him and all his creations, you can have it.

So then it's not like you have your own anything. It's more like, God loans you his stuff. He himself goes into you and his own strength is what you call the strength in you. And his mind is shared with you and thus your mind is really his mind in you. And his thoughts and his will are shared with you. His love and his happiness and his peace are in you, as yourself, as his.

As the course tells us, we are either host to God or hostage to the ego. Being a host means you make room within to accommodate the presence of someone else, and to share your stuff with them. By hosting God, it's like you are literally having God come into you and dwell within you. You then share everything with him, not just in a separate compromising way, but he actually BE's your stuff.

So now there's God in you being mind and spirit, and what seems to be your mind and spirit is actually one with his and is his. You don't actually have anything that is just yours. There's his stuff, and he shares it with you so that it is yours as well. But it's not yours alone.

Nothing belongs to you alone. Absolutely everything is shared. That's why atonement is a lesson in sharing - because we forgot how to share and to be shared - ego/separation is an idea of selfishness and exclusivity.

This is a whole different way of describing yourself and your identity and what you are. Instead of saying "I am this and that", it's more like "God in me is being my this and that." Any happiness in me is actually God being happy in me and sharing his happiness with me. Any love in me is really God's love and God sharing his love with me so that I also have it.

In heaven it's kind of like a giant banquet buffet, where everyone can have access to everything simultaneously, everyone shares everything, everything is available to everyone and no-one can hog or hoard anything. Every part of you is part of God. Every attribute of your own is an attribute of God. You are immortal and divine, because you are part of HIS immortality and divinity.

So the whole aim is to get your sense of who and what you are away from this exclusive separate idea of "only I am this and that", defining yourself in terms of what belongs only to you. When you do that you are "hostage to the ego". We need to be moving toward an attitude of "God in me is this and that and I share his this and that." We need to be host to God again, in us and through us.

God's is the mind with which I think. God is the light in which I see. God is the love with which I forgive. God is the peace in which I am peaceful. Love created me loving. You have nothing OTHER THAN what God himself is BEING in you.

This is why you have inherited everything from God, and therefore everything real is given you. It is also why you are still as God created you - because what you are is an extension of his own self. You can't be anything separate from God. Whatever you are, is a part of his own, because you are ONE.

You thus actually have a symbiotic relationship with God in which you depend on God for your entire existence. It's not just about you trusting God like a separate person, but you actually getting your very existence, life, mind, joy etc from God himself. You depend on him to BE your life, your happiness, your love, your will etc. You need him to be these things FOR you.

Your eternal life is sustained BY him. Your innocence is guaranteed BY him. You have all power in heaven and earth because he shares HIS power with you, without which you have no power.

We need to get our heads out of this definition of self in terms of what I am exclusively, what is only mine, what belongs to me alone, what stuff I can say about my separate self that isn't shared with God. We need to have ONLY that which comes from God, and we need to deny anything that is not of him being a part of ourselves.

And we need to realize that if we think that we have personal exclusive attributes, we are being separate from God. And if we are separate from God, everything that is really a part of us and worth having is actually IN God and is a part of himself. So if we want it, we have to stop being separate from God and go be ONE with him and use HIS stuff, BE his extension.

This entails not only acknowledging that God is our creator, which undoes the authority problem, and that we are his creation and co-creator, bur it also entails realizing that getting with God is the ONLY solution possible to ALL your problems.

There is really only one problem which is a sense of being separate from God. By being separate from God you have nothing and are nothing. You can't exist without him. So the ONLY solution to the ONLY problem is to rejoin with God. That is the ONLY thing you can do to make a difference. Either you are being separate from God, which produces all problems and suffering and death, OR you are one with God and share HIS eternal life.

One problem, one solution. Staying separate from God and trying to utilize your special separate exclusive lack of power to solve problems and heal the world will not work. The problem is separation. ONLY undoing the separation will help. The ONLY way to do that is to resurrect and become whole again, to become one with God again, which means being HOST to God again - letting God into you to take up residence within again.

It's kind of like being a medium for God, a channel through which God expresses. Only in this way can you share his love and power and use his power to work miracles. And only his power is capable of doing this. Without his power you have no power to do anything. But with his power there is nothing your SHARED holiness cannot do.

T19H

Section 8 - Pleasure and Pain

T19H1

Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole IDEA of sacrifice. And to ACCEPT the peace He gave, instead. WITHOUT the limits that would hold its extension back, and so would limit YOUR awareness of it. For what He gives MUST be extended, if YOU would have its limitless power, and use it for the Son of God's release. It is not THIS you would be rid of, and having it, you CANNOT limit it. If peace is homeless, so are you. And so am I. And He Who IS our Home, is homeless WITH us.

T19H2

Is this your will? Would you forever be a wanderer in search of peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what MUST fail? Faith in the eternal is ALWAYS justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as itself. The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; not pain nor joy. It is a means, and NOT an end. It HAS no purpose of itself, but only what is GIVEN it to do. The body will seem to BE whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you ASSIGN to it.

T19H3

Only the mind can set a purpose, and only mind can see the means for its accomplishment, and justify its use. Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be ATTAINED. And these conditions are the home of the emotion that called them forth, and therefore is COMPATIBLE with it. But think you which it is that is compatible with YOU. Here is your choice, and it IS free. But all that LIES in it WILL come with it. And what you think you are can NEVER be APART from it.

T19H4

The body is the great SEEMING betrayer of faith. In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness. But ONLY if you asked of it what it CANNOT give. Can YOUR mistake be reasonable grounds for your depression and disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think has failed you? Use not your ERROR as the justification for your faithlessness. You have NOT sinned, but you HAVE been mistaken in what is faithful. And the correction of YOUR mistake will GIVE you grounds for faith.

T19H5

It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body, and NOT find pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is one the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not REALLY punitive at all. It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself WITH the body, which is the INVITATION to pain. For it invites FEAR to enter, and become your PURPOSE. The attraction of guilt MUST enter with it, and WHATEVER fear directs the body to do IS therefore painful. It will share the pain of ALL illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will BE the same as pain.

T19H6

Is not this inevitable? Under fear's orders, the body WILL pursue guilt, serving its master, whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole illusion of his existence. This, then, IS the attraction to PAIN. Ruled by THIS perception, the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully, and obeying the idea that pain IS pleasure. It is this IDEA that underlies all of the ego's heavy investment in the body. And it is this insane relationship which it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. To YOU, it teaches that the body's pleasure is happiness. But to ITSELF it whispers, "It is death."

T19H7

Why should the body be ANYTHING to you? Certainly what it is MADE of is not precious. And, just as certainly, IT has no feeling. It transmits TO YOU the feelings that you WANT. Like any communication medium, the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has NO feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize this. And both also recognize that here, THE SENDER AND RECEIVER ARE THE SAME. The Holy Spirit TELLS you this with joy. The ego HIDES it, for it would keep you unaware of it.

T19H8

Who would send messages of hatred and attack, if he but understood he sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn HIMSELF?The ego's messages are ALWAYS sent AWAY from you, in the belief that, for your message of attack and guilt, will someone OTHER than yourself suffer. And, even if YOU suffer, yet someone ELSE will suffer more. The great deceiver recognizes that this is not so, but, as the "enemy" of peace, it urges you to SEND OUT all your messages of hate, and free YOURSELF. And, to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure, and OFFERING it to you as freedom FROM attack.

T19H9

Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not that the ego has DEDICATED the body to the goal of sin, and places in it ALL its faith that this can be accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the body's praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego's rule. Not one but MUST believe that YIELDING to the attraction of guilt is the ESCAPE from pain. Not one but MUST regard the body as himself, WITHOUT which he would die, and yet WITHIN which is his death equally inevitable.

T19H10

It is not given to the ego's disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death. This has been OFFERED them, but they have not accepted it. And what is offered must also be received, to be truly given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving from the Father, and offering His messages unto the Son. Like to the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and receiver. For what is sent through Him RETURNS to Him, seeking itself along the way, and FINDING what it seeks. So does the ego FIND the death it seeks, returning it to YOU.

In this world, it always seems as though we are at the effect of the world. As if the world is dreaming us, causing us, doing things to us, making us feel certain ways, triggering certain reactions.

When the world does something, the "ego" in us seems to react with various kinds of stress, emotions, fears, retaliations etc. Always it’s like being strapped into a ride where you have no say in what you feel or what your state of mind is. As though the world entirely dictates everything you experience.

What does the world have in store for you today? What problems is it going to slap you in the face with? In what way is it going to decide your fate? How it is going to upset you and shit on you and make you feel afraid? This is what it is set up to to do, all day every day.

False perception is a backwards perception. It literally feels like everything you experience is coming at you from the world. Your moods, your emotions, your reactions, your state of mind, whether you are happy or sad, or calm or upset, seems entirely at the whim of an external alien will.

The ego in us, is this part of mind that seems to just sit there and receive punishment. The world has some shit on store for you today? Fuck you. The world wants to crap all over your nice sense of security? Fuck you today. The world wants to decide everything’s just going to hit the fan all at once? Fuck you especially.

This is how it is set up. This is what happens in false perception. This is how we experience life, every day, when we believe that the world is the cause of us. That outside forces are shaping us. External events determine whether the day sucks to hell or whether it’s a "good one".

And so, in your mind, there’s this receiver of experience, the seeming passive and powerless and weak and victimized self, defenseless and vulnerable and completely at the effect of everything. That is the ego. That is a state of mind of false perception, of blindness, of being a victim 24/7. That the world is doing you.

To not question this, is to remain unaware of reality, light, truth, power and peace. To not question it is to simply be victimized all the time. Stuff just continues to go wrong, over and over and over again. Shit happens. Bad stuff goes down. Unexpected things break. There’s sudden emergencies. The world plots against you and wants you dead.

This is what the inner victim believes. And because it is the belief in this, it also plays the role of this. It is the desire to be victimized. It is the attempt to position oneself as at the effect of the world. To suffer. To have the world capable of doing things to you. To allow us to overpower you, upset you, shake you, disturb your peace, and take your freedom and happiness away.

It’s not easy to break out of this because this ego self, this receiver of punishment by the world, this sufferer and victim of an alien will, is practically wired into the world like a totally passive absorber of punishment. It sees the world as happening from the outside in, happening to it, not from it. Nothing is seen as coming out of it or as being caused by it or it being responsible for how anything is. This is the ego in all its selfishness and all its irresponsibility and the face of innocence.

This is how it’s wired. It’s like it’s made to be plugged into the world. The world is set up to send messages to it, and it is set up to receive the messages. And in particular it is set up to seem not to even interpret the messages, but to take them at face value. To believe it them, and to let the world define for itself what its truth is. It’s even set up so that whatever the world says it is doing to you, it does that to you, and you have the appropriate reaction according to the hierarchy of illusions.

If the world decides today to do something severe to you, the ego in you decides to go along with it blindly and suffer in the extreme. If the world decides to seem to give you a break, the ego in you decides you’re somehow being let off and given a break from the barrage of punishment. Only to expect that the next fuck-you is just around the corner.

But there is something very weird about this, because it is in fact very backwards. It’s completely unnatural for it to be backwards. It’s like living in the world in such a way, that you don’t see yourself as having any power to do anything, and only that you are to just lay down and let the world walk all over you. Like you are a piece of carpeting onto which the world can just shit as it pleases.

The outside seems to comes into you, people do stuff to you, others decide who and what you are, and the world dreams of you any way it wishes. You seem even to be made by other dream figures, and modified by them as life goes on. This is so strange and so backwards to experience "life" as though the external world is the cause of everything you are forever.

This is the fundamental, natural, corresponding and automatic arrangement of the nature of this world, and the nature of your ego. This is the special relationship, locked into form and dedicated to suffering and victimhood. Where your every relationship is founded on what you get and take from the world and what it does to you on your behalf.

This is how you are automatically wired, as a body identity, to experience the world as an automaton. To sense it, to have it tell you what is there, to have the world stimulate you from the outside in, and to define what your experience is. It transmits stuff into you from the outside and seems to tell you what there is to see and feel. And never does it attempt to challenge this arrangement or raise doubts about the world’s ability to dominate you.

To overcome this, to move into true perception, which requires not only the reversal of cause and effect in your entire though system, but also the total questioning of every way in which the world seems to do anything at all, you have to be willing to fly in the face of what seems "physically natural". To even go against the standard setup of the body senses. To be confronted with the attempt by the world to cause you, and to be uncaused by it. To disregard all temptations and not fall for the belief that sin is really happening to you. Because really this is a dream coming from you designed to make it look like it’s coming from itself.

This is the work and the challenge and the spiritual way out of hell. This is the forgiveness of the world. To stare the world in the face and recognize it is not coming AT you, but FROM you. To realize you have a say in it, you contribute, you choose, you consent, you cause, you have power, and you cannot be a victim. It is completely unnatural in terms of this world to attempts to do this, which is why it can seem so difficult to do it consistently. The world has no end of temptations and problems to offer you to distract you onto the slippery slopes of hell.

The truth then flies totally in the face of the world and is nothing like the world. The world is false. Truth offers a perspective which comes from the inside and extends outward through love rather than acting like a black hole of suffering. It ignores any suggestion that the world does anything to you or anyone, and is completely unaffected and unmoved by any and all occurrences and suggestions of attack happening. It is to stand in the onslaught of a river barraging you in your face and be solid like a rock, unmoved and unwavered by its endless attempted attack.

What you are is immovable, unchangeable, permanent, fixed, absolute, eternal, immortal, invulnerable, powerful, harmless, unassailable, perfect and causal. Asserting and expressing this at all times is the goal. You are not relative but absolute. You are not finite but infinite. You have power over this world and over all phenomenon, over the body and over space and time and matter and energy. You are real and the world is not. And only if it is not is there hope that you can overcome it.

In A Course in Miracles, in the beginning, you are safe in God, happily co-creating with Him. Then along comes the tiny mad idea. The authority problem forms, level confusion begins, you go into the separation and the idea of real sin is given belief.

Believing that sin is possible, has reality, has occurred producing real effects, and is irreversible, is an unforgiving attitude. If you were to be forgiving you'd recognize that sin is impossible and there is no sin - that you remain innocent. But without forgiveness you immediately enter into the belief that sin is real.

At this point, you are already attacking yourself. You have condemned yourself by believing that you really sinned against God. You now have an unwillingness to forgive yourself. This sets up a chain reaction whereby, since you sinned, and you did it, you must be guilty of it. And since you are guilty, you deserve punishment.

This is all a judgement that you are placing on yourself. It has nothing to do with other people. Just the simple belief that you really sinned is enough to condemn yourself to death. Actually death is a completely logical conclusion if sin is real, and until the sin is undone, you will seek to destroy yourself for what you did.

So the mere act of believing sin is real is actually an attack upon yourself, a condemnation. And this automatically is going to lead to you believing that you should be punished. It will even make sense to you that you should be punished. You will agree that punishment is called for, because of your guilty nature.

If you believe in your guilt you're going to continue the process of self attack. You will allow yourself to be hurt, because you will agree with punishment as if it should be happening. You won't resist it or defend yourself against it. You'll welcome suffering and want retribution against yourself. And when you arrange for others to seem to play the part of victimizer, punisher or abuser, you are secretly wanting to be the victim because you think you deserve it.

But the more dangerous aspect here is, it isn't really others or the world or God that are going to enact this vengeance for you and upon you. It's you. Your own belief that you sinned and are guilty will compel you to believe you should be hurt. You are starting to hate yourself and find yourself unworthy of love. And you will start trying to hurt yourself. It will make sense to you that you should suffer and you will actively try to make it happen because it seems justified.

As this develops you are becoming more and more suicidal. What is suicide other than self attack, self punishment, and an attempt to destroy yourself? We should make clear here that the entire ego thought system is an attempt to destroy your identity. It's an attack on God's Son, on His immortality. It's an attempt to deny that you exist and destroy yourself. So the whole ego thought system is suicidal and self-defeating from the beginning.

This essentially is the cause of all death. Every single death, no matter the seeming circumstances or appearances of causes, is solely the result of the belief that sin is real. And all forms of sickness are symptoms of the fear of God's wrath, the desire to suffer, and an attempt to project your sin onto others in a futile effort to deny that you believe you did it.

"The wages of sin is death."

"No one dies wihtout their own consent"

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

So anyone who believes they really sinned, is suicidal, and is choosing to die. They are consenting to punishment, because they believe they deserve it for what they did. Every single dead body in the history of the human race has been caused by the belief in sin. It's essentially a death wish, a wish for the death of yourself as consequence of your sinfulness.

If you consider the belief that you sinned against God, attacking Him against His will by usurping his power, playing God and having authority over Him, you will now believe that God is entirely justified in vengeance. In essence, you will believe that God wants you dead - that your death is God's will. And this will then lead to the belief that you cannot go home, you are not welcome in Heaven, sin cannot be undone, and there is no choice at all.

Based on this a death wish is formed, producing the sense of the inevitability of death. It's the belief that returning to Eternal Life is no longer an option, so the only thing you can do is suffer and die. This makes death the only path you can seemingly follow. And it's this belief that makes death seem inevitable. The driving force is your own belief that you really sinned, which is already a way to condemn yourself to death.

The good thing is, that in truth you did not really sin, God is unchanged and nothing has really happened. You have only dreamed of all this and there is no real sin at all. Nothing real can be threatened so the idea of sinning against something real is nonsense. This means that if you can recognize your sinlessness, which is accepting the Atonement truth, the belief in sin is uprooted at its core. There is no foundation for sin when innocence is recognized, and this is how the atonement cures you by proving sin doesn't exist.

"Only atonement can be said to cure."

The good thing then is, that if you are willing to forgive yourself and recognize you never sinned, you are not guilty, and you are still loved by God, this opens up to the door to option B. You can now CHOOSE whether or not to go towards death or towards eternal life. Death becomes OPTIONAL. You recognize you don't HAVE to be sick or die, and you actually can choose never to die again. To never commit suicide.

By acknowledging you are welcome to return back Home to God, because you are forgiven and have never sinned, Real Life is on the cards again and you can choose it. Which means you can choose not to die! You can choose to experience eternal life, and never have to die again. To never again torture yourself, make yourself unhappy, suffer or make yourself sick. That you deserve to live and not die, because there is no sin or death and you are free.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

"I am still as God created me."

"There is no sin."

The acceptance of the Atonement is the end of suicide because it is the end of death. It is the end of the sense of inevitability or "lack of another option". It's the reclaiming of the power to choose to accept the eternal life you already have. And it therefore signals the end of the need for sickness and death. Those who are innocent have not sinned, are not guilty, do not deserve to die, and thus death has no purpose.

The fact is then, that most of the people on this planet are suicidal. To varying degrees, we're all trying to die. And most believe death is inevitable because they have not forgiven the belief in sin entirely.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

No-one deserves to die, and no-one needs to die. In truth no one CAN die, but we can confuse ourselves with things that seem to.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

Given you cannot die and are permanently innocent, it is pointless to try to make death happen. This is why Jesus is asking you to "swear not to die, you holy Son of God." Only those who are committing suicide want death and thus choose it. Those who are awakening to truth, forgiving themselves and are preparing to go Home to God, MUST relinquish the attraction to and need for death. And this automatically melts away as the guilt and sin disappear. Without sin there is no death. And without death there is no world of sin.

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

If you have not sinned you are not guilty. If you are not guilty you do not need to be punished. If you do not need to be punished you have no basis for hurting yourself. If you stop hurting yourself you never have to suffer or die ever again. This is the secret of salvation.

This is a course in LIFE, in resurrection, and returning to your immortality. It is the end of all suicidal death and the restoration of eternal life. Death is a failure to forgive. And succeeding in forgiveness opens the gates of heaven.

I asked Jesus some questions about "the script", what it is, how it works, what freedom we have, etc.

He pulled together information from all over the Course in ways I would have never imagined. Here are the key points.

1) Scripts, as sequences of events or arrangements to meet, set up in what seems to be "before" incarnation but which is somewhat in parallel to it, are better described as "templates". They are frameworks which present lessons which you may, or may not, learn from.

2) You ALWAYS have the freedom to choose WHEN you will take the curriculum. You can deny it, you can avoid it, you can prolong suffering, you can fail temporarily to learn a lesson, and then it will be presented at a later date. That means you are not 100% "locked in" to being "forced to wake up" against your will just because it's written into some kind of premeditated sequence of events.

3) YOUR MIND has to choose when it will awaken. Awakening cannot be forced upon it, and the script cannot MAKE the awakening happen, because you have to wake up FROM scripts. The scripts can only contain an exit point, a doorway, through which you must still willingly walk by free will.

4) The Holy Spirit's script is also referred to as the curriculum, and it is considered Holy. The curriculum means that the truth is OFFERED, just as love is always offered, but it is up to you when you will accept it. You can choose to delay accepting it. But sooner or later you will accept it, depending on how much tolerance for pain you have or how much willingness to elect to give.

5) In the Holy Spirit's curriculum, all events are planned by Him in general. This is also referred to as the "plan of atonement", which Jesus is in charge of, and which you are to become a PART of. This is reflected upon here: "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

6) The Holy Spirit came into the dream in a sense, with us, "this world has two makers" and reorganized what we made in order to GUARANTEE that we would eventually return to God. Thus events and life situations and people you meet ("those who are to meet will meet"), and the general themes of your life, and certain things you have chosen to "work on" in this life, are presented at the appropriate time when learning is optimally possible.

7) Challenges and what seems at first to be difficult situations or lessons, are only difficult due to what has NOT been learned yet, and present an opportunity to change what you believe, when seen correctly and accepted as helpful. When the lesson is not accepted or learned but resisted, now you are into the ego's script. What that means is, you are now choosing to interpret the world using the ego and plan or enforce selective attitudes about the world which influence your perception and adjust your experiences in isolated ways. Since the ego thought system generally leads towards death, participating in this way of being puts you "under tyrannical rule" and you now become sort of "subject to" the consequences of that decision. Not because you are forced to, but because you choose to.

8) Because those who are to meet will meet, the manual for teachers talks about 3 types of relationships, short term, mid-term, and long-term, depending on how much learning is possible, whereby the long-term ones are the ideal balance of teaching and learning for both involved, such that a great deal of progress can be made over a long time period without destroying each other.

9) Within the scope of the "template" of your life, there is room to maneuver. Because you have free will and can choose whether to learn or not, there MUST be some degree of freedom of mind not just to manipulate your perceptions or thoughts but also your actions, because your actions stem from your thoughts and beliefs. While "people who meet" may be scripted, and while certain properties of those people or why those people were chosen is scripted, to present an "opportunity", the fine details of how you interact and physically move and what you do in situations or whether you are willing to change, is up to you.

10) You are not locked into a rollercoaster ride which forces awakening upon you or enforces that you will learn a lesson or implements experience into your mind. Lessons are PRESENTED, but it is up to you how you USE them. We should not concern ourselves with being so locked into some kind of pre-recorded "movie of time" as to think there is no flexibility of outcome or that you "must succeed" in that sense. What makes you succeed is the Holy Spirit's infinite patience in presenting further lifetimes as needed until you are finished resisting the truth, by your free will.

11) You decide on what your script for your lifetime will be before you incarnate into it. You decide which family to choose, the type of body, your name, your astrological background, how your brain will function, any special bodily conditions you might be "born with" or manifest early, any scenarios which will arise, who you will meet and when, what lessons/trials you will be exposed to, and so on. Sometimes people's life lessons turn out to be too strong and the person is allowed to "die early" in order to "rest" between lifetimes. Love is compassionate not cruel. It's like we're all people with mental illness who are gradually going through a healing process and there is give and take and always a gentleness in terms of "mercy" from God about what you can tolerate.

12) There is some truth to the idea that God only gives you lessons you can handle, although this speaks more to the script you chose knowing what it would likely entail and also knowing the long-term outcome if you were to be successful at learning from it. Since you know, when not incarnate, the long-term goal of being with God, and can see sense in "whatever it takes to get there", you are WILLING to expose yourself to all manner of positive and negative situations AS NEEDED in order to awaken. What seems like short-term suffering can ultimately be a blessing in the long-term plan.

13) In the biggest possible picture, there never was a real separation or any real time. However our belief in it made it seem real to us, which is why we "need" these "scripts" to help us learn that it is not so. We wrote the need for the scripts, the Holy Spirit provided the curriculum for the correction. That means we wrote a script with the ego for what we wanted to be true, and Holy Spirit wrote a counter-script of lessons and learning which would lead us back to what is really true. The time you elect to LEARN His curriculum is up to you. No-one is forcing you to be awake and no-one is keeping you asleep.

14) Ultimately free will is only free when it is embracing freedom which means embracing God's Will. It is free in Heaven. It is free to willingly choose to agree with God's will and to extend it in joy and love. That is why it was given you, that you would share and increase it. When you will against yourself/God, you are trying to NOT will, which renders your will ineffectual, and stops your will. Thus your will seems to become powerless and you turn to wishful thinking which produces no effects. As you regain your power and your will becomes more whole, you become stronger in the truth and more miraculous, and more able to consciously will whatever you want to happen. Ultimately you can master this to the point where EVEN in this world, what you desire happens and what you do not desire does not happen. At that point, you do not need corrective scripts because you are not writing ego scripts.

15) While from a high vantage point it seems all of time was "written" at once, or all possible moments of time were expressed simultaneously, they were organized by the Holy Spirit into a linear sequence NOT as an ego creation but as part of His plan of atonement, in order to USE TIME for the purpose of learning, and when time's usefulness for leaning is done, it will be UNMADE. Our ego self perceives time as linear in an attempt to believe in appearances, but time is not inherently linear.

16) From a high vantage point, the time that you began dreaming and the time that time began and the time that you stop dreaming and the time that time ends, are all essentially seen as happening at once. Dreaming began and God answered it with the Holy Spirit who has already succeeded in undoing it all. We are guaranteed to return to God because God's Answer is perfect and cannot fail. That doesn't mean that "in time" our experience will be as if all of time's events or sequence is pre-written. There is some flexibility built-in. There are multiple "dimensions" to time, parallel timelines, and you can skip between slices of time depending on your willingness to awaken. Nor does it mean that within each slice of time there are only certain pre-scripted actions you can make. YOUR MIND HAS FREE WILL and it can choose to ignore the script if it wants to. That's why the time you take Holy Spirit's curriculum is voluntary. Ultimately, one way or another, from the highest perspective, "all paths lead to God", and Holy Spirit has ensured that they will.

17) Miracles are the only means at your disposal for controlling time. Also miracles entail a shift into vertical perception which positions you and the person you heal further along in time than you were, having skipped an interval. This tells you that since miracles happen within the world `in time`, that they are capable of manipulating time and thus essentially take you out of the script. Ultimately they lead to revelation and atonement, because they are the means of the atonement, and so miracles must be performed in order to receive and give and share the truth, to have it.

That's all for now.

ACIM has many statements which really don't make any sense. For example:

"To have all, give all to all."

Let's look at this closely.

In this world, let's say you have a chocolate cake. You follow Jesus's advice. You are attempting to have ALL the cake. So you give ALL the cake to everyone else. The question then is, having done this, and now that everyone else is smiling and full of cake, do YOU have any cake?

The answer is no. If you have given ALL the cake, there is NO cake left.

This is really quite simple and hopefully makes sense to you. In terms of spacetime and all its physical contents, anything that you give you lose. You cannot really share anything. We can't both have the whole pizza. If I want you to have the whole pizza, I'm going to go hungry. If I give you the whole pizza, there will be nothing left. I cannot have ANY of the pizza, if I give ALL of the pizza.

Take another look at what Jesus said: "To have all, give all to all."

Now we have to admit something here. There are two possibilities.

1) Either Jesus is lying and is completely mistaken, because giving all of something leaves you with nothing.

2) Or, Jesus is correct, and knows what he's talking about, and SOMEHOW the LOGIC that we're using isn't working correctly. Or it breaks down and is invalid for use in reference to anything real.

Either Jesus is wrong or the logic is wrong, they can't both be true because they're making opposite claims. So, when you give ALL, do you truly GET all, or do you LOSE all? Is Jesus right or wrong?

What he's implying is that, somehow, when you give EVERYTHING away, you still have everything. How is that even POSSIBLE? Let's say that Jesus is very wise and knows what he's talking about. Let's say that his claim is true and we'll trust it. What does that mean? It means that if HE is right, the LOGIC must be wrong.

Something is wrong with the way the logic proceeds. There is something fundamentally broken about "normal logical reasoning" that is incompatible with what HE says is the truth.

What it implies is that the entire way that we think about things has something wrong with it. The reasoning that we use has something wrong with it. It's somehow fundamentally OPPOSITE to some kind of logic that is needed to properly handle Jesus's claims.

We can't continue to use the same way of thinking, if we hope to understand why or how his claim is true. It can't be true that when you give everything away you end up with nothing. But that's what the logic says. So the logic is faulty. We need some other way to "reason" things out that follows some other kinds of rules.

The truth is that our normal logic is actually based on SEPARATION. It was in the separation that we introduced the idea of "separate parts". And with that, the idea of "many separate things." We think that removing the separation is a matter of removing the many things, but in fact undoing separation really means undoing the entire SYSTEM of logic.

What people doing ACIM may not realize is that we continue to use a logic system of separation when trying to study what ACIM says. And this produces faulty conclusions. Even when you attempt to remove (disguise) the separation by getting rid of all the separations between things, to end up with a count of 1, we are still actually squarely WITHIN the thought system of separation. We've just reduced the number of boxes, instead of transcending the system of boxes.

ACIM presents another kind of thinking and reasoning, which is not compatible with the way we normally think about things. It's based on paralogical reasoning. It's worth your while looking that up and learning about it. In paralogical reasoning it's possible for one thing to be two things, and for two things to be one thing. It's possible for something to be in multiple places at once, and for all of something to be in all places at once. It is a transcendental model of logic.

It is only through transcendental logic that it becomes possible for Jesus's statement to be true. If I give ALL to everyone else, the only way I can still have all of it is if I am INCLUDED in the "everyone else". I have to BE the everyone else in some way, which means I have to transcend the box that separates me off from others. And there has to still BE others in order to "give to all."

So now my sense of who and what I am has to become transcendental. It can't just be that EITHER I am me OR not. It has to be that I am me and I am also something else. I am others and also myself, at the same time. This has to melt borders and transcend boxes. When I ... who am also everything, give all to all, I am giving all to myself, and therefore end up with all. So I do not sacrifice or lose, and OTHERS, who are also part of the all, now gain what I gave them. And now everyone is sharing everything.

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

This is another of those impossible statements. If I were to have everything, normal logic would say that YOU cannot have ANYTHING. There is nothing LEFT for you to have if I have it all. e.g.

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

So here Jesus himself is even tipping us off, that in normal logic, if we are to say that one soul/son has everything, for itself, there cannot be anything LEFT for anyone else to have. And he's saying this is NOT the case - that in fact the soul has a miraculous - transcendental quality, which makes is possible for EACH individual soul to have ALL. At the same time. And that is a matter of sharing.

I can have all of God. You can have all of God. We both can have all of God all at once, without contradiction or compromise or sacrifice or loss or taking turns. That makes NO sense in normal logic. But it makes total sense in paralogical reasoning, in which something can be true of two things at once without being a contradiction.

A logic system based on sharing is needed in order to understand Jesus's statements about the nature of reality. You CANNOT use normal logic because it will just polarize and separate and project separation onto reality. The result will be that you'll claim either God is alone or he has a separate son, and neither of those is really true.

It's mind-bending to us because we have to find a way to accept that, it's possible, for two things to be true at once. For God to have an actual real son who is real and individual, but who simultaneously is not separate from God. That you can be one with God ie the father, but that this oneness does NOT mean you are God. That you are still his creation. To be one, and yet to be also two, at the same time, that is the true quality of reality. And that is what Jesus's statements are pointing to.

What makes no sense to the ego, or to separation-based logic, makes total sense in reality. That's because the ego is really nonsense, and its whole logic system is nonsense. It has to be possible that when we give all to all, we still have all. It has to be possible that when ideas are given away and shared, they increase, and are accessed by both persons.

It has to be possible that when I have everything, you can also have everything. It has to be possible that I am myself and I also am the whole Kingdom of God, and all my brothers. It has to be possible that you have brothers permanently, but are also one. And that you can be one with God, without losing yourself. Otherwise Jesus is telling a whole bunch of lies. Like he says, the father is GREATER than you, so you ARE NOT his equal, so you cannot just disappear into him at the loss of your soul. You have to be able to be one with God AND be yourself. Two, AND one.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND.""

Reality's true nature is that it is one and many at the same time. This is not something that a lot of people are comfortable with. The EGO's way of thinking has told them that reality has to be ONLY one thing, with no parts or aspects or divisions or separations, which might hint at "bad evil separation" happening. But the presence of divisions at the SAME TIME AS the presence of oneness, is entirely natural. It is only when you remove the oneness aspect of that, that you end up with "only many", which is duality.

God is a creator with many parts and every part of God is one with all of God. And each of God's creations is a son of God, a member of the sonship and part of his Kingdom. Each of them is a co-creator and has their own creations, who in turn are co-creators with them. Heaven therefore includes a great many created things, all of which are "many in number", while simultaneously being ONE in number. BOTH one AND many. That is paralogical reasoning. That is what ACIM is based on and it's what we have to learn if we want to understand how it makes any sense at all.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"The Kingdom of God includes all his children and their creations."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

Ok so this might be a bit controversial.

It seems to me, there MUST be "different things" in heaven, somehow. When you start to look at it, there's just too many different things happening there.

1) God created the one son or sonship, which comprises the sons of God. That's fine. If God were to have only created this we could perhaps say that everything God created is of one kind and its all like God and there are no differences. Except...

2) God also created the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not exactly identical to the sons of God and has his own function or role. Now ask yourself, how is it possible for there to be multiple roles in a reality that's supposed to be all equal and one?

3) Beyond this, God also created the angels. We're told for example that Lucifer was an angel who projected himself out of heaven in the separation. Which means he lived in heaven prior to the separation. So now we have this different 'type' of being. And we're also told that angels were created "below" the sons of God, with a function of protection, whereas the sons of God have a function both protection and creation. So doesn't this imply that angels do not have their own creations? So how is it not possible that God has created "different kinds of beings?"

4) This leads on to the fact that the sons of God were created to add to the sonship, and do so by creating their own children. And what's to say that all of these children are exactly the same like a bunch of clones? So now you've got the children of the sons of God, who presumably we can say are equal in every way to the sons of God, including the fact that the children also are co-creators. This doesn't necessarily violate the idea that God only creates one kind of thing though, as we're told there is one continuous line of creation.

"Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order."

5) If you now look slightly further afield, for example in the bible and elsewhere, or through personal experience, you'll discover that there are allegedly many different KINDS of angels. For example there are the archangels, guardian angels, cherabim, seraphim, principalities, thrones, and these all have various "hierarchy" to them. It also appears that each of the archangels for example has a "special role" or function, whereby they focus on helping people in various aspects of life, be it healing or protection or guidance etc. And we're also told Lucifer was the light-bearer or one of the brightest/most beautiful angels and why would he be different to others in this way?

It seems to me that regardless of any attempt to force heaven's contents into a nice ego box, the reality is that God in fact has many thoughts ("heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite.") And some of these thoughts might in fact be different. Which suggests God is not just sitting there "radiating" like some fixed light bulb, but rather is a living, thinking being, that is capable of having "different thoughts".

After all, the thought that produces the sonship and sons of God, is in some manner different to the thought that produces angels. And that in turn is also different to the thought that produced the holy spirit. Just the mere fact that the holy spirit was created in response to the separation, and was added to the christ mind, as something that was not in the christ mind prior, tells you that God is CAPABLE of creating "different things with different functions."

Now don't be fooled by the idea of differences always means ego. It does not. Nor does the idea of separation always mean ego divisions. e.g. Ego separation is not well understood by many people and it does not mean that the removal of all hints of separation is "non-ego".

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

So we're told God created distinct individuals, who share everything with each other, which is fine. There's nothing ego about that, because ego is a problem of ATTITUDE and a breakdown in COMMUNICATION, it's not a problem of whether there are many beings or individuals. It's only an issue that they no longer want to SHARE EVERYTHING, which enters them into thoughts of selfishness and specialness.

It's quite plausible, if you think about it, that God is quite capable of very intelligently, unlimitedly, having various kinds of thoughts or thoughts which result in various kinds of creations, all of which are still living in harmony, all of which still possess divine holy properties, all of which share everything, but that nevertheless are distinct in some ways. Particularly in terms of their roles and capabilities. Because it does not sound as though angels are co-creators as such. That said, we ARE told that the holy spirit is also a co-creator.

What I want to be able to say is that God is one nature and one being and has one extension which is like a mirror image of himself and that's all he has created. But this just does not seem to correlate to what Jesus says in the course. Not only has he created more than one son in the sonship, in fact great numbers of beings, but also it appears he has created beings that have different functions and roles IN heaven, that has nothing to do with ego or separation. Which makes you wonder what ELSE God might have created.

We are also told that God created some manner of a universe or world, and so that now throws an additional "thought creation" into the mix. God has a kingdom, and he also mentions that angels have a kingdom, and so do you. And that your mind has the power to create worlds. Which all is starting to paint more of a picture that perhaps heaven is not just some big blob of light in which nothing is really happening, but rather than perhaps it is teaming with life and various different "stuff", that spirit beings are floating around having creative thoughts and conversations of some kind, and who knows what else.

What it boils down to for me is simple that God evidently has the power, ability, flexibility of thinking, and will, to be ABLE to create more than one kind of thing. Sons, angels, holy spirit, they are not all the same. And there IS a holy trinity which is real, and has distinct parts. There are so many statements in the course talking about parts and aspects of God. It does not appear God is a one-trick pony nor that he can only "burp out a single son of God". God appears to be much more versatile, unlimited, and quite capable of a plethora of creations. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to create the holy spirit.

I was thinking about this and about the fact that "God did not create the body." And what came to mind was that perhaps in heaven, there are not bodies - which are walls of flesh and separation devices surrounding the mind - but that in fact in heaven we still have our mind/soul but WITHOUT the body SURROUNDING it, separating it off in a prison. Like, who you are within, your mind/soul/spirit, remains as a full being, and the outer-shell of the body which is made of sin is no longer there. We're like the oyster inside the shell.

Jesus tells us also that "to be without a body is to be in your natural state" and "minds need not bodies to communicate." Does this not imply that 1) we exist together as a family without bodies surrounding our selves, and 2) we interact through communication, and 3) we're having communication with other spirit beings in heaven through a telepathic mind-to-mind means? That doesn't exactly paint a picture of "nothing happening" in heaven.

While it's true there are no separation forms or spacetime-bodies or physical materials coming between us in reality, it is perhaps false to suggest that this means we don't have an individual difference. Our spirit being, let's think of it as perhaps a whisp of light, a spark of life, a shaft of being, perhaps does have some kind of unique "something" about it. What if God did in fact create all sons of God slightly differently? And what if this is not an ego thing? How is it that the angels have different abilities and functions? What if you actually have some kind of "personality" that is a little different to other personalities, in reality?

When you read stuff in other texts like the bible etc about the fall of man and so on, you hear about how there were things going on in heaven. There were arguments and conflicts, even a kind of war, and different individuals had different attitudes. In the course even, Jesus literally says that there was someone called ADAM, who started the tiny mad idea. How is it possible that people even had NAMES that are potentially different and potentially "human like"? And why does Jesus even refer to the sons of God as MAN?

Referring to people, sons of God, as 'man', or as souls that have choices and are co-creators, and different kinds of angels, etc certainly seems to hint at Heaven containing a plethora of different beings, who perhaps are distinct in some way, whereby their "spirit" has certain qualities or character. Beings of light are not just blobs. And just because we think of them abstractly doesn't mean they're non-descript and have no kind of personality. In fact, there are even statements in the course to suggest that God has feelings.

The jury is out, and more information is needed, but just based on what I've talked about, to me it sure sounds as though there's a whole lot more going on in Heaven than we might give it credit for.

"What seems to be the opposite of (eternal) 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."

The above paragraph describes the ONLY thing that happens in the separation. The mind seems to go to sleep a while. The mind dreams of a world that doesn't really exist but seems to. Events seem to happen in it. But these events are nowhere, and the changes have no reality. The mind then wakes up, and this world it was dreaming of ceases to exist. Quite simply, at that point, the "world" which was dreamed, does not exist at all. This is what it means to say, "there is no world."

So what He's telling us simply is, you are in Heaven, dreaming of exile. You are in reality, which is God's world, DREAMING OF BEING IN ANOTHER WORLD. A second world, which your mind is making, as a result of its unconscious state. Its denial of reality is producing an hallucination of a SECOND world, which does not really exist, but seems temporarily to be very real. Upon waking, that world is nowhere. All its events are nowhere. It has had no consequences on God's world.

This is very fundamental A Course in Miracles metaphysics. You are awake, you sleep, you dream of a fake world, you wake up, the world is gone.

Now, see if you can follow this simple reasoning.

God is existence. God is infinite and unlimited. Therefore God exists everywhere without limits. He has no outer edges. You cannot be anywhere that He is not. He is everywhere always.

The idea of sleeping or dreaming, or the separation, or the tiny mad idea, or the ego, are all labels for one thing.... the idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God.

What would an opposite to God have to be?

If God exists, an opposite to God is non-existence.

If God is life, an opposite to God is death.

If God is reality, an opposite to God is unreality.

If God is true, an opposite to God is false.

If God is holy, an opposite to God is unholy.

If God is present, an opposite to God is not present.

What are we describing here? Let's group it all together. We're talking about a TOTALLY OPPOSITE state, which is non-existent, death, unreal, false, unholy, and not present.

Now, here's a simple fact. You cannot exist in non-existence. Non-Existence DOES NOT EXIST. Period. Never ever. There is no non-existence. It is nothingness. It is impossibility. You cannot be where God does not exist. You cannot go there, you cannot live there.

This idea of a total opposite to God, is the idea we had in the tiny mad idea. "What if"... I could be UNLIKE God? What if I could be NOT ALIVE? What if I could NOT EXIST? That is the tiny mad idea.

The reason it is mad, is because obviously you cannot NOT exist. You can't exist IN non-existence. The BELIEF THAT YOU CAN, is the whole problem. It's like claiming, non-existence DOES exist, and has reality, and you can go live there without God. This is a nonsense, insane idea. It is the idea we had. It is the idea we WANTED to believe in. And by believing it, we TRIED to make it real.

What were we really doing? We were BELIEVING that something which TOTALLY DOES NOT EXIST, exists. That an unreal nothingness, is real and something. Another word for that is HALLUCINATION.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

We hallucinated an entire "world", in an attempt to BELIEVE, that NON-EXISTENT NOTHINGNESS, actually has some reality. The desire to WANT it to exist, believed in it, and made it SEEM to do so, as an illusion. We MADE AN ILLUSORY WORLD, to DENY God's world, to DENY existence. A world of impossibility. A world which does not exist, but seems to, so long as we are insane.

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

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"The world you see is the insane thought system of those driven mad by guilt."

We made this world in an attempt to REPLACE God's world. To attack existence. To shut God out. To suggest, there is a PLACE, an existence, where GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Where His son is dead. Where God cannot enter, because it is OUTSIDE OF HIM. We constructed a world OPPOSING The Kingdom, an illusion of being EXILED outside of the Kingdom. Outside of existence. In NON-EXISTENCE. A dream of death.

"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

"The hell you made"

You made, invented, dreamed, hallcuinated, a UNIVERSE, a world, including planet Earth, to shut God out, to attack existence, to reject existence, to oppose the Kingdom, to depict God's son as dead, to make it seem God does not exist, and as though sin is happening. It is the idea of a NON-EXISTENT WORLD, seeming to take the place of real existence - the real world, the Kingdom. You made an opposite to God.

You now find yourself, IN THE WORLD YOU MADE. On the planet you dreamed. Inhabiting a body you manufactured as a separation device. A device which does not exist. On a planet which does not exist. In non-existence.

This is why this world does not exist. It is a counterfeit world. A made-up substitute world. A second home away from God. Where you thought God (existence) would not exist. This includes the Earth, which is a SELF-DENYING world, an illusory world, made of NOTHING. It's a world you attempted to make and enter, OUTSIDE the Kingdom. It is not life. It is an illusion of life. And it does not really exist.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, (being on Earth) life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is **not life**, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible (Earth is impossible), and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. (Earth is the idea of NOWHERE). Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

God did not create the Earth because, the fact is, Earth is NOTHING LIKE THE KINGDOM. God can only Create ONE KIND of world. A reflection of Himself. That world is The Kingdom of God, comprising the Sonship. It is the Holy Trinity. God could not create ANOTHER world, DIFFERENT to the Kingdom. Earth is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature.

"The laws of this world go against your nature."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (Earth)and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence (which Earth does, being NON-EXISTENCE) and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.*** ... God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two."

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

Earth is the idea of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom of God, in NON-EXISTENCE. It is an illusion of death, nothing, fictional fantasy, insanity, darkness, the opposite to eternal life. Being made of NOTHING, it DOES NOT exist. When you stop hallucinating it, it will be nowhere. You only see it because you WISH to do so, with wishful thinking. A wishful thought that it is possible to be where God is not. There IS NO WORLD apart from your wishful thinking.

It boils down to this. God created ONE WORLD, Heaven, the Kingdom. That world IS NOT this world. It is NOT Earth. Then we MADE UP, invented, a fake world, out of NOTHING, to OPPOSE His world in every way. A picture of crucifixion, an attack on existence, a place of nothing. We now think the NOTHING world exists, because we are delusional. And we may even think God's world IS THIS WORLD, which is completely delusional as part of the BELIEF.... "there is no existence" "there is no Kingdom".

"Only the creations of light are real." There IS NO WORLD here. This is the central lesson in the course. You're DREAMING and hallucinating and making stuff up. because of your DESIRE, wish, to SEE and experience, that which DOES NOT EXIST.

"The world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot see both worlds."

There ARE TWO worlds. One God created, and one you hallucinate. In order to SEE God's Kingdom you have to develop christ vision which OVERLOOKS (does not see) the hallucinatory world of Earth. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Earth is a veil of illusions covering the face of Christ. You must see PAST it to see reality.

Heaven is BEYOND this world. Or rather, this world is NOTHING, NOWHERE, NOT HAPPENING, and Heaven is all that remains.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"**Beyond the body**,

**beyond the sun and stars**,

**past everything you see**

and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.

The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it no longer is contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside (no world, no earth). For there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within you, and joined to all of it as surely as all is joined to you."

If you are immortal, you cannot suffer. You cannot be hurt, damaged, offended, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, lacking joy, unloved, abused, made sick, killed, harmed, bruised, wounded, angered, nothing. You can only be immortal.

So what does that mean, in light of what seems to be "you suffering"? Even "your suffering" cannot be truly happening to you. YOU cannot be suffering. Your immortal self CANNOT be experiencing suffering. You cannot suffer. So who is suffering?

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

So when you seem to be suffering, let's say you feel hurt because someone called you a "stinky fart face", can it really be that you ACTUALLY are hurt? And if you FEEL hurt by this, is this "you feeling hurt" actually really happening? Even if you feel it, even if it seems "it applies to me", even if it seems it was targeted "at you", even if its "highly personal and reminds me of the time I kept farting in church", CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that YOUR IMMORTAL SELF is actually experiencing this or believing it?

It must be that even when under attack, "you" that feels attacked is some kind of fictional construct. It can't REALLY be your immortal self that is attacked. Your immortal self cannot be sad or upset or feeling betrayed or victimized. It's impossible for your real self to feel anything but joy and love and happiness. So when you have an "I feel hurt" moment, even if it involves HEAVY emotions, and terrible pain, and totally seems to be all about YOU and how you feel... CAN IT BE?

It cannot ever be really your true identity that is suffering. Even if you seem to "hurt yourself", you are not hurting yourself. You can't BE hurt. So who or what are you hurting? If you even decide to kill yourself, YOU cannot be killed. So what is dying?

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

WHO or what is being killed? Sure enough it is the body that is involved. But in addition, how is it that there seems to be a sensation that it's YOU that is going down with the ship? WHO or what is under attack? Is this taking place IN YOUR MIND?

Is it possible, that when there is a sensation of hurt or upset feeling or guilt etc, that the feeling ITSELF brings with it a kind of illusion or "sense of" "self"? Could it be that when you are feeling guilty, and you feel like a target, and it feels like everyone can see you and knows you are there, and you are "self conscious" in public, and you want to hide from everyone because you feel like they KNOW your inner guilty secret.... is it perhaps that the guilt ITSELF brings a sense of "centric identity"? Is not anything other than love, a sense of selfishness, and thus a sense of ego?

Some years ago some stuff happened and I had a large amount of guilt because of it. And because of this guilt, I felt ashamed and took it with me everywhere I went. And I felt constantly threatened. Anywhere especially in public, which I avoided, it felt like I had a target on my back, that EVERYONE knew that I was guilty, and they could see this guilty self, and MY experience of this guilty self was a feeling of being very "self conscious". Nervous about what I AM. Feeling like I am "evil" or "bad". Feeling certain that I AM THE GUILT. And that everyone was pointing a finger at me.

It would then happen that if people would attack me, or call me names, or accuse me or whatever, I would feel like "this guilty self" is vulnerable AND attackable. If they would accuse me of something, they were accusing THIS guilty self of it, and IT was self conscious, and IT felt attackable and vulnerable, and IT believed that it deserved punishment and that IT was the ACTUAL target of what people were putting out there. So when they called me by name, and then hurled an abuse, this "guilty self" felt like it was ABOUT IT, personally, and that they were directly addressing this guilty self.

But then after a time and much healing, this guilt was gone. And then I noticed that when these same people were being the same way they seemed to be before, it clearly did not appear to be ABOUT ME, and it was not targeting "that self", that guilty self, that was in me before. And that guilty self and its sense of being "self conscious" ie in fear, was not there to "receive" the attack. It did not exist, so they could not AIM their attack AT it. And so "I", my identity, which was no longer bound up with the guilt, saw myself as NOT being the target of their expressions. And so I felt invulnerable and could now recognize that they were attacking themselves. What happened to the sense of SELF that was present IN THE GUILT?

See, whatever you make TRUE of you you will believe is WHAT YOU ARE, and in effect WHO you are. So if you believe of yourself, "I am guilty", you will believe this DEFINES you. And now you ARE guilt. And this guilt has components of ego in it. And ego is selfish. Ego is a kind of "self centeredness", a self-important self-interest.

If the absence of separation means that there is pervasive light everywhere throughout the universe, then ego is a massive CONDENSING of that, down to a point, such as a star, so that all you are now left with is masses of darkness and a tiny CENTER of a point of light. And this "all that's left" little concentration of "self" now seems to be separated off and small and weak and vulnerable. That littleness is the sense of EGO, and it is experienced like a focus on yourself alone, in isolation.

Everything about ego is about becoming small, little, contracted, compressed, diminished, weakened, self-focused, self-centered, selfish, self-attacking, self-important, self aggrandizing, delusions of grandeur, etc. This condensing produces a kind of "sense" of "me", distinguished from the rest, broken off and separate. This sense of self is "self conscious" ie made of CONCERN for self and FEAR of its own weakness and littleness. The "self conscious" self is in fear and looks out frightened of the world that threatens it. The more EGO you have, the more ego stuff you have, baggage, dark feelings, guilts and hurts, the MORE you feel self centered and like this stuff "is a self". A sense of "separated me", cut off from the rest and not sharing.

It brings with it a kind of "focal point", a contracted little fearful corner of the mind, and the more this little corner withdraws and hides and tries to be even smaller and weaker, the MORE the sense of artificial "self" increases. Because the amount of selfishness is going up, the amount of self importance is going up, the amount of superiority/inferiority complex is going up, and this all produces what SEEMS LIKE a sense of "there is something here", "I am something", "I am all these feelings", "I am these thoughts". You become identified with FORM.

The whole egotism, the attitude, inherently has this bunching up, crunching together, condensing, tightening, contracting kind of thing about it, and this SENSE of this happening FEELS like the formation of a hot-spot in the mind that seems like "where something is, moreso than the rest", or "self interest". A sense of an island within the mind. A "self".

When the guilt goes, when the self attack goes, when the sin is gone, the egotism is gone, and all this tightened contracted littleness "dissipates" and stops being so focused, and without the focus on a tiny little huddled-in-a-corner-hiding sense of identity and truth, that sense of being "separated off" and "a separate identity" goes with it. It just disappears. But that isn't the end of YOU, because your sense of self EXPANDS and moves towards the UNLIMITED, universal, endless holy christ self that you really are.

So who is it that suffers? Who is it that can BE hurt and FEEL vulnerable? It is not your immortal christ self. It is not the real you. But it can seem to be a SENSE of "you" because part of your mind gets caught up in the contraction and withdrawal into "a center", into a little prison, a bodily identity, an identification with locality in space-time. And the more ego-stuff you have in your mind, the more intensely that your mind forms into a huddle of tightly-held-onto stuff, creating an IMPRESSION of you being kind of snagged or caught up on this collection of ego material. And being localized around a "point" it makes you feel like you are this little separated off dot of identity.

It is kind of like.... the suffering, ITSELF, suffers. Just as how fear is self-fulfilling. The guilt ITSELF brings with it a feeling of separate self. Any ego emotions, be it anger or sadness or grief or loss or lack or abandonment or unworthiness or sinfulness or fear or whatever, all brings with it SELFISHNESS, which is isolation and contraction and that attempt to GET AWAY FROM everything else, producing an increasing sense that you are "this something" in the middle of the ocean of mind. And this "sense of self" always feels vulnerable and threatened and unsafe. But this sense of self is PART OF the ego material that's in the mind, and without it your mind DOES NOT experience being a target.

Without the guilt, you cannot feel this. Without the unworthiness or loathing, you cannot feel this. Your mind is elastic and sort of snaps-back into its expanded, non-localized state, spread out evenly and smoothly instead of tightened and restricted and limited. When the guilt goes, YOU stop feeling like "you" are susceptible and attackable. You stop feeling like YOU are guilty. And that sense of "contracted self" goes.

Your sense of identity stops being "caught up in" the "truth" that the guilt expresses. Because if you believe "I AM guilty" then this will set you up to experience that you AND the guilt ARE ONE. And now you ARE guilt. And in the guilt is your "self", your identity. And you will not want to let it go if you believe that letting it go will be the loss of who and what you are. So there is a kind of addiction to the ego materials and an unwillingness to see YOUR SELF as being something NOT associated with, or identified with, the ego materials. e.g. with the guilt. "I am guilty" will feel like you are MADE OF guilt. That it is fundamentally your nature.

So who is suffering? Who is hurt? Who is it that is having loss? Who is sad? Who is unworthy? Who is afraid? THOSE THINGS, combined with your mind, produce a sense of identity, or identification WITH those things, that makes YOU feel and perceive that it is YOU that is those things. That they APPLY to you. Because you think they are PART of your makeup. But it is those things themselves that bring with them the sense of artificial SELF, that is the ego, the selfish self-centered self, the hoarding possessing self, the playing small self. And without YOUR CONSENT, without your BELIEF, that these things are true of you, that sense of little self cannot remain. Because true self is expansive and infinite.

You seem to suffer because you identify WITH and AS ego stuff. Which temporarily makes you believe YOU are being attacked and YOU are the guilty one suffering. But it is really "the ego", the non-existent fictional self, the selfishenss, that is the guilty one. IT feels like IT is guilty, made of guilt. And when you WITHDRAW your allegiance from THE GUILT, that sense of "its about me" goes with it. And then you recognize that your REAL self, your immortal self, was NEVER guilty. It CANNOT BE guilty. And your immortal self doesn't have that sense of self-consciousness, self-concern, self-importance and selfishness.

You can think you are suffering, but you aren't. In a way, it is the ego that is suffering. Ego = suffering. You can think you are "the little self that suffers", but it is NOT really you. Your mind can get CAUGHT IN the trap of the ego viewpoints, which bring with them a sense of self-focus and self-worship and vulnerability, but you are not ever really those things. It is the ego that suffers because the ego IS suffering. It is the ego that has guilt because the ego IS guilt. Without guilt there is no ego. Without a bodily identity there is no body. Without sin there is no world of sin. And without death there is no world.

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

So when you feel like "I am guilty" or "I am anything" other than as God created you, know that you are lost in the ego and are feeling ego stuff and ego stuff feels this way and the sense of artificial "me", self importance, being self-absorbed, selfish, comes with that territory. And it is that vulnerable, sensitive false self that seems to be the target of the suffering, NOT your immortal self. And once you dis-identify from that EGOTISM, the whole ego thought system, you let go of these false accusations and the falsely accused goes with it. And all that is left is your immortal spirit. Your true identity in God which can never be attacked.

Here a beautiful and inspiring collection of short quotes all to do with going BEYOND. Beyond the body, beyond appearances, beyond forms, beyond sin, beyond the world. This is the goal of the course. To return home to Heaven.

"Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is."

"Beyond the body"

"Beyond this world there is a world I want. I choose to see that world instead of this, For here is nothing that I really want."

"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARDS it."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception."

"Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain."

"We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"I DO go before you, because I am beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego."

"Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see beyond appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality."

"Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one."

"And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. "

"Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist."

"You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity TOGETHER."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely. "

"NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you."

"One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty."

"The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world? You are a stranger here."

"Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation."

"Truth is so far beyond time, that ALL of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all."

"Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sounds and sights of this insane world. You do not live there."

"He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? "

"And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all."

"But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. "

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond everything that would hold you back."

"It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world. It is its holiness that points to God. It is its holiness that makes you safe."

"This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is."

"Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him."

"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."

"How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!"

"If they understood what is beyond them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."

"No-one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."

"Who, then, can say which one can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive?This is insanity indeed.It is not up to God's teachers"

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. "

"Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want."

"He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time."

"He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them."

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"Only joy increases forever. Joy and Eternity are INSEPARABLE. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. "

"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure."

"It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them."

"What lies beyond them cannot BE attacked."

"For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane."

"It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never died, but has been kept obscure."

"They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. "

"For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind."

"NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today s idea perfectly."

"The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."

"Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. "

"For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them."

"You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. "

"Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request."

"Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond."

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you."

"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."

"Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth."

"From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks."

"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."

"It is the world s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely."

"It is past the clouds, and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the light."

"Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release."

"But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved."

"There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever."

"Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own."

"You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love s "enemy" Christ s vision does not see."

"And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them."

"We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. "

"The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember."

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted, hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to JOIN with Him at last."

"From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared."

"No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One. "

"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body."

"This One can teach you how to look on time differently and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin."

In heaven, you and your brother share everything. Not just as two beings who "trade", but as two beings who are one. You overlap, sharing the same space. You are in him and he is in you. He literally is you, while also being himself. The two of you share everything as the Christ mind or One Son/Sonship. Along with everyone else also.

There is therefore a part of your own self, which is in your brother and is your brother. It's like you live inside of each other. His own self is part of your own self. Therefore the wholeness of who and what you are is not just you, it's that you are also him, and you are also part of God.

In the separation, the aspect of you which is hosted inside your brother, and which is one with his mind, was "sectioned off" through the separation device of the body. The body seemed to "fence in" the part of you which seems to be "you alone", and "keep out" the part of you which is literally in your brother "as" your brother.

Part of your mind is now seemingly housed inside the body prison, while the other part of your mind is seemingly housed inside your brother's body. And since the two appear in the form of "being separated by physical distance", it creates the illusion of a "gap" between not only you and your brother, but between you and the rest of you, which is in him and as him.

The initial function of bodies as separation devices was to make it appear that you are not in your brother, you are not one with him, you share nothing with him, you are not equal to him, you are different to him in every way, he is a stranger to you, you do not know him, and you do not recognize him or yourself. And the body paints a picture of an identity which is not in any way what you or your brother are really like.

This egoic view of him confines him to a body, and therefore also denies that he is in you. And so it reduces him and yourself you being less than whole. Bodies isolate the "self" portion of you while rejecting the "shared" portion of you. So now you and your brother find yourself inside prison cells and trapped in brains and kept apart and not communicating.

The body makes it appear that there is NO relationship between you. It demonstrates the proof of sin that separation has occurred. The two bodies being unalike do not share the same truth, and so are in disagreement, and are therefore at war with each other, just by virtue of their different natures. Which in turn, when identified with as your self or as your brother's self, makes it appear that you are fundamentally in perpetual war and competition with everyone. And everyone lacks what everyone else has."There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone."

"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."

In this state, you are in special relationship. Which we really should call, no relationship. It is a breakdown in communication, it is a lack of sharing, it is a broken interaction. It really is a lack of relating at all. And in this relating, neither party is viewed as a whole being, because wholeness means sharing and the part of you that is seemingly separated off inside your brother is rejected as "him alone". So now you are not your whole self, and he is not his whole self. And neither of you are wholly relating.

"Yet the special relationship which the EGO seeks, does NOT include even ONE whole individual. For the ego WANTS but part of him, and sees ONLY this part, and nothing else."

"An altar is erected IN BETWEEN two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body, raise another self that TAKES HIS POWER FROM HIS DEATH."

"The special relationship is totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you must also value the body."

When your mindset is one of being only the you that is in your body, as a body, you cannot help but relate to others in a dysfunctional way. And may struggle to relate at all. You may think, "I cannot relate to them because I am not physically like them."

The gap seen between you also produces justification for getting away with murder, a breakdown in cause and effect, and justified selfishness. Any attack you make upon another you do not realize is attacking the part of you which is shared with him. And the more you push him away in a lack of love, the less you accept yourself.

To have holy relationship doesn't merely mean that you love another person a lot. It doesn't mean, that you are still a separate person trapped in a body whose whole self is in that body, and who then relates lovingly with other people. This is still special love. To be truly loving and holy you have to be whole, which means you have to recognize that your identity is shared with your brother. That there is a part of you IN him and a part of him IN you. And that through your oneness you transcend the body boundaries, and therefore ARE NOT bodies.

You can't be all of yourself while isolated to space and time. You can't fully relate to anyone if you don't recognize that they are simultaneously you, and therefore that you see yourself in them and truly have something in common. You cannot treat anyone correctly unless you have a vested interest of treating yourself correctly, having recognized that you are in them, so that what you do to them you do to yourself.

To relate in holiness isn't two separate wholes relating, it is a relationship in which two are one. You are not just loving another, you are loving yourself AS another. And you are loving the self that is in you and the self that is in the other, as yourself. And the two of you as one together share everything.

"Miracles are a way of loving your neighbor (brother) as yourself."This must entail the shared/joined state of mind, which is more than just two minds sitting next to each other sending love vibes from afar. It is two minds FUSED together sharing everything to such a degree you cannot even tell where one begins and the other ends. Where the identity of both individuals is recognized as the same, being one in Christ. Two Christs, who are one Christ. Where what is theirs is yours and what is yours is theirs and both of you have everything simultaneously.

"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."

Each soul also knows all other souls completely. And you are part of God. And you are the whole Sonship. And you are the One Son, and Christ, and a Soul. And you are all Souls. And you are all Creations and all of Creation. And you are part of God Himself.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The soul is the idea of self fullness."

To relate fully to your self, you have to relate to the whole of yourself. The whole of yourself includes the part you fenced off in your body, AND the part that is in literally in your brother. He has to be recognized as part of your self, in order for you to have shared interests with him. Because by recognizing that you are IN him, you recognize that how you treat him is how you treat yourself. You cannot "see the Christ in Him" without recognize that Christ SPANS the two of you and INCLUDES you both as one identity.

When you do not recognize yourself in your brother, a wall or gap starts to form between you, you lose recognition, you become blinded by form, you start to focus on the body, sickness arises, and you begin to attack. The formation of this "separation gap" in between you and your brother makes the world of bodies and sin. And it is there that you enter into illusions of suffering and death, war and competition, disagreement and hatred and fear.

When you re-embrace your brother AS yourself, recognizing that in actual factual truth this is how God created you - joined with everyone, you are putting aside that gap between you and are overflowing your body. You are now extending PAST the body and past the body of your brother. Because your full self transcends these imprisoning boundaries. You are everywhere. You are everything. And only by relating to yourself as that, can you be fully yourself and fully awake.

Two separate things bumping up against each other is no more relationship than two separate things being at a distance. But when the two separate things realize they are not separate and they fuse together and become one, in which each of them is in the other, like yin and yang, there is now a union and a harmony and an equality. To be equal with something means to BE IT, not just to be like it. a = b means a IS b, no just that a and b are alike.

Bodies present a picture which is a complete lie. It is totally opposite to the nature of reality. It is an attempt to pull deeply relating immersed beings away from each other and lock them up in little isolating prisons in the farthest corners of the earth. Kept apart, they believe they are their prisons, and that they have no relationship. And every way they relate is on a basis of a lack of self, the attempt to get self from the other, and the attempt to lose even more self in doing so through sacrifice and loss and bargaining.

When the body is your identity, and you think that the you that is solely within your body is all of yourself, and you have a "bodily identity" in your mind as a picture of who and what you are, you are cutting yourself off from yourself and from relationship. In order to become spirit identified, you need to identify with the spirit that is both in you AND in your brother. You cannot find yourself without sharing yourself. And you cannot accept atonement without sharing and extending it either. You have to give what you have received.

This is why the body has no part to play in a holy relationship. This is why focusing on the body is a rejection of health, because health comes from wholeness and from extension. When you do not allow your SELF or identity to extend past the body and past your brother's body to the SHARED identity that is the Christ in both of you, you cannot be healthy, because your mind is split BY the body. If you allow the body to separate you off from others, you have a split mind and are choosing death.

When you join with others, which does not mean ego joining or a special relationship joining or bodies joining or two separate selves remaining separate and hooking up, mind extends past limitation and separation. It transcends the gap. And now the two that were on either sides of the gap span across the gap and erase the gap. And there is no gap. And in this view the bodies actually become healed because the mind is healthy. In effect, mind has to adopt a state completely "alien" to the body in order for the body to be healthy, which overrides the body's laws with the laws of God.

Reunion with others is reunion with your self and with God. You are a "whole part" of the hologram of God's creation. What you are is what your brother is. Your minds are one. Your souls are connected. You both overlap with each other. You share the same space. You overflow bodies and transcend their limits. You are everywhere. You are infinite, immortal and unlimited. You are the whole Sonship and the whole Son of God. And you are part of God Himself. And what God has put together no man can put asudner. You are eternally married to all beings forever and ever.

JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOU

JUST BECAUSE YOU PERCEIVE CORRECTLY, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE STOP PERCEIVING INCORRECTLY

Moving into the LIGHT, does not necessarily bring others with you, until they are WILLING to join you.

God is 100% awake right now. There is no sickness or death or suffering in God. It is "true" that these things do not exist, that separation is impossible, and no-one can die.

HOWEVER

It SEEMS. ... in an illusory way.... that we can SEEM to separate from God, to go off into a nightmare, have a bad dream, IMAGINE it is really happening, confuse it with reality temporarily, and SEEM to suffer and die.

Any such suffering, sickness or dying, is not real, and every single person who has sickness or suffering is not REALLY suffering. They are just having a bad dream.

But let's look at this with some compassion. Those "people", even if those people are not really individuals, no matter who or what they are, even if they are split of bits of the Son's mind, there is still some kind of ILLUSORY EXPERIENCE of terrible things happening.

A nightmare. A bad dream. Stuff that seems horrible, but in truth, is not happening. Yet still SEEMS to be happening to those "to whom" it seems to be happening.

And while these people are having these FALSE EXPERIENCES, God is already 100% awake, 100% healed and whole, 100% knowing that sickness and death are not possible.

WHY DOES GOD NOT UNDO THOSE NIGHTMARES IMMEDIATELY?

WHY DOESN'T GOD's INFINITE POWER AND IMMORTALITY stop people from killing themselves in the dream?

WHY DOESN'T THE FACT THAT GOD's MIND IS TOTALLY AWAKE, "cause" all "people" to NOT BE ABLE To create dreams of suffering?

Putting aside the illusion of linear time for a moment, God does not do that ONLY because those people having the nightmares keep REFUSING TO RECEIVE THE HELP. They use ILLUSIONS of denial, to pretend that they do not want the help, and that they need to suffer.

Even though God is offering 100% eternal life right now, immortal spirit is attempting to PRETEND to be stuck in a mortal body, confused with what can be sick and suffer and die.

And while we're in this illusion, having this nightmare, I think most people would AGREE that these "nightmares" can seem pretty dam real TO the person who is having them. Like if someone was mentally ill, having a terrible distorted vision of a horrible monster trying to eat them, freaking out and running around screaming because they THINK they're being attacked, even if they are NOT.... what is the loving response?

The loving response is TO LOVE.... always... the same.... unconditional love OFFERED at all times, but not being FORCED onto the person. Why not? Why doesn't God just wake us up out of the nightmare right now "against our will". Because we have FREE WILL, or at least love does not do that because it sees no NEED to do that, because it knows nothing real is happening.

Since God is 100% aware right now, and we, here, in this forum, for the most part, ARE NOT 100% AWARE RIGHT NOW, what that means is..... even though it's ultimately not true that we are unaware, it SEEMS like we are. We are having a false nightmare, a dream, a fantasy experience. Which SEEMS real to us.

And some of us here are experiencing what we think is real suffering. Maybe someone had a stroke, or has terrible pains, or anxiety about food, or had a heart attack, or their kidneys aren't working, or they have some "rare disease". Or maybe someone close to them is sick and it keeps them up at night worrying.

These are all false experiences, unreal nightmares, BUT the person having them DOES NOT KNOW THAT at this point. The illusion is so convincing, that we seem to have this twisted sense of "reality"... where we perceive and think these things are "really happening". And that produces ALL of the suffering, fear, and torment in this fictional world.

And none of it is real. And no-one is really sick. And there is no suffering. BUT.. .. that's not what people are SEEMING to experience.

What would love do about this? How would love respond to someone with mental illness, who hallucinates problems, who psychosomatically puts sickness into their body and writhes in torment over the pain they feel? What would love's response be?

TO LOVE THEM. TO OFFER A MIRACLE OF HEALING.

They might not accept the healing. Just as we seem to sleep "against God's will"... something which is really IMPOSSIBLE, yet which we are PRETENDING is possible....the person might refuse to JOIN YOU in being 100% awake. They might keep pretending that denial is real and possible and can block love. They might still manifesting artificial make-believe terrible sickness. They might PERCEIVE differently than you perceive.

Just because you go into true perception, or even go beyond perception to TOTAL AWARENESS of everything real, does NOT MEAN that other people automatically go there as well.

This is why Jesus was able to walk around the earth in a MORE HEALED state than other people, and OFFER THEM healing. He was still able to PERCEIVE that these "people" - whatever they are - parts of his mind or whatever - these people were having nightmares. Some split-off part of mind was still twisting "reality" and SEEMING to experience a terrible state of suffering. And to that piece of mind, that person, that suffering seemed VERY REAL and horrible.

Even though love knows that suffering is NOT REALLY THERE and has no real consequence and minds cannot be sick etc.... that none of this even happened.... IT IS STILL LOVING to offer miracles of healing to those "parts" which seem to be in need. This is part of the atonement process. The plan of salvation. That we are BRING LOVE to ALL PARTS OF MIND.

As Jesus says, he offers us salvation and love right now, but if we are not ready to receive it, HE WILL WAIT.

In time, people CAN REFUSE LOVE. Or at least seem to. They can produce forms of sickness in the body EVEN THOUGH God does not contain any real sickness. They can make illusions of being sick, and have horrible nightmares about those sicknesses being real. It is LOVING to alleviate that suffering IF THEY ARE WILLING to RECEIVE IT, through your offering of a miracle.

Just because there is total awareness or total perception, and even if that shows you there is NO DEATH and sickness is an IMPOSSIBLE ILLUSION, in time.. there is STILL a "need" for healing. That's why the Holy Spirit is here. His function here is healing, and we are supposed to share that with him, to OFFER HEALING to everyone who still seems to suffer from self-made nightmares. It is the loving thing to do, to offer a miracle, EVEN IF it is refused, and in spite of the fact that people can CHOOSE NOT TO PERCEIVE AS YOU DO.

Additionally, just because your perception is true and whole and healed, it does not STOP you from seeing what these "other people" or "split off bits of mind" - from the one whole son - are doing to themselves. It's possible to have COMPASSION for them, to recognize they are MISTAKEN and to not believe their sickness is REAL... yet to STILL OFFER HEALING of *THEIR BELIEF* that sickness is justified. And if they continue to spend time refusing to learn the curriculum, which is their free will right, they may well refuse to undo that illusion of sickness and will STILL EXPERIENCE SUFFERING, even if God can never suffer.

So yes, there IS no real sickness. Yes, there ARE no separate people. Yes, there are not even any bodies TO heal. Yes, no-one really needs real healing because healing is an illusion. BUT WHILE WE ARE HERE.... inside this dream illusion, where people DO choose to make illusions of attack and sickness, IT IS our role to offer and bring healing through love, to perform miracles, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to HELP "those" who seem to suffer. And they will thank you, because what they were experiencing before, even if it was an illusion, was WORSE to them than what they are experiencing now. How is that not KIND?

This is our function here. To offer love and truth to those who THINK they are really sick and suffering. To undo that suffering if they will ALLOW. To recognize they cannot be sick or suffer or die FOR THEM while they refuse to see it FOR THEMSELVES. Just because you wake up, does NOT mean "their sickness" disappears from THEIR EXPERIENCE. Otherwise, because God is awake NOW, it would be impossible for anyone to experience sickness. And truly they can't because sickness MUST therefore be AN ILLUSION, but people are still TEMPORARILY INSANE believing otherwise.

No-one needs saving, yet they do. In this dream, they do. There is healing to be performed. There are miracles to work. There are people who, if you walked up to them and asked, "would you like me to take away this cancerous growth", would say, "sure"... and you extend God's love in prayer and IT DISAPPEARS, and they are totally over the moon because they were suffering for years and thought they are going to have the NIGHTMARE of dying.

It's all mental illness, but love STILL HEALS IT. There is no real need to heal it, BUT LOVE DOES ANYWAY. Love just loves. While we dream, God wants us to awaken. While we refuse God's will, or try to, pretend to, God wills that we be happy and accept his will.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER, even if it is just a made-up dream of made-up suffering. You don't even NEED TO HAVE a nightmare dream. You can have a HAPPIER DREAM. A dream which is gentler and softer and precedes awakening in a smooth and non-jarring way. You do not need to be sick, or tolerate it, or try to transcend it in order to deny it. IT CAN BE REMOVED. No-one has to have dreams of death and suffering and sickness and pain, EVEN IF it is just a dream. This is not God's will.

It is God's will for you to EXPERIENCE PERMANENT HEALTH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, to no longer have that broken leg, or that missing arm, or that defective lung, or that cancer, or any of it. A broken body proves the mind is not healed, so these breaks MUST BE HEALED if the mind is to be healed. We do not need to find ways to "be at peace with it". We need to UNDO IT, in form, in the body, to prove and demonstrate the truth that we cannot be hurt against our will. No-one needs to be having a dream of limitations.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light"

"God is the light in which I see."

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The world will disappear in light."

In ACIM there is a theme of the relationship of light and dark. We're simply told light dispels darkness, and that really there is no such thing as darkness. Darkness is a label for the illusion of a "lack of light". Essentially this means there is either light or a lack of light, and darkness isn't "a real thing". It's similar to saying there is love or a lack of love, but there isn't real evil. This is forgiving because it recognizes either love or a call for love and doesn't regard the "lack of love" as a state that's real or "actually evil."

That said, when we dreamed of death and made a world, which includes Earth, and all bodies, we made these things by pretending there is a lack of light. And this absence of light seems to show up as darkness, as if to say it is "made of darkness". As soon as you switch from realizing there is only light or its lack, to believing that the lack of light is itself something which can CAUSE light to go away, you start to believe that the darkness is real and that "darkness can hide." It's the belief that darkness has power, is evil, is real, and is capable of forcing light to be dispelled. It's nothing other than the mistaken belief in sin - a dark thought being able to attack the light of God. It's a level confused idea.

In truth, since there is only light or its illusion of absence, when light is supplied, the illusion of the lack of light disappears. Miracles supply a lack. Once the "lack of light" is overcome by supplying the light, and the light is present, there simply is no lack of light any more and so "the darkness" simply vanishes. In the presence of light there is no darkness. That which seemed to be "made of darkness" is really just light's seeming absence, and now that light has arrived, that which was "made of darkness" must be shone away and disappear. It really was only an illusion of darkness seeming to exist, when in fact it was nothing. Darkness isn't real.

For example, when clouds block the sun from shining, and the sun is still shining beyond the clouds, the underside of the clouds seem to become dark because it now seems as if the clouds have the power to block the light. The clouds are symbolic of the idea that darkness has power over the light and can prevent light from extending. Blocks to awareness do the same thing. But the fact is that the clouds only become dark because of the seeming illusion of an absence of light, not because clouds are inherently dark. They are made of transparent water. When light shines upon them, they are not dark at all. They are seen IN the light WITH light and this light thus dispels the belief that "the clouds are dark". Darkness is an illusion.

Similarly with shadows, a shadow is merely the illusion of an absence of light. When light shines onto the area which was "in shadow", the shadow disappears. Light always has power over darkness EVEN in this dream world. Whenever the light comes, darkness simply vanishes and whatever evil figures seemed to be made of darkness, absolutely cease to be. It has no protest, it has no power, it has no way to prevent itself from being shone away. Darkness has no defense against the light. It simply disappears because it wasn't really a thing in its own right, it was just the absence of light. Once the absence of God is supplied, once love is given to those who lack the love, the absence of love is restored to love and all seeming illusions and manifestations of darkness simply disappear. Light corrects the darkness by showing that there is no darkness, just as atonement shows there is no sin.

Light has power over darkness because there is no REAL opposite to light. Darkness is not reality. Light is reality. Darkness, as the opposite to light, is just an illusion of darkness and so the light always has power over it. Light is permanently true and unchangeable. Darkness is a temporary illusion that what is permanent is not permanent. Darkness is a lie, a deception. It doesn't really exist.

The world, which we made, with bodies, are all made out of darkness. They are the "absence of light" attempting to be maintained by minds that are trying to believe light is not present. And so they are trying withhold their light in order to stop the shining in order to make it seem like there is a "hole" in the light where light has become absent, where heaven has turned into hell. And then it becomes easy to believe, the seeming lack of light - which is showing up as darkness - is actually a "real darkness", as if the darkness itself is a thing in its own right, with a power and a will and a causality and capable of causing light to go away. Like since when did darkness ever have the ability to resist light? But while we believe there is a world here, we are believing that darkness has power over light. We're looking at nothing but an illusion of light's seeming absence, not real darkness. When light is allowed to shine and enter, light's absence is corrected and there is now no darkness for the world to be made of.

Given also that the world and bodies are all "made of darkness" or are the illusion of light's absence, when the light comes, those things will be shone away. When we are no longer interested in making illusions or playing with this idea that we can cause the light to be harmed or affected and caused to leave by our dark powers, we will simply allow light to shine and it WILL shine away the world and the body. They must be shone away because they are ONLY the illusion of the absence of light. When the light comes, the world has to disappear. All shadows must disappear. The body must disappear. They cannot coexist with the light because they are founded entirely on light's absence. Any more than the ego, which is darkness, can go into the light and keep its darkness. This is why that which is "made of darkness" cannot enter the light or have any ability to attack God's Kingdom.

This is also why "a forgiven world cannot last." If you forgive the world you are shining a light ONTO the world, illuminating it, and thereby SHINING IT AWAY, because it is made of light's absence and when the light comes the absence is corrected and undone, light replaces darkness, and so the world which was the illusion of light being absent, is shone away and undone. This is why ACIM says that "the world will disappear in light" and "the world will spin into the nothingness from which it came". You cannot forgive a world, shine light onto it, see it in light, and expect it to stay IF it is not made of light. And this world, Earth, is not made of light - it is the idea of sin which is the idea of darkness being able to hide or block the light of Heaven. As soon as there is light, there is no world. This is also why there are no worlds or bodies in Heaven - darkness does not exist there and these things are completely "made of" darkness. The illusion that there is no light. They were made to block the light. They cannot enter or be in the light and maintain their state of darkness, thus they cannot exist at all.

This is why eternity will eventually shine away the world. The world, its forms, its bodies, which are all lack of light, will become filled with light so much that the light will dispel the lack of light, and so all of the forms will be shone away entirely. They will leave absolutely no trace in their going because they were always illusions of darkness or light's absence. Temporarily, the world may seem to become a shining reflection of Heaven or to be so filled with light ("I am the light of the world") that it seems heaven-like... but only temporarily, in a transition from dark to light, because when enough light has shone upon it, it will be so infused with light its darkness simply MUST vanish. When the light becomes brilliant, intense, powerful and full, there is nowhere for darkness to exist or hide, and all things "made of darkness" will vanish as if they never existed. The world will be healed away.

So long as forms and objects are maintained, there is a protest against light and an attempt to block it. Physical objects are blocks to the light just as they are blocks to awareness. They are made of the idea of sin, the suggestion that darkness can block the light and have power over the light. This is why "to see a sinless body is impossible" - you cannot look upon sin unless you are sinful and when you are purely innocent you can see nothing but light. And this is why you cannot truly be 100% in the light of heaven, while having a body.

The light (of the great rays for example) will literally fill the void where the body was pretending to exist, and replace it, filling up the gap with light, since the body is nothing but the illusion that there is a lack of light or a block to light. The body is what a lack of light "looks like", something dark and an obstacle to light seemingly capable of obscuring it. And since the body blocks light, it also blocks the mind and awareness of truth and atonement. "The body is a limit" "The body cannot stay." So long as the body is present at all, it is blocking light or demonstrating that darkness still exists.

There are no obstacles to light in the living world of light, which is Heaven. There are no bodies, forms, objects, walls, or anything that can keep light from being absolutely infinite and intensely brilliant everywhere. There is nowhere "lacking light" for the body to seem to exist. There is only light everywhere.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

"Only the creations of light are real."

There are two thought systems based on two entirely different logical reasonings, and it has produced "two worlds." And only one of them is real.

A AND B = Heaven/God's Creation/Reality.

A OR B = Hell/Earth/ego/the world you made/a dream.

The two thought systems are entirely different. They are run on different laws. Heaven is one thought system. Earth and this universe is another.

The two thought systems produce entirely different consequences and "natures". The nature of Earth runs entirely contrary to your true nature as a heavenly being.

"The laws of this world run against your nature."

Your nature, of Heaven, is to share. Whatever you have, you share it with others. Whatever God has, He shares it with you. Everyone shares everything. I have it, and you have it. That is heaven's logical system. A AND B. Me and you. Both.

Earth, this universe, and everything about physical matter and objects, is run inside and part of the ego thought system. It is a system based on the logical of A OR B, where NOTHING IS SHARED. No two things have everything. Nothing has full access to anything. Everything is partial and incomplete. There is no wholeness.

Here, when I have an ice cream, I do not share it with you. You are 100% denied the ice cream. If I let you have all of the ice cream, there is none left for me. This is driven by a basic LAW of nature which drives this entire universe and applies everywhere to all planets and stars and galaxies.

In Heaven, when you give something, you share and extend it. You do not lose it. Someone else can share ALL of it, and have all of it, and yet you also STILL have all of it. That sounds nuts to the ego thinker. How can I give you all of my ice-cream, while still having all of the ice-cream? How could Jesus feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves, in a demonstration of GOD'S LAWS? That we can all SHARE in defiance of physical limitation?

On Earth, when I try to share, all I do is sacrifice. I must give something up, have less, lack and have nothing myself. This is BUILT IN to MATTER. It is built into spacetime. Everything within spacetime, including planet Earth, OPERATES based on this principle of sacrifice and scarcity. When one part of the world is over here, and another part of the world is over there, and they are different, and kept apart, that is NOT sharing, that is NOT wholeness, and that is NOT love.

"The world is the insane thought system of those driven mad by guilt."

Realize this. This planet ITSELF, its physical matter, its nature, the laws that keep its particles suspended in space, is based in the idea of SEPARATION. It is based in the idea of NOT SHARING. My left arm is not where my right arm is. They do not share space. I cannot join or merge with anyone. Bodies, objects, people, animals, are kept apart by this material of rejection, separation, lack, scarcity, sacrifice and limitation. This is what RUNS THE WORLD. This is even more fundamental and deeper than the laws of physics. It's the EGO's law.

The world was made this way, by you, as an attack on God and on his NATURE. It was made to function OPPOSITE to His nature. If His nature is that everything is openly shared by everyone, the opposite is that NOTHING IS SHARED. That is the nature of this world. To give you half of my pizza is NOT SHARING. It is sacrifice. Neither of us gets a whole pizza. I cannot throw a ball to you and have you hold it while I also receive it and hold it. We cannot both own the same property.

This is a world of selfishness, ownership, exclusivity, isolation and separation. And it's going to STAY THAT WAY for as long as it appears to exist. It cannot show up AS Earth and follow ANY other laws. It has to keep following the same laws of the ego thought system. To remain a physical three dimensional planet it has to be maintained by an idea of SPACE. Space is an attack thought.

Space is the OPPOSITE of "everywhere". It is an attack on omnipresence. Time similarly is an attack thought. It is an attack on eternity, or "always". It forces the ILLUSION that things change "naturally", which is wholly unnatural, as an expression of the idea that one moment was Heaven and then something changed. Time is an attempted attack on God.

"Reality is a constant state."

So now you have a problem, because the fact is, no matter how much you change your mind, no matter how much you heal your perception, no matter what your beliefs are ABOUT the world, it does NOT CHANGE the underlying LAW that this world ENTIRELY DEPENDS ON for its three dimensional existence - a law of separation and death. It depends on spcaetime. It depends on separate objects, not sharing with each other. It depends on loss and change and a lack of permanence. Permanence is of God, and this world HAS NONE. Permanence is love. "Never was love in the world of dreams." (earth).

So the fact is, no matter how much you change your mind here, you CANNOT alter the fundamental FUNCTIONING of this planet. You cannot change the law that it relies on for it to BE a planet. To sustain its spatial occupation or its reliance on time for growth. Without THE EGO, there cannot BE a planet. There cannot BE bodies. There cannot BE this world or this universe. Without the ego, it is NOT POSSIBLE to have a three dimensional form. Without a fundamental law of separation, there cannot BE objects, forms, bodies, appearances, images, animals, humans, or anything else you recognize as what you think is life.

Here is the clincher then. The ego's thought system is a thought system of death. Death is the one illusion from which all others stem. Death is the last illusion to be overcome. And the fact is, the ego is the idea of death - an opposite to life, an opposite to heaven, and an opposite to God's nature. And death has PRODUCED PLANET EARTH. Earth is made of death. It is not made of life. It was made to OPPOSE LIFE. It is OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature in EVERY WAY. Heaven is a system of pure extension of eternal life. Earth is a system of limitation, dead ends, temporary existence and death.

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

"There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach."

This is literally true folks. Planet Earth DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. It cannot exist, because it is MADE OF THE EGO, and the ego is not real. This whole system, this whole universe, is inside the tiny mad idea. Without the mad idea, there is no world. Without death, there is no world. This is not a world of LIFE. IT is not eternity. And quite literally, the forms and appearances that seem to be in it, are NOTHING but a dream of death. At best, they seem like a symbol of life, at worst like death and suffering. But NEVER are they truly ALIVE FOREVER.

"The body neither lives nor dies. It is nothing."

"There is no life outside of Heaven."

"God did not create the body."

"God can not enter a body, nor can you join him there."

Heaven is ELSEWHERE. It is not this planet. It will NOT EVER BE this planet. If you think it CAN, then you are really not seeing the clear distinction between the two thought systems. You cannot have one set of LAWS, from which EXISTENCE springs, and have a world which completely OPPOSES those laws exist based ON those laws. Earth simply cannot REMAIN when Heaven has come. It HAS TO DISAPPEAR. Heaven and Earth are incompatible systems. The ego system and the Holy System are exclusive and incompatible.

"There is total communication failure between the ego and the Holy Spirit."

Ego world = Earth. Holy world = Heaven. They CANNOT coexist. Love has no opposite. Earth does not exist.

Earth's NATURE cannot exist IN HEAVEN. Heaven cannot contain a world that opposes it's nature.

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

This is all very very clear and consistent in the course.

Now, some people recognize that, in a sense, God being a "container of everything" seemingly must contain the Earth. And some will reason that this means God made the Earth. This is in complete contradiction to what ACIM says, and is completely against God's nature. It is not GOD'S WILL to produce a world LIKE THIS ONE. He would not, and cannot, express Himself and his divinity, as bodies, objects, planets and galaxies. He simply does not. Ever. Think about it. Divine holy infinite unlimited LIFE, can only create that which lives forever, not things which FAIL TO GIVE LIFE, which is true of ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS. God did not create the world. This is the world YOU MADE. It has not been CREATED and it does not EXTEND life at all.

It is possible for your mind to transcend this dream world and recognize that it IS a dream. Nothing more than an illusion. It is possible for you to experience increased love and peace and joy, or at least a sense of it, while you are "in a body." But it is NOT possible to 100% fully completely EXTEND GOD while in a body. God cannot be in or through a body. Bodies are THOUGHTS, maintained by MINDS, who DO NOT WANT GOD. The body MUST END and disappear in order to be in total awareness and knowing of God.

"The body is a limit."

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh."

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"The body is clearly a separation device and therefore does not exist."

The body can be given a holy purpose, but a holy purpose does not MAKE the body "holy". What is NOTHING cannot be endowed with the properties of Christ. You can use it as a LIMITED TOOL, temporarily, but its limits are EXTREME. It prevents you from knowing God, from being the size of the universe, and from wielding unlimited power. You CANNOT experience Heaven while you are in a body! God has to take the last step to scoop you up and take you HOME, where you BELONG, which is NOT HERE.

Heaven is HERE NOW.

Earth is NOT HERE NOW and is the idea of NOT EXISTING. It is the idea of NOT BEING ALIVE. It is the IDEA OF DEATH. And without the idea of death, THERE IS NO WORLD.

"A world that attacks itself and denies its own existence is not of God."

Heaven is here, but "here" does not include Earth. Earth is an illusion. It is NOT HERE. It is a thought of darkness. Light SHINES IT AWAY. It doesn't continue as an opposite to Heaven because Heaven HAS no opposite, and Earth NEVER REALLY HAPPENED in the first place. It is just a dream of pretending Earth exists.

"There is no world."

"The world was over long ago."

"It takes great learning to realize this world has nothing to give."

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"Together we will watch the world disappear."

"Heaven remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to the strange world YOU MADE."

God doesn't have an attitude of making you guilty for doing certain things. He isn't up there judging and condemning. He isn't holding grievances or hating you for your choices. Nor does he forcibly stop you from doing whatever you want. Even if it's something that is seemingly hurtful to you and others.

When God created you, he extended his infinite unlimited freedom, giving you total free will. This was like a granting of permission, that you are free to create and do whatever you want. God placed NO LIMITS on your freedom. There are no clauses or exceptions, and no small print. You are completely free. It is because of this giving of total freedom that you are a fully created individual being.

That automatically means God isn't sitting there revoking your freedoms, judging you as guilty for the choices you make, regretting giving you freedom, wanting to enact his wrath because of the sins you commit, aiming to punish you for poor choices, or any other kind of control or coercion or attempts to stop you against your will.

God cannot go against your will because your will is actually shared with his own. To deny your freedom would deny his freedom. He isn't in the business of putting you in chains or binding you to certain rules and regulations.

With God there is always a sense of.... you can come and go as you freely wish. No-one is forcing you. You can choose heaven, you can choose hell. You can choose harmlessness or harm, peace or war, life or death.

One thing you cannot do is alter the laws of God, you cannot undo the golden rule, you cannot influence what reality is, you cannot alter what is ultimately true, and you cannot attack anything real. This is because God wills that reality be perfect and immortal and eternal forever, and reality is his creation, not yours.

You also cannot undo the fact that rejecting God results in illusions of pain and suffering, not because God punishes or makes you suffer for trying to violate his will, but because you choose and induce it upon yourself when you try to deny his nature. You literally assert that you want to suffer rather than be happy.

In granting you total freedom, you were also given the freedom to "mis-use" will, to try to will not to will, to attempt to deny what is still true, to try to use creative power to create nothing, and to attempt to repress and disempower yourself as much as you like.

God did not STOP you from believing that you could be separate from him, even though you can't. He didn't stop you from trying to attack him and his kingdom. He didn't stop you from trying to die, or making war and terror, or trying to enforce sickness, or anything else that ego would consider a sin. He doesn't WILL it for you, but he also doesn't force you not to.

Since you've been given total freedom, nothing that you choose is ever a reason for guilt. If you are free, you have been given permission when you were given freedom. God isn't holding you on a leash or binding you in chains. Nor does love enter where it is not welcome, nor does God demand or control or force anything.

God never says "you shouldn't have done that, you're sinful for breaking the rules". You cannot break the rules because you cannot violate your freedom. There are no rules because there are no limits on your freedom.

You actually are totally free to come and go, live or die, be happy or unhappy, be awake or asleep, whatever you want. But this also means that because you are totally free, you are also totally responsible for your choices. Total freedom IS total responsibility.

When you are willing to take total responsibility for your total freedom, you are also taking responsibility for the power of decision to choose what you want. You are now exercising your will to choose whether to will one thing or another, and whether to go home to heaven. This is why heaven is a choice that you have to make freely and willingly. It cannot be forced upon you.

This also then means that you can never blame anyone else for doing anything to you, because in your freedom you cannot have anything done to you against your freedom. You can attack your own freedom, in illusions, but no one can ever be guilty. Because everyone is always free. And you are always free from attack.

The secret of salvation then comes in, because in total responsibility you are the one who must have denied your own freedom. Attempting to be guilty is an attempt to deny that you are free, accusing self and others of violating God's rules and sinning against his law. But this has to be false because God has granted you the freedom AND POWER to do absolutely anything.

The ramification of this is that you could potentially choose never to go back to him. You could choose to be evil and murderous. You could choose destruction and sickness and death. Just as freely as you could choose healing and love and life. And you have done so - although you can always choose again.

This then reveals that whatever you are getting, you must be choosing, because you are free. And since freedom is power and responsibility, you must be choosing AND CAUSING everything that happens. This includes all forms of suffering, which must be doing to yourself freely. This is why you are master of your own destiny, and why you are ruler of the universe, and why nothing happens without your consent.

The question then is, does God just sit in heaven watching all this, allowing you to suffer for as long as you wish? In a sense, yes, except that God is also loving. God does not will that you suffer, or even believe that you suffer. God wills perfect happiness. God wills eternal life and deathlessness. God wills love not fear.

In his love, God has INVITED you freely to return your awareness to him. God isn't coercing you to go there. God HAS placed an atonement plan in place via the Holy Spirit, to gently orchestrate events and repurpose the world to lead you back to eternal life. And because the Holy Spirit is perfect and powerful, succeeding in doing so is effortless for him.

This doesn't mean you are ever forced to return or to give up your dreams. You STILL have to have a little willingness. You still have to be willing to learn - because the time that you take the curriculum is voluntary. But there is a PLAN in place to ENCOURAGE you to return to God. This plan is gentle and wise.

People are arranged to meet because they have POTENTIAL for a teaching/learning situation - for a holy relationship. There are no chance encounters. Events are organised by the Holy Spirit to be conducive to education and healing. This is why we have 'lessons', which appear as trials, so that we can learn to choose again.

None of this is forced. Before we incarnate we CONSENT to plans and events and encounters based on our current needs and wants. We give free permission for things to occur so that we can learn. We exhibit willingness, to whatever degree, sometimes more than others. And our life in the school unfolds accordingly.

But at NO TIME is there ever force, or requirements, or pressure, or sneering down the nose, or judgement, or reprimand, or punishment, or keeping score, or enforced karmic punishment, or any kind of "you're wrong for doing that".

As best as is GENTLY possible, God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit orchestrates time and space to make its events as conducive to change and spiritual progress as possible. As the therapist, the Holy Spirit knows how to do this expertly and perfectly. He knows how to GUARANTEE that everyone will eventually wake up to reality, and it is only a matter of time before we all do so.

You're still free. You will eventually freely return to God because you want to. Because you see no other alternative. Because you recognize that you gained nothing in leaving and will regain everything in returning. Not because anyone has the whip out. Not because there's hell to pay. Not because there is any kind of bully in the sky waiting to kick you in the ass if you take a step out of line.

It's all very loving and gentle and consenting. This is also why the "script is written" pertains to an OPT-IN free-willed curriculum where there is an outline "plan" for atonement but not a FORCED awakening. Nor are you locked into some kind of rollercoaster you can't get off, or some kind of replay of hell that you have no say in choosing.

This is simply because YOU ARE ALWAYS FREE. Your freedom is permanent. There are no restraints, no special rules or terms and conditions, no requirements, no punishments for your choices, and no judgement from God. God does care about you and wills that you awaken, and you will do so because your will is shared. But WHEN you do is still up to you just as it always has been. And this is why accepting atonement is your sole responsibility, because no-one else can do it for you.

"It is crucial to say first that this is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all." UrT1A1

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself." UrM19A4

"When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence YOURSELF, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they COME from an attempt to PROJECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ERRORS." UrT7I8

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it." UrT8E9

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given" UrT9A9

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." UrT1B30N

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment." UrT2A30

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free." UrT9K9

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His." UrT8E9

"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." UrT12F12

"Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule." UrT26H9

"Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven." UrT18F2

"Heaven is the decision I must make." UrW138

"Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His." UrT8A2

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way." UrT2B69

"Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will, because it involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception." UrT3F13

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW135L19

"The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In fact, both TIME and MATTER were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will, because of the inevitability of this decision. If you review the idea carefully, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose." UrT2B68

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone." In the separation from God, we rejected the meaning of divine order and replaced it with meaningless chaos. Through separation and fragmentation, there was no longer a single truth shared by everyone. Instead, everyone believed their own truth, and now everyone was in conflict.

In a state of fundamental disagreement, this gave rise to an entire seeming universe, or system of thought, in which conflict, clashes, wars, disagreement, argument, inequality, domination, submission, tyranny, attack, fighting, selfishness, hoarding, scarcity, and all manner of separation became commonplace.

This also expressed as the world itself, on a physical level, in terms of the seeming laws of physics and of space and time, which are utterly opposed to the divine laws of God. This produced an environment in which every particle of matter is at odds with every other, all things are different, kept apart, and in conflict, and where one thing can seem to destroy another. In a world without divine order, "senseless laws" seem to govern it.

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. "

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist."

In a chaotic world, the most random-seeming things can happen. They appear to happen without the involvement of any kind of will or mind. Seemingly without the participation or attention of anyone. As if the world is simply on some kind of autopilot, allowing for things to happen which make no sense, for no useful purpose, and producing effects which appear completely random and unintended.

As such "accidents" seem to arise and we enter into a realm of "bad luck", where coincidence seems possible and shit can just seemingly happen "by chance." Physical objects and their interactions seem to trigger a cascading chain of effects, as rocks tumble from a mountain, as people slip on banana peels, as decay sets in, as random wind finally blows the roof off, as meteorites happen to strike a person's body, as the weather happens to be worse, as sick bodies seem to take a turn for the worse, and as you just happened to step on a specific piece of dog shit today.

We think this world is normal and natural but it is completely devoid of divine order and meaning. Utter nonsense can transpire for no good reason. Things can seem to happen, unfortunate events, strange twists of fate, odd unlikelihoods transpire, trees fall on cars, rotten wood crumbles, a person steps on a nail which was left behind 50 years ago, there isn't quite enough energy to keep the phone running to capture that UFO in the sky, and someone's wheel falls off because the bolts on the hub were just slightly loose enough today.

When you look at all the stupid stuff that happens in the world, all the dangers and pitfalls and strange occurrences and injuries and houses falling on people's heads and so on, most of it really boils down to a seemingly lifeless environment, run by chaotic laws. Unfair, mean, cruel laws, where animals starve because they get stuck in a hole between some rocks. Laws which seem to be consistent and make sense, but which are founded on the complete absence of love and belonging and harmlessness and wholeness.

In a way, most of what transpires is "forgiveable" in the sense that, most of it is just the laws of physics playing out, as if it's not "personal". We might yell at the door for slamming on us, but it was just the physics in the hinges and the weight of gravity. We might be annoyed at the handle falling off the saucepan but it was just the rust setting in to corrode the metal. We might stub our toe and swear at the little bump in the sidewalk, but it's just an arrangement of matter sitting there. It isn't transpiring against you, as such, it's just ticking over like a mindless dead program, like some kind of debris that's just left behind from centuries of pointless events.

The world really is kind of like a dead world, a graveyard in which "stuff" just sits around doing next to nothing, until it is disturbed slightly, and seeming forces and energies collude into the mix, resulting in seeming new effects. And now the rock falls on your head and the tree crashes into the car and the tornado throws a random cow through your window.

And then the little stone tumbles off the hill, and bounces off the recently grown leaf, and hits you on the head as you just happen to walk past. All seemingly totally at random. In a world where everything seems to be utterly chaotic, pointless, senseless, meaningless, purposeless, without divine design, orderless and lifeless. Where the dust comprised of the dead corpses of skin cells clog your nose and triggers and chemical reaction.

In heaven there are no such accidents, no things which happen in chain reactions of random collisions. There is no chance or bad luck or probability or likelihoods. There is no unintended consequence, or lifeless discarded piles of trash, or little objects that sit around waiting to be victimized by external forces, or giant "natural disasters" that bring totally arbitrary suffering and completely unpredictable chaos to all concerned. Where who survives and who does not depends on whether a particular piece of wood floats past at the right time.

The world is like an old trash heap where all manner of garbage has just been collected together and piled up, and now the pile is unstable and it topples over, and once in a while just enough gravity affects something to cause a sudden shift, and a landslide begins as particular specific items are involved and others left out, falling and plummeting to their new doom, until they settle and are stifled and end up in a new meaningless ugly formation of rotten stench.

This is the world we made. This is the opposition to heaven and to the divine order. This is how we wanted our life to be - dangerous and victimizing and unfair. And now most of our lives we spend trying to navigate through an obstacle course, barricades on a battlefield, with pokey nails sticking out and nasty sharp corners and little annoying things that just keep breaking and stuff that wears out and even your tangled shoelaces transpire against you.

The entire world has taken shape as an unpleasant and seemingly dangerous, unstable, and untrustworthy torture chamber, just to piss you off on a Monday and to reach out of the blue with its sudden breakdowns. Most of us then spend most of our lives trying to just "manage" to "survive" in such a strange and meaningless environment, angered when the laws of physics dictate that something else random and badly timed happens, trying to keep our frail bodies from being affected, and trying to scrape by unscathed in what effectively is a harsh and unnatural environment.

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die."

Battlefields are places for thorns and spikes and bombs and armies. We have to find a way to rise above and out of the chaos if we are to reconnect with order, with peace and with divine order. There is no peace to be found amongst the twisted thorns and sharp corners of a meaningless world. Only the reality of Heaven offers a safe and meaningful home. And no-one can experience a sense of holy protection while standing on a landmine, which may or may not take them with it.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying"

"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

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

""Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them."

""I am upset because I see a meaningless world." Insane thoughts are upsetting, and They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world which represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws. I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning."

"The "laws of chaos" CAN be brought to light, though NEVER understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they APPEAR to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look BEYOND them, understanding what they ARE, NOT what they would maintain. It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond."

"Dreams are chaotic BECAUSE they are governed by your conflicting wishes. And therefore they have NO concern with what is true."

"This is the characteristic of the ego's judgments. SEPARATELY, they seem to hold, but PUT THEM TOGETHER, and the system of thought which arises from JOINING them, is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible."

"To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life, all this is arrogance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"Except he judges this as does a child, who does not KNOW what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made."

"In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos."

Everything real is of God, within God. God has no opposite because God is infinite, everywhere, always. It is not possible to leave God. There is nowhere that God is not. Anywhere "else", which must be unreal, does not exist.

"Ego", is nothing but a concept. It's an idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God. Since God is absolute existence, the idea of an ego is "total non existence". Literally, this conceptual idea of total opposition to God DOES NOT EXIST. Non-existence has no existence at all.

The ego is also the idea that you can totally LEAVE God, be OUTSIDE of God, totally separate from and cut off from God, in an entirely separate realm of "existence", in which God is 100% absolutely absent and there is NO LIFE. It's the idea that you can and have left God entirely, have successfully separated from reality, and are now NOWHERE, not existing, having no life, in total oblivion.

This notion, this idea, of total opposition to and separate from God, IS the idea of the ego. But IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Non-existence HAS no existence whatsoever. It is not possible to go there, exist there, be there or live there. We have not done this. Not even in our dreaming. It's a "goal", a "wish", but it is wishful thinking to believe you can accomplish it. God has no exit.

It is literally impossible to be outside of God's being. It is therefore literally impossible to be "inside" or "in" ego. In fact, the idea of ego is the idea of nothing. "The ego" has never lived, it has no life, no mind, no will, no power, no force, no opinion, absolutely nothing. It DOES NOT exist. It is literally NON-EXISTENCE. So all it can ever be to us is a CONCEPTUAL IDEA.

The "tiny mad idea" is the idea that IMPOSSIBLE NON-EXISTENCE actually exists. It is INSANE to believe this. You CAN believe impossible lies if you choose to, but this does not make them REAL, and believing it you MUST BE MISTAKEN.

You could not EVER even in the greatest delusion produce a state of non-existence. You could not separate yourself off from God's being. You could not leave God's reality. You could not produce a state opposite to God that HAS existence. You could not place yourself in a location that you can call "non-existence". Non-existence does not exist. Ever.

But what you DID DO, is you ATTEMPTED to APPROACH this state. You attempted to TRY to leave God. You tried to imagine that you COULD leave God completely, and that you had. And given that this was literally impossible, you WERE very confused, delusional, deceived and mistaken. You HAVE NOT DONE what you think you have done. ("There is no sin.")

It's kind of like, you are inside God still, but you imagine God has "outer walls". And then you imagine that you can push against these walls causing them to stretch. You think that if you push hard enough you will cause the walls to thin out. And that perhaps even in the greatest opposition to life imaginable, you'll be able to actually BREAK THROUGH .... to non-existence. That you'll literally be able to LEAVE God forever. To enter into some state where He DOES NOT exist.

The good news is, you WILL NEVER accomplish this, because all you could possibly do is enter NON-EXISTENCE which DOES NOT exist, so you CANNOT GO THERE. The ego is the idea of that place, that non-existence hell of nothingness, emptiness, lack of God, darkness, absence of light, lifelessness, death. It's a CONCEPTUAL REALM that does not exist. But you have used this concept of an "idea" of "what's it like to totally leave God forever", as a way to TRY TO DO SO.

It should be obvious this attempt is utterly pointless and futile. It cannot succeed. You are guaranteed to never not exist. All that you've "done", is ATTEMPT to leave God. You've pushed up against fictional boundaries, you've stretched the envelope, you've tried to blot God out of you mind so that you THINK you are not still inside of Him, and you've tried to make his outer walls as thin as possible. You reason that if you can ALMOST break through God's perimeter, He will become so thin that you will be able to OVERLOOK Him. And that then you'll be able to see PAST God, TO that non-existent realm. And this is what gives rise to FALSE PERCEPTION.

False perception is the attempt to overlook God in order to NOT SEE God, and instead to ignore and see PAST God TO that non-existent ego realm. And you will then start to IMAGINE that you CAN SEE a realm that doesn't exist. That you CAN SEE things which are IMPOSSIBLE and NOT THERE. And as Jesus clearly and correctly identifies this, this MUST be form a of hallucination. Because you CANNOT SEE what is NOT THERE, but believing you can and are MUST be delusional and hallucinatory.

You CANNOT REALLY SEE non-existence, but you keep trying to. And so you hallucinate A WORLD believing you are SEEING one. There IS NO WORLD, because there is NO OPPOSITE to GOD. The world, the illusory world you made, including Earth, is the insane system of thought produced by those driven mad by guilt. By people who believe they CAN SEE GOD's OPPOSITE. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." Earth is an hallucination by the insane, believing they are or have escaped God.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

The making of this hallucinated world was an attempt to leave God and to produce a state where GOD IS ABSENT. A world OUTSIDE the Kingdom, a world of NON-EXISTENCE, non-life, non-love, non-reality.

"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"

Yet even in this so-called "separate world", it STILL is not outside of God. We DID NOT produce a state of total non-existence. Even this world has a limited degree of seeming reality. It is not "totally not here". And so in this world, which is, let's say, hovering on the outer border between God and non-existence, still within God (a dream of exile within God), the idea of physical death is the FINAL attempt to TOTALLY LEAVE GOD. It's how we try to put as much distance between ourselves and God as possible. To be as opposite to LIFE as possible.

We reason that, in death, we finally can LEAVE the realm where God exists a little. As if we think death is a doorway into the NON-EXISTENT realm of the ego. As if even the fake illusions of life and almost-death of this world, are still not "unlike God enough", and ONLY death can seal the deal and take us TOTALLY into that ego state. To cross over into the realm of non-existence. And as such, when we produce death, we are trying our hardest to LEAVE GOD and be NOTHING LIKE HIM. Death is a total unwillingness to live, to exist, to have anything of God, and to make His Son NOT EXIST. The attempt to do this is of course murderous and suicidal.

EVEN WHEN the body dies, unfortunately we STILL do not succeed in reaching the non-existent ego realm. The Son of God's spirit cannot be affected or killed, so we HAVE TO then carry on and reincarnate. Death FAILS to take us outside of God. Death FAILS to end life. Death is not the end of life, it is merely DENIAL of the fact that you CANNOT DIE because you CANNOT LEAVE THE LIFE OF GOD. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

So think of this world, Earth, as merely A FAILED ATTEMPT to leave God. A failed attempt to completely separate from existence. A failed attempt to die. It does not accomplish what it claims. It cannot succeed in destroying God or His Son. Death is pointless and futile. You might as well just acknowledge you are alive in God and live forever.

"Swear not to die you Holy Son of God, you have made a bargain that you cannot keep."

In this world, "separation from God" or the LEAVING of God, producing a state of NEAR death, near non-existence, is REVERSIBLE, because it is not total. It is not total non-existence or total ego. If it were "absolute separation", it could not be undone. The fact that it CANNOT BE separation proves it is limited in its capacity to accomplish anything. And this is why death can be reversed and resurrection is possible, even physically, because death is NOT TOTAL.

This world does not work. It is a failed attempt. Death is failure. It doesn't do what it claims to do. It will NOT complete the separation or take you outside God. You might as well stop trying to die and just live. You HAVE eternal life, you just keep rejecting it. Denying it. You're an eternal immortal being pretending to suffer and die as if that were ever possible. Pretending you are limited and mortal and affected and sick and suffering. It is futile. It will not bring about an escape from God. And sickness's only purpose is to TRY TO escape from God.

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

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"All forms of sickness even unto death (including physial death), are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

You cannot leave God. You have not left Home. You DREAM that you are outside the Kingdom. You imagine you have placed yourself BEYOND God's walls. You THINK you have succeeded in entering a non-existent lifeless realm where God does not exist. You have not. You are just sleeping and pretending to be exiled.

"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."

The ego DOES NOT EXIST. It's nothing but the CONCEPT of NON-EXISTENCE. It is another word for nothingness, impossibility, absolute void, godlessness, emptiness and absence. It HAS no existence at all. All our dramas are entirely a fictional attempt to BRING IT ABOUT, to get closer to it, to attach to it, to believe YOU ARE IT. This CANNOT BE. You can't do it.

BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN OR HAVE IS DELUSIONAL. It produces hallucinations of worlds that don't exist. Stuff that is NOT THERE, that you only seem to perceive because of your BELIEF in it. Your DESIRE to DREAM OF unrealities and fictional fairtytales. It is WISHFUL THINKING. And "there is no world apart from what you wish." You're not in non-existence, you're IN GOD, PRETENDING NOT TO BE. THERE IS NO WORLD.

Post-atonement awakening reawakens your mind to realize that THERE IS NO EGO, there is no non-existent world, you never DID leave God, you COULDN'T die, nothing has really happened, and ONLY the Kingdom of God exists. It is the end of DENIAL, the end of resistance, and the end of suffering.

"Ego" is nothing, literally. Your ATTEMPT to give "it" power does not give it power. You can't empower nothing. Ego does not exist. All you do is convince yourself that you are willing against yourself and that you are using your power against itself. You merely become divided against yourself and disassociated. All your efforts to be NOT LIKE God seem to manifest "the ego's characteristics", is an attempt to BE LIKE the ego. The non-existent ego. You never BECOME it.

It's just you being confused about what you are and where you are. You are safe in God at all times.

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

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

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."

"You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God."

"denial of Life perceives its opposite"

"your salvation lies in teaching exactly the opposite of everything the ego believes"

"You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you."

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to reality."

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

If you look at the various things ACIM says, it becomes clearer and makes more sense when you don't think of "mind" or "one mind" or "christ mind" as being the highest or deepest level of existence. We need to distinguish that mind IS NOT the same thing as spirit, soul, SON or being.

For example, there is a distinction between MIND and SOUL:

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

For example, the soul USES the mind to create or miscreate. The mind is at its disposal, like a tool, described here as a MEDIUM *through which* the soul/son/spirit expresses itself:

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation."

For example, we're told that YOU (whatever you are) has control OVER the mind. That mind is the mechanism of decision (free will), and so the "what you are" CONTROLS the mind or has POWER OVER it, meaning it is on another "level", causality-wise:

"For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision. "

All of this indicates that you essentially are OUTSIDE OF your mind. Your mind is something you HAVE, not something you ARE. It's something you USE, and it's not the same thing as your soul.

Soul is a synonym for spirit, and a synonym for "Son of God". So too is BEING an aspect of the soul/son/spirit NOT an aspect of the mind. The essence of what you are at the deepest or highest level, is BEYOND the mind, and CONTAINS the mind inside of it. What you ARE, is the soul/son/spirit/being.

Now look at this:

"Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot overcome yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal."

Here, "separation" or "joining" occur WITHIN the realm of your free will, WITHIN the realm of decision, which is WITHIN the mind. Note also that Jesus clearly states your free-will decision is AS POWERFUL AS HIS. That the two of you, EACH, have a free will. Therefore, you both have your own minds.

If you can distinguish these two "levels" within reality, whereby at the highest level there is being/soul/son/spirit, and at the lower level there is MIND, which has IDEAS such as the tiny mad idea, and where ALL ideas are contained INSIDE the mind and do not leave the mind (never affect or determine anything about the soul), then it becomes OBVIOUS that "the ego" is occurring IN THE MIND, NOT IN THE SOUL.

The ego is occurring on an entirely different LEVEL to your soul/spirit/being/son/self.

This means that WHAT you are - a spirit being - is in a larger realm than your MIND, and the ego is never happening in the realm of the spirit. Your SPIRIT does not have a separation idea, the mind does. Your SPIRIT does not develop an ego, the mind THINKS of egotism. Ego is an idea, a thought, in the mind, NOT part of the soul.

Which means... drumroll please... that whether or not there are many SONS, many SOULS, many BEINGS, or many SPIRITS, has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there is EGO or separation. They're on two entirely different levels. How many sons there are, thus, is completely BEYOND the realm of ego, beyond all speculation as to "it means separation", and beyond all ideas of separateness in the EGO sense. The KIND of separateness that we're trying to undo, has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with souls, sons, spirits or beings. We're ONLY trying to correct the MIND, NOT THE SOUL.

The separation is a MIND problem, NOT a soul problem.

And this in turn means, that whether there are many souls/sons, or one, or not, has absolutely nothing to do with the separation or the ego. It is NOT a separation IDEA to suggest that there are many sons, because IDEAS are confined to the MIND, and souls/sons are BEYOND that.

This is why, Jesus is able to tell us in the course that WHAT we are, is permanent brothers, permanent real beings, permanent family, permanent souls, permanent multitudes of spirit beings, and that this fact has NOTHING to do with the ego THOUGHT in the mind.

The ego thought does not come BETWEEN souls, it does not DEFINE their "separateness", it does not CAUSE them to BE separate, and it says absolutely nothing as to the VALIDITY of whether it is NATURAL for there to be many souls in reality. Or therefore, many sons of God. And in fact it also means any statements about "sons of God" plural is absolutely NOT contradictory against ideas of ego separation. They're not even on the same level. Ego is inside the bubble of mind, mind is inside the bubble of being.

"Mind is the activating agent of spirit."

Does not mean mind IS spirit. It's merely a PART of what you are or HAVE.

This is why it's totally OKAY, NATURAL, NORMAL, REAL, and NOT AN EGO THING, that there are MANY SONS OF GOD. And that these son's of God are many in NUMBER *without* it having anything to do with "an ego thing".

God literally has MANY thoughts, in his mind, which is not his being. He literally creates many other BEINGS, and GIVES THEM their own mind, as a reflection of his own nature. Thus God has created many minds, many sons. This is "the family of God".

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit."

The "One Son of God" is a synonym for Creation, meaning ALL of the sonship. Christ is the MIND that is SHARED in communication between God and the Sonship. SONS are the SOULS/spirits/beings that God created as equals forever (brothers, children of God). And each child has a soul/spirit/being and a MIND with which to create.

Sons of God (meaning God's literal direct descendent IN REALITY) is mentioned 82 times, in direct relationship between God as Father and US (plural) as many BEINGS:

"All the Sons of God"

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

"Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION."

"Know then the Sons of God, and you will know all Creation."

"When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God." (AFTER the ego is GONE, no separation left, there are STILL many sons of God sharing talents!)

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy." (AFTER the ego, with no separation left, the SONS OF GOD are STILL PLURAL!)

"Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself and therefore as holy as He is."

God creates permanent BEINGS (plural):

"Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His Creations naturally communicate WITH Him and communicate LIKE Him."

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. "

God creates permanent CHILDREN (plural):

"God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty."

"The Children of Light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is NOT in them." (no ego!)

"The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense of perfect trust."

"Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father." (not only are there multiple sons, there are multiple CREATIONS BY sons - grandchildren of God).

"Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy"

And similarly there is plenty of mention of SOULS (plural), over 120:

"They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"

"It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls." (soul=son)

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son (the combined totality of ALL the sons). 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." (every means PLURAL! - MANY beings, who SHARE everything).

"They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"

"Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the Separated Ones" (not all souls used their minds to believe in ego!)

God additionally also created MANY MINDS, not just one:

"God's memory is in our holy minds"

"How holy are our minds!"

"If you allow yourselves to HAVE in your minds only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it."

"And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His Son" (good example of the ego-rule-breaking logic, that God has many sons who are, IN TOTAL, "His Son").

"Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one." (still many minds, they don't stop being many just because they are ONE. On means IDENTICAL, of like nature or KIND, NOT one in number).

"all the minds which God created one with me"

"Not being in their Right Minds, they turned their defenses from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely." (MULTIPLE right minds)

The evidence is totally overwhelming for anyone willing to be open to this. It does NOT mean "separation" in the ego sense. It does not mean, ISOLATION, or SPECIALNESS. It only means many EQUAL BEINGS WHO SHARE EVERYTHING AND YET ARE INDIVIDUALS.

There ARE many beings, spirits, souls, sons. There ARE many minds that SHARE as the Christ mind. Ego has NOTHING to do with this. It's NOT unnatural. It's not "wrong". It's not "the separation". Individuality is NOT an ego thing. Ego has ONLY anything to do with whether INDIVIDUALS choose to BELIEVE in lies or truth, WITHIN their minds. That's is all.

"And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend, as you extended when you joined."

Some of us like to describe reality as oneness, or perhaps that "its all God", or "non-duality". A state with no separations or differences. But there is a problem with this.

If you take something and you "boil it down" to something else, you end up with this idea of something very simple. Something seemingly singular. Perhaps even a single word which represents it. So maybe we'll say that there is just oneness and that's an entire description of reality.

But the problem is this. If you can't take that boiled-down simplified concept, and arrive at the original state, condition, nature, contents, of reality by building upon it, extending it, then something has become lost in the process. If you START WITH e.g. "God is all there is", you can't logically get to "God has a son".

There is an analogy in the world of data compressionm like when you "zip" some files on your computer. When you try to compress a file, you can do so losslessly or with some acceptable loss. If you want to get every single byte of the file back in its original condition when you decompress it, you have to use a lossless algorithm or process.

Whatever it "boils down to" or compresses to, it has to be detailed enough that when you reassemble the original file, every single detail is still there. If you omit even a tiny bit of "information", you can't get the original file back. How much it can boil down is determined by how much information there is, and relates to the "entropy" of the data. This is why your big image file cannot be compressed below a certain level. It has to maintain enough information to get the original back.

What happens is, if your method of boiling down leaves out some details, omits some information, doesn't fully and accurately represent the original data, then when you go to re-expand the file you don't get back the same data you started with. It becomes "inaccurate." Something has been lost in translation. That means, whatever you boiled it down too was too generalized, too simplified, too basic, and not descriptive enough. Trying to get back the original data is then impossible because too much information is lost. So the simplified file no longer accurately REPRESENTS the "actual reality" of the file.

The same thing happens when we try to describe reality and use concepts or terms which are TOO simple, too basic, and omit too much information. They seem like nice handy symbols but logically they are lacking too much information. You should be able to take a simplified description of reality and derive the full contents of reality from it, by "decompressing it" or reversing the boiling-down process.

You should get back what you started with. So if your description is the "starting point" you MUST be able to fully ACCOUNT FOR every possible detail or characteristic of that reality. And your description of reality in its "most condensed" or most simplified form MUST have enough descriptive information, otherwise you simply cannot end up with what you started with. And when you try to do so, you will produce massive errors.

Particular culprits of this kind of loss of information are conceptual terms such as oneness, "its all God", "God is", "non-duality", "no differences", "no separation" "no self" "unity" etc. These all sound plausibly realistic or representative of the full details about reality, but they're not. They in fact are too generalizing, too basic, and not accurate enough. They leave out some details. And so when you then try to base the description of heaven, for example, on this "premise", on this basic generalization, you CANNOT get back the details of heaven. And in fact you will get back conclusions you did not bargain on.

So if you say ok, it's all oneness, or one thing. Well, now you cannot get a son of God out of that. At all, in any way. Or if you say "its all God", you cannot get out of that an accurate description of why the son of God dreamed and God DID NOT because God has been too mixed in or included in the tiny mad idea. Or if you say it's non-duality and there are no separations, you can't get back the fact God has a Son, yet alone that there is a holy trinity and a bunch of creations.

So there is a big risk, actually an error, in using these really super basic ego-logic-derived terms and concepts to try to describe the reality or God. There is such a thing as something being TOO lacking in detail to accurately describe it. Yes God HIMSELF is one, and reality itself is singular, and there is no opposite to reality, but this unfortunately is not the WHOLE STORY. And so major aspects of the picture become lost in the process of over-simplifying. To the extent that they BLOT OUT key characteristics of reality's true contents.

When you look at what ACIM says about the contents of reality, it is a very different picture to just "its all one" or "there's only God there" or "there are no separations". Yes, there are aspects of reality which ARE only one, or that it IS all just God, but that is only PART OF the story. There are more facts, there is more information needed, and more has HAPPENED in reality because God is a creator. Just the fact God creates results in these ideas being not sufficient to ACCURATELY AND FULLY describe reality.

So if God is to for example have even one son, we cannot JUST say that it's all one because that's now illogical. Yet it IS all one, and that is always true, but it MUST also be true that there is SOME WAY for there to be a son. Otherwise God is not a father or a creator and he is alone and cannot love and there is no extension of life and so on.

In fact the PUREST possible non-duality concept logically ends up with the conclusion that God is dead because He has nothing to give or extend or share or create. It makes him lifeless. You get all kinds of utterly nonsense conclusions deriving FROM that "basis" of what reality IS, when you leave out some facts. So if you start out your reasoning based on things like "its all God" you WILL end up with some horrendously wrong conclusions.

So if you take for example what ACIM says, which is that God has one son, which is also many sons, who have their own sons ad infinitum, and also there is the holy spirit and the angels, apparently in many legions and with a hierarchy, and who knows what else you've created, to describe that ACCURATELY, you can't JUST say "its one thing". A blob is one thing. A state is one thing. A singular entity like God is one thing. But there is MUCH MORE going on in reality than that according to what Jesus tells us. And we should be trusting his word.

So describing it as oneness, or generalizing too far and blotting out the details, or boiling it down so much that the nice soup mixture of various key ingredients becomes just a singular meaningless slush, is actually an error in logical reasoning. It does NOT accurately describe reality or what is happening in reality. It does not accurately describe God's nature either.

It in fact in some ways it can be far better to be MORE DETAILED in describing the nature of God and His Kingdom than it is to be LESS detailed. Just saying "God is" is a premise SO BASIC that it is massively open to huge false conclusions when you try to derive the Kingdom out of it. If God is were the WHOLE story, God would not have a creation at all.

The ego only leans towards less detail because it reasons, if I remove all sense of separations and divisions and multiplicity, I will end up with ONE THING, and this one thing SEEMS like it might most accurately describe the idea of what is all encompassing and infinite. Except that it doesn't. Its a total fail.

It does not take into account that God has a mind, has thoughts, creates beings, or that there are relationships, or that the beings he creates have their own children, minds, and will, or that there are millions of angels for example, or that God doesn't will to be alone. That all goes out the window because the EGO'S conclusion about God IRONS OUT all the details to the point of nothing - the loss of information. It's a great way to become BLIND to what reality is really like.

In the ego's thought system, its sense of logic is that something is either this or that, but not both. This results in differences, and it sees the existence of the separation between those differences as "separation". It even labels that separation as "ego". And then it seeks to get rid of those separations, to attack itself, to remove all separations, in order to end up with "no separation", thinking that this is what it will be like when you have "undone the separation", and must therefore describe God.

And so it reasons, reality is one thing, a oneness, a pool of singularity in which nothing happens and there is no creation. This is only PARTLY correct because it loses too much information. And so the ego cannot accurately describe reality with THIS thought process. You have to become open to thinking outside the box and using God's reasoning in order to describe what God and His creations are like. And since God does have at least one son, it certainly is not a state of logically pure non-duality, nor is it "only oneness", and certainly it's not "just God" because he has ADDED you to Himself.

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN."

If you end up with "it is oneness" or "its all God", and then you decompress that idea to address for example the issue of the making of death, you have to conclude God is death, or God is a body, or God separated from God, or God is a pile of shit, or God went insane, or even God is an illusion that doesn't really exist. Without enough information you cannot "get back" the full picture of what God is, what has happened, what we dreamed, and what has not really occurred, without making some CRAZY false conclusions.

T7H

Section 8 - The Total Commitment

T7H1

Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother, YOU will feel deprived. This is because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally AT TIMES. You CANNOT be totally committed SOMETIMES. Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone FOR YOU. REALITY CANNOT BE PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost awareness of ALL of it.

T7H2

That is the negative side of the law as it operates in this world. But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively. Used negatively, it WILL be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of God. Stated positively, the law requires you only to recognize PART of reality to appreciate ALL of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will NEVER be able to exclude yourself from what you project.

T7H3

When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is YOURS. YOU need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it EXCEPT by giving it. This IS the law of God, and it HAS NO EXCEPTIONS. What you deny you LACK, not because it IS lacking, but because you have denied it in another, and therefore are not aware of it in YOU. Every response you make is determined by what you think you ARE. And what you WANT to be IS what you think you are. Therefore, what you WANT to be determines every response you make.

T7H4

You do NOT need God's blessing, because that you have forever. But you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. But you can very easily escape FROM it, or better, leave it behind. You are NOT there, and that is not YOU. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you HAVE accepted it as you. ALL illusions about the Sonship are DISPELLED together, as they were MADE together. Teach no-one that HE is what YOU do not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you will see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole.

T7H5

You MADE perception, and it MUST last as long as you WANT it. Illusions are investments. They will last as long as you value them. Values are relative, but they are powerful because they are MENTAL JUDGMENTS. The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw ALL investment from them, and they will HAVE no life for you because you have put them OUT OF YOUR MIND. While you include them IN it, you are GIVING them life. Except there is nothing there to receive your gift.

T7H6

The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU. You are unaware of YOUR gift BECAUSE you do not give it. You CANNOT make nothing live, because it cannot BE enlivened. Therefore, you have NOT extended the gift you both have and are, and so you do NOT know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life, because this is NOT the will of your Creator. You CAN do nothing apart from Him, and you DO do nothing apart from him. Keep His Way to remember yourselves, and teach His Ways lest you forget yourself. Give only honor to the sons of the living God, and count yourself among them gladly.

T7H7

ONLY honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of honor and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation which God accords them always, because they are His Beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased. You CANNOT be apart from them, because you are not apart from Him. Rest in His love, and protect your rest by loving. But love EVERYTHING He created, of which YOU are part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift FOR yourself and AS yourself. You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you.

T7H8

One Child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all your minds, and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE BLESSED. They attack BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE DEPRIVED. Give therefore of YOUR abundance, and teach them THEIRS. Do not share their delusions of scarcity, or you will perceive YOURSELF as lacking.

T7H9

Attack could never PROMOTE attack unless you perceived it as a means of depriving you of SOMETHING YOU WANT. But you cannot lose ANYTHING unless YOU do not value it and therefore DO NOT WANT IT. This makes you feel DEPRIVED of it, and by projecting YOUR rejection, you believe that others are TAKING IT FROM YOU. One MUST be fearful if he believes that his brother is attacking him to tear the Kingdom of Heaven from him.

T7H10

This is the ultimate basis for ALL of the ego's projection. Being the part of your mind which does NOT believe it is responsible for ITSELF, and being without allegiance to God, it is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief that YOU have been treacherous to YOUR Creator, it believes that your brothers, who are as incapable of this as you are, are out to TAKE GOD FROM YOU. Whenever a brother attacks another, THIS IS WHAT HE BELIEVES. Projection ALWAYS sees YOUR will in others. If you will to separate YOURSELF from God, that is what you will think others are doing TO you.

T7H11

You ARE the will of God. Do not accept anything else AS YOUR will, or you ARE denying what you are. Deny THIS and you WILL attack, because you believe you have BEEN attacked. But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you as you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God IS understanding this.

T7H12

There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY. Perceive ANY part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have CORRECTLY EVALUATED ALL OF IT. This correction enables you to perceive ANY part of Creation as wholly real, wholly perfect, and WHOLLY DESIRABLE. Wanting this ONLY, you will HAVE this only, and giving this only, you will BE only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are ALWAYS experienced as sacrifices. But the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to YOU. They will always be treasured by God, because they belong to His Beloved Sons who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His.

In ACIM, there is no real devil. However, he does describe our BELIEF in the separation, or the denial of God, as "the devil". It's like putting a label on our authority problem. Since "the ego is part of your belief about yourself", and its a belief in something opposite to God and Christ, the BELIEF can be said to be "evil". It's a belief IN evil, or an attempt to be "anti-christ".

"An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ which constitutes a gap BETWEEN the Christ and what you see."

"All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His Face like a dark veil which SEEMS to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do." Someone whose mind believes in separation from God, or who denies God, or who wants to overthrow the Kingdom, or who tries to attack the unattackable immortality of God, is in effect trying to be evil. They are becoming "a devil", or have a devilish attitude. This attitude is destructive instead of creative, and it also holds within it all the perspectives and behaviors that we might describe as "evil" in the world.

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

So Jesus is saying that our belief in separation from God, in sin, in death, in illusions, in sickness, in bodies etc, which is really our mental illness ie insanity, is "the devil". Another way of saying that is our egotism is the devil. The ego isn't really a real entity either, any more than the devil is. If you are being egotistical, ie "the ego is the idea of selfishness", which includes beliefs in specialness and so on, then you are effectively TRYING TO be evil. This means you're trying to change yourself from christ into the anti-christ.

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." "Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you. Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to Savior; from the devil into Christ."

In effect, if we deny God and reality, we attempt to turn ourselves into devils. We are trying to oppose the Kingdom, to oppose life, to oppose the truth. The word we'd properly use for that is "evil". But evil isn't REAL, in the big picture. It's a mistaken sense of what is real. It's really a state of insanity in which that which is true is swapped with that which is false. The attributes of nothingness are assigned to God, while life's attributes are assigned to death. Hell is thought to be heaven, and heaven is hell.

This also gives rise to what you might call satanism ie a kind of rebellious attitude against God, which wants nothing to do with God. A system of thought which is seemingly unholy and dark and destructive and vengeful etc. A way of believing that is distorted and sick, giving rise to inhumane and insane ways of relating to others. Ways which you might call evil, or unnatural.

But such minds which seem to be "hell bent" are simply mistaken minds that are mentally ill. They are out of touch with reality. And these are the minds of christs, sons of God, who temporarily believe they are not themselves. You can see here Jesus talking about the devil ... ie our belief in hell and separation and death, in terms somewhat similar to those laid out in christianity.

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet, he ATTRACTS men rather than repels them, and they are perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all."

All of these aspects are in fact metaphysically sound and in keeping with ACIM's principles. Devilishness is an attempt to oppose God, to use the power of the mind to actively being in combat with God. This produces "the ego" mindset or belief system in which everything unreal and untrue attempts to TEMPT you to believe it is real and true. And thus temptation is part of the evil, just as the belief in sin is.

This "evil" tries to keep you in hell by tempting you to believe it is heaven, ie reality, and that you want it. And therefore it tries to offer you to gain the whole world and thus lose track of your soul. In being unaware of or not remembering who you really are, in insanity, you then "lose your soul". Of course, souls cannot really be lost.

This egotism is a lie, just as the very notion of evil or ego or devil is al ie. They are NOT real, or even possible. But you can BELIEVE things which are false and this believing IS "the devil at work". It is even said for example that if a person is "a sinner", ie is indulging in some kind of unholy belief or action, then this gives "the devil" permission to enter that person and manipulate them.

This is a rather ... storytelling take.... on a simple principle. ie if you BELIEVE sin is real, then you are "being a sinner", and this makes your mind seem unholy, which means you believe in and WANT destructive beliefs. And that means you see yourself as sinful, therefore deserving of punishment and suffering. And indeed this is an invitation to insanity, which could be easily blamed for a whole host of bizarre behaviors which, in less civilized times, would have been likely described as the activities of "demons" or "the devil."

Basically then the devil is your "ego beliefs". It's you being devilish, in your attempts to reject God. It's your way of rebelling by denying reality and moving into insanity. It is indeed a twisted, backwards, self destructive, self harming, suffering-inducing, attacking, seemingly unholy, tormented, dark, hellish nightmare of an experience. Because that's what minds experience when they are out of touch with God.

"Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

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

So when you deny God, you are rejecting his fatherhood, and therefore rebelling against heaven, and are trying to convince yourself that an opposite to holiness is possible. That evil can exist, or that you can attack or kill, or that suffering and death can happen. These are beliefs in sin being real. That punishment is inevitable.

People who believe in such seemingly evil things, are in effect "sinners". But not in the sense that they are REALLY sinners, because they are really just mistaken. Their mental illness is just confusion about who their father is and who they really are. Anyone in touch with the love of christ in them couldn't possibly believe any of this. Jesus does refer to sinners a little.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"The magic of the world can SEEM to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it IS. For sin is a REQUEST for death, a wish to make this world's foundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself."

"Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to sanity."

"To the world, justice and VENGEANCE are the same, for sinners see justice ONLY as their punishment, perhaps sustained by someone ELSE, but NOT escaped. The laws of sin DEMAND a victim."

"Love is NOT understandable to sinners. BECAUSE they think that justice is SPLIT OFF from love, and stands for something else. And thus is love perceived as weak and vengeance strong."

Being "a sinner" is just a temporary state of being mistaken. And mistakes can be corrected without punishment. This is why sin does not have to be punished, even though the ego/devil would say otherwise.

"We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are. And lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

"No-one is "punished" for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners."

We are not really sinners, but we BELIEVE we are. And that is our attempt to turn ourselves from Christ into the anti-christ or devil. It is an attempt to make an ego of ourselves, to try to replace the soul. And in this belief system we make a world of hell and attack it and destroy it in attempting to enact the wages of sin. Sins that we think we are guilty of that deserve nothing short of death. This is all a mistaken state of mind and nothing more. A simple

insanity that needs healing. And it also means that in the big picture, THERE IS NO EVIL. There is no ego, and there is no devil. There is no sin and there is no death.

"What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

What we call evil is nothing but the seeming LACK of love, or the seeming absence of light. It's just a distortion of mind. It isn't really dark any more than darkness can make light go away. It's just a lack of light. It's just confusion. Those who seem evil are not really evil, but they may seem that way. They are just mistaken. What they believe is not true. And they do believe they are sinners, which is a call for love and forgiveness.

Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.

An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.

Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.

The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."

When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.

Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.

All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.

The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.

When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.

The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.

It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.

The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.

Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.

As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.

The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.

The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.

Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."

Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.

THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).

To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."

Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."

We often talk about the versions of the course, the editing, whether all the facts are included etc. And then on top of that we try to understand its metaphysical model, its concepts and ideas, and argue over which model is the right one.

But what we should perhaps really be more concerned with is whether true information has been lost. ie whether we have the whole truth represented in word form, or whether key detail has been lost.Information is ... the minimum amount of detail that is needed to represent something with perfect logical accuracy.

In its simplest form, for example, let's say there are two squares next to each other. One is black and one is white. You can distinguish that there are two, because they contrast to each other. This contrast is information. If you were to, for example, color both squares white, you cannot tell whether its one square or two squares. Information has been lost.

In information theory, which is used for such things as data compression algorithms for example, and also in science, there is something called entropy. Entropy is a measure of the absolutely minimum possible size that the information can be, in order to fully and accurately represent something.

When you have files on your computer, or images for example, you can "compress" them. Usually this is based on representing larger repeated things with smaller symbols. You can get back exactly what you started with by "de-compressing" it based on the symbols. But this can only be done up to a point. There is a threshold at which you CANNOT compress the files any smaller, without losing information. All the "information" needed to fully describe the image must be retained in some form.

With images for example, the jpeg file format is not an accurate representation of the image. It LOSES ACCURACY as a trade-off for making the files smaller. The more accuracy it loses, the smaller the representation becomes, the blurrier the image is. It starts to develop artifacts which are visual errors. From that "overly reduced" data, you CANNOT get back the original full fidelity and quality of the original image. Key accuracy of information is LOST.

When we conceive of truth, when we try to describe reality, or talk about God and his creation etc, these lofty and rather abstract metaphysical ideas, the temptation is to make the representation of that truth, the symbol of that truth, be as SMALL AND SHORT as possible. We somehow think that less is always more, and that "simpler" must be more true. This is NOT true. TOO FEW words is INACCURATE.

When an accurate representation of something is reduced SO much, it has to in fact LOSE very important detail. The information becomes blurred, vague, generalized, overly abstract, and really does NOT contain the subtle nuances that are actual aspects of the whole truth. It may SEEM like it represents the whole of the truth but it doesn't. It's an APPROXIMATION, like a jpeg image, which is "sort of close" to being accurate and gives you some idea of it, but IS NOT accurate.

Examples of this happening include "reductionistic" statements like "Everything is God." Well now. For some reason that sounds all mystical and special and lofty. But, such a vague statement lacks enough detail to be accurate. You cannot GET BACK the full story when you BASE logical conclusions on this information. The reconstruction of the whole story is corrupted.

You could say for example, well, it seemed like the Son of God feel asleep and dreamed of death. But ... since ITS ALL GOD.... THIS MUST MEAN, logically, that God HIMSELF fell asleep and dreamed of death. That is absolutely what it implies. You can argue that "no it doesn't" but all you're doing is trying to pretend that it is accurate because the BS alarms are going off to indicate errors. The fact is that the information that's given is NOT ENOUGH, it DOES NOT accurately represent the whole truth, and it's too vague.

MORE WORDS IS BETTER! Or perhaps we can say, you want ideally the fewer number of words which FULLY AND ACCURATELY represent the whole truth. I you can be sure this is not going to be 3 words or even 20 words.

So yes, even in terms of thinking about abstract spiritual stuff, even in terms of oneness, god being all, everything is mind, son and father blending into each other, going beyond words and concepts... all this stuff.... when you are USING LANGUAGE and logical constructs to THINK about it..... and you strip SO much away that you start losing vital information, going BEYOND the entropy threshold, you are literally turning a detailed and nuanced truth into a blob of mush and mud and blurriness and meaninglessness. Because you think that is what spirituality is like .... this oneness thing... must mean, we only need to use one word. Not even close.

There IS an entropy limit beyond which you cannot go, in logical reasoning, in discussion, in theorizing, in metaphysics, in conceptualizing reality, where if you DO go beyond it, you have chopped out SO much information that you're not even really talking about the whole truth anymore. You're making a vague approximation which is NOT accurate enough. And it is therefore MISELADING. The more you push it towards eradicating as many words as possible, down to like "everything's God"... you have seriously censored significant major truths.

If for example I have a flower with 6 petals and I tell you that I have "a flower", but I don't tell you that it has 6 petals, in your mind you may envisage a flower with 8 petals. You are wrong. I did not give you enough information to represent the whole truth about what I have. There is information loss. I have been TOO VAGUE. I have reduced the accuracy of the representation of truth BEYOND the limit of information entropy, and have gone into the realm of a LACK OF TRUTH. A loss of precision.

It is funny then that when we talk about "its all one thing", we are actually LACKING truth, while pretending to talk about truth. We are not being accurate because we are not giving enough information. In fact we're trying to SPIRITUALIZE WORDS by having the fewest words possible. Less words is not more spiritual! In fact less words can be corrupting and destructive and a complete misrepresentation of the truth.

There are some people that go so far with their stripping away of any notion of anything informational - which usually means anything separate-sounding - any contrast or delineation or division or any notion of a "something" or two of anything.... that they enter a logical realm of total abstract bullshit. It devolves into meaningless drivel with specialness all over it. Ego loves to do this because it thinks a count of one is more spiritual than a count of two. It's concept of truth is flawed.

If for example it is true that God has at least one son. And if we say that this son IS God. And that is ALL that we tell you. If we tell you that is the WHOLE truth. Then someone is going to think ok.... the son IS God, so.... when the son fucks up and dreams of death and imagines murder, this must be God doing it right? Sure thing. God is now dreaming of death. We weren't specific enough or accurate enough.

It's a nice idea to imagine that God is this total 100% abstraction which is SO abstract that there is NO detail to it, no properties, no structure, no qualities, no characteristics, nothing. Just a nice blob of existence sitting there all by itself. That is NOT an accurate enough representation using words and symbols and language. It is a massive information loss. And God DOES in fact have properties, qualities, a "nature", a premise, law, mind, thought, causation, will, love, etc. The attempt to reduce truth to NOTHING, is an attempt by the ego to destroy the truth!

We HAVE to understand that God is for example infinite and absolute. We have to properly specify what God'e nature actually is before we can start basing conclusions on it. If you knew that God is causal and a creator, you would also know that God MUST have creations which MUST in turn have creations. The logic in this is utterly impeccable. But you can't see that or come to that conclusion is you DON'T specify that God is causal, or that his creations have to inherit through extension, or that he is a creator at all.

So when you become too vague, thinking it is spiritual, thinking you are representing truth more, thinking that "its oneness" is the most spiritual thing anyone has ever conceived of. ... it is not true. You CANNOT go that far into the loss of information and represent the whole truth using language and logic. But people are doing it all the time. "It's all God" ... well, sort of... but no. It's not. God has creations. "God is everything" .. well.. sort of, but no. God is not an illusion. Did you specify that? You need to.

So in terms of the editions of the course and the editing and the words in the book and the repetition of concepts and ideas and whether it contains ALL distinct information, fact, accuracy, precision and is "complete" informationally, you really need to think more in terms of ..... is there a full and accurate representation of the whole truth here. Is there ENOUGH words to represent the whole message. And that does NOT mean there should be too FEW words OR more than is needed. More words is not always an improvement either.

We might ask if something has been LOST, vital information, which is not repeated, which is missing, and that without it the picture is incomplete. It doesn't matter so much if the same ideas are presented many times, or if the concepts taught are built upon by others, etc. We need the whole accuracy and full scope of the truth, enough description to leave no loopholes, but we don't necessarily need 550,000 words to do that. But what matters is when you become SO reductionistic that you chop out VITAL information and disappear up your own arse.

So perhaps we can steer away from all these super-short ultra-vague trying-to-be-mystical statements of vagueness, and instead realize that you HAVE to use enough words in order to fully communicate an idea. You can't JUST say "God is" at this level and expect someone to understand that this DOESN'T imply that God is a piece of dog poop on the sidewalk. A more accurate, more detailed definition is needed, to close loopholes and stop logical errors from happening. This is why ACIM is presented as rather a lot of words, and not just one.

The course tries to represent a picture of the whole truth. It tries to talk about God and his nature. It doesn't do it in 2 words. It does it with a great many words because Jesus knows that you CANNOT represent the nuances of reality in such a small number of symbols. There is a certain level of entropy to this. You can't properly represent God, creation, kingdom, sonship, holy spirit, souls, your creations, eternal life, immortality, etc... in two words.

It has nothing to do with a person's inability to "grasp the truth of oneness" either. No one is grasping the truth of oneness by using the word oneness in a sentence. Oneness actually encapsulates rather a lot of details which you might not think are a part of it. Oneness doesn't forego God having a son. But it implies that there is no son at all. That is wrong. It is not an accurate representation and not enough information. The son is literally lost in that formulation.

Nor is someone being "all spiritual" just because they talk about God as if he's SO abstract that you can't say anything about him accurately at all. We might as well say that God is so beyond everything that you can't even say that God is beyond everything. What then? If you're GOING to use words, and language, and logical arguments, you CANNOT REDUCE IT beyond a certain point and expect to be accurately representing it.

God is ... much more than... just oneness.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

Ok. It's time to get honest and stop pretending to be dead!

You are an immortal being, created by God to live forever. You cannot change or be changed, and nothing can EVER happen to you. This is a FACT.

This means you cannot be hurt, damaged, attacked, broken, malfunctioning, decay, degrade, have a dis-ease, be sick, suffer, transform, change, be modified, grow old, or in any way be altered. You are PERMANENT AND ABSOLUTE This is a FACT.

Therefore you must still be exactly the same ORIGINAL SELF that God created, exactly as you were when he created you, and you must not have changed WHATSOEVER. You are STILL as God created you, immortal and unchanged and invulnerable. You have never turned into anything else. This is a FACT.

So what the fuck is this "sickness"? Anything which seems to be so-called "sick" CANNOT BE TRUE. It cannot even exist. How can it be true that you are immortal, and at the same time have it be true that you are a suffering dying self? How can they both be true of you? How can you die if you are immortal? How can you ever be sick? The sickness cannot be true and must be an illusion and a deception. This is a FACT.

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion."

"So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real."

Jesus is stating in ACIM that you are an immortal eternal being with eternal life, endless and unassailable, PRETENDING THAT YOU CAN DIE. You are playing a game of pretending that you are mortal in a suffering body, to cover up who and what you are. To hide the TRUTH! YOU ARE FAKING YOUR DEATH. You are literally using the body as a DISGUISE to make it look like you are dying when you're not. All the while underneath you are totally powerful and perfect still.

"Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God's beloved Son for what must die?"

You use the body as a decoy, to cover up who you are and hide your true nature as the Perfect Christ. You attack the body with your mind and make it show up as suffering, as a victim. And then you use this to accuse others and the world of causing you to suffer against your will, hiding the fact you put it there on purpose. You are literally trying to fake your own death and to make it look like someone else made it happen. So that it can seem that "you died" for reasons beyond your control.

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

"The sick remain accusers."

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."

So when you are sick, you are lying. When you are sick, you are deceiving yourself and others. It means you are insane and do not know who you are, so you're trying to be something you're not. When you are sick, you are pretending that you are fallible, weak, vulnerable, capable of suffering, diminished, threatenable, hurt, broken, having lost your peace, unfairly treated, victimized, abused and destroyed by anyone or anything EXCEPT yourself. It is a form of irresponsibility, in which you try to claim that death HAPPENS TO YOU AGAINST YOUR WILL.

YOU CHOOSE to make yourself and your body seem to be sick. So that you can DENY that you are NOT SICK. The sickness is a deception and a lie, and cannot be true. Therefore it MUST be an illusion - something appearing to be something it is not. It cannot BE a real sickness, it must be fake. Because you cannot really BE sick ever. The sickness is your attempt to DENY that you are immortal. Death is you being IN DENIAL that you STILL have eternal life. This is a FACT.

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make"

"For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness"

"If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it."

"Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

What are you doing? Why are you going into states of sickness and suffering? Why are you holding up the body as an attacked picture of crucifixion, trying to demonstrate first of all that you "are" the body, and that secondly you have been attacked? Why are you using the body as a picture held up to your brother to accuse THEM of causing it? Or to accuse the world of causing it? When all along YOUR OWN MIND puts the effects into the body and then shifts the blame to someone else?

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

You are FAKING BEING SICK. You are faking that you can even be CAPABLE of suffering. That you can even CHANGE or be changed. You are not even changeable. You are so permanent and endless and will live forever, such that you couldn't even really be sick if you wanted to. It cannot be "who you are" that is sick. Even if your mind becomes sick and takes it out on the body, pretending it is a body, and that the body is dying, your soul is STILL not sick.

"But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."

YOU CAN NEVER BE SICK. YOU CAN NEVER DIE. YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So what's with this fake game of "poor-me I'm dying"? Why are you playing this game and putting on this fake show? Who are you trying to convince? Why are you making yourself out to be a punished victim, weakened and tormented, disabled and disfigured, diseased and decayed, ripe for the picking and ready to die? Who are you trying to FOOL? Why are you so convinced not only that you ARE a body, but that you deserve to be sentenced to death?

You cannot be guilty because the fact is that you cannot even sin. Sin is the idea that something REAL can be attacked. But "nothing real can be threatened". Reality is NOT attackable. Reality is PERMANENT AND CHANGELESS. "Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all."

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

Nothing real can ever change. YOU are real and can never change. GOD is real and can never change. Your brothers are real and can never change. Nothing real EVER changes because it is ABSOLUTELY FIXED. So you cannot sin against or attack or destroy anything real. That means you cannot be sinned against, nor can you sin, or become sinful. You cannot stop being innocent because "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." You are PERMANENTLY INNOCENT.

So the idea that you have become evil, have attacked God, are unworthy of love, have committed a crime, cannot be forgiven, deserve to be punished, should suffer, are guilty, should be destroyed etc, is completely unfounded. It's all based on a lie that you even CAN DO these things. You can't. You can never attack or hurt or damage anything real. And anything which SEEMS like it can be attacked or hurt or damaged CANNOT BE REAL.

Bodies show up with their seeming "proof of sin", with their images blasted in your face, with their testimony to your senses, showing you pictures of destruction and crucifixion, to try to tempt you to believe that this is a FACT. That sickness is TRUE. That it's HAPPENING NOW. But this cannot be true at the same time as you being immortal. You cannot be immortal and mortal at the same time. How can the sickness be real? How can the body even be real? How can a person ever actually BE anything less than perfect?

Either you are immortal and you cannot die, or you have NEVER been immortal and you are ALWAYS dead. You either have eternal life and are permanent and absolute, or you are merely some relative dream fiction temporary body story that begins and ends, which is not life and is a dream of death.

"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

YOU CANNOT DIE. So why are you pretending that you ARE?

This is the whole issue of the separation from God. Immortal endless beings trying to force themselves to be mortal. Trying to DENY that they are STILL immortal. Pretending they have brought an end to the immortality and that life has been stopped. That you have CHANGED what God created to last forever, and have thus overthrown his will. That you are more powerful than God and have been able to destroy the indestructible.

Let's stop today playing this game of death, playing at dying, playing at suffering and being sick, playing at being guilty and unworthy, playing small and little and weak and helpless, playing at being victimized and paralyzed and struck down and attacked and helpless. We are POWERFUL BEINGS. We can NEVER DIE. When will the game of dying end? When will we bring an end to the illusion of death and proclaim that THERE IS ONLY ETERNAL LIFE?

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"These are specifically first that the body is for attack, and also that you ARE a body. Without this, sickness is completely inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him, you will KNOW that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment OF you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is. Seen undisguised it is intolerable. Without protection it could not endure. Here is all sickness cherished, but without the recognition that this is so. For when an unforgiveness is not recognized, the form it takes seems to be something else. And now it is the "something else" that seems to terrify. But it is not the "something else" that can be healed. It is not sick, and needs no remedy. To concentrate your healing efforts here is but futility. Who can cure what cannot be sick and make it well?"

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself." "I will awaken from the dream that I

Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

And know I am the perfect Son of God."

"The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. "

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

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

"The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is POSSIBLE. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of YOUR immortality." "Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it."

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

When something is logical, you start with a premise, and then as the nature of this premise "extends", it produces logical conclusions. The conclusions that will come from this premise are really established in the premise itself. The limitations or scope of the premise determines what can come from it, and what comes from it is completely in accord with its starting point.

"Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed. Their resemblance lies in their power as foundations. Their difference lies in what rests upon them. Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which one lives."

When you use logic, and you arrive at a logical conclusion, what you're looking for is consistency, or the lack of contradiction within the logical system. If what you end up with seems to correlate to what you started with, and there was no obvious "nonsense" creeping in, then you can conclude that your logical conclusions are valid. You won't see any sign of contradiction so you'll consider the conclusion to be "correct". It will seem that the logic "makes sense".

What's happening is you're finding an internal consistency within the system, set up by the premise you started with. And each step you took in your reasoning did not violate the rules of the logic system. So whatever conclusions you ended up with seemed to make sense, based on what you started with. And this gives you a notion of things making sense, being valid, even being correct.

The problem is that the premise itself has absolutely everything to do with what you end up with. The conclusions that come from it, if you follow the logical steps carefully and impeccably, are really "automatic". If you start at a given starting point, you WILL end up at an ending point which is in harmony with the starting point. And you won't be able to come to a "false conclusion" if you reason it through carefully.

But if you start off on the wrong foot, if you begin with an assumption, of your premise is entirely wrong to begin with, what will happen? You'll still make logical steps, you'll still seek out internal consistency, you'll still look for that sense of "it all seems to fit together", and you'll still draw conclusions which seem to be in accord with the premise you started with. And you'll conclude "it makes sense" even. But the conclusions you come to, if you start off on the wrong foot, will be actually false. Even though they'll seem correct.

So you can be logical, and be wrong. If you start out wrong, you will only get something wrong at the other end. If you begin with a lie, you will end up with a lie, but it will be a logical lie which makes sense within the context of the whole system.

Thought systems work the same way, whatever the system is based on determines what can come from it, and only that can come from it and nothing else, unless you want to be contradictory. Yet if you start out with a system based on a lie, you will end up with lies. The lies will seem to make sense and even will seem "true" in that they seem to "add up" without contradicting the starting point, but they will still be false in the big picture. But if you believe them, you will be trapped and stuck, while believing you are free. And that is false perception.

This is the problem with the ego thought system. In the really big picture, the ego's system is a "small picture", and it is out of context, and it does not start with the whole truth. It is not beginning with something that is actually really true. It is starting out on the wrong foot, such as the belief that separation is true, or sin is real, or the impossible is possible, or death is life, or something real can be threatened etc.

When you start out with something ultimately false like that, you will produce an ENTIRE logical "system", where your reasoning will progress completely "logically" from the start to the end. And you will end up with conclusions which seem consistent. The conclusions will even seem to make total sense, IF the premise is true. But in the big picture, if it is recognized that the premise was false to begin with, then even though the conclusions are logically consistent, they are still false conclusions.

So the ego starts off on the wrong foot, on an assumption which is wrong. It starts with the belief that separation is possible, or sin is real, and then begins a progression of seemingly natural logical conclusions. If separation is real, then it must be true (consistent) that bodies are real. Then if bodes are real, it must be true that anything bodies experience is real. And if their experiences are real, then death is real. etc. That's a natural logical progress and completely impeccable logic. But the conclusion is insane because the whole "system of thought", the system of logic, began with a false premise.

When you start with a true premise, such as that God is infinite and permanent and immortal, there are once again logical progressions which come from this. If you follow the steps and start to draw conclusions based on that, and if you are careful to be consistent and not contradictory, you will end up with natural conclusions. And these conclusions will make sense, and seem valid, and they ALSO WILL BE TRUE. If you start with truth, you will end up with truth. And so whether or not the result is true or false, depends on whether the premise is true or false. And what you get out of the system as a natural logical conclusion or outcome, is set up in its starting point.

When the starting point is God, the natural logical outcome of God is the creation of the Kingdom. It's not that God randomly decides to create immortal beings, it's that the whole system just functions that way, truth goes in at the start, progressions of logical consistency occur, and you automatically get creation out the other end. And because you started with immortality, you end up with immortality. "God is but love, and therefore so am I." Such conclusions therefore are not only making sense, they are also TRUE.

"The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this world is. You may have carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth."

When you begin a thought process/system on a lie or illusion, you will end up with illusory lies which seem to make sense but are false. This means the total absence of REASON, which is the absence of sanity, because the whole system of thinking started out insane. When you start out the thought process/system with sanity and truth, you end up with a SANE conclusion. This is what ACIM refers to as REASON. The reasoning is LOGICAL, just as the ego's reasoning is logical, but it starts with sanity so ends with sane conclusions.

Just because something seems extremely logical, does not mean it is true. And this is a BIG problem for a lot of people studying ACIM. If for example you start out with a premise that e.g. God created the world, and you do not challenge this premise, the ENTIRE course will now be interpreted to try to "fit" it into that premise. And every conclusions drawn will not challenge that premise.

In order to uphold the premise that God created this world, a LOT of adjustments have to be made to the course's meanings, in order to produce consistency and a lack of contradiction. And this can lead to what seems like a consistent picture, but it is also completely wrong. Because it started out with a belief that is completely mistaken and unfounded, in light of God's nature.

A massive collection of CONSISTENT logical conclusions will be made based on it. And all of these conclusion together will form the appearance of what seems like a completely consistent internal coherence. It will STILL all seems to "fit together". A clear "picture" will form. There won't appear to be any contradictions. And any steps necessary to keep the premise valid will be made, regardless of the extent to which that means changing the meaning of the course.

Everything it says will be interpreted through that lens and filter. And the person will end up with a very elaborate, consistent, highly polished, internally supportive, self un-contradictory, and seemingly highly sensible set of conclusions. And it will all seem TRUE because it seems to make sense. And they will marvel at the seeming beauty of its logical harmony. BUT, the entire thing will be bullshit, because it all starts out with a false premise. And so the entire system of thought is completely mistaken. Yet it is regarded as truth because of its consistency.

You have to therefore be careful that your reasoning begins with something which is absolutely true. You need to understand God's nature first. And when you reason based on the truth, you will end up with truthful and valid and consistent answers, which are correct. You can't start with the world and try to reason backwards to find the truth. You have to start at the beginning of the system.

You have to have an awareness or grasp of what the absolute truth IS FIRST, before you can even proceed to think about anything. If you set off on the wrong foot, every conclusion you come to will be potentially false. But most of us will start out with false conclusions and assumptions and not question them, resulting in more false conclusions. Because we're starting out exploring all this with our egos, which has taken a whole bunch of assumptions as true, and this has not yet been questioned.

We have to find out first what the premise of our entire thinking is, whether we have started out on the wrong foot or not. And for that you have to ask yourself, what is the ultimate truth really like? What is God like? What is his nature? What IS the ultimate absolute premise? Where DID everything actually start, and what is the logical nature of that premise? Because from God, everything real proceeds as a logical system of thought, and it proceeds only according to His nature, and nothing can come from it which is unlike its starting point. So you have to be REALLY clear about God's nature before you can reason anything correctly.

When you can understand what God is like, you can start to draw truthful conclusions. And if you are careful, you can be GUARANTEED that these conclusions will be true. But if you do not understand God's premise, or you have difficulty being impeccable with your logic, then you will come to false conclusions because you'll be starting out with something false. And yet these conclusions will see true to you and make sense, even though they are mistakes or errors in reasoning. And you can end up with a whole lot of "it makes sense" even if you start out with lies.

This is happening A LOT in ACIM circles because many students are not yet in a position to grasp the nature of God's system, the premise of reality and the one truth. And so most of us are struggling to come to terms with what the conclusions are, yet alone being able to grasp where it all started or what it's all based on. And a lot of time is spent trying to uncover or learn about the premise.

If you return to the highest possible starting point, the pre-separation system, and you look at how God functions, and then you begin to reason out what CAME from that premise, and if you do so impeccably logically, you WILL come to true conclusions. But if you are mistaken about God, you will be mistaken in everything you conclude.

Those true conclusions will not only show you the things God COULD do, it will also show you what he COULD NOT do. What CAN come from Him, and what cannot. What He would will, and what he would not. And thus what you are, what your nature is, and what you are capable of in reality. When you do that, you'll see why the ego's system is entirely a FALSE premise, and EVERYTHING that comes from it will be false. And that includes the attempt to oppose God's premise, to overthrow the Kingdom, to make another world (including Earth), and why Earth CANNOT have come from God due to its nature being a complete contradiction of God's nature.

God does not make contradictions because He is logically consistent. For Him, heaven is the natural outcome of His premise. And Heaven is the ONLY outcome of His premise. Nothing else CAN come from it because it is rooted in truth. And because of His nature, Heaven HAD to be created. It's in God's nature to extend His logical premise to produce The Kingdom. Which is why it has always existed.

Earth, which is OPPOSITE to heaven in *EVERY* way, CANNOT COME FROM GOD. Its nature is opposite to His premise. It does not function like Him. It does not begin with the premise He begins with. And it cannot be a natural outcome of His thought system. If He were to create it, in addition to creating Heaven, that would mean two entirely different and opposing outcomes can result from a single premise. This is logically IMPOSSIBLE regardless of what the premise is. Each premise produces ONE conclusion in accord with it, not two different ones.

God could only create one or the other, and which one is set up in his beginning nature. Since Earth is opposite to Heaven, God could NOT have created it, otherwise He would have to have STARTED OUT with a split mind and be opposing himself. He would have to be fundamentally contradictory, as a premise, in order to PRODUCE two contradictory outputs. He could only Create ONE or the other, not both, and they cannot both exist or "be one" because of their contradictory natures. If Earth is real, heaven does not exist at all.

God is NOT contradictory, so He can ONLY produce ONE outcome. That outcome is HEAVEN, and Earth is therefore NOT OF GOD, and is not based on truth or reality. And since God is real, Earth therefore, logically, cannot be real. And since only what God creates CAN exist, Earth does not exist at all. And if God is permanent, Earth cannot be permanent. And if God exists, having Created ONLY heaven, Earth cannot exist at all. This is why "there is no world" and God did not create it.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates MUST be eternal AS HIMSELF" is a logical statement. Since Earth is NOT eternal, it must have come from a NON-ETERNAL premise, and since God is eternal, it cannot have come from HIS premise. And because HIS premise is true, it must have come from a FALSE premise. And therefore Earth is an illusion, and never will it be His one outcome.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

You hear often that 'the world' as a term becomes substituted with terms like "its a dream", "its an illusion", "its not real", "we made it up", "its a projection" etc.

But, this doesn't really grasp what an illusion is. It's not just some word you can replace other words with.

The definition of an illusion is something appearing tobe something it is not, designed to deliberately deceive and block awareness of the truth. It is a device that lies to you and tricks you into believing something that isn't true. But in order to even KNOW that it is an illusion, you have to have enough awareness of what it's like to NOT be deceived by the illusion. You have to be aware of how the illusion works, what it's actually 'doing' to portray an appearance, how it is distracting you, and basically to 'see through it'.

Overlooking illusions is forgiveness. This means being aware of all of the 'tricks' that the illusion attempts to perform, but seeing through them and past them and not being fooled by them. And this is an entirely different state of consciousness and awareness, than to simply stay IN the ego illusion and start labeling it 'illusion'. That's like just switching out the term "planet earth" for "planet illusion". That doesn't really reveal HOW it deceives you.

So the big problem we have is that we do NOT realize how the illusion is an illusion. We do not recognize it AS an illusion. We do not see through it, or past it. We are fooled by it. We are made unconscious by it. It's like being hypnotized or put into an unconscious stupor, in which we take the illusion seriously, at face value, and listen to its appearance as if that is reality. Mistaking an illusion for reality is our only mistake.

Here's an example of an illusion. You are in the dark. The room is unlit. In the room there are objects. One of the objects you touch and it feels really strange and it seems to move as you touch it, and this makes you suddenly afraid that there's maybe a person in the room, and you scream. So you've fallen for the illusion, the impression, that there is something serious and frightening happening. But what happens when you switch the light on, suddenly you have MORE INFORMATION. You are now aware of more parts and pieces that you couldn't even see before, and were not aware of at all. Suddenly you realize that the thing you touched was in fact just a large house plant which you brushed up against, and it's completely safe and not scary at all. You feel relieved, right?

This is what it means to see through the illusion. It means, you have seen the truth, which has revealed to you, by shining a light of increased awareness, ALL of what is present, rather than only a narrow context or portion of what is present. When things are taken out of context they become a nightmare. Meaning becomes distorted. Reality becomes disjointed. We start to hallucinate that things might be happening that aren't really happening. This is how someone experiences insanity - losing touch with the bigger picture and becoming fixated on something whose relationship to real meaning has been distorted and blocked, such that you can no longer tell what anything really is and everything becomes frighteningly animated and motivated by bizarre nonsense forces that you don't understand.

The physical world, in the form that it appears, is an illusion. This does not mean that the physical world of form is being seen 'correctly' and fully, by seeing objects as they are. Or like, you become more aware of how all the objects contain beauty or contain God etc. That isn't seeing through the whole illusion. What you do not realize, because you have forgotten what it means to be NOT DELUDED AT ALL, is that the physical world of forms is, in its entirety, designed to block and distract away from the awareness of the presence of God. Even if you awaken to some 'stage' in which you see God in all things, if you are still seeing forms you are still deluded by the illusion.

"Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give." - ACIM - "T-22.III.4."

Also.. "T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

What you may not realize is, this entire physical universe is a holographic projection, designed SPECIFICALLY and INTENTIONALLY, to distort and block all trace of the nature of God. It is deliberately designed to obfuscate, distort, give an opposite appearance to, and completely make it appear, that God does not exist at all. The form that it takes is DELIBERATELY designed by the ego to show you something that looks nothing like God, has no properties of God, completely diffuses and blocks God's character, and makes you completely BLIND to God. The body's eyes then can only see this form, the appearance of the absence of God, and cannot see past it TO God. The entire physical universe is a DECEPTION!

The way this works is, every 'form', every object, presents to your awareness the idea that all things are different. It presents the idea that all objects are separate from each other, none of them share anything at all including the same space or time, none of them truly are equal or perfectly alike, and all of them are in conflict. Does that sound like a picture of God? No. That's intentional. Form, the form of error, was deliberately made make God not apparent, and to make it seem to your awareness that God does not exist at all anymore. That's the ego's wish. That's why it made this illusion.

So the 'illusion' is, that forms present an image to you which is not the truth, which is extremely deceptive, and which you fall for easily. For example, consider problems. The ego presents to you a specific problem which is usually limited to a handful of forms. It tells you that only these forms are a problem, so you need to solve it. You solve it, but this has no effect on the 50 billion other problems in the world. The ego's solution to problems only seems to apply to a tiny portion of the world, and has no transfer value to other problems.

The ego absolutely hates the idea of it being possible to solve ALL problems with ONE solution - that is the Holy Spirit's attitude. It does not want that at all. So it keeps you focussed on looking at objects as being very DIFFERENT to each other. A dog is not a cat. A car is not a house. An attack by a coworkers is not an attack by a neighbor. The ego makes it all APPEAR different and separate. THAT is how it deceives you. Because in truth, there is only ONE problem and ONLY solution resolves the entirety of it completely.

The abstraction needed to SEE and to RECOGNIZE that all forms are THE SAME THING, the same illusion, takes some significant forgiveness and awakening. Being able to look at all forms and recognize, every single one of the deceptions and temptations that every one of these forms is trying to SHOW me, to try to convince me that they are TRUE, is the SAME LIE, and they are all using the SAME STRATEGY. Ultimately, the entire world is the same ONE illusion, presented by the ONE ego, using ONE set of seemingly diverse and apparently highly fragmented deceptions. Each time that you fall for one of its deceptions and think, hey, yes, this illusion is real and this problem is separate from others, and this object is not one with other objects, and that person is separate from this person etc... that's you FAILING to see through the illusion. That's you FALLING FOR THE TRICK!

So yes, there is a way of seeing, which doesn't just overlook illusions but which is AWARE ONLY OF GOD. There is a way of recognizing everything that is false for what it is - false. There is a way of no longer believing a single thing that any appearance of object or form or separation or expression of fragmentation/multiplicity suggests to you in any way. There is a way of COMPLETELY IGNORING what the senses are shown via external signals. There is a way of absolutely not listening to a single shred of ego consciousness whatsoever. And there is a way of SEEING GOD DIRECTLY AND FULLY. And guess what? God does not look ANYTHING like how the physical world looks, and they have nothing in common at all.

In revelation, the entire world disappears. The entire illusion disappears. All physical objects disappear and are replaced with brilliant bright light and total awareness of love. That is all. This is reality. This is an experience of no illusions. Compare that to the PURPOSE of the world that the ego made, and recognize that forms looks like forms FOR A REASON, and separate objects appear to be separate FOR A REASON, and separate problems appear to be distinct and unique FOR A REASON, and all temptations and deceptions are designed to distract you and lead you into unconsciousness FOR A REASON.

The ego's use of the world is NOT that it is neutral. The ego's use of the world is to create a 'veil', an illusion, a huge TRICK, a distortion of consciousness, a BLOCK to awareness, over your awareness, so that you can no longer fully experience God or recognize His nature. God is the same everywhere. God is in all parts equally. All of God is in every part of God. When you are presented with objects which appears to only contain distinct separate parts in each part and there is no sign of any sharing or oneness whatsoever, in form, THAT is the illusion that there is no God. You have to learn NOT TO BELIEVE YOUR EYES!

This is what illusion means. You have to get out of the illusion to know that it is an illusion. You have to awaken to a greater reality in which you are aware of how God is everywhere, God shares everything, God is in everything fully, all of God is in all parts of existence, there is no separation, and all appearances are a LIE. Lies are not meant to be paid attention to, you are meant to discern that they are lies and not listen to them and not take what they present to you seriously or as though it is even real. Recognize the entire physical universe was made to SHUT OUT GOD, and not just in terms of you having a separate perception OF the world that has errors in it, but that the world ITSELF is an error and has taken on a multitude of forms to completely deceive your comprehension of 'what is'. We fall for this every single day and every time we believe in any kind of differences whatsoever.

There are no forms in God, not even forms that seem like they have God in them. NO FORMS. Complete formlessness. Forms are separation and separation is not real.

Every time we think one thing is not something else. Every time we think one object is not another object. Every time we experience separate problems and separate solutions. Every time we believe that we are separated from other people by bodies. Every time we don't recognize that there is only ONE problem, and only ONE solution is needed once and for all to solve them all, permanently. Every time we fall for this grand illusion and can't find a vantage point in awareness from which we can see 'the whole', the one, we fall for the ego's deception. Truly this world is not just a 'thing' and not just a 'place', it is a mechanism for reality distortion, consciousness obstruction, enforced unconsciousness, fragmentation of mind, and loss of life. This is what we have to see past and not believe what our senses are saying is out there.

"There is no world. This is the central thought the Course would attempt to teach." - ACIM - think about that deeply, the entire physical world is a magic trick aimed at stopping Creation, stopping awareness, and stopping God.

We are immortal Spirit. We are God's creation. We are infinite and unlimited by form. We are equal everywhere. And we are real. And we have no differences. And we are not separate objects. And we are not limited by space or time.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - "I am not an illusion but a reality." - ACIM

One of the worst and most generalizing interpretations of ACIM's teaching, is that "there is no separation". This has framed any kind of separateness as wrong. It has associated all separation with duality, and has stripped oneness of any possibility of being many things.

So now we have in our minds this idea that oneness must be the total absence of separation. This even seems to make logical sense. But it's not the truth. How do we even know that reality has to be oneness? Where did we learn that crap? We've also taken it further to mean that, separation equates with duality, and a lack of separation equates with oneness. As if, there literally is "only one thing", a count of one, as reality. And obviously that must be God, so there is only God. God being alone all by himself. But that's not the truth etiher.

For a start, just as a cursory glance, ACIM has all kinds of material talking about God having a son. A what now? How can God have a son if there is no separation? If you are being strict about this it's impossible for God to have a son at all. Surely that implies there are separations in reality? Surely it's not true that reality has separate parts to it? Surely it has to be all one thing?

Who came up with this notion that reality HAS TO be all one thing with no parts? That is a gross preconception. So many of us keep projecting this idea onto what the course is saying, insisting that reality HAS to be one thing. It HAS to be oneness. We all want that lovely shiny oneness, and it absolutely cannot have any separations in it, because separation is ego, right? Well no.

How about, it would be okay for there to be a kind of separation, where even though there is a separation, it isn't a complete severance? How about if a single environment can contain two things, which are indeed two fully distinctly and wholly created things, but those two things ALSO are unified and share everything with each other? Is it still separation or ego if they are completely open to sharing everything without any selfishness?

The kind of separation that exists in reality is not the same kind of separation that exists in the ego world. The thing that you really need to get your head around is this. One thing can also be many things while still being one thing. Does that sound too radical or difficult to understand? Is such a thing impossible, and why does it have to be "not the truth"?

Wouldn't such a scenario where something is one thing, but is also two things, and the two things are still two things, but are also one thing, be somewhat transcendental? It would have to warp and transcend every notion we have about how everything is supposed to be in a nice tidy box of its own, wouldn't it. It would be some kind of weird thing where something can be one thing and two things at the same time. It might even have to be described as miraculous.

If God cannot create, God cannot live. If God cannot share, God cannot give. If God is devoid of any kind of separation, God can never create a son. Not even one. Not a single son of God can exist in God if God is this very vague idea of "oneness". Some people seem to not be comfortable with the idea of God having TWO sons, but they seem to be okay with him having ONE son, even though that's still a logical contradiction. Why is ONE SEPARATION okay?

Just on the general jist of it, ACIM is saying a whole lot of stuff about God having a son. Now, I don't know about you but if it were to be meaning that he DOES NOT have any sons AT ALL, then I would say Jesus is a terribly misleading author. Just on the basis of how often and how much "the son of God" is referenced, either Jesus is full of shit, or Jesus is deceptive, or the ENTIRE course is metaphorical.

Now, sometimes people actually do opt to believe that the whole thing is metaphorical, because that seems to put a nice bandaid on it and COVER UP the truth. It sort of ties up some loose ends. Those nasty little loose ends that keep saying God has a son. It would be great to just say, well it's all a metaphor, there isn't really a son of God, and to then go onto say that Jesus is just placating your little pretend ego self because it can't handle the truth. Where have you heard that before?

It would be quite convenient IF Jesus actually were only talking in riddles, and the entire course was a lie, and the whole thing was just playing to your ego's need for specialness, and if only "the special advanced students" will get and accept the fact that there really is NO SON AT ALL.

This is the kind of of mad thinking that some people have adopted to try to justify and explain away the very intensely radical truths in the course, to make themselves feel better and to try to understand what the heck it's saying. But it's simply wrong.

God absolutely does have a son. You're going to have to deal with that. If you think he does not have a son, then there is only God. What are the implications of this idea? If there is only God, then you are God entirely, God is dreaming of exile from God, God is insane and believes in death, God has special relationships, God creates poop, and God kills people. Hmm... Is that going to jive with your spiritual goals? It doesn't exactly sound very loving, but it is perfectly logical.

For God NOT to have participated in this madness of a hellhole we're in, he MUST be distinct from you in SOME way. There has to be some kind of freedom that you have "from him" that allows YOUR insanity to not affect him. Otherwise any madness you go into would instantly infect him, and then we'd all be lost forever. God did NOT enter "the separation", did not buy into the mad idea, and did not dream of hell. So who did? And the obvious answer is of course that you - as the Son of God - or at least ONE OF the sons of God did.

The kind of warped bandaids that a person has to come up with to try to mangle the course's meaning to make certain untruths "fit" is quite incredible. We've got people saying that God has no son at all, people saying that one separation is acceptable but not two, and we've got people saying that God can't have many sons because that mean separation. It doesn't, but that's what they think.

And mainly it's because people just cannot seem to conceive of something that TRANSCENDS "either this or that". They just can't seem to envision what a reality is like where one thing is also two things, or even many things, while still being one thing. There is NO parallel to that in the physical world. There are NO examples in your environment that you've ever encountered where one thing is also two things, or two things are one thing, or two things entirely overlap and share the same space. It seems impossible. But THIS world is impossible, so don't you think that means "one as two" is entirely possible?

What some people then don't like is the seeming SIMILARITY between this idea of God being "one and many", and their idea of duality. Oooh... it's a little bit too much like duality isn't it, that must be an ego thing, that must be a bad thing, let's get rid of it. But duality is NOT the same thing as the transcendental multiplicities of reality.

Duality really means, things are separate, AND they do not share anything. The lack of sharing is a vital part of it. It's not just that there's a separation, it's that the two things are kept apart and do not join or connect. So then you might ask what is the opposite of that? Is it oneness? NOT NECESSARILY. How about the opposite of duality, is a reality in which there are STILL many things, BUT at the same time, they SHARE EVERYTHING? What would that be like? Because that's what reality IS like.

That's exactly what Jesus describes over and over again in ACIM. A reality in which there are many parts, and where each part is the whole, and each part shares everything with all the other parts, yet is STILL a part. You being one with God, while STILL being yourself. You having your own soul, while ALSO sharing the soul of others. You being christ, while OTHERS are also christ. You having many brothers, yet each brother BEING the other brothers. That's all over the course in hundreds of ways and that's what you have to come to realize about reality.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Reality IS NOT ONENESS. It is not the kind of "opposite of separation" that you think it is. It IS oneness, but it's not ONLY that. It is a oneness which has expressed infinite power to CREATE additional ones. It is a wholeness which has FULLY created additional WHOLE beings. It's an entire constellation of creations, where each INDIVIDUAL creation is also so joined to the others that they are ALSO one. Oh my God, did he just say that we have an INDIVIDUAL SELF IN REALITY? How can that be?!!!

"We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

Now I can hear the thoughts in your mind trying to whirl around to visualize this. And you're probably thinking well, how do these many separate things be joined, to the extent that they are one, without DISAPPEARING? Because in spacetime we only have analogies where, as two things become one thing, the separation vanishes and you can't tell them apart any more. But that's NOT the case in reality. The two things are FULLY two things, AND fully one thing, at the same time. That's what you have to come to accept. The dynamics of heaven's reality is NOT the same as the laws of physics.

God is one, and has many children, who are one, who have many creations of their own, which are one. And every one creates with every other one. And the whole sonship, which is a collection of ones, creates as one, to create many additional ones, with God, who is one with them all. Oneness extends itself, to produce more onenesses, which are each oneness, and each gives oneness, creating more onenesses, which are in turn still the same oneness. One thing, creating separate things, which are one thing still.

This cannot be understood by separating things into separate boxes. It cannot be understood by insisting that reality be a count of one. It cannot be understand by projecting ego ideas of the "lack of separations" onto it. It cannot be understood by trying to get rid of all the sons of God and all your brothers and turning the world into a solo-gameshow of you vs yourself. There ARE other people here, there are other dreamers here, there are other free willed beings here, and you DO have relationships.

The course has been smushed, crushed, distorted, twisted, mangled, bent, upheaved and shattered, by well-meaning but mistaken individuals who THINK they know that heaven has to be a singularity of God. ACIM if you read it carefully does not support this idea. Even when it says "God is". Even when it says "God has but one son". Even then it STILL ALSO SAYS that God has many sons and a family and even grandchildren. Your creations are his grandchildren. That's all in A Course in Miracles, whether a person likes it or not, or whether it makes sense or not.

Can we just let the course be what it is and say what it does and try to FIND A WAY TO ACCEPT IT, instead of keep trying to CONVERT IT INTO the models and concepts and theories and theologies that WE think it has to be? Because it is not like them. ACIM is not non-duality, it is not adviata vedanta, it is not about oneness in the traditional sense, and it doesn't teach that there is only God.

Let it be itself and let it tell you what the whole truth is. Take ALL of what Jesus says and recognize that he does NOT contradict himself, and if he says two things which SOUND contradictory, it does not mean they are. What it means is YOUR THOUGHT SYSTEM contradicts itself when it is exposed to a truth that trancends it. It isn't the course that's confused, it's you. Jesus knows what he's talking about. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

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

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself."

"God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you" "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."

"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."

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.

"What He (Holy Spirit) enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

Heaven's reality is governed by the laws of God. These laws are unlimited and impose no limits. They enable to be possible anything and everything that can happen. And what can happen must happen and has happened. And these laws cannot be broken because they are the will of God.

On Earth, however, the world seems to be governed by a second set of laws, which are laws of limitation and conditionality. Laws which appear to be separated out into many separate laws. Laws of gravity and space and time and forces and quantum energies. Laws which allegedly govern and form the foundation of this whole "reality".

"These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

But these laws are completely fictional. They are a layer of lies laid on top of heaven in an attempt to obstruct it and deny it. They are an enforcement of an idea of being separate and of separate things having separate interactions. It leads to the illusion of physical matter and of bodies and worlds. But all of these laws are artificial and secondary to what is real.

What this means is that someone who is in touch with the real laws of God, can break every law of physics. Someone who is in a position prior to the making of the fictional laws of space and time, has access behind-the-scenes to adjusting and manipulating those laws. If the very laws of the world themselves can be adjusted at will, then all physical objects and happenings can be overridden.

When this happens, the world's laws will appear to be "broken", and what seems to be impossible will become possible. The fact is that what seems to be possible in this world, is a very limited range of possibilities. It is not unlimited possibility. One thing has to happen in order for another to happen. Two specific materials have to come together in order for specific reactions to happen. There are fundamental low-level rules which seem more basic but always they are laws of limitation.

Even the basic laws of space and time are laws of limitation. The idea that something has to be located in one place and not another, is a limitation. That two things can't be one thing, or one thing can't be in two places. These are limitations.

We have become very accustomed to living in a realm of limitation and accepting it as the entire scope of freedom and possibility. But in the big picture, this world IS a very limited world, and even space and time and mass and materials are forms of confinement and lack and scarcity and littleness. And all of these limits impose NO limit at all on the infinite unlimited power of God and his children.

"For it is YOUR will to learn aright, and NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as HE is."

There is a suitable analogy for this. In computers now, we have 3D models of environments and worlds. Virtual reality games and so on. The designers of these worlds can make up whatever rules they like, implement whatever limitations they like, and even produce entirely custom forms of physics.

They can decide that gravity moves upwards, they can decide that two objects can overlap, they can even decide that some kind of mysterious force keeps two objects from ever getting close. They have the freedom to do this because they are operating on a higher level than the world they're making. Similarly, you who are of heaven and reality and a world beyond Earth, have the freedom to design worlds in which you implement whatever rules and laws you so choose. And even these laws and limits are artificially added, held in place and maintained by the mind.

You can decide, ok, there's going to be this thing called gravity which sucks things onto surfaces, and this other thing called time which makes everything keep changing, and another thing called space to keep things apart, etc. But these are made-up limits. Somewhere there's a construct in the mind of imposing limitation on what should be utterly unlimited and boundless.

This also means, if you are aware that you are the programmer of the world, that you design it and dream it and implement it, then you also are above and beyond and have power OVER all the laws and limitations that you yourself set in place. Even if you made these laws to limit YOU, you still can transcend them and override them.

And this means you can tinker with the background code, you can adjust the laws, you can bend and break them. You can do things to modify the world which CANNOT happen as a natural result OF the laws, but CAN happen as a result of someone reaching down from OUTSIDE the laws and "forcing" a change. Some would regard such influences as a "glitch in the matrix", where the laws of physics seem to be broken.

And now water turns to wine and bread multiplies out of thin air, and bodies walk on water, and people appear to teleport, and sickness disappears into nowhere, and dead bodies resurrect, and heavy objects are levitated, and mountains are moved into the ocean, and oceans are parted, and those born without eyeballs suddenly can see, and those without legs suddenly can walk.

All such things are possible in God because God is above and beyond the limited world. He is outside the law. He can BREAK the law. He can change and manipulate the law. In fact Jesus in ACIM says that "time and space are under my control" and "I have overcome the world". And that "mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

This world of limits is not REALLY a world of limits. It's not even really a world. It's not even really physical. And its laws are not even real laws. And gravity is not gravity, and nuclear forces are made up, and even space and time are fake. If you knew this and were in touch with this, you could manipulate them in ways which, to those who operate WITHIN the laws, would consider impossible. You would appear to be "breaking reality."

This is why undiluted miracles have a potential power to possibly induce fear in some people, because they make possible things which the world considers impossible. We're talking here about physical objects potentially chaing in ways that DEFY all of the laws you have grown accustomed to, believe are the "stable foundation" of your entire reality, and therefore brings into QUESTION whether or not such laws are even true. And witnessing such a miracle could therefore seem to "frighten" those who think their sense of reality has become broken, as if they are losing touch with reality itself. But miracles can do this because they can accomplish "the impossible."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

Miracles, which in A Course in Miracles means the power from ANOTHER WORLD, having power over an ILLUSION OF A WORLD, in which the illusory world's laws are BROKEN, have the power to do this. They can rearrange space and time and move objects and transform one form into another. They can press the pause button on the laws of physics, tinker with what seems to be "reality", and result in a change which the world would say cannot be possible, and yet it has happened.

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and COULD not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

Jesus was and is an expert at changing forms, because he has transcended the hierarchy of illusions. He knows there is no order of difficulty in miracles, because he recognizes all physical objects as the same one illusion. He is able to manipulate and influence any and all things because he is in touch with the truth that their limitations are completely fiction, that his mind has made them up, that he is under no laws but God's, and therefore the laws of the world simply do not apply to him.

"There are no laws but God's."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's. His laws release me from all grievances, and replace them with miracles. And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond. Now I would accept only what the laws of God entitle me to have, that I may use it on behalf of the function He has given me."

This is not merely a psychological change. The world is in your mind, and by recognizing your mind makes up its rules, your mind can change the rules. You can change the laws of physics. You can override the body. You can erase sickness and death. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

"Heaven and earth are both in your mind." "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." "Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, will you gain control over it. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision." "There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it."

"My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."

"There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, - over and over until you realize that it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to His Will."

"We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would include, for example, the laws of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the body's protection in innumerable ways."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"What I seek today transcends all laws of time and things perceived in time."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so? You know, from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you think is real, as long as you are asleep. But the instant you waken, you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL. You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."

"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey."

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

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set."

"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."

"Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality."

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED."

As we allow ourselves to be healed, we become healed, and in turn become healers. We are able to give the miracles we have received, and we can give healing to others.

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

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing." (note that an instrument is used by something HIGHER than the instrument - in this case the Holy Spirit).

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."

We're asked in ACIM to perform healing WITH the Holy Spirit. That means he is included in the healing process, and is actually the way by which the healing occurs. This is because HE is the only healer and therapist. Only HE understands miracles. He is the answer to the separation and KNOWS HOW to heal everything. You DO NOT know how to heal!

"the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him"

"The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION."

"help is His function"

"its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function."

"he (you) LETS HEALING BE"

"the nature of miracles you do not understand" "Nor do you DO them."

"HE (you) can point to darkness, but he (you) CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF"

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world"

"what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them"

In effect, we act like a kind of portal or window THROUGH which the Holy Spirit's radiance of healing power extends. The light of God comes from God through him, through us, to others. We are not able to GENERATE this light ourselves.

We of ourselves really have NO power at all. But when we OPEN ourselves to him, and allow him to work WITH AND THROUGH us, we GAIN the power of God. And this power works ON ITS OWN, because love automatically extends and shines.

It's kind of like, the radiant shining light of God, which has healing power in it, shines from God THROUGH you, to others. Which is why "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me (Jesus, as an example of a brother), to my all brothers". The light of God is God's light, which shines through you, and extends to others, healing them.

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles" or the way by which this miraculous power is bridged to you from God, so that it can be GIVEN TO OTHERS through you.

This is because in your creation, you are given the gift of giving, which means that God gives himself to create you, and creates you to BE a giver, so that HE can be given THROUGH you along WITH you, to co-create. He has given you something which you are meant to GIVE to others, to share with them, in order to have it.

"You CAN LEARN to bless, and CANNOT give WHAT YOU HAVE NOT. If, then, you OFFER blessing, it MUST have come FIRST TO YOURSELF. And you must also have ACCEPTED IT AS YOURS, for how else could you GIVE IT AWAY? This is WHY your miracles offer YOU the testimony that YOU are blessed."

"Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

Healing miracles are a mirror of this creative dynamic, on Earth, whereby you give what you receive. And WHAT you receive (God's blessing/miracle) has within it the power to heal others, WITHOUT you having to know how it does it.

It's kind of like you are passing along or allowing to extend THROUGH you a power which you did not generate on your own, you did not author, but which you allow to TRANSFER as a form of communication. God shines through you, FOR you, and therefore FOR your "patient".

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

Your function is, in effect, to participate in the Holy Spirits's healing work, by sharing his function, allowing HIM to PASS ON his healing (of you) through you to others. In this, you don't really get to claim any credit for being a healer, or special, or the source of the healing.

HE heals YOU, FOR you. And you in turn allow him to heal others, FOR you, FOR them. Because he is the help that God has appointed and given. He is supposed to be the one who DOES the miracles.

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."

"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

This means that in truth the Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist, because ONLY he knows everything to be able to be certain how to heal everything. He is the GUARANTEE that the separation WILL be undone, because he has the power TO undo it entirely, given him by God. The Holy Spirit DOES NOT FAIL, and when He heals, IT ALWAYS WORKS. Your role then is really to LET HIM DO THE HEALING.

"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."

"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."

When I heal with the Holy Spirit, I am not really doing anything. I am specifically instructed what to do, to fulfill my part of the function I am sharing with him. I may be told to place my hand on a specific part of the body. I may be told when the healing is done. I may be asked to move to a different position.

But more often I will be asked to "rest" or "relax". In effect I am really being told to just take a chill pill and sit on the sidelines while I let HIM USE ME and work through me. He works through my body and through my hands. The more that I don't try to do anything at all, the less obstructing I am. I pretty much just relax and rest and just let him get on with it.

I have NO CLUE how he does what he does. I do not know what he is doing, only that he is doing it. My body shakes and my hands tremble and there is an intensity and various back-and-forth motions and so on. But these happen on their own, caused BY him, or as side effects of what HE is doing.

This means that I have to be willing to trust and to sort of "get out of the way", and to "not interfere". And you can be sure that at times my ego does try to BECOME the healer. The ego in me starts trying to say things to make healing happen, which really has little to no effect anyway. Or I start thinking that I need to force or push, or to hold my hand differently, or to think forgiveness thoughts, or to start doing affirmations, or say lofty things, and none of this is necessary. I am told to relax or even to stop.

In particular Jesus instructs me by saying "let me". Which I've come now to learn to mean, allow him to use the Holy Spirit through me to perform a healing on a person FOR me and FOR them, without me doing anything other than being used as a kind of vessel. It may still entail me "laying on hands" and spending some time involved in the process, but my participation is minimal.

It does take the willingness to allow something OTHER than yourself to DO stuff through you and through your body. This may be unsettling at first, learning to trust to allow some unseen force to make stuff happen IN your body and THROUGH it. To see that, even if you are standing there doing nothing of your own volition, your body is moving, even BEING moved by some unseen power.

Trusting that it WILL move on its own, without your intention to move it. And then seeing it consistently do so, without interference or motivation or control on your part. I am now at a point where I can let the Holy Spirit literally move my body parts ON HIS OWN. He can actually make my arms and hands move around with no motor intentions of my own.

"For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"The 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."

"Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"

So here Jesus is clear, you don't even really DO miracles yourself. That is to say, you do not originate or source the power or the light that produces healing. You do not "use your own power". You are not the "battery" that charges someone. Instead, the Holy Spirit temporarily USES your system to infuse your battery with HIS power so that it extends beyond yourself to someone else. HE brings the power from God, and you allow it to extend.

This is also reflected here, where Jesus tells us that the miracle extends through you WITHOUT your help, because it's really something that's being given BY GOD. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God." Their RADIANCE or GIVING to another is essentially AUTOMATIC, because you give it freely through sharing and letting it go. Ie not inhibiting it or stopping it from FLOWING THROUGH you.

"The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says."

Essentially then you are to receive help and healing from the Holy Spirit to get your own mind into a state where it is more trusting of HIS help. Where you are willing to RECEIVE miracles for yourself, which you are willing to SHARE with others. You become infused with healing and love and power. And HIS light now shines out from you ON ITS OWN. This light "performs" the healing in another. The light comes from God and you just allow it to pass through you. You become a kind of CHANNEL or MEDIUM THROUGH which love, light, life, healing etc is communicated to your brother.

"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."

"You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it."

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

What I have learned now is to let Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit perform the healing. As in "You will see healing through your hands through me." This means acknowledging that the healing power or force or love which CAUSES the healing, the remedy, is something given by God and passes TO me and THROUGH me. I can let it pass through me when I have been willing to receive it for myself, because that means I am unblocking myself and getting MY blocks out of HIS way, so that HE can shine THROUGH me.

This means also recognizing I am NOT SPECIAL as "a healer". I have NO CLUE how to heal anyone to be honest. I don't know how bodies work, what makes emotions work, or the intricacies of the actual mind or how to make it sane. I cannot claim selfish credit for the healing that takes place, beacuse I am not the one doing it. Yes i am involved, yes I am facilitating, yes I am using my hands, yes I am maintaing a relaxed and non-interfering state of mind, but I am not the CAUSE of the healing. All "glory" for that goes to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

At least, for now anyway. We are told that eventually we will become far more directly in-touch with all power in heaven and earth, that "I am not afraid but all powerful", and that by acknowledging that "all power is of God is to gain all power." But right now my experience is that I a pretty much powerless to do anything OF MYSELF, I don't HAVE any special powers, and I don't know HOW to heal. But I do know how to trust the Holy Spirit and Jesus to do healing through me.

"A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand."

"As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit TRANSLATE His communications THROUGH you, so YOU can understand them."

"The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him."

"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."

"You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away."

"But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH YOU, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you. For it is done ALREADY, and unless you give ALL that you have received, you will not know that your Redeemer liveth and that YOU have awakened WITH Him. Redemption is recognized ONLY by sharing it."

Unconditionality, means that something applies the same way to many things. In a sense this is impersonal, in that it does not treat a given person differently from others. At the same time, if the treatment is TOTAL all inclusive love, then EACH person can be FULLY loved, provided that it means this love does not EXCLUDE ANYONE.

This means that you literally cannot unconditionally love only one other person. Nor can you unconditoinally love a million people. You can ONLY unconditionally love the ENTIRE WHOLE of creation. There cannot be any exceptions or conditions, otherwise it is not unconditional.

We might say well, I unconditionally love my kids or my parents etc, but this isn't really true. Because the same maximal love is not felt in relationship to EVERYONE. So it isn't unconditional in the broader sense. It may seen unconditional in that, the child or parent is loved quite fully or that they're loved regardless of what they do or say or believe or how they live. That's a form of unconditionality. But it isn't TOTAL unconditionality.

Total unconditionality requires that the entirety of existence be loved as one, and equally. You have to love EVERY person the same if you want to claim unconditional love. Similarly, you cannot claim holiness until you do this because conditions mean a lack of wholeness.

Holiness means wholeness. It recognizes that you are whole. It recognizes that other people are whole. But it also recognizes that the whole of you is the whole of them in truth. It is a holographic principle.

To be holy, ie whole, in and of yourself, you cannot be in need of anyone. It sounds like a paradox but to to love anyone in a holy way you have be whole in and of yourself so that you have wholeness to share with them. And by being whole, you do not NEED them. Moreso it means you HAVE them because you ARE them. All of them.

Holiness, and unconditoinal love, have to go hand in hand with a complete lack of limits or confinement of any kind. It can't just apply to you, or to your closest partner, or to only your friends and family. It has to be the same everywhere. To be whole is to be the whole of creation. You have to be the entire Kingdom of God to be holy. Which means you cannot have a holy relationship without EVERYONE being included.

No one can claim to unconditionally love only A PART of the totality. This is partial love. That love is not unconditional. It may be approaching it but so long as it remains applying ONLY to certain individuals it is NOT unconditional love.

Unconditional love is universal love. It has to apply to EVERYONE equally and all at the same time. Nor can it apply only to some person that is temporarily "nearby" while applying later to someone else who happens to be "nearby." It has to transcend time and space as well. It is unlimited in every way.

This means that a real holy relationship is one where you are whole in your soul, and you know intimately that EVERYONE is included in you. And therefore you love EVERYONE simultaneously. This is the only way for it to be holy, and the only way to be whole. There is no other unconditional love that is as fully unconditional as this.

What that means is, you cannot have a truly holy relationship which its just between TWO people. That is too confining. Any sense of walls, barriers, exclusiveness, limits of any kind, any way that it is not FULLY SHARED, is a limit on holiness and on love. The love has to totally transcend ALL FORMS of relationship. Like how Jesus loves everyone the same.

When a special relationship, which is really a lack of relationship, is taken and repurposed for a holy purpose, it is used as a framework to develop wholeness. Holiness is the goal so wholeness is the goal. To be whole, EACH person, as a soul, must individually attain THEIR OWN wholeness. And their wholeness cannot be held back by each other. To be whole, EACH individual has to be open to loving EVERYONE equally. And if I am whole, I am recognizing that I AM THE WHOLE OF YOU as well, so you cannot limit me.

At the highest level, this means that the specialness which began as "two" for practical or collaborative learning purposes, is transcended. Even if there are still seeming to be two bodies in proximity, or a marriage, or a friendship, or any other FORM of a relationship that seems to isolate individuals, even for those two people "relationship" has to transcend the boundaries of that container.

If it does not transcend the boundaries, it cannot be whole. It is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for a confined pair of individuals to be holy together while NOT being holy in relationship to EVERYONE. However, if they ARE holy towards everyone, they CAN be holy in relation to each other.

We need to perhaps then SEPARATE OUT, the difference between an arrangement of bodies, versus psychological relationship. If you decouple the two, it becomes more obvious how it works. In the atonement plan, TWO OR MORE individuals (tied to bodies) are orchestrated to meet and form a special connection. A time spent seemingly in proximity. This is not a relationship. This is just being near to each other for the sake of working on THEMSELVES in the company of each other and with each other's support. To learn to fully share themselves with everyone. They cannot fully share themselves with EACH OTHER because this excudes everyone else - UNTIL they can share with everyone.

While the two are together, they EACH may be becoming more unconditionally loving, which melts the specialness or form that holds the two of them in proximity. But at some point a threshold has to be reached, in which they cannot increase the love any further if the love is thought to have to be LIMITED to the two of them, or that it excludes anyone, or is switched off in certain encounters.

In order for the love to become IMPERSONALLY PERSONAL, which means total full love given in FULL to EACH of ALL individuals at once (this is ominpresence), the sense of two-ness has to be dissolved completely, BEFORE even getting close to total holiness. The twoness is just there as a repurposing of the device of physical closeness. It has nothing to do with relationship or holiness. It's just a way to focus on a project.

To go beyond this ceiling, EITHER of them has to decide to transcend their 'relationship' and love OTHERS in the same way. The only way TO love unconditionally and ALL the time, is to love everyone the same way all the time, no matter who they are, and no matter where they are. That means you are IN love, at all times, regardless of location. This has nothing then to do with whether you are with a particular person's body/mind or not.

At its absolute maximal expression, then, a holy relationship has gone BEYOND the necessity of two people, and now applies simultaneously to ONESELF, and to ALL SELVES. And ALL holy relationships MERGE INTO ONE. It is then not a question of whether a holy relationship requires ONE person OR TWO... which is an either/or reasoning, but actually in a holographic manner, it applies to ONE AND INFINITE.

Therefore I, as an individual soul, who God created in full love and completion, who is also sharing everything with all other souls, who in turn love EVERYONE, have the task of individually accepting atonement for MYSELF, so that it is SHARED, so that it is given to EVERYONE. THIS is holy relationship. It is one soul sharing all of itself wholly and fully in holiness with the entire sonship at once. This reflects this logical statement:

"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all, AND equally."

Total real relationship, in heaven, which a holy relationship is based on or becomes a reflection of, requires YOU to love everyone. It does NOT require everyone to be aware of loving you. In reality, yes, all souls love all souls. In the dream, where minds are blocked, it does not entail all minds being AWARE of that oneness. But ideally, everyone should eventually love everyone. This allows the ENTIRE sonship to unite in a single relationship of co-creation with God.

"Everyone should love everyone".

While it is possible for example for me to be in total love which means unconditionally loving the entire universe - universal love, this is because I am a free soul. I am in freedom and therefore NOT TIED to anyone in the sense of, no one can impede my freedom or require me to do anything in order to be FULLY myself. God established me perfect from the start. And that means i can go into holiness/wholeness and unconditionally love everyone, EVEN IF they do not reciprocate. Nor can their lack of love hold me in hell against my will. I am free to choose to love. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

If another person happens to also be in a very unconditional state of mind, then it is possible, that that person can connect with you and be AWARE OF sharing everything with you. BUT, this is NOT JUST personal. It is personal and impersonal. Everything is shared with YOU, BUT at the same time, it is also being shared with everyone. It is not exclusive to you. It is completely open. It is fully given to you, AND fully given to everyone equally. Such a person can fully love you, but ONLY because they are unconditionally loving the whole sonship at the same time. You receive the PERSONAL love, while the IMPERSONAL aspect is personally loving all the others. It's almost like, two people just happening to 'bump into each other'.

When two people consent to FULLY LOVE, the "each other" part does not enter into it. They happen to fully love EVERYONE. Two people, who fully love everyone, and who are in intimate relationship with EVERY SOUL as their own wholeness, "meet", and experience their mutual position of unconditional love. They fully embrace and express their shared nature in TOTAL holy relationship. But IT DOES NOT EXCLUDE ANYONE ELSE. It is not exclusive to them. An analogy might be one parent who equally loves all their children. They don't stop loving the OTHER kids just because they love you.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."The only requirement for you to enter heaven, is that you reflect heaven's relationship status. That is, I am in a relationship with EVERYONE EQUALLY. You "enter into real relationship" with ALL of God's children. And thus you "enter into reality" itself. This is the only requirement for entry to heaven by ANY INDIVIDUAL SOUL. That is, all you have to do is accept and love all of yourself which IS all of the sonship, loving every son of God equally.

No one can keep you from this. No partner can hold you back. No duo or pair or special relationship or repurposed relationship has a quality that causes any REQUIREMENT that TWO such people are doing this at the same time. The two-ness is part of specialness and it will always be. Two-ness has to be TOTALLY TRANSCENDED in order to have ANY holiness. EVERY person has to be loved equally otherwise NONE OF THEM ARE TRULY LOVED AT ALL.

To meet another person who is fully in christ, is a pleasure. And it is a total relationship with that person AND with everyone else. But it doesn't mean that you need that person's love, or that they are imprisoning you. You are completely free to come and go. You are the free willed soul that God created one with him. You have no needs and are not bound by any special rules other than God's law. You are under no laws but God's and God himself established you as holy forever.

In essence, first there is JUST ME. Then there is JUST ME AND YOU. Then there is US trying to transcend JUST US (a "holy relationship couple"). And then there is EVERYONE. That is the progression of relationship towards holiness. And anyone can go there WITHOUT a partner.

So really the requirement of having to have another "special person" to have a holy relationship with, is false. A repurposed special relationship goes THROUGH a purpose or goal of holiness, and DISSOLVES away, leaving only unconditional love for everyone. The two are no longer two, they are THE ENTIRE KINGDOM. Or maybe one of them went there and is the entire kingdom, and the other lagged behind still. Everyone is free to come and go.

Only then, when ONE PERSON has attained a state of unconditional universal love and equality, can that ONE person enter heaven. It does not require anyone else to do this. It's just that, in this world, the holy spirit is repurposing what we MADE (specialness) for a holy PURPOSE, so that it can be USED like a device or tool, to help us to move towards unconditionality. But this cannot mean that you ONLY learn to love another single person unconditionally. If you ONLY love them unconditionally you are NOT LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY. Walls cannot remain if it is to be universally applied and extended. Unconditional love MUST be impersonal as well as personal.

Therefore, any single person/soul CAN enter heaven WITHOUT the need for particular encounters, relations, conversations, physical proximities, lengths of time, or any other "requirement". They may in fact have enjoyed MULTIPLE relationships to get to that point. They may have had many partners, even simultaneously. They may have even had NO ONE ELSE. They might've even been sitting in a cave in a mountain and seeing no one since 50 years ago. It doesn't matter. If any one person attains holographic love, they are done and out of here, entering real relationship with the ENTIRE sonship.

I've come up with a new model of ACIM which promises to resolve numerous contradictions and potentially unite the two major camps: those who believe they can experience heaven while in the dream, and those who believe heaven is elsewhere.

In this model, think of "the world you made" as a room with no windows, like a prison cell. You are currently in the room, perceiving the inside walls of the room. This is "false perception". Everything inside that room is false. "The world is false perception." You are blinded by perception of form and cannot see past the walls.

As you develop true perception, the walls start to become TRANSPARENT, and you start to see BEYOND them. You are IN the world, SEEING THROUGH IT, to something OUTSIDE it. This is what it means to OVERLOOK ie forgive the world. By forgiving the FALSE world, you become able to SEE the TRUE world. The true world is Heaven. Heaven is outside of the room. But you can SEE IT, from inside the room, using perception. True perception/christ vision is CAPABLE OF SEEING REALITY.

This is backed up by statements such as "God is in everything I see", that you can "see the son of God", having a "vision of God", "see the face of Christ", etc. To be able to SEE these things, you MUST be seeing reality directly with perception. Which means you are inside the dream, peering OUTSIDE OF IT from the inside out.

This also entails a major adjustment to older models. "The real world" is a synonym for HEAVEN. It is correctly labelled as REAL because it is real. When you PERCEIVE "the real world" you are literally perceiving heaven. This is also backed up by statements saying it is only possible to SEE what REALLY EXISTS, which MUST mean it is reality you are seeing.

Perception CAN SEE REALITY. But you have to also remember that "perception is a separated state". Therefore perception is happening FROM INSIDE the dream of separation, LOOKING AT WHAT'S OUTSIDE OF IT. When you are NOT blinded by the WALLS of the dream world, you have true perception. When you cannot see PAST the illusions of form, you have false perception.

We also have to remember a couple of key facts.

1. Perception of the truth is not the same as knowledge. That means you can perceive heaven, but this perception is kind of an "image" of heaven. A vision. This perception is not the same thing as being IN heaven. It is not cognition or knowledge or certainty or communion. But, it's kind of like window shopping. You are on the street (in the false physical world of false perception), looking through the window of the Kingdom of God (overlooking the world, forgiving the world, seeing beyond the veil), and are looking INTO or AT the contents of the Kingdom (seeing the face of Christ).

2. It is necessary to still accept that the FALSE world IS AN ILLUSION. The physical world. "The world of bodies is the world of sin" "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came" "There is no world" etc are all STILL TRUE of this world of forms, bodies, planets. "The world is false perception" means that if you LOOK AT THIS WORLD, you are having false perception. And that means you have to LOOK AWAY FROM this world, and look AT HEAVEN.

This is also totally backed up by statements about not being able to see two worlds. There ARE two worlds. Heaven/reality, and the illusory world. Sight of one costs you sight of the other because they deny each other. This does not mean TWO VIEWS OF THIS WORLD. It means if you see this world in ANY way you are having false perception, and sight of THIS world is costing you sight OF HEAVEN. Heaven is ANOTHER WORLD. And in order for this world to disappear from your sight, heaven must BECOME VISIBLE.

This is also totally backed up by the fact that The Holy Spirit loves to LOOK UPON CHRIST. He is using PERCEPTION, to look AT CHRIST. Christ in IN HEAVEN! The Holy Spirit is having true perception OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN. That proves that true perception MUST be capable of breaking out of the physical world, looking beyond the veil of forms (wall of sin), and must be cable of looking direct AT REALITY. At Christ. Who is in heaven.

There are a number of statements in the course which previously alluded to being able to perceive holiness, reality, christ, god etc from INSIDE the dream. And some people latched on this since it correlated to their experience and much of what happens in the workbook, and it SEEMED to imply that God must somehow be able to be SEEN from within this world. There is validity in those statements (e.g. God is in everything I see etc), BUT the conclusion drawn from that is a polarized ego conclusion based on thinking of THE ROOM (the world you made) as being REAL. AS if to say, perception ABOUT the inside of the room can change from false to true, in order to try to make sense of the seeming references to SEEING real stuff. But that was a false conclusion based on exclusive boxes.

Also in the old models people often thought of "the real world" as a reference to some kind of in-between state, still illusory (thus inappropriately named) and NOT the same thing as reality itself. I suggest that is wrong, and that HEAVEN is a the actual "real world". When we have perceptions OF "the real world", we are seeing HEAVEN ITSELF. We are looking OUTSIDE OF the dream, from the inside. This is also backed up by the fact there is a quote about the real world which speaks of there being no bodies, no streets and stores, no day and night (no sun) etc... which is accurate of HEAVEN. The IMAGE of the real world that perception SEES, is SEEING heaven, and the IMAGE is an illusion, but the world it is looking AT is reality!

This is also then helps us to see that not only can you LOOK OUTSIDE OF THE DREAM from the inside, but also the LIGHT OF HEAVEN can shine INTO or upon the dream from the outside in. And that TOO is backed up by various quotes. Heaven is spread across the world but you do not see it etc. The world seems to become holy. You shine your light upon the world by "reflecting it here" within yourself, etc. Because the CEILING on top of the room, is only SOLID when you have false perception. The ceiling becomes TRANSPARENT when you have true perception, allowing you to SEE OUT (like a window onto reality), AND allowing the light to PENETRATE the world. This is part of how "eternity will shine away the world." When we think of the separation between heaven and earth as SOLID we arrive at a false conclusion that you cannot experience God AT ALL in the world, which is incorrect.

A forgiven world, similarly, must be correctly understood. "To forgive is to overlook" Overlooking THE FALSE WORLD, "the world is false perception", means overlooking the PHYSICAL WORLD, overlooking bodies ("you're brother's reality is beyond his body"), "forgiveness does not look upon bodies" etc... and therefore to FORGIVE the world, does not mean keep LOOKING AT IT in a more loving way. It means to OVERLOOK it, see PAST it, and LOOK AT HEAVEN. The reality of heaven is what true perception (spiritual sight) sees. It is a perception of SPIRIT. And this means the physical veil of illusions, wall of sin, wall of flesh etc all has to VANISH from your sight. This happens when you SEE CHRIST (face of christ). The world is FORGOTTEN.

That's what it means to forgive the world. It means to RECOGNIZE the WORLD IS FALSE. And to put ALL of your attention ON REALITY. To look AT reality, bypassing this world and seeing the truth which is BEYOND IT. And that means what you are "falling in love with" as you wake up, isn't the FALSE world, it's HEAVEN! You are starting to become able to SEE REALITY, and it is WHERE the beauty, light, and love are. Your ability to SEE IT, "in" the world, overlaid on the world, is what makes the world seem lovely. But it is HEAVEN that you are in love with, not an illusory world of forms. Proven here:

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while (the false world/physical world)...The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?...Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are ***not deceived by what they see*** (not tempted, not believing in the world)....Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream***, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Unity, is reality. Unity, is heaven. Unity is the ACTUALLY REAL WORLD of Heaven. The Kingdom of God. Which is BEHIND the dream world. The dream world is FALSE, as in there is no world. EVERYTHING in the physical world is false. It is all illusion. You are not supposed to try to make it real and keep it and dress it up and turn it into heaven. It is a veil of illusions. It is NOTHING. You are meant to learn to STOP BEING DISTRACTED BY IT, and LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE. Look at ANOTHER WORLD entirely. You are in THIS world, and have to learn to SEE ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND IT.

So the model is quite simple. You're in a seemingly solid room with no windows. You gradually learn to LOOK THROUGH THE WALLS, and start to see ANOTHER WORLD outside of the room. When the walls become totally transparent you will SEE CHRIST and will SEE GOD "in" everything you see (beyond it, not hidden by it), and then ..... when you are ready, you will GET OUT OF THE ROOM. Leaving the room is what takes you BEYOND THE WALLS, and immerses you directly in the REAL WORLD OF HEAVEN that you were SEEING WITH PERCEPTION prior to awakening. You first window shop and SEE reality, then you go BE IN IT. "Gone is perception". And of course there is no real "going" because you simply realize YOU ARE EVERYWHERE and have always BEEN in heaven, and THE ROOM DOES NOT EXIST. The world is gone, reality is your home.

I believe this far more accurately encapsulates what ACIM is saying. I believe there is not one single quote which speaks against this from any perspective. Especially, this BRINGS HEAVEN CLOSER to those who are IN the dream (room), because it means even while you are dreaming, you can to some degree EXPERIENCE heaven through perception. You can SEE HEAVEN while in a body. BUT.... if you want to be totally immersed in it, you have to leave the body, leave the false world, leave the room, and become expanded everywhere. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the son of God." "There is no world."

It still accounts for the two levels which are Reality and Unreality, true and false, light and dark, heaven and hell, God's world and the world you made. These ARE the two levels, not "two ways to perceive a false world." It still incorporates all aspects of perceiving in recognizing that false perception is an inability to see past walls, while true perception overlooks walls and sees what is beyond them. It supports everything said about the ability to SEE REAL STUFF. "Perception can reach everywhere under the guidance of the holy spirit" (even to reality).

It also supports the EXPERIENCES people have had (me included) IN this world such as having visions of God, seeing Christ in others, SEEING love everywhere, etc. AND it still supports the larger model that we are to WAKE UP FROM some kind of dream world to a reality that were were becoming gradually aware of prior to awakening. You can essentially PERCEIVE or "perceptually experience" reality while in a body in this world. BUT if you want the TOTAL communion with God, knowledge, absolute wakening, total reality, WITHOUT perception (because "those who perceive still need healing"), you have to TRANSCEND THE ROOM, and wake up in infinite reality. "Nothing seen, only know." Because then, you no longer have perception, nor do you need it.

Have a think about it. Open your mind. Put aside "traditional" ACIM models. Consider this. I think it unites the two camps quite a lot and it also is wholly inclusive of ALL ACIM STATEMENTS, something which could not be said for the older models. It has to be possible to SEE reality (God/Christ). It HAS to be possible to see what is ACTUALLY the REAL world (heaven). And it HAS to be possible that the world of false perception disappear when ANOTHER world becomes visible. And it has to be possible that there IS another world entirely BEYOND the one that false perception sees. And that means the world you see with true perception is BEYOND this world. It is heaven. It is the Kingdom of God. And "you cannot remain in this world (false world), with this knowledge."

I know this shakes up a LOT of what people have become accustomed to thinking. And I've had to let go of many of my own conclusions in order to get to this. I had made adjustments, justifications, and false conclusions in order to try to make things "fit" before and I see now where that was flawed because it omitted too many quotes and ways of perceiving love and reality while still in a body. I encourage everyone to think about this and see if you feel that it fits and works for you. If not, that's fine. But for me I feel this is the most accurate model of the course I've ever seen. It is so clear-cut and makes so much sense and supports everything.

"Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation."

What is a WHOLE mind? A whole mind is at least as large as the universe. As Jesus states, "both heaven and earth are in your mind" and "you maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts". Realize that your mind has to be LARGER than planet Earth in order for Earth to be in your mind. It's not appropriate to try to imagine that your tiny little self inside your body is projecting this entire world. In fact, "the world" is this entire universe, and so let's say a WHOLE mind is large enough to contain THE WHOLE of everything.

A SPLIT mind, is a mind which believes in separation. The split is like a division, which literally seems to divide your mind into TWO halves. The division is upheld by some kind of "wall of sin", which comes between the two halves. This wall is made of illusions. This wall IS THE WORLD YOU SEE and the world you made. It is the physical matter of this universe. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

So if your whole mind is larger than the universe, what does a split mind mean? It means you place a wall WITHIN the universe, to separate off one part of your mind from another. What is that wall? It's all physical matter, actually, but more symbolically it is your BODY. Your body is the wall of flesh that you surround a part of your mind with.

The body is a device for separation. It has two functions. It keeps part of your mind INSIDE, and keeps the other part of your mind OUTSIDE. Remember you were WHOLE before, you were unlimited in size, and now you've SECTIONED OFF only a PART of your mind and placed it "inside the body", so all the stuff outside the body is THE REST OF YOUR MIND. You, who seem to be in a body, are only PART OF YOURSELF.

You're used to thinking in terms of everything applying only to the mind that seems to be inside the body, as if that is "you". And as if everything outside the body is "not you". And THEN you think that the whole of ACIM applies only to this "is me" that's inside the body. But it DOES NOT! THAT is part of the illusion of the split. It's a state of massive disassociation. In fact this is also part of how you pretend to be a figure in a dream.

When you dream, you dream an entire ENVIRONMENT. A world. But then you divide up that world, you fence off part of it as a body, and then place a fragment of the mind seemingly INSIDE that body. That part of mind now peers out through the body's eyes upon the environment, but because it is a DISASSOCIATED part, it does not believe that the environment is part of ITSELF. It thinks it is "not me". And it also does not believe it PUT IT THERE.

It doesn't see itself as the DREAMING mind, only as PART of the dream. And you in your human body right now experience exactly the same disassociation - you do not believe or perceive that this ENTIRE WORLD is inside your mind, or that you are dreaming it from a larger mind. You think you are ONLY the thing "inside" the body. This is part of being a split mind.

When you have a split mind, one half of your mind disassociates from the other. The ego splits off some parts of you and labels them as sinful, guilty, wrong, bad, and tries to destroy them. It does this in order to try to only preserve the appearance of being "good" and successful and perfect and innocent. In psychology terms, this is the PERSONA, which is ONE HALF of your mind and yet believes it is ALL of yourself. This is to do with where the course talks about the sunbeam believing it is the sun. This split off part of mind thinks it is ALL of you.

The parts of your mind that it disassociates FROM, and keeps believing is "not myself", it sees as "outside of me". Separate from me. And the wall of flesh that is the body acts as the divider between your persona and the REST of you. The rest of you is OUTSIDE the body. Due to disassociation you do not believe that the outside world is you AT ALL, or has anything to do with you. That you didn't put it there nor is it the location of your SELF. But it is, and you did put it there. You needed to make a world outside the body in order to be able to have a world to disassociate from.

What then happens is, within your mind, within the whole of your mind, there are now two seeming selves. There is the part that you think is all of you, and there is another part that you think is not you at all. That "not me" part is hidden behind a wall of denial, which is a block to awareness, which makes the REST of your mind unconscious. Since your persona self sees the REST of your mind as "outside of me", or separate from itself, it regards the "shadow" as OUTSIDE the persona. Now, the BODY IS the persona. Within the dream, it represents this fake "face of innocence", and everything OUTSIDE the body is YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

Within your mind, then, since "ideas leave not their source", everything that your mind can ever experience HAS to be within your mind, otherwise the mind cannot be aware of it. So that means your "inside self" is in your mind, your BODY is in your mind, and the outside WORLD is in your mind. And your mind is larger than all of them.

Within your mind, you will experience that there is war happening between one half of you and the other half. There will be a perception of "your self" (one half) as "the innocent victim", and it will seem that "the not me" self (outside "you") is the sinful victimizer. Your will is going to be divided against itself, because both parts of your mind are not in agreement. They conflict. And so the inner you, your persona, believes that it is under attack by "an alien will", that it THINKS is "outside of it", but which really is just another part of the mind.

You have this fully INTERNAL war with yourself, between these two parts, but because of the disassociation, your inner part BELIEVES that the "other me" is OUTSIDE the body. That your enemy is out there and is "not myself". So it is seen as "beyond yourself". And since your idea of yourself is confined within the body, that means you think it's outside the body. Even though it's in your mind.

It then becomes very EASY, to "project" or map this dynamic of a split mind, ONTO The world. Whereby you seem to "project" your sin onto your brother. But it's not really projection as such. It's more like, your mind actually believes that YOUR sinful parts are separated off from your "self" and are SEEN outside of you, beyond the body, and so you see them IN the world as if they are external. Your mind locates them externally because that seems to make sense in terms of them being disassociated from what's inside your body.

And so if you're believing/perceiving that the sinful part of YOUR mind, your "inner enemy", the "not me self", is OUTSIDE of your body, it's VERY VERY easy to assign or associate that with OTHER BROTHERS in the dream, whose bodies are walking around the same environment having split minds. Since you already believe "the sin is not in me, it's outside me", and since you believe" I am inside the body", you'll easily believe "the sinners are outside the body". And so there's a very small step from there to actually being deluded that some actual OTHER brother is the separate self who is sinful. And so you attach your split mind TO him and accuse him of your sins.

But in truth, all of this is really taking place inside your larger mind. Both what is inside your body and what is outside your body is WITHIN the confines of your larger mind. The innocent seeming victim that you see your PARTIAL self as, and the external victimizer evil sinful menace, are BOTH parts of YOUR mind. And this is what the secret of salvation is designed to show you. To merely look and realize that your brother has NOTHING to do with you being attacked, there is actually ANOTHER PART OF YOUR MIND ATTACKING THIS PART OF YOUR MIND. You are at war with yourself, and you literally are your enemy.

ACIM: "The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true." - that external attacker IS PART OF YOUR MIND.

So that means you are ACTING the part of being the victim, AND you are acting the part of the victimizer. You are BOTH. You are the inside and the outside. And until you can recognize that what you see in another is part of your own larger mind, you won't stop projecting it onto them. When you own it, and take responsibility for it, that means realizing that this "separate enemy" is actually a character IN your larger mind, seeming to interact with this other persona character IN your mind, and BOTH of them are like puppets that your LARGER mind is operating. Your larger mind is pitting parts of ITSELF against each other.

What makes it SEEM as if there are two identities or characters, is illusions. Illusions present a picture of images and appearances and behaviors that SEEM to make it look like there are TWO distinct persons, two wills, two minds, to selves. But the challenge you have, is to OVERLOOK (forgive) those illusions. When you do so, you should come to realize that your larger mind is responsible for playing the roles of BOTH of those two characters. That who YOU are, as a whole, is WITHIN BOTH of them. If you can see that YOU are literally playing BOTH sides and ARE both of them, that "unity" will transcend the illusions, and it will dissolve the split.

You won't be able to believe in the split, or in being only one of the two halves of the split, if you can see how your WHOLE mind is in BOTH sides. It's like owning up to being one who has been pulling all the strings, MAKING THE DREAM ENVIRONMENT, and causing all things to happen. That means moving UPWARDS, from a position of "I am only this little self in a body" to " I am the whole of everything everywhere". And it is from that larger WHOLE mind that you are the DREAMER OF THE WORLD.

ACIM: "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream (as a smaller part of mind) you knew that YOU (your larger mind) were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you (your larger self), unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR (whole mind's) dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." - this is a shift in identity from "I am a PART of mind in a body" to " I am ALL of mind everywhere."

If your mind transcends the separation, ie you stop believing illusions of separation, you will become aware of your wholeness. That's a transition from being two selves on a lower level, to being one unified self on a higher level.

What that also means in terms of the fact that your mind is the size of the universe, is that you should eventually heal the separation that is DIVIDING THE WORLD, which means removing the WALLS that the world is made of, which means undoing physical matter which is the illusion of separation, and that also means ERASING THE BODY. The body IS the device that acts to implement the split mind, WITHIN the larger scope of what you are.

In order NOT to have a split mind, your body HAS to be undone. It acts like a wall that is literally keeping part of you inside it and the rest of you outside it. It is made of illusions. "The body cannot stay without illusions". That means without the idea of being PART OF the world and not ALL of it, there cannot be a body there, representing the split in the mind and dividing and separating your universe-sized mind into two parts.

The body must vanish. It must be transcended and it must disappear. It is made of the illusion of separtion. "The body is a dream." And it is also the way by which the whole dream is maintained. There is no dream WITHOUT the body, because you have to MAKE a separation - a split in your larger mind, in order to go INTO dreaming. A split mind is a dreaming mind. And MAKING that split in your mind MAKES a body. It puts a wall there. Therefore when this dream of "opposition" and "competition" and "taking sides" is ironed out and ends, so too does the body wall disappear, and so too does the dream disappear, and that includes the Earth.

In effect, the undoing of the belief in separation is the undoing of the WALL within your split mind which IS the body, and this cancels out the differences between the inner and outer parts of mind, makes the mind WHOLE, and a whole mind CANNOT BE ASLEEP DREAMING. A whole mind cannot have a body. And a whole mind cannot be IN a dream world. The dream world only lasts so long as there is an illusion of separation, which depends ENTIRELY on having a split in your universe-sized mind. And this is also why "you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." Knowledge collapses spacetime.

As you return to being whole, you will also return to a state of mind where what is inside you is also seen outside you. ie it is everywhere the same. That means seeing the holy spirit in all your brothers because he is in your mind. Seeing God "in the world" because God is in your mind. Your wholeness reunites you with THE REST OF YOURSELF WHICH IS IN YOUR BROTHER. Your wholeness rejoins and reconnects YOUR mind, to the REST of your mind, which is currently believed to be "not inside you". Your sense of SELF, therefore, has to expand from "I am that which is inside the body" to "I AM EVERYWHERE". That results in oneness with all brothers.

To be whole is to be restored to an awareness that YOU are everywhere, you are larger than the universe, you are unlimited and infinite and immortal, you are not partial, you are not located in space or time, and you are beyond the dream of death. You are beyond the world. The world was merely YOUR SPLIT MIND, while you were dreaming. It's forms were YOUR SPLITS. Its walls were your illusions of disassociation. Without you having a split mind there can be no dream world. Waking up is waking up to WHOLENESS. Wholeness is reality. In wholeness, there is no world and there are no bodies and no walls.

You are unlimited. You made this entire world as a result of splitting your mind. When your mind is whole, the world will disappear. You are a huge, unlimited, spiritual being and this TINY world is nothing against your magnitude.

A Course in Miracles itself is over 550,000 words of deep and dense material. It appears filled with meaning dripping from every word, and seems to talk on many topics. But really the entire thing has very simple origins and a very simple goal.

You simply started off in heaven's reality with God, and then you tried to rebel against his will and put yourself to sleep. You had a strange dream of mortality, and now you're trying to remember what your immortal reality is like again, so that you can wake up. It's no more complex than that.

Jesus even summarizes what the course/atonement is encouraging you to accept, in just 4 words, as "only reality is true." Or similarly "only the truth is true and nothing else is true." Or "I am under no laws but God's."The "truth" is what is "real", what is actual, is the most encompassing and the least interpreted. Just simply, what really exists as given by God. That which is actually happening and its truest actual meaning without distortion or denial.

The whole course is simply saying that you fell into a strange sleep where you appear to be insane and have lost touch with reality. And now he is trying to help you to become sane again. It's funny when after a while he says: "you are no longer WHOLLY insane."

"Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much of your insanity, and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason."

"For you are no longer WHOLLY insane, and you WOULD recognize the guilt of SELF-betrayal FOR WHAT IT IS."

But it's worth realizing that words are symbols of symbolic things - dream things. Just as the body is a dream, it symbolizes separation and ego. And the word "body" symbolizes that symbol. And A Course in Miracle as a book of 550,000+ words is filled with symbols.

Symbols always point beyond themselves to something else that they represent. They are not ends in themselves and don't really have their own meaning. They are representatives of a state prior to themselves, from which they express. Just as the body is a symbol and an expression which represents the mind from which it comes.

Jesus teaches that "nothing so blinding as perception of form". And that believing form is real or true is false perception. So when you look at the forms of the words in the course and you take them to be the truth, in and of themselves, based on the form they take, you are in fact blinded by perception of form.

Some people become very enamored with the choice of symbols in the course, the beauty of its seeming artistic poetry, and its mastery of language. But it only appears this way because it came from an origin higher and beyond and prior to itself, who articulated otherwise random symbols into seemingly symbolic arrangements to convey a message.

It's possible to mistake the words in the book for the truth itself, to idolize those words, to put them on a pedestal and think of them as the word of God. It's also possible to then become blinded by them, unable to look deeper or see the meaning on which they are based. Ultimately the purpose of the course is to make itself unnecessary, all of it has to eventually be let go and all of its words overlooked through forgiveness.

There becomes fanatical defense against the words being changed, the preservation of the words, and the attempt to prove logical arguments based on whether or not the words show up in the book. But this is all a false perception of the course, taking an illusion to be reality.

What is really needed, to go deeper, is a forgiveness even of the course itself. What begins as false perceptions of very sophisticated wordings must at some point move past the appearance of its symbols. To mistake a symbol for the thing it symbolizes is a mistake.

If you want to really find out what things mean, where they came from, why those symbols were chosen, or what they are expressions of, then you have to move beyond the words. You have to overlook their form and not get hung up on whether or not something is explicitly written, or whether it's in its original form, or whether it's been edited all to hell.

Jesus expressed A Course in Miracles from a very lofty vantage point, a point in which words mean nothing. He translated his awareness and experience into symbols upon symbols and into sequences of symbols, to try to speak a language that you might understand, or which might at least serve as an in-road towards their origin.

The words in the book are signposts and pointers, aiming in the direction of the truth. But they are not the truth itself. Nor are they even capable of accurately representing that truth, although Jesus has done an exceptional job of being very careful to convey meaning as accurately as possible. But you still have to learn to look past the words if you want to find out what they really mean, otherwise the course is just another idol.

What I personally found is that behind all of the words in the book, there is a deeper metaphysics. There is a logic which is amazingly impeccable and self evident, a living logic. There are natural structures and perfect extensions of truth. That even God is a logical premise with a logical conclusion.

There are reasons for everything being the way it is in reality, and in the ego's realm. Even the separation and the nature of this world are a progression of logical reasoning. The descent into hell was a procession of logical steps leading away from the truth, and all of this can be carefully detailed.

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth."

What you eventually have to do is a total rewind of all learning back to the origin, back to the nature of God and his reality. You have to then look logically and with reason, and very carefully, at how and why God is the way he is. To look at what it means to be absolute, infinite, unlimited, immortal, eternal and so on. There are laws behind all of this.

This is because God is actually the logical premise of all reality. It is his nature which dictates the entire laws that heaven is based upon. He is the truth and the source of all reality. If you understand why he is the way he is, then you can begin to logically reason why everything else must be the way it is. Because everything began with God and everything else followed very precicely.

Even if you completely forget everything you ever learned in ACIM and just start over from the very beginning, with the nature of God's reality, and reason out from there, you will surprisingly find that you'll come to the exact same conclusions that are written in ACIM.

Thats's because everything ACIM is saying is logically perfect. It is completely true. And if it weren't, the logic would be out of alignment with it and show why it is flawed. But it's not flawed, because Jesus is not flawed, and he knew exactly what he was talking about, as he still does.

In fact the entire nature and structure of creation, of all real relationship, including the shared sonship and the laws of heaven, all derive according to very simple and clear logical rules. These rules and their extension can be followed perfectly and make absolutely perfect logical sense. They are completely impeccable and flawless in their clarity that only a fool would argue against them once explained.

When you take these very simple logical foundations and you look at what they mean and imply, and then you take A Course in Miracles and you look at what it says about God's reality and nature, you find that they EXACTLY match in every case. They validate each other. Which means that everything in reality is perfectly logical, is exactly is the way it is, and can only be that way, and cannot be any other way. And that therefore ACIM is in fact based on the real truth.

Looking to these logical foundations, the logic can be expressed in simple words or diagrams, and it can be shown step by step, exactly why God is the way God is, exactly why and how he creates, exactly what must be created and its nature, and why the Kingdom of God operates the way it does. It can all be accurately described, and in far less words than are in ACIM. The basics are quite simple.

When you get all the words out of the way, so to speak, and see the deeper connection or basis for all of it, then you realize that Jesus really is just basing all his expressions on very simple concepts. Seeing past the complexity of the many ways it has been expresed, and not being blinded by its forms is the hard part. And it can take many years to try to find the needles in the haystack.

See, Jesus doesn't really write at the level of the words. It's not like some regular human who is sitting in this world at a typewriter pounding the keys and coming up with an egoic novel about ego stuff. He has written the course from a maximally high level, translating truths into an elegant breakdown of its aspects. How it applies to the world, how it applies to the body, how it applies to relationship etc.

He's done this so that you can be reached wherever your starting point is, and in terms you are familiar with, and using language and references you can understand. But the purpose isn't to leave you there poking around in the dirt and arguing over words, but to raise you up and bring you closer to the origins of the course. To the state of reality Jesus shares, and to its divine truth.

The metaphysics that the course is based on, shows that the course itself is an expression of something higher and deeper. It comes from a source that is very simple and is in touch with reality. Just because a person is putting the same teaching into over half a million words, or even a trillion words, doesn't mean that even more than a few words are needed to convey the whole truth, such as that "God is".

You don't necessarily need all those words. You don't really need to learn every single word form or memorize every quote or only quote from a specific version. In fact if you cannot use reason to determine WHETHER or not something is true and accurate, you are already in a state of not only depending entirely on but being blinded by the words themselves. You're supposed to see the logic behind them.

You don't really have to even read the whole book. It has a holographic nature reflecting the holographic nature of reality, such that the whole truth is in every part, because every part is an expression from the whole truth, given wholly and truthfully. Jesus wrote it all from a single whole truth and all of it expresses a cohesive single message, which you can find on every page.

You do need to fully apply it yes. You need to fully learn the simple truth, the basic nature of your self. You do need to shift allegiance from the forms of error to the unified reality. And you do need to develop trust and learn to relate with actual love and so on. But you don't need hundreds of thousands of words to do that. Maybe at first it seems you do, then later you realize you don't.

What I'm doing in the book I'm working om right now, is stripping away all the words entirely and "starting over" with pure logic. I'm examining what is deeper than all these words. I'm going to present extremely clearly what the real logic of God is and what reality's nature is.

I'll be explaining in simple clear steps exactly how heaven came to be and why it is run by the laws that it is. How creation comes of it and what must be true of you. This can all be arrived at through simple logical steps. Even God's nature can be logically and accurately described, because what you find out is that reality is in fact a living logic system of divine states, with very specific rules.

The aim is to come up with a "reformulation" of the form of the course's teachings, in far fewer words and in much simpler terms. A deep look at the ideas behind its many words. A formulation which still represents the truth with perfect accuracy, but which can be learned very quickly and easily in its more purified form.

Really the metaphysics behind the course is very simple and clear-cut, its not all that complicated once you can see it. But for many people, seeing through the fog of the course's words can be a hurdle in itself. It needs to be laid out in the simplest and clearest way possible, to save time and effort and to provide accuracy and clarity. And it has to bypass the entire realm of "opinion" - the logic has to stand on its own two feet and speak for itself.

That's why I'm making the book that I'm making right now. It will cut through all the noise and all the opinions and all the ego arguments and all the confusion. It goes deeper than debate and countless theories and interpretations that are hung up on word choices.

It's kind of like brushing away all the many forms that have covered over the course's true origins, to reveal what's behind it at all. I hope it will act as a "primer" and easier introduction, especially for those who are newer to the course.

You'll see, once you read it, and as you follow its reasoning, that it is extremely hard to deny what it says, and it is ultra clear in making total sense. I'm deliberately making it so that it is practically impossible to find fault in it. The logical is very flawless, not because I'm "expert" at it but just because reality's laws are themselves flaweless. Such that the true metaphysics of the course will be revealed in the light and seen for what it must be, completely accurately and consistently.

Then the really interesting thing is that, once armed with this tool, a kind of magnifying glass for the course bringing its depths totally into the light, it actually shines a light of clarity onto all that the course says. It helps to frame its meaning, to clarify intentions, to properly identify what Jesus meant in his wordings, and to steer away from common misinterpretations. The logic even helps you to realize things which must be true, which may not even be written in ACIM itself, yet are completely consistent with it.

The book itself actually stands alone in that it comes to the same conclusions as the course through its own process. It doesn't even rely on the course or anything the course says, to make its points. It doesn't need any quotes from the book either. It simply uses clear reasoning to come up with a clear metaphysical foundation.

Then it looks to what the course says to find out IF it agrees. And it happens to validate and agree with everything it says. And both of them reflect each other perfectly because they're based on the same exact truth.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

Nothing belongs to you exclusively. Everything is shared by everyone inclusively. This is the law of God.

"We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth."

"what is Yours belongs to me as well"

"As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me."

"We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth."

"everything WE do belongs to you as well"

"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part."

"Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son."

"And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."

"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."

You have nothing that is yours alone. Which means you have nothing special or exclusive or just for you. This means you aren't special, have not been granted special favor, and don't have any treasures that belong just to you. This however doesn't mean you have nothing at all, because in fact you share everything with everyone. God's Kingdom is not a place of exclusive ownership. It's kind of like an open buffet. Everyone is welcome, everything is for everyone, everything belongs to everyone, and everyone has simultaneous access to everything. It's completely open and unlimited.

"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."

God who is complete, cannot add anything to himself. He is already infinite and everywhere. He is kind of like a closed system that way. However, all parts of God host all of God, because every part of God is God. And this means every part of God shares the whole of God. All of God belongs to every part of God, and every part of God is whole.

God can therefore create by sharing himself. He hosts his creations within his own being, literally sharing his own existence. But this requires that anything he creates, must be created to purely and completely share all of himself. Any created being must have full access to everything God has, and must inherit everything from him.

Inheriting from God does not mean you receive a windfall that's exclusively just for you. It's not like winning the lottery. Everything that exists still belongs to God, and is him. But he creates you by allowing you to share everything he has. He gives himself to you in your creation. You inherit God, and inherit everything from God, but God is a co-owner of everything he shares.

"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever."

"And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him."

"The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

This means that you are created to share everything, and the only way you can exist at all is if you share absolutely everything. God cannot add anything onto the outside of himself, so can only share what is inside of himself. You are hosted by God within his own being, and your entire function must be to share everything openly and fully. Only by sharing it can you have it at all, and you must be willing to give it all in order to have it.

This creates an environment in the Kingdom that we might describe as a totally open society. It's a relationship in which everyone has total full access to everything at all times. Everyone has all of God. Everyone is plugged into God. Everyone has FULL access to everything that exists, simultaneously and in parallel. One being having full access does not deprive any other being any kind of access. Their access overlaps.

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

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

You can exist only if God shares everything that exists with you. And now both of you have everything that already exists. And you can only exist if you are willing to fully share everything that exists with everyone else. Which means that no-one anywhere in the Kingdom has anything that anyone else lacks, and no-one lacks anything that anyone else has. Everything belongs to everyone forever.

This also leads to the fact that no-one can have anything that belongs ONLY to them. You have absolutely nothing that is yours alone. The ego begs to differ, because "the ego is the idea of selfishness." It is the part of you that believes in specialness and in exclusivity. It wants to have everything for itself, such that it shares nothing with anyone. The ego is the antithesis of sharing and openness, and wants exclusive rights, ownership and control. It was the desire not to share that led to the separation. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."

What this leads to is the truth that, in and of yourself, by yourself, alone, you have absolutely NOTHING that belongs exclusively to you. Nothing you can put your name tag on, nothing you can say is legally yours, nothing that is just yours and no-one else's. If it seems that you have such things, possessions, toys, clothes, cars, houses, bodies, whatever, which seem to be exclusively "yours", and no-one else's, then you are aligned with the ego.

We need to recognize that in and of our own selves, we can do nothing. We have no life without God. We have no power without God. We have NOTHING without God. You don't even have any existence without God. You have nothing that is personal just to you which is yours alone. Nothing belongs just to you. In effect, you are utterly powerless and tiny and weak and afraid and empty and non-existent if it all boils down to "what is only mine".

"I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."

"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."

This is where it becomes interesting. You alone, on your own, in isolation, have absolutely NOTHING. That is to say, ignoring God for a moment, ignoring your inheritance, ignoring anything that anyone else has, you actually have absolutely ZERO "for yourself'. Zero that is "of you". Nothing that has been sourced in you, that you have invented, within yourself, which is unshared or belongs to you alone.

That really means that you don't have any kind of special talents or abilities that can be said to "make you unique". You don't have any special "super powers" that others lack. You don't have any exclusive "something", some kind of special secret treasure, that no-one else has. You don't have any possessions that really are yours alone, which is easily proven by the fact that anyone can take them away from you, and they all can be lost, because they were never really yours to begin with.

So you are empty. Without God, you are nothing. Without God you don't even have existence. HOWEVER, you are not without God. If you are willing to go beyond your ego, you in fact regain access to your inheritance. You become once again a member of the Sonship. You open up to receiving your inheritance, which is everything real, in exchange for giving up the NOTHING that you have otherwise. "We will gain EVERYTHING by giving HIM the power and the

glory, and keeping NO illusions of where they are."

"As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"

"for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing" "Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"

"Of yourself you can do none of these things."

"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light."

So here are your options. On the one hand you have what the ego is offering, which is absolutely nothing, disguised as something special and rare, something which is exclusive just for you, something special, which makes you important and unique and different. But which really is made of nothing at all, and is not something you can really have, nor can it last forever. And by trying to have it, you may seem to gain the fictional world, and lose your soul.

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" The alternative on offer, is that you are invited as a guest to join in the Kingdom of God, in which you are allowed to participate openly, freely, and fully. Provided that you are willing to share everything that exists with everyone. And provided you are willing to share your entire self with everyone. And provided you are willing to grant everyone total free access to everything at all times.

And provided you do not in any way attempt to hoard anything for yourself, to have any trace of selfishness, nor to regard anything as belonging ONLY to you. That nothing belongs ONLY to you doesn't mean you have nothing, only that what you HAVE isn't ONLY yours to have and must be shared. You DO have power, but it only so long as you acknowledge that you SHARE this power with God and with everyone. To take it away from them, to have it just for you, is to strip it from yourself and be powerless.

Provided you are willing to enter into a relationship with the whole sonship, where everything belongs to everyone equally, then you can enter the Kingdom of God. To receive your inheritance isn't to receive a big special christmas gift that no-one else gets to play with. All things that are real, that you can actually HAVE, have to belong to everyone. It belongs to God, it belongs to you, AND it belongs to all your brothers. And everyone can access all of it all the time at the same time. "To have all, give all to all."

So you can either have basically nothing for yourself, disguised as receiving the illusory riches of the world, which appear to be valuable bullshit items that you don't even really want, and which have no real value, but which appear to be extremely valuable treasures. Or, you can openly share non-exclusive rights with everyone, to own ALL of the Kingdom of God, ALONG WITH God and with everyone else, in which everything belongs to everyone.

The gifts of God are given in order to "passed forward". He gives you the power to create, so that you can share and give what you have been given. Quite simply, "give what you have been given" is the only rule of the system. Give the love that God has given you. Nothing is ever given to just you alone, it is given FOR everyone.

"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."

"Healing must be for everyone"

"It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you."

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

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

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

"Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons?"

"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."

"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE."

Quite simply, you either can be utterly powerless, afraid, weak, lacking, deprived, miserable, sick, unhappy, lost, desperate, improverished, bereft, and empty, OR .... you can acknowledge that the ONLY real thing you can HAVE is everything God has given already, and you can ONLY have it IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SHARE IT. Be selfish and end up alone and with nothing, or share with everyone and gain everything there is to have.

You can truly have what EVERYONE has, and only by ackowledging that it belong to them as well, OR you will end up empty handed. To try to take possession of some part of heaven for yourself, all of heaven will slip through your fingers. The more you try to own something, the less you have it. The more you try to depend on yourself alone, the less you become able to deal with life. The more you try to "go it alone", the more helpless you become.

God is your strength! His shared strength is literally YOUR strength. Without God, you have no strength at all. Of yourself you are nothing and have nothing. He is the battery-pack which fuels your power. However, because you are OF GOD, you HAVE EVERYTHING AND ARE EVERYTHING. God's power belongs to you, God's life belongs to you, God's entire creation belongs to you.

Everything real is YOURS. It is not just partly yours, it is FULLY yours. But it is also fully everyone's. You cannot have it by grasping for it to keep it for yourself, you can ONLY have it by acknowledging that it is EVERYONE'S RIGHT. And therefore you have to be open to GIVING IT. You must give what you have received, be open to sharing what you have, and everything must belong to everyone.

To admit that you have nothing SPECIAL about you, is humility. But this does not leave you powerless. It simply leaves you without a SPECIAL power that you invented. It strips you of your "super powers", your fictional sense of personal strength, and your illusion that you can do this ON YOUR OWN. You cannot do ANYTHING on your own. You are helpless and powerless on your own. The ONLY way you can live at all is to join with God and let him help you.

This is why you have to surrender your ego. You simply can't do life by yourself. When you try to you will depend on your own exclusive strength, which is pitiful at best and nothing at worst. And you will not be able to deal with anything. Only WITH God do you have stength. Only WITH God do you have anything at all! But with God, you are ALL POWERFUL. With God, you CAN DO ANYTHING.

"You can do ANYTHING I ask." "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "Do his works." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."

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

"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."

"The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."

"It knows that it is EVERYWHERE, just as it has EVERYTHING and FOREVER." "No-one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he value the body's offerings."

"Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special."

"No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT."

"Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."

"Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness."

"When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary."

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

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

"Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them."

The world of physical form is a projection of the ego thought system. It is based on a belief in separation, which has produced 3D images of physical objects, all of which appear to be different and unique. And every form screams "we are not one" or "I am not the same."

Miracle mindedness, on the other hand, is an opposite state, in which there is no regard for differences, forms or appearances. All differences are completely ignored. All forms are recognized as a deception. All illusions are the same. All seeming levels and degrees and variations and intensities and difficulties and measures are completely irrelevant.

The world of bodies is the world of form. And form takes on many forms, being the forms of the same one error. The single belief in separation has produced a fragmented world, with an entire hierarchy of differences. Big and small and heavy and light and round and square and near and far and every other conceivable difference is represented here. But they are all forms of separation.

Separateness produces form, and form pictures the ways in which the separate parts are separate. One object sticks out more, another is smaller, another a different color. One has extra parts, which the others lack. One moves in a different way, while the others seem more or less alive. And this results in an entire world filled with contrast and conflict, competition and inequality. A world of a trillion truths.

"Illusions are always illusions of differences."

"Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside."

"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation."

"He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth, or any attribute they seem to have"

"You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest."

"the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal."

But miracle mindedness is not deceived by any of this. It is a state of mind of wholeness, not fragmentation. It completely ignores all forms of difference, all measures of value, all sense of degrees and proportions and ratios. It has absolutely no regard for the infinite ways in which separation shows up. It does not buy into the temptation to believe that one thing is NOT another thing, seeing ALL illusions as the same and equal.

To live in a world of form is to live as though surrounded by many different things. Countless objects, each with many parts and sub-parts. Even to the extent of all things being formed from tiny little microscopic parts. All of them different, all of them unique. No two objects are even alike.

And so you believe this is normal and natural. You think this is reality. You accept it as if the form of an object defines its meaning, its true inherent nature. As if apples are apples and oranges are oranges, and they have no thing in common. As if cars are not houses and dogs are not cats and Earth is not Mars and one body is not another body.

But moving toward miracle mindedness must entail the questioning of appearances. The questioning of ALL forms. Every disguise. Every temptation to believe that the form of an object is truth. To recognize that all objects are disguises. They are all projected images from an egoic belief in separation. Not one of them is anything else other than just another form of the same one error, the same one problem, the same one illusion.

This must entail moving away from a dependency on different forms. Believing that life is normal when you use a car key to open the car door, and a house key to open your home. Or that one food is different to another. Or that some kinds of weather are better. Or that some relationships are more special. Or that one piece of clothing is different to another and changes your whole appearance.

This whole "lifestyle" of living in a world of differences, has to go. We can't continue believing that there are in fact many things here. That is the deception. We can't keep believing that we're surrounded with an utter buffet of choices. As if there are even any different choices at all. As if things are really any different.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."

We have to stop being dependent on unique special forms, and particular options, and conditions and styles and themes and preferences. We have to let go all prejudices and all ways that we make some parts of the world special.

We should not believe that one form of sickness is different to another, just based on how it looks or its severity or its size or appearance or how it seemed to arrive. We should not be deceived that a dead body is more dead than a living one. Or that a small wound is more difficult to heal than a gaping hole. Or that there is any such thing as "orders of difficulty."

The illusion of separation has not only taken on many forms, it has resulted in a vast hierarchy. A tremendous amount of different values, different amounts, severities, intensities, difficulties, degrees of problem, sizes of activity, degree of value or credit, amount of importance, etc. We've built our whole lives on the basis of fictional differences, buying into illusion after illusion of how "this is not the same as that".

We have to put all of this aside and recognize that ALL FORMS ARE LIES. Every way that one form says "this is how I am not the same", is a lie. They are ALL doing this. Every object is doing this, claiming to be different somehow. And we buy into it. And now we believe in the differences, and set up a whole egoic thought structure of rules and laws and limits of freedom, about how one thing is more or less something than something else.

Miracle mindedness is the state you reach when all of this is undone. When you are not convinced by ANY forms. When you see clearly and recognize the truth that ALL forms are a temptation to believe something that isn't true. You are not deceived by size or weight or severity or strength or proportions or values or importance or colors or shapes or types or classifications. You just put them ALL into one category - they are all equally unreal, equally the same, ONE ILLUSION, ONE PROBLEM, ONE SOLUTION.

This is why in miracle mindedness there are NO ORDERS. There is no hierarchy, no levels, no separations, no divisions. There is no sense of one thing being different to another. No belief in the deception that a slightly broken body is different to a severely damaged one. Why raising the dead is really on different than curing a headache. Why converting water into wine is effortless. Why walking on water is no more special or different than walking on land.

Once all things are equalized, once all differences no longer deceive, once all problems are recognized as one problem, once all forms are seen to be untrue, and once you stop living in a world of many reactions and many relationships and many separate conditions, your mind becomes WHOLE. It becomes unified and singular and "one with itself." It is not divided or twisted or mis-shapen by differences of any kind.

"You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible."

Such a mind is miraculous because it utterly ignores differences. It can have power over them all because it is not deceived by them. It sees that to change one small illusion is in fact NOT different to changing a "big one".

That to raise the dead is NOT really a bigger feat than curing a headache. And it is precicely this equality and singularity which gives the mind its POWER. A power which is derived from being undivided and singular. You are a singular whole unified one being, presently confronted with a world of many differences and separations, learning to disregard all of these alien separations so that you can be restored to ONE SINGULAR STATE. One mind. One voice. One will. One power. One wholeness. One capability. And this capability has the power to move mountains, just as much as to reconfigure objects, or materialize different body images, or to do anything at all. Because a mind free from differences is a mind free from limits, and there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

The course is moving us away from fragmentation, towards INTEGRATION. Away from a split mind, towards WHOLENESS. Away from many, towards ONE. Away from separation, towards ATONEMENT. Away from hierarchies, towards UNIFORMITY. Away from exclusion, towards INCLUSION. And away from isolation, towards UNION. Away from rejection towards JOINING. Away from selfishness towards SHARING. Away from the eseparation, towards GOD.

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

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

"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY"

"there is no order of difficulty in healing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same."

"WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN."

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

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

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

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

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

"As you survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any thought of hierarchy among them. "

"The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. The body's eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, so only the mind is responsible for seeing."

"Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."

"It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

There are many subjects in ACIM which can be difficult to understand. When we try to understand anything, we try to "make sense of it". If it makes sense, we're willing to accept it as true, because we can't "see any reason why not". Everything seems to make sense without contradiction so we regard this as "it must be true."

The problem is that our way of making sense, is NOT compatible with some of the subjects in ACIM. And not many people realize this. HOW you make sense of something has a lot to do with WHAT sense comes out of it. The kinds of conclusions you come to is actually hugely influenced by HOW you reason things out.

In the physical world of spacetime, in a world of separation and separate objects, thinking in the way that we typically do "makes sense". It lines up very well with separateness. In this world we have therefore learned to think in a separating way. This versus that, one thing and not another, either this or that but not both. We think of all things as kept apart from each other. Nothing ever overlaps or shares or transcends boundaries.

It works great when you're talking about whether to park your car in the first or second spot. Or whether you'll eat dinner at your house or a friends house. Or whether you want the red or blue shirt. Or when you are doing math. Or when you are choosing which way to turn. Or whose body belongs to who etc. This is all based on a very simple logical idea of "EITHER OR". Or what you can also describe as an "exclusive or".

Something can be this, or that, but not both. Because in a separated world, everything is based on EXCLUSION. A banana is not an apple. An orange is not a pear. Either I have 100% of the money or you do. Either I am at work or at home. Either the license for the car belongs to me or you etc.

This works for just about everything in the known "universe" simply because all of the physical objects in space time are BASED ON SEPARATION. The world around you, all forms of matter, are exact representations of the IDEA of separation. Houses do not overlap. Cars are in different lanes. Trees cannot take root on the same spot. Planets cannot occupy the same orbit etc. Everything physical is separate, and therefore it "makes sense" to think about all physical things in terms of separateness.

Therefore, we have all grown up immersed in, working with, thinking about, talking about, and interacting with, a separation-based environment, in which we have learned that THINKING in a separation-based way is the best kind of language to use to describe it. Our who way of "reasoning things out" is based on separation, and we do this so automatically we don't even realize how unnatural it is.

The rule of separation is that one thing is not another thing. They are different. One thing shares nothing with another thing. The two things are seprate and are kept apart. One thing you can put in one box, another you can put in another box. The two things cannot share boxes, or transcend boxes, or be in two boxes at once. Nothing is allowed to occupy the same space or literally BE another thing. One thing is never in two places at once. Two things are never one thing, and one thing is never two things. And on this basis we perform ALL of our thinking about the world.

But this way of thinking is COMPLETELY INCOMPATIBLE with reality, with heaven, with God's creation and mind, with the Sonship, with anything to do with the PRE-SEPARATION state, anything to do with the sons of God, anything to do with real relationship, and anything to do with the REFLECTIONS of heaven on earth... which includes the atonement, miracles, forgiveness, holy relationships, and so on.

When you think in terms of "either this or that but not both", you don't make any errors, provided you are thinking ABOUT physical stuff. If you take this highly polarizing mindset and think ABOUT non-physical stuff, you IMMEDIATELY FAIL. And to understand why that is, you need to understand why the Kingdom of God operates on an entirely different kind of LOGIC and reasoning. A logic that is NOT based on separation, does NOT follow rules of separateness, and where the seemingly impossible becomes possible.

As soon as we're talking about oneness, or sharing, or transcending limits, or having a relationship in which you recognize yourself in another, or the unity of the sonship, etc we're no longer talking about states of separation. When we talk about ideas being given away and increased and the person who gives it still has it, that's not compatible with separation-based logic. When we're talking about you being one with God, you cannot use separation-logic to describe that. When we talk about how one soul has everything and so does another soul simultaneously, that is NOT compatible with separation logic.

Indeed Jesus speaks of many kinds of overlaps, blends, merges, sharings, equations, and various ways that two things are one thing and one thing is two things, and at first these things will seem to make NO sense.

For example "God has but one son knowing them all as one". Does that mean in separate terms, that God does only have ONE son, OR does it mean that he has many? Before you answer that, you might notice what KIND of thinking you are using. Are you thinking in an "either this or that" kind of way? Are you asking yourself, whether EITHER he has one OR he has many? Because if you are, you are USING SEPARATION to think about something beyond the realm of separation.

When you do that, you will come to false conclusions. You are taking something that transcends separations, and you are IMPOSING separations and limits on it by thinking about it that way. You are POLARIZING something that is not polarized. You look at it and you SEE separate boxes in it, you put "one son" into one box and "many sons" into another box, keeping them APART. But that is a destruction of the nature of what heaven contains. It corrupts the data, so to speak.

God does in fact have one son. And, simultaneously, God does in fact have many sons. BOTH of these statements are true, at the same time, and to the same degree. One is not MORE true than the other. It isn't MORE true or encompassing that God has one son, than that he has many. Nor are the many part of duality - which is another false proof people use to claim "why" God can't have separate parts. Nor does their manyness indicate separation in the physical terms we're used to. What this requires is a leap in the WAY YOU THINK, to think like God, and NOT like the ego.

There has to be a way of reasoning, of MAKING SENSE, that actually does make sense, while also supporting ideas where TWO THINGS ARE TRUE AT ONCE without it being a contradiction. Two things which seemed like two in separate terms, but which are not two things. For example, we're told that God is whole, and that God creates at least one whole son. To create a WHOLE thing, God has to GIVE THE WHOLE of himself.

Separation-based thinking would claim that if God gives 100% of what he has, he has NOTHING LEFT. And thus God disappears as soon as he gives unconditional love. But does that really seem likely?

What actually happens is that God gives the whole of himself, through a oneness act of SHARING it, and now both God AND the thing he created have the WHOLE of everything, and at the same time. That DEFIES the kind of logical reasoning you've been using your whole life. IT DEFIES the separation.

Now we're told that if you want to HAVE everything, you have to GIVE everything. "To have all, give all to all." How can that make ANY SENSE whatsoever to someone who thinks in separate terms? It makes NO sense. If I give everything, I have nothing, right? That's our experience in spacetime in a world based on separation. If I give the whole pizza to you, I get no pizza at all. But that's NOT how it works in God's reality and creation. We are literally being told that if we give 100%, we will still HAVE 100%. And that if we DON'T give 100%, we will LACK 100%. How can it be true that you LOSE when you don't give anything away? Can you see how that SEEMS like it makes no sense whatsoever, in terms of how we normally think?

To put it simply, God, his creation/Kingdom/heaven, the sonship, all our creations, the holy spirit, miraculousness, all of the qualities and properties of ultimate reality, IS NOTHING LIKE THIS WORLD. Nor does it run on the same logic. Nor do the aspects of it interact or relate in the separate ways that we think all things in the physical universe relate - not even remotely. This is part of "earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." And because heaven is OPPOSITE to a separated world, you have to use AN OPPOSITE WAY OF THINKING if you want to grasp what the course is saying about those things.

The opposite of regular logical reasoning, is paralogical reasoning. Where BOTH AND makes sense, and EITHER OR does not. Either/Or is another way of saying "NOT BOTH". Logically speaking, "not both" or "share nothing" was the ego's assertion in the separation, which led to the separated world of spacetime. "Not both" is the OPPOSITE of "both have everything."

In reality, God can create many things and STILL be one. God can create one son, a billion sons, and STILL be one. EACH created being can be the WHOLE of creation. YOU, can be ALL your brothers, while simultaneously there being billions of brothers. YOU, can be EQUATED to the utmost degree, with another person, to the extent to even say you ARE them, WITHOUT losing your self. Because in reality it is BOTH true that I am me AND I am you. I am one with God AND I am myself.

Another popular line is that "I and my father are one." If you think about this in terms of separation, you will make two boxes - "I" - and "my father." You will then take those two boxes and say, "these two boxes are one box." And then you will say that, because you have merged the boxes, the contents of the boxes have merged. And that therefore, in conclusion, there is only "one thing left". BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE. This is a complete failure in reasoning, as Jesus points out. Just because I am one with God doesn't mean he and I form a singular big "blob" in which I have NO self and I AM HIM. You are NOT equal to God.

"This is because God and man are NOT equal." urtext T1B40AC "This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."" urtext T1B40AA

Here Jesus clearly states that the father is GREATER than the son. That's because God encompasses MANY sons, just as God has MANY thoughts. That is why you have AWE of God because he IS bigger than you. To say you are one with him does mean you SHARE everything with him, and are PART OF him, but you are NOT equal to him. That is what ACIM says. And to understand that you cannot think in separating terms, you have to think in terms of "both and".

Both I and God are whole. Both me and my brother are God's creations. This is what the golden rule is based on, that the truth is the same for everyone - my truth is the same as your truth, what is true of me us true of BOTH of us. It's true of me AND you. You cannot think about ANY of the topics in ACIM that are on the other side of the separation, unless you are prepared to put aside your ego-based separation-based laws of reasoning and logic, and think WAY outside the box using paralogical reasoning. You will not only not make ACCURATE sense of anything Jesus says, you will also DISTORT IT to hell.

THIS, is why, many ACIM teachers, and MOST ACIM students, have come to false conclusions about a large chunk of the course. They have used the same ego reasoning and thought processes ABOUT things which are NOT ego-like. And when you do that, you project separations onto things that are not separate, and you fail to acknowledge separations where they are natural and present. There IS a separation of sorts between father and son, and between you and your creations, but it's not the KIND OF separation we see in spacetime. SHARING, DOES require multitudes, and does NOT require isolation.

Very few people understand this, so if you've made it this far and are following along, then good for you. Thinking like God is SO ALIEN to how the world thinks that for many people it will take a lot of practice to REASON like God does. His whole mind, his whole thought process, the whole act of creation, the whole dynamics of heaven and the sonship, are NOTHING LIKE this world. And until you learn to recognize when you are thinking like an ego ie "either this or that", separating things out in your mind, versus when you are thinking like God - recognizing their UNION AND SHARING, you will continue to draw false conclusions about what ACIM is saying.

Even as you BEGIN to move away from false perception, ego projections of blame, attack thoughts etc, and move towards God's reality, you will have to start to open up to seemingly ILLOGICAL ideas that you really have a hard time making sense of. What does it even mean that "One brother is all brothers?" Or that "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness". What does it even mean that my brother is my savior because the christ in him is in me? Any notion of having ANYTHING in common with another is NOT separation idea, and ANY degree of holy relationship TRANSCENDS seeing the two of you are "separate".

The presence of separation in spacetime means, two things share nothing. What is the opposite of this? The opposite IS NOT that "there are not two things". The opposite is that "Two things share everything." That's what a lot of people do not understand about what separation means. Duality and Trans-duality (heaven's nature) are not the same thing. God having many sons is NOT a separation idea. God having parts is NOT a separation idea. Because those separate things ARE ALSO one. The ability for something to be both one AND many simultaneously, is what ACIM refers to as "miraculousness."

Ending separation does not mean erasing all trace of separateness. This is a MAJOR false conclusion with so many people. The reason being that this is still staying within the thought system of the ego while trying to undo it. Trying to KEEP the that something MUST be "either this or that", and then getting rid of "that" to end up with "this". That is NOT what oneness is like. Oneness is about sharing with others, union among many, singularity as multitudes, God having many thoughts which are all one (which is reflected in miracles - they each contain the rest).

You'll be far more accurate and clear about what the course DOES mean when you recognize that heaven has holographic properties, the whole is in every part and every part is whole. God is in all his children. Every son of God is one. I have everything and so do you. God has many sons who ARE all one as christ. Yet they are many.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit." urtext W320W111 "The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation." urtext T7L8

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God." urtext W320W114

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." urtext T9E3

If in any way, at any time, you are "singling out", "isolating", "putting in boxes", "separating off", as you think about these abstract topics, you are making a major mistake and blinding yourself to the truth. Learn to think in such a way that ALLOWS miraculous possibilities. Where there is sharing and overlap. Where the two are one and the one are two. Where we can be joined and be ourselves. Where I can see myself in you, as you, and as myself. And where we can all still be a collective family in UNION without it meaning we're exclusive. Reality is INCLUSIVE, and being included means you are part of everything, it does NOT mean you can't have an individual identity.

FIP 3rd edition: "God, Who encompasses all being, created beings (PLURAL!) who have everything individually (INDIVIDUALITY!), but who want to share it to increase their (PLURAL!) joy. (https://acim.org/acim/en/s/86#5:1 | T-4.VII.5:1)"

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else. ... To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer?"

"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."

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe."

"All sickness comes from a confusion of the levels."

"Sickness is but another form of guilt."

"Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness of its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS. "

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. ... "You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack, which SEEMS to be justified by its RESULTS. For, by withholding faith, you see only what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look BEYOND the barrier to what is joined with you."

"Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

"Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. "

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

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

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun."

"Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reason's eyes, can be confused with joy."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all."

"Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"For example, do not say, 'God did not create illness', but, 'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. ... This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking.These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter.What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

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

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common purpose IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has. "

"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son; the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?"

"Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was NOT among them. Nor did you, in ANY way, REQUEST them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The one who makes them does NOT see himself as making them, and their reality does NOT depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite APART from him, and what he sees is SEPARATE from his mind. "

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes. "

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. "

"Delay will hurt you now MORE THAN BEFORE, ONLY because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain IS REALLY POSSIBLE. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this. You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in ANY special relationship here."

"This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction."

"You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE."

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: "I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness. Yet, in these dark and heavy garments, are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth. Truth is the opposite of illusions, because it offers joy."

"No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. There is no will but God's."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have been slave to nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of God."

"To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. "

"These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your 'laws' would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them."

God's will isn't really a matter of "whether" you do God's will or not. If God wills something, it is done. But that doesn't mean you have no freedom.

ACIM teaches that "God does not coerce" and "even God would not oppose your will". Since your will is really one with God's will, or the same as, to in any way require you to will with Him or like Him would be like Him trying to force Himself against His own will.

God is not sitting there trying to "decide for you" the question of whether or not you'll will with Him or like Him. When you ask for guidance as to whether or not to do something, with the typical "should I do this?" kind of question, you'll probably be told that "you are free", instead of yes or no. In fact I get this response so often it's somewhat annoying, because I keep asking "should I" questions.

So God isn't trying to force you into anything or to choose for you whether you will with Him. Yet He does have a will, and He also wills something "for" you.

For example "God's will for me is perfect happiness". God does will or "want" that you be happy. In truth, God creates you happy, by His Will, and in your acceptance that you are as He created you, you automatically are happy. In effect, you are doing God's will by accepting your true nature.

But that doesn't mean God is pushing you into happiness, or requiring it, or forcing it, or demanding it. He loves you, and "love does not enter where it is not welcome". "Love waits on welcome, not on time".

So there is a component to your free will, that you yourself have to freely willingly will or "want" or elect to will with and like God. To be happy, God can't just force happiness on you. Anymore than he forcefully rips you of the world and puts you back in heaven, or anymore than he stops you from trying to hurt yourself against your will.

You have to be willing to be happy. And in your willingness, which is of your own free will, and yours to decide whether or not you will do so, you either choose to will what God wills for you, or you will something else. God does will that you be happy, but your refusal is up to you.

You can ask questions of guidance which may give yes or no answers, in terms of information, learning about a situation, asking whether something might be in someone's best interest etc. You can even ask for advice such as whether to buy the computer, or whether to stay at a job etc. This is part of trust. And the advice can come across as clear and wise and true, but it is still devoid of the component of force or demand.

When you move into believing that God is demanding, you are really becoming an idol worshipper. That means you see yourself as under tyrannical rulership by God, really the false ego God that you invented, and believe that God has cruel power over you to dictate what you must do. It's like cave dwellers worshipping a God in fear of retribution that, if you don't, there will be punishment. And then the admiration of God is more like trying to love something that's forcing you to do so.

"No one comes to the atonement except willingly" and "heaven is a choice I must make" means that you still, at all times, have the freedom to choose. Similarly ACIM says of angels that "they are free to establish their kingdom wherever they see fit", in reference to them setting trying to create a Kingdom on Earth. God would "prefer" that they establish their Kingdom in Heaven but he does not force them there.

Let's be clear that God very powerfully and strongly and certainly does have a will for you, a desire, an expression or broadcast of what He "himself" wants. What he supports. What he is in favor of. What he provides and gives and sees you as deserving. And whatever He wills, is DONE. But at the same time he cannot force it down your throat. If you don't want it, he waits patiently until you do. Just as if you do not want Jesus's help, he will wait patiently until you do.

Becoming one, or sharing interests, does not entail the giving up of your freedom. It really entails the reclaiming of your freedom, and freely electing to serve God. Freely assuming the function He has offered to you. Freely wanting to create with and like Him, together, as a team. Freely accepting God's harmlessness and desire that you be happy forever. Freely allowing God to give you everything, in acknowledging that He already did share everything with you in your creation. And at no point does it entail God ever "taking over" or going into a mode of demand.

God does not demand that you accept Him. You cannot really leave Him, because of His will that you be together forever. But you are free to block awareness of His will and pretend that He does not will what He does. You can deny His will just as you can deny your own will. Which has no effect on His will. And as you enter into unwillingness to will with God you enter into unwillingness to will freely, placing your will in a state of imprisonment. And then you will your own imprisonment by a tyrannical God that is really you playing the part of prison guard.

What God wills, truly, already is. And that includes the creation of you, the defining of what you are, what you are capable of, what you really have. It also includes your true nature, your innate built-in desire or character or "what you want". In a sense you could say that God "forced" you to "naturally" want to will with and like Him. To create loving living beings joyfully. To create the beautiful and divine. But at the same time, God "forced" you to also have total unconditional freedom. It sounds like a paradox but God permanently guaranteed that you can never "escape" being free.

You are a co-creator with God, as established in your creation by the fact that God DID grant you total freedom. Because in sharing all His nature and attributes and desire with you, He established you as similarly creative, powerful, unrestrained, unlimited, and completely free. And so God did bless you with the freedom to choose "whether to" will or not. Whether to will with or like God or not. But he did not grant you the freedom to throw away that freedom in any permanent way.

You can hide from what He has willed, but what He wills cannot be opposed, or undone, or attacked. His will is insurmountable and infinite and all powerful. But so is yours. As Jesus says, "Your will is as strong as mine", and He cannot oppose it anymore than God can. In fact God is incapable of opposing your freedom, because to do so would be to revoke the fact that He willed that you BE free.

God just wants you home, wants to love you, wants you to acknowledge what you are, wants you to remember your safety and certainty, wants you to be happy, wants you to feel free and unrestrained and unlimited, wants you to be willing to will with Him and like Him, and to create with Him. But it is by invitation only, and never by force or dominance. God even gives you all of His power.

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

So now, if you accept it freely, you are now as powerful as God, and God cannot oppose this. You have the power of God in you. You share His power and express and extend it. This makes you all powerful. As ACIM says, "I am not afraid but all powerful."

In some ways, in terms of the causation between God and His creative act of creating what you are and what you in-built nature is, and therefore what you are "likely" to want and desire when you are being true to yourself, God DOES have total power and authority and His will HAS fully "restricted" or "defined" the rules and scope of your freedom. Your function. Your ability. What you can and cannot do. That is not open for question and your rebelling against that is the authority problem and the separation.

But in other ways, when it comes to what happens AFTER your creation, how you USE your existence, how you express your nature, what you want to choose, what you are capable of creating, that is all entirely within the scope of your freedom. That is where you have absolute authority over whether you will or whether you are unwilling, whether you want to acknowledge God or not, whether you want to admit to co-creating with Him or not.

You can't stop your function and you can't change the rules and you can't make yourself be what you're not, which thankfully provides a guarantee that even in ego and dreaming you cannot actually change what you really are, and this therefore guarantees your place in Heaven forever, you DO have the freedom to deny it and pretend otherwise, to seem to want something else, and to reject your own freedom. What God wills is permanent, but since He willed your freedom you are free to deny it, but not change it.

It is in fact your freedom, within the scope of what you are, but not freedom or power OVER God, that has guaranteed that God did not enter into the insanity of separation with you. Because your will is free to block itself, but not to undo itself, you were able to "will" (un-will) to make a dream world unlike and without God. But because you were free to do this, God was not pulled into the separation or the insanity with you. In this respect you are not "one" with Him, ie you do not cause God or overpower His will, even if you dream of doing so. You can bring an illusion of suffering into your own mind, within your own self, but you cannot bring it into God.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain and wholly without suffering of any kind. 10 If you deny Him you bring sin, pain and suffering into your own mind because of the power He gave it. 11 Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.

You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. 2 Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. 3 To interfere with you would be to attack Himself, and God is not insane. 4 When you deny Him you are insane. 5 Would you have Him share your insanity? 6 God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. 7 That was the condition of His Son's creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. 8 To know that is sanity. 9 To deny it is insanity. 10 God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His gifts are eternal. 11 Would you deny yourself to Him?"

You are free to imprison yourself. And untimately it IS only you that can seem imprison your own will. No one else can imprison you, not even God. And you can also set yourself free, per the secret of salvation, that you and you alone are doing this to yourself. But in order to become free, you do have to accept the "ground rules of the house of God", the nature that you have, the function He assigned to you, to serve WITH Him and accept that you are still as He created you.

It still requires you to want to accept that you can only be as God chose you to be, which the ego interprets to be a limitation, a requirement or restriction, a demand, and a lack of freedom. The ego sees it as you "having to" comply by certain rules and be a certain way in order to be in God's world. Which is true, in a sense, because the Kingdom does have conditions for entry, for acceptance, for being in it and of it. You cannot experience it without "complying" with its nature. And wanting to be of a different nature exiles you from it. You cannot hate and attack and expect to be aware of divinity.

It's the desire to be something else, something unlike God, something unhappy, something lacking freedom, something limited and less, something broken and breakable, something that God would not will, that is the ego. When you want to suffer, when you want to die, when you want to hurt, abuse and attack and murder, that is all a desire not to will like God would have you will. It's an unnatural will. It also isn't really free will, because its a way of making your will imprisoned and being unwilling. And the more unwilling you are to will with and like God, the less you acknowledge your freedom. And thereby your will SEEMS to become imprisoned, weak, diminished and hidden. Not free at all.

The ego's version of free will is really an imprisoned will which does not want to will anything. It opposes will and rebels against God. It sees itself as having a "separate will" or a will which has separated itself off from being anything like God's will, and this poses as "free will". Defiance. But it is not free will, really, it is is an illusion of freedom. It is really imprisonment, masquerading as freedom, which is why it is an illusion. And giving this up is not really a loss of anything, because the ego's version of free will is really a desire to have no freedom at all, or to have an illusion of freedom. And death is an illusion of freedom from God, who is life.

In death you attempt to assert that you have no will, no choice, no power, no desire to will anything that God wills. And this is considered "free will". It's a statement of defiance, an expression of a total unwillingness to do anything. To will anything. It's a refusal to live, because life is what God wills for you. It's a desire to not exist, because God wills that you exist. It's an expression of attack and revenge and hatred and hurt and abandonment, having done these things to yourself instead of God, knowing that God would never do these things. Death is an attempt to end your freedom and to stop God's will.

But it is in life, in resurrection, in choosing, willing, opening, trusting, having faith, uniting, sharing, loving, that you regain access to not only your own freedom and true nature, but also to God. And this flowering, blossoming, returning to how you were designed to be, does require your "little willingness". And that means a little bit willing to be like God, to acknowledge truth, to be like your true self, which is forgiving and loving and whole and healed. Which is happy and healthy and immortal. Which is joyful and peaceful and unconditionally loving.

And so you return to what you always were given, to what God willed for you already. And you open to what you have no say in, freely and gladly, knowing that it guarantees your happiness and peace and freedom. And you are restored to heaven and to the full inheritance of everything God has given you without limit. And thus your freedom leads to the restoration fo your awareness that you are the will of God and always have been. And simply by being what you really are, unlimited, you are simultaneously free. Free of coercion and demand and sacrifice and force. Free in God, because God decided you be so.

And then you resume your function, the extension of God's spirit, the joyful co-creatorship and authorship with God, and the celebration of your total freedom and unity, one with all of Creation forever.

Oneness does not mean "one thing."

In reality, all thinking follows along the lines that whatever applies to one creation, applies to all creations. What is true of one son, is true of another. What is true of you, is true of the entire sonship. Whatever applies to you, applies to everything. It either applies to BOTH of you, or NEITHER of you.

This is a LOGIC system, a way of THINKING, based on the simple idea of "BOTH-AND". What applies as true, is true of BOTH you and others. It is true of me AND you. It is a system based on INCLUSION and EQUALITY. The entirety of God's mind and all of creation runs on this form of reasoning, this kind of THINKING. It's how God thinks and how all of creation functions in harmony. And it's how you should think of ALL your brothers, as being equal to you in every way.

In the dream, the ego's thinking was devised as a way to OPPOSE God's way of thinking. To develop another thought SYSTEM and WAY of thinking that breaks away from God's system and DENIES IT. What better way to disrupt equality and everything applying equally to everyone, than to introduce the law of chaos that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone.

In the ego's thought system and its way of thinking about anything, it does not think in terms of both/and. It thinks in terms of EXCLUSION, because the whole system is based on separation/exclusion/isolation/specialness. So to the ego, what is true of you is NOT true of your brother. What applies to you does NOT apply to them. This ISOLATES you from them and sets up a special rule that seems only to apply to some PART of the sonship, not everyone. And "me not you" is murderous.

The entire ego MIND runs on "EITHER-OR" logic. The ego never wants to confirm that anything is EQUALLY TRUE of more than one thing, because this would erase separation and differences. It emphasizes how, one thing is NOT another thing. How you are NOT the same as your brother. How what is over here, is NOT over there. How what you have, your brother does NOT have. This belief alone, this kind of mindset, gave rise to SPACETIME, in which what is true in one location is not true in another.

Now, spacetime IS THE THOUGHT SYSTEM OF THE EGO. And because everything IN spacetime is "laid out" logically on a basis of exclusion and isolation, where one object appears to be over here and not over there, and one object appears to be different to thus not equal to other objects, this maps exactly onto the way the ego THINKS. And so then it seems to be natural to THINK in terms of either/or, about everything in the world, because it happens to map exactly or "naturally" onto the physical world.

You can for example easily talk about how your car is parked in the first parking space and not the second one. How you were in Australia for a week and not the USA. How your body is not the same as your neighbor's body. How you own a particular car while your neighbor does not. How your hair is brown while your neighbor's hair is blonde. All of these ways that you pick apart the world, is inherently a direct reflection of the entire ego thought system (which is the world), and so makes it seem easy to talk ABOUT the world using either/or logical reasoning.

However, because this "way of thinking" is COMPLETELY OPPOSED to God's SYSTEM, his thought system,which is HEAVEN and how heaven functions, whenever you use this kind of either/or reasoning to think about ANYTHING to do with heaven, creation, sonship, sons, god etc, MAJOR DISTORTIONS HAPPEN, hugely FALSE conclusions are arrived at, and all kinds of confusion erupts. The ego's system was made to DENY AND DESTROY heaven's system, so if you USE the ego's system to try to understand heaven's system YOU WILL FAIL. Guaranteed.

Here's what happens. In ego thinking, you think in terms of boxes. Either something is in box A, or its in box B. Those are the only accepted possibilities. All of spacetime's "reality" seems to support the idea that this is the only possibility ie something cannot be in two boxes. However, Heaven is outside of spacetime and transcends its nature and its laws. Things having to be separated out by space, things not being equal, things not SHARING a location, things having to be in one place at a time and not everywhere at once, etc... are all DEFIED by heaven's thought system. The ego's laws are BROKEN by Heaven's laws.

The truth is, in heaven's reality, in God's system of both/and thinking, it is possible for very "strange" things to happen. For example it's possible for one thing to be in multiple locations at once, simultaneously. Not only is the thing in multiple locations, it is FULLY in EACH of those locations. This is because everything in heaven has OMNIPRESENCE. God is omnipresent and so are all his creations. Meaning LITERALLY, that a being in reality is capable of showing up in multiple locations simultaneously.

God is not only everywhere, he is FULLY PRESENT in EVERY location. Without compromise. Without only one "part" of him being over here and another "part" of him being over there. He is not partial. ALL of God is simultaneously in multiple locations at the same time. To the ego, that is regarded as ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. But it is nevertheless possible, because God does abide by the ego's limited laws. The ego would say, anything that is in this location, must be TOTALLY ABSENT from another location. And if it thinks that is true of God, it is not TOTALLY FUCKED In its comprehension of the truth and has come to a completely INCORRECT conclusion. Ego thinking is BROKEN!

Now, that's a problem for ego reasoning, because the EGO wants to put things into nice discreet boxes. It wants to say, well, either a son of God is in this one box, or he is in another box, but he can't be in both at once. But in reality that is actually a LIMITATION which is being placed on what is possible. In reality, A son of God CAN be in both boxes at once! He transcends boxes even when there are boxes. So the ego looks at reality and sees a son of God and says, this Son of God is either:

a) totally separate from all other sons of God because he MUST be ONLY in one completely discreet box by himself, thus "multiple sons" MUST mean SEPARATE sons and this is therefore an "idea of separation", thus the sonship is an ego thing, or

b) the division between the boxes must be erased completely so that there is only ONE box, resulting in there being in truth only ONE son, which by erasing the boxes, has now destroyed the individual sons of God because the ego can't comprehend how many sons can SHARE existence or OVERLAP boxes.

Similarly, if we talk about the notion that a single son of God can be in two places at once, or that there can be multiple sons of God, the ego has no way to comprehend that correctly. It WILL come to false conclusions. All it can conclude is either:

a) if there are multiple sons of God there must be multiple SEPARATE boxes whereby the sons do not SHARE boxes at all and thus are separate - which renders the idea of multiple sons an EGO idea of separation to be discarded as untrue, or

b) there aren't really multiple sons because there can only be "one son per box" so if you take away all the "separations" by taking away all the boxes, there can only be one box left containing only one son, thus completely ignoring the fact that God created many permanent sons IN reality.

This is the kind of ego reasoning that almost everyone in this WORLD uses because it seems to match up to the LAYOUT of spacetime and thus goes unchallenged. To think about or try to understand reality, heaven, creation, and the sonship THROUGH this ego lens, is an AUTOMATIC DISTORTION of the truth. The result is FALSE CONCLUSIONS that SEEM to make SENSE, but are TOTALLY NONSENSE.

It is FALSE to say that God only has one son, by reasoning that there can only in truth be one box in order to have no separation. Separate boxes in reality does NOT mean separation, because the contents of the boxes TRANSCEND the boxes. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds" does in fact mean there ARE many boxes!

It is FALSE to say that multiple sons implies multiple separations and is therefore a separation idea. If you think of "any kind of separation" as being an ego thing, not realizing that it's OKAY and NATURAL for there to be NATURAL DIVISIONS in reality WITHOUT it implying EXCLUSION, ignoring that the boxes are SHARING with each other, then you are making a mistake.

SONS OF GOD SPAN BOXES. THEY TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF EGO REASONING. THEY CANNOT BE CONTAINED BY OR ACCURATELY MAP ONTO A SYSTEM OF THOUGHT BASED ON EXCLUSION! YOUR WAY OF THINKING IS FAULTY!

So in order to actually comprehend how and why there ARE MANY sons in reality, and why AT THE SAME TIME they are "all one", YET MANY STILL, and why this is NOT an ego idea of separation or duality, you have to go BEYOND "box based thinking." And another way of saying that is "thinking outside the box". If you don't think outside the EGO box you WILL come to ALL of the ego's logical conclusions such as "god has only one son" (because it SEEMS to make sense) and "multiple sons is a separation idea" (which SEEMS to make sense) because that's all the ego CAN conclude. It's automatic as a result of either/or thinking.

To think like God, means to stop thinking in terms of either/or. For example, in this world, you have to learn to stop thinking about how your brother is DIFFERENT from you. You have to stop thinking that some truth can apply to him and NOT you. You have to move past this ego model of "its true of you, but not me" or "you're sinful, I'm innocent". You actually have to learn, in thinking like God, that what is true of you is true of THE WHOLE SONSHIP. What is true of you is true of your brother. And you and your brothers are totally EQUAL in every way. And that also means you are transcending the LAWS OF SPACETIME, and you are transcending the entire WAY that the ego thinks, which opens you up to POSSIBILITIES that the ego considers totally impossible.

It's quite a big transition to go from constantly thinking in terms of "true of me, not true of you" or vice versa, to thinking in terms of "whatever is true of me is true of everyone". Or to go from "having individuality is an ego separation idea" to "having individuality that we share but still retaining my SELF is TOTALLY NATURAL." God's system is a matter of either:

a) its true of BOTH of us, or

b) its true of NEITHER of us.

That's totally different to the ego's system of "its true of either A or B but but not both."

It's a TOTALLY different SYSTEM of thought. A totally diffeent MIND. It's a totally different WAY of thinking. It's a totally different way of REASONING and performing logical conclusions. God's system simply is not LIKE the ego's system. And so to understand heaven's dynamics you HAVE to move past either/or thought. If you don't, if you just keep thinking of ANYTHING to do with God's Kingdom USING the ego to THINK WITH, you will conclude falsely!

You have to realize WHY either/or thought is LIMITED, why it was made to produce CHAOS, why it leads to CONFUSION, and why it is totally NONSENSE. In fact, when ego thinking looks at anything to do with reality, anything true registers as nonsense, and anything false registers as making sense! That's because the ego is NUTS and totally OPPOSED to truth. IT CANNOT SEE REALITY CLEARLY. But that doesn't mean YOU can't comprehend heaven's nature, you just have to ditch the WAY you have always been thinking.

So let's say the ego looks at heaven and it sees ok, over here there seems to be a son of God, but over there there also seems to be a son of God. There seems to be two things, two brothers. What will the ego conclude? It will conclude that if there are two things, there are two separate boxes, and the two things are EITHER in one box OR another, but they do not share boxes at all. And thus that this means there are two SEPARATE beings, thus there is *separation* happening, thus its an EGO situation so the two brothers MUST BE ILLUSIONS. And thus it turns the sonship, which comprises MANY INDIVIDUALS, into an ego concept.

That's a PROBLEM, because the fact is that one brother is IN the other brother, and both brothers are SHARING their INDIVIDUAL boxes. There ARE two boxes, but the CONTENTS of the boxes SPAN the boxes. The ego can't handle that! So it sees joined unified SHARED experiences/minds, multiple INDIVIDUALS who SHARE EVERYTHING, as being "separated off" isolated units, and thus concludes that the idea of multiple children of God must be an ego idea of separation that IT has put INTO an ego framework. TOTAL FAIL!

It is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE, in reality, in heaven, for there to be MANY INDIVIDUAL THINGS, which SIMULTANEOUSLY are one. One AND many. Truth that applies to one thing AND to another. Truth that is true of BOTH OF THEM. Something in box A which is ALSO in box B, supporting oneness AND individuality. THAT is heaven's nature! It's a realm, a mind, a thought system, where there ARE many things, in number, many INDIVIDUALS, but AT THE SAME TIME, those individuals are SHARING everything of themselves with each other and God and therefore are "one". The one doesn't cancel the many!

"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (defiant of ego logic) created *SEPARATE BEINGS*, who have EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy."

There is nothing false in this statement and "separate beings" does NOT mean EXCLUSIVE ISOLATED BEINGS. It means MANY beings, who SHARE everything. Who have boxes, and SPAN boxes. They TRANSCEND LIMITATIONS.

Beware. Just because they are ONE, does not mean they are NOT TWO. THAT would be an ego conclusion. And just because they are TWO, does not mean they are NOT ONE! That too is an ego conclusion. Are you following? It's mind bending. The truth about God's creation TRANSCENDS EGO LAWS. Transcends ego logic. Transcends limitations. And transcends the "layout" of spacetime. Omnipresence is the total opposite of spatial relationships, just as eternity is the opposite of time. Spacetime and its structure (thought system) was made as an ATTACK on God.

Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS WORLD, because it is a SYSTEM OF THOUGHT (God's creation) totally opposite to the SYSTEM that runs spacetime. Heaven does not THINK like how the ego thinks! It's laws and rules are BEYOND the ego's laws and rules. Your entire WAY of THINKING has to be transcended and recognized for its limitation in order to go BEYOND it to SEE clearly and correctly the metaphysics and dynamics of heaven. It is not of this world. And in fact you have to unlearn "thinking with the ego" and LEARN TO THINK LIKE GOD. This is in the course! Your mind has to get out of the either/or paradigm!

Ego says, "how can something be two things and yet one thing at the same time? that makes no sense". OF COURSE! It makes no sense to the EGO's way of thinking, so it registers as nonsense, even though IT IS TOTALLY SENSIBLE. One thing CAN be two things! God HAS CHILDREN!!!!!! God has a FAMILY! The Holy Trinity is real and DOES HAVE 3 PARTS TO IT. The Holy Spirit *IS* a permanent distinct ETERNAL CREATION. The sonship DOES have its own children! God DID create legions of angels!

"We are creation, we, the sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes ALL HIS CHILDREN, and their creations."

"God's angels".

Until you can recognize and move beyond the limitations of either/or-based ego thinking you will not be able to SEE or ACCEPT why God has created many sons or why it makes TOTAL SENSE to say so. You have to think way outside the box and use an entirely different KIND of thinking. If you look up "paralogical reasoning" you will get an idea of how this works.

This is also why heaven is NOT DUALITY.

This is also why heaven is ****NOT NON DUALITY.***

***BOTH of those concepts are EGO CONCLUSIONS!!!!***

THEY ARE BOTH FALSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The ego can't help but think that way. "Either its one thing, or its two things". That's ALL the ego thought system can conclude, ever! And so it thinks "one thing" is "more spiritual" than two things, so let's go with that. BUT IT's WRONG! IT"S NO BETTER! "Either its duality, or its non-duality, there's no other possibility". THAT'S EGO!! THERE IS another possibility beyond the limits of that assumed way of reasoning. THERE IS A BETTER WAY!

Reality is not duality OR non-duality. It is "paraduality" or "transduality", to coin a phrase. It TRANSCENDS BOTH OF THEM. Stupid ego rules DO NOT APPLY. God is one AND MANY. Creations are one AND many. One brother is ALL brothers. One mind is ALL minds. There are MANY!!! And it's not duality!

Omipresence! Transcendence of the limits of space and time. Transcendence of finite boxes or being one box or many boxes. SHARED experiences. Transcendent experiences. Unity which does not obliterate individuality. Oneness which does not undo or cancel the multitude of God's creations who are, according to ACIM, "in number infinite"!! Equality which acknowledges REAL BROTHERHOOD. A sonship which DOES CONTAIN MANY INDIVIDUALS who are all "the one son of God" AND WHO ARE THE MANY SONS OF GOD. At the same time! Doesn't make sense? TO THE EGO!

Some of you reading this will get it. Most probably will not, and most have not, mainly because we don't realize just HOW steeped we are in ego reasoning. Thinking like God is VERY DIFFERENT to what you're used to. Any time you go towards "one box", or you go towards "many separate boxes", you are IN THE EGO and failing to comprehend the nature of reality.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." (notice how the ego's reasoning comes to false conclusions because it can't comprehend how multiple souls could have everything AT THE SAME TIME and not exclude each other).

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven. The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed." (Heaven's thought system of both/and GOES AGAINST the ego's thought system of this WORLD)

"...but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world..." (the true nature of heaven is ALIEN to the ego's idea of it)

"Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." (Recognition of reality REQUIRES that you ditch either/or based thought and adopt both/and based thought, which is INCLUSIVE REASONING)

"You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes." (to reach true perception you have to transcend the body's perception, ie transcend EGO THINKING and the EGO WORLD/SYSTEM, so that you can SEE SENSE and SEE REASON and return to reality, only possibly through an acceptance of how everything applies equally to everyone everywhere always.)

"I and my father are one"

Oneness does not mean "one box"! THAT IS EGO!!!!

Oneness means SHARED UNITY AND BEING JOINED AS TWO THINGS IN HARMONY WHO ARE NOT SEPARATE YET ARE STILL TWO THINGS!

T5I

Section 9 - The Eternal Fixation

T5I1

The concept of "set" is among the better psychological percepts. Actually, it is used quite frequently in the Bible, and also here, under many different terms. "God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed (or set) on Thee because he trusteth in Thee."

T5I2

The pronouns here are confusing without explanation, and the attempt to shift "Thee" to "Him" is a misinterpretation. The statement means that God's peace is set in the Holy Spirit, because it is fixed on God. It is also fixed in you. You, then, ARE fixed in the peace of God.

T5I3

The concept of "fixation" is a very helpful one, which Freud understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because he was afraid, and as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with good judgment. Fear DISTORTS thinking, and therefore DISorders thought. Freud's system of thought was extremely ingenious, because Freud was extremely ingenious. A mind MUST endow its thoughts with its own attributes. This is its inherent STRENGTH, even though it may misuse its power.

T5I4

Freud lost much of the potential value of his own thought system because, much like Cayce, he did NOT include himself in it. This IS a dissociated state, because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freud's thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as HE saw it WITHOUT dissociating. This is why the many contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became increasingly less apparent to HIM.

T5I5

A man who knows what fixation REALLY means and does NOT yield to it is terribly afraid. Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind IS fixed because of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's set is the basis for its unequivocal voice. The Holy Spirit NEVER changes its mind. Clarity of thought CANNOT occur under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is NOT clear. But clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment IS understanding. It stands UNDER perception because you have denied it as the REAL foundation of thought. This is the basis for ALL delusional systems.

T5I6

The concept of fixation, as Freud saw it, has a number of real learning advantages. First, it recognizes that man CAN be fixated at a point in development which does NOT accord with a point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward real release from the time belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. But Freud suffered all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind, and enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked NOW entirely, and merely saw the continuity of past and future.

T5I7

Second, although he misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than he had to, to keep his fear in tolerable bounds, as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he EMPHASIZED that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is more real to ITSELF than the external reality with which it DISagrees. This again could have been a powerful RELEASE mechanism, had Freud not decided to involve it in a strong defense system because he perceived it as an attack.

T5I8

Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as irrevocable danger points to which the mind can always regress, the concept can also be interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind cannot LOSE. Freud saw return as a threat to maturity because he did not understand prodigality. He merely interpreted it as squandering. Actually, "prodigal" also means careful. This confusion between careful and careless led him to confuse the escape from care with something desirable. In fact, he even went so far as to equate it quite literally WITH desire.

T5I9

But throughout his thought-system, the "threat" of fixation remained, and could never be completely eliminated by any living human being anywhere. Essentially, this was the basis of his pessimism. This was personally as well as theoretically the case. Freud tried every means his very inventive mind could devise to set up a form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation forever, even though he KNEW this was impossible. The knowledge plagued his belief in his own thought-system at every turn, because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore only PARTIALLY insane at the perceptual level, and was unable to relinquish the hope of release even though he could not cope with it.

T5I10

The reason for this amount of detail is because YOU are in the same position. You were eternally fixated on God in your creation, and the pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The reason is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level that is so high that it cannot BE surmounted. You are ALWAYS being pulled back to your Creator because you belong in Him.

T5I11

Do you REALLY believe you can make a voice that can drown out His? Do you REALLY believe that you can devise a thought-system which can separate you from His? Do you REALLY believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless. You need merely cast all your cares upon Him because He careth for YOU. You ARE His care because He loves you. His voice reminds you always that all hope is yours BECAUSE of His care.

T5I12

You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it. There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE.

T5I13

You are asked merely to return to God the mind as HE created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal YOU. Sanity IS wholeness. And the sanity of your brothers IS yours. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are made upon you, when you KNOW the voice of God Himself is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace because you are of one mind and Spirit with Him.

T5I14

Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE HEALED. When I told Bill that there is "just one more thing," he heard me very well. I hope he will hear me as well now. His intelligent mis-hearing of "river" as "rivet" showed that, even though he wanted release, he was not able to cope with it at the time.

T5I15

But the time IS now. You have not been asked to work out the Plan of Salvation yourselves, because, as I told you before, the Remedy is NOT of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will. I have made His Plan perfectly clear and perfectly explicit to you, and have also told you of your part in His Plan and how urgent it is that you fulfill it.

T5I16

There is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the sacrifice of His children who believe they are lost to Him. The "one more thing" that Bill must learn is merely that he is NOT the one more. He is both ONE and AT ONE. If he will learn this NOW, he will be willing in accord with the last judgment, which is really only the Biblical reminder of the inevitability of self-INCLUSION. This is what "Physician, heal thyself" really means. Bill has frequently observed for HIMSELF that this is hard to do. He has, however, been perfectly aware of JUST what YOU should do about it.

T5I17

You might ask him for me whether he does not think he might be dissociating HIMSELF from his own awareness, since he is so clear about the remedy for YOU. You might also remind him that to whatever extent he separates himself from you, he is separating himself from ME. This IS a collaborative venture. Let me therefore return his own ideas to him, so that you can share them and thus help each other to help me.

T5I18

But let me first remind you of something I told you myself. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as sin, you become defensive because you EXPECT ATTACK. The decision to react in that way, however, was YOURS, and can therefore be undone. It CANNOT be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error, rather than allowing it to be undone FOR you.

T5I19

Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE.

T5I20

Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the UNDOING process, which does NOT come from you, is nevertheless WITHIN you because God placed it there. YOUR part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:

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.

There is a statement in A Course in Miracles which describes how God thinks. This is a very important statement because it gives us a strong idea of the workings of God's mind. And let's not forget that GOD IS REALITY, so how God functions is how reality functions...

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Notice that it says there are PARTS in God's mind. EACH of those parts, which are therefore MANY parts, contains the WHOLE. God thinks of "whole parts". God has many thoughts in his mind, in reality, which produce many parts, each of which contains the same ONE whole.

When you ponder what kind of relationships are going on between these parts, you may realize that this is THE SAME as the holographic principle. The principle states that there is a whole, and the whole also has parts, and the whole is in every part, and every part contains or IS the whole, and therefore every part is whole.

If you read up a bit on how true holograms work, and I don't mean hollywood's "projected images" which are NOT holograms, you find the same thing happening. In a holographic image, such as those on your credit cards, EACH PART of the image actually contains THE WHOLE image. All of the information is crammed into each speck of the picture. Every part is whole.

That is very different to how things usually work in the world. Usually a part of something does NOT contain the whole. Usually parts are only PART OF the whole, are limited, finite, and lacking some of the information. For example an apple lacks the qualities of a banana. Apples don't contain bananas parts, nor do bananas contain apple parts. But it's not like that in God.

In reality, according to ACIM, God's mind is unlike spacetime. God's mind HAS parts which DO contain the whole. EACH PART IS the whole. Notice that it does not say that there "are no parts" in God. It quite explicitly says that the whole of God is in EVERY PART. And therefore there are many parts in God. Yes, that means multiplicity, and no, that does not mean the same as duality.

There is a key difference between many whole parts in God, and duality. In duality, each of the parts is NOT the whole, and each of the parts does NOT contain the whole. The parts are all different and separate. They do not SHARE anything. Parts which do not share is duality, or illusion. But this does not mean that you have to get rid of parts, in general, in order to find the opposite of duality.

The opposite of "parts which do not share anything", is actually "parts which share everything." The TRUE opposite of duality, is not non-duality, it is a holographic system in which EVERYTHING IS SHARED by the parts.

To put it into other words, God is the whole, and God also contains parts, because God has a mind which has thoughts. God has many thoughts, not just one. Each of these thoughts is a part of God's mind. Each of these thoughts is alive, and is a thought of life, and is in fact a living being. Each thought is a thought of WHOLENESS, because God is whole and can only think in whole terms, so EVERY thought contains the whole of God.

Therefore, as God thinks a thought, a WHOLE BEING comes into existence, which is a PART OF God, AND which shares the whole of God. "I am forever host to God." Sharing the whole of God is what "your inheritance" means. Each part of God inherits the whole of God. Each part of God, each thought of God, is A SON OF GOD - a soul. Or one of God's creations.

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

Notice how ACIM states clearly that God has many thoughts: "the extensions (plural)" "ALL His Thoughts (pural)". This is a fact of reality. God has many thoughts. There is a multiplicity of thoughts in God and this is completely natural and real.

Notice how ACIM also states that all of his thoughts (his parts), EACH of his parts, "are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other". EACH son of God, each thought of God, is WHOLE WITHIN ITSELF, AND it shares the whole with the other sons of God. There is one whole - God - which is shared FULLY, by each and every thought of God. All of them are united (whole, one) within themselves as WHOLE BEINGS, AND are united (whole, one) across their RELATIONSHIPS with each other as a SONSHIP.

Notice how ACIM also states that each of these many thought-creations are not created "in part", or "partially". They are fully created. Which causes them to be, in effect, "fully standalone whole beings". In effect, "separate beings". I know people don't like the word separation but, it does not always mean ego. If there are separate beings (thoughts of God) which are THE WHOLE, simultaneously "many and one", their separateness is there at the same time as their unity. And THAT is what most people find hard to get their head around.

This is where most ACIM students fall flat on their faces attempting to understand how it can be possible that something can be separate AND one at the same time. It is not possible on Earth, for example, so we are not used to this idea. When two objects are separate, they are not one. When you join them together, they become one, and are no longer two. So we think that nothing can be one AND two at the same time. This has become HOW WE THINK. But it is NOT how God thinks. And thinking that God thinks (that reality functions) in this way is an error.

God does NOT think in terms of "either this or that" or "this is not that" or "it can be this or that but not both". Those are ego thoughts based in a separation thought system. They are ideas of parts which do not share anything. They are ideas of a lack of unity and oneness. They are selfish egoic unsharing ideas. And they also lead to a majorly false conclusion, that you would have to get rid of the many in order to have the one. That oneness means "not two" and "non-dual" and "not many". That is completely false.

It's false because God's mind does not function in the same way that spacetime functions. God's mind does NOT follow laws of separation of objects. God DOES have many thoughts, DOES contain many parts, AND STILL maintains oneness at the same time. That's what's so hard for many people to get their heads around, to understand it logically and to make sense of it.

It will not make sense when you think of it in normal logical terms. It will not make sense when you try to ask yourself, "is it this, or that?" It will not make sense when you demand that everything within God has to put be into one box, or another box, and that nothing can span the boxes. It will also not make sense when you demand that it's not POSSIBLE for there to be one AND many at the same time, or have an ASSUMPTION that reality HAS to be "only one thing" in order to have oneness.

This is why many parts of ACIM seem to be "contradictions", when considered using normal egoic logic. It becomes apparent that they are NOT CONTRADICTIONS when you consider them in terms of the holgoraphic principle. Because the holographic principle allows there to be MANY AND ONE at the same time, through sharing of the same whole, which DEFIES the contradiction. And btw the proper term for this relationship is MIRACULOUSNESS, which is the true nature of God.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is."

"Each Soul knows God completely (each part is the whole). This IS the miraculous power of the Soul (holographic relationship = miraculous). The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking (separation-based logic), in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This statement for example contains two major claims. 1) That God has only one son, and 2) That God knows ALL of his sons - meaning there are many of them. And since they are his sons, they are his direct creations, and MUST therefore exist in reality together. It goes on to reinforce that "they are not less", meaning there is more than one.

So now YOUR mind is going to look at this, and it's going to look at it WITH SEPARATION (alienating thinking). You're going to think in terms of, "it has to be either this, or that, and it can't be both". You will PROJECT SEPARATION onto it. You don't realize you do this because you do it all the time and have not questioning how you think, and have not realized that you are NOT thinking like God, and that your insistence on separating everything is corrupting reality.

So what you'll end up doing is you're going to try to SEPARATE OUT the two parts in the statement. You will identify that "God has one son", and you'll put that in one separate box, which does not SHARE with anything else. And then you will identify the idea "God has many sons", which you will put into a second SEPARATE box. THEN you will reason WITH THE EGO, that they can't both be true. That it has to either be one or many. That the two boxes do not share anything.

The conclusion that you'll come to, which will seem to make sense to you, based on how you think, is that EITHER God has one son OR many sons. And you will probably steer towards the "one son" because you see it as larger or more encompassing. Then you will side with HALF OF THE TRUTH, and HALF of ACIM's statements of fact, and claim that God only has one Son, and will go look and find quotes abut God having only one son, which you'll think backs up this idea. It's true, but it's not the whole story.

The truth is that in a holographic system, there is many AND one, that BOTH parts are true, that God does indeed only have one son, BUT, at the same time, that one son IS MANY sons. And their manyness coexists with their oneness. Without any ego in a PRE-SEPARATION STATE. This is because they SHARE EVERYTHING and overlap. Each son HOSTS all of God. Each son HAS everything. The many sons of God ARE the one son of God. They all make up the sonship. God experiences them as individual wholes AND as one whole son.

Note that there is no "exclusion" in this. Reality runs on laws of inclusion. Being the one son does NOT stop the many sons from being many. And being many sons does NOT imply they they are not one. In a holographic system the rules are very different. It is OKAY AND NATURAL for "many parts" to exist, provided they are ALSO THE WHOLE. It is the sharing of the wholeness that is the true ACIM definition of "oneness", NOT a "count of one to the exclusion of many".

This is largely why A Course in Miracles is NOT a non-duality teaching. Or to put it more accurately, non-duality only touches on HALF the story, identifying that there is a oneness, but with complete disregard for the many. Thus it focuses on only the wholeness of the hologram and not its parts. You can just as easily pull up many quotes about God's MANY creations, children, beings, individuals, minds etc, all of which are JUST AS VALID AND EQUAL as the quotes about the one son, AND are on the same level.

One of the very unfortunate things which happens when people cannot understand that God's reality is holographic and not linear, is that they cannot accept "the many" as being part of and coexisting with "the one". So they instead see the many as a separation idea, and separation in general becomes taboo. To remove all separation becomes a goal, EVEN IF it means destroying all of God's creations in the process. Driving everything toward "oneness only" EXCLUDES creation and is blind to reality's nature.

And then the only way to logically seem to RESOLVE the conflict, to undo the contradiction in the statements, is to relegate the many to the realm of the ego, wihch people think is the only place that manyness can exist. This does "make perfect sense" when you think in EGO TERMS, using separation-based logical reasoning, but it DOES NOT make sense in holographic terms. In holographic terms, it is a total mangling of A Course in Miracles, taking the perfectly valid whole parts of God's creation, his many whole children, and shoving them into a box with the ego, to try to get rid of them. This is a horrible BANDAID, and it turns FACTS INTO METAPHORS and REALITIES INTO ILLUSIONS.

This all leads to non-sense notions, which SEEM LIKE logical sense, that 1) there is only one son of God, 2) this one son must have split apart to form many, 3) the many sons is an ego illusion and not part of reality, 4) there is no-one else to have a relationship with, 5) when you wake up everyone is awake so you should selfishly focus on your own atonement etc.. Notice any popularly held beliefs here? Commonly distributed ideas of what ACIM is saying? Non-duality based interpretations handed down from teacher to teacher all making the same logical error?

This has literally become an entire MISREPRESENTATION of A Course in Miracles, taught by very prominent teachers the world over. It is a horrible logical bandaid placed over ACIM's holographic metaphysics by people who think using the ego's rules and do not even realize they're doing it. It has led to a "version" of ACIM that does not allow for sons of God or souls, does not permit free will, does not include relationships, does not support co-creators, does not acknowledge the Holy Spirit or Jesus, does not support performing miracles to help others, and in general points solely towards the non-dualistic eradication of God's Kingdom and the death of the self. Literally, it is UPSIDE DOWN and destructive and an attempt to destroy reality and its contents.

All of this has arisen PURELY because of a faulty logical reasoning, based on a lack of comprehension of the subtle SYSTEM of God's mind and its properties. God is not just another "space". God is not like space or time. God is transcendental and holographic in his nature. All of God thinks at once, and when all of God thinks, EACH thought contains all of God, because it is a thought OF wholeness BY wholeness. And this produces WHOLE creations, which are FULLY created, which are inherently therefore "independent individuals", but WHO ALSO are STILL the whole.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit."

Thus we have this perfectly legitimate and perfectly accurately worded statement in the urtext AND in FIP 3rd edition:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings*** who have everything ***individually***, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you."

Notice a few things here. It is stating that God does encompass all being - he is the whole of being, all of existence. It is stating that regardless of this fact, GOD HAS CREATED. It is stating also that God has created many things, because he has created a PLURAL of beings as his many thoughts. Note also that while it uses the term "separate beings", which is ENTIRELY VALID, because each of these beings IS a WHOLE BEING, this does NOT imply that these beings are egos or that they do not share in oneness. It also states that EACH of these whole beings "has everything individually", which again reflects the holographic principle that the whole is in every part and every part (being/self) is whole. And this of course does mean that EACH being is an INDIVIDUAL, but NOT CUT OFF.

This again goes on to confirm not only that God created individual beings, but also that individuality and having a SELF is perfectly natural. "I am still as God created me." As in the first quote I gave, "what is natural to him is natural to you". YOU have a self that lives in heaven. You also have brothers in heaven who have selves, as individuals. This is because each of God's MANY thoughts are living beings, and you have relationships of wholeness with these selves making them PART OF YOU as well. The whole of God is shared by EACH brother, making your brother contain the SAME whole as you, and therefore each brother IS you also, and is part of God - while still being a separate distinct brother.

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

This again is a seemingly highly cryptic and contradictory statement WHEN you consider it in terms of separate boxes. When you think about it with the ego, you come to false conclusions. When one brother is all brothers, it DOES NOT mean that there is a single person standing alone. Or more to the point, there IS a oneness, but there also are still MANY brothers, many in number. They ARE brothers because they share the same parent - the same whole in the hologram. EACH brother is a brother (whole part), all the brothers are equals (share the same whole as one), and they each contain EACH OTHER. But they are still many!

Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. This again is a holographic principle, not a linear principle. It means that there are in fact many minds "(all the minds God created one with me)", and EACH of those minds contains ALL the minds. The fact that EACH mind contains the WHOLE of mind, does NOT eradicate the fact that there are many minds. The manyness, and the oneness, exist SIMULTANEOUSLY in a holographic system. And God's mind IS a holgoraphic system.

Unfortunately all of this is very rarely understood by ACIM students. It is not something I properly understood until recent years after a great deal of exploration. I rarely hear ACIM people talking about this, and I even more rarely hear ACIM people understanding it. Yet it is absolutely the CORE of A Course in Miracles's metaphysics. That God is not a solitary lonely figure, but in fact has many thoughts and many children, many co-creators who even themselves have many children. That REALITY in fact comprises ONE AND MANY, and NOT JUST ONE. That oneness is ALSO manyness.

Until there is a full grasp of this, ACIM students will continue to misunderstand and misrepresent A Course in Miracles. This isn't just something that a select few teachers have done, it is very widespread among teachers and students at all levels. The lack of recognition that the WAY YOU THINK is firmly rooted in separation, is the real culprit. The fact that we are all so used to thinking in terms of "separation of objects", because the physical world is set up this way and it works very well when describing SEPARATE THINGS. But it is HORRENDOUS when it is used to describe a state of reality which is nothing like "the separation" of space.

It is solely because everyone thinks in compartmentalizing terms of "either this or that" or "not that" or "not both", which is thinking WITH AND LIKE the ego, that we've resulted in these extraordinary skewings of the ACIM teachings. Especially in terms of trying to foce reality into a non-dualistic model, which is completely inappropriate and inaccurate. Also in terms of the very basic and wrong interpretation that "oneness" means "there's only God". Yes there is only God.... PLUS the many parts of God which God shares all of himself with, which are MANY in number, AND which are fully "separate" creations. Non-duality is only HALF of the story.

Even the term "separation" has become taboo because people think "the separation" is a bad thing and getting rid of separation is a good thing. This is a fallacy because God in fact does include many separate parts. It's just that those parts are ALSO joined. They are separate, AND they are joined. The true logical system of God's mind and thus reality is not "either this or that". It"s "this is BOTH this AND that." This is what the Golden Rule is based on - what is true of me is true of you. Either/or always means ego, and both/and always is true to God. Using any kind of either/or logic to describe reality is an ABSOLUTELY FAILURE.

Major teachers of ACIM never realized this. They came to faulty conclusions about the nature of reality and taught it to many people. They used the ego to reason as to what reality is like, and came to egoic conclusions about God's system of thought. This led them AUTOMATICALLY to the ONLY conclusions that an egoic thought process COULD come to, because their LOGIC drove them there. This results in these ideas of "only one son", "one dreamer", "fragmented son", "no others", "no free will", "no relationships", "no miracles", etc. This whole "model" of ACIM is completely false and has resulted PURELY form BAD THINKING. By people who do not understand the logic of God's mind.

This highly distorted and soul-destroying self-denying anti-creation version of ACIM needs to be pushed aside and replaced with a much more accurate holographic model. One which supports, is open to, allows for, and accounts for, the presence of many beings in heaven's reality. The fact even that you have real brothers, with real relationships, and that God has a real family, and that all of this is permanently real. That reality itself is not JUST oneneses, it is also an entire Kingdom of absolute creations.

This is the true form of A Course in Miracles. Not a non-dualistic flattening of God, not a creation-ignoring blob of singularity, but in fact a sort of "hybrid" idea which joins the one with the many in a perfectly natural system. Perhaps we can call it trans-duality. But it is definitely not non-duality. Yes duality is not real, yes bodies are not real, yes separate things are not real. But in God, there are also separate things which SHARE, and that guarantees they are still one. You DO have brothers, God DOES have children, and you ARE part of a divine family.

We have to open our minds to thinking WAY outside the box, and to stop thinking WITH boxes, if we want to understand what A Course in Miracles is really saying.

A glossary of christianity terms reinterpreted and clarified by Jesus in A Course in Miracles.

Here are some elements of ACIM which may sound christianity-oriented, but of course Jesus redefines and clarifies their meaning.

1. Heaven - is the kingdom of God which God created one with Him and which is immortal and eternal. You are part of it, as is everyone. It is reality. It is a living creation in which all things are alive forever. It is not Earth.

2. Hell - the attempt to oppose heaven, reality, God, yourself and others, by believing in a state which really does not exist, as if it does. A state opposite to the nature of God, which lacks everything and is therefore devoid of meaning. Onto this empty shell you can project ideas of hell or or heaven, which are seen as a reflection. A belief that hell is real turns the nothingness into hallucinations of something evil. Earth is part of the empty shell, the veil of illusions.

3. Being cast out of heaven - if you are not in heaven, you are dreaming of being exiled. God didn't cast you out, you left. Or at least, you believe you are no longer where God is. This produces an illusion of a world outside of heaven, which includes the Earth. God didn't abandon or reject you, you wanted to not have him be your father and to receive nothing from him. You became the prodigal son who thought he could be better off on his own.

4. The devil - anyone who denies God is against God. They are also against Christ, making them the anti-christ. Being against God you are attempting to turn yourself into a devil. The devil is your belief in an impossible opposite to God. It is your ego. Every separated individual is the anti-christ. But these states are not real. They are make-believe fiction and fantasy in which someone who is confused believes they are something they can never be. Thus there is no real devil or anti-christ, only people with mental illness.

5. Sin - the idea that separation is possible and real and has real consequences. That you can cause reality, therefore you can cause God. Therefore you have committed the "original sin" of trying to attack God. Except nothing real (immortal) can be attacked, so sin is really just a mistaken belief that sin is possible. When correctly recognized as a mistaken belief, it is regarded as error, and errors can be corrected without punishment. If sin were real, punishment by death is inevitable. But if sin is a false idea, then there is no death.

6. Salvation - to the ego-oriented person, salvation is anything opposite to God which takes you further away from God. In this light death is seen as salvation from life. In truth salvation is the return to God through willingness and acceptance that only his truth is true. To be saved is to be free from sin, ie error. Which means simply to be sane and to recognize correctly what is really true. Salvation is the same thing as atonement, true perception and true forgiveness.

7. Atonement - to the ego-oriented person, this is punishment for sin, demanding death. To pay for what you did. Ego says you attacked life so your life will now be attacked. Real atonement is the recognition that attack is impossible, there is no sin, and only what God created really exists. Atonement is the final miracle in which you recognize reality for what it is and reject anything not of God. Where you realize that only God's Kingdom exists and there is no world. That you are still as God created you, causing you to wake up from your dream and return to reality.

8. Evil - the notion that some power other than God exists and can cause changes in the immortal. Evil is nothing but mental illness, insanity, confusion, and just a belief in an opposite to God. It's an attempt to overthrow the kingdom and rebel against reality, making a person seem insane. Believing truth is false and false is true, all properties of nothingness and evil are assigned to God, while all properties of God are assigned to nothing. This produces hallucinations of enemies and attack and hell. There is no evil because it is nothing but a false belief in something impossible.

9. Repentance - you must repent of sins, or choose to stop being a sinner. In truth you cannot really be a sinner because sin is not possible. You can believe you are a sinner, however. And it is this belief that must be undone. To "choose again" is to repent by aligning yourself closer to God and rejecting the ego/devil.

10. Confession - really means to admit the truth, but only to admit the truth of God is true. To admit to having seemingly done something that is impossible in reality, may seem like honesty, but it's really admitting to something unreal. A true confession admits that you are christ and are purely innocent forever.

11. Word of God - the true nature of God expressed and manifested in creation. God's authenticity and honesty and trustworthiness. The expression of God's love, his voice, and his creations. It is the whole kingdom and its truth. 12. Faith - similar to trust, in terms of who or what you are placing your faith and allegiance in. Faith in the ego/devil means trusting a lie and moving towards death. Faith in God means trusting the turth and moving towards life. It's also tied into what you give "credit" to, and therefore what you value or want. If you value God you want God and credit him with being true. Therefore you trust him and side with him, and therefore have faith (know) that his laws are the only laws.

13. Resurrection - A return to life, meaning a return to immortality and eternity. This is possible only in the context that currently those who reject God are to some degree "playing dead" and are trying not to live. Resurrection is the assertion of pure life and is the opposite of choosing to die. It surmounts death and abolishes it and has power over it. It might be expressed or demonstrated as in Jesus's resurrection in which he showed through physical form that death has no power over him. It also includes the power to abolish sickness and death in all its forms, including physically in self and others.

14. Savior - Jesus is an example of a savior in that he united his will with God's, therefore uniting the will of the whole sonship with God's for us. Part of us therefore became united with God again in Jesus's resurrection. In this sense he has now in a position of being able to save ie help us - to become saviors.

15. Prayer - Ultimately communion with God in which everything is given and received. Love is received and love is expressed. It is a request for and an acceptance of everything. In its lower forms it devolves into specifics and requests which include a wish for some kind of attack or control or special favor.

16. Revelation - a true revelation is a state in which fear is totally abolished. It is a one-way communication from God to a child of God, and is like being imprinted with God. In the experience it is deeply personal and there's only you and God there. It does not include others. But its content can later be shared with others. It is not a mere insight or download or slight upgrade, it's a powerful world-blotting-out intense expression directly from God.

17. Soul - God created many souls which are individual beings who comprise the sonship and are the Kingdom. They are simultaneously all one as the Christ, also known as the one son of God. They are not children of Christ, they are children of God. They share everything with each other and therefore are each other. Souls are permanently perfect co-creators with God and create their own kingdoms of living beings together. You have a soul which is your real self/identity in christ, and you have your own kingdom of creations in heaven, which are your children.

18. Christ - Christ is also referred to as the one son, a part of the holy trinity, but christ is also EVERY son of God. Each soul is christ and you are christ just as Jesus is. Which means you are also part of Jesus and vice versa. We are all joined together in christ. Christ is the perfect holy state of being of all souls and the christ-mind is shared by all minds.

19. Trinity - Before the separation from God there was a duality, ie God and his Sonship. But in the separation God also added the Holy Spirit, producing a trinity. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken, God's Voice speaking to His Son, which guarantees his healing and his return to reality. All three aspects of the trinity are now permanent and only the trinity is real.

20. Holy Spirit - God's creation which was added in the separation to keep a link between God and his children so that they could never be lost. It is God's guarantee of their union with him and the permanent potential for their return home to share everything with him. He bridges the gap between parts of mind that seem united in christ and parts which seem separate. He is the appointed friend and help and corrector and therapist and comforter and healer God has designated to lead us out of hell.

21. Forgiveness - really the recognition that there is nothing to forgive. In this recognition is the clear sane recognition of what is true and what is false. And only God's truth is regarded as true. In that truth sin is utterly impossible and nothing real can be changed. Therefore it's the acknowledgement that everyone is as God created them and nothing has ever happened to change God's will. It disregards all notions of an opposite to immortality and shines a beacon of light in the darkness for all those who think they are unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflection of your immortal nature, and therefore entails invulnerability in which no-one can ever be accused of doing anything to you.

22. Angel - beings created by God as part of the Kingdom. They are created below the sons of God (or from?) and act in roles of protection and guidance and healing. You can communicate and work with them even while on earth.

23. The fall of man - the separation from God, which was an attempted belief that separation is possible, a tiny mad idea, took place in the minds of souls. But also some angels became involved and believed in the separation. This produced what is termed "the fall" in which we exiled/projected ourselves from heaven, into a fictional realm of exile outside of heaven, which is not really anywhere. Lucifer, an actual angel, was included in the fall. He symbolizes the devil perhaps but all separated souls are just as much the anti-christ. This was an actual rebellion in heaven against God and a desire to be God, producing the authority problem and the rejection of God's fatherhood/authorship. A desire for their own kingdom they could rule without him. This produced spacetime, the world, and earth, which was the idea of hell as heaven's opposite.

24. Blasphemy - technically real blasphemy is impossible because God cannot be opposed or offended. But you can believe things which are seemingly against God's nature. Any form of fear, suffering, sickness, death, an annoyance, even a slight lack of joy, unhappiness, lack of peace, are all blasphemous in that they claim something that is not true in God's reality. Therefore they are trying to work against God's truth and oppose his laws. This is of course all a fantasy and there is no sin.

25. The last judgement - God's evaluation of you is the same as it was when he created you perfect, which is that you remain exactly as you were intended to be and nothing can change you. Therefore you are worthy of God and are perfectly innocent forever. Nothing has ever been done to affect your entitlement to his love and you have never sinned or attacked anything real. You merely dreamed of it in a nightmare of your own making, where you deceived yourself. The last judgement upon the world we made (earth etc) is that it is nothing and does not exist.

26. Church - perhaps a term best used as a synonym for the sonship or the kingdom, which are the same thing. The body of God, if you will, is the outer expression of God - his creation. All members of the sonship are part of the church of christ, and this membership is permanent.

27. Communion - while "holy communion" may be a symbolic act, real communion takes place in heaven as the perfect symbiotic union of God and his children. It is the total immersion and openness to God, receiving from Him and expressing in return. To commune is to know, to be, to share. On Earth this devolves into "communication" which can have varying degrees. The separation from God was really a communication breakdown, ie an unwillingness to receive or to see eye-to-eye. Miracles raise the level of communication until communion becomes possible again.

28. Creation - a term only applicable to what takes place in heaven and not on earth. It requires the perfect total whole extension or giving of what the creator has, to what the creation is. The creation inherits everything of its creator and has nothing else. It shares everything with him, having not left him, and therefore can only exist to share it. All creations are co-creators therefore because they inherit the ability to create. Creations are living beings of light, and can only create living beings of light. They cannot create physical objects or forms of matter or energy or other elements of spacetime. Earth is not a creation because it cannot create more earths. Everything in spacetime is a "dead end".

29. Crucifixion - while Jesus's activity on the cross is mostly referred to as "the crucifixion", crucifixion itself really means the attempt to crucify christ, which is everyone, through allegiance to the ego and to death. It's the attempt to prove that God's immortal son can be killed. Every form of fear and suffering and unhappiness and death is a form of crucifixion. This includes the making of an entire seeming universe of spacetime which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son ie kingdom. It depicts all possible forms of death and is run by laws of death. Being hell, everything in it is crucified and crucifying. Ressurrection marks the ascension back to heaven.

30. Disciple - someone who freely wills to follow someone who may be more advanced, above, or wiser than themselves. Jesus does state in ACIM that if you were not to follow someone of greater wisdom you would be unwise. This indirectly suggests you should follow Jesus as his discipline and learn from him, but is not a mandate. We're also told that Jesus told the disciples to be physicians of the lord, that is to go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, and to heal themselves, with the power of the holy spirit. It is again implied that we are asked to do the same.

31. Garden of Eden - originally really the state of heaven, in which there was no need or lack of anything. Everyone had everything. It wasn't literally a garden with apple trees in it. Adam and Eve were just a couple of God's children. The tree of knowledge of life and death is symbolically the ego thought system, which if believed in (partaken of, eaten, consumed, believed) seems to "poison" the mind, make a person self-conscious of their shameful existence, and attempt to hide in the bushes of the darkness of the mind, to hide from God. They seem then to be expelled from heaven but really have believed in their own expulsion because they want to be exiled, having bought into temptation by believing the tiny mad idea of "the serpent" (ego).

32. God - of course, the prime first creator, the absolute reality, the only true law, the infinite immortal being who shares everything of himself in order to express and apply himself through creation. The father of all eternally living beings and the source of all existence. The all in all. The guarantee of eternal peace and perfection. God relates to every child fully and personally while relating to all children the same way, making him both personal and impersonal. Everyone knows God.

33. Holiness - related to wholeness and purity, innocence and the lack of belief in sin. A state of alignment with God's reality and with truth. Sanity, harmlessness, gentleness, light, healing, power, certainty and openness. Just one of many synonyms for the state of being in heaven.

34. Miracle - in the big picture everything real is permanently miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of reality in which one thing is all things and all thing are one. This breaks all rules relating to limitation and separate boxes and isolation and exclusion. All expressions of love (God) are miraculous. God creates miracles. You are a miracle of God. God extends through you, God works miracles. You are a miracle capable of creating miracles. Miracles are expressions of life. Even in the world of dreams, on earth, miracles mirror creation in heaven, and are thought-creations which give life, provide love, fill a lack, resurrect, and correct the mind from its mistaken beliefs, producing healing. Since their nature is extension, they are received from God and given to your brothers. There are without number or limit and there is nothing they cannot do. They are truly supernatural - above the nature of the world, based solely on the laws of another world (heaven).

35. Temptation - really just the way that illusions of nothingness seem to symbolically assert and represent things which are opposite to God, as if to try to persuade you to buy into and believe in them. Illusions present themselves as things happening which cannot happen in reality, sins occurring, attacks having effects, real suffering, to "tempt you" to believe further that such things are possible. If you give them your belief, you buy into it and are deceived. If you see through the illusion and frame it in the truth, you deny it and reject its lies and do not believe in it. You can be tempted but not coerced against your will. Being tempted to believe sons of God are bodies is a major hurdle to be overcome because it is not true, but difficulty to recognize as false. The ego/devil is said to tempt souls deeper into hell, which is our own mind/beliefs making faulty decisions.

36. Commandment - not talked about much in ACIM except to say that God's will cannot be opposed, his laws are unbreakable, his nature has permanently established reality, and you cannot do anything to interfere with it. What God has created, no man can put asunder. This does not include the rather social-religious commandments or "guidelines for behavior" on earth. God does not coerce. Thou shalt be free. Thou shalt love your brother as yourself. Thou shalt live forever. Thou shalt come to no harm. Thou shalt be always happy. Thou shalt give and receive as one. Thou shalt share everything with everyone.

37. Worship - Appreciation and awe of God is appropriate, as is loving God and thanking Him, but he does not have an ego with which to receive any kind of praise. You cannot tell him how great he is as if to give him something he does not have. He cannot receive offerings of sacrifice or exalting words. He has no need of anything. But you can celebrate what has been given and rejoice and be glad that only his truth is true. You can thank him for what you are and for what you have been given, and for what your brothers have as well. But you're not supposed to idolize him or your brothers or jesus or turn anyone into a figure "above" you. Only God is above you and that's why you have awe of him.

38. Healing - in ACIM this usually refers to the transformative process of change whereby something begins in a less healed state and moves towards a more healed state. Miracles can induce healing but a "miracle of healing" is a level confusion. Miracles are a remedy, like a drop of detergent upon dirt, which causes the dirt to be removed. Healing is the result, but the miracle itself is not the healing. This is also why miracles can cause shifts in perception but are not the shifts, because the shifts are part of the healing effect, not the miracle that caused them. To heal you give healing and learn to receive healing as you give it. All those who become healed become instruments of healing. Your function on earth is the healing of the sonship as a miracle-worker.

39. Christian - apparently someone who follows christ, but you should recognize that you are christ as well. You are supposed to return to the state of owning up to being christ, recognizing that everyone is christ. Acting as christ and being christ-like is to be christian.

40. Second coming - really has nothing to do with a singular person coming down from heaven for a second time for a second go-around. It's really what happens when all those on earth are choosing to return to heaven and, of themselves, become the christ. The first coming was Jesus showing the way to return to heaven, and the second coming is us actually implementing and following that and doing the same.

41. Eternal life - really granted by God the instant he created you and everyone. It means permanence and the impossibility of anything ever happening that could interrupt, damage or change that permanence. This means it is a state of total immortality and invulnerability. Everything real lives forever.

42. Eternity - a state of heaven and reality in which everything real always exists, is always the same, never changes, and exists here and now and forever. There is no "time" involved, only presence.

43. Golden rule - Not an optional rule, but really the unbreakable law of God that you are everyone. Therefore how you treat them you are immediately and directly and personally treating youreslf. The part of you that is in them is the receiver of what you give, because giving and receiving are one. This produces an incentive for only shared interests and for giving only love, otherwise you will hurt yourself by trying to hurt another. What you do unto others you do unto yourself. By treating them how you would want to be treated, you directly do treat yourself that way and directly receive that treatment, regardless of whether other opt to reciprocate or not.

Some ACIM quotes...

"I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one."

"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows it in his own Being and its experience of His Sons' experience. The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

""No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in any way separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up", I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own."

"I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."

Let's have a closer look at what the course says about the world and whether it is God's creation. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or pick and choose which quotes you want to look at. I put a comment after each one.

To me, the way that all of these statements sound paints a clear picture that the "physical world" i.e. the physical universe - planet Earth, is NOT God's creation whatsoever in any way shape or form.

It also says to me and that every time Jesus refers to the world as something we do not want, he is not referring to some "misperception of it" that we don't want - some imagined version of the world, which he talks about in other passages - but rather, literally "the world" - planet Earth. It is an illusion not created by God, and it does not exist, and it is not our home.

Confusion comes in because at times, Jesus IS speaking about our false perceptions and the need for the correction of perception. But at other times, he is speaking at a higher "level" either at the level of someone with true perception, or even higher at a level of the One Son of God who made this universe. Not having a clear distinguish about WHICH level he is talking at in any given quote leads many people to a lot of confusing and false conclusions. Let's take a look at some quotes....

"You do not want the world." (who would want a world God didn't create?)

"The world provides no safety." (because it is an attack on God)

"This world was over long ago." (because it never happened)

"Nothing the world believes is true." (because the world itself is fundamentally a lie)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (because God cannot be in the world or of the world nor can He create the world. The world of dreams is not your dreamy interpretation of planet Earth, it IS planet Earth, a dream which you are inside of right now, sleeping - look around you! "Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." - tells us that when we wake up in the morning to eat breakfast, WE ARE INSIDE A DREAM, not a world that God created.)

"There are no satisfactions in the world." (because the world was made by us as a substitute for God's universe)

"It is the world you see that is impossible." (because the world we see - literally planet earth, not your interpretation of planet earth - is impossible. It cannot exist because God did not create it.)

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world." (because this world is entirely an EFFECT and it has no power to do anything)

"The world is not left by death but by truth." (because the world ITSELF is death, and truth is its undoing)

"Without the idea of death there is no world." (see .. the world is MADE OF DEATH and it will not ever be made of Life or given life or resurrected or turned into something living or God-created).

"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing." (because they are illusions, and substitutes for God's love. This means the world can NEVER be a satisfying replacement for God's Creation).

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (Many many people think this means, that you have misperception OF the world, peeking out from a separate body, looking incorrectly at planet earth which somehow objectively came to exist "on its own" or created by God. What this really means is, YOUR perception, as the One Son of God, MADE THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the world *itself* IS a state of mind containing images. Trees, houses, people, it's all part of perception. Not perception OF trees and houses and people, but literally the things themselves. Those objects, your body, planet earth, are misperceptions.)

"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself." (because you are the One Son of God and the ENTIRE WORLD is a judgement against you. It's an attempt to deny who you are, to turn you into a form which dies, to picture what it would be like to be dead, and to completely obscure the light of Christ. The world itself IS judgement. Judgements OF or ABOUT the world are an entirely additional LAYER of bullshit that you added as a separate human, and is a SECOND LAYER of sleeping you added on top of dreaming the world.)

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality." (Again, this is one which many people think means, the world your little separate body-located self sees... thus your private perception. No. It's the world your eyes see. You see trees. You can call the trees good trees or bad trees, hated trees or loved trees, you still see trees. The trees you SEE - trees AT ALL - are nothing to do with reality. God did not create trees.)

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (This SHOULD be an obvious one. Given all the suffering and terror and death in the world, which is inherent to the world's nature, should NOT be possible if God created it. And claiming that it's really love or life if viewed correctly, is a complete distortion, again based in one person's body-identified personal opinion about the world. God does not create worlds where there are forms or bodies or things which die, NOR does he create worlds where even if those things are all part of one lovely "whole", they are possible either. God only creates HEAVEN, which is formless and has absolutely nothing to do with planet Earth in any way.)

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness." (Yes, planet Earth, is a bleak little world, and it will vanish into nothingness, because God did not create it. This does not mean your personal misperception of the world will vanish (though it will also) - the world ITSELF will vanish, because it is a lie).

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." (the purpose for this self-made world was to create problems that are inescapable, such as sickness and death. These problems however have no power over miracles which can undo them all BECAUSE God did not create a world of problems.)

"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." (I like this one because it says it like it is. The entire world, the entire physical universe, is a "picture" in the MIND of the Son of God, who is absolutely vast and unlimited, who is dreaming this ENTIRE physical universe and everything in it, and it was designed by him as the crucifixion of himself. Its depiction of things which have beginnings and ends, stars which are born and die, flowers which wilt, people who die of disease, planets that die, etc... is a picture of CRUCIFIXION not a picture of "God is very loving." While you can come to perceive it in a more forgiving way, that does not make or prove it is God's creation either, because if you recognize it for the illusion/lie it is, it MUST disappear.)

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all." (This is because the world is an effect of dreaming. What appears in it as "causes" are illusions of causes put in place by the dreamer. The world has no consequences. Anything God creates MUST have the power to CAUSE, and since the world cannot cause anything, it cannot be a creation of God.)

"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be." (There can only be joy and love and peace in what CAN be, i.e. God's creation, heaven, the kingdom, but outside of that there is no life and nothing can be joyful or loving or peaceful. The world is inherently a depiction of what peace is NOT like. Separation in all its forms is played out here, and every single particle of matter is at war with all the rest.)

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home." (This world is not your home... literally, planet Earth is not your home. This entire physical universe is not your home. But some people interpret this to mean, well, this imaginary interpretation of the world is not my home - the world I'm putting on top of the world is not my home. Bullshit. "The world" is simply planet earth. Planet earth is not your home. Surely you FEEL this? Surely you recognize that you feel like an alien here, and that the more you wake up the more you recognize that you do not belong in this illusory place? I know I do.)

"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."(Thank God, because this world is not something God would ever create. God is suddenly the author of duality and sickness and death? God sees sickness and death as lovely and precious? I think not.).

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state." (Planet Earth has never existed at all. This is hard to accept I know. There is no world. This is the one core teaching in ACIM which many people refuse to entertain. This is because we believe the world is REAL and cannot conceive of how it would not be. Especially if you come to the course with a background in beliefs which say God made the world in some way, that's hard to put down. This isn't referring to a privately perceived interpretation of the world. Again, it's just simply... this world, planet earth, has never existed. We can deny and fight this all we want.)

"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible." (Would you say planet earth is a world of scarcity? I sure would. That's not a judgement or an inability to see its pure loveliness. Yes there's a forgiven world, which is the recognition that this world is an illusion and is nothing, but I think most would agree this is a world of lack and rarity. Just look at how empty outer space is and how distant civilizations or inhabitable planets are. Extreme scarcity.)

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (So here again you could say, well, this means my perception is nuts and I'm not seeing the world correctly. Ok. That's one LAYER of the problem. Once you undo that false perception you're going to find out, that the world is STILL a delusional system. Inherently, the mountains, trees, planets, forests, oceans, it's all a state of DELUSION, and that's not going to change when you get over your personal misinterpretations of it. See, the problem is, we think that when we overcome "my" personal misperceptions, that's going to be the end of the story. It's not. You have to not only get over your personal interpretations (which is ONE level of awakening), AND then go beyond the definition of "my self" to incorporate ALL SELVES into one single Son of God - as Christ. And in that view, there is an entirely second level of awakening which leads to God, and the acceptance that the One Son of God MADE this world out of insanity and guilt. Guilt, denied, became unconscious, and projected out as the physical universe, in which we are now hiding from it by pretending to be innocent. Hmmm)

"The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home." (because the world ITSELF is not your home. It's just a way Holy Spirit can USE it to help you to ESCAPE from it through truth - because it doesn't exist)

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." (Plain and simple. Normal language. The world you see, with your eyes, regardless of your mental interpretations or labelling or judgements, is an illusion of a world. God did NOT create it. Many people want this mean, my personal interpretation of the world is not the world God created, and once I am free of my personal interpretation, God is going to reveal that this world - planet Earth - is his lovely creation. Good luck with that. Planet Earth does not exist. It is an illusion. The course even tells us the "real world" is an illusion and will disappear.)

"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach." (AHA!.. .. If you can GET this one and accept it, you've made a huge leap away from the ILLUSION that this world dis real, or that God could have created it whatsoever, to the awareness that this world can NEVER be real because to believe that requires a belief in sin and death. There is no world. Yes, planet Earth. There is no planet earth, neither as a separate planet nor as part of some seamless "soup" of God-stuff. Pretty threatening to the ego which is why it fights it tooth and nail.)

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." (Miracles can UNDO the world itself, and everything the world says cannot be undone (itself), BECAUSE the world CAN be undone, proving that it is NOT REAL. What is real cannot be undone. If miracles can undo the world, they can bring about RESURRECTION - the undoing of death in ALL its forms, including physical and mental death. Eventually the entire physical universes is going to be UNDONE, because it does not exist. Only God's kingdom will remain.)

"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity." (Obviously, but this actually does not just mean that the people in the world are nuts (and most are, me included), it means the world ITSELF, the very fabric of spacetime, is insanity. It is impossible to be separate from God and this universe attempts to prove otherwise.)

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon." (here, we're told the world RESTS UPON confusion. The world itself. Now, if this means your perception, sure, that'd seem to make sense. You can be confused, and become unconfused. Sure, makes sense. But this statement isn't speaking about you or your personal world. In fact, most of the course is not speaking to or about anyone's EGO SELF, and yet 90%+ of ACIM students THINK that the Course is talking about THEIR PERSONAL EGO, which leads to a ton of confusion. The world ITSELF is based on confusion because it's an expression of a belief that separation from God is possible, which is a confused state of mind.)

"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world." (And this never changes. The world is BASED ON death, made of death, and is ALWAYS DEAD. There is no life here. There is no life outside of heaven. All forms of "life" in the world, all bodies, animals, plants etc, the sun and stars, it is all part of a DREAM OF DEATH, and not one part of it has eternal life. Death was the motivation that MADE THIS WORLD. This world was MADE BY A DEATH WISH, not by God. That's quite extremely opposite to the folk who believe God created this world somehow).

"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself." (When this says "yourself" note that it does not just mean "you in a body and not other people." Most people take it that way because they have an ego. Statements about you making the world or the world being in your mind, is not about it being in your SEPARATE MIND. It's about it being in THE ONE MIND of the son of God. The ONE son of God is the maker of this entire world. It is not outside of THAT SELF. You are busy focusing on how to get your LITTLE SELF to a state of awakening of maximal naturalness, but there is more beyond that - realizing that you are the entire sonship and more. You are Christ, not just one Son.)

"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" (Who wants the crappy world anyway? It's full of shit.)

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (You can believe you are victimized when you believe the world itself is a CAUSE and you are its EFFECT. But when this is reversed (this is a course in cause not effect), YOU become the cause and the world is recognized as an EFFECT. It has no power over you because it is an EFFECT of YOUR dreaming it (as the One Son). This is how you are not a victim of it. Otherwise, the world can still kill you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent.)

"Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?" (Apparently Jesus is clear that the world is not a place of peace or freedom or holiness. So God cannot have created it.)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth." (Yes dreams seem very real. What if i told you right now that you are actually INSIDE A HUGE DREAM? Right now... this room you are in or whatever, the people you are near, it's part of a DREAM. This is not what God created because it is a DREAM, not a reality. God does not dream or make worlds of dreams, or dreams of death. God did not create a dream world. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up FROM this dream, not TO it.)

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that every thing that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real." (Objects in this world have ends and beginnings. Every particle begins and ends. Every flower is sown and grows and blooms and dies. Beginnings and endings. It's not just a matter of not seeing them correctly or not realizing that "God is making them grow" or some BS, it's simply that, ALL FORMS ARE FORMS OF DEATH, and they all end, and that is why they are NOT eternal, and God did not create them.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel." (Exactly, and elsewhere Jesus tells us that love (God) did not make the body. God does not create forms, or planets, or a physical universe).

"The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher." (The entire world and all things in it were MADE by us to be NOT ETERNAL, which is WHY it passed away, because it could not last. Nothing God creates can die or end or transform or change, no matter what words you use to try to make out that it wouldn't be seen "as change" when you're awake.)

"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." (I like this quote also because it locks in the form of the world as being evidence of a mistake. Everything in the world, bodies, objects, even the planet, are "little". All little particles and atoms. All little tiny little creatures walking around thinking they are big. Go up in an airplane and you'll see how little it all is. Every FORM in this world is little, as an idea of not being unlimited or infinite, because it's an idea of contraction AWAY from God. This is not God's creation or God's will, and God would not maintain this for an instant.)

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. (mind over matter)" (Again this is another one which people can and do use to try to prove that references to the world are all about "your personal misperception", and that you need to fix how you see in order to see it properly, and that afterwards, you'll keep the world and stay in it because it's real. No. Your WISHES have MADE A PLANET. The wishes of the one son of God, has made an entire physical universe. These are wishes to die. Wishes to be crucified. Wishes to sin. Wishes against God's will. God did not make this. What you want to see, changes, IN FORM, as mind-over-matter, because your mind is THAT POWERFUL. It doesn't just mean you change your perception OF stuff, when your perception properly changes, the world ITSELF must change form, and so must the body.)

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition." (You put it there (forms, bodies, trees, buildings) because you WANT TO. Do you think you don't have that much power? The mind is very powerful. The world must match the outward picture of the inward condition of the mind of the ONE SON. The One Son is attempting to destroy himself BY fragmenting himself into many many individuals and forms scattered across many worlds. What shows up as objects and bodies is what the Son of God wants to see there. It IS his perception. The course says literally "the world IS PERCEPTION", which does not mean that your little human "perception" contains the illusory world, it means the ENTIRE WORLD OF EARTH is inside the perception of a vast mind - it is that mind's IMAGINATION. Meaning, physical objects, are actually a part of SEEING, the mechanism of trying to VISUALIZE STUFF, which brings it into appearance as fake images i.e. objects and forms and bodies. When the mind is free of all this, the physical world - yes - planet earth in all its ways - MUST DISSAPPEAR.)

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." (I would rather have what the Kingdom of God offers than what this world offers. This world is not my home. It does not contain the truth. It is not real. And God did not create it. It HAS blinded the sons to the father, which was its purpose. You cannot behold (see in any way) the world (physical planet earth) and behold the kingdom. Only one of them is true and real. Planet earth does not exist, was not created by god, is an illusion, and if you're still SEEING IT in any way, with any mind whatsoever, you are not in the Kingdom. To suggest you can BE in God, in his kingdom, while the world continues to appear or move or change or have form, you are in denial.)

"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love." (Looking forward to this! Finally a relief from this world of nightmares and death and suffering. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND THIS which God did create - his kingdom, heaven, filled with joy and life and peace and celebration. It is HOME. It is where you really want to be. Do not let the world, planet earth, bodies, objects, forms, people, places, idols, or anything else, KEEP YOU FROM going there and accepting it as your true home where your true nature is free at last. The world offers nothing in comparison. Pleasure is not love. Specialness is not love. Forms are not love. Sunsets and kittens are not love. "Never was love in the world."

There is no world. The people who do not believe this will continue to not believe this, and will object to this post and everything it says. They are free to do so, but they are not free of the confusion that is going to accompany those beliefs, or the fear that will be induced upon being confronted with this truth. I would hope people will change their mind and see what the course is really telling us. Then we have real hope.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
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