While it may seem like the ego is the idea of an individual self, some kind of artificial self, this isn't really an accurate way to frame it. The ego is actually the idea of NOT having a self.

In heaven God created your soul which is your real self. It is a fully created being. It is an individual being, at least in the sense that it has its own mind and free will, but it ALSO SHARES with everyone else, and so is also one.

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

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

In the separation, the willingness to share was denied, producing a state of selfishness. "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness." Selfishness is an attempt to withdraw from sharing, to not want to be be one with the rest.

In what we might describe as "making an ego", the truth is that we didn't really make an ego. We HID the soul. And we did this by denying the soul. This repression of self was an act of TRYING NOT TO EXIST. It was an attempt not to will anything at all.

In attempting not to exist, which is really an attempt to murder God's son, you tried to have en existence in which you didn't really exist. It was one thing to have the idea of existing "apart from God", but the real truth is that you were attempting NOT to exist at all. To be the total opposite of eternal life, which is death.

The ego then isn't really a self, or an individual. It is the idea of NOT SELF. It is really an ILLUSION of a self, seeming to be like a self, but this illusion is actually a deception. It isn't really the presence of something, it is actually the ABSENCE of self. It is a lack of self.

It lacks wholeness, it lacks real identity, it lacks truth and sanity, it lacks will power, and it lacks life. What it SEEMS to be, it is not. It appears to be a thing, but it is really a no-thing. It is an anti-self, and Jesus sometimes refers to it as the anti-christ. The lack of christ. A LACK OF "everything that exists" is obviously not the PRESENCE of anything at all.

So the ego is this upside-down idea of "a separate self" that you made. But secretly, when recognized, this illusion of a self existing is really actually an attempt to make something that DOES NOT exist. And it's not really there at all. That's the illusion of it. There is not really an ego.

When you identify with "the ego" and try to believe that it exists or that it is a self, or it is your own self, you are really identifying with nothingness. You are trying to reject your true existence as a soul and are trying to seemingly "take on" a new self.

As if you can line up the soul and the ego side-by-side and pick between them. But the ego isn't alongside the soul in this way, because it doesn't have any existence. So you're really identifying with a fictional nothingness that isn't really there, while believing it is really something.

If we correctly identify that the ego is a LACK OF SELF, and is an attempt NOT to exist, which is an effort to die or to cause the death of God's son, then we need to also recognize that the ego is NOT really an individual. Nor is it really the idea of individuality. It is the idea of separation from sharing an identity in christ. It's the idea of NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. As if you don't even exist at all.

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

When the ego is undone, so to speak, we're not REALLY talking about undoing something that exists. We're talking about recognizing that is never was anything at all. That there IS no ego. That it is NOT your self. And it was never really a self. We're talking about shifting from identifying as "I don't exist" to "I do exist." From identifying with nothingness while pretending it's everything, to identifying with everything and recognizing that the ego is nothing. Your soul IS everything.

So really it's all upside down. And a lot of people have believed this idea that the ego IS a self, and IS a real individual. And that therefore, we have to get rid of this self, and therefore get rid of individuality in order to be spiritual. But this then leads to the false conclusion that you HAVE NO SELF. Or that individuality is a bad thing. Thus has individuality received a bad wrap, and people keep thinking that there are no individuals in heaven. The truth is there are no real individuals on earth, and heaven is full of them!

The separation from God therefore was never really an issue about individuality. It was never really about BECOMING an individual. You had an individual self BEFORE the separation even happened, it's just that your individual self was so SHARED with others that it was also one with them. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God." "You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." Remember that "God who encompasses all being

nevertheless CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS who HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy." That is normal, that is natural. It's OKAY to have an individual self, provided it shares and is not selfish. The ego is all about specialness and selfishness. Getting rid of the specialness and selfishness doesn't have to get rid of YOU. Especially when the specialness and selfishness was an attempt to get rid of you in the first place.

As you awaken, as you come to know yourself, as you return to being as God created you to be forever, as you acknowledge your brothers ACTUALLY PERMANENTLY EXIST along with you in reality, and therefore that you DO HAVE real relationships, and that everything belongs to everyone, the sense of "I am a real ego" is replaced with "I don't have an ego". But not having an ego doesn't mean YOU don't exist.

The end of an illusion of a self, an illusion of who you are not, of what you are not, of NOT existing, and NOT having a self, is the re-dawning on your awareness of your REAL SELF which has always existed and always will exist. A recognition of your individuality AND your shared nature. A reclaiming of your real identity in christ. And awakening to remembering that you are the soul God created to live forever.

"The Name of Jesus is the Name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

There is a fundamental difficulty in choosing anything in this world. Everything in this world lacks everything else. Everything has taken a side, has separated itself off, has made itself different, and does not have what other things have. This means that nothing is whole, nothing has everything, and nothing is perfect.

There is a fiction perpetrated that suggests you can have it all, get it all, win everything, find the best, be the best, choose the best option, be on a perfect diet, get the perfect body, etc. These are all make-believe, achieve a dream, conquer the world etc.

The separation even applies to colors. Red lacks green, blue lacks orange, and yellow lacks purple. In order to get one color you have to lose its opposite. Picking one color denies aspects which other colors have. So none of the colors are the perfect whole divine color. And you can drive yourself up the wall trying to choose the best one.

So then as you're trying to choose between options, you find yourself in a state of paralysis. You seek to make the perfect choice, the best choice, and to entirely win and succeed in whichever choice to make. But the truth is that whichever thing you choose, will lack something. Whatever option to take, it's going to be defective and limited and lacking.

This drives you nuts, when you're trying to decide what is the best course of action, or the right thing to buy, or the most appropriate selection, or whether to do one thing or another. Both options appeal with equal potential, and with equal lack. Neither of them is completely ideal. So then most of the time you end up throwing your hands in the air and "settling" for whichever one seems the least offensive. Or whichever one seems to have more pros than cons.

I'll just go with this one. I'll settle for that one. I guess this one will do. That one's probably good enough. So then you learn that in this world you usually have to lower your standards, be willing to accept that everything is limited, be okay with scarcity and sacrifice, and realize that every single choice is a compromise. You cannot get anything without losing something. That's how it's all set up.

Some people will have higher standards and will try to fine-tune the selection process. They will have in their minds the idealistic idea that some choices are actually completely perfect. That you can win without losing. That you can gain without loss. That you can get without having to give. And much of society and industry is geared towards trying to maximize the "return on investment". To get as much of what seems perfect and ideal, with as little loss as possible. There's an art to it, but it can never succeed.

If you are perfectionistic, thus, usually because you see yourself as imperfect and are trying to find what you think you don't have, you'll find this familiar. It drives you nuts trying to ideally look for the absolute best possible outcome, the most amazing toy, the completely perfect choice. It literally can make you more insane by expecting, or rather misunderstanding, that the world has the capability of offering you something that is whole and complete. It can't.

You will feel far more at ease and sane about your interactions and goals in the world if you can recognize that, fundamentally, all physical matter is a state of partiality. It's based on separation, so everything has only a small portion of the whole. Each item is lacking something that the other items have. If you go for the TV with the bigger speakers you lose out on the TV with the cool remote. You can't win everything. You can't have it all.

If you can accept that every choice in the world falls short, every option is incomplete, every possible outcome is not ideal, and realize this is just how a world of separation must be, then you can stop fighting with it or setting yourself up for disappointment. As jesus says in the course, "the world has disappointed you since time began." That's because everything it promises, it fails to deliver. Everything it gives you, it takes away.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Nothing in the world is whole. It was designed to reject wholeness. Space is an assertion of the idea that nothing is everywhere and the everywhere (God) is nowhere. Every object, every piece of matter, every physical attribute, every choice, is divided. It is only because there has BEEN a division that you even have two things to choose between, and each of those options is only half of the whole. So at best, any choice you make leaves you empty handed, second-guessing, and wishing you picked the other one. And surely the best of the best will bring you salvation!

The world is two-faced, just as the ego is. It gives and takes away. If you gain you lose. If you win you lose. If you get you lack. If you want not to share anything with anyone you end up with nothing. What you get is taken from you. What you accomplish is destroyed. What you build comes tumbling down. Nothing lasts, nothing is whole, nothing completes you. That's how this world is. The sooner you accept that this is its nature you can work within its limits and use it for a higher purpose without trying to expect it to suddenly act like heaven. Pigs will never be able to fly.

This is a world based on limitation, relativity, differences and lack.

What one thing has, another thing does not.

This is what makes everything different. Apples lack the color of oranges. Bananas lack the shape of apples. You can eat an apple but you can't eat your car, etc.

This is a fundamental built-in law - giving and receiving are not one, and what you give you lose. And so what you have, is lacking, and to gain something is to lose something else.

This unfortunately means that nothing in the world is whole, there are no perfect choices, anything you choose will only give you a partial solution, and every single thiing you choose will be lacking something.

You are very familiar with this. You think of whether to choose A or B. A seems to appeal with its particular attributes, but then again, B has something that A doesn't. But then again, if you pick B, it lacks the things that A has.

After a while of driving yourself mad trying to make a choice, trying to make the right choice, you can't help but get a nagging feeling that if you choose either of them it won't be a complete answer. It won't really totally solve things. It won't be perfect.

So you think to choose A, but then you recognize that B has something going for it. But then, you can't choose B, because it has something missing. And then you think, well, shit, I just can't choose, because both options are not ideal, neither of them is perfect, none of them give me the wholeless I'm looking for, and I can't be satisfied with either of them.

So then you throw up your arms in frustration at the stupidly impossible situation and decide to be done with this whole stupid choosing business, and just compromise and settle and make do and put up with and tolerate, because dis-satisfaction and imperfection are all that's really on offer.

And then you regret your decision because not only did you only have totally incomplete lacking options to choose from, you've now settled for something you don't totally want, and can't get behind, and now you don't want any of them.

This is the malady of human life, and it's not your fault and its not particular to you. It's the same for everyone, because it's built into the system. The entire system of spacetime, of relativity, is a systtem of partiality, because it lacks the wholeness of God. It's a system of impossibilities, contradictions, lacks, scarcities, imperfections, flaws, limits, inadequacies, and frustrating nonsense.

You think you can solve a problem here, but every problem solved produces another problem. You can reduce the overall problematicness of something, but to do it you have to add something else, which brings its own problems with it. The duck tape you fixed that broken whatever with, is now subject to decay and over time it's going to fail. Solutions are problems, and there is no escape.

There is no wholeness to be had in the world. The world cannot ever give you perfection. There is no perfect answer. There is no real lasting solution. There is no correct path to take. There is no completely right choice. The best you can hope for in such a ridiculous sytem is to make do and shut up and put up with shit.

But at least if you recognize that its the system itself that has this limitation, then you can drop your expectation that it SHOULD be able to offer you perfection, and then you can at least stop fighting with it or being utterly disappointed by every single thing you ever go for. Accept it's all shit and play with the turds and recognize it was all meant to be shit right from the start. Then you can laugh about it.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

The requirement to eat and get food is built into spacetime, did you know that? If space is the idea that something is "over here and not over there", then the thing over here lacks what is over there. This makes all of spacetime fundamentally lack based. Which means that everything that relies on it, which is all physical matter, every atom, is in some way lacking and deficient. Everything thus depends on something other than itself to attempt to become whole or sustained.

This lays the ground rules for what later becomes "feeding". Taking something outside of something to try to replenish what is lacking. And because of the ego's laws, if you take something from somewhere in order to address a lack, there is no increase, and only decrease, and now that thing is forced to lack "against its will". So if I take the apple from the tree the tree is now lacking an apple, and I have impoverished it.

If I take an animals body it no longer has its body. If I take water from the fountain it now lacks some water. Everywhere in this world this is true, with absolutely no regard for the form or type of object. And the act of "getting" from "others" is a murderous, attacking act, because it's an attempt to deprive them and to diminish what they have and to steal it away for your own selfish reasons. And so every single atom in spacetime is fundamentally, scientifically selfish.

The system of massive dependency later becomes what people call an ecosystem. An inter-dependent system where stuff consumes other stuff, selectively, and so it seems some things are "more ok" than other things. That's just part of the hierarchy of illusions. There are no special separate laws for animals versus plants versus microbes. It's all governed by the same ego laws of physics which are fundamentally selfish and murderous. This is why this is a cruel world that God did not create.

It's impossible to not be murderous if you do anything in this world physically. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." Best you can do is let Holy Spirit use the body and inform you of what to select, but this is not on a basis of being able to spiritualize or avoid the fact of what is happening here based on ego's laws. If you were truly operating under holy laws, God's laws, and no other, you would manifest food out of thin air, symbolizing the laws of increase of God, so that nothing is deprived or made to lack at your expense.

That is the ONLY way not to be murderous, by breaking the ego's laws entirely and bypassing them. This is why Jesus materialized food to feed people. You can justify and spiritualize a breakdown of objects into categories and give some special rules and other different rules if you want, suggesting some items are more sacred than others so you should avoid eating them, but that's a fragmenting and separation-based illusion of harmlessness, trying to be harmless to some parts of the world of death so as to justify why its okay to harm other parts. "The world was made that problems (like this) could not be escaped."

Only in God's Kingdom or under God's laws is there the possibility of true harmlessness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sense of separation from God is the ONLY problem you need correct.

This is far reaching. Every sickness, every war, every grievance, every negative thought, all death, every illusion, all fear and doubt, every body, is a SYMPTOM of what it is like to experience a LACK of love. It’s how the appearance of the absence of love shows up.

There is no problem love cannot solve.

Sickness for example, arises from a block the awareness of love’s presence. When love is blocked, the block itself shows up as an illusion of unlove - a seeming absence of love and therefore health. As Jesus says:

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

I love how Jesus is so extremely logically clear with no exceptions. All sicknes arises from a lack of love. Therefore, increasing the level of love HEALS and restores health.

This also MUST mean that when there IS love, there CANNOT be sickness. Or death!

Love is God. When we attempt to be separate from LOVE in any way, we enter into ego, darkness, suffering and problems. Those problems are symptoms of love’s absence. Human bodies, planets, weather, wars, fear, suffering, birth and death are ALL symptoms of the seeming absence of LOVE.

So it is very very simple. If you increase the love, ALL of the problems disappear. Love shines away darkness. Love removes ALL false needs and lacks. Love heals all sickness on every level. Love has miraculous power over all the ego’s laws. Love can raise the dead. Love can make death impossible.

Have you ever noticed, when you are riddled with fears and questions, trying to find answers, and believing you have needs, IF YOU GO TO GOD, commune with Him and receive some love, EVERYTHING GETS BETTER?! It all just vanishes. You forget what you were going to ask. Questions dissolve because the lack of love is met. Questions are doubts arising from fear, which is love’s absence. If you put aside what you think you need, and jump straight to getting some LOVE, it accelerates your return to peace.

You don’t really want your questions answered. You don’t really want your problems solved. You don’t really want someone to meet your fake needs. What you really want is LOVE. And love will ERASE all of these things instantly. All these other needs, wants, lacks, demands, fears and problems are only there because of love’s absence. Love’s lack is what they are MADE FROM.

When love is present, there can be no suffering. Love is powerful, miraculous, and there is NOTHING it cannot do. Love, quite literally, has miraculous supernatural power. It can heal the sick, raise the dead, repair bodies, heal the world, move mountains, overcome all the egos laws, and do everything that Jesus demonstrated as possible.

Love is the central core glue that joins ALL parts of A Course in Miracles into one seamless unified essence. It is very, very simple. All our undoing of grievances, all our forgiving, all our healing, all our practice of miracles, any acceptance of atonement, reversal of cause-effect, removing blocks to love, it is all ultimately aimed toward an increasing awareness of love’s presence, AND an increasing EXTENSION of and expression of love.

"Teach only love, for that is what you are".

Jesus was VERY loving. That is why he had miraculous power to do anything. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." Love is not just love, it is UNLIMITED CAPABILITY. All of ACIM is geared toward returning to a more loving presence. To healing the separation from love. To put us back in touch with LOVE itself, so that all problems are solved.

In love is salvation. In love is healing. In love is peace. And in love is eternal life with God.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you. This does not mean that I/Jesus am in any way separate or different from you except in time." - ACIM

Here Jesus is telling us that He, who is a Son of God, who has a soul, only has what "comes from God", because He is an effect/creation of God, and God has created Him perfectly as a free-willed son, and He needs nothing else and lacks nothing.

There are parts in this which sound contradictory to the ego. If Jesus only has what comes from God, does that imply that Jesus IS God? No. Jesus speaks as an individual soul. An individual Son. He simply says that all that he is was given him by his Father.

Also when Jesus says there is nothing "different or separate" about Him and you, to the ego this implies you ARE Jesus. This is NOT what it means. You are one with Him, but you have also your own soul. You share with Him. Creation is all about sharing, and therefore having someone to share WITH.

You would hardly accuse your own child of being their own parent, and neither does this deny their individual freedom.

You do have a soul. You do have spirit. You are created permanent and an equal part of the sonship. You do share with God and with all brothers. Yet you are also a perfect creation in and of yourself. God created many many perfect souls/sons.

This is ACIM fact.

The things that happen in the world don't really matter. All the efforts to build things, reach goals, assemble cities, improve governments, it's not really the point. It's not why we're here. We're here because we're stubborning refusing to live with God. We have lessons to learn and the purpose is to get to a point where we leave the world permanently. It's not about building a wonderful human civilization on the planet. There is no real benefit to doing that. We're not really supposed to be here. We belong in heaven. This world is just a temporary outpost, a corner in which we're hiding, while we delay being with God. Don't get too comfortable, because it was never meant to last.

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is NOT your home; its laws are NOT imposed on you, its values are NOT yours. And nothing that you THINK you see in it is REALLY there at all."

"Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made a home like this BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides."

"The world I see has nothing that I want."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him."

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world."

"The body is hardly worth the least defense."

"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

On the level of the physical world, all objects and forms can never be perfect. This is sobering to recognize. It's actually because of the nature of spacetime.

In order to have space, or locations, it's necessary that something is in one location and NOT another. It's also therefore necessary that any given object LACKS what any other given object has. There is no real sharing, whereby two objects are literally one object. Everything is separated out, exclusive, unique, different and unequal.

This applies throughout this universe. It sets up a scenario where, in terms of a physical object, which includes planets and human bodies and toys and cars and houses and food, it is literally impossible to find perfection.

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"The world was made that problems could not be solved."

"All its roads lead to death"

So now, as we enter this physical world, seen through false perception of the body's eyes, blinded by sight of form, we now seek to try to find "the perfect thing".

The ego presents objects as options, choices, and then asks you to choose between them. It does not ask whether you believe in the objects existing at all, it simply assumes they do exist and leaves you with the only remaining "choice" of choosing A OR B. This "either or" scenario is built into the whole ego thought system of spacetime. "Do you want to die this way, or that way?"

But the problem is, you are now left with two inferior, partial, temporary, incomplete, unwhole options. Neither of them ca be perfect because they both are lacking something. They both entail compromise. None of them truly mirror any kind of divine nature. They are all flawed.

So now the best you can do is choose between two flawed possibilities, where you know that to choose one you will lack the other. And committing to any of them is not fully possible with full satisfaction or certainty because to choose one is to reject something else, leaving you empty handed.

If you choose object A, you lack what object B has to offer. It drives you nuts trying to settle on what you want. You try to look more closely for signs that one thing is "better" than the other, to judge and evaluate its worth or value, as if its even possible for one of them to BE perfect.

Then after a lot of frustration and fear and uncertainty and lack of commitment and inability to trust, you "settle" for what you think is the lesser of two evils. It seems to be the best choice only because you're willing to accept its limitations and what it cannot offer you, which seems less of a sacrifice than the other choice. And so you "commit", reluctantly and in fear, crossing your fingers that it will be the right one.

The ego is playing this game all the time. It is literally impossible to be 100% satisfied with ANY choice the ego offers, because they are limited and lacking. And it would simply have you choose between two forms of death. And you think that by choosing the better of the two, you will defer death a little longer.

As you look at this, you'll find yourself trying to seek for this "perfection in the world". The perfect choice. The perfect option. The perfect car, perfect house, perfect body, perfect diet, perfect tv show, perfect city, perfect president, perfect whatever. Trying to find that one something that is completely whole and lacking nothing and utterly fulfilling and flawless. And there is NO SUCH THING in this world.

Anywhere.

I stumbled on this many times, particularly in terms of artistic projects and trying to come up with something that was perfect. My mistake was not recognizing the ways in which limitation are inherent to this world. I thought in terms of ideas, that some kind of perfection was POSSIBLE among the physical objects or physical choices or things I could create physically.

This would lead to tremendous frustration and blown-out expectations and procrastination and low self worth and being afraid of the judgement of others when they would find out how flawed and imperfect my creations were, implying my own imperfection. And this would just snowball into a huge amount of avoidance and shame and dysfunction trying to deal with this whole mess of "how will I achieve perfection". And this search for physicalized perfection is the spiritual ego, with its mantra, "seek and do not find."

It is much better to recognize when I am seeming to seek perfection at a FORM level, and to recognize the truth that ALL form is INCAPABLE of perfection. So for example if I am trying to create a piece of art, or some project, I have to realize there are built in limits as to what is possible. It cannot BE perfect, ever.

Limits have to be realistically set, there is only so much time and energy, there are only so many features, there are only so many design decisions, the object cannot ever be some kind of "miracle" that pleases everyone infinitely.

For example maybe I'm writing a book and getting hung up on how this book will "cover everything", how it will "talk to everyone", how it will be everything to all people. And then this becomes paralyzing, because as soon as you try to appease the myriad "forms" the ego presents, such as billions of disagreeing egos, it is now literally impossible to please them.

In any creative endeavor, any form of shopping, any kind of selection process, any decision making about your life or your time or where you will go or what you will do, if it entails the physical level at all it is far more productive and sane to "accept" that there are these limitations on this level. And to then simply work within those limitations, removing the sense of expectation or "wishful thinking" that form CAN BE anything other than it can be.

This means accepting that the world of limits IS fundamentally limited and limiting. And by that I don't mean to just settle for imprisonment, because of course we are meant to rise above these limits, break all the laws of physics, go beyond all boundaries and demonstrate "the impossible is possible." But in terms of the form level, it JUST IS a world of limitation and pretending it isn't really gets us in trouble.

There is one passage in ACIM where it touches on this with regards to why Jesus was not able to "perfectly" save or teach the whole world during his lifetime. The nature of the beast is simply that operating IN TIME AND SPACE, there were limits, and he had to be selective, and there was a plan and a goal and various things to be done and not others.

A physical life cannot truly embody unlimited infinity, nor can divinity be fully expressed at the level of the world. This is a world of partiality and lack and temporary differences, inequalities and flaws. It can never be immortal or perfect or holy or innocent or have eternal life or be whole. It lacks, because it is a picture of lack. We can work with it, or we can break its rules with miracles. But even miracles can't keep death while expressing life.

The world can only do what it can do. It's in its nature. It's a world of limits. It won't ever give you heaven or salvation or the attributes of God's perfection. Through true perception it can be seen as a reflection of God's perfection, but it cannot be it.

"Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Free will MUST lead to freedom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(God has MANY miracle workers!)

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

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