Jesus uses the word "reflection" quite often when talking about the state of seeing this physical world "perfectly" (overlooking it with forgiveness), a state of true perception looking at a forgiven world, and preparing for Heaven. This reflection is actually an IMAGE, just as your reflection in a mirror is an image. It isn't the actual thing itself - it is within the realm of perception which is still a separated state.

Holiness, love, purity, sanity, peace, etc can all be reflected "on Earth", symbolically. This can temporarily render Earth as a kind of "Heaven on Earth" or, more accurately, Heaven being glimpsed beyond Earth where forms no longer mean anything. But this state is still once removed from Heaven itself. Those who perceive still need healing, are not in communion with God, have not fully embraced the Atonement, and are lacking in certainty and knowledge. Perception, and the forgiven world, the reflection of Heaven, must end. Only Heaven is my home.

All these quotes are distinctly CLEAR, that the THING is Heaven, and ITS REFLECTION is on Earth. And every quote is consistent in this. Reflections are second-hand information, and reflections are STILL illusions.

"In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the Holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all around you. 2 You can REFLECT Heaven here."

"Earth can REFLECT Heaven or hell; God or the ego. 5 You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. 6 God will shine upon it of Himself. 7 Only the clear REFLECTION of Himself can be perceived upon it."

"REFLECTIONS are SEEN in light."

"Could you but realize for a single instant the power of healing that the REFLECTION of God, shining in you, can bring to all the world, you could not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean to receive the IMAGE of the holiness that heals the world."

"Those who have learned to offer only healing, because of the REFLECTION of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. 5 There, holiness is NOT A REFLECTION, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but REFLECTED to them here. 6 God is NO IMAGE, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. 7 They DO NOT MERELY REFLECT truth, for they ARE truth."

"God's laws DO NOT obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could NOT HAVE BEEN CREATED by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. 2 Yet are His laws REFLECTED everywhere. 3 *********NOT that the world where this REFLECTION is, is REAL at all."**********

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. 5 It is the REFLECTION of God's Love on earth. 6 It will bring me NEAR enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him."

"As I begin to see, I recognize His REFLECTION on earth."

"The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit's perception is the REFLECTION of the perfect equality of God's knowing. 2 The ego's perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the Bridge between perception and knowledge. 3 By enabling you to use perception in a way that REFLECTS knowledge, you will ultimately remember it."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the REFLECTION of His Love."

"The miracle itself is a REFLECTION of this union of Will between Father and Son"

"It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure REFLECTION of the LIGHT ABOVE, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one." (careful!)

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. 2 It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be REFLECTED from beyond the gate behind which total lack of limits lies. 3 Nothing in boundless love could need forgiveness. 4 And what is charity within the world gives way to simple justice past the gate that opens into Heaven."

"Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes, return again to bless THE WORLD HE MADE. 2 In ERROR it began, but it will end in the REFLECTION of his holiness. 3 And he will sleep no more and dream of death. 4 Then join with me today. 5 Your glory is the light that saves the world. 6 Do not withhold salvation longer. 7 Look about the world, and see the suffering there. 8 Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?"

"All names are unified; all space is filled with truth's REFLECTION. 4 Every gap is closed, and separation healed. 5 The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to TAKE THE PLACE OF Heaven."

"If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be soon replaced by love's REFLECTION. 5 And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind."

"Charity is really a weaker REFLECTION of a much more powerful love-encompassment that is far beyond any form of charity you can conceive of as yet. 7 Charity is essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which it can now be attained."

"Forgiveness is a SYMBOL, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. 2 And so the unity that it REFLECTS becomes His Will. 3 It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself REFLECTED there. 2 Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. 3 Now you are holy and PERCEIVE it so. 4 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. 5 God is NOT SEEN but only understood. 6 His Son is not attacked but recognized."

When you do something "wrong", if you go into guilt, you're trying to atone for your sin by demonstrating remorse and so on, but this is not love. Nor does it make up for it, nor does it undo it. Guilt is actually a state where you are DISOWNING what you did, by presenting yourself as wishing you didn't do it, regretting it, feeling bad about it, and so on. NONE of these things undo what you did. Guilt is a lie.

Additionally, if the person that you did something to is holding it over your head, requires you to be guilty, finds you guilty, and is playing off your guilt to milk it for all its worth, they are unfairly trying to condemn you and accuse you. This is just as irresponsible and sinful.

In this dynamic, which is a special relationship, both parties are at fault. Love is the only true justice and innocence is the only true verdict. The person who "sinned" needs to get out of the guilt and return to being loving. That is the ONLY repair that has the potential to heal and undo what was done, and love is the only way to truly atone. If the person stays in guilt, they are now in a state of double sin, having sinned first and now having stayed outside of love in a state of sorrow and shame, which is serving no-one, its useless, does not heal anything, and just makes the world a worse place.

Similarly, the person who is hurt, should have it in their own best interests, to find the person NOT guilty, to demand that they return to LOVE, and that they they should RECEIVE love for themselves, because it was only the absence of love that produced the problem in the first place. Condemning the person or making them ashamed does NOTHING constructive and is nothing but using the opportunity to feed your own ego, taking advantage of someone's mistake by punishing them instead of forgiving them. The hurt person's role is to forgive and to love and to lift the other person up, restored back to love, so that BOTH of them can be healed and whole.

This of course runs contrary to the established norms of society (ego) because it entails forgiveness, unconditional love, justified healing, and a recognition that nothing real can be threatened. It means that when something goes wrong, forgiveness is the only true route to take, and either states of condemnation/judgement or guilt/shame are both equally ridiculous.

Guilt is not love. Shame is not love. Being remorseful and unworthy is not love. There is no atonement in someone staying in a state of guilt. There is no atonement in someone "suffering just as much". The only atonement is the true recognition of the ongoing innocence and forgiveability of both parties. When either one of them enters into attack or guilt the world has suffered and DECREASED in its love. Whenever someone is going into guilt they are withholding love. Whenever someone is going into blame they are withholding guilt. The total amount of love is LESS, when this ego dynamic of blame and prosecution and punishment and deserved suffering is upheld.

Only forgiveness is sane. Only by lifting both parties back up to a state of love is there true repair and true healing and the actual miraculous undoing of all consequences and symptoms and happenings. Love is miraculous, it can heal and reverse all things that aren't love. But you can't even approach such a miracle in a state of guilt, shame, unworthiness, regret, remorse, loss, blame, anger, judgement or hate. They do not WORK. They maintain the suffering and the effects of the attack. They are not a form of healing. They are PERPETUATION of the symptoms, by the hurt person, who is claiming to be unhappy about the hurt.

Let's get honest here. These dynamics of specialness, blame and unforgiveness are insane, are all founded in ego bullshit and selfishness and attack, from both victims and victimizers, and until there is forgiveness, healing and love, the problem is not resolved. The ONLY true Justice of Heaven is recognition of the ONLY TRUTH about all beings, that they are PERMANENTLY INNOCENT, and all else is an illusion. There is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no death. The sons of God are free.

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

It is not possible to hold a thought of accusation in your own mind, which seems to be about someone else, without YOU also receiving side-effects from that thought. That thought is toxic.

A thought of attack, even if it's a justified attack, is still an attack. And attack thoughts have attacking properties. It's like a nasty, dark, spiky, painful energy in your mind. Do you think you get away with not being affected by that?

So here's the conundrum. You cannot have a negative thought about anyone else without it affecting you. You have to put the negative thought into your own interior mind-garden, and it's going to grow a bunch of weeds there. It's going to attack YOU as much as it attacks someone else.

It's all or nothing. Either the thought applies to you AND them, or it doesn't apply to either of you.

When you're in the business of having the kind of thoughts that apply 'separately' to separate people, those are INSANE thoughts.

If you would realize that your attack thoughts (about other people) are attacking your invulnerability, you would not have them.

If you would realize that you cannot hate someone without hating yourself, you would not hate.

If you would realize that you can't judge and condemn someone without you also feeling condemned, you would not do it.

There is no 'separate justice'. There is no person A being guilty and person B being innocent. Either all are innocent or all are guilty. The accused and the accuser are both guilty.

The ego's laws, the law of the land, are all based on this idea. Someone is to blame, and someone is not. This is not a law based in sanity.

God's law says that whatever is true of one, is true of all. Whatever applies to one, applies to all. One law that applies equally to everyone and finds everyone equally innocent. That is the only sane law.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin for only if there were a body is sin possible."

The physical world is made of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Sin is the idea of attempting to attack God. "The world was made as an attack on God".

Physical matter is the idea of sin showing up like a solid immovable object. Its forms are "forms of error". The body can see only these errors as if they are true. It was made to try to picture God's son as crucified and attacked. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

The body was made to look at hell and see nothing else. It can see only conflict everywhere it looks. Our mind must learn NOT to believe what the body reports as true.

"The body's eyes see only form (objects). They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error (forms of error) and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin (literal granite blocks made of sin), and stopping at the outside form of nothing (the surface of physical matter). To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything (physical objects), the wall that stands between you and the truth (the physical world is a literal "solid wall" hanging like a veil across the face of Christ to block your sight), is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall (ie brick walls), see truly? It is held back by form (matter), having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form (bodies, planets) will be perceived.

These (physical) eyes, made not to see (reality), will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them (meaning you made the body's eyes). What was its maker's goal but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals (surfaces of matter) and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness (houses, tables, cars, humans), unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form (the world). For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."

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"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

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"The introduction of reason (sanity, sense, truth) into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason (literally, you can look at the truth beyond the world of lies). This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally (the ability to see what is true plainly and clearly). If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."

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"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

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

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"Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. 2 The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. 3 How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo!"

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"In content all the questions are the same. 2 For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. 3 And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world."

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

----

"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real. 2 The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. 3 And what else is hell?"

"But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life, which HAS no end."

The Holy Spirit's goal is eternal life and immortality. That means everything he is doing is working towards the complete resurrection of the entire sonship back to their original state of perfection. This also includes the return to a state of total wholeness, innocence, happiness and health. It is the complete undoing of ALL sickness, ALL suffering, and ALL death.

Whereas all the world's roads point toward death, and the ego tries to steer everything toward destruction, the Holy Spirit steers everything towards immortality. A Course in Miracle is a course in immortality, because it's a way to move you back towards God who is life.

If you can imagine, what if everyone in the world became healed? What if everyone was a healer? What if all the sicknesses started to disappear and everyone's bodies returned to total heath? What if people stopped dying and there was no further war or attack or murder or damage? What if the entire population of the planet resounded in laughter and joy and love as one happy family?

That ultimately is the goal, or a step toward the goal, because the Holy Spirit is tasked with nothing LESS than the TOTAL resurrection of everyone. His goal is to restore everyone to eternal life and health. His goal runs completely opposite to all the goals and paths of the world, all the likely outcomes, all consequences and effects, all prognosis and diagnosis.

What's happening here in the atonement is nothing short of the absolute global resurrection of every single person. If you think that Jesus managing to surmount death was astounding, and indeed it is, since he returned to immortality and eternal life, imagine what that's going to be like when the entire population does the same?

No more sickness, no more death, no more suffering, no more unhappiness, no more corruption, no more hospitals, no more separation, no more world. Everyone lifted up and resurrected and restored and renewed through miracles. Everyone healed and whole and happy and healthy. Everyone united in a single chorus of celebration and joy and gratitude.

"The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him."

"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."

"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God."

"It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL."

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."

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

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls to him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit." "Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone."

"Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he does not merit an attack of any kind."

"And everyone is EQUALLY entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace."

"No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike."

"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."

"And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world."

"God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide."

"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no-one left outside, to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union."

"Your special relationship will be a means for UNDOING guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will SHARE with all who come within your sight."

"He uses everyone who calls on Him, as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you, who offered your relationship to Him."

"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. "

"The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you, and where to find them."

"Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You."

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?"

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

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

Here are some quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are upset by the world or offended by what people do, you will turn yourself into a false savior. You will make yourself look like you care, and you will become upset and reactionary about what happened. You'll seem to save the world from this "real sin" or sinner, and you'll want some form of revenge which you call justice. You'll position yourself as saving everyone from these injustices and that you're doing so out of the kindness of your heart.

But what's really happening is that you are attacking the world by believing in real sin, you are failing to actually undo the problem, you are using the opportunity to make your own ego bigger, you're not honestly being a representative of real truth, and you're basically using this as justification for denial. You're denying that you have attacked yourself, you're denying that you believe in sin punishable by death, you're denying that you deserve unconditional love, and you're denying that the world IS saved because it doesn't exist.

The ego's version of salvation looks great on paper. It acts great in appearance. But it is completely full of holes. It is a lie. It is fake. It is false. You cannot be upset and be the salvation of the world. You cannot be offended and be helpful. You cannot be hurt by the world and claim that you are making the world better by keeping the hurt and acting based on it. Salvation doesn't come from pain and suffering.

Salvation comes from the truth, which is that nothing can be threatened, nothing real has been threatened, nothing real will ever be threatened, so any offense or upset to the contrary is a denial of the truth and an inability to recognize what is true and thus what is false. Not being able to recognize the illusion that something false is true is the sole reason why anyone would ever justify being upset, or see it as making sense that they should be upset based on what happened.

This is a failure to recognize or see past illusions, believing that something unreal is real, something untrue is true, and therefore something true and real has been damaged. This secretly is an attempt to assert that God has been damaged by separation, which the ego will be glad to believe even if it covers it up with facades of innocently helping or caring or wanting to stop suffering. There is a big difference between wanting to stop suffering and to ACTUALLY stop it by stopping being the cause of it. And it takes a lot of honesty to admit that you are the only cause of suffering, because all suffering is self-attack.

"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."

In the ego's world, someone has to be to blame for everything that happens. It's way of thinking is a very closed system. No matter what happens, if something happens, someone is to blame for it, even if that person had barely any control over it or much to do with it at all. To the ego, this is responsibility.

The ego wants you to confess that you are, in fact, guilty, and that you do, in fact, deserve punishment, because you did, in fact, separate from God and make all manner of shit happen. To the ego, this is being responsible and 'mature'.

In the ego's model there is zero room for forgiveness. Absolutely no forgiveness whatsoever. Everything that 'happens' in the physical world is proof, to the ego, that it has caused "real consequences" to occur as a result of separating from God. It is evidence of sin, and proves that everyone involved is guilty without question. To the ego, anything 'happening' in this world is a sin, and only sin can happen. To the ego, nothing unsinful can ever happen and God is impossible, meaning innocence is impossible.

So to the ego, when someone makes a mistake, maybe they bump into the fridge and it knocks a glass tray that was resting on the top and it crashes to the floor, you can bet, to the ego, that person is "responsible" for this entire thing. Not just the accidental bumping, not just the item falling down, not just the smashing, but all of it. Every single bit of it. And, to the ego, every single bit of it was ON PURPOSE, completely deliberate and intentional, producing real irreversible effects. It will point the finger in condemnation and declare "you have sinned". The ego has no concept of `not on purpose` or `unintentional` or `accidental` because that would suggest not guilty, which it refuses to accept.

To the ego there is no room for anything happening without it being involved in guilt in some way. To the ego, nothing occurs but without someone's deliberate intention and involvement, and therefore every single thing proves that someone is guilty. The ego claims that if you own up to this and "accept responsibility" for this and take full responsibility upon yourself for every single part of what happened, then and only then might you be excused or let off. If there is even the slightest hint of what seems like a resistance to accepting this "responsibility" it will condemn you further for avoidance and irresponsible carelessness. It demands you must own up to what you did (sin), that you must completely admit to it (it happened), that you did it intentionally (its your fault) and that you should enter into shame and guilt and suffering because you DESERVE it.

This is not responsibility. It is condemnation. It is a death sentence. When you hold other people to these standards, where the ego exalts the idea of getting someone to admit to being wrong, you hold yourself to that standard also and therefore find yourself constantly guilty for every little thing you do. You don't really want that. It's a way to be a victim and to be constantly tortured and therefore in need of being constantly 'good' in order to avoid making even a tiny mistake.

It's okay to make mistakes and break shit and do things wrong and be in error and not know everything and not be accountable for every single little consequence of events set in motion. You're not guilty for clouds moving, or objects falling, or people bumping into each other. You're not even guilty for seeming to deliberately do something wrong. Why does mistakedness have to always call for judgement and attack and the 'justice' of punishment? Punishment is never justified and it fails to correct anything, so it does not really stand for a pure or right way of living but only for how to get fucked over when you step out of line.

True responsibility MUST include the concept of you being 100% innocent. True responsibility must mean that no matter what you did or what effects it had or how serious or whatever, you are still innocent. It must mean you are unconditionally innocent. There is nothing like this in the ego's repertoir. To let you off the hook here and there it would see as begrudging pardons, or stern warnings, and it would never ever consider that you could be wholly found innocent for EVERYTHING that you seemed to do as a blanket statement. Yet Holy Spirit sees only your innocence.

Do you deserve judgement, condemnation, proof of fault, the justice of punishment, self hatred and shame, or some horrific shock treatment in retaliation for an accident? Nope. You're not guilty, no matter what. You made a big giant mess? You deserve love. You totally fucked up your life? You deserve love. And you broke everyone else's favorite toys? If they have a shit-fit that's not exactly your responsibility. Not to justify any behavior. But you're always innocent. Always. And only by being innocent can you be truly responsible. Because you have a responsibility to BE INNOCENT.

People that make mistakes need to be returned to a corrected state of not making those mistakes. They need to be returned to love. This is in the best interests of everyone. It is completely against everyone to punish that person or to feed lies and attack into them. That causes them to become your enemy. You don't want that. It's in everyone's interests that everyone be forgiven and reminded of the truth of who they are. We all need to own up to being God's innocent child. We all need to take responsibility for being who we authentically are, not who people condemn us for being. Responsibility WITHOUT the guilt.

True responsibility means ownership without blame. It also means that only the extension of God happens and there aren't any other consequences. It means everything is correctable. It means mistakes call for forgiveness and love, not punishment. It means you are let off the hook even before anything happens. It means that when stuff happens, you should be laughing, because it does NOT prove anything about your worth. It also means that you're not guilty when you make mistakes and you do not need to claim the guilt that surrounds them. You can own up to being mistaken, which is helpful, but this should never mean "I really did it".

If we are really trying not to be racist, then we really need to recognize that people are equal regardless of their body shapes or sizes or colors right? And this means regarding people as NOT bodies. Because the only way to say that all skin colors are equal is to say that people are not their skin colors. Which leads to recognizing that people are not their bodies. We can't be claiming to be less racist by locking people into their bodies, making their skin color real and important, and then trying to transcend these differences. Coexisting differences is an illusion of peace, and skin color should not matter at all.

The only way that life matters, that all lives matter, is when life is recognized as not a body. Only by recognizing that people are spirit, not bodies, can there be equality. Bodies were made specifically to mis-represent every single person who has one, and to set them apart, and make them look different, and therefore make them fundamentally at war with each other. Only when there are no bodies or when bodies are completely overlooked and not part of what a person is, can there be a true respect for every person.

We should not be aiming for trying to isolate a group of persons based on body types, in the name of trying to make those body types matter. No body types matter. The body is nothing. It is an illusion in a dream. Confusing people with their bodies is mental illness, given that they are not bodies at all. Failing to look past a skin color is a faulty perception based on an unforgiving attitude. To really see a person you have to look past the body entirely.

The body was made to imprison people and to make them out to be something they are not. It was made to attack with. It was made for separating people off based on appearances. All of that has to be overlooked if there is to be true justice and recognition of people's sacredness as spiritual beings. Making certain kinds of bodies matter is really just another ego protest, protesting against its own attacks, having made bodies to make people not matter in the first place, to try to convince us that bodies are important. So long as bodies are the focus, no lives matter at all.

Unforgiving police officers or unforgiving rioters or unforgiving onlookers are all part of the same ego equation of believing mistakenly that people are physical objects. Seeing people that way can only inspire conflict because all physical objects conflict. Spacetime itself was made for that purpose. Racism will not ever end so long as people see each other as physical objects and therefore make the differences real and make it impossible to overlook them. You cannot see difference and equality at the same time.

Only beyond bodies is it possible that we all be totally equal and one and united and whole and recognized and respected. Don't fall for the illusion that upholding certain body types is spiritual. Identifying people as any kind of body is an attack on their true nature, regardless of the skin color or shape or size or persuasion or gender. Bodies are not real. People matter, bodies do not.

"At no time does the body really exist."

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The body is a dream."

"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"God did not create the body."

Jesus's redefinition of terms continues to amaze me. When you suddenly realize that he has a whole different MEANING to a term, it suddenly opens up a whole box of insights.

For example "The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible." Jesus says that bodies are needed for sin. But you might think, sin came before guilt and made the world. But no. He's saying that sin is more like an all encompassing term describing ALL illusions and the ENTIRE ego world of death. Wherein everything was designed to BE sin. ie, sin is like a way of proving that illusions are real. And ALL illusions, by their seeming reality, proven by laws of physics and by "evidence", testify against reality.

A better definition of SIN might be, that "twisting" or "distorting" of reality and truth, which results in what is true and false being swapped, and what is real and unreal being confused. It is "the evil" that seems to turn reality into illusions, and make illusions seem real.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is."

Here he says that sin is insanity, and so the whole ego thought system can be said to be sin. It's the way by which there is a distortion in what is true, where true and false are confused, and real and unreal are confused. So it's not just that you commit a crime and call it a sin, it's actually that the entire physical world is deeply rooted in sin - the attempt to prove that illusion are real. The whole world is an attempt to do this. Even the rocks and grains of sand. This is because:

"The world is false perception"

And all false perception, ie distortion of mind, inaccurate perception, believing that illusions are real, thinking that death is life, thinking that what is false is true, is what the physical world is composed of. It's laws are literally the laws of sin and death.

"Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts which are untrue. They are the "proof " that what has no reality is real."

Here he tells us that ALL illusions are rooted in sin. And so "the world of bodies (the illusory world) is the world of sin." The WHOLE thing is sin. Which is why Jesus refers to the physical world, the veil across the face of Christ, as "the granite block of sin". By its laws, it acts as a mechanism for manufacturing "proof", through "physical evidence", which is maintained in order to testify that sin is real and has happened. All of the worlds happenings, seen through unforgiving eyes and insanity, are sin.

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

What this means is that, the fact that ANYTHING can seem to die, is A SIN. It's sin embodied as proof of death. Dead carcasses, dead flies, dead humans, dead planets. It was all made to try to make sin, ie "separation from God", or "that hell is real and heaven is not" be the new truth.

"A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game."

So all dreams, the whole dream world, is made of sin.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

Sin, or, the physicalized material laws of the ego thought system, resulted in the eyeballs.

"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

"It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

If you didn’t believe that God is innocent, you wouldn’t feel guilty as a result of believing that you’ve attacked him. You feel guilty precisely because deep down somewhere inside you know that God is innocent. If you didn’t believe God is innocent, you wouldn’t feel anything at all when you try to attack him. If you believed he truly is guilty and deserves to die, you would interpret it as justice, and would have no remorse or guilt at all.

Similarly in all states of suffering and pain and misery, you feel bad and unhappy precisely because there is fundamentally some part of you that knows it belongs with God, a part of you that is absolutely anchored and centred in being with God, and knows that it cannot be happy if it is away from God.

This is why trying to be separate feels horrible, trying to deny life turns into sickness and suffering, and why trying to deny God completely produces death and destruction.

These are effectively natural reactions to what you’re trying to do based on the fact that in your core you know these things are wrong, you know the God is love, you know that you want to be with him, and you know that when you’re not one with God, you can only be unhappy and miserable about it.

Being away from God makes you suffer, and this suffering implies and validates the fact that deep down you do not want to be away from God. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel anything about it at all. Guilt when correctly interpreted implies innocence, just as denial of something implies that it still exists.

But anyone who tries to live without God induces suffering and cannot be happy. All forms of suffering and sickness and death, all unhappy feelings, directly imply that you know you belong in God’s love, and these things feel awful because of that, in a knowing of what is right for your soul.

This is why eventually we come to recognise that being away from God is painful, we can’t stand it anymore, It’s not working for us, and we want to seek a better way. Then we begin to give up our attempt to be away from God, because we start to recognise that it hurts really badly, and no longer willing to tolerate being in pain.

This represents a massive crisis, a spiritual emergency, and a vital turning point in awakening, and questioning the unreality of the world, and returning to spirit. It requires beginning to realise that your strategy isn’t working, that what you’re getting into actually is not good for you, the pain actually is painful and not tolerable, and that you no longer want to be evil.

Until this point you did not recognise what you were doing and you thought you were doing the exact opposite. You thought the death was life and punishment was salvation and hell was heaven. You thought death was attractive and hell was justified and there was no reason to change anything. Except that it nearly killed you.

There has to be a massive change of heart, a total reversal of the thought system, an awakening to a completely opposite truth than what you believed in, willingness to be completely mistaken. Death must be questioned and no longer confused for life. And real reality must be approached with an open mind and a willingness to be saved from hell. This invites the Holy Spirit to help you, guide you, comfort you, and heal you. A little wellness is all it takes to open up to another world.

Yes Earth is not Heaven. Being ON EARTH, on the physical planet earth, is NOT being in Heaven. You cannot be in both places, and you cannot see both worlds. One or the other. This is your only choice. Either you are IN this world, or you are IN Heaven. Earth, or Heaven. You choose. Can't have your cake and eat it. Bodies or no bodies. Choose.

Earth is NOT the Kingdom of God and never will be. It is an ILLUSION OF A WORLD and does not really exist.

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"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."

"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. "

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth."

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

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. "

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven. "

"You makers of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another world where peace abides."

"And in His sight there IS another world. "

"Your WISH to make another world that is NOT real, REMAINS with you."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of another world, brings to it hope of peace. For it REMEMBERS Heaven. "

"It is your world salvation will undo, and LET you see another world your eyes could never find. "

"You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. "

"The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see. "

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. "

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

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world

Jesus speaks in ACIM about translating hell into heaven, converting somehow the Earth into heaven's reflection. ie that the Earth is neutral/devoid of meaning and we project meaning onto it. Or to put it another way, we decided that certain states or forms or situations "must mean" something in partcular.

We associate meanings like they are outcomes or inherent definitions of what is happening. As if, when such and such happens it always means "this". As if the meaning is inherent in the form. Jesus speaks of this as form appearing to shut out all meaning to the extend that the form itself seems to describe what the forms means. And that this is a total illusion.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

The truth is that we give everything all the meaning it has, and the world has NO inherent meaning of its own. It is indeed a meaningless world, which is why it acts like a mirror reflecting back whatever you project onto it. We actually decide that it means whatever we think it means, and then pretend it meant this without our contribution.

But when you think about it, he's talking about a process of interpretation or translation. There's plenty of interesting quotes about both those terms. We basically interpret the world. Interpretation means, a process of judging or evaluating, what WE BELIEVE something is, which in some way TRANSLATES it into some other preferred form in our minds that we find acceptable. We decide to interpret it to mean whatever we WANT it to mean, hence "there is no world apart from what you wish."

Similarly, the idea of a translation does not simply mean that the thing itself changes. The world doesn't actually "turn into" the meaning that you give it. You can take the example of translating a language.

If the world is writen in English, and you translate the world into Spanish, and you can only speak Spanish, then you can "read" or interpret a VERSION of the world, an image of it, written in the Spanish language, that seems to represent the world. But the translation you are reading isn't the ORIGINAL form. The world is essentially still in English, but your interpretation of it is transforming its meaning.

Translation is also a kind of math term, translating means to move something from one location to another. And it's part of a broader group of operations such as rotation and scaling, which are all types of "transforms". In effect the thing goes through a transformation of some kind and ends up different to how it began.

So in ACIM terms, our minds are giving the world meaning by interpreting it, putting that meaning onto it. Sometimes we give it meaning from our egos and sometimes from the Holy Spirit. When the ego gives it meaning, we believe the world is inherently hell or reflects a hell-like nature. When the Holy Spirit gives it his meaning, the world now reflects the love of God.

But we should note here that the TRANSLATED VERSION of the world is in fact once removed from the world, just as a Spanish translation is once removed from the original English. When you have interpreted the world to mean that it reflects heaven's meaning, we're saying that we now look AT the translated version, a sort of copy of the world, which is a different way of looking at it.

So when ACIM talks of earth translating into heaven etc it's not really saying that a meaningless world, having the meaning of God projected ONTO it, reflected back, now is actually a meaningful world. But that the REFLECTION is meaningful, and the TRANSLATED alternative dream which INTERPRETS the world is heaven-like. You are then seeing what you put there to see, rather than necessarily what is there. Because really the world is not there at all.

Our task then is simply to recognize that we do not want the translations that are converting the world into a hell-like language, and we instead want to "read into" the world a heaven-like language. We want the Holy Spirit's translation of the world, his purpose for it, his use of it, instead of what the ego is trying to "make of" it or use it for. And that applies to the body too.

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

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced."

"Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that, though there be some lack of ease at times, and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."

""Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."

"For the instant of peace is eternal, BECAUSE it is wholly WITHOUT fear. It WILL come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher HE has appointed, to translate time to eternity."

"Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you, BECAUSE His joy is yours. Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless."

"Forgiveness is the ONLY function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to TRANSLATE specialness from sin into salvation. "

"For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it."

"Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly."

"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is to TRANSLATE the miracle into the knowledge which it REPRESENTS, and which IS lost to you."

"However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS." "Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing."

"Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity."

"When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow and his "dragon" into a dream, he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear."

"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."

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

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected."

"By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created."

"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."

"What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, LIKE your Father, YOU are an idea. And like Him, YOU can give yourself COMPLETELY, wholly without loss, and ONLY WITH GAIN."

When giving and receiving are seen as separate, you will believe that your brother gives something to you without giving it to themselves. That they escape from the effects of what they cause.

You will also believe that you are receiving something that you did not give. This is perceived as an attack against your will. If you did not give it, you have not asked for it, and yet have received it, so you do not want it.

If we are in any kind of perception where it seems like we are receiving something - being at the effect of - others or anything in the world or body, it's because we believe there is a separation between giving and receiving.

You cannot receive without giving, in truth. But ego is the idea of separation between cause and effect, or father and creation. If cause escapes from its effects it does not receive what it gives, and so "gets away with murder" by being able to do something without experiencing the consequences.

The ego then really is nothing more than a logical premise that you are separate, and every other conclusion that you come to is based on that. If you are separate, what you give and receive are separate. And who you give and receive them to/from are separate.

If you are separate, it makes perfect logical sense that you should not give, otherwise you will fail to receive what you have given, and therefore will lose it. No-one would consider it to make sense to give when they see themselves as standing to lose in the deal.

The ego or "a sense of self based on the assumption that you are separate", only appears to be selfish, or having unshared self-interests, because it makes perfect sense to do so. If separation is true, you should and cannot share with anyone, and therefore must hoard everything, or you'll end up with nothing.

People being egotistical will therefore automatically and quite "naturally" attempt to keep everything for themselves, and will be unloving, only because it makes sense to them. They recognize that giving is a loss and a sacrifice, so it works against them to give anything away freely.

This simply means that such a person is mistaken, because what they believe about themselves - that they are separate - is false. It isn't a sin, therefore, to be selfish, it is just a mistake based on a false premise. ie it's completely understandable why we'd want to claim private possession of everything if it's true that we are fundamentally a non-shared identity.

All we then need to do, which sounds simple enough, is transition from a sense of being separate, to a sense of being joined. This is nothing more than a shift in premise from "I am separated off" to "I am one with". From what appears to be a state of selfishness, to a state of sharing. From inequality to equality.

If the premise is that we are shared, our identity is shared (Christ), and we are each other (one), then it will make perfect logical sense to say that we CAN give everything away and still end up with everything. To have all, we can give all to all. And to have all, we should give all to all. This then means that if you DON'T give everything, you will have nothing.

So now it becomes in your own best interests to give love unconditionally all the time to everyone, because you recognize that this IS the ONLY WAY that you can receive it. To be included in the receipt of the love, you must be one with the receivers. And giving must not be seen as loss or sacrifice or deprivation, or any kind of a cost. What is seen as a cost is seen as a punishment.

If we are one, then what is mine literally is yours, and what is yours literally is mine. And because we share everything, the same everything belongs to both of us. And now no-one can lose anything at all.

Forgiveness reflects this truth that everything belongs to everyone, and therefore everyone loves everyone in order to receive everything. This reflects the nature of heaven, in which everything literally belongs to everyone simultaneously, and everything is shared - even your self.

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

"To give and to receive are one in truth."

"Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one Thought Whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in second place."

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiving toward one whom you think of as an enemy and one whom you consider as a friend."

"No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same."

"the RECIPROCAL relationship of giving and RECEIVING will be recognized"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the new rule.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love your enemies. We are all one.

One thing people in the world don't realize, is that when you make one part of the world 'special', it HAS to make other parts of the world rejected.

So if I say, I really love Mac computers, it tends to make me feel that I dislike PC's. Or if I say, I like sporty-looking cars, it tends to make me believe that other cars are 'uglier'. Or if I say, I like the summer, it tends to make me feel antagonistic toward winter.

We do this every day, but we just don't really realize how we are actually *creating* the enemies that we despise, indirectly, by elevating various other things to special/hero/idol-worshipped status.

If I worship an idol and put something on a pedestal and believe it is my savior, that's all well and good but I don't realize that simultaneously I've created a nemesis somewhere else. It may not even seem to be in my conscious awareness, but I can't MAKE something an idol without using a tool of attack on everything the idol is not.

So people are going around for example trying to be good, trying to people please, trying to have the right behavior, trying to choose the right political candidate, trying to be in love with a special something, trying to save a special group of individuals, trying to stand up for some kind of social justice, or trying to eat the right foods etc. And what does this do?

What happens in the mind when we say "only this part of the world is acceptable?". We reject the rest of it, which is an act of denial, which is an attack, which throws all kinds of darkness and secret hate onto the 'rest' of the world. And since this is all really about the MIND, it basically creates an unconscious mind filled with everything we don't want.

And then this unconscious mind turns around and projects into the world and manifests as enemies, examples of what we hate, examples of the kind of people we think are sinners, examples of behaviors and actions that we consider not allowed, etc. And the more we try to really intensely focus on what is 'right', we inadvertently keep CREATING what is 'wrong' and reinforcing it.

Then all this extra wrong stuff shows up in the world and we hate it more and try to separate from it more, which is secretly an ego ploy to reinforce and keep it. We go on our crusade and blow our trumpet in defense of 'all that is good' which is exactly what actually creates and manifests 'all that is bad'.

If we're not being neutral, if we're attached to outcomes, it we're judging something as right or wrong, if we're invested in seeing a certain thing be kept while other things are destroyed, we just keep creating a greater TENSION between 'right and wrong' rather than actually undoing what's wrong. And this tension grows the more we try to separate from what's 'wrong', because the pursuit of what's 'right' ISN'T a pursuit of the truth - its a pursuit of one-sidedness and is a spiritualizing of the world.

So everyone's on this ego rollercoaster of chasing after what they have decided means 'right' and 'correct' and 'not sinful' and not realizing that this is directly and explicitly creating even more of the stuff they are trying to get away from. Because all that they're really doing is trying to escape from, deny, and shut out, everything they consider bad. You can't have a happy life by being in FUCKING DENIAL!

The world is neutral. It's we who give it all the meaning it has and label it with all our made-up labels of 'oh that's ok' and 'oh thats not ok'. And this constant effort to separate out the ok from the not-ok is just more ego separation which leads to war, hate, anger, and attack. It does not WORK. And it does not lead to progress. If you want the kind of progress where you create a world where everything is only 'good' and nothing 'bad' happens, you will never attain it, because the very desire to do so is a desire to DENY that 'bad' exists and therefore create it. And so the world is spinning its wheels. Isn't it horrifying to realize that YOU are creating the very enemies that you hate the most, and that you will keep doing so while you keep trying to reject a part of yourself?

Have you ever had a dream at night where you're being chased by someone and you're running away in fear and you just can't seem to get away, and the more you run away or fight with the person the stronger and more adamant they seem to become? This is exactly this dynamic, because the person chasing you is YOURSELF who is only appearing as an attacker because you keep rejecting yourself. In your dreams, when you stop running, and you surrender, and you do what the ego would say is 'letting yourself be caught', the person stops chasing you, and they stop attacking you, and all of a sudden you are friends. How about that?

We have to become able to ACCEPT and ALLOW everything. Not split it out and say one part is ok and one part isn't. This is true equality. This is a value worth pursuing. Unconditional love, not conditional love. Not a love that's only given to friends and not enemies. Not a love that, in being given only to friends, turns everyone else INTO an enemy, for the sake of being able to reject them further.

What would Jesus do? He would overlook all sin and recognize the innocence and equality of everyone.

Ok.. stepping off the righteous soap-box for now.

Let's say that the entire contents of spacetime is sin. It is an idea of sin. Sin is a lack of love. The world was made as an attack on God, as a sin against him. Let's say that sin is the absence of truth, and so is a false world. Let's say that sin is also insanity, in which the true and the false are swapped and nothing means anything.

And let's say that all of spacetime is therefore a realm of sin, a realm in which everything is always attacked. Because sin is attack. And bodies were made to make attack seem possible. Bodies are the idea of sin, and this includes human and animal and vegetable and mineral and planetary bodies.

It is all sin, and it is sinning all the time. Every time it suggests something impossible has happened, which cannot happen in heaven, it is attempting to provide the proof of sin. Physical matter is "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes look upon and cannot see past. Sin appears to be irreversible and unsealable, like a permanent crime, stepping ever closer to inevitable death. And death is the wages in sin, in a world where all roads lead to death.

Let's then simply say that the physical world is the idea of sin and of evil, of destruction and death. It is a dream of death and a fantasy of sin being possible. The world is false perception. Flesh and bones were made to sin with. Every atom can attack every other atom and sin against it. Destruction of any kind is sin. And if the mind takes all of this world to be true or real, it has believed in sin instead of innocence.

The function of forgiveness is to forgive the ENTIRE world of spacetime, including all of planet earth and every other planet. It has to be forgiven because it constantly sinning. Every part of it is constantly trying to murder. The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son.

Every part of it sins against the rest and holds sins up before your eyes to testify that sin is real. It is a world of sin. It must be forgiven because it has sinned, and it can be forgiven only because it has sinned. It has offended you and your function now is to recognize it as merely a mistake, an error in judgement, and to release it from your belief that sin is the truth.

The world can be seen in another light, which reframes the sin and regards it as a mistake. Which does not hold the world against itself, despite its continued efforts to induce death. You don't merely need to forgive a murderer, you need to forgive an entire planet of death. An entire solar system and galaxy of death. The world is an attempt to tempt you to believe that sin is reality. Your job is to forgive its sinful nature and let it go.

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

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. 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. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

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

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world"

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

"Except for God's teachers there would be no hope of salvation, for the world of sin would be forever real."

"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

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

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

"You brand it sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil." "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Sin would maintain you MUST be separate. But REASON tells you that this must be WRONG."

"My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless; neither good nor bad."

"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."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven."

"What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside?" "Who could see the world as dark and sinful when God's Son has come again at last to set it free?"

"Who but the sinful need to be forgiven?"

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"

In the separation from God, each of us has condemned ourselves. We've accused ourselves of sin, and condemned ourselves to suffer. We want ourselves to be punished, murdered, and destroyed. Ultimately this is a death wish, in which we have become suicidal because we don't believe we deserve to live or to be loved by God. You might be thinking, suicidal? I'm not suicidal. Well think again.

At the same time as trying to destroy yourself to prove you don't exist in God, your true self is utterly sinless, guiltless, innocent, holy and pure. You have never sinned or hurt or commit a crime or broke a law. You have never done anything to anyone, and no-one has ever attacked you. You are immortal and eternal and endless and permanent. And no harm can come to you because God himself protects you.

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you"

The problem is, there is a seeming "gap" between what is really true of you, and what you currently BELIEVE. And if you are not in touch with your utter immaculate sinlessness, then some part of you DOES believe you are condemned to hell. God isn't doing this condemnation, nor are your brothers.

It's all an inside job of your own self attack. It is your self destruction. And this is suicidal. Even though death isn't real, this needs to be undone because the belief in your non-existence keeps you from being happy.

Looking at what you are doing to yourself is not pretty. If you are not accepting your sinlessness, it means you are believing you are sinful. It means you don't love yourself. It means you actively attack yourself and are trying to destroy yourself. Such as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." It means you don't really like yourself, yet alone love yourself with the love of God.

So now if you think about it in terms of the "relationship" that you have "with yourself", as if you could relate to yourself like a third party, how do you really feel about yourself? What is your honest current attitude towards yourself? If it's not one of total unconditional perfect love, then it isn't a very healthy relationship.

If there is a belief in being sinful, or evil, or a monster, or unworthy, or not good enough, or you resent yourself, or are angry at yourself, or keep judging yourself, or see yourself as weak, or hurt yourself emotionally or physically, or keep being abusive towards yourself, there are all signs of a breakdown in relationship.

And what that ultimately means is that you have not forgiven yourself. You're in this relationship with someone that you don't want to be with. And that is going to split your mind and hurt your mind. If you don't love yourself and embrace yourself with acceptance then how can you possibly relate to yourself at all?

Think of yourself as in the shoes of a person that you don't like in a similar way. If you don't like that person you don't want to be near them. You don't want to give them things. You don't want to share with them or spend time with them. You don't want them to exist. You don't care if they get hurt or suffer. You want them to suffer. And you may even feel so bitter towards them that you wish they were dead. Is that the relationship you are having with YOURSELF?

You have to look deep within yourself with much honesty to find this out. And it's probably going to be somewhat painful or even scary. You may not actually even realize or recognize that you have it in for yourself, or want yourself to suffer, because you may be so used to a general level of background destructiveness that you think it's totally normal. You might not have even seen how much you hate yourself.

"You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO."

"You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it."

"You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy."

"And why do you attack them anywhere except you hate yourself?"

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love."

"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. "

So you have to look at this stuff. And typically you need a strong contrast in order to recognize it. Get in touch with what it means to be sinless. That your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Get a feel for total pure innocence and the complete absence of all attack, even slight annoyances. And then in that light, look at how you feel about yourself.

Do you still feel like attacking? Do you still feel a need or requirement to judge and blame? Do you condemn others to hide your self condemnation? Are you constantly fighting with people? Do you feel unhappy most of the time? If you have any of the "symptoms" of the ego, which is anything not of God, then certainly there is room for improvement in your relationship with yourself.

First you need to recognize that you even DO hate yourself, before you can be willing to take steps to heal that relationship. And you can't see that unless you have some kind of higher truth about you to compare it to. Your utter pure sinlessness in God, your immortal innocence, the guarantee of eternal life, can act as a contrast and at reality-tester to find out just how you really do feel about yourself. And once you find that out, you have healing work to be done upon yourself. You need correction and forgiveness. You need to FORGIVE YOURSELF, in order to recognize you are sinless and free.

"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God."

"You who believe you have condemned the Son of God"

"But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned."

"And unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion."

"Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find."

"If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice."

"Guilt is ALWAYS in your OWN mind, WHICH HAS CONDEMNED ITSELF. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot BE undone."

"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES."

"It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self."

"Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death."

"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

You don't need to die. You need to forgive yourself.

Let's just be VERY, VERY clear for a moment. Heaven and Earth are definitely TWO VERY DISTINCT STATES/PLACES in A Course in Miracles. If they were the same place there'd be no point Jesus referring to them as opposites or as two things. Or as "in heaven" or as "on earth". THEY ARE TWO PLACES. You cannot be in, or see, both of them, at once. THEY ARE OPPOSITES, diametrically opposed in every way.

This is important to realize, because Jesus frequently states how Heaven is DISTINCT from Earth and being IN Heaven is very different to being ON Earth. And yes folks, EARTH DOES MEAN THE PLANET EARTH, not some strange twisted metaphoric interpreted labelling of your inner ego interference "about" a world. The only way the Earth is "about" anything is in that it is an attack on Heaven.

Heaven and Earth. TWO PLACES. Earth has "place" because it is inside spacetime. Heaven is "not a place" only in that it has no FINITE LOCATIONS, because IT IS EVERYWHERE, and so transcends spacetime. It is STILL A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN EXIST AND LIVE!!!

If you EVER think that Earth is Heaven, you are stuck and have totally missed the obvious. Anyone reading theses statements SHOULD, using NORMAL LANGUAGE, get the impression and message that Jesus literally means TWO WORLDS, and that they can never be one because they are OPPOSITES. And only Heaven really exists. If someone reads these and doesn't get that? Read it again and take it literally.

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven, because IT WILL MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IT."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours."

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

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours. "

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here."

"The golden ASPECTS of reality which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

"Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. "

"Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you ARE in hell and misery."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"No one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses."

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

"I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus"

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven. "

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity."

"God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give. "

"His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them."

Earth is in fact an alien world, and human bodies are alien bodies. Given that our true natural state or "home world" is The Kingdom of God (Heaven), Earth represents the total opposite to what is natural and is alien to it.

That which is is "alienated" is that which is separated or exiled or unlike. That which is "alien" is that which is so unlike your nature that it seems completely against it.

Jesus also refers to "alien" in the sense of heaven's truth being "alien to" how you are on earth, because it is so different. Here's what he has to say about you trying to be an alien in an alien world...

"Grievances are completely alien to love."

"If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. "

"Try to avoid the tendency toward self-directed selection, which may be particularly tempting in connection with today's idea because of its wholly alien nature. Remember that any order which you impose is equally alien to reality."

"What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real but different from yourself."

"Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him while he is alien now who is at home."

"For in his home his Self remains. It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself."

"A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place which called you to return although you do not recognize the Voice, nor what it is the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again."

"Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here."

"For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts."

"Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He."

"Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

""Let me not separate my function from my will."

"I would not use this for an alien purpose."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."

"Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed."

"When you GIVE UP peace, you are EXCLUDING yourself FROM it. This is a condition which is so ALIEN to the Kingdom that you CANNOT understand the state which prevails WITHIN it." "In your FORGIVENESS of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient Friend, lie HIS release, and YOUR redemption WITH him."

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. "

"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."

"Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an "enemy," an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are."

"Its alien nature, TO THE EGO, is proof you will NOT find the answer there."

"Reason is ALIEN to insanity, and those who use it have gained a means which cannot BE applied to sin."

"The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding."

"What NEEDS interpretation MUST be alien. Nor will it EVER be made understandable, by an interpreter you cannot understand."

"This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue."

"If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is totally alien to having THINGS, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with IDEAS."

"He is not attempting to force an alien will UPON you."

"If you did not have divided wills, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it IS communication. It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues."

"Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved."

"The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. "

"Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."

"Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"It is not the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly."

"And you WILL deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a "something" you are not."

"He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you, and what YOU will."

"You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. But your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language."

"The seeds of sickness and the shame of sin He CANNOT bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will that He created not."

"Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth and nothing are you LESS inclined to listen to."

"He does not see the Christ in him who calls. What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him?"

"Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane."

"Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. "

"If you will consider WHAT you have taught, and how alien it is to what you THOUGHT you knew, you will be COMPELLED to recognize that your Teacher came from BEYOND your thought-system, and so could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue."

"It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved and concepts can be meaningfully shared."

"God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will."

"Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose."

"And no thought ALIEN to His Oneness can abide with Him there."

"The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it does not know the difference between miracle-impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own."

"There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality."

"Perceiving something alien to itself in your MIND, the ego turns to the body, NOT the mind as its ally BECAUSE the body is not part of you."

"The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him."

"Nothing at all has happened, but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE's dream."

"The son of man perceives an alien will, AND WISHES IT WERE SO."

"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."

"To value specialness is to esteem an alien will, to which illusions of yourself ARE dearer than the truth."

"By adopting the ego's viewpoint, you undertook an ego-alien journey WITH THE EGO AS GUIDE. "

"Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize."

"Vengeance is alien to His Mind BECAUSE He knows of justice."

"To the world, generosity means "giving away" in the sense of "giving up." To the teachers of God, it means "giving away" in order to keep. This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum."

"Teaching devices which are totally alien to a learner's perceptual system are usually merely disruptive."

"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."

If you perceive that you have lost something, then your logical response is despair. You are not grateful because you have not received. Something has been taken away instead, and it inspires ingratitude. You also can feel the same way if you think you are getting something you do not want - you resent it, judge it and reject it instead of being grateful for it.

You will then feel that you do not want what has happened. You will fight with it, resist it, hate it, and wish it was the way it used to be. Whatever has been lost, you want it back. And you feel justified in feeling loss so long as it remains absent.

At the same time, the ego wants what has been lost to stay lost, because it really believes in loss as death. Loss is the gap of spacetime. Loss is the absence of love. Loss is the suggestion that something of God is missing from reality. It is a rejection of life and love and happiness. It is an attempt to die.

Such a state of mind does not inspire gratitude because it feels more like a treachery, a theft, a taking away, a diminishment, in which you now don't have what you should have. And then there will be hate and anger and resentment and a sense of not wanting whatever else someone or some place is offering, because it's not the thing you're missing.

In loss, you will then reject everything, not acknowledge what you have, not appreciate or even recognise what is present, and will just wish that you had the thing that is absent. But wanting what is not there can only produce what we call grief, which is the unhappy despair and sadness and sense of horror that everything of value has gone away.

But what can this be other than a denial of God, a rejection of love, an unwillingness to live, an insistence that death is true, and a failure to recognise what has been given. There is no gratitude because there is no acknowledgement of what you are receiving.

In fact, loss can be a lesson in which you have to learn to become grateful, and to receive. It is a state in which you are are trying to do the opposite of receive, as if you gave and didn't receive in return.

It's based on the ego's breakdown of the golden rule, in which it insists that giving and receiving are not one, and therefore you have not received what you have given. This is a state of sacrifice, as if something has been sacrificed.

But such a state of mind, which is really the rejection of love and God and receiving, can only produce feelings of loss and despair. It can only incite an attachment to what is gone, a wish it be present, and yet a firm belief that it must not be. It is a way of pushing love away, pushing the valued thing away, while at the same time wishing it was here.

This can only produce a kind of "split" in the mind which produces insanity and intensifies the ego. The ego loves to be in this contradictory state of wanting and not wanting at the same time. It wants what it does not have, and it does not want what it has. This is completely backwards, of course.

The remedy requires the recognition and acknowledgement that you are NOT at a loss, and in fact the total opposite is true. It must entail realising that God has given you everything, and therefore you lack nothing at all, loss is impossible, and everything you could ever really want has been given you.

This requires you to be willing to receive. It requites a willingness to want what you have, and to no longer want what you don't have. But the ego will say, it's impossible not to want the thing that's missing because you love it so much. You want it badly. And the idea of not wanting it seems like a betrayal.

Yet badly wanting something is a state of lack and need, and the more you believe in this lack the more you will want it. So you aren't really wanting it based on love, but based on not getting what you want. The loss is therefore selfish, as part of the ego.

It is in fact by wanting what you don't have instead of what you do have, that you produce a rejection of what is here right now, and therefore a denial and unwillingness to be grateful for what has been given you in the present. It is a rejection of the acknowledgement of gain, and a dwelling on absence and death. But in fact, a willingness to want what you have, not what you don't have, is the only sane approach.

In truth, if you move into a space of being willing to receive, acknowledging that everything has been given you, and that you have everything from God, you will suddenly find that in fact that means that you have love. And the only way to really acknowledge that you have the love you thought you lost, is to acknowledge that it is still being given to you right now. In fact, God has eternally given you love, and the only problem in you seeming to "lack it" and being at a loss, is an unwillingness to receive it. You might complain by feeling it is lost, but this is really an attempt NOT to have it.

By moving into a willingness to RECEIVE, you therefore admit that God has GIVEN everything, and fully, and so completely, that in fact you have been gifted, blessed, honoured and completely recognised. In fact you have not been left out at all, you have been utterly showered with everything you could ever really want. And in that recognition that it is coming TO you, and you HAVE it, you immediately move into a natural response of gratitude. Gratitude opens your awareness to RECEIVE and to WANT what you are receiving, instead of wanting what you are not receiving.

Gratitude is therefore the antidote to loss, because it recognises gain and completely ignores the ego's insistence that death is possible. Loss is really ingratitude for what is. In fact, gratitude to God for life is the way to receive life, and is the rejection of death and the belief in death. And without a lack of God, there can be no sense of loss at all. And then suddenly you will find that everything you thought you did not want is suddenly something you can embrace and accept and want. And then you open up to a whole new life that was in front of your face all along, even while you were unwilling to acknowledge it.

And the good part is, that the love you thought you lost, is not only still with you, it is in you, as you, given to you, shared with you, and had never really left. And thank God for that. How could you actually experience that you had the love you thought was lost, if you weren't willing to gratefully receive it?! This is simply a lesson in becoming grateful to God for what he has guaranteed to be yours forever. A simple movement out of loss and despair and disaster and failure, into total happiness and gladness that everything is present and accounted for.

"Love is the way I walk in gratitude."

"And gratitude can only be sincere if it is joined to love."

"Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love."

"Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are now entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future."

"Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of."

"For gratitude is but an aspect of the love which is the Source of all creation."

"For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God."

"A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight into the real extent of all the gains which you have made; the gifts you have received."

"Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair, and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. We sing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do."

"In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my Reality at last."

"What IS Heaven, but a song of gratitude and love and praise, by everything created, to the Source of its creation?"

"YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"And with My gratitude will come the gift first of forgiveness, then eternal peace."

"What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love?"

"The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but he is NOT grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something TO them, and is NOT receiving something equally desirable in return. His TEACHING is limited because he is LEARNING so little. His HEALING lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness."

"Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want."

"Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world."

"God's justice warrants gratitude, NOT fear."

"And by this LACK of thanks and gratitude, you make YOURSELVES unable to EXPRESS the holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it." "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

Miracle principle 11 says "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."

If you believe and perceive that your neighbor is not yourself, that they are a separate person, and you are not one, you will find yourself unwilling to give to them.

There is a very simple reason for this. If the two of you are separate, then logically when you give something to them, you are excluded from receiving it. What is theirs is not yours.

This leads to the quite sensible conclusion that, since your brother seems separate from you, you should NOT give to them, because if you do, you will stand to lose everything that you give.

It makes perfect sense because if the premise is that the two of you are separated, then it also makes sense to say that what belongs to you does not belong to them, and vice versa.

Believing that the two of you are separate, you will therefore find yourself "naturally" unwilling to give to others. You will not want to perform any miracles. You will not want to share yourself or give love.

Giving love across a divide, to a separate person, who is cut off from you, can only seem to entail a sense of loss. You believe quite logically that whatever you give you will lose, and giving will be a sacrifice.

This is rooted in the fundamental dynamic that giving and receiving are not one. If you and your brother are separated, then giving and receiving are also separated. Who you give to will appear to exclude your self, and so you will see yourself as not the receiver. If you do not stand to receive, then you will not want to give away, because it will seem detrimental to you.

In a sense, you could say that this appears to be selfish. However, the person is really just doing what seems logical based on the premise that they are separate. A person is unwilling to give because they want to keep what they give. They want to be included in the receipt of it. But because they see themselves as not included in the "list of receivers", they conclude that hoarding is a better strategy. This is entirely sensible and logical.

What this means then is that if you see yourself as separate from another, and you think you have something they lack, or you see yourself as a healer or giver, but do not see yourself as one with the other person, you will not want to give to them. You will be unwilling to perform a miracle of union on the grounds that giving so fully will deprive you of everything. And no-one is going to argue that this makes no sense.

If your brother is indeed separate from you, then by all means you should not give anything to him, because what he stands to gain you stand to lose. And so the ego will counsel that it's important to recognize the separation, make it real, and therefore stay within your private prison. And that it is in your best interests not to even try to give, or to perform a miracle of love, because this runs against your best interests.

So long as this separateness is maintained, you will of course maintain separate interests. What is in your own best interests is not the same as what is in the interests of another. If the two of you are not actually one, then there is no way for you to really receive or keep what you're giving. Only IF the two of you are one, can your interests be mutual, and therefore shared.

Only through shared interests, recognizing that you are one with the other person, they are a part of your self, and therefore it IS in your best interest to give to the part of you that you share with them, can you be naturally and logically willing to perform a miracle.

The ego will suggest this is impossible because it claims that you are currently separate. And if you are separate, there is no logical basis for saying that giving is going to help your situation. In fact giving will appear to deprive you, so long as you remain separate. And it's clue here is that if you give love, in an attempt to heal, the healing will have no effect on YOU, and therefore there is no way to bridge the gap anyway.

The interesting thing, however, is that regardless of how separated you are right now, when you TRY to give, you will find that the giving of love actually heals you along with it. You cannot heal without being healed. The love that you try to squeeze through to share with another is actually received by you as well. It includes you in it. And this inclusiveness of love actually unifies your minds and lifts your spirits.

If you can recognize therefore, however dimly, that your brother is yourself, and is part of you, and therefore you are not losing by giving, then you will become willing to give. Giving is sharing and inclusion, not loss If you believe that giving is going to deprive you, then you have to recognize you currently see yourself as separate. It's actually then a necessity to be willing to try to overcome this sense of separateness, in order for you to be okay with giving.

Indeed the course suggests that "miracles are taken first on faith", because you may be in a position where you do NOT really recognize your oneness with another, and you do not see them as part of yourself. They still seem separate to you. Which means that you're going to have to "take it on faith" that IF you give love and attempt to join, to heal the isolation that keeps you apart, then the love will do its job and make it clearer to you that you are in fact NOT separate, AND that you stand to gain from the giving.

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

Your willingness to try to share, join, be one with, see yourself as, with others, brings a healing love to you, to heal the gap in your own mind, and to lift you up in addition to lifting another up. You actually receive the love that you give. When you try to heal another, therefore, you should find that you yourself become healed as well. Both of you are recipients of love's benefit because it is inclusive.

So if you assess how much you see another as separate from you, you'll also find that this correlates to how much of an "unhealed healer" you are. If you regard yourself as having something others lack, you are seeing yourself as separate. And then you will feel that you can expend effort and therefore become taxed by trying to give healing.

This sense of limitation or that "healing is a sacrifice", is all part of the unhealed healer's thought process. To overcome this the healer has to be included in the healing and thus receive what is given. If I feel that I cannot perform miracles because it would be too much effort, would require me to give a lot, and I'm not willing to lose a lot in order to do so - because I'm selfish, then obviously I need to learn that by giving I will receive and the sense of separation and sacrifice is unfounded.

By learning to give to another AS yourself, you can actually take that all the way, and through such equality of giving and receving you will find God.

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

"It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."

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

"Yet it is always God Who calls to you, and he who asks your help is but yourself. Who is the giver and the receiver then? Who asks the gift and who is given it?"

"Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same."

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

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

Heaven is possible. Earth is impossible. This is a simple enough fact. But maybe you don't realize just to what extent the things of Earth are impossible. For it is here in "this world" that things which CANNOT OCCUR in heaven, seem to occur constantly. Things which cannot be true, appear to be always true. Events which cannot occur, seem to occur. Impossible consequences seem easy to cause.

For example, nothing real can be threatened or die. In this world, however, it is easy to threaten anything and destroy it. This is in fact technically impossible. Nothing in heaven can die because it has immortality. So what is this seeming appearance that something can be easily attacked and destroyed? It's can't BE HAPPENING. Everything about it must be a lie. Right down to the very atoms that are forming the murder weapon, and the subatomic forces that are allowing the body to be damaged. IT CAN'T BE!

When you really look at it, it is shocking. Everything that SEEMS POSSIBLE in this world IS IMPOSSIBLE in reality. Destruction of any kind of not possible. Sin is not possible. Death is not possible. Attack is not possible. Sickness is not possible. Damage is not possible. Fear and guilt are not possible. Murder is not possible. Space and time are not possible. The laws of physics are not possible. Consumption and decay are not possible. Change is not possible. Just look around you, all the things which seem COMMON and ever-present and constantly proving their possibility here, CANNOT BE. This world can't be here.

If a body is attacked, and it lays on the ground in a pool of blood, with flesh wounds and damage, this is impossible. This is what we call the "proof of sin". So long as it is there AT ALL, in this form, it is testifying that SIN IS REAL. That attack DID happen with real consequences. And its evidence is easy for anyone to look upon, and not deny. For if the body is damaged and dying on the ground, something IMPOSSIBLE is happening.

Do you realize the extent of this? It means that this whole world and all its workings and EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, all events, all causes and effects, all states of matter, all forms of growth and decay, everything in this universe, IS A LIE. It CANNOT happen in reality.

" 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."

Two planets colliding and blowing each other up, utterly impossible. Bodies consuming each other, utterly impossible. Sickness and suffering and pain, COMPLETELY impossible. All that is required here is to be aware of God's truth. Look at what is true in God and his reality. And then COMPARE it to this world. And recognize they are NOT the same. In fact Earth opposes heaven completely and totally. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way."

Then you have to ask yourself, how can it be POSSIBLE, that this world is in ANY WAY like God or God's creation, given that it demonstrates things that are NOT POSSIBLE in God or to or for God? EITHER heaven's reality is true, OR this world is true. Either the Kingdom is real, or Earth is real. They CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. Either death can happen, or it cannot. And death is RAMPANT on this planet, so can this planet be true? Not it cannot.

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

When you understand what heaven is like, it becomes starkly obvious that this world comprises the EXACT OPPOSITE, and is constantly trying to demonstrate that what CANNOT HAPPEN is happening. That there is real pain and suffering and destruction. These things cannot even exist. If you are seeing them, you MUST be hallucinating a fantasy world. And no amount of forgiveness or changed perception will alter the fact that while bodies CAN still change and suffer and die, UNREALITY is there. Because the world you made is false.

"The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask in many forms."

"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."

"Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream."

"grief and pain must be impossible"

"That is why attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible."

"You are in an impossible situation only because you thought it was possible to be in one."

"because the ego wishes for the impossible"

"In illusions the impossible is easily accomplished, but only at the cost of making illusions true."

"For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen."

"Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see."

"Harm is impossible for God's teachers."

"Gentleness means that fear is now impossible"

"Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible."

"HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS. It would indeed be impossible to BE in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness, or, everything and nothing, as joint possibilities."

"UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"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."

"Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"which makes ALL fear impossible"

"Loss of ANY kind is impossible."

"Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world."

"What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of magnitude, which stamps the miracle as something that MUST come from elsewhere, NOT from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is quite impossible."

"For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"terror is impossible"

"If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible."

"But if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then ANYTHING that is destructible cannot be real."

"Actually, a meaningless world is impossible."

"Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion."

"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."

"To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven."

"Without illusions conflict is impossible."

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."

"It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions."

"The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure."

"The impossible can happen ONLY in fantasy."

"War is impossible unless belief in VICTORY is cherished."

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"If you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, then you will insist on holding on to judgment.

"rejection is impossible."

"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. " "He offered us all a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God's Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. "the special love relationship would thus ACCOMPLISH THE IMPOSSIBLE." "It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true."

"It is impossible that one can gain because another loses."

"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less."

"Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."

"Where there is death is peace impossible."

"The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible."

"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."

"The learning situation in which you place yourself IS impossible, and IN this situation, you clearly require a special teacher, and a special curriculum."

"For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible, and there would be no hope except illusions."

"Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God."

"How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. "

"And sin MUST be impossible"

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

People talk about forgiveness a lot, but might not recognize that judgement is its opposite. In order to forgive we have to give up being judgemental.

To be more accurate, the Holy Spirit does judge, but his judgement is completely accurate and impartial, simply seeing the truth of things. When we move away from his judgement we judge with the ego, and the ego is always biased and unfair and harsh.

Until recently I didn't see how important the idea of not judging is. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "judging is the way that you perceive wrongly." That lead to a realisation that I was somehow in a mode of judging all the time. Judging everything I see, labelling, categorising, evaluating, selecting, analysing, figuring out, that's all judgement.

Judgement is something we made up to replace knowledge. In knowledge we have a direct knowing of what something is, a cognition of it, with no interpretation needed. We are one with it and be it, so we know it intimately like ourselves. But in the separation we threw knowledge away, meaning we could no longer just "know" what something is. We denied knowing and claimed not to know, which is a state of questioning and fear. We then needed a way to "find out" what stuff is, so in the split mind of consciousness and perception we invented judgement - to judge or assess reality.

Having invented judgement, perception is then totally based on it. Judging is what you do to try to figure out what something else, on the basis that you do not know what it is. And because you don't know it, you can't possibly correctly discern it, at least not unless judgement is completely lined up with knowledge in the state of true perception - as the Holy Spirit sees it.

To judge with ego is the attempt to decide what you think something is, what you make of it, what you read into it, and what you project onto it. And in fact it's then not an attempt to find out what the thing is, it's actually an attempt to push it away and not know it. Sensing is about not knowing, and is also part of this, via the body's senses.

So then we judge as an attack, in an effort to play God as if we can tell things what they are. As if we can put onto them our definition of them. A label to be attached. You're this, you're that. A finger to point and a sentence to hand down, a verdict of guilty. The ego always judges there to be something wrong with everything, while the Holy Spirit judges there to be nothing wrong but a mistake.

When I was thinking about not judging at all, I started noticing many quotes in the course confirming this. And then I thought, maybe God doesn't judge at all either. If God has knowledge he has no need for judgement. Which means he's not sitting there pointing a finger, blaming, resenting, assessing if we did well enough, deciding if we're worthy, looking down his nose at us, condemning and accusing us, hating and resenting and rejecting us, or any other kind of snooty dis-satisfaction.

In fact I'd been noticing this in a lot of near death experience accounts, where people discover that there is absolutely no judgement in heaven. And that means none of the above, none of that sort of sitting there in front of some panel of judges, or waiting to find out your fate, or being frowned upon for doing things wrong, or even condemned for crimes or sins or whatever. There is absolutely no judgement at all in heaven.

I found this quite inspiring, because I think we spend most of lives living inside of a state of judging and being judged. And the course says that if you judge others, you will judge yourself, due to the golden rule - other people are you, so if you judge them you are judging yourself. So then we're in a constant state of feeling judged and condemned, and trying to project that onto others. So we might then think that God does the same and judges the things we decide are sins. But he doesn't, at all.

I found this really interesting, to consider God as non-judgemental entirely. Not even batting an eyelid if we do the most heinous things, make horrendous mistakes, or even seem to deliberately hurt others or attack or whatever we would judge as evil. Not a single bit of judgement from God. It's a very loving and forgiving state when you think about that. That no-one up there is looking down their nose at you or holding anything against you whatsoever.

As I pondered this I was then wondering, well, what is it like to see things without judgement then... and then the Holy Spirit showed me one of his visions. In this vision I was aware of a person who was being seen with such innocence, such lack of judgementalism, that they seemed to be doing absolutely nothing wrong at all.

I could see that there was an awareness that the person was a bit lost, confused, perhaps making mistakes, but they just seemed to be seen as absolutely utterly innocent in that. Sort of like a child that just hadn't learned yet, didn't know any better, and was just finding their way. There was a total and utter lack of judgement against them, no sense of wrongfulness, no guilt, no condemnation, no sense that they are breaking rules, nothing but a deeply innocent and compassionate view that they are simply loved where they're at. Even their mistaken state didn't seem like a state of sin, it was just "how they were at the moment" framed in total innocence and harmlessness. As if all that remained was for them to gently find a way out of a maze or something.

No judgement, no condemnation, no failing to measure up, no sense of unworthiness, no anger or blame for doing something wrong, not even a sense that the way the person was mistaken was even "not supposed to be that way". There was no pressure, no hurrying them up toward a goal, no chastisement or punishment, and nothing but a loving sense of just gently guiding them to be less confused. Like all they had was a temporary slight confusion about things, and just needed to be shown the truth, and that is all.

I see now that forgiveness is completely non-judgemental in this way, and this is how the Holy Spirit sees everyone. It's also how heaven and God sees everyone. That we're not going through some kind of obstacle course, doing things hellishly wrong, committing sins all over the place, or causing any real problem. From heaven's viewpoint we're completely and totally innocent at all times, and just a little bit lost. With no sense of sin whatsoever, we are then just in need of being guided back home, like just a lovely little lost sheep that needs as little bit of help.

No sense of shame or guilt, no sense of punishment or sinfulness, no sense of demand or coming down like a ton of bricks, no sense of force or pushing or chastising or assessing whether someone is measuring up or not, no disappointment or annoyance or finger pointing, none of that. Just simple innocent love being nothing but innocent and gently offering a loving correction, with a smile behind it.

If to forgive is to suspend ego judgement, then we have to find a way to stop judging everything on our own. We have to let the Holy Spirit judge for us, and his judgement is a pure judgement based on innocence, in which there is no guilt or punishment of any kind. He only ever finds us to be innocent because he recognizes exactly what is true of us. And recognition is enlightenment, and is rooted in knowledge.

"Judgment and love are opposites. From one Come all the sorrows of the world. But from the Other comes the peace of God Himself."

"In the mind of the THINKER, then, He (Holy Spirit) IS judgmental, but only in order to unify it so IT CAN perceive WITHOUT judgment. This enables the mind to TEACH without judgment and therefore learn to BE without judgment."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken."

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment."

"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. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

"Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too. How can the special REALLY understand that justice is the same for everyone?"

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made. These problems are not true, but that is meaningless to those who believe in them. And everyone believes in what he made, for it was made by his believing it. Into this strange and paradoxical situation, - one without meaning and devoid of sense, yet out of which no way seems possible, - God has sent His Judgment to answer yours. Gently His Judgment substitutes for yours. And through this substitution is the ununderstandable made understandable. How is peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible, and can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God what is reflected here is only peace."

"On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment."

"And in His judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it with the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you."

"Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him."

"You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?"

Judgment is a fairly large topic in ACIM. The course teaches us to basically "not judge". But that's not the whole story. Judgement can relate to evaluating the meaning of something, but also can in its lower forms mean condemnation. It can devolve into hate and attack and sin, or it can elevate to true justice and forgiveness.

Judgment is tied into perception, which "selects and evaluates" the meaning of things. And because it's based on perception, it is uncertain and unstable. That is, until it is stabilized by the Holy Spirit.

He has correct judgement because he, in part, has perception, but he also has knowledge. You have to know EVERYTHING in order to correctly discern what anything is. It thus requires vision, based on knowledge. He is the only one who can judge correctly, until you can learn to share his judgement in place of the ego's judgment. The ego always judges harshly, producing what we call "condemnation" or "being judgmental."

This is because the ego does not know anything, and is always wrong. Its judgements are always harsh and attacking, accusing everything of sin and guilt. It cannot recognize the "true" judgements of the Holy Spirit, and so its judgements produce false perceptions.

If you let the Holy Spirit judge for you, and then you match, accept or align with his judgement, your own judgement will line up with his and be accurate. If you try to judge on your own, and given you lack knowledge, most of the time you will judge with the ego and make false judgements. These judgements will be attacks and they will hurt yourself.

As you learn to let your judgement rest upon the Holy Spirit's judgement, your own judgement aligns with the truth, causing your perception to become "true". You judge with the ego less and trust the Holy Spirit to judge for you. Eventually your own judgement becomes "as true" and equal to his, shared with him.

Only when your judgement is perfected, and your perception aligned with knowledge, are you in a position to judge correctly without ego. This is an advanced state.

Jesus doesn't entirely write off all judgement. He does want us to stop using our ego to judge, and to instead depend on the Holy Spirit to judge for us until we are better able to judge with him correctly and share his judgement. His judgements are not condemning, they are healing and forgiving.

Thus to him, true judgement or "the final judgement" is a way of evaluating everything as forgiven and innocent, in which judgement becomes "non-judgmental." In this way, the attacking judgementalism of the ego becomes repurposed and is used to cancel itself out. By using judgment to not attack, the need for judging at all is undone, and so the need for perception ends.

Ultimately, by using the Holy Spirit's nonjudgmental judgement, we escape from the world. The world was made BY judging, ie as an attack on God, as a condemnation of his son. The ego aligned with the world's nature (both based on separation) and judged the world harshly.

The Holy Spirit judges the world fairly and without condemning it. You thus escape from the world by not playing the world's game of condemnation and attack (which is also sin). By not attacking what is rooted in attack, by not judging those who condemn, by seeing sinners as innocent, judgement is repurposed as a way to evaluate that the judgmental attack-world is forgiven. Thus is our investment in its nature undone, and the world is gone with it.

When judgement is perfected, ie shared with and in agreement with the Holy Spirit, ego and the body and the world disappear. Perception ends and we return to a state of knowledge, waking up in the reality of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no condemnation and no sin and no ego, and no need to judge or evaluate the meaning of anything. Everything there is inherently meaningful and means everything, which thus gives way to cognition and knowledge.

This all boils down to:

1) Do not condemn (hate, attack, sin, make guilty, attack-thoughts, grievances etc).

2) Do not evaluate anything on your own, recognizing you cannot (let Holy Spirit judge through you - extend his judgement).

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

"Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."

"No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself."

"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."

"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. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

"Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being."

"We will receive but what is given us from Judgment made beyond the world."

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment. What is your judgment on the world, teacher of God? Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him."

"How CAN specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too."

"We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety."

"Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one."

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you."

"Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be."

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."

"Good judgment" in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does "bad." It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment he merely gives up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."

"Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception."

"No-one can escape God's final judgment. Who could flee forever from the truth? But the final judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear."

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. The Final Judgment might be called a process of Right-evaluation. It simply means that finally all men must come to understand what is worthy and what is not."

"Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact."

In ACIM Jesus makes many clear references to a distinction between heaven and earth. He particularly uses the term "in heaven" as an opposite to "on earth". This clearly implies to most readers that heaven is some kind of place which is "not earth", which is "other than earth", which is "beyond earth", and which you can "be in" as an alternative to "being on earth".

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's Son."

Jesus clearly distinguishes that there are two places. You can be in heaven, and you can be on the earth. And they are not the same. Heaven is actually a vast realm of creation and living beings which earth barely has any awareness of. And heaven is a place you can "go to". Do not be deceived by statements such as "heaven is not a place", because this refers only to it not being localized in space. Heaven is everywhere, earth is nowhere.

It is also clear that heaven's properties are not like the properties of earth. We can bring some aspects of heaven "down" onto the earth, such as forgiveness which symbolizes heaven, and such as holy relationships which symbolize real relationships in heaven. Indeed earth can even "reflect" heaven. But it cannot BE heaven.

Jesus is clear that these are two states and two orders of reality and they are opposites. And even when earth is reinterpreted "as if part of heaven", it is still not the same. Nor is there any life outside of heaven, and earth is outside of heaven.

You can be on the earth, or in heaven. On the earth, your function is to forgive and heal to prepare your mind for God to take the final step, which literally takes you OFF the earth and INTO heaven. Back home to God where you belong. Heaven is your home. Earth is an alien world to you. Forgive the world and go home.

"Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"He was "called down upon the earth"

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"His holy will can never be denied, because his Father shines upon his mind, and lays before it all the strength and love in earth and Heaven."

"Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God's creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all."

"The gifts of God are in my hands, to give to anyone who would exchange the world for Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"For God's Will is done in earth and Heaven."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there."

"Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts beyond the worth of anything on earth. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with Heaven's treasures, which alone are real."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace. For it REMEMBERS Heaven. And now it sees that Heaven HAS come to earth at last, from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what has been GIVEN Heaven as its own."

"His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of Heaven, for these are the words in which all will merge as one at last."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well."

"Your will be done! In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."

"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."

"You become the symbol of his Father here on earth."

"No-one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its One Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses. It is to them that wisdom would appeal." "All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests."

"In Heaven, means and end are one, and One with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no-one here is this describable."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one."

"He denies NOT his own reality BECAUSE it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven BE?"

"It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

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

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God."

"Prayer is a ladder reaching up to Heaven. At the top there is a transformation much like your own, for prayer is part of you. The things of earth are left behind, all unremembered."

"Today's idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven's gate; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God. How far are we progressing now from earth!"

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him. They witness to what you do not know, and, as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. For never would He leave His own beloved Son outside them, and beyond Himself."

"How could there be a meeting place at all where earth and Heaven can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist?"

"He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is."

"And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate, and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven. God will take this final step Himself."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go BEYOND forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and constant he can barely stay, and wait a little longer with his feet still touching earth. Yet is he glad to wait 'til every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go with him. For thus is HE made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left behind."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth."

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

"Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."

It's important to realize that the Kingdom of God cannot be even remotely encroached upon. What you are in reality, it utterly BEYOND the reach of the ego and death and all forms of attack. Nothing illusory can even TOUCH what you are.

You live in a realm of light which is far beyond the world of Earth and beyond anywhere that any kind of illusion can exist. It is so protected and so intensely powerful that not a single speck of unreality can even approach it.

This is why you are safe in God. This is why you cannot be hurt. This is why your immortality is permanent. This is why you cannot be changed or redefined or affected by the world. This is why nothing in this world has any power over you. This is why you are invulnerable and cannot be attacked, made to be sick, or die.

You are not of this world. You are from and in another world. You are heaven's child, safe in the womb of God, utterly unexposed to hell, and completely distant from every little scrap of attack this world can muster.

It's not even a matter of two distinct worlds butting up against each other, of or them making contact, overlapping, sharing something, or the "outside surface" of heaven being accessible to the realm of the ego. They do NOT meet. And they do NOT communicate. And illusion cannot even get close to the children of God.

"The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from It an instant. It belongs to you. By It you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with It, and everything is one with you because It left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and Everlasting Life shine in your mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you."

With this in mind, you can get a sense of the fact that this whole world is like a surface "layer" or coating covering over reality, like an old crust, which has broken away and is floating by itself. And you are deeper than this. Your are within and beyond and above.

You are not made of anything of this world. No part of the physical body is your self, or yours, nor does it make contact with what you are. Not one single physical object has ever touched your soul. Not one sexual act or hug or high-five or physical smile has ever in fact influenced your spirit in any way.

What you are cannot be changed, cannot be affected, cannot be hurt, cannot be attacked, cannot be damaged, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be blown around by the wind, cannot suffer in any way, cannot lose anything, cannot have anything taken from it, and cannot be encroached upon.

What you are is utterly safe from the world, beyond the world, above the world. So far beyond that the world doesn't even really know your real self exists. So high in heaven that you are more than a trillion light years from the slightest particle of matter. And so embedded in God's heart that you not one beam of real light can ever fail to shine on you and keep you safe.

The reality of the Kingdom is a SAFE PLACE TO BE. And nothing can hurt you there. It is your sacred space. It is perfectly protected forever by God Himself, and identifying with BEING THERE NOW you are safe from all danger. You cannot be hurt because you are immortal, and this God guarantees forever. "It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed."

"Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable." "Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators, but your Soul and YOUR Creator will ALWAYS be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"The Father keeps what HE created safe. YOU cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, BECAUSE it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him."

"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." "Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet."

"NOTHING can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are."

"Against our united strength, the ego CANNOT prevail."

"The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God, and any totality MUST include God. Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit"

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The ego CANNOT prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never occurred."

"The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them."

"The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality. God's glory and His Son's BELONG to you in truth. They HAVE no opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves."

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ. For the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence that He protects, and Whose Power protects HIM."

"The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond."

"Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it."

"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."

"There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe."

"I am safe today because there is no will but God's."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."

"Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light which blesses and which heals. At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

"Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care."

"Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection."

"How simply and how easily does time slip by for the teacher of God who has accepted His protection!"

"God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions."

"Concentrate on the holiness which they imply about you; on the unfailing companionship which is yours; on the complete protection that surrounds you."

"The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."

"The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"God's Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father's protection and CANNOT fear. His Father's love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing."

"When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable."

"And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real."

"Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind which nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God."

"Now he has learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things."

"NOTHING can come BETWEEN what God has joined, and what the Holy Spirit sees as one."

"Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid."

"Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you."

"Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's."

"Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything."

"When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He CANNOT answer, because NOTHING can hurt you and SO YOU ARE ASKING FOR NOTHING."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

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

"Communication here is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain, because nothing discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore LIKE Him. That IS its reality, and nothing CAN assail it."

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son"

"The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are NOT protecting their egos, so that nothing CAN hurt them."

"You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him."

"NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure."

"In my defenselessness my safety lies."

"Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"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."

"He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering."

"Safety is the COMPLETE RELINQUISHMENT OF ATTACK. No compromise is possible in this."

"Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last."

"It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise, that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source?"

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? 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 they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from

all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds." "But you cannot be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY safety."

"You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed."

"Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself."

"The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."

"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. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. "

"It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God."

"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?"

"How better could your OWN mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk BEYOND the world of darkness into light?"

"The Word of God has no exceptions. 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."

"You will not remember change and shift in Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me. "

"Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world can NOT destroy."

"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."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE."

"Neither justice nor injustice exists in Heaven, for error is impossible and correction meaningless."

"For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source."

"There is no change in Heaven, because THERE IS NO CHANGE IN GOD."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality."

Most people feel some sense of unworthiness. Some people feel it very strongly. Unworthiness means you do not believe you deserve to be loved. You're not good enough or smart enough or perfect enough or something enough. There is something lacking about you, something missing or something wrong with you. Something which proves that you can't and shouldn't be loved.

That which you believe is true and real, you will accept and allow and agree with. If you believe that something is wrong with you, that you are guilty or a sinner or are ashamed or remorseful about something that happened, even if you are upset about it you will believe that you deserve what you are experiencing. Whatever you accept as true, you will believe you are worthy of. Worthiness, deserving, entitlement, all correlates to what you accept and therefore allow and agree with.

If you do not feel worthy of love and forgiveness, it is because you believe you ARE worthy of something else. It means you believe that guilt is real. Believing in guilt means you accept that you are guilty, you agree that you are guilty, you believe that you should be punished and not loved, and will agree with anyone who comes along to punish you for you, ultimately on your behalf. Even if it hurts, you will not stop them, because you yourself believe that you are worthy of it.

When you are feeling unworthy or less than wholly lovable, you will experience some form of victimhood. You'll see yourself as unfairly treated, that what you are experiencing is not what you want, that you wish you could have a "do-over" and fix what you did, and that you feel deeply bad about what happened. These feelings seem very genuine.

In particular, feeling very bad about yourself, unworthy of love or attention or credit, feels very sad and depressing and unhappy. It makes you feel as though you are weak and have no power. Maybe someone took your power away. You see yourself as helpless and suffering.

It simultaneously will seem as though someone else has power over you. Someone else was hurt, or someone else attacked you, or someone else decided you are not good enough by not treating you well. Someone else has more than you, and you have less. You don't measure up, you fall short of the standard, you're not man or woman enough, or something is just lacking about you. These experiences are a perception of you being a victim. It seems so unfair, it seems so un-asked for, it seems like what you do not want. No-one seems to love you and there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.

Perhaps there is even something about you physically, mentally or emotionally which seems to be hideous or unacceptable or just not good enough that anyone would love it. Overweight? Underweight? Ugly? Bad hair? Pimples? Poor clothing? The wrong kind of physique? A strange voice? The list goes on of all the reasons why someone would not love you.

In this state of mind, there doesn't SEEM to be anything that you are doing to put yourself into this situation. It seems deserved. It seems like there is no way out and nothing you can do to change it. You WISH that it would not be this way, but you do not see a way out. You don't see how you can escape this, and instead have to avoid the people who judge you and who have decided for you that you are a sinner.

The experience and feelings that go along with this unworthiness or guilt can be deep and profound. You can feel really awful about yourself. You can feel as though God wouldn't love you, no-one would love you and nobody wants you. It seems tragic. You just seem to want someone to come along and rescue you or be a friend or side with you or whatever. But they don't show up. Funny that.

All of these feelings are unpleasant and seem to suggest there is nothing you are doing to put them in place, that you are trying so hard to get out of it and that you just feel really bad about what you did or what you are. It SEEMS like you do not want this, that your guilt is genuine, you feel really awful about what you did, and it seemed so real, you actually caused someone or God to be hurt and it's had a real effect and someone got damaged and there's just no way to undo it.

So now you're stuck feeling guilty, and you deserve it, but your feeling of guilt is almost like a plea for forgiveness or a wish that someone else will forgive you for you. It feels as though you feel really really bad for doing something wrong, a kind of remorse, as though you recognize clearly that it was not the right thing to do, and just feel terrible about it.

But what we now need to address is the fact that all of this is bullshit. There are illusions at play here. There is denial. There is unconscious material which is not being admitted to. There are cover-ups taking place. There is dishonesty. There is irresponsibility. And there are ego devices in place that actually have a hidden agenda and purpose for all of these feelings, which you at first will not want to admit to.

The suggestion that you in ANY way might be using this guilt, remorse, shame or unworthiness for a secret purpose, that you actually might want it to be happening because you're getting some kind of benefit from it, will initially be experienced as a slap in the face. It will seem like a blasphemy, which will trigger you to react with "how could you say that" and "how dare you" as though this is completely the opposite of what you're experiencing. It will seem insensitive.

The problem is that your mind has placed itself into a perceptual experience of being a victim and is very confused and deluded and simply does not see the truth. It does not recognize what it is doing or how it is using unworthiness on purpose. It doesn't want to admit the truth and sees the truth as a threat or offense or attack.

This is simply because, whatever your scope of awareness is right now, which you will believe is full and whole but really isn't, determines what information you have and what facts you are aware of. Although your perception is limited, you see yourself as being aware of everything there is to be aware of, because your awareness only shows you what is within its range right now and anything outside of it seems not to exist. You may not even suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Because of this, based on the evidence you ARE aware of, you will simply conclude (erroneously) that it does not SEEM as though you want to be guilty, it does not look as though you are choosing this on purpose, and you are ONLY aware of the seeming causes of this unworthiness and the consequences it produced, ie the justification for WHY you feel guilty, and the explanation for why it is both logical and sensible to feel this way.

For example if you are aware that someone did something to you, seeming to cause you to feel ashamed, and you see no other causes, you will sensibly conclude that you feel this way because of what they did to you. But this doesn't mean this is the truth or the real reason why you feel this way. There is more truth that is outside your awareness which you haven't admitted to yet.

Or if you did something yourself, you sinned, and thus you feel guilty and ashamed, you will conclude that you're supposed to feel this way because what you did was awful, and therefore it is justified and normal. People refer to this as your "guilty conscience", as though you have this "conscience" which regulates and honestly perceives whether what you do is good or bad at all times. However, only the ego has a guilty conscience, and the conscience has absolutely nothing to do with truth. It is purely based on judgement and ego-based errors in perception, denial and an unwillingness to admit the real truth.

Guilt will always feel as though it is genuine and heartfelt and that you are truly sorry and feel bad about what you did. That is its purpose. It is meant to make you experience in this way. It is, however, a very effective cover-up for a deeper experience which is completely opposite. There are some facts which you are unaware of which would show you that your guilt is actually not pure and sacred and sincere. There are some facts which would reveal that your guilt is actually a device for further sinning and for increasing separation.

When you make-believe separation and move into sin - the belief that separation really has happened in reality - you are believing that you committed an act of murder. Such an act does not happen "by accident". It is deliberate, intentional, pre-meditated destruction. It was on purpose, you wanted it, and you chose it. The whole reason for sin originally was to establish separation from God SO THAT you could go off by yourself and pretend to have your own separate existence, be ruler of your own universe and act like God without God.

There was nothing accidental about that, you didn't do it "by mistake", and it wasn't a cosmic "oops". It was vicious, it was an attack, and according to your belief in sin, which you WANT to believe, it produced a tremendous amount of "real" consequences such as that God has been changed, God has been hurt, God is justified in getting revenge, and you now have no option other than to go off by yourself and hide in a corner.

The purpose of the original sin was to bring about a separation from God and therefore from yourself. It required you to disown yourself. Sin was an attempt to disown yourself by destroying yourself and what you are. Following sin, based on the logic of separation which naturally proceeds all the way to death, you CONTINUED to implement a "getting rid of what I am" mentality. This led to the invention of guilt as a cover-up story.

To disown yourself and to be less responsible for choosing and for who and what you are, you invented guilt as if to say, you didn't REALLY mean to sin, you didn't want to do it, it sort of happened on its own, or God abandoned you or cast you out of Heaven, or it happened to you against your will, or, having really hurt God you now feel sorry that you did it. It's as though you have had a change of heart! Suddenly you enter into this guilt as if to say, I'm really sorry that I did that, I wish I could take it back. But this is a total lie.

Guilt is a layer of denial. It represses the fact that you DID want to sin and you did want to be separate. It covers up the very deliberate choice that you made with an ILLUSION of you seeming as though you couldn't possibly have wanted this. You sinned, you attacked, and then all of a sudden... what did I do? How could I do this? What was I thinking?

Well... this shift may on the surface APPEAR to indicate that you did not want to sin and regret it, but this is not at all genuine. You did want to sin and you will do everything in your power to KEEP the sin in place and never question it and never attempt to be open to the possibility that it can be healed or undone or that it never happened. You never want to let sin be threatened.

Therefore you have to build this fictional illusion that you do not want sin, which actually is an act of further separation. You look at the sin and you try to get rid of it, just like you tried to get rid of God. You separate yourself off from it, judge it, attack it, and tell yourself that it and you have nothing in common. The movement from separation to sin is exactly the same motive, purpose, and goal, as the movement from sin to guilt.

In terms of illusions, the appearance of them as if they are true will tell you, no no, I didn't really want to sin... it was a mistake, I didn't realize what would come of it. Bullshit to that. You actually did know and you chose it and tried to MAKE it happen. And now you then cover this up with a facade of guilt as if you couldn't possibly have wanted this. But this pretend remorse really covers up the fact that you are USING guilt now as a device for not only keeping the sin in place, continuing to believe it cannot ever be changed, but also as a way of disowning it and yourself.

Guilt causes sin to go unconscious. It is your attempt to shut sin out of your awareness and pretend that you do not want it. Your not wanting of something is an attack, using a device of separation to get rid of something. It worked for you to get rid of God, and now again it works for you to get rid of sin. By being guilty and SEEMING to be all ashamed and unworthy and nobody-can-love-me-now, you paint a picture of the reasons WHY sin cannot be undone and WHY guilt is justified, making guilt the truth and protecting sin from healing.

Having blocked out sin, which is the sole cause of guilt, your mind will no longer be aware of the sense of sin. Instead, your conscious awareness only remains aware of this new fictional guilt that you invented - fake guilt, not real guilt. It is not genuine guilt, it is not honest guilt, it is not true guilt, it is completely artificial and a lie. But being unaware of the sin that came before it, guilt is now squarely in your conscious awareness and seems to be the truth to you.

Guilt explains why you should be punished. Guilt also explains that sin cannot ever be undone. It justifies keeping the sin, pushing it into the past, as though it's done and over with, and can never be changed. It puts the decision-maker or cause of why you are guilty outside of yourself, so that you do not appear to be the one who decided to invent the guilt in the first place.

You are guilty because of "what you did to God" or you are guilty because of "how you hurt another person". Their hurt, their suffering, is used as the justification for why you should be guilty, and because you believe (through sin) that their suffering is real, you see it as the cause of your guilt. Lo and behold, you have successfully disowned the power and honesty and choice of being the one who put the guilt in place, and will now come across consciously as NOT being the one who wanted any of this.

In the guilt you'll put on this performance, this sob-story, about how you don't want to feel this way, you wish it never happened, it was unfair, someone else made this happen, you didn't choose it, if you could do something to undo it you would - EXCEPT FOR what would actually undo it - we won't let ourselves go there, believing that because it was a sin in the past it is a given - irreversible and never to be questioned. Anything but that.

Since you then believe you are guilty, you will believe you do not deserve forgiveness. To forgive would mean to UNDO the guilt and question whether you sinned. You do not want that and you have no intention whatsoever of ever going there to look at that. You want to stay as far away from the sin as possible, which is what makes it unconscious. If you do not deserve to undo sin or be loved ever again, you now believe you are not worthy of love.

It is through your own belief that you are guilty, which is you agreeing that you should be guilty, that you will accept and allow the guilt, even if on the surface you will experience it as unwanted. From inside of the guilt, from inside the unworthiness, which means that you are blocked from being aware of love by a barrier of denial, it will SEEM as though this is just a horrible experience that you would never want to choose... because you do not SEE that you did choose it, OR that you chose it on purpose for a very "evil" intention of bringing about the death of the Son of God.

So then you'll experience that you are worthy of punishment and unlove and mis-treatment and being attacked and hurt, because you do not believe you deserve anything better. Your allegiance has to be somewhere, so if it's not to God, it's to the ego - the thought system of pain and suffering and death. Not much of a substitute, but it's your only choice. And secretly, it's what you wanted. Being closer aligned to the ego will allow you to further you plan, which has been in place since the start and never questioned, of becoming a separate individual in your own reality, where death is life and separation from God is absolutely true.

In this unworthiness you will feel powerless, helpless, victimized, profoundly "not wanting" this at all. Or do you? Secretly you do. You are getting away with murder. You wouldn't feel guilty unless you believed that sin is real. Guilt keeps sin real. You wouldn't believe you deserve to suffer and die unless you believed guilt was justified and therefore that you should be punished.

You might seem on the illusory surface not to want the suffering at all, to be not choosing it at all, to be completely averse and horrified and terrified about what is going to happen to you, but this also is a huge bullshit lie. You are deliberately positioning yourself to suffer SO THAT you can continue your plan of separation and death and keep justifying why the Son of God should die.

The more that separation is implemented the more there will seem to be this huge rift between what you APPEAR to be wanting, versus what you are secretly really wanting. And since the ego is a split mind, always there will be a conscious self-will which seems to not want to suffer or be guilty or upset in any way, but there will be an unconscious self-will which is constantly trying to bring about death and disaster.

You actually believe you deserve to die, because of what you did. And you want to believe it. Death is what you want. It's what this entire dream is all about - you choosing death over life, ego over God. And isn't it strange how you flipped from attempted murder of God and His Son, to suddenly now seeming like a victim? Like you went from being the victimizer, to being the one who is being victimized?

Isn't that like a perfect cover-up for a victimizer, to portray themselves as innocent, to show themselves as being the least likely to sin, to fake their own helpless death (suicide) in order to prove that they are so powerless that it couldn't possibly have been them who did it? Their secret sin and hidden hate goes to the grave with them, and is the reason they go there. Who would suspect the most innocent-seeming person of hiding a malice against God which has attempted to destroy all of Creation? Who would suspect someone who is so powerless, helpless, hopeless, weak, afraid, suffering and unfairly treated by life?

It's the perfect cover. It's the perfect mechanism of denial, layer upon layer of projection, disownership, displacement of blame, irresponsibility, pretending to have no choice, and picturing yourself as the least likely one to have sinned. We're all playing this game of who can seem to die without anyone suspecting that they wanted God to be dead. It's the desire to want God to be dead which CAUSES you to die.

So yes, you can feel guilty, ashamed, remorseful and unworthy, and these can seem like such unfair, un-asked for, unwanted experiences. But we have to get very honest here if we want to actually have a chance of being set free by the truth - any hope in hell of actually being forgiven and for this whole mess to go away.

We have to be willing to admit that our guilt is not genuine guilt, or real guilt, or truthful guilt. It is fake guilt, denial, and a cover-story for something even worse. We have to admit also that our feeling of unworthiness is a tremendous cover-story once again for how we couldn't possibly want any of this, life is totally unfair, other people have been really judgemental and mean and accusatory, and how we "don't deserve this".

Those who feel unworthy will be constantly saying "I don't deserve this". Bullshit! This is the conscious ego persona claiming that it doesn't believe you deserve this, and that you are just trying to preserve your integrity and innocence, while unconsciously the ego shadow is hell-bent on staying as unworthy as possible.

You are fundamentally worthy of God's unconditional love all the time forever. But if you can position yourself as unworthy and justify why you are unworthy, this will seem to "explain" why and how you should not be loved by God. But isn't this just another way for you to attempt to assert that you CANNOT be loved? If you cannot be loved, guess what that means? It means that you have STOPPED GOD. And what's another word for stopping God? Murder.

So your unworthiness will be all sorrowful and you'll feel like you didn't ask for it and you don't want to be this way. But you do. You have to own up to that if you want to be free. And typically those who are in a victim mindset will NOT want to ACTUALLY take the steps necessary in order to undo the real problem. They will make HUGE amounts of noise about their desire to have this go away, how they don't want to suffer, and complain extensively about how unfair this all is, but the one key thing that they need to DO to ACTUALLY solve this problem - the undoing of separation and sin, they will avoid at all costs.

And so when you listen to a victimy person, you will notice that they are forever staying paralyzed, they are always staying exactly where they are, keeping all of their problems, keeping all of their suffering, but making huge screeching noises about how they want this to go away. They don't want it to go away. The one thing that would undo it, they do not want. Anything else they want, any other possible pathway or solution or answer they will be open to, but not the undoing of the unworthiness.

How are you going to be able to maintain that God cannot love, and therefore God is not love, and therefore God has no power to love you, and therefore you have power OVER God, unless you assert strongly that you cannot be loved? Your unworthiness is an authority problem. It is arrogance. It is you trying to stop God from loving. You justify it with guilt. You support it with an explanation of having sinned. You want to KEEP all of the ways that justify you being attacked and hurt and rejected and punished, because it allows you to GET AWAY WITH MURDER.

Your rejection of God's love, because you "don't deserve it", is bullshit. It is not true. You DO deserve God's love. You do not WANT to admit to deserving God's love. Your unwillingness to admit that you are USING your unlovability as a weapon, is keeping you in the dark and maintaining your agenda of death. Oh, poor me, I guess I sinned too much, I'm too guilty, God, you might as well not love me, just pass me by and go love someone else, you're really better off not loving me anyway, you wouldn't want to love someone like me, I'm SAVING YOU from unnecessary unjustified love and hurt by me turning away from you.

And so this unworthiness is really a denial of love and an attempt to explain why you should not be loved. Not that you cannot be, but that you should not be. And you will explain that because of your sinfulness, because of your guilt, you really do not DESERVE the love - that you're doing love a favor by saving love from having to love you. You believe the love will not WORK and that therefore you would be causing love to waste its efforts. Or in other words, your deserving to die comes from your attempt to make God die by stopping God's love from extending, ceasing the extension of Life.

It's almost like an admittance that you hurt someone so bad that they really should not love you, they shouldn't even try to, because they would be wasting their love unnecessarily and that you are saving them from this additional loss by not being worthy. So now you are God's savior, which makes your ego happy. So long a you stay unworthy, which SEEMS to be the illusion of wanting to be loved so badly, wanting to be forgiven, wanting to be seen as worthy, it REALLY is an attempt to do the exact opposite - to reject love as much as possible.

If God is permanently loving then you have to admit at some point that your belief in guilt and sin and unworthiness is YOUR belief. It is not God's view of you. You must also own up to and take responsibility for making the DECISION that you are guilty and unworthy, which reveals that you actually CHOSE it and put it in place on purpose, for a reason. You being responsible for all of this reveals the truth that every single part of what you are experiencing is a form of denial, is part of your ego plan, is untrue and dishonest.

You wanted to sin. You wanted to use guilt to cover up the sin and disown it. You wanted to be unworthy of love so that you could reject God. And you wanted to die to prove that God was dead. No-one else decided any of this for you. God didn't make it happen. It wasn't other people who caused you to be unlovable.

This is ALL part of your plan, every step of the way, and you wanted all of it. That means, that you have done this all to yourself, but it also means that therefore, if you change your mind and admit to the truth, you might STOP doing this to yourself and actually have a REAL HOPE of being free from this suffering. Unworthiness is hardly a joyful experience.

You will say you cannot forgive yourself for what you did. You do not want to. You don't believe in your innocence because you chose to believe that guilt is true. And not just because you did something really bad, but so that you could hide your sin and increase the attack on God.

Being guilty for murder is hardly a restoration of the state that existed prior to the murder, and guilt can hardly be said to be an atonement or compensation for attack. If you sin by attacking someone and its hurts them, what are you going to offer to them to compensate them? If you were to offer them love, healing, undoing of the sin, and reversal of all effects, that would be true "repentance". A miracle of healing would be true repentance. But you don't choose that. Instead you choose to go into guilt.

In this world, guilt has been terribly confused with love. People hurt those they "love" (but really don't) then go into guilt. Guilt is supposed to be some kind of position of being sorry, or remorse or regret, and then they will attempt to perform actions which make it up to the person, based on that guilt, as though that will atone for the sin. Guilt is not a gift, it's a slap in the face. It's an attempt to kick them while they're down. It's an attempt to save face. It is dishonest.

If you sin and hurt someone, the response from you should be that you RETURN TO LOVE, so that you can be as truly helpful as possible and heal the problem. And that person, IF they are in their right mind, should encourage you to return to love, through forgiveness, in order to RESTORE the state of innocence and invulnerability which seemed to be disrupted. Thus both of you are now better off. But if you instead move into guilt as your offering of atonement, you're really being selfish and are not atoning at all.

If the person you hurt is not in their right mind and has an ego agenda, they will likely seize the opportunity to notice that you made a mistake and, instead of forgiving you to help you to return to love, they will use this to get rid of some of their own sin and guilt. They will attack you, justifiably, accuse you, put you in the dog house, put limits on you, reject you from their "love", or generally separate from you as a justified punishment. This is a completely insane response and not in any way justified or honest or exhibiting integrity.

This is the ego's version of atonement, that you sinned so you must sacrifice in order to make up for it. You must lose something, you must be less loved, and you must give something away that you value and be at a loss, in order to "pay" for your crime. There is no justice when any Son of God is found to be guilty. Not only has one person been attacked, but now a second person has fallen from Grace and has entered into guilt. So now two people are suffering, which is hardly an improvement.

Being guilty and unworthy of forgiveness is exactly what your ego wants, and is exactly what it uses to pretend to be sorry about what happened. If you are TRULY regretful, you will return to love as quickly as possible, regain your sense of deserving love as quickly as possible, repair the "damage" by offering a miracle of healing, and give the TRUE GIFT of love. This will be a real atonement. This will undo the suffering and reverse the problem and restore peace. But the ego doesn't want that, and anyone with an ego will condemn and demand guilt as though it makes sense. It is insane.

Many forms of "love" are really guilt. Feeling guilty that you didn't do enough, feeling guilty that you hurt your loved one, feeling bad about not being able to help someone, feeling guilty that you caused someone to suffer or lack, etc... these are not positions of honesty or responsibility or repentance or atonement. These are positions of the ego using the situation to reinforce itself and increase separation and unconsciousness and death. And a "crime punishable by death" is the ultimate bullshit.

When someone makes a mistake, it must be innocent, because no-one in their innocent right mind deliberately sins. If it is a mistake, it is forgivable, calls for forgiveness and love and a restoration of communication and communion. It calls for even greater sharing and love, in order to correct the problem of the error in perception.

So at some point when you admit all this to yourself, you will have to learn to drop the entire "sob story" of how you are unworthy and guilty and ashamed and remorseful and regretful. None of these are genuine and every one of them is a dishonest plot to move you further towards death.

This "correct perception" of these perceptual errors allows you to RECOGNIZE these illusions as ego devices and not as truth. If you believe them then you have failed to recognize them, and they will remain. But illusions, when recognized for what they are REALLY doing, leads to their undoing and they must disappear. Therefore there is a healing and a release.

Yes, you feel like shit and unworthy of love, but.... do you want to keep spinning your wheels on this or... do you want an honest, real solution which will ACTUALLY repair the damage and heal you and set you free of this guilt and restore your worthiness for being loved? That is what forgiveness offers you. That is the escape from death that the truth offers you, if you are willing to own up to it.

Unworthy? Ashamed? Guilty? Mad at yourself for what you did? Self loathing? Low self-esteem? Bullshit!

You ARE permanently lovable, permanently worthy, permanently innocent, and permanently forgiven. Your self-hate is not justified. Your attempted self-destruction is not justified. Your guilt is unfounded. Your sadness is completely unfounded. Your fear of punishment is a total lie. And you have not really sinned at all.

God is very happy with you right now. Can you accept it as the truth? At least in your willingness to approach this truth, it may bring to light the ways that you are trying to believe the opposite, so that you can look at it honestly and let it go.

God loves you. Always has. Always will. And there is nothing that you need to "do" to make it up to Him or win Him over or convince Him of your innocence. You do not need to "atone" for a sin that you didn't really commit. You do not need to "atone" or "pay" for hurting God, because you haven't. You're just mistaken, and so long as you want to keep being mistaken God will STILL continue to love you unconditionally. At some time you will be ready to accept that, in truth, you deserve to be loved forever, and you are.

"Nothing you can do can turn me away, nothing anyone can say, 'cus I'm with you now and as long as you stay, loving you's the right thing to do, loving you is the right thing." - Carly Simon