Unworthiness comes from the belief that you cannot have the 'real thing' - the real love - God, because of something you did (sin), which means you have to SETTLE for lesser substitutes.
And likely, these lesser substitutes, you don't really want. But you don't think you deserve any better. So you try to idolize and emphasize these substitutes as though they are really valuable and important. Andthus you buy into illusions of how great they are, when really they are shallow, empty, and meaningless.
And really, as you try to accept the worthless junk that you think you are worthy of, you really are equating your value with the value of the things. And you can see this in society and commercialism where objects and substitutes are given special value, in fact value that seems to be 'above' the value that you possess, which is symbolized by how much money you own, therefore making these objects MORE valuable than your own self worth. So then to receive one of these objects seems like a 'gift' that bestows upon you, which you don't barely deserve. How low can be your estimation of yourself when you are excited about receiving some electronic gadget or the next best piece of clothing? You are FAR MORE WORTHY than this.
You deserve complete and total unconditional love, absolute perfect peace and happiness, immortality, eternal life, complete satisfaction, total acceptance, the absence of all fear and death, and a complete resurrection into God's eternal Heaven. That is far more valuable than ANYTHING this world can offer, and it is more in line with what you are REALLY WORTH.
So if you are believing or feeling you are unworthy, it's because you believe there's something wrong with you or that you did something unforgivable, that renders you not eligible for God's love.
Well I've got news for you.
God loves unconditionally. Which means you are ALWAYS eligible for God's love no matter what you do or what you believe.
I had an 'aha' moment today about being a teacher, i.e. being helpful in this world, which probably applies to everyone.
ACIM says that "those who temporarily have more" give to "those who temporarily have less". This is the relationship of teachers to students.
But let's look at what this means.
The teacher has to be someone who temporarily appears to be more aware of truth than the student. And that means if the student can learn anything from them, the student has to be temporarily less aware.
Being temporarily less aware means you must be more insane, and you must believe in less truth, and you must therefore see truth as the enemy.
So this means that, potentially, the student will reject the teacher, i.e. the teachING, at least at first, because there is a clash of belief systems. The student comes to the teacher IN ERROR, seeking CORRECTION.
What this means for the teacher, is that the teacher will very likely experience REJECTION, conflict, attack, misunderstanding, etc. i.e. a lot of confusion and interference, at the beginning, moreso than potentially at the end AFTER teaching has been accomplished.
So here's the problem for the teacher or anyone who wants to be a teacher. And this also applies to anyone who wants to express themselves more fully, anyone who wants to express something that other people may not be able to accept, anyone doing art or creative pursuits, and anyone trying to say anything that might actually HELP or contribute to the awakening of humanity.
The problem is, that there will be a fear of rejection, a fear of judgement, a fear of abandonment, BY the student, i.e. by the audience. And you hear this a lot like people who are artists being afraid of the 'pressure' to have their art be liked, or a writer who gets a block because they are too worried about the audience's reaction. Or a teacher who wants to share and uplift others but is afraid that the teaching will be ridiculed.
The insight I had, about this, which is very freeing, is this. IF you want to in any way help, uplift, inspire, teach, awaken, guide, educate, or cause people to experience something or enjoy something that you created, there absolutely WILL be rejection. At least at first. There HAS to be rejection by the student otherwise the student wouldn't NEED the teaching. The art critic MUST 'not get' the art, at least at first, otherwise the art really has no transformative
power.
In other words, if you as a teacher/artist/creative etc can ACCEPT, that there is rejection built in whenever you step outside the box or attempt to open people's minds, that THEY will not understand because they CANNOT understand, at first, you can perhaps see that it is not PERSONAL. It is not that they are personally attacking you, it's that their .. 'ignorance'... is resisting exposure to what you are offering. And that only means, that they are not as aware, and they have come to you BECAUSE they are ripe for increasing their awareness. "Those who are to meet will meet" - ACIM .... When the student is ready, the teacher will appear (I forget if that's ACIM or not).
So those who have a potential to learn, at least will find the teachers, or the artists, or whoever is offering the expanded mind. The teacher/artist/expresser should EXPECT that there HAS to be rejection, because the student's mind has not yet opened up to the teaching/offering. And so it's not that the teaching is crap, or the art is crap, or the creation is crap... it's that the viewer hasn't yet opened up to it - and that's because of THEIR mind and THEIR unconsciousness and THEIR resistance. It's nothing to do with what you're offering. And really it should be the PURPOSE of the art or teaching, to help that student transform and awaken out of their resistance/rejection, into acceptance and understanding.
So I guess my insight is, which helps me immensely, is.... that instead of being afraid of rejection, and thus hiding from 'coming out' as 'a teacher', I need to recognize that there will be rejection and why, and realize that it will not actually have anything to do with me. Those who are ready and willing to open up will do so, and those who are not will not do so. I need to DETACH from the ego effort to 'force' or 'coerce' others into accepting what I say, therefore indirectly accepting ME. I need to take the ME out of it. Just put it out there for "those who have ears to listen", and just accept that everyone else will fall into the 'rejection' camp. And this is normal. And it's not personal. And it's nothing to do with me.
Expecting that rejection and welcoming it and knowing that it is because of a person's un-readiness or inappropriateness to be a student, takes the burden off the 'false' expectation that *EVERYONE* MUST ACCEPT YOU. You don't need *everyone's* acceptance. Not everyone is ready. Not everyone is meant to meet you. That's not how the plan works. We each have an appointed function. Talents. Gifts. etc. Or as some people say, "just do you".
I guess in a way this means being unconditional in how you express yourself. Being true to yourself and expressing who you are and what YOUR message is, in the knowing that SOMEONE is meant to receive it, and that everyone else is irrelevant. Which means there is absolutely no reason NOT to express yourself exactly how you want to. With freedom. And not with dependency. So what is 90% of people hate your stuff. Let them. Help the rest.
At first we believe physical sight is perception. And everything the body's eyes look upon is taken as real. And thus we learn that the world appears to be an inherently bad place. Regardless of trying to be optimistic or positive, bad shit happens frequently. And people seem to die.
Assuming that everything we see is real, we might not realize that there is a flexible component to perception. Our mind gets to actually decide what to "make of" the images that the physical eyes see. It categorizes them, projects meaning onto them, and decide what they are for.
This is because only the mind really sees, and it is looking upon the images the body shows to it of the world, as pictures of reflected photons bouncing off blockages. And the mind can decide what this means and what to project onto them, choosing what to see in them, God or ego.
What this means is the world you initially see is a combination of "the physical world" and the overlaid projected junk in your mind. The dirt on your lens. The baggage and self attack and sense of sin and guilt which you see in the world as if it's outside of you.
What you have to learn, is that what the world is, and the sense of it being a negative hellish place, are two different things. It's easy to hate the world, be angry at it, mistrust it, fear it, and want to escape it.
You can easily get into a mindset that if you will get away from "that bad place" through some spiritual means, you'll be better off. You can judge and demonize the world and decide it is a hell you want nothing to do with. But this isn't escape. It really is just making it real to yourself, which keeps you trapped.
The real solution is to develop true vision, which allows you to look upon whatever the world "is", without your projections of baggage. Without your distortions of meaning. Without your judgements. Without your sin and guilt seen in it.
But to do that, you have to in a way give "the world" the benefit of the doubt, or a kind of second chance. A possibility of redemption. Because somehow you have to be able to get to where you forgive the world, where you shine a light of love towards it, and where it no longer appears to threaten or upset you.
It may have taken a long time to build up resentment towards the world, which bound what the world is to a negative, false perception of the world. And in this confusion you thought the world was inherently a bad place. But now you have to be open to the idea that the world is not inherently bad. That there is another way to see it.
This entails the recognition that if you will change the component of your mind that gives meaning to the world, you actually can redefine what it means to you. Instead of meaning hell, or indicating sin, or proving guilt, or producing fear, the world can be seen in a much different light.
What the world IS, isn't what you see in false perception. That's the unforgiven world. That's Earth with your self hate and belief in sin projected onto it. It actually makes what the world IS appear to be a hellish place.
What the world IS, is nothing more than a simple thin veil of illusions injected in-between you and yourself, or you and Christ and God. Kind of like a wall, or as Jesus calls it "the granite block of sin." It takes on various forms of error, and depicts sin and attack and guilt. But without the meaning of "sinful", "attacking", "guilty" projected onto it, what's left?
The world is really just a thin illusory world, a whisp of smoke, a faint remnant of an idea of separation, and a strange area of nothingness pretending to be something. It does not have any meaning. This is why Jesus tells you that the world you see is a meaningless world which God did not create. It is devoid of meaning, in its false-viewed form, because love is the only real meaning.
As you forgive it, as you lift away guilt from yourself, as you have no sin to project onto it, as you recognize your own innocence, the dark heavy shadow of guilt which makes the world seem SOLID, is lifted away from it. Like a heavy curtain or a thick wall, it thins out and lightens. And eventually without any judgement upon it at all, it is recognized only as a light veil of illusions swirling around.
It is not positive, or negative. It is not alive, or dead. It is not really anything. The world, the veil, being illusions, is nothing at all. It is not loving, it is not holy. It is not even really there. And eventually when Christ Vision is fully accepted it vanishes completely.
Just prior to that, however, you reach "the forgiven world." A forgiven world is always an illusory world, because forgiveness overlooks illusions, not reality. It looks beyond bodies. It looks toward the light. So as you forgive the world you are learning to look past it to the light of the real world. And this causes the world to appear thinner and lighter and less burdened with guilt and the reality of sin.
It should over time look less and less sinful, less and less serious, less and less threatening, less and less solid even. Christ Vision is practically similar to having x-ray vision. It literally bypasses matter, as the spiritual eye can see anywhere and with no regard for distance or obstacles. It is not blinded by perception of form and its sight does not stop at physical surfaces. It is not deceived or blocked by what they appear to be. It sees through them.
As the world becomes forgiven, due to you forgiving yourself, what used to be "world + negativity", becomes "world + holiness". Your holiness or the meaning of love, is projected onto it. It is seen WITH love. This does not make it love, it is still nothing. And in fact this love causes it to disappear even more. But if you do see it still, just short of going home to God, it will appear beautiful and lovely in its sparkling forgiven state.
And so what once seemed like a world of inherent hell, reflecting hell and showing signs of attack and death everywhere, your view or perspective on it changes to one of spiritual love. And from that vantage point of true perception, there is no longer a belief in real sin projected onto it. And being made of sin, it is therefore recognized as fake sin, and not sin at all. The world is simply recognized as false, not sinful. And just as it is about to be seen as a perfect reflection of heaven, it disappears, revealing Christ.
And then you go home.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer."
Whenever you are presented with a choice in this world, you'll find it always entails an impossible situation. It's not "you" that is making choices difficult, it is the nature of the world.
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
Option A will offer something which seems to be mostly what you want, but it will lack something.
Option B may have what the other lacks, and offer something it doesn't have.
But in all cases, you will never find two choices which offer exactly everything. Or even one.
This fundamentally makes for an impossible situation, in which you are torn. You cannot feel a sense of total certainty regardless of which one you choose.
If you choose A, you know you'll be missing out on something. If you choose B, you know you'll be missing out on something.
The thing is, with our egos, we actually believe that there is a "perfect choice" in this world. That its possible to find the exact perfect something, be it an item you're buying, or a person to relate with, or a place to hang out, or a tv show to watch, or whatever.
But there is nothing perfect in this world. This world is based on separation, which requires that nothing be whole, nothing be perfect, and everything be only partially anything.
Often then you'll find that if you are seeking the perfect choice, you will feel flrustrated, uncertain, doubtful, mis-trusting, not sure whether to go with this or that.
Option A seems to tantilize you with its offferings, but you know it's flawed. And option B seems to offer something of its own. Even if you have both, they still would lack something. But you can't decide, because neither of them seems to "do it all".
Sometimes, depending on if you lower your standards, or are open to compromise, or don't mind some shortcomings, or can live with the absence of certain features etc, you'll allow yourself to use this adjustment of attitude as a way to "settle" for one of the options. And you might talk yourself into that being satisfactory. Even though you know deep down it is less than ideal.
This in a way seems to give you a sense of less stress or more sanity, but it's only an illusion. Settling for the fact that the situation is an impossible choice, and then trying to justify why its okay that it's impossible, and settling for a compromise, is not really attaining perfection. So you make do.
And so once again, the world comes up short, and it offers you less than what you want, and it can never please you fully, never totally satisfy you, and is always disappointing.
"All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."
Looking at this clearly, you can recognize that any choice to be made between illusions, will always be fundamentally impossible, incomplete and less than ideal. If you seek for the ideal you will be disappointed and lost and frustrated and disillusioned.
If you can accept that the world is fundamentally flawed and you cannot have everything here, accepting the fact that every option is less than whole, less than total life, and thus an idea of death, maybe you can choose on a more practical basis and just go with the devil you know, or the lesser of two evils.
There is no perfect choice in the world because the world was made in an effort to reject perfection and to offer no real choice. It is an assertion that you have no choice, that death is inevitable, and there is no alternative.
But there is a real choice. There is a perfect choice. That is, to choose NOT this world, and to instead choose the TRUE perfection of the Kingdom. God's world is the only world that offers you a total lack of compromise, total satisfaction, complete wholeness and perfect completion. There is no lack or frustration or impossibility or pointlessness in its offering.
To choose God again is to make a choice FOR perfection, which is a perfect choice. And it is the only choice that is perfect, when made. All other choosing is imperfect and unholy. And only a choice for holiness can bring you what you want.
"This world holds nothing that I want."
"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that this world has nothing to give."
Is it possible to accept the world?
First of all, we have to keep in mind that we have perception, and our perception of the world is going to change depending on our mindset. This renders the world not really a "static" objective thing. So as we attempt to be more accepting, most likely our perception is going to change, and it's going to show us something different about the world we were trying to accept.
Secondly, Jesus says that "whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you". So if we are accepting something into our mind, that's going to seem real. We seemingly need to be careful about what we accept, otherwise we could inadvertently make something real to us that isn't.
So if we're trying to be more accepting, we have to look at a willingness to let go. This means letting go of various aspects of ego false perception. Such as resistance, control, denial, unwillingness, unawareness, blockages, trying to change things, not wanting things to be a certain way, a need to fix, etc. Let's say that we make progress towards relinquishing a lot of this ego activity. What then happens to acceptance?
If we resist and deny the world less, as though we are becoming "more accepting of" the world, allowing it to be whatever it is, this should lift away from our mind various resistance and darkness, allowing us to see the world more fully and accurately. Being more accepting or allowing of the world should put us in a more spiritual mindset. Our perception should become truer and more whole, more encompassing, more inclusive. The exclusivity, narrowness, selfishness and control should diminish.
But this also is going to mean that how we see the world - the world we're trying to accept - is going to change. We will see less of what we were making of it, in our resistance, and more of its "true nature". In a way, this will seem like opening up to simply allowing the world to be whatever way "it is". As if to suggest, we are becoming completely passive in simply observing it. Neutral. But we have to be careful here.
We don't want to be accepting into our mind that the world is real. We don't want to be believing "something really bad is happening" and to then try to accept it. This is the same as making something real and not being able to forgive it. Maybe it's useful to equate acceptance with forgiveness. To properly accept the world for "whatever it is", we must be forgiving of it. Which means OVERLOOKING whatever it is and not making it real.
So perhaps we need a new definition of acceptance, just as the course introduces a new definition of forgiveness. If the old forgiveness was to believe things are real and to pardon then, not really undoing anything, the new forgiveness recognizes this is just a dream world where nothing is really happening and you should not make any of it real to you. Similarly, the old acceptance said "accept whatever seems to be happening", which accepts into your mind unreal things that aren't happening. The new acceptance should say, accept the truth about this world, that this world is not real or happening, allow it to be an illusion of nothing, accept that it isn't there, and don't fight with illusions.
You can accept the truth about the world without having to make it real and accept bad stuff. If you're experiencing it as bad stuff it's because you're not accepting it. As you go to accept "the bad stuff" the bad stuff should stop looking like bad stuff. Less resistance should make the world less real, not merely leave you at the same place you were before. Less denial should make the world less solid to you Jesus even says in the course that if you have more guilt in your mind it will make the world seem more solid - so having less guilt should make the world more transparent.
You really then cannot accept the world. You can accept that it is not a world. This is the atonement. You can accept that nothing happened. You can accept God. But you cannot really accept what isn't even there to accept. But if you use that fact to try to resist or deny or make real the illusory world prior to accepting, you're just going to accept things which aren't true.
I could accept that the tree is burning, but if I try to be at peace while believing this is true, it will be impossible. If I can recognize the tree is not really burning, trees and fire are not real, I am now accepting reality and truth, and this is acceptable. The burning tree is now recognized as an illusion of a burning tree, a mere figment in a dream, which I don't have to accept "as real", only to accept its "true nature". It's true nature is that it's part of an illusion and nothing to be concerned about. Accepting the "real world" allows you to not be disturbed by the unreal content.
You can only truly accept what true perception shows you about the world. A forgiven world can be seen as forgiven (overlooked). You can accept the holy spirit's view of it, which correctly identifies that it is unreal. But trying to accept the unreal world, the illusory world, as if it's real, will never work. There is no peace where illusions are real. You can't be at peace while believing something real is dying. But you can be at peace by recognizing and accepting that nothing real can ever die, so whatever seems to die isn't really there TO accept.
Then you need not resist the illusory world, or deny it, or hide from it, or make it real, but nor do you need to accept it as though it's something to be accepted. Being neutral it is nothing, asking neither for acceptance or denial. Only God can be accepted, everything else is unacceptable.
"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not."
"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past EVERYTHING you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes."
Let's draw a large circle and call it heaven.
Then inside of that circle, let's draw a smaller circle and call it earth.
You could say that the small circle overlaps with the big circle. In a sense, when you are in the small circle, you are in BOTH circles. As such, being in the smaller circle, or on Earth, it is possible to be aware of the fact that in truth you are ALSO inside the big circle. That you are always in heaven with God, even if you are dreaming of exile inside the small circle.
It's also possible while you are in the smaller circle, of focusing so much on the small circle to the exclusion of the big circle, that it can seem like ONLY the small circle exists. This is what being "blinded by perception of form" means, focusing on a limitation of smallness and not seeing the bigger picture. Focusing on the small circle and not seeing the big circle. Focusing on believing earth (small circle) is real, and not seeing the reality of the big circle at all.
But it is also possible for the small circle to be overlooked (forgiven) to such an extent that its boundaries become transparent and you become able to see the bigger circle behind it. As such, as you look toward the things in the small circle you will see the light of the big circle shining through underneath it. As though you are in two places at once. One foot on earth, and one in heaven.
Your perception takes on a temporarily parallel functioning, part physically focused on the small circle, and part spiritual-eye focused on the vision of the big circle. When seeing the big circle more clearly, the smaller circle is framed differently, and the things in the small circle become less important, less solid, less believable.
This smaller circle, when seen through, and when seen beyond, is regarded as the forgiven world, or real world. This includes the earth which is a small circle within the small circle. As mind becomes aware of its thinness and transparency, it simultaneously becomes increasingly aware of God, which is a very large circle beyond all small circles.
God is the big circle. This means the small circle is an illusion, because there can only be one circle. A separation is needed in order to imply that there is a second circle. Temporarily there seems to be two circles. But you cannot have two circles without opposition and conflict. With separation, the small circle is a dream of death, and without separation, there is no death because there is no small circle (no world).
At best, the small circle can be interpreted AS IF it is LIKE the big circle, as though reflecting heaven, and while the small circle persists you can seem to be in the small circle and mostly aware of the big circle at the same time. This makes the small circle seem less like an actual thing, and more like a faint illusion of a thing. It becomes less valued, and more overlooked. It seems more lovely, framed in the holy wholeness of the big circle, but is still a limited circle.
If you really want to go ALL the way to awareness of the big circle, you will have to transcend the small circle completely. You will have to go OUTSIDE the small circle, beyond its small reach, and beyond its limits. This isn't possible while remaining in any way inside the small circle, because the small circle doesn't cover all of the area that big circle covers. Also the small circle requires a belief in being separate in order to have a second circle. Without separation there is no small circle at all.
When you are ready to transcend the small circle and completely open up to the big circle, which is totally accepting atonement and ascending to heaven, you will transcend the small circle world and wake up in the big circle. At this point you will be completely aware of the fullness of the big circle, and there will be no small circles anywhere. In truth, only the big circle exists, and there is no small circle at all.
In our default ego react-to-the-world mode, it seems that how we feel is dictated by what happens. The "hierarchy of illusions" tells us that something has a given amount of importance or seriousness and that we should have an appropriate amount and type of reaction.
How much ego emotion you have about external events seems to be driven by those events, as if automatic. As if you should be upset when you find out about cancer, or you should be frightened by a tornado, or you should be hurt when someone attacks you. As if you are merely an effect of the world.
But Jesus is training us to be more responsible for how we feel, what we think, and what we experience or make of things. He's telling us that we are cause, not effect. After a while we start to notice a certain amount of detachment from external stimuli. What happens doesn't necessarily have the power to change who we are, dictate how we feel, or force us to be upset.
This entails a combination of knowing yourself, taking responsibility for thought and sight, not giving away your power, the cessation of playing the victim role, dis-identifying with the attackable body, an increased recognition of reality, and a willingness to forgive.
This movement away from victimhood towards empowerment gives you the strength and clarity to remain "less changed" by what happens. You are not so easily tossed about on a rollercoaster of suffering. And you are equipped with more tools to help you apply principles and techniques to get you out of victim-mode sooner.
You might then start to notice that when you're in a better frame of mind, you feel more invulnerable, more confident and assertive, able to stand your ground and remain true to what you choose to experience. When external problems arise, you are less thrown around and more able to stay centered. Your happiness is less disturbed and your peace of mind less upset.
You will probably also notice that when you are not in such a great fame of mind, have entered into upset, are having reactions, buying into temptation and illusions, suffering and in pain, sorrowful and unhappy, you feel really out of touch with it. As if you're back to square one, forgetting how to forgive and feeling like a powerless victim.
But eventually you'll rise up again in strength and light and love and forgiveness, and remember your training, and return to a state of greater peace and confidence. And then you'll compare the two states and realize that how you feel is not really dependent on the world. What you make of events, how you perceive them, and the effects that you put into yourself, are not quite so strongly bound to the world or other people.
That means you awaken the ability to deliberately choose to remain in the light more often. You start to realize that you aren't happy or unhappy "because of" external things. You realize that if you are unhappy about something it is really an internal state, and not really caused by the external. And that anything that's disturbing you is the result of you putting it there through a mistaken choice.
Gradually you separate yourself off from the external and spend more time in the happiness and strength that you want to be in. You realize that, if you could just be happy right now, a certain event or situation or problem wouldn't be upsetting to you. That you don't "have to" have certain upsets or reactions or ego emotions of despair and fear.
Then it becomes more about moving through life as though you are in the world and less "of" the world, being "passer-by", being less changed and disturbed regardless of what happens, buying into illusions and temptations less, remaining more calm and centered in your truth even if it contradicts what's happening, etc. It means you become more in charge of your destiny and able to not only cause things to happen deliberately but able to withstand the ego's onslaughts more easily.
"My self is ruler of the universe" ... "It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253
And so you develop a real sense of there being a difference between what happens and what you feel. That how you feel is not based on the world or its problems or how people are doing or what's happening. And you can in a way float above it or beyond it, out of reach of it, regardless of what seems to be transpiring. This places you "above the battleground", where you are safe and invulnerable.
When you dip into ego and nightmares and victimhood you'll probably forget all this, lol. ... but when you rise like a pheonix back out of the ashes, you'll remember again and laugh. And you'll stop making all your feelings dependent on external things. You'll return to being able to stay centered in power and stillness, a calm in the storm, a "need do nothing" of rest, regardless of the world.
"He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm, than all its raging activity. This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent." UrT18H10
Eventually you'll master this so much that you'll remain in your "happy place" forever. No longer driven by outside events, deceived by appearances, tossed around by threats or made to be anything not of God.
"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to you to give yourself. For, BY this gift, is given you the power to release your Savior, that HE may give salvation unto YOU." UrT21C3
What if the world is really a highly malleable dream, not some fixed objective place, and our minds have the power to change it at will? Then this perhaps redefines physical miracles.
If the state of objects, the events that happen, the people that show up, the things that happen, are all chosen and consented and actually put there by the mind, then the mind is in a position of orchestrating, arranging, organizing and putting in place the contents of the dreamworld. Literally projecting physical matter.
This then means that if the mind is changing, its current state is going to project and manipulate and steer the dream in different directions. If it is in fear and war it's going to produce more conflicting nightmarish dreams, and that literally means causing the physical world to have more fights, arguments, conflicts, and so on. Not merely that you're interpreting such events in a more negative way but literally the physical number of problems increases.
Then if the mind is moving into a lighter, higher perspective, it is projecting a broadcast of more tranquil "surroundings", it will outwardly picture its inner condition and make a world in which there literally is less conflict. Less fights, less arguments, less wars, less attacks. Not merely that wars and attacks are now looked up in a more loving way, but that literally the count of them decreases.
This would then mean that someone who is anti-miraculous will be tending to mis-create life scenarios, events, occurrances etc which are generally more conflicted and upsetting. And someone who is more at peace and in line with God will produce life scenarios which are literally, on the physical level, calmer and more cooperative and easier to deal with.
A miracle worker would then be someone of a high mind who literally "manifests" a more healed world. Not merely healed as in, on I'm looking at the same world in a happier way, but that literally a higher world is projected and made. A higher world is hallucinated. Not a projection onto the world, but the ACTUAL world itself is a higher kind of world, with more peace and less problems and less sickness and so on.
For example, Jesus speaks of this:
"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?"
Jesus isn't merely speaking there of interpreting a warzone AS IF it were a beautiful garden. He is saying that literally it transforms INTO a beautiful garden, a physical garden. How else does "all around the signs of life spring up" when miracles fall like drops of healing rain?
We have to now ask ourselves, is Jesus referring here to vision being some kind of just "happier way of looking at the same stuff", in which there are still wars and conflicts and so on but you "read into" them more positively? OR is he LITERALLY saying, that terrifying scenes, harmful arrangements of objects, frightening events, and so on, are literally erased, and replaced with a different kind of "reality" where there is now literally a beautiful garden instead of a warzone? Not a warzone reimagined or reinterpreted, but a warzone REPLACED by a garden?
What if our attempted understanding of perception is totally fucked up, and Jesus is actually NOT saying that you have "perceptions about" a separate world "out there", but instead that there is NO objective world, there is only a wishful-thinking dream projection hallucination of a world, which takes on different literal FORMS, depending on the content of your mind? Because now we're talking about mind literally changing the physical content, the events that transpire, the people that interact, how relationships go, problems that arise etc, and not merely looking at them in a different way.
Perhaps Jesus has thrown out the idea of there being an "objective world" entirely, and is speaking solely to the fact that our minds are literally PROJECTING A WORLD in realtime? That the reflection of hell on earth isn't merely a darkened interpretation of earth, but an actual projection of a warring world? And that vision or true perception or sight of "the real world" may actually be a way to project a heaven-like illusory world where there is no more sickness or death or suffering? Not a heaven ON earth, but a dream of heaven replacing earth?
When you go back and re-read many of Jesus's statements about perception and what you see and so on, perhaps they take on a different light if you consider them as NOT referring to an objectively separate world. Such as when Jesus says "The world IS perception" and "The world is false perception." Perhaps he is literally saying that when the mind is in false perception it projects planet earth, and when it is in true perception it projects the real world which REPLACES ENTIRELY the "actual world"? That perceptions of the world are always SUBJECTIVE hallucinations.
There is no world to really project onto. There is only an outward picturing of your present inner condition. There is no perceptions "about" the world as such. Changing how you feel about the world actually changes the world, itself, into a different form of a world, a different dream.
You see, when Jesus says that your self is ruler of the universe and nothing happens without your consent, he's not giving any exceptions to that. He's telling us that nothing happens unless we consent to it. That means the events, the happenings, the people, the encounters, the relationships, etc are actually orchestrated by the mind. Not merely interpretations of a world. The mind IS the world. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."
So now when you are a miracle worker, turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, these are not merely perceptual reinterpretations of things. Jesus didn't look at lazarus's body in "a happier light". He transformed the FORM of his body from a dead decaying corpse into a living healthy active form of a body. That is direct reality manipulation. That is mind over matter. That is changing the dream world with the mind. That is what we might call a "physical miracle".
I'm really starting to lean more now toward this idea that there is no objective world here, there is only a dream, and it does not exist without our mind dreaming it. Therefore its content is entirely mind driven, mind chosen, mind consented. What happens is what we desire. If the world is going to pot its because we're making a world that's going to pot. If events are improving its because your mind is improving. And this leads to the notion that eventually we will actually orchestrate a world state which is actually somewhat like "heaven on earth", before we ascend. Where things are PHYSICALLY more harmonious.
What if the world is not a mirror or a screen or something to project onto. What if it IS the projection? And what if there is no world without such dreaming? And what if you as the dreamer can dream any kind of world, and have it become physically manifest?
"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and ***all the world must change accordingly***."
"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and ***you maintain the world within your mind in thought***."
"***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."
When I used to see people making mistakes with the course - "believing the wrong thing", not understanding it right etc, I would see that as a sin. I would react to it and pounce on it with a correction.
Somehow over time "it's not a sin" has taken hold, and I see people as being simply mistaken, and at many varied stages of learning. In the past I would have even chastised a beginner if they sounded stupid or were not getting it right away, without recognizing people are at different places in their path.
By moving past "it's a sin", expanding past "my ego says so", and becoming more allowing of differences, I see more that everyone's at different places and with different learning. A person making a mistake is given more gentle credit and their mistake is more recognized without it meaning that they are "wrong" for it.
After all, if this is a classroom and we're all children who are rather unwise and have lost our way, then we're all at different places on our path and have different mistakes to overcome. The people who are newer or are making classic mistakes or whatever might not have yet even read enough material to get past it.
Sin tends to isolate and exclude, and it narrows perception down. It focused on what one small fault a person has, draws a fence around it, makes it separated off, and then focused purely on that one thing, as if that is the whole of the person. Do one thing wrong and they're totally sinful. The sin shuts out all love and so obscure all good things about the person, casting them in darkness with no light.
Forgiveness breaks down these tiny boxes and looks at more of the big picture, more of the whole picture, to see other areas where the person is to be credited and is correct and not mistaken. It's more inclusive and open minded and recognizing calls for love rather than attacks. And without all the "taking it personal" it makes things a lot easier.
More forgiveness, less judgment. More acceptance less rejection. More love less hate. More inclusion less exclusion.
"And faith in innocence IS faith in sin, if the belief excludes ONE living thing, and holds it out, APART from its forgiveness."
"Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal."
"Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self. Only by doing this can teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, you and I, accept Atonement and learn to give it as it was received."
Sometimes when less than happy, I will notice that probably some fear is present. I will look at the "fearing" itself and to some degree this shines a light on it and dispels it. Just even admitting to being afraid is helpful.
But what I recently discovered is that when I am less than happy, it is possible to actually notice that I'm believing not just in fear and guilt, but in sin. If I recognize this and look at the sense or feeling of "its a sin" or "sinfulness" or "I am sinful", which can express itself in any form of guilt or fear or emotional upset, I am quite surprised how rapidly a tremendous weight is lifted. It's like a dark veil is just lifted right up and all of those symptoms just disappear.
If sin isn't real, then everything that came from sin must go with it - all the guilt and all the fear and all of the unhappiness. It's like unplugging the problem at its core.
It makes sense that if you keep seeing people as being able to affect you, as being the cause of your problems, as being to blame, as being an enemy, or having power over you, you will simply have to experience fear. Fear will be present in the mind because the mind is now split and has diminished its perception of itself.
Now that you are 'suppressed', you will sense that you have much less power, and that this power has been displaced outward to other people who now have power over you. You will see enemies all over the place and will not feel safe, but rather will be afraid all the time.
Fear isn't just a reaction. Fear is a state of mind in which you are perceiving enemies. Fear is what it is like when the mind is experiencing itself being at war with itself, where its inner conflict is overlaid on top of the world, filtering out the beauty and peace and causing you to only see part of what's there, which then looks harrowing and insane and a threat.
Fear is a reversal of cause and effect, and fear is also the mechanism of perceptual distortion that forces you to see enemies where there are none.
You'll also find that once you're in a victim consciousness like this, you will feel afraid all the time and not even imagine that it's possible to be less afraid. And more importantly, you won't realize that you feel afraid because of some attitude you have, OR that it's really got anything to do with how other people are behaving.
You will think your fear is just your separate problem, and that other people probably aren't this afraid and there's something wrong with just you. You'll notice everyone else seems to be more confident and you can't figure out why you're the scared one.
You imagine ways you might stand up to the intensity and terror of everyone you meet, by bolstering yourself up or talking yourself into being tougher, but it doesn't work. You still feel insecure, until you realize what part you play in doing this to yourself.
Something marvelous happens when you start to change your perception. What you need to do is to take back your power, by realizing how your way of perceiving is attacking you. You have to realize that people look like enemies to you because of how much you are attacking yourself and them. And you have to see in your mind the processes that go into trying to separate you from yourself.
You can't feel strong and safe when you're perceiving yourself in a split way, which means there is a strong contrast between what applies to you and what applies to others. So long as you imagine that other people have taken something away from you, that they are the cause of you feeling afraid, that they are doing this to you, you are going to experience fear. But you have to realize, that's just how YOU are choosing to perceive. It's got nothing to do with other people, and you're not really seeing them correctly.
When your mind is split, you will project your shadow mind onto other people and see it in them, and will be threatened by it. This makes other people seem like an enemy, like they are powerful and dark and evil and scary. They're not. But you will see this in them because it's in your mind like a filter. And within your mind, that dark evil stuff is at war with the part of you that you think is you - the positive-seeking goodie-goodie self that people pleases and wants to be adored. Both of these are within your own mind, having a war between them, and that's entirely down to the fact your perception is broken.
That also tells you that if you would heal the separation between these two parts of yourself, undoing all of that attack content, you would not see people AS threatening because you would not have this negativity in your perception, and therefore would not HAVE grounds for feeling afraid.
This healing will lead to a feeling of continually increasing strength and empowerment. It will make you literally less afraid. You will marvel at how you feel stronger, brighter, more energetic, more expressive. You will be surprised at how less anxious you are around others. You will feel more aware and awake and will be happier more often. And you'll be quite surprised at how you don't feel terrorized like you used to. Because you've stopped doing it to yourself.
And as such the forgiven world starts to rise up before your perception instead of a world of hate and vengeance. As you forgive yourself, the world will appear to be a happier place. It will seem like it doesn't contain the threats and guilts that it once did. And it will be like unveiling a beautiful world that was right in front of your face all along but you didn't see it because it was all covered up with your blocks to awareness.
And eventually too this will mean, you will come to realize that God is right here in front of you and with you and inside you, and that you can experience Him. For real! And how joyful that will be.
Recently I've been noticing a changed feeling inside. It feels like some kind of grievance has been forgiven, and now there is less desire to be at war. It feels like a backing down, dropping weapons, stepping attack and being less interested in separating off.
The best that separating or fighting can accomplish is some fake victory, which leaves you in prison separated off from others and alone. It's a standoff or a stalemate. There is nothing gained there because you lose by winning, and taking sides no longer works.
I feel like somehow there is a gradual closing up of some kind of gap. The rift in the mind is the split mind, which is reinforced by anger and projection of guilt. I see more clearly that these acts increase my separateness, and separateness is the only problem.
Being separate just leads to being separated off, alone, isolated, weakened, licking wounds and plotting revenge. It's not a state of trust. It seems to be becoming more obvious that I should just surrender and let go and stop fighting altogether. That fighting doesn't ever make me win.
In recognition that I can only attack myself, and can only separate myself off, and can only split my own mind, I just have less desire to do so. And there is less need to do so as guilts are undone and are healed away by forgiveness. With forgiveness the woulds are closed up and they leave no scars behind. And what once was sore and sorry and an ancient self-hatred has turned into a present self-love.
Perhaps we need to lay down our weapons and stop the war with ourselves, if we want to be at peace. It isn't anyone else but me that I make to suffer and I can be attacked by nothing but my own thoughts of being separate.
"And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die."
"The seeming solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking."
"Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist."
"Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again."
"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head."
"The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword you MUST perceive the body as YOURSELF, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what HE is, and thus what YOU must be."
"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness."
"specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies."
"Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence."
"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, oh holy Son of God, how long?"
You can’t solve a problem by staying within the SYSTEM or level in which the problem seems to exist.
In ego terms, in intellectual terms, we’ll have a great many questions. We do not recognize what these questions are or their purpose of maintaining separation. They make separation real and then ask how it was possible. Then they seek for an answer.
But if you could find all those answers to all those questions, it would only produce an ILLUSION of a solution to the problem. Temporarily problems would seem to be fixed, only to be replaced with more in different forms.
The same is true of the past. If you have unhealed stuff from the past, problems unresolved, old wounds etc, you might think that these really exist and are real and need solving. Then you’ll set about trying to find solutions to them to make them go away. And maybe you’ll find some things that seem to alleviate some if it.
But you’ll stay within the system.
For example I can tell that the ego will NEVER stop feeling unhappy. It will never stop grieving loss, it will never find salvation, it will never heal, it will never accept love, and it will never stop believing in death. But if we’re experiencing these things or have them anchoring us into the past, we might look for solutions to these things to try to make them stop or to find a fix.
But this is always a matter of trying to stay within the realm of what you think is reality, making the issues real, and then trying to be free from them. It’s not the problem that you need to be free from, it’s the whole SYSTEM! Because the system is designed to malfunction and break and fail and it will never stop being that way.
The same is true of all questions, especially intellectual questions. To question is actually to doubt God’s reality. ALL sense of questioning is an attempt to be separate from God. It’s to bring into question what is without question and certainly known. It’s an attempt to undermine the truth and bring suffering into being.
What then seems to be an earnest attempt to ask a great many questions, to figure everything out, to cover all the intellectual answers, to find every single “answer” to every one of the multitudes of questions, is actually an attempt to STAY AWAY from God and maintain a state of separation. So then the intellectual answers are not really undoing separation, or solving the problem. You will NOT be saved by answering all your questions.
What needs to happen is you need to resolve the issue of what is CAUSING the questions, which is a sense of being separate from God. The ONLY solution to that issue is to resume being one with God. There is NO other solution and no other way. No amount of questions will ever answer that, solve it, make it go away, or resolve the suffering. The entire system of “questioning God” is designed to NEVER ANSWER the questioning.
What really solves the problem is communion with God, entering into the light, getting out of the past, and being in the present. ONLY moving closer to God solves the problem. It is the ANSWER. In other words, all questions simply melt and dissolve and become IRRELEVANT when the actual problem - being separate - is solved.
When you get God, you have no purpose or reason to question, doubting comes to an end, interference with reality stops, and you are simply giving up the NEED to figure everything out. Answers to a bazillion questions might at best point you towards God but cannot UNDO the separation. You do not need to get all our questions answered, or to understand all technicalities or theories. What you need is more love and less fear.
You can resolve the past, with its perpetually loose ends and its unresolved issues, NOT by being IN the past trying to fight with what’s in your belief system and trying to change what you think is happening. You resolve the past by GETTING OUT OF IT. Entirely. As Jesus says in ACIM, paraphrasing... “The best thing to do with a desert is to leave.” You can’t solve the problem of spiritual starvation by staying in the desert.
Get out of the past and into the present. Your problems DO NOT EXIST in the present. All healing takes place in the present. The present moves you closer to certainty and to love, which means less fear and doubt, which means less questioning, which means less of a NEED for answers. The more you need answers the further you are from the answer. All questions are separation. The only answer is God.
Escape your past by not being in it. Escape your problems by recognizing you don’t have any. Escape suffering and death by recognizing they don’t exist. Escape fear by moving into love. And escape unhappiness by going where the happiness is.
For Jesus, miracles were natural. We'd call them supernatural because our idea of natural is less than natural.
Each time He performed a miracle, it wasn't that He was shifting his awareness from illusions to truth. He wasn't doing some kind of correction of Himself in His own mind.
He performed miracles BECAUSE He had already gone through a purification process, not in order TO purify himself.
He was doing miracles all the time. Every single day, every hour, every minute He was miraculous.
This idea that a miracle (in A Course in Miracles) means the process of correcting your own illusions, clearly does not hold up against the evidence. Jesus would have run out of illusions a long time prior.
When he raised the dead, multiplied food, walked on water, turned objects into other objects, restored sight to the blind etc, he wasn't in a mode of "waking up". He was able to do these things BECAUSE He had woken up.
All of His miracles were inspired by, came from, and were powered by God's love. His simple willingness to love unconditionally was miraculous. That love was possible because of the removal of the blocks to love's awareness, for Himself, which He had more or less finished already.
If miracles come from love and require love, and if blocks to awareness shut love out, then you could believe that lifting away the block to awareness is a miracle. In a sense, you go from being less miraculous to more miraculous, because you go from less love to more love.
But it isn't the transition from darkness to light that is miraculous. It isn't the process of going from illusions to truth that is miraculous. It isn't the waking up process over time that is miraculous. Miraculous is what you naturally ARE once those processes are complete.
And yet, even without their completion, all that it takes is enough willingness and faith in an unseen truth to be able to bring forth demonstrations that that truth is true. Expressions of love, not just concepts of love.
"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness" means that miracles occur when the mind is whole. If the mind is very far from whole and there is a lot to be undone yet, you can hardly call the undoing of a thin layer of illusion miraculous. That isn't wholeness.
Just as claiming the atonement once and for all is miraculous, and just as COMPLETE forgiveness is a state of having nothing left to forgive, so too is the miracle an expression of that state of mind. This is why the Holy Spirit, who is in the "right mind", is the mechanism of miracles, because He sees with whole perception. WHOLE perception, not partial.
As we are transitioning from partial perception toward whole perception, let's be honest. Those steps are worthwhile and they bring correction and it is easy to use various course quotes to justify calling this a miracle, but it's not. Miracles become POSSIBLE because of this process.
This is why it was natural for Jesus to perform miracles all the time, and why when miracles are not happening all the time, something has gone wrong. When something has gone wrong, you're in the ego illusion and need some purification, correction, but that is only to bring you BACK to the miraculous mind.
Having faith, from a standpoint of being still filled with illusions, creates a kind of bridge between where you're at and the mind of Holy Spirit. He is still able to be miraculous on your behalf because from His vantage point, He sees with wholeness. He is in a state of CORRECTNESS, which is capable of correcting, except that this correctness also knows that there is not really a NEED for correction.
He can help to correct by showing you only that, in truth, all is forgiven already and nothing need be corrected. That this is the truth. Correction does NOT mean "real correction" as in a change within an illusion which you believe is true. It is the UN-doing of illusions, and it not really a change at all.
You are miraculous because of what you ARE. You are miraculous because you are of God. You are love. And to the unnatural, who believe they are natural, this will appear to be supernatural. Awakened, purified, perfected, in perfect forgiveness, and having claimed the atonement COMPLETELY, you will not STOP doing miracles.
If miracles were just shifts in perception and you had no perceptions left to shift, does that mean you will stop being miraculous? No. The Course is telling just the complete opposite. When you are done shifting your perception to truth, or even as you take steps towards this, miracles will become your RIGHT, and you will share the Will of God to perform them. They will be second nature, happening all the time.
Being miraculous is the way of God's children.
You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.
There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.
Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.
Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.
What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.
Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.
Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.
So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.
I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.
We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.
And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.
I asked myself yesterday, when was the list time I actually "did a forgiveness" ... perhaps because I know that forgiveness is very important - its the core of ACIM practice - but was I actually DOING it?
What came to mind wasn't the typical answer, you know, thinking back to how many times I 'did something'.
Instead, what I recognized is, forgiveness or 'being forgiving' is a constant state that Holy Spirit represents, in which all is seen as already forgiven and that there is nothing 'to' forgive - because forgiveness fore-gives in order NOT to judge.
So this led to recognizing and acknowledging, that perhaps in some way I am 'being forgiving' all the time, to some degree, as a constant thing rather than as one-off events of sudden correction.
See, there's a difference between being forgiving and applying a correction. Correction is there to undo faulty perceptions so that you can RETURN to a forgiving attitude. Yet in the past I used to think forgiveness is the part where you correct the attitude - the process.
So I stopped to get a sense of... am I, in general, having a more forgiving attitude than I used to have.... am I carrying around with me a constantly more forgiving way of perceiving, regardless of whether it's punctuated with "Oh I gotta do something" procedures and techniques. And in general, I don't really know.. but I think I'd have to say yes, I'm generally more forgiving.
In other words, each time a correction is made, I become more forgiving in general and my 'level' of forgiving attitude raises. It's a constant, not a one-off. I'm less judgemental. I'm not as attached. I'm less reactive. I'm generally "stronger in the truth" (Jesus's words to me). That seems like a step in the right direction.
So no need to beat ourselves up for how many linear times we've 'done a forgiveness'... all the benefits of prior efforts stay with us. Each choice for Holy Spirit is a permanent step toward Heaven. And you definitely aren't 'guilty' for not taking enough of them.
Ego is a narrowing and an excluding of wholeness. We began in wholeness, into which a tiny mad idea of "not whole" was thought. An idea of limitation or something less than whole - as if lacking something.
In order to be not whole, some part of the whole has to be excluded. This introduced the idea of exclusion or exclusivity into what was originally entirely inclusive. And this also means a sense of being excluded from or separate from God and each other.
This is the idea that something can apply to you alone, and not apply to others equally. And so was the beginning of inequality. When things are not equal, unconditionality is lost and we now have conflict, and ideas of better than or less than.
It was actually a request to God that you be treated differently and in a special way, compared to others. As though having special favour with God, being more important than your brothers.
"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son." UrT12C11
Entering into this idea of "not whole" is entirely ego. It's a whole different kind of "thought system" or way or thinking, seemingly excluded from God's system of wholeness and oneness.
Everything about this system is egoic in some way, and while it persists the "ego", or egotism, persists. Another way to describe this is selfishnesss - something which applies only to you, and something which you do not share with others.
The separation from God was thus an entry into egotism, selfishness, and not sharing. It was an attempt to hoard, to have something that belonged solely to yourself, and to defend it against others so that they would lack it. As though exclaiming, "mine."
As mind progresses into this ego idea, a whole dynamic of relationship and identity and meaning unfolds. A sense of self shifts from being one with others, to being "only myself". What you have shifts from "shared with God and everyone" to "mine alone."
We begin to take credit for what God created, claiming God did not create it. We decided God is not our father and we try to be father (cause) to him, going against his will forcefully. We try to be more than God, usurp his will, overthrow heaven and exist excluded from infinity.
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. " UrT29I6
Egotism depends on exclusion. It depends on being less than whole. It depends on having enemies, lacking something, gaining something, and being always unfulfilled. It requires ongoing attack and guilt to maintain a sense of separation. And without this it cannot be there.
Egotism then turns to self interest. Our egos are only concerned with ourselves because we see ourselves as existing stranded on an island separate from everyone. We think of everyone else as outside of us beyond the perimeter, and therefore cannot possibly need to consider their interests.
It is very natural therefore that as mind narrows down from wholeness, seeing the boundary of infinity shrink down to the body, or even less, that its scope of interest shrinks also. And so it becomes concerned only with itself in isolation, trapped in a body, confined to a self-made prison.
As egotistical people we then have concern only for ourselves. We need constant recognition from others, wanting them to worship us and adore us for our artificial sense of power and pride. We need constant validation because the ego is unreal, have no real sense of worth because we've thrown infinite worth away, and are permanently insecure.
As egos we can't escape from some fundamental experiences which come as part of the package of being exclusive. Anxiety and depression, loneliness and fear, threat and attack, vulnerability and suffering, it's all part of the dynamic of being less than whole.
"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss." UrW41L1
The return to God very simply entails the expansion of the boundaries of Self to be wholly inclusive of the whole of the Kingdom. To share everything with everyone and to be one with everything. To have no concern for exclusive rights or self importance or specialness. And to recognize that we have nothing other than what God has shared with us, which is equally shared with all.
"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace." UrT18G16
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you." UrT1B40Y
"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly." UrT9C6
'In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration of your release. GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid." UrT4D21
"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?" UrU3A6
There's no such thing as "guilt-inducing" or "fear-inducing".
If something is capable of causing fear or guilt, that means it must induce fear or guilt in everyone regardless of whether they want guilt or fear to be induced or not, even if they are enlightened, and even if they are God. It means they are a powerless victim. Does this thing really have the power to do that? Can God be changed by this?
The truth is that if you are experiencing fear or guilt, it is because YOU have chosen to. YOU are reacting to something and it is your decision to have that reaction.
Nothing can 'make you' afraid. Nothing can 'make you guilty'.
There aren't certain things which should or should not be said or done, in effort to avoid being made guilty or afraid. That doesn't make you empowered, it makes you in denial, and THAT will make you afraid.
If you're feeling guilty "because of", or afraid "because of", think again. It is not because of this reason at all. You are afraid because you're choosing to use fear. You're guilty because you believe in guilt. Its your responsibility, not the responsibility of whoever or whatever seems to be causing it to happen.
Own your fear. Own your guilt. Transcend it by ceasing to blame the cause of it onto other people.
Nobody has ever made you afraid. Nothing that ever seemed to happen ever made you afraid. Nothing anyone said ever made you guilty. And even taking responsibility has not implied that you are guilty. Any implication of guilt is really your ego reacting, choosing to be guilty, and choosing to make it MEAN that you are guilty, based on what was said, in order to take advantage of the opportunity to DENY the truth.
It is similar to political correctness where everyone is trying to say the right thing and not say the wrong thing and not upset anyone. The suggestion is that this makes people better or, makes people happier, makes people less offended, makes people less hurt. That's a fucking lie. What it really does is it makes people be AT THE EFFECT of the world, which means they are being irresponsible (and now getting away with it), and it means they are disempowered, because they now believe that they NEED to have others not say certain things otherwise their happiness is going to disappear. And that's because they believe that other people are responsible for their lives, and responsible for causing them to be happy or not. Political correctness TURNS PEOPLE INTO VICTIMS, all the while pretending that it is a way to not victimize people!
Nobody else is responsible for making you happy, any more than they are responsible for making you unhappy. They do not cause you fear or guilt or happiness. YOU ARE CHOOSING EVERYTHING YOU EXPERIENCE.
So political correctness is really a bandaid to disguise people's egos, to pretend that the ego is being "less ego", and in fact is actually the ego being MORE ego. It is not progress, it is DENIAL.
What everyone needs to do is to take proper ownership of who they are and be free to express themselves uncensored and to not have to worry about offending anyone, given that everyone is doing the same, everyone is INVULNERABLE, nobody is playing the part of a VICTIM, and therefore it does not matter what anyone says or does. Nobody can be hurt, because we are immortal. That's what healthy looks like.
If you're not afraid because of anyone, and if you're not guilty because of anyone, and if you're not offended or upset because of anyone, then.... what are you? You are what you are INSIDE, as given by God, which is naturally happy, and nobody can take that away.
God would not be afraid of this, therefore it cannot be causing fear, therefore I am not afraid of this.
Does the picture I attached "make you afraid"? Are you sure about that? Are you experiencing fear when you look at it? Is it the cause of this fear, or is your mind choosing to use it to justify being afraid? Does the form of it "look scary" and is therefore inherently scary? Is that a lie also? Do you have control over what you experience, or don't you? Will you take responsibility for using this to produce fear? Will you take back your power and decide you are not going to be afraid? Does it really have power over you at all? What if I told you this is a picture of Christ?
A lot is said about fear. Less is said about guilt. Even less is said about sin. And less still is said about separation.
It is hard enough to get people to talk about unconscious guilt, and once they do they somewhat fixate on it as being 'the real problem'. But the only way it's even possible to believe in guilt is if you believe in sin, which came before guilt. Behind unconscious guilt there is unconscious sin.
Sin also isn't the end of the road, or rather the start of it, because the only way you can believe in sin is if you believe you are separate from God. The tiny mad idea had to happen before sin could happen, otherwise sin would have nothing to 'make real'.
Sin says that the separation has actually happened and gives 'reality' to that sense of separation, stating that it has happened so much that it is irreversible. It is only after sin has established that separation produced "real consequences", which are irreversible/un-healable, that you even get to the affirmation of guilt.
By being guilty you are acknowledging that sin has happened, and therefore YOU were the one who made it happen, and so you are the guilty one. You are responsible for all of the consequences that sin indicates has occurred. And so you are guilty. And it's not until after you accept guilt into your mind that you can even become afraid of punishment.
Fear of punishment enters into it by you believing you are the one who sinned, you are guilty of it, and because of this there is going to be a punishment. In other words, sin has a price - God has been lost - and you are the one who did it, so you are responsible for 'paying' for this loss. Sin established what you really did happened, guilt pointed the finger at you, and fear results because YOU really want to claim responsibility for having successfully achieved the separation. You will have to pay for being guilty because sin and guilt DEMAND punishment. So now you're afraid of punishment because you believe you're guilty.
And we could even say that fear isn't the end of the road either. Fear comes from believing you are guilty, and fear governs most of what happens in the world. The physical world was a denial-projection mechanism made to COVER UP unconscious guilt, to make it palatable. So now we are in a world of FEAR. And fear says that punishment is coming. Fear therefore BRINGS that punishment. The punishment is death. You may be afraid of death but nevertheless fear leads to death. And so the tiny mad idea leads to death through all of these stages.
So yes it's important to undo our belief in death. It's important to undo all fear. And it's also important to undo the unconscious guilt with the help of Holy Spirit. But it's ALSO important to undo the belief in sin, otherwise 'what has happened' cannot be undone. Just undoing the idea that we're guilty for what happened, may allow us to see a guiltless world, but it will still be a world where things happen and go wrong. Things going wrong is sin. Things happening is sin. If a world is happening, it is proving that separation has happened.
So unconscious sin has to be undone, which entails the further healing of the separation, and the reversal of the laws of the physical world - the laws of 'whats happened'. This is where cause and effect are reversed back to their proper order. This could perhaps be called the level of our higher selves, or of our 'individual' son self as part of the sonship. And this still isn't the end of it. Having mastery over the world and able to change the world still allows the world to exist.
The final undoing is the undoing of the IDEA of separation in its entirety, in which there is a total oneness of the sonship as the ONE son, on the level of Christ. And it's here that all separation is healed and the entire universe disappears. This is the idea of 'separation' being undone. Sin is undone, proving the separation has not happened, and demonstrating that it has had no effects. And so without sin there is no proof of separation. But it's still an idea. And now this idea must be let go and God takes the final step to return us to total union - awakening into Heaven.
I used to be of the mindset, like most humans, that certain physical things were bad things, and others were good. I would use whatever form the thing took, to tell me what it meant.
Someone falling over and breaking a leg might be considered a bad thing, and someone laughing perhaps a good thing. Tigers are dangerous, butterflies are harmless. You can eat the good bread but don't eat the mouldy bread.
The sense of whether it's right or wrong was always based on what did the thing look like physically, what shape, what color, what behaviours, what forms. As though some physical things are evil, and other physical things are good.
And of course this elevated some physical things to being somehow more spiritual, acceptable, less guilt-laden than others. And other things to being more evil and bad, forms of sin and deserving of guilt. Crimes versus blessings.
But the truth is that looking at and dividing up the world this way, is based on an egoic false perception. The world is in fact not comprised of positives and negatives. It's a neutral world. It's chaotic yes, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciless, sometimes seems to take on an appearance of loveliness etc. But overall it's basically all the same.
Internally, in our minds, our degree of ego - mental illness - determines what we make of the world. Whether we judge some things are hellish, or some things as heavenly. Whether we think that certain acts are crimes while others are not. How much guilt we think something deserves versus how much special attention.
There is a whole internal landscape of meanings and interpretations, judgements and labels, categorisations and evaluations, which become projected onto the world. But they really have nothing to do with the world.
For example we could say that when bodies seem to die, that's very bad, especially if we are projecting the belief that people are entirely physical bodies. The bodies go and then there is loss and horror and crying and misery. But this is because the ego mind is deciding that such events mean this, based on the form that it takes. As though physical deaths are worse than mild headaches or a slight tiredness.
We're got all this meaning that we've put onto everything, binding it to it, and then believing that it is part of it. But the world doesn't inherently have any of this meaning. Physical deaths are not really that important, or any more significant, than someone going to the toilet or eating some cake. It's just another form of the same illusion.
Eventually we end up with an entire hierarchy of illusions in our minds, with things ranked and evaluated as being better and worse in varying degrees, more or less serious, more or less important, more or less harmful, more or less evil etc. But this is entirely all made up.
For sure, our internal egoic experience of the world is an entire layer of suffering induced by ourselves, which really has no actual connection to what goes on physically. We could be watching the very same scene, and either practically kill ourselves over the seeming horror of the form it takes, or laugh at it as another example of nothingness.
It's in this way that the course says "Earth can reflect heaven or hell." Earth itself is neutral, meaningless, and nothing. Just a dream of a world, a pretend world, a world of forms and changes. It has what seem to be some changes we might classify as positive in some way, and others that are not so great. And overall it's a pretty harsh and occasionally pleasant-seeming place.
But whether or not we choose to experience it in a hell-like manner, or a heaven-like manner, is entirely an internal thing. Whether we are coming from ego and mental illness, or coming from Holy Spirit and sanity, makes the entire contribution to whether or not we "read into" the world meaning one thing or another.
All physical forms are illusions, and the differences they take on is itself the illusion that ... being different makes something inherently not the same as something else. A different shape, color, size, style, movement, whatever, all seeming to suggest this is not part of that, there is a separation. Dogs are not cats and houses are not cars and boats are not airplanes and birds are not fish. That's the illusion, that there are many separate things, when in truth it's all one illusion morphing and changing in irrelevant ways.
A dead body, a living body, a broken body, a sick body, a healthy body, it's all still the same illusion. None of those states are better or worse than the others. Symbolically maybe, we'd prefer to see symbols of life and heath and harmlessness. And we'd prefer to not see symbols of death and destruction and murder. But ultimately it's all just spacetime dream-stuff moulded into different shapes.
So really there's no sort of inherent physical sin, or physical evil, or physical good. It's neutral and meaningless in and of itself. It's just stuff. Stuff designed to obscure the wholeness and shared nature of God, to make it seem like God is not fully anywhere and doesn't exist. What you make to it, use it for, see in it, or project onto it, is an entirely mental exercise.
Use it for ego and the ego will happily tell you you're suffering in hell and life is shit and everyone hates you and you might as well be dead. Use it for Holy Spirit and he'll happily tell you you're not of this world, you're safe in God, nothing in the world can affect you, and none of it really matters.
So is a dead body worse than a living one? Does it actually matter is there are crimes or well behaved individuals? Is it worse to murder than to support? Technically no. That doesn't mean it's justified or the kind of behaviour that would emerge from a loving mind. But in the grand scheme of things, life and death, seeming positives and negatives, truths and untruths, it's all the same stuff just in a different shape. And none of it is real.
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6
"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6
In terms of there being no order of difficulty in miracles, Jesus is clearly stating that we are to NOT BELIEVE that there are any REAL DIFFERENCES between illusions. A small thing is no different to a big thing. Something that has been there a long time is NO DIFFERENT to something that just appeared. All illusions of form, shape, size, behavior, difficulty, hardness, permanence, all of them must be equally regarded as illusory.
You are to NOT BELIEVE that a rotten apple is any more real than a fresh apple. You are to NOT BELIEVE that a slight sickness is any more or less healable than a major disease. The aim is to learn to disbelieve all illusions, to transcend them, to categorize them ALL EQUALLY AS UNREAL, and thereby completely ignore all APPEARANCES that one thing has properties that another does not have.
ALL illusions are the ONE DREAM. And the one answer to the one dream is a miracle. And all miracles are equal and completely IGNORE all suggestions of orders of difficulty. Jesus even goes as far as to say that raising the dead is NO MORE DIFFICULT than healing a slight sickness. Because in the correct light, they are BOTH recognized as the same NOTHINGNESS, and therefore NEITHER of them has any more magnitude or power or reality. Both are AS EASILY dispelled.
Miracle mindedness sees everything in this world as a totally level playing field, all illusions are equal, all illusions are the same, nothing is more or less difficult and there is no difficulty in dispelling or healing them at all. This is the mindset of a miracle worker. One who sees the entire dream and is not deceived by a single appearance, a single suggestion or temptation, and has absolutely no regard for any stories about what can or cannot happen.
THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY. The hierarchy of illusions is just that, a total fiction. Cancer is NO MORE SERIOUS than a headache or a runny nose. It is by recognizing them ALL AS THE SAME that you become able to DISPEL THEM ALL.
Do you see where this is leading? Away from ALL LIMITATIONS towards being TOTALLY UNLIMITED AND ALL POWERFUL.
"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."
"I am not afraid but all powerful."
What it claims is that if you will not say certain things, or do certain things, other people will be less hurt and less offended and less victimized. And that therefore, this is more loving and supportive.
This is not true.
What is really happening is that we're saying that people are affected by what is happening outside of them, that events and words and people's actions cause them harm, that they are therefore vulnerable, offendable, hurtable. And that therefore, because they are hurtable, we must aim to not hurt them.
But this completely assumes that it's true, normal, and natural for people to be hurtable. People are not hurtable. Someone who believes they are hurtable are in denial of their immortality. They are being a victim. They are scapegoating and blaming. They are putting responsibility for their life and their happiness into the hands of other people, in an attempt to disown themselves, to BE irresponsible, and to MAKE other people guilty.
If what I say offends someone, that's their fault. If what you say offends someone, that's their fault. If you are offended by what someone else says, that's your fault. It means you are secretly and not so obviously being irresponsible, are projecting ownership and blame for your existence onto others, are holding other people accountable for your happiness, are requiring and controlling other people to be a certain way in order to "make your ego happy", which means you are trying to get your way. It is manipulative, deceitful and controlling.
So what actually ends up happening, is that if someone avoids saying a particular word or doing a particular thing in order to not displease you, ie to please you, this is the ego persona at work. The persona tries to get rid of all unpleasant things by chopping out parts of yourself that it disapproves of, which eventually will leave nothing left, and is actually an attempt to destroy you. People pleasing is suicide.
So while on the surface it might seem like, well, we're being kind, we're taking other people's needs into consideration, we're placating, we're being gentle, we're trying to have compassion, we're understanding other people's insecurities, etc... all well and good, but this isn't AS good for people as to get them to be more responsible for their own existence. If it's up to me to change my expressions in order to not offend someone who is particularly touchy about certain subjects, then who really has the problem? Its the person who is touchy about the subject. They're actually playing a victim game, are projecting fault onto me, are trying to get me to change to satisfy their agenda, and they want me to stop being a certain way so that they can be justified in defending their beliefs.
If we're all going to 'get along' harmoniously, it is only going to happen when everyone grows up and takes full responsibility for everything they are experiencing, even if its fear or guilt or offense or hurt or whatever. It's each person's responsibility. And never is your life anyone else's responsibility. And nobody else is to blame for making you upset. If you want that, go ahead... it will make you weak and even more afraid and vulnerable to believe that.
So ultimately "PC" turns you into a victim. It attacks your invulnerability. It assumes that you are affected by the world and that therefore, as part of the world, everyone else has to tone down what they are doing to you. It's entirely based around a victim mentality. It strips people of their power. It actually disempowers people. It also makes everyone be in DENIAL. You are in denial of yourself because you're trying to not show all of yourself to others, and everyone else is in denial because they want to keep pretending you are responsible for their reactions.
It doesn't make people happier, because all it means is you are not being AUTHENTIC or HONEST toward them, and are baby'ing them, and are placating them and putting on a facade for them, likely in order for YOU to "not get hurt" through your own victimhood. So PC is really invented by victims, for victims, to continue victimization, and has NOTHING to do with helping people to be stronger or more powerful or less hurt or more respected. The ego wants to be respected, because it is disrespectful.
Yes if someone is upset, it may be compassionate to comfort and be gentle with them and empathize and help support them. But what is support REALLY? Support means also reminding them that all the reasons they are upset are not real or true, that they are actually victimizing themselves, that they are doing this all to themselves, that they can become much more empowered by owning up to this, and that there is a better way than to see themselves as affected by someone.
Is political correctness love? No. It's an ego agenda of misery and victimization and inescapable vulnerability. It worships suffering, it perpetuates fear, and destroys people.
Suck on that whether you like it or not.
Yesterday I lay hands on my wife's cramping feet, I commanded the cramps to go, Holy Spirit flowed and the cramps left. There wasn't a whole lot of fanfare. It just happened and it was done.
Miracle.
I noticed afterwards that it had worked seemingly easier than in past attempts. Something about me had changed.
Previously, as I attempted miracles, I still had a strong belief in sickness being real. I saw its removal as "difficult", and felt that I was going up against a formidable opponent.
It reminded me of how when I first started to pray to God, that I would be in much more of a begging mode, much more a victim, and quite powerless. I'd be in tears and pleading and begging but it wouldn't bring about much of a result. This is because I was not orienting myself properly as an extender of God's miracles, but was trying have something done to me. That's victim consciousness, and God will not attack.
ACIM also tells us about the authority problem, which is our attempt to "be God" in separation from God, to overthrow God and to replace Him with a false self. The more that we try to do this, the more we give "power" to the ego, but paradoxically this is also giving AWAY our true power - the power of God. The stronger the ego seems to become, the weaker we become. Taking authority away from God takes real authority away from ourselves.
Similarly, the extent to which we believe that illusions are reality, such as that sickness is real, problems are real, or that we have powerful enemies, reveals just how weakened we are. If we believe that illusions have power over us, that they are the truth (and the truth cannot be changed), then this "disables" us from being effective miracle workers.
I had previously attempted to go up against what I perceived to be a real enemy, a real sickness, a real difficulty, and it was this fundamental belief that produced the wrong kind of perception - a perception which blocks miracles. If I'm perceiving that, let's say, 70% of the truth is in illusions, then I only believe in God's power 30% and see myself as incapable of overcoming the problem. I can rant and scream at it all I want but it won't budge.
I will also keep looking at the problem to see 'if' the miracle worked, I will check it, I will be in a mode of diagnosis (ego), and I will have a lot of doubt. Here I am using perception to receive signals from outside of me to tell me IF something happened, instead of knowing from WITHIN that it MUST happen. With a perception riddled with fear - which means that you believe illusions are real - you are not wielding very much authority over them.
In the past few weeks I've been going through quite a breakthrough in terms of recognizing that ALL sickness is unreal, that the entire physical world is an illusion, and really withdrawing a lot of belief from it. It has reframed everything for me and is putting things in their proper perspective. It was very difficult seeming to decide to not believe in sickness anymore, flying in the face of what the whole world believes.
Following this, however, I noticed as I attempted a miracle that I had a much more miracle-minded attitude. I was not about to take no for an answer, was not checking to see if something happened, I did not pause to decide whether to do it, I told the problem to go and I meant it, and a greater sense of authority expressed itself through me.
As such, when you change your mind and believe more strongly that God's truth is the truth, and that illusions really are NOTHING, you take on and share more of the REAL authority of God once more. You have power OVER illusions because you are much less deceived by them. This makes you more miracle minded because now you are more aligned with Holy Spirit's mindset, are more empowered by the truth, are much less deterred by the illusions of orders of difficulty, and you simply believe far less that the problem/sickness has more power than you do.
Ultimately this will mean that you gain such authority in Christ, such alignment with God, and such certainty that illusions are NOTHING to you, that you literally can brush them away like they meant nothing at all. That is the kind of power that Jesus demonstrated. That's what happens when you have aligned yourself with God's truth and no longer perceive incorrectly that illusions are actually even a formidable opponent. Recognizing them as nothing, not taking them seriously, not believing they are real and not GIVING THEM any power, strips them of all possible defenses and prevents them from preventing the miracle.
As we reclaim our birthright in sharing the True Authority of God, relinquishing our attempt to have ego authority - which is really weakness and powerlessness - and surrendering to the truth, provides us with automatic access to the miracle-minded awareness of God/Holy Spirit, and thereby facilitates miracles. Instead of difficult miracles seeming to become harder, they instead become easier the less you believe the problem is real. Nothing can stand in the way of the Son of God.
You have authority over all illusions because of what you are and because of what the truth is. That authority is POWER, and that power can effortlessly disappear all sickness, death and suffering. It can disappear the body, the world, and the universe. The power of God knows no limits.
Jesus writes: "See the point about miracles as a perception corrector (for himself) ***before*** he can effect (perform) miracles as CREATIVE ENERGIZERS (for others), which they are."
Becoming a miracle worker has two phases. As Jesus writes here, in the first phase there is an emphasis on the correction of YOUR perceptual flaws. This GIVES WAY, to the second phase, which is the ability to EXTEND love to others as a creative energizing power, which can heal them.
This is because miracles express FROM a loving state of mind, and in the initial phase you are NOT loving enough to express them yourself. You have to shift perception FIRST, to get INTO a loving state, before you can PERFORM a miracle.
This all hinges around a very simple mechanic. The question of, are you in a state of mind in which you are willing to EXTEND?
When you are in the first phase, you are still much too selfish, too in the dark, too afraid, too unwilling, and riddled with sin, to be able to truly extend maximal love to others. You can't PERFORM miracles very effectively. The mind is deluded with false perception and temptation. In this stage, your mind is very much IN NEED of help itself. It can't effectively get out of the way or give or supply the lack in others, because it itself is too lacking.
In this first phase, our main function is PURIFICATION. We need to RECEIVE healing for ourselves. The mind has to be trained. Fear has to be undone. Sin has to be forgiven. Blocks to awareness have to be removed. All the ways that we are HOLDING BACK THE LIGHT have to be dissolved. It's kind of like, you are a light of healing, but while your light is covered up with ego bullshit you cannot SHINE enough to effectively "shed light" onto others. You are too dark.
"Miracles are everyone's right (the right to PERFORM them), but purification is necessary first."
So you have to go through a phase, which could be quite extensive, of purification for yourself. Here you can RECEIVE miracles, ie outside help, FROM those who are already miraculously powerful. That could be another miracle worker who can SUPPLY YOUR LACK, because they "temporarily have more" than you, or it might be healing received from Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Our task here is also to practice forgiveness and learn to undo sin through atonement.
Now, you can probably imagine what's going to happen as, over time, your mind becomes LIGHTER. Or rather, the various ways that you are unwilling to EXTEND LIGHT into the minds of others, unwilling to join, and are too focused on separation, is removed. What's going to happen as you open up, develop trust in your brother, forgive yourself and him, and remove the blocks to unconditional love?
You're going to gradually SHINE more, becoming brighter and more able and willing to ALLOW love to extend through you. You're learning to line up with God's will. To let go of ego. To connect and communicate. To express love more unconditionally. Special relationships are melting into holy relationships. And your mind is becoming UNBLOCKED. So it's not getting in the way of the extension of the mind itself.
As this progresses, you are gradually approaching the second state of miracle mindedness and more consistently "being the light of the world." As you UNVEIL yourself, you are more willing and able to express love and extend LIFE. You start becoming more able to GIVE to others and to serve, to be truly helpful. And you begin to represent God and Christ more. Your mind is reconnecting with other minds and your heart is opening to love.
By becoming less blocked, less inhibited, less afraid, less selfish and less separated off, you are resuming your NATURAL FUNCTION of miraculousness. Being miraculous is actually permanent. Even God is miraculous and so are all His creations. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" "God's miracles" "You are a miracle" "The miraculous nature of the soul" etc. Miracles are supposed to naturally be happening ALL the time.
When we talk of miracles as ONLY the shifts in perception which LEAD UP TO the state of miracle mindedness, we are missing half the story. This would imply that once your mind IS shifted into truth, you STOP being miraculous. This is not AT ALL true. In fact what happens is you are uncovering your PERMANENT and natural innate miraculous NATURE, which puts you back in touch with being ALWAYS miraculous.
As your mind becomes healed, YOU become able TO heal others. As you become more loving and unafraid, you are able to GIVE the miracles you have received. As you become more in line with the Golden Rule, you are able to recognize that giving and receiving are ONE. As you remove the blocks to awareness, you become more JOINED with other minds and SUPPORT and STRENGTHEN them.
"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."
So the first phase is all about uncovering your natural miracle working ability and nature, and the second phase is about starting to get in touch with and EXPRESSING that nature. First becoming stronger in the truth, then GIVING that truth to others. First receiving healing that you need in order to BE healed, then GIVING that healing to others effortlessly.
Some people focus only on the aspect of ACIM which discusses the "benefits to you" of reaching the atonement "for yourself". Your sole responsibility. But this misses an entire other half of the story. The rest of the story tells us of how, having been restored to our natural condition, we become empowered to WORK MIRACLES ourselves, by being able once again to EXTEND God's Power to others.
"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally ***become part of the Atonement yourself***. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO.""
Jesus is ALSO clear in the course that he does not intend for us to WAIT until we reach 100% atonement before working any miracles. In fact, he describes it as an ability to be PRACTICED.
"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability."
He states that as we ATTEMPT to perform miracles, sometimes we will have successes and that DOING THEM will BRING conviction in the ability. That we need a bit of convincing and the only way to get that is to TRY to perform them. Perhaps we will fail at first. Perhaps we will be too involved in the ego to get a result. But if we don't TRY, we will not discover what we can do or learn from mistakes.
"Miracles are taken first on faith" also tells us that initially we have to TRUST and have faith in order to perform miracles, because we are OUT OF TOUCH with the miracle-minded state. And so we need Holy Spirit or Jesus to do the work for us. To help us out where we fail. But LATER, as we get more in touch with our innate miraculousness, we become more able to directly PERFORM them ourselves.
He also describes how if we were to just TEMPORARILY suspend fear, or uses words to focus the mind in prayer, that this would be sufficient to bring about a miracle. EVEN IF we then return to a state of fear afterwards. He also discusses how "some of you have healed the sick at times but have not raised the dead because your faith was not whole." A PARTIAL faith can bring about "minor miracles", while a FULLER faith (a more healed mind) can bring about what would seem to be "more difficult" miracles such as raising the dead.
Becoming ABLE to perform a miracle, is clearly a PROGRESSION, something to be experimented with, explored, discovered, learned, strengthened, so that we can GAIN confidence in the ability. We will see lesser miracles and later more significant ones as we hone the ability. As our mind becomes more purified, it becomes easier. As our ego gets more out of the way, we become more powerful. As we trust more, we gain God's Power more. And as we become more truly loving, we are able to supply a lack of love in others, healing and enlightening them.
This is also why Jesus says "an untrained mind can accomplish nothing." Meaning that a trained mind CAN accomplish something. A trained mind is more ABLE to perform miracles for others.
We are to gradually unlock our potential as miracle workers. We are to "test the waters" and dabble and TRY to perform them. We are to experiment with working with the Holy Spirit. And we are to learn from our failures and forgive our faults and fears, so that we can become more effective healers. Once we reach consistent miracle mindedness we'll be so empowered that we can effortlessly perform miracles all day every day. "Every day should be devoted to miracles."
So miracles "benefit both the giver and the receiver". As you attempt to give them, even from a non 100%-atoned state, they LIFT YOU UP, as well as lifting others up. As you flow and give the love that you DO NOT have, you tap into the flow and it starts to move, and it starts to LIFT YOU out of the darkness. You get healed as well as the other person. But once you have BEEN healed, and are sustaining a higher level of functioning, the healing you extend has less need to heal YOU, and focuses more on the healing you GIVE to others.
"Miracles are the maximal SERVICE you can render to others."
Being miraculously MINDED, as a state, is distinct from miracle DOING/WORKING, which is an EXPRESSION FROM that state.
"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression. "
Becoming closer to the miracle-minded STATE is the first PHASE of learning to be a miracle worker. Miracle DOING/WORKING is the EXPRESSION/extension of that state, which entails the PERFORMING of miracles for others. This second state is completely natural and automatic and effortless and MANDATORY. You cannot become loving WITHOUT being willing to GIVE love. You cannot be healed without a willingness TO HEAL. And you cannot accept atonement or miracles without a recognition that it is to be SHARED with others.
"Perhaps there is a fear of failure and shame associated with a sense of inadequacy."
"As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others."
If there is some way that you are found, or find yourself to be, not equal, it will induce a sense of inadequacy. This is based on a perceive lack of value or worth. And this in turn will induce a feeling of shame and unworthiness.
Whatever is considered the ideal, or the optimum or best way to be, if you do not "measure up", or you are evaluated to be less than or lacking, this inadequacy will present shameful feelings. As if you are lacking something.
Ultimately if you look at the body, the body was made on purpose to limit you, confine you, define you as very restricted, with only a small handful of abilities. It can only move so fast, perform so good, look so attractive, etc. If you identify with a body, you fundamentally identify with being inadequate. Which produces automatic shame.
So anyone who has identified with a body is automatically grandfathered in to feeling a sense of shame and unworthiness. Because no body, no matter how great it seems to be, is free of limitations. And every body was made from the idea of imperfection and is inehrently inadequate.
It doesn't therefore matter how beautiful you make it look, how much muscle you build, how tall and hansom it is, how fair and lovely, it can never fully represent your perfection. It can never be "good enough". So if you think of it as your self, and you take personally anything about it, you are doomed to find yourself not good enough.No-one who believes they are a body can be satisfied with their "self image". Even those who believe their body is god-like and fantastic, must at some level suspect their flawed and limited nature. Any amount of body identification is going to condemn you as less than whole and less than perfect.
Sometimes also the things that bodies do, or the we use them for, fall far short of perfection. And that means that almost everything we do with them is prone to result in a judgement of inadequacy. It doesn't even matter if you try to be proud of it or pleased with it or amazed by its greatness, these are all forms of denial of the inherent limitation and lack that the body represents.
There is also a fear of failure that automatically must be present for anyone who considers themselves a body. Since it is recognized how limited you are, that you do not know how to do something, or be guaranteed to do it perfectly, it presents an inherent recognition that it WILL fail to some degree. And this induces fear. So the inadequate and the shameful are afraid of failure, knowing that they ARE a failure, having identified with failure.
The only way to transcend inadequacy and be fully released from shame, is to embrace your REAL perfection, which is your spirit. To be spirit identified is to overcome all limitation and thus all inability, insufficiency and incapability. There can be no grounds for shame in owning up to being immortal and divine.
"This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable. ""Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in Love's presence, for it could not respond at all. You would HAVE to abandon its guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response pattern you NEED."
"But the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy."
"God is the strength in which I trust. Now try to slip past all concerns related to your own sense of inadequacy."
The truth is an experience, not information. It is not metaphysics.
So as you approach the truth, it's going to be less and less possible to just expose yourself to written truths or concepts of truth and believe that they're actually making you truth-filled. How many truth burgers will you eat before you are full and still hungry?
How many times do you need to hear someone say or quote the ways in which you need to be in order for awakening to happen? How can it happen when all these things do is provide your intellect with information?
Will exposing yourself to some lofty spiritual truth cause you to become awakened? Is it going to rub off on you and give you major insight? When is the truth going to take you out of the intellect into the heart? When does it turn into love?
A major mistake I made many many times is believing and assuming that my intellect was capable of producing an experience of God. I thought that if I could fully and correctly understand the metaphysics or the information, and "get" that understanding, then I would find God. But it did not work. Grasping the information did not produce love. There was nothing at the end of it. It's just information.
The information has to be APPLIED, and used in such a way as to actually change the mind, remove insanity, undo illusions, and bring about an awakening of presence, which is quite different to becoming an expert on the literature or a brilliant quoter or someone who knows what the Course says inside and out. Analysis doesn't produce oneness, it produces separation.
God is being. God is love. Presence. Happiness. Joy. Peace. Information will never give you that. Its only purpose is to point the way and to give you tools for mind correction, so that you can experience reality.
Surrendering is always a great way to let go, give up ego resistance and settle into being guided. It allows you to admit to the truth and stop pretending. It's a way to dissolve denial and get to the real root cause behind things. It helps you to sink deeper into the Holy Spirit and allow yourself to be helped. It entails giving up on trying to do it all yourself, trying to fearfully depend on your own strength, and builds trust.
Without surrendering ego activities, you will remain "in control" and clinging tightly to problems and upsets, thinking that the more you do this the more you will avoid further suffering. But it works the opposite way. The more you try to control, the less control you have. Everything falls through your fingers when you try to grab it. You have to let it go. You then can gain everything by holding onto nothing.
As I surrender to the Holy Spirit and let go, I feel myself being willing to drop egotism, drop controls, drop the fight, and that puts me in a position of being open to support. The Holy Spirit can't do or take anything from you against your will. But in order to become able, you have to show a little willingness. And that means being willing to admit the truth, which in turn means surrendering or letting go of the ego facade, bravado, prowess, fake strength and "total independence."
It is natural for you to be completely 100% dependent on God. This doesn't mean you have no free will. It means you trust and will in accord with His will. You want what He wants because you know it's for your best, and He wants only good for you. You are a co-creator with God. The ego sees surrendering as death. It doesn't want to drop defenses. It doesn't want to let anything go. Attachment and possession are its motto, which keeps you bound to stress and fear and problems. Let all that fucking shit go.
It can literally be as simple and easy as saying over and over again, "I surrender", "I let go". Just say it or think it to yourself. The less time you leave in-between each repetition the more effective it is because it keeps you from drifting back off into problem solving. Usually now when I do this Holy Spirit steps in and starts healing me very quickly, and it was by doing this that I developed trust in Him to come into me and help me.
By surrendering, you open up to receiving. It's kind of like a willingness to let everything go to shit, which at first seems like it's going to be a terrible move and life will suck. But the truth is that when you let it all go you transcend the shit and it no longer seems important to do anything about it at all.
Especially if you are afraid, if you are fearing and worrying and doubting and are riddled with uncertainty, you need to surrender that shit. It means you're relying heavily on your own little ego self which is totally inadequate and is not the source of certainty or strength. Certainty (fearlessness) is an attribute of Knowledge, which is of God/Love. You can't experience certainty by "going it alone". You can only be fear-free by being joined with God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, higher-self, love, whatever you want to call it. Dependency on God is freedom.
The instant you start to surrender and let go you'll feel relief from the fear/anxiety. As soon as you surrender you'll start sighing, as an expression of how you admit that what you've been doing isn't working. It seems like a disappointment to admit that the ego's strategies are all bullshit. That your best "I can do it myself" reliance/independence simply is not working. Admitting to failure is a great step toward surrendering because it admits the truth, and that means opening a window for truth (healing) to access you. All your strategies suck. and aren't working. Let go and let God.
Surrendering will make you happier. Surrendering will bring you peace. Surrendering will make you calmer and less stressed out. Surrendering will open you up to spiritual healing and miracles. Let Holy Spirit manage the body. Let God in. Receive love. Be healed.
For a while I'd thought that by asking Holy Spirit to decide for or asking Jesus to decide, it meant sort of a 'giving up' of deciding.
Lately especially in light of free will I've been seeing it a bit differently, that instead of sort of a subservience or obedience, it could be looked at more as a collaboration or joint agreement kind of thing.
e.g. "Today I will make no decisions by myself".... could mean, let someone entirely separate do all deciding. OR it could mean, make a decision WITH guidance. The course does say that guidance is not coercive, it is only supposed to point you in the right direction and it's up to YOU to FOLLOW the guidance willingly.
I think in a way, the way I was doing this before was somewhat SACRIFICIAL, in that I would attempt to put "all responsibility" into their hands. The course does say that if you choose with Jesus and your will is IN ACCORD with His, there can be no fear, but it does not say like... "do whatever Jesus tells you you must do". Jesus in fact often tells me "you are free". He does not impose upon my free will. Because I used to view Jesus and Holy Spirit as even more of a kind of tyrant or "authority" or dominating power, I would become quite afraid and reluctant to channel or write their words etc, turning it into an arduous task, precisely because I thought I was serving some kind of powerful dominant being.
This kind of thinking of sort of "surrendering self" and being a slave or servant to some higher decider, was I think part of the "one son, one self, one mind, one will, one dreamer" bullshit paradigm taught by others, which I bought into before. All the implications of "you have no self" and "you do not exist" and "there is no one else" etc CAN lead to these kind of interpretations, that you simply have to sort of "die" and put aside all of your own will or decision-making and hand it over to someone else.
What I see now, especially in light of God clearly having created many souls/sons and giving each free will, is quite a different picture, that while Jesus is an older brother and is due respect for his position and accomplishment, he is still a brother. He also speaks of how we are not to awe him, and also how he is equal with us in our awe of God, and that there is nothing he has that you cannot attain.
This sounds a lot more like EQUALITY than it does being dominated or submissive or under the thumb or obedient in a kind of... "because I don't matter" kind of manner. I'm finding MORE freedom and MORE willingness to trust and open up to this guidance BY ACKNOWLEDGING my free will and recognizing that Jesus acknowledges it also. Thus there is less FEAR involved in "having to do" whatever commandment comes down from heaven in a lightning bolt. Without that pressure or coercion or sense of God's impending punishment if you don't comply, there is much less to FEAR and thus far greater WILLINGNESS to actually trust the guidance and follow it freely!
So much more freeing and mutual and cooperative than I used to think was possible or intended.
Let's say that you're eating some ice-cream, and your loved-one says to you, "don't have too much, I don't want you to get sick"... that can seem like caring. But is it?
Their assertion is that ice-cream has power over you, can affect you, you are vulnerable to it, you can be victimized by it, and it is capable of attacking you. Their belief in this is practically using the ice-cream as a weapon, while at the same time making it LOOK LIKE they are caring about your well-being.
Well, if the person would've said something more like "you are invulnerable to ice-cream and it has no power over you and I see you being completely unaffected by it" that's far more powerful and actually supportive. That affirms the person's immortality and invulnerability and strength.
In contrast then, compared to this supportive statement, the statement of "be careful you might be hurt and I don't want that" is shown to be filled with attack and fear and guilt. Does that make it truly caring? No.
Such an illusion of caring is based always on the perception that stuff happens to people against their will, and therefore they need to take certain actions or avoid certain things in order to be safe. It's not empowerment at all. It's not protection, either. And it's not causing the person to actually feel safer or more protected.
It is a veiled ego attack, which on the surface always has a persona mask of "I am just caring about you my love" while underneath the real content of it is "I want you dead".
Too harsh? No. The ego is very deceptive and it disguises attacks as help and hides behind a facade of innocence when in fact, in the light of truth, its content is very undermining and backwards.
We have to re-learn how to be supportive of others. Our entire system of false empathy and caring and worrying about people is all riddled with disempowerment and thinly-veiled attacks. If we want to really support people, we need to start seeing them as they truly are - powerful, strong, holy, innocent, free of all suffering, and completely invulnerable. To see them as anything less or to believe anything less of them is not caring at all.
You can see this in stores, where people are standing looking at several shelves filled with basically the same product, wondering which one to pick. And this is also me ;-)
In ego metaphysical terms, what's happening is the ego presents a vast variety of FORMS, each of which presents the ILLUSION that these forms are unique and different. They distinguish themselves as being unrelated to and distinct from each other.
So instead of, you know, going to get the one headache pill, you go and have to wade through 5 different brands each of which has like 10 variations and subtleties, which you were not expecting.
So you enter into confusion. If it's true that these objects are unique and different, then this suggests a great degree of fragmentation. And in order to understand what you're faced with, your mind is going to be in so much conflict, trying to discern or balance the subtle differences as if they are important.
The more ego problems you are given, and the more they seem to present distinctly different options, the more you get lost in trying to find MEANING. Meaning only really comes from oneness, so the more fragmentation there is, the less sense it makes.
It's like being faced with a complicated puzzle, which your mind just doesn't know how to deal with. It scrambles your brain. You are completely befuddled trying to find 'clarity' or 'confidence' or 'certainty' in the face of so many conflicting viewpoints.
So commercialism, in this way, is the ego's way to get people to believe in separate problems. And the more options and choices and 'freedom of choice' there is, the LESS certain you become.
Stores are filled with thousands of brands, millions of products, all vying for attention, trying to prove to you that they are what you want and need, when you really need God. It is a huge ego distraction.
Commercialism and ever increasing choices builds up the ILLUSION that different forms have a different value, or different content. Like, exactly how many different varieties of something does anyone really need?
I work at a company that sells a certain type of product, and there are like over 30,000 products being sold, and honestly, for most people, you would've seen all the majorly 'unique' options within about 50 products.
Take a look at Amazon, millions upon millions of products. Each time I go on there, I can browse for ages and not find anything I want. I'm not too picky ;-)
Anyway, the whole point is, is not to get you to find exactly the perfect item that you really really want....it's to get you so conditioned to think that this is what you want that you end up NOT FINDING ANYTHING. It is another part of "seek and do not find".
"Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM
Forms, forms, forms, forms. Objects, stuff. Choices, options. Things.
It's incredible how it is possible for a slight change in the form of something seems to give us enough reason to believe that it is 'different' and 'unique', that we accept it as though it is completely new.
The ego world has a huge wealth of scope for including countless variations of forms. All of these forms present the same ILLUSION, that the 'form' something takes determines what it IS.
The truth is, that a different form is actually an illusion designed to make you believe that there are a) many problems, b) a great amount of isolation, c) things which don't apply to other things, d) value in different forms, and many other side effects, all of which support and sustain the ego thought system.
The deception that different forms really ARE different, is the ego's main play in this world. There really is no difference between, e.g. a chair with a curved back and shiny chrome legs and a certain shape of seat, versus almost the exact same chair in a slightly different color with a slightly less rounded seat. I mean... its enough for us gullible fools to believe, oh yes, look, there are DIFFERENT ONES.
And then you go about choosing between these subtle differences as though they are really, really important. I will choose the red one with the slopey back, instead of the orange one with the slightly more squared-off seat. Success!
We have a gross paralysis in life because of this. There are thousands of tv channels with nothing to watch. There are millions of products to buy and none of them are fulfilling.
After a while of seeing this, of seeing THROUGH this illusion, life starts to look a lot less deceiving, and at the time, you could say somewhat more boring. You start to realize what the Course says, "this world holds nothing that I want".
It's really all to do with searching outside of ourselves, to replace the emptiness that we have inside, due to unawareness of God/Self.
When we want God, we want God more than we want the world. And then we can recognize that all 'forms' (which the Course refers to btw as FORMS OF ERROR because all form comes from separation), are really the SAME ILLUSION, presented in a different variation. It's like, learning that all objects with 4 wheels are 'cars', and no longer believing that there are many distinct separate objects in the parking lot. It's a matter of abstraction.
Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.
The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.
Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.
Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.
To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.
You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.
"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."
They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.
These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.
And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.
The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.
If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.
And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.
For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.
At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.
This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.
This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.
The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.
If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.
To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.
This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.
In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.
The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.
There was a man I posted a video about recently who killed several people. This man was hallucinating that the people were trying to kill him. In his self-defense, and terror, he thought he was completely sane in ending their lives.
He did not see these people for who they were. He did not see their innocence. He saw something in them which was not there and which they were not doing. But he was convinced they were his enemy. He perceived them as an enemy and was certain the only sane course of action was to destroy them before they destroyed him.
Obviously this is insanity, but this is how the ego functions in all of us. When we are in the ego we go into a PRIVATE WORLD in which we hallucinate and project our OWN sin onto other people. We perceive it there, as though it is not our own stuff and as though it is real. We don't even see the person for who they are, and instead interact with that hallucinated projected enemy self, as if it's really out there.
In a sense, when we do this, we are no better than murdering other people. It may seem to be to less of a degree, but it's the same mechanism. And yet, it is not really other people that we're attacking, because as soon as you choose ego you go into a private world. You are then actually attacking a portion of the inside of your own mind, where you see a hallucinated version of your own sin and guilt. You attack your own ego. All of this has nothing to do with other people.
We need to learn to let go of identifying ourselves as ego, i.e. sinful and guilty, so that we can gain a clarity that is very important. We need to become able to truly SEE people as who they really are (Christ, innocent). But we're not going to be ABLE to see that in them if it is not also our own identity. Anything less than love will project a private world of self attack, in which we are at war with ourselves and THINK that it's a war with other people.
Anyone with enough awareness to KNOW that they are Christ, that they are innocent, CANNOT fall for the impression that someone else's insanity has anything to do with them. Someone else's self attack, someone else's private world, someone else's hallucination, or someone else's attempt to project their illusions onto you, has NOTHING to do with who and what you are. It doesn't even touch on who you are, is not targeted at who you are, and doesn't even acknowledge your identity. It's like the person is sending out packages with address labels that are for... not you, even though they're throwing them at you. They just do not register with you. They don't land with your identity.
You then have enough awareness to SEE clearly that the person is actually experiencing insanity. What they are accusing you of they are accusing themselves of. What they think is true of you is true of them, to themselves. Their belief that their enemy is evil is really their own belief that they are evil. They are having a mental illness. They are inside a private hallucinatory world, interact with make-believe selves, and it's literally got NOTHING to do with you at all.
IF you can get to that awareness, which requires that your own awareness be full and know yourself as innocence, you will have the clarity you need to NOT fall for the delusion that someone else's madness is about you. You will see, instead, that their entire experience is a CALL FOR LOVE. THEY need help. It's got nothing to do with you personally. This also will reveal to you that you are completely invulnerable, completely inaccessible to their ego attacks, because YOU do not believe that you are made of the things that they are accusing you of.
Therefore, this gives you access to a freedom, an awareness that nobody CAN attack what you ARE, because what you ARE has shown you that everyone else is trapped in private worlds. Their attacks are on THEMSELVES, and therefore, actually, NOBODY IS REALLY ATTACKING YOU. That then will give you natural confidence and fearlessness, and compassion. And you will be able to come from love.
Nobody has ever really attacked you. You are innocent and immortal and invulnerable. Nobody's harsh words have ever really been toward you. Nobody's abuse was ever an abuse of what you are. You are not abusable. You cannot be defiled in your innocence. You are naturally OUTSIDE of the ego entirely, outside of people's private reality bubbles. You are outside of other people's private worlds, you are outside of their hallucinated attacks, and you are outside of their delusion that their rage has anything to do with you. What a peaceful, safe place to be!
You only are "affected", which really means, are attacking yourself, when YOU believe that you are less than innocence and lovable. That means you believe you are ego, and you are now having your own private world of hallucinations. And other people's hallucinations will start to resonate with your false truth, and you will believe they join together and that therefore other people ARE now capable of attacking you. And when they express their hallucinations toward what you are, you will believe they really are about you, and you will really generate "hurt" in yourself (really done by your own mind), believing that they put it there. That's the mode you have to get OUT of, by reclaiming the Atonement.
Atonement is the awareness of your innocence, your invulnerability, and your immortality. And in this view of clarity, you'll laugh when you see that NOBODY is actually even attacking what you are AT ALL! They're all too busy attacking themselves, and are all lost and unconscious in their own little worlds. How freeing! Nothing real can be threatened, because nothing real is BEING threatened.
I'm somewhat tired of hearing people say that, given this world is an illusion and doesn't exist, all you need to do is recognize this and disappear off to heaven. This "seems" to make some logical sense, to the ego.
This is not only level confusion, it is also selfish. It is the EGO trying to interpret what atonement means, because it wants to "get" the atonement without any of the responsibility of sharing it or giving it to help others.
Jesus has a PLAN OF ATONEMENT, which He also refers to as "the great crusade". This plan includes you accepting atonement, but also entails you become PART OF the atonement plan, so that you can HELP to fulfill the rest of the plan.
Accepting Atonement entails a willingness to receive miracles, a willingness to admit you are worthy of love, and thus a willingness to accept that others are worthy of love. This automatically opens the door to you loving others and helping them. And you will help them by sharing the miracles you have received.
"When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. 6 As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. 7 The power to work miracles belongs to you. 8 I will provide the opportunities to do them, but you must be ready and willing."
Here is how Jesus describes the fact that He did not accept atonement solely for "himself", but in fact had to SHARE it in order to HAVE it.
"I heard one Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. 2 Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. 3 The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. "
Essentially, by accepting atonement, you receive miracle-working abilities, and are more or less given a "mission" to help others through miracles, teaching, loving, sharing. There is nothing selfish about it.
The other main part of the problem many people have, is the way the ego comes to logical FALSE conclusions. It SEEMS logical to say, well, this world is an illusion and does not exist, therefore I only need to "do nothing" in the world and sort of ignore it and go off to heaven. That's ego bullshit.
The result of that "reasoning" is that the truth of the higher level or "goal" of "there is no world" is used as JUSTIFICATION for behavior WHILE STILL IN THE WORLD. That is pure level confusion. That means, people will then "do nothing" in the world, while still in the world, will not help anyone, will sit on a fence smiling at the illusion, will not perform any miracles, will not heal anyone, and will basically BYPASS MIRACLES.
This is used as a broad brush stroke to GLOSS OVER the REQUIREMENT that you perform miracles as part of Jesus's plan of atonement, IN THIS WORLD. If you jump from "I'm in the world" to "there is no world" while you're still in the world, you will put up a BLINDNESS OF DENIAL against anything you could possibly ever do while in the world.
This has been used, en-masse, to justify NOT performing any miracles, NOT changing the world, NOT helping others, and basically disappearing up your own butt while everyone else "who is an illusion" continues to be in suffering and loss. EVEN IF that suffering and loss is an illusion, that does not mean you should not help anyone who is having a "false experience". How cold and callous can we be, to put up a middle finger to the world just because it's a dream and let everyone who believes in it continue to be in despair?
We have a FUNCTION of being the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, to heal the world, to correct it, to demonstrate truth through miracles, to prove this world is NOT REAL by showing that its forms can be changed by the mind, and to help others to overcome the suffering they have themselves implemented.
It is because people do not want to do this, the ego does not want to do this, that we disappear up our own selfish butt holes imagining how we will "gain" atonement for ourselves and be done with this whole world. "There is no-one to save"? That is level confusion. "No-one is sick so there's nothing to heal"? That is level confusion. "Death isn't real so there's no point reversing it"? That is level confusion.
You can't use a truth that only applies on a much higher level, to explain why you should or should not do something on this lower level. While we are in this world, we are to heal, help, perform miracles, enlighten, share, love, teach, and HELP OUR BROTHERS. Even if this whole world is fiction. Even if no-one is really sick. Even if death isn't real. Even if none of this happened. OTHER BROTHERS do not wake up just because you wake up. Other brothers do not get healed just because you accept healing for yourself.
The function of a miracle worker is to SUPPLY A LACK, to give to those who temporarily have less, from those who temporarily have more. That means when you accept atonement and "have more", you GIVE IT to those who have less. This is your RESPONSIBILITY.
All the belief systems that have interpreted the course in terms of "there is no world so just get out of here and go home", are ALSO the belief systems which POO POO miracles. They are also the belief systems which justify "doing nothing". They are also the belief systems of people who believe ACIM is non-duality. And they are also the belief systems of even some of the best teachers who are IN DENIAL of Jesus's atonement plan, or the fact that giving and receiving are one and that you must GIVE the miracles you have received in order to receive or have them.
And what is behind all of this level confusion? What is the driving force of fear behind all of this BYPASSING of performing miracles? What is the foundation of this "reasoning" which SEEMS to make sense, to the ego, that we need do nothing here other than forgive and go home? What kind of selfish motivation is behind all this?
IT IS THE EGO.
This is the ego's interpretation of the atonement. And it is INHERENTLY FALSE. When something makes sense to the ego, the ego has MADE NONSENSE. It is NOT your only responsibility to accept atonement for yourself. You must accept it SO THAT you can extend it to others through supernatural miracles and healing and being truly helpful. Being, essentially, "a disciple" of Jesus, proving that you ACTUALLY believe God's laws by demonstrating them IN the world, where help is still needed.
This can seem extreme, and perhaps guilt inducing. But Jesus is saying that anything short of TOTAL love, is in some way murderous. Even a slight grievance, even a little annoyance, even a vague judgement. Anything short of complete and total love, has a murderous intent.
In heaven, the Golden Rule dictates that what is true of one is true of another. What is true of God is true of the Son. What is true of you is true of your brother. This means that if you believe something is true of them, it is also true of you.
What that leads to is a shared interest. You have to be loving towards everyone otherwise you will be unloving towards yourself. If you think they are evil or sinful, you are forced to believe in evil and sin, and this will apply to you as much as to them. So unless you want to hurt yourself, you have a vested interest in loving everyone all the time.
In the ego separation state, the ego pretends to violate the Golden Rule, which is God's law. It suggests, what is true of you can be DIFFERENT to what is true of another. That something can apply to you which does not apply to them, and vice versa. This leads to the idea that you can CAUSE towards them in a certain way, where you will ESCAPE the effects. Where the effects can apply to them, and not to you.
This sets up the entire ego thought system on a basis of inequality. And now the ego believes it's possible for you to attack without being hurt, to have someone else be wrong while you are right, for them to be sinful while you are innocent. And that means, you can now attack and murder and condemn and blame, without seeming to be included in the effects. In other words, that you can get away with murder. On this basis alone, the ENTIRE ego thought system is murderous.
So if there's any way in which we don't consider others to be completely equal, perfectly innocent like you, or they are in any way different, or you have anything less than a complete love towards them, you ARE being murderous. A slight annoyance with someone is murderous in that you're trying to attack them with accusation of sin, while rendering yourself innocent. You're trying to get rid of them. Even if its slight, even if it doesn't seem "that important". It is still murderous.
"You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury."
To not be murderous, you have to be more loving and kind. To be more loving and kind you have to be willing to be loving and kind toward yourself, so that you can extend this to others. And for that you need forgiveness. To be willing to be loving and kind to others you have to be unwilling to find them guilty or wrong or be annoyed with them or have anything less than total love for them. That's a big thing to ask, but it's what's required to get out of the ego thought system. When the golden rule is fully honored, you love your neighbor as yourself.
"It is impossible to overestimate your brother's worth."
"18. 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."
There are different teachers for different students at different points on their path. The teaching that is given to the students at any given stage are appropriate learning for what that student can accept at the time. The student is only able to learn what is 'next' on their path and according to their willingness.
At some point if the student has learned something beneficial, they will increase in awareness and will begin to see flaws and cracks in the teacher's teaching that they did not notice before. This indicates teaching has been accomplished in some way. It may be necessary for the student to then move on to a different teacher who has the ability and appropriateness to teach the next lessons that the student is ready for.
There are teachers who teach to large numbers of people and many of those teachers are not necessarily teaching the whole truth. Now, the ego jumps in here because the ego is fantastic at drawing comparisons, measuring-up who is who and who is saying what and whether said persons are being 'as truthful' as others. It loves to make a competition out of everything.
The are two sides to this. From the student's point of view they will start to compare teachers and find ways that their current teacher is flawed and become disillusioned with this teacher. They are recognizing that the teachings being offered have been outgrown, but they are still expecting that this particular teacher is meant to be the teacher of ALL lessons, and that they're failing to be 100% authentic. This comes about because the student has become attached to the teacher and has set them up with idol worship in some way, which is part of what caused them to come together initially.
The other side is from the teacher's point of view - remembering that as the student progresses they become a teacher also to those who "have less light" - and so the teacher is now aware of the flaws and shortcomings of the message being given by other teachers who seem to be 'behind' them on the path, and begin to downgrade them as inferior students and as being wrong for teaching what they're teaching. This is all ego and is driven by insecurity that their own teaching and learning is incomplete.
Now, what we need to recognize here is this. "Those who are to meet will meet" - ACIM. There are appropriate teachers and appropriate teachings for everyone, based on exactly where they are at, their individual curriculum, what they need to learn and can learn and are open to learning at the time. Everyone is very different and has their own path. There is rarely a single teacher who teaches everything to everyone, because usually the ego is too strong in novice students to accept full exposure to the truth that might come from a 'higher' place. So instead the Holy Spirit works with everyone where they're at and sends them the appropriate lessons and teachers at the right time, to take the next small steps on their path.
Without an ego comparison entering into it, those who are therefore 'teaching less truth' have perhaps volunteered to fulfill the role of building bridges between those who are teaching even less truth and those who are teaching more. Just because these teachers do not have all the answers doesn't mean we have to hold them accountable or find them guilty. They're providing a service. Even Hitler is a teacher. Even Saddam Hussein was a teacher. Even Jack the Ripper was a teacher. For the appropriate students, these people taught what needed to be taught and what could be learned by the appropriate students, who agreed to be exposed to those lessons because they needed to.
So instead of us saying, well, ok Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyre, Deepak Chopra, Oprah, etc.. instead of saying like they all teach only part of the truth or they're not totally pure or they're guilty for peddling lies - and technically they are not telling the whole truth so that's true - instead of them being guilty for falling short of perfection, recognize instead they are the right teacher for the right students and the people attracted to them will naturally be drawn to do so because thats what those students need, psychologically. They're not ready for a greater truth. They're not willing yet to open up to a greater truth. They need a bridge. They need stepping stones. And therefore these teachers are being really helpful by positioning themselves as the bridges to a higher place.
So what you can take away from this is... recognize that it's okay to like who you like and to learn from who you're learning from and you don't have to listen to certain people if you're not resonating with them. You will naturally flow to the company of the people that you are ready to be receptive to and that you can open up to and learn from, regardless of where those teachings lie in the big picture. Everyone finds their way to God eventually and it doesn't matter that it takes a very long time or that people are 'deceived' temporarily along the way. When students become aware enough in their own true learning they WILL learn to recognize a greater truth and WILL discern and WILL know when there are flaws and WILL move on when they're genuinely ready. So let them have their teachers and their lessons and where they're at. And let yourself have your teachers and your lessons and where you're at.
Do this without trying to force yourself to always be absolutely perfect and whole before you're ready, and without making yourself guilty for liking who you like or not liking who you don't - that's your guidance system - your program for today's performance. Trust where you are at. You are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people. You are on the right path. You have the right teachers, unless you're transitioning to a new one which in itself is also right. And so is everyone else. The freedom to let others be where they are at without pressure to be where they're not, gives that same freedom to you.
"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"
"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."
What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.
You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.
BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.
In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.
"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."
Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.
The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.
Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.
Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."
The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.
The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.
To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.
This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.
In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.
Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.
You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.
"There is no death, the son of god is free."
Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.
To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.
When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.
But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.
You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.
This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.
Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.
This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.
This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.
This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.
It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."
You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.
In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.
It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).
And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."
So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.
What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.
So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.
All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.
Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.
Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.
"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."
As we dive deeply into what it means to be an immortal being, something suddenly becomes clear. If we are indeed invulnerable, inpenetrable, eternal, incapable of even being changed, or affected in any way.... then how is it possible that there can be any kind of suffering that is a PART of us?
If we are this PURE LIFE, which is so alive it is completely devoid of all traces of attack and sickness and death, unable to be even modified in any way, completely permanent and absolute, how can it BECOME anything? How can any kind of suffering be something we have in us, or are made of?
Surely this means that if there does seem to be some kind of suffering - an upset feeling, some loss, some guilt, a fear, a sickness, anything at all which is a form of destruction, it cannot be INSIDE of what we are. It can't be modifying the inherent nature and substance of what we are. So it has to be somehow separate or "outside".
If there is for example a feeling of unhappiness, we can't really accurately say "I am unhappy." Because this means I have become unhappiness. I have changed, and so I am not unchangeable, and I have transformed, and I have modified what I am and how I feel - no longer permanently happy, no longer joyful and at peace, but disturbed and upset and defective in some way.
This points to the idea that we IDENTIFY WITH things which cannot be a part of us, and tend to include them in our definition of me, myself, I, what I am, what I have, what I feel, what I experience. As though to say we ARE these things, that they are a part of us. But they can't be.
The ego on the other hand is a sense of confusion in identity, in which our mind has moved away from being PURE LIFE and has gone off the rails. It's believing that there are now qualities and substances and contents to our self that God did not put there. That we have changed and turned into something less than whole, less than pure, less than perfect.
So the ego then has this sort of view of BEING ONE WITH things which are not of God. Being one with illusions, with pain and misery, with sickness and death, with suffering, with the body etc. It regards them as part of itself and tries to wear them - not just like a separate piece of clothing, but like... to be so merged with it that it thinks of it like it is its SELF. That you ARE a body.
The ego view is this smushing together of mind and form, where identity becomes tangled up in the things which are not of God. So now we start to feel like "I feel upset" and "I am in pain" and "I am guilty" and so on. But this can't be true. We cannot BE these things in truth if we are immortal beings. They can't be a PART of our self, included in ourself, part of our nature or condition. They have to be separate things, outside of us, not even "ours" really.
If we then look when ego is flaring up and there is all manner of upset and hurt and emotions and pian coming out, we should do something which seems to most humans would be insane and unhealthy - to separate ourselves from it. To say, I am not suffering, I am not upset, I am not weak, I am not in pain, I am not having this happen to me, I am not these sensations, I am not these thoughts.
Because all of these forms of suffering cannot actually BE - they are not ways of being - they are just illusions and dreams. What we are as immortal beings cannot suffer, cannot have loss, cannot die. What we are cannot even really be unhappy - which is a form of death. We can't have guilt in us because that's like saying there's something wrong with perfection. And we can't in fact really have anything be a part of us that God didn't put there.
So we have to sort out, and be careful, with how we are identifying WITH things that are not of God, even the way we feel and think. As an immortal being you DO NOT have upset feelings. If there seem to be upset feelings, it is ego, and it is driven by a mistaken belief about yourself being not like God. There is no pain in God and none in me. There is no unhappiness in God and none in me.
"Whatever suffers is not part of me." W248
"Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind. What dies was never living in reality, and did but mock the truth about myself. Now I disown self-concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God. Now am I ready to accept him back as God created him, and as he is." UrW248
"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is." UrW152
"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You." UrW235L2
"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself." UrW84L2 "I am the holy Son of God Himself.
I cannot suffer; cannot be in pain;
I cannot lose, nor can I fail to do
All that salvation asks." UrW191L7
"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am." UrW58L5
"I cannot be guilty because I am a Son of God." UrW46L6
"The "self" that needs protection is not real. 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?" UrW135L9
"Forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want, and everything I give I give myself. This is salvation s simple formula."
"Only the self-accused condemn."
"It can be but myself I crucify."
"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."
"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."
As I learn that any upset I feel is entirely self created and internal and nothing to do with anything else, I begin to experience a strangely unexpected disconnection between what seems to happen and how I react.
I can see that things happen externally, and perhaps they trigger internal reactions initially, but if I work on those reactions or realize they are just some old unhealed junk surfacing in my awareness, and I heal it, I am then restored to a more peaceful happy state even in spite of the fact that the external situation may still be the same.
And so this shows me that there are kind of two things running simultaneously. There's the external story, the world, showing pictures of things happening. And then there's this internal story or dialog, this inner reactive ego response, which runs alongside it. The ways that I am attacking myself, and then USING the world as a scapegoat.
As I practice ownership of my inner experience and see myself responsible for choosing and causing it, rather than making a false ego causal connection between "what I feel" and "what is happening outside", the two previously merged stories are peeling away from each other. Whereas before I thought that my upset goes hand in hand with a given situation, it is suddenly evidence that the two are not connected.
They no longer completely coincide and I now see myself sometimes moving outward to join with the external story but then flowing back inward again to pull away from it. If I identify with the "what's happening out there" story, I lose myself and react to it. But if I recall that I'm doing this all to myself internally, and ideas leave not their source, and any reaction in me I have chosen to reinvent myself, the whole sense of being "caused by" the world diminishes.
Where there used to be simply a total confusion and distraction and immersion and absorption into the hierarchy of illusions, all of the effects the ego dream would suggest I have, and its entire script for what I "should" be experiencing as a result, there is now an intermittent but increasingly wide divide between "what the dream is doing" and "what I am doing to myself."
If I am being triggered a lot by some situation that is ongoing, but then I recognize the triggered reaction is a re-emergence of a prior condition of self attack in my mind, my own accusation of myself as sinful, and I work on that and undo it, and it goes away, and the external situation just continues in its normal form but without triggering me, I see that there is a definite difference between me and "it".
It's as if, we don't just become body identified, we become world identified. We believe that *everything* external to the mind, which includes the body, has become the storage place and cause of all the stuff we are experiencing. We bind with it, just as we bind with the body in pain. We fail to separate out what is the dream and who is doing the dreaming. It's like an attempt to be one with the dream, to merge with it, and to fail to recognize it is not dreaming you.
If I think the world is dreaming me and causing me, I'm going to go out of my mind and connect my sense of who and what I am to whatever the world suggests I should be, based on that causality. If I let the dream dictate everything I experience, I am now in a constant victim role. As I continue to believe that I'm at the effect of the world, I cannot separate out what is happening within me versus what is really causing it. Because the world is not really the cause at all, and I'm doing this all to myself from within, to within.
I have to learn to recognize that whatever is going on inside me, whatever feelings or upsets or experiences or beliefs I'm having, not one single one of them is the result of the external dream world. There is not a single cause in the world with the power to do anything to me, as an invulnerable, immortal being. And that means learning to stop having this symbiotic merging of identity with the world, where I plug myself into the external illusion and allow it to trample all over me under the belief that it CAN and IS doing so.
I have to learn that nothing I experience is caused by anything but my innermost self. And if I am upset, I must address what I am doing to myself. And if someone *seems* to trigger me, I have to not accuse them of causing what comes up because they did not put it there, I did. And I would then thank them for bringing it to my attention. And so I must then recognize, if it weren't for me hurting myself, accusing myself, upsetting myself, I would NEVER be hurt, accused, or upset. An in fact as Jesus says, "you cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."
It actually isn't really so much a matter of what the world has been doing TO ME. It's more in fact a matter of what I have been doing TO THE WORLD. I have been putting MY self-accused sins ONTO the world and have been attacking it and using it as a scapegoat to blame for causing the very things *I* have been doing to myself! The world has not been guilty at all, it's been innocent the whole time. And it's my own inner conflict that has been playing out projected and disassociated externally, to make it SEEM as if it's not part of me or in my mind or anything to do with me. I then get away with blaming the world for everything I do not like about myself.
MY task now is to step back, out of the drama I am causing, out of the rollercoaster of reactions and suffering that I'm producing based on what I've done to myself and tried to accuse others of, and constantly correct the "spilling over" of my inner wounds onto the world. Indeed I am to take off of the world all of the shite that I have been dumping onto it through my egoic projections of self attack.
All the guilt, sin, fear, unworthiness, shame, whatever.... if I address it as an internal scenario that I am doing to myself, NOT caused by anything or anyone else, and it is addressed honestly and correctly within my mind, then gradually I'm lifting off of the world all of this inner baggage that I was associating or attaching to it. And that means the world itself, the dream, is going to be recognized more as not really the cause of anything.
In this way, gradually the world becomes forgiven, in the sense that it is seen WITHOUT my inner content projections. As I stop seeing inner junk "out there", what was behind the junk - the illusory world onto which I projected more illusions - the illusory world is "revealed" more for simply what it is and not what I was making of it. Without my sins being projected, and without having any sins, I cannot see sin IN it.
The guilty meanings I was projecting onto it, the causality I was accusing it of, the sense of vulnerability and stress and suffering that I thought IT was responsible for causing but which I was doing to myself backwards, are no longer seen as "coming from" the world or from anyone else, but myself. It's all an inside job. And it's really me that needs the forgiveness, having accused myself of things that are untrue of my perfect divine holiness.
If I am wounded, by my self attack, I will project my wounds all over the place, bleeding out onto the world a blackness of self hatred. This will cloud my perception of the world and render it dark. As I heal the inner wounds, within, where the problem really is, in my mind, I can no longer have anything TO leak out onto the world. The world simply becomes automatically "forgiven", not because it did anything, but through simply being able to SEE what is there as the world, through self-forgiven eyes, rather than seeing THROUGH the old lens of sin and guilt.
As such, the world becomes uncovered, released, "saved" from me, from my projected self attack. And without a log in my own eye, I no longer HAVE sin in my mind TO attempt to displace onto external figures. And without this sin blocking my vision, I become more able to simply see the world for what it is, without all of the sin guilt and fear dumped onto it or filtering it. And without this angry dark content, perhaps the world is filled with light.
We're told that as we progress with this, the "real world" will become more visible to us. That is, the world we made, but without judgement, projection, disassociation, displacement, or all the other forms of disowned self attack masking it. Without this content, its forms seem less inherently meaningful. Without putting these dark meanings onto the world, the world IS meaningless. It is also neutral, and in a way pure, because it is nothing.
The world, in its "reality", or rather, seen "as is", is just a picture, without sin or guilt or fear or death projected onto it. It just stands like a thin veil before the face of Christ. It has no meaning of its own, because God only creates meaningful worlds and He did not create this. It is not dark. Or alive. Or dead. Or holy. Or sinful. In fact it can become more seemingly beautiful, as the inner beauty begins to look upon itself and shine outwards, illuminating the picture rather than attacking it. And as such the "real world", the forgiven world, begins to show up in awareness as a reflection of your OWN holiness projected onto a NEUTRAL canvas.
While the world in its physicality and form is "false perception", in which the forms are only focused on as part of seeing falsely and dwelling on separations, guilt and death, as perception rises toward the light within, looking first within and then looking outward, the forms are overlooked. They don't define anything quite so strongly as before. They don't separate off with harsh boundaries and walls. They become less solid, less heavy, less dark. They loom with less weight and seem to have less substance or meaning. As if they are not there, because they aren't, being just illusions.
The world becomes lighter, within, and seen without, as the dream seems to turn to a happier dream, where the unhappiness that was in you is no longer added to it. Where happiness returns to the mind and the world is seen as not containing any real sin or guilt - because the mind has none to project onto it. You can only look upon yourself. If you are love you see love in everything because the world is not real or evil. If you are guilty, you see guilt in everything and the world seems like hell. By forgiving yourself and restoring heaven to your mind, the world can be but a reflection of heaven to you.
The world without your guilt is the forgiven world, shining and sparkly and new. Still an illusion, yes. Still neutral and meaningless, yes. It is still nothing at all. But now the meaningfulness of love - God's will - is projected and seen within it, rather than darkness. This makes the world seem "lovable". Not because it is love or made of love, but because you can see only the love BEYOND it and can do nothing else. And God does love the world we made. This love, seen in it, is its only reality, and in the intensity of this love, all of the forms melt and disappear. Because the love is deeper than the forms and lives between the lines.
When eternity finally shines away the world, all its forms have vanished, everything has fused into oneness, love has erased death and the nothingness of the world of bodies ceases to exist. Without separation there are no forms. In light, there is no darkness. And in love there is no fear. All that remains beyond this disappearing world is heaven. Love looks upon itself. Christ looks upon Himself. And then God is known in completion.
"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. This leads directly to dissociation"
"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you made of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything else from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked within, and thought you saw the power to give something else WITHIN YOURSELF. It was only this decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision of what you SOUGHT."
"You are afraid of me because you looked within, and are afraid of what you saw. But you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of God's Creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace, IF YOU REALLY LOOKED UPON IT. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something THAT IS NOT THERE. Yet in this same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind that created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to project His peace through YOU."
"When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace, you will FIND it. For by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its holy witnesses will surround you, because you CALLED upon them, and they will come to you. I have heard your call, and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me, nor hear the answer which you sought. But that is only because you do not yet want ONLY that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that you DO want only that. And you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the world as God created it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen."
"As you decide, so will you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision. When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is YOUR judgment, it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging as HE does, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."
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. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."
After a while you realize that many things are really the same thing. And there are really only two categories of things. There's what's real, and what isn't. Love/life and its opposite - a seeming lack of love/life.
For example, fear is a lack of love. Sin is a lack of love. Guilt is obviously unloving. Sickness is an absence of love/life. Death is a lack of love/life. All forms of attack or grievance are lacks of love. All weakness or corruption or deficiency or blockage or denial are just more signs of a lack or resistance against love/life.
So there's just really the presence of love/life and then there's the seeming absence of it. The absence of it shows up as the opposite of love/life in all its many forms, including all forms of sickness, all symptoms, all forms of fear, all less than perfect states.
Healing then is purely about a supplying of this lack, a restoration and a resurrection, in which the seemingly "lacking" love/life is given to fill what's missing. Like how a battery can be empty or charged.
As a miracle worker it becomes much simpler to realize that all states of suffering, all sickness, all problems, all fear and guilt, all seeming sin, is all just one thing - a lack of something. Some kind of distance from God, from love and life, from happiness and wholeness.
One category is true, one category is false. It doesn't matter what form it's taking. It doesn't matter if it's fear or a sickness or a deadly disease or death. It's all just different disguises for one single problem - God appears to be lacking in some way.
Healing can be nothing more than simply the supplying of what is lacking. This is why God created the Holy Spirit as "the idea of healing", or in other words, the idea of supplying the love that was lacking in the separated children of God. By offering the love and life, the Holy Spirit restores the mind to a healed state by making it whole again. He is the resurrector of life.
"If you consider what the process really means, it is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as THE remedy. From this viewpoint, the steps can be reworded as follows:
1.) Know first this is fear.
2.) Fear arises from lack of love.
3.) The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
4.) Perfect love IS the Atonement."
"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."
"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."
"The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help. The only judgment involved at all is in the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other, the call for love."
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."
"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."
"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct."
"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms."
"How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"
The ego does not take one side. The ego takes all sides, and pits them all against each other. It pretends to be on one team, while simultaneously being on the other team. It plays the part of both victim and its own victimizer. It attacks itself.
The ego is the idea of self attack, self denial, inner conflict, a split-mindedness. It is a state of being "in two minds", undecided and certain of nothing. It is a state of disassociation, in which there literally seem to be two halves or selves, one against the other. It represents a divided will, where one part of mind wills against the other.
In all wars, all conflicts, all arguments, all political debates, all fights between teams and nations, every form of taking sides, and all the various ways that we buy into the illusion that one person is ego and another is not, the ego delights in playing both parties off against each other.
It does not care who wins anything. It does not care whether one side is victorious while the other suffers. All it cares about is that it is perpetuated and persists because it has attacked and destroyed part of self, leaving only part left as victor, who must therefore suffer being less than whole.
The ego will happily attack itself provided some portion of it remains. It will side with something which seems good, positive, uplifting and true, provided to side with it permits a sacrifice where the "rest" of what is denied, hated, repelled and rejected is regarded as not self.
The ego split mind is divided into persona and shadow. The person is the part that is kept in conscious awareness and seems to allow and accept only that which it thinks is good enough - and nothing is good enough. Systematically it strips away portions of your self, deeming them unworthy and imperfect, relegating them to the unconscious shadow portion of mind. It is never satisfied, prompting you to put on a facade of perfection in order to truly destroy everything about you that you cannot accept. That which seems so innocent and holy is murderous.
Self attack takes on many forms and all of them are deceptive. If you buy into one such appearance and think, this person is a hero or savior, while this other person is guilty and a sinner, you have fallen for the trick. The ego is BOTH OF THEM. And it has no problem attacking itself in order to perpetuate the illusion that there is a *separation* between the two. That they are not the same identity or the same self. That is its aim. To split the mind and emphasize the differences.
It does not want people forgiving each other and seeing each other as equals. It wants war not peace. It has no interest or care as to whether you win or someone else wins. It couldn't care less if you are right or someone else is. All it's interested in that that rift between the two is increased, differences are amplified, the gap increases, and equality is lost.
If you play the game, if you take sides, if you buy into the illusion that one is a sinner and another innocent, you have fallen for its tricks. You have bought into separation. Only when you can see you and your brother as being in the same boat, as both striving toward the same goal, and recognize that the EGO is the third party here, the enemy, who would come between you and drive you apart, then you can join forces to agree NOT to attack each other, so that the EGO will disappear and not each other.
There is a clear teaching in ACIM that there are TWO worlds, and you can ONLY see one of the two in its entirety at any given time. Seeing one, REQUIRES you NOT TO SEE the other. You CANNOT see both of them in full simultaneously. And each of them uses a different KIND of vision, designed ONLY to see one kind of world.
One of these two worlds is Earth and its environment - all galaxies etc. The other is the real world/heaven - God's creation. You can ONLY see ONE of the two in full. If you shift your vision to true perception you can see God's world. If you shift your vision to false perception you can see the physical world. But you CANNOT DO BOTH AT ONCE.
So there is a dynamic, whereby the MORE that you see the real world, the LESS you see the physical world. As the real world "phases in", the physical world "fades out". You cannot see both at once, and in order to see one or the other you have to sacrifice the ability to see its opposite.
To the DEGREE that you value one of the worlds, that is how much you will see it, and inversely, this valuing of it causes you NOT TO VALUE the opposite world, which causes you to SEE IT LESS. This is a basic function of perception, that you see what you value, because you believe in it, and thus want to see it. You do NOT SEE what you DO NOT VALUE. And any world you consider "false" due to its opposite being "true", becomes invisible to you.
This is a very core teaching. You are choosing between heaven or hell.
"The world is false perception" and relies on physical sight of photons using the biological apparatus of the eyeballs an nerves etc.
The real world is true perception/christ vision and relies on the spiritual eye, which in turn DOES NOT rely on the body, and is direct mind-seeing.
Two types of perception. Two ways of seeing. Two worlds resulting. "The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."
"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear"
"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."
""The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten"
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear."
"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."
When you perceive that something is 'wrong' with someone else, and that this wrongness does not apply to you, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.
When you perceive that what applies to another person, due to their apparent separate free will and the idea that they are supposed to be responsible for what they do, in isolation, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.
When you think that its possible for you to do something to someone else, or to have an attitude or judgement toward them, which does not apply to you in any way, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.
When you believe that someone else clearly is the guilty party and that you did not do anything whatsoever to ask for mistreatment, and that you have been victimized, and that you are completely innocent and they are completely guilty, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.
When you hate someone or judge them or are disgusted by them or offended by them or they seem to be totally crazy or they are your worst enemy, in which you are none of these things, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.
In all the ways of perceiving reality, when you perceive that there is a SEPARATION between what applies to you, and what applies to another, that is MENTAL ILLNESS. And this is the foundation of ALL mental illness. A belief in separation, in all its forms and flavors, is mental illness.
When you perceive that something is happening to you which you did not ask for, when you are receiving something you did not choose, or that you are not receiving you what you did attempt to ask for, that is also mental illness.
When you believe that death is inevitable and that it is going to happen to you against your will and that you will be a passive victim of it, that is also mental illness.
You will notice that the above describes THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN KIND. That is because the majority of human kind IS MENTALLY ILL.
To understand WHY this is mental illness, you need to understand how the mind is supposed to function and what is NATURAL for the mind, as opposed to unnatural. All of the attitudes listed above are unnatural and are NOT normal. They are very commonplace, but they are not normal.
The mind, in every person, is not ever in any way supposed to operate in the realm of separation. Your mind is meant to be whole, which means not only that it is whole within itself, but also that it is part of a greater whole in which all minds are joined as ONE MIND.
This means that everyone shares the same mind. This One Mind is the mind of God. When your mind is One with the Mind of God, you are SANE. God is permanently whole and permanently sane and there is no separation of fragmentation in God's mind. You can share God's mind, and that is your NATURAL CONDITION. And it is in sharing God's mind fully that you MUST experience PERFECT HEALTH - perfect divine immortal health.
When your mind is separated off from the whole, and therefore sees itself as separate and limited, it will also see itself as containing limitations and separations. This is what gives birth to EGO. The ego is INSANITY. When there is ego in your mind, i.e. a lack of wholeness, a lack of oneness, a lack of unity with God, you WILL experience insanity - mental illness.
So then as you go around the world perceiving that a given person is "not you", and another person is also "not you", and that there is not something IN them that is exactly the same as what is in YOU, you are in mental illness. You have entered into a private hallucinatory world of separation and division and SELF ATTACK. As soon as you believe in separation in any way, your whole mind must attack itself in an attempt to set one part of itself against the other part. This self attack produces ALL SICKNESS, and all sickness is a form of MENTAL ILLNESS.
Once you are in mental illness, you will perceive that other people are separate from you, that there are separate rules that apply to them which don't apply to you, that what they will is different from what you will, that something can apply to them that does not apply to you, you are in mental illness. Once you start to treat them in a different way than you treat other people, or react to them differently based on their behavior, or have a different attitude of specialness based on who they are or what they exclusively do for you, you've moved away from the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE which is the condition of the WHOLE mind, and have entered into conditionality. Conditionality is insanity.
So then when you are hating the political candidate for the opposition, or when you are against that other sports team, or when you hate that person who seemed to do something to someone against their will, or when you judge someone for the form that they appear to take, or when you can only love a special person and nobody else, or when you believe that you are right and someone is wrong, or that you are good and someone else is bad, THAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS.
It is not natural. It is not normal. It is extremely common and almost everyone on this planet IS mentally ill. This IS a crazy world, but it doesn't have to be.
So when we talk about mental illness, let's be clear about what sanity really means (One shared mind of wholeness and peace and unconditional love), and that anything other than this is mental illness in one form or another. Everyday people rising up 'against' some other group of people, is mental illness. Everyday people attacking some other group righteously because of how that other group is 'less spiritual' or 'less honest' or 'less good' or whatever, that is mental illness. And its YOUR mental illness, not theirs.
All forms of separation are mental illness. All perceptions of separation are mental illness. And all other commonly recognized types of "mental illness", which people would normally call mental illness, such as paranoia or schizophrenia or psychosis or whatever, those are just the more noticeable EXTREMES of mental illness. That doesn't mean that all the other people are SANE. Almost every psychiatrist on the planet is insane. Almost every doctor or nurse on the planet is insane. Almost every pastor of churches or preacher in religions is insane.
The only sanity is in God, with God, joined with God, one with God, as God's Holy Son who is permanently sane and whole and complete, devoid of separation and lies. Only in TRUTH is there sanity. So before we judge other people for being insane or 'not right', let's remember that WE are just as insane and we need to work on our own mental health instead.
In the beginning of the ACIM Workbook, we're instructed to look around the room and tell ourselves, indiscriminately, that this thing we're looking at doesn't mean anything. And we're asked not to be selective in what we apply it to, applying it to everything equally. This EQUALIZING is what's important.
I'm finding that this basic idea is core to the process of mind training in order to awaken from this world. Basically, our minds have become very used to fragmenting everything into separate boxes, with separate labels.
We become blinded by perception of form, and we take the form of something to determine its meaning. Yet we've given it all the meaning it has. Differences and shifts and changes all seem to stand out as separate and exclusive. One thing is not another etc. And before you know it we have 1000 different responses to 1000 different things and never are we simple unconditional.
But the mind is not supposed to be in this kind of viewpoint, with a massive complicated hierarchy of illusions, with multiple different reactions and responses, treating one thing differently to another, adapting and changing based on circumstances etc. These are all unnatural for the mind which must be unconditionally constant in order to be healthy.
As we peruse the room and identify that one different seeming object is really to be treated no differently than another, we're beginning the process of collapsing the hierarchy of illusions, undoing the belief in separation, dispelling the illusion that one thing is NOT the same as another, and are gradually reprogramming the mind to be less conditional.
For me a huge way this has recently come to light is in the idea of the death of a body. On the physical level the ego world says that a body has been utterly destroyed and irreversibly erased from existence. But on the spiritual level the person still persists in eternal life. And they can't both be true.
Given that God would never allow one of his immortal creations to ever be destroyed, and there is no power greater than God's to overthrow his will, death is an absolute lie. The body's demise means absolutely nothing. It does not mean a person is dead, it does not mean God's son is destroyed, and it does not imply anything. Death is ultimately meaningless.
"The death of an illusion means nothing."
So then if you look at this closely and see that death cannot have a meaning, it causes nothing and has no effect, it is completely meaningless. And this then means that it doesn't MEAN anything DIFFERENT to a living body. And both of those bodies do not really mean anything.
"Nothing I see means anything."
It's in this erasing of the MEANING of separation, whereby you isolate something and give it a different unique meaning compared to something else, that the mind begins to split and fragment. Believing in separation plays out as believing the seeming messages we get from separate different objects.
It's as though the whole of physical unreality is screaming constantly to tell you that this one thing IS NOT another thing, this thing is NOT the same, this thing has unique properties, this one's red and that one's green, this one's bigger, that one's smaller etc. All constantly tempting you to believe that EVERYTHING is separate. And this couldn't be more OPPOSITE to how the mind is supposed to function.
When we see objects meaning something unique we are deceived by illusion, blinded by form, deceived by temptation, lost in a dream, and find our mind to be imprisoned. When we EQUALIZE forms and give them the SAME meaning, recognizing they have NO meaning of their own, that's when mind is entering a state of unconditionality, which means love.
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."
So then we look at a body that seems dead and we do not assign it any meaning. And we look at bodies which seem alive and we do not assign them any meaning. And we recognize that both types of bodies are not really different in their meaning, or in what they are. They are both illusions, both unreal, both in ONE category.
Consider then that the mind in this state is a very cohesive whole unified mind. It's not a mind that goes putting labels on everything, putting things in separate boxes, emphasizing differences, or thinking of the things of the physical world as unique.
It's a mind that has ONE state, one feeling, one undivided will, one power, one wholeness, one unconditional action. It treats everyone and everything with the same singular completely still peaceful loving relationship. It responds to everything in the same way, and sees no "orders of difficulty".
Such a mind is not deceived by forms. Such a mind does not really pay any special attention to things which seem different, more important, less important, more serious, less serious. It has learned to see that both living and dead bodies are the same one illusion, the same one lie.
On a way then, the waking mind is finding a way to be whole and unmoved by the world, always constant and honest, always peaceful and loving. It doesn't buy into any temptations, it doesn't fall for the appearance of something seeming easier or harder, bigger or heavier. It finds a way to transcend all differences. And it really is about psychological transcendence. Completely disregarding the appearance of any differences of form whatsoever.
Such a mind isn't finding a way to see that the forms are ONE, or that God is the forms. It isn't finding oneness in them as such. It's transcending them toward the oneness that is behind and beyond them, a oneness that the forms don't even touch or influence in any way.
Because mind becomes whole and unified and loving and disregards differences, it sees in a sense a "reflection of heaven" - a unified transcendental perception - looking upon the physical separate objects still but NOT believing them, NOT falling for their forms, NOT blinded, NOT regarding them as truly different or true at all. But seeing them with a unified mind can't help but see unity IN PLACE of the differences, reflected there.
Cars are still separately driving down separate roads. Bodies are still separately walking down separate streets. Dogs are still barking at separate cats. But the healed mind is not deceived by how any of these things look. The healed mind becomes transcendental of all separate forms, all separate labels, all separate distinctions and differences.
So really in the start of the Workbook we're basically in at the deep end, starting off running, because we're already practicing this simple idea - getting the mind to wean off interacting with the world from a complicated chaotic jumble of vantage points, and shifting toward a singular vantage point which pays no attention to form whatsoever.
Its an odd idea really. Adopting a state of mind which is centered on a singular oneness, and unchanging wholeness, an unconditional love, rather than being 1000 separate things to 1000 separate people. Just being you, knowing thyself, unmoved and unchanged and unaffected. Simple and unified. Ignoring all separations and divisons. Having no belief in the false illusion of the material world at all. A wholeness of mind from another world.
"And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God?"
"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."
"The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."
"Would you transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father?"
"Communion comes with peace, and peace MUST transcend the body."
"Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind."
Here is today's bombshell of truth.
The entire physical universe is a game, designed by the ego, which is impossible to win. Anyone who plays the game will die. Period.
The game has only one rule. If you believe in the game and try to play it, you will die. There is no way to play it and win.
If you think that you can play the game in some kind of special way, using some kind of special abilities or skills or knowledge or workarounds or talents or aptitude or cleverness or creativity or whatever, you will become delusional, and you will die.
If you think you can play the game in a certain way by taking sides with certain apparent powers, by teaming up with those who seem to be winning, by avoiding certain obstacles or traps, by being at war with enemies and getting rid of them, by being very very careful not to have anything bad happen to you, or any other strategy whatsoever, ALL of those strategies WILL NOT WORK, and you will die.
If you think you can outsmart the game and section off a small part of the environment to protect and defend you, or that having certain behaviors will ensure your safety, or that wearing certain clothes or embarking on certain activities will change your chances, you are delusional, and you will die.
The instruction manual for the ego's game of "life and death", which has a subheading "actually, its just death", reads: "all players will die." That's it. At least it doesn't take 5 hours to learn like some games.
The ego's primary game is a game of separation. It is a game of emphasizing differences. It is a game of attempting to separate out one thing from another in as intense and believable a way as possible. It does not care whatsoever what the qualities of each part are, so long as they seem separate.
The game's primary function is temptation. It is designed to tempt you to believe that the appearance of difference or separation between things is real. If you fall for it, you fall for the trap, and you will die. If you look at two parts of the environment and you find yourself siding with or against either of them, not recognizing that they are BOTH PART OF THE SAME GAME, you will fail, and you will die. The instant you feel sorry for some part, or are against another part, or put one part on a pedestal, or buy into any kind of SPECIALNESS, you will die.
The devious, diabolical fact of the game is, anyone who falls for the illusion of difference and separation WILL SUFFER AND DIE, because they have been tricked into making themselves LESS THAN WHOLE, and therefore have diminished who and what they are, and this is DEATH.
So within the ego's game, it does not matter AT ALL, in any state of war and conflict, who wins or loses, who is right or wrong, good or bad, innocent or guilty, or any of it. If you buy into the belief that the good/innocent/righteous people are correct and the bad/wrong/guilty people are not, YOU FELL FOR IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER AND YOU WILL DIE.
The ego itself is the puppet master which disguises itself in the costume and form of every single thing which shows up in the game. It is secretly the identity behind every individual, every form, every event which happens, and every illusion of difference. It will play both sides against each other, playing itself against itself. It will take the role of savior and fixer and helper and carer and lover JUST SO THAT it can be victimized by someone else, SO THAT you will buy into the illusion that the other person was the sinner and not this one. AND THEN YOU WILL DIE, because you failed the test.
Illusions of better/worse, right/wrong, good/bad, more spiritual/less spiritual, more ego/less ego, are TRAPS. Illusions of people who seem innocent but who are still vulnerable, are traps. Illusions of people suffering and being sick against their will are traps. Illusions of bad things happening are traps. Illusions of unwanted terrible weather events are traps. Illusions of acts of nature, God's wrath, war, disagreement of all kinds, marital tension, sexual tension, hate, violence, condemnation, judgementalism, taking sides in a sports match, liking someone more than another, loving someone more than another, IS A TRAP, AND YOU WILL DIE.
This entire world, everything you see in the world, all people, all objects, all places, all events, all circumstances, all situations, all stories, are all DOOMED to condemn you to death IF you buy into them whatsoever.
No-one wins here. No-one actually pulls off a win, which would be a win against God. No-one achieves the FICTION of getting away with murder, being able to do something to someone else without receiving the effects, being able to have someone else make you die against your will, or suffering without choosing it. There are no winners in any argument or war. To believe in the war itself IS LOSS. To believe in enemies at all MAKES YOU WEAK. To side with the little victims MAKES YOU SUFFER. You cannot escape the game this way. You cannot just shift yourself into one safe-seeming corner of life where you cower and hope that all the bad shit doesn't come your way.
There is only one way to escape the game, one way to overcome its rules, and only one way to play it correctly to your advantage. The ONLY advantage is NOT TO PLAY IT AT ALL. This is what you have to learn. You have to see all illusions for what they are, tools for separation. This includes all "life forms" (death forms) in this world. They are all forms of separation, forms of error, forms of sin. They are not holy. That they appear at all, and that you believe you really see them, is your choice to die.
This entire world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. There is NO PART OF IT which is not an attempt to kill you. Every trap will present itself and you will fall for all of them until you learn to overlook them all and attain Atonement/forgiveness. The world is not escaped by death, or by winning, or by making your best effort to avoid death, or by trying to bend the rules, or by thinking you're so great that you can go outside the lines and succeed on your own terms. YOU WILL FAIL, GUARANTEED, and you will die. The world - the entire ego's game - is only escaped by TRUTH.
Only truth will set you free. Only truth will show you the ego's game in plain sight, with all its diabolical devious designs and all of its traps and purposes and attempts to tempt you into it. Only the truth will allow you to see in the true light, the true nature of the temptation. Only the truth will keep you protected and safe. Only the truth will guide you out of the dream of death. Only the truth will allow you to live forever.
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."
Years ago I used to hate a person. I thought this person was the cause of everyone's problems. I was secretly and passively angry at them, not communicating with them, unwilling to forgive them, feeling very hurt by them, annoyed by everything they did and wanting nothing to do with them. I had built up a considerable case against them and attempted to get others on board to agree with me. It really seemed to me that this person was the reason why I was suffering and unhappy, why I was imprisoned, why I was always at war with them and why I did not feel loved by them. It was ALL their fault.
For many years this went on. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. I didn't want anything to do with them. I even moved to live in another place to get away from them. I was quite sure they were the enemy and I did many things to emphasize the separation between us. I wanted to be not associated with them (disassociated) and pushed them away, did not allow us to have a relationship, and despised them. That is, until one day when it all changed.
A moment happened where, in their presence and in the midst of secretly wanting not to be around them, accusing them of sin, all of a sudden this idea came into my mind. It was a shocking idea, but it was unavoidably obvious. Somehow, this person was me. Somehow, that person, in that separate body, was in some way one with me. I, myself, was "over there", behind the wall of hatred, behind their physical form, inside them. I had a kind of oneness experience for a moment. And the "target" that I always thought was "that person", suddenly was revealed to be ME.
This experience was so completely opposite to everything I had thought and felt about this person. I literally was shocked to suddenly have this experience that while I had made every effort to disassociate from "them" and build a gap between us, *I* was somehow on the other side of that gap and therefore everything I felt towards them, I was ALSO feeling towards myself. This wasn't a pleasant realization. But at the same time it was very powerful.
It was like dropping a drop of liquid detergent into greasy water. This truth had dropped in and shown me how terribly mistaken I'd been, what I'd been doing to myself, and that I couldn't continue to hate this person because doing so was hating myself. If we were one, if I was in them, if I myself was on the other side of that wall, then this whole entire thing wasn't "exclusively" about them, it was about me. Some part of my own self or mind was attacking itself with a vengeance.
This was a major turning point in the relationship. It totally turned it on its head, but gradually. Not merely in the relationship to that person but also the relationship with myself. I began to heal and to start to realize, at even an emotional level, as I catharted old pains and misperceptions and false beliefs and grievances, that I wasn't REALLY angry with that person, it was actually in fact directed towards myself. It was me that I hated and it was that which I had to heal. And everything I'd believed "they did to me" had to be forgiven.
The more I allowed myself to heal and release that, the less it appeared to be anything to really do with that person at all. It far more obviously was a split in my own mind and my own attack upon myself, which I had vehemently projected onto this person. The more I projected, using hate to increase the separation, the less it SEEMED to be anything to do with myself. It was all about them. I as I healed, so too did my view of this person. As I undid my own self attack, the impression of offense, victimhood, enemies and projective blame, I stopped being so triggered by this person or believing it was about them at all. My attention turned within to the enemy I'd made of myself.
Over time, my relationship to that person has improved profoundly. Almost all of the blame and scapegoating has stopped. The huge stockpile of pain has melted. Animosity and inequality has turned to equality and friendliness. It seems like nothing happened. The specialness has dissolved. I can talk to them more honestly, openly and deeply. There is communication. There is forgiveness. And it's given way to a more mature way of relating. This is all thanks to the undoing of the separation in my mind and the willingness to take an honest look at what I am doing to myself.
Ancient hatred. Present love.
This is a potent, and clarifying passage, about the fact that ALL perception (even true) is totally OPPOSITE to reality still. Even Christ vision, even sight of the real world, is STILL a state of separation. "Perception is a separated state." "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." Knowledge is a direct experience of God's Kingdom, whereas perception is a once-removed, separated, interpretative IMAGE-based reflection. Nothing in the world of illusions (including Eath) HAS any truth to it. True perception merely recognizes that the world IS SENSELESS. Teachers of God who choose to look on dreams a while, are NOT DECEIVED by what they see.
"This is a course in miracles. And, as such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible it MUST occur. ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness, that it may be carefully preserved from reason's light.
Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in ***the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin***. The Son of God perceives what he would see, because perception IS a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge. ***Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot BE perceived, but only known.*** What is perceived takes many forms, but ***NONE has meaning***. ****Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent.**** Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real. ****Perception's laws are OPPOSITE to truth, and what IS true of knowledge is NOT true of ANYTHING that is apart from it.**** Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms.
God's Answer is eternal, though It operates in time, where It is needed. But, because It IS of God, the laws of time do not affect Its workings. It is in this world, but NOT a part of it. For It is real, and dwells where all reality MUST be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but SEEM to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause.
****Perception's laws must be reversed, because they ARE reversals of the laws of truth****. The laws of truth FOREVER will be true, and cannot BE reversed; yet can be SEEN as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies. It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. ****NO illusion has ANY truth in it.**** Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."
This is really key:
"Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real."
The world is an illusion. Period. Having illusions ABOUT the world, means you are believing the world is real. It means you have illusions ON TOP OF an illusion, and are not RECOGNIZING that it's an illusion.
"the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin" "The world of bodies is the world of sin."
Perceiving the world AS REAL, means that it has been kept APART from truth. And therefore true perception is not occurring.
Because the world IS AN ILLUSION, perceiving it AS REAL is a MISTAKE. An error. This is FALSE perception.
Because the world IS AN ILLUSION, perceiving it AS NOT REAL, is CORRECT perception, true perception. When the world is seen with true perception the world does NOT BECOME REAL. It becomes RECOGNIZED AS FALSE. Its senselessness becomes apparent. It ceases to DECEIVE because you do not buy INTO its illusions of temptation.
This world is not real. Nor is is real in the eyes of christ. Believing it is real is a complete 180 degree reversal of what the course is teaching.
Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."
The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.
An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.
Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.
The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."
When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.
Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.
All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.
The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.
When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.
The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.
It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.
The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.
Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."
The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.
As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.
The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.
The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.
Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."
Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.
THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).
To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."
Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."
If I react differently to each person, or in each situation, I am not being unconditional. I think that one response is appropriate for one situation, another in a different situation. And in this way, my ego becomes locked into and engaged with the FORM of the situation. If someone becomes angry, I react with sternness. If someone is kinder, I react with kindness. This is conditionality.
I didn't really realize that I was doing this all the time. I was giving back a response based on what I received from the person, instead of giving a response based on what I received from God!
It is very challenging to be loving all the time, in spite of and regardless of ego appearances. Our ego is easily triggered when other people act unlovingly. It's also easy to buy into the appearance that something has gone wrong with someone's life and that they're guilty of a fault. It may seem true in form that they are doing something, but my reaction doesn't HAVE to mirror that guilt/attack back to them.
Being able to love all the time totally flies in the face of what the ego shows us and completely denies all ego illusions the power to change us. I have been going through this lesson recently, learning that ONLY LOVE works in a dire situation, and ONLY LOVE can make a difference. All of my other reactions and manipulations and misperceptions and emotional reactions did nothing but make the situation worse.
Unconditionality is very much contrary to how the ego operates. It wants difference and change and special conditions placed on all interactions. When someone is happy, you love them. What about when they are depressed, or violent, or insane, or severely upset? Can you overlook that and LOVE THEM?
I found myself coming face to face with my own inner inability to love, as situations pushed and challenged me to love unconditionally. I said to Jesus "I cannot love that"... and I couldn't. Or I believed I couldn't. It wasn't true. It's just that I was being forced to have to love when my ego didn't want to and so I had to move PAST my ego (overlook/forgive) in order to love anyway.
It seems hard to do this at first. I like many are so used to just having the normal automatic ego reactions. And the ego is especially very TEMPTING in trying to pull us into its drama, to get us to believe that something has gone wrong. Holy Spirit's advice to me in the face of ridiculous ego absurdity was LAUGH! It seemed completely inappropriate, and it was actually hard to find a laugh, but I did it.
Gradually I'm growing more capable of loving unconditionally even when faced with ego bullshit, and, the cool thing is, that this means that in order TO love unconditionally, I have to learn to put aside my own ego self-attack, which fails to love myself unconditionally, and as a result, the more I choose unconditional love the more I seem to gain some kind of... invulnerability to the ego's temptations. Situations seem to be bothering me less, or they are not latching onto me as easily. I am having less reactions. Things which would've upset me, I've had to overlook, and that means I'm no longer as deceived by the ego. Yay.
So now it's more a question of, a situation happens, and then REGARDLESS of what the situation looks like, choosing to only come from love, in the heart, rather than all the other 'reasons' for responses of the ego which come from the head. Just plainly ignoring everything, ignoring how it looks, ignoring appearances, ignoring the form of the situation, ignoring what the ego is demonstrating, and then demonstrating unconditional love instead. I WILL STILL LOVE YOU ANYWAY!
The challenge is to keep this up all the time. To come from love, all the time. ALL the time. Not just sometimes. Love love love love love love love love love.
Jesus redefines the meaning of fear. It is not some mere feeling that you have. In fact, He teaches that fear is the opposite of love. Love is essentially equated with the entire Kingdom of God and the nature of Creation. So fear really is another word for "the entire ego thought system."
Fear is the idea of love's opposite. If you are slightly unhappy, if you are sick, if you are dead, if you are at war, if you are suffering in any way less than experiencing eternal life, there must be fear present. The entire dream of death is a dream of fear. Fear is death. Fear is unwillingness.
I bump into this all the time. It just seems that I keep encountering some form of fear, over and over and over again. It doesn't always seem like fear, unless I look at it carefully and notice that it seems less than loving and has some kind of fearful resistance or reluctance or uncertainty running through it. All stresses, all upsets, all are based in fearful perceptions.
All of my efforts to awaken or be spiritual etc all seem to be this constant "battle" with fear coming and going, sometimes stronger than other times. It feels like trying to stay afloat or even to approach the surface where the light shines, only to be dragged down by these fearful anchors. If I could be released from fear, I would be in a state of love, therefore, and would be happy.
If happiness and love is what I want, and to be miraculous you must be expressing love, then it makes sense that all fear has to be undone. Fear is really the big problem. And fear is nothing but the illusion of the absence of love. It's the idea of darkness. Fear is seriousness. Fear is hell. Fear paralyzes. Fear is attack. And fear stops life.
All forms of hate and vengeance, all grievances, all self attack, all projections, it's all rooted in fear. All attempts to fix and solve and figure out and plan are based in the fear that something is wrong. All ego motivations and seeking to not find, is based on the fearful idea of loss and lack. Without fear there can only be love.
We must seek out and remove all traces of fear and the cause of this fear. Undoing fear allows you to relax. Undoing fear re-establishes trust. Undoing fear lightens you up. Undoing fear makes you happy and corrects your perception. Without fear you will see the shining face of Christ and be glad.
"All healing is essentially the release from fear."
"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."
"T-1.VI.5. All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. 2 To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. 3 In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:
4 Perfect love casts out fear.
5 If fear exists, then there is not perfect love.
6 But:
7 Only perfect love exists.
8 If there is fear,
It produces a state that does not exist.
9 ****Believe this and you will be free.**** 10 Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift."
"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them."
Our traditional definitions of what the ego IS, may need a rethink, based on what it ACTUALLY says in the course.
Interestingly, the course tells us that we have a SPLIT mind.... and that this division - which IS THE SEPARATION - has produced what seems like TWO selves. And yet it does not say that either of these two selves is the ego.
"And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two."
"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided."
"It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING."
"***The Separation is merely another term for a split mind.***"In a way, it more accurately uses "ego" to describe the effort WITHIN the split itself, to perpetuate and increase the separation.
Kind of like an "agent of separation" working to magnify the division or increase the gap between the two halves.It also tells us that the split ITSELF needs to be undone, so that the two parts of mind REUNITE as one mind. Because BOTH parts of mind MUST BE REINTEGRATED.
"They had already split their minds, and were bent on further dividing, rather than reintegrating. ****The levels they introduced into their minds turned against each other****, and they established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits which they produced."
This has absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the second portion of mind in order to "heal it", and in fact destroying part of mind is the GOAL of the separation. Healing is entirely to do with undoing the SEPARATION BETWEEN the parts of mind.
So the question then arises, where does the EGO come into it, or the idea of a false self?
Because in truth, the separated off second part of mind, IS NOT the ego. That second portion of mind is to be KEPT AND HEALED and REINTEGRATED with the first part. So we can't say that this second portion IS the ego.
We could more accurately say, that it is the DIVISION ITSELF which is ego. The division is what seems to arise, when there is a SEPARATION, which means there is an INEQUALITY. You can only have a seeming separation, in which there seem to be "two things", when there is something DIFFERENT about each of those things.
This difference, a kind of rift or inequality, produces a kind of "territory" in-between the two parts, a fence around a part of the mind, where we could say that it is "in between" the two parts, or is what defines the two parts as being distinct from each other. And we could call this inner seeming territory the GAP or the SEPARATION. Indeed, we can accurately call it SPACE TIME!
This separation GAP, which is kind of like the "pit of hell", seems to come in BETWEEN the parts of minds, which now appears to be inner and outer, or associated and dissociated parts of mind.
In fact, one part of mind then seems to be on "this side" of physical matter (e.g. inside the brain), while the OTHER HALF of mind seems to be BEYOND "the granite block of sin" or "the veil" that is physical matter - the illusion of separation. This is why you have to overlook (forgive) physical matter and see the face of christ BEYOND it, in order to REJOIN WITH the other half of yourself.
The part of mind you associate WITH, you believe is your whole self, which is the sunbeam believing it is the sun. While the sun is the metaphor for the REST of the mind, or the whole of mind.
The body, for example, becomes a SEPARTION DEVICE, which comes BETWEEN the associated part of mind, and the dissociated part of mind. It stands between you and your brothers, as do all forms and bodies, like a literal physical wall. It symbolizes our separateness, or rather, the separation between you and the rest of you.
But then the question then arises, where or what is the EGO?The course says that the WORLD is the symbol of the separation, and the BODY is the symbol of the ego. This almost suggests, and perhaps it does, that separation in general is not quite the same thing as EGO.
Through separation, we split the part of the mind which is in heaven from a part which seems to be in hell, just as we split the part that seems to be housed in a body from the part that seems outside of it. You could say that separation is a vertical split, while ego/body is a horizontal split. It's almost like saying that the ego is a symbol of separation INSIDE the world, which is itself a symbol of separation. Making the ego twice removed or "within" the realm of separation.
Either way, ego or egotism, is defined in the course as SELFISHNESS. It is synonymous with specialness, uniqueness, differences, favoritism and inequality. Why would we say that this places ego INSIDE the portion of mind that is in the body, and not the part outside? Perhaps because as ego condenses and possesses and claims exclusive ownership for itself, it tends to partition itself off and contract into a specific location in spacetime. Thus ending up AS or IN a body.
We can also though say that the WORLD, is the ego thought SYSTEM. That the whole system of ego thinking, based on differences, visualizes the physical universe. This would associate ego with the entire "realm" of separation ie separateness.
It's important to realize though, that ego is really something that comes BETWEEN, and emphasizes SEPARATION. It tries to INCREASE separation. It also thus increases inequality. So regardless of "where" we try to locate it, it is very much tied to the notion of separating. It might even be valid and useful to relate ego to the idea of "the devil", an attitude WITHIN THE SPLIT, that operates as active thought WITHIN the idea of separation, to lend reality and value to the separation.
Similarly the body, when it is made to be sick, doesn't simply testify that its host is sick, but that the body is trying to attack BOTH the host AND its brothers. "Sick bodies remain accusers". They are attempts to be contagious and to destroy others. So the sickness is bi-directional. Or in other words, the sickness is acting like a SEPARATION. And this happens when the body is being used AS a separation device. ie the more you emphasize the body as a SEPARATING WALL BETWEEN you and others, the sicker it becomes.Either way, for me, I'm finding it makes a lot more sense to think of ego simply as the same thing as SEPARATION in general, rather than thinking of it as ONE SIDE of a separation, or ONE PART of mind, or ONE OF the two "selves" which are formed BY separation.
Ego will in fact play BOTH SIDES of the separation. It takes positions on both sides of every conflict. Because ego is the idea of SELF DENIAL, and therefore self destruction. So it is literally against itself and is the idea of suicide. It has no interest in who WINS any kind of fight or competition, only that both sides are attacking and increasing the inequality and separation between them. It doesn't care how the game of death is played so long as you're playing it.
The thing to realize then is that if ego IS separation, and separation entirely depends on INEQUALITY, then the restoration of perfect equality causes ego to vanish. In fact, since ego is illusion or a shadow, a fake appearance, or a sense of a LACK OF light as in darkness, this lack is based on inequality. ie that one thing lacks what another has. And without this lack, there can be no ILLUSION OF the ABSENCE OF what the other part has. And so as you approach equality, you simply phase out separateness and erase differences, thereby completely undoing ego. And there is no ego AT ALL in an equal state.
To me this makes metaphysical and logical sense. It makes less sense to me, and perhaps is not even supported by the course, to say that ego is some kind of separate person, or ONLY the separate person, or one half of mind, or a made-up self.
The course does refer to a false self and a false self image, but this false sense of self is kind of a side effect of the division BETWEEN parts of mind. This separation - the split mind - results in both parts of mind being seemingly lacking or diminished. The half you associate with maybe takes on more of a sense of "artificial identity" - artificial identification or association. While the other half seems to become unconscious.
But really in the big picture, when you look at it, Jesus essentially just describes "the separation from God" and its undoing through atonement. It describes separation as synonymous with dissociation and the splitting of mind into two parts. So the undoing of this split, the removal of separation BETWEEN the parts, undoes the separation and restores the WHOLENESS of the mind. The unification or oneness of the mind.
One thing to bear in mind though is that in fact, in a split minded state, we do tend to DISSOCIATE a large portion of mind. The part of mind we DO associate with, which seems to be experienced as WITHIN us or inside the body or inside the bounds of its container, looks upon the other split-off part as "outside" of itself.
And this tends to project it and place it external to the body, which it identifies as symbolizing the "perimeter" of itself, making it easy to ASSOCIATE the second half of mind with other bodies. This leads to the effortless CONFUSION WITH other bodies, associating this other half of mind WITH other bodies, and thus believing other people are "where the sin is" or are "who the enemy is".
This then leads to our continued efforts to DESTROY this other half of mind, labeling it as the home of sin and guilt, projected externally, bound to others, as if accusing THEM of our own sin. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You then attempt to correct what seems to you to be "them", when in fact it is the OTHER PART OF YOURSELF that you are attacking.
This is especially true on another level as well, in that your brothers ARE you, in a oneness kind of way, and attacking them DOES also attack you. So as you split off part of your mind and label it "not me", by DISSOCIATING from it, you tend to split off the part that is IN YOUR BROTHER or one with Him. And so you then tend to target YOUR BROTHER as the home of sin and guilt.
But all the while, this is all still happening INSIDE the totality of your whole mind. One part of your mind is at war with the other part. And it is by INTEGRATING BOTH PARTS, which results by UNDOING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM, that restores the mind to health and wholeness. In addition to reawakening your awareness of the whole of your identity. Kind of like large "dormant" parts of mind coming online - coming into awareness, because they are no longer hidden behind walls.
What this tells you ultimately is that your egotism is an attempt to REJECT. And ACIM confirms that the separation was an act of REJECTION. And through rejection you rejected God's will and your self and your brothers, simultaneously rejecting the part of your mind which is ONE with and IN them. So it is through acceptance, the undoing of denial, that you are restored to awareness of the whole of yourself, one with your brothers and God.
Ego, or egotism, or selfishness, or specialness, or idol worship, or special relationships, or valuing illusory treasures, or elevating the body etc, is all different ways of EMPHASIZING DIFFERENCE, which is a primary ego function of INCREASING SEPARATIONS. Its only goal is to INTENSIFY the separation, to make you believe you are MORE separate, and to SPLIT your mind further.
All of the egos activities are so fully fixated on this "increase in separation", that you really can equate the two things. Ego is far less some kind of sneaky little devil entity hiding in the mind, and more of a SABATEUR, coming BETWEEN you and your brothers, interfering with relationship, breaking down communication, and trying to SPLIT YOU IN HALF.
You become more split as you REJECT. You become less split as you INTEGRATE. You become more split as you attack. You become less split as you JOIN. You become more split as you hate and hurt. You become less split as you love and heal. And it is really the RIFT between YOUR OWN PARTS OF MIND, that you are working on healing.
One part of your mind you see as an EXTERNAL VICTIMIZER, and another part as an INTERNAL VICTIM. The internal victim puts on "the face of innocence", while the external victimizer puts on the face of evil and sin and death. The secret of salvation tells you thus that your DISSOCIATED part of mind SEEMS to be attacking the ASSOCIATED part of mind. The "outer" self, is attacking the "inner self". And this takes place by backward perception ie the reversal of cause and effect - being at the effect of the "world."
But the truth is you are NOT at the effect of THE WORLD, you are at the effect of the part of your MIND that you have ASSOCIATED WITH the world, projected onto it. It is not some other person who is willing against you, it is YOU using your will AGAINST your own will, in a war against yourself. And this is all happening WITHIN YOU. Inside your mind.
So now you have to realize that the externalized "not me", really IS YOU. It is part of your mind ACTING AGAINST the rest of your mind. And this happens because you have a divided will, due to the SPLIT. It's like having two heads or two conflicting opinions in the same mind. You have to find a way to bring these two parts together into the light. And there you have to see the SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM disappear, so that the two parts are reintegrated as ONE.
This never involves the destruction of MIND or any part of mind. Mind is permanent. All it involves it the removal of EGOIC ATTITUDES,, which produce SEPARATION. The undoing of the separation from God is what atonement and forgiveness is all about. And once YOUR MIND is no longer split, you CANNOT BE ATTACKED.
In fact, it is SO clear that you need to reintegrate the dissociated parts of mind, and that these parts of mind are YOUR ONLY ENEMY, that once you realize that EVERY form of attack against you IS COMING FROM YOURSELF.... playing the part of an INDIRECT victimizer, you realize that you can be FREE from suffering forever if you will stop attacking yourself.
"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."
"It is but myself I crucify."
"Secret of salvation" .... "you are doing this to yourself."In this realization, that the externalized part of mind is WITHIN your mind, and the OVERLOOKING of the "differences" between the parts of mind, which results in UNIFICATION or reunion, you heal the mind's SPLIT and restore its sanity. And this means taking full responsibility for being the one who has been doing everything to you.
This sets you free because it acknowledges you have NEVER suffered except by YOUR OWN hand. No one, nor the world, has EVER attacked you. Every form of suffering has been self inflicted. And it has only EVER been YOUR MIND'S DIVIDED STATE that has produced illusions of suffering. You CANNOT suffer, without a split mind. This is also why it's true that everyone is SELF-destructive in this world.
"The guiltless mind cannot suffer." Nor can it be sick, or attack, and NOR does it use the body FOR attack, OR as a separation device. And this heals the body and guarantees its health. So the healing of the SPLIT in YOUR mind is ALL you have to do. This is what it means by accepting atonement FOR YOURSELF. Which has NOTHING to do with other people, until you share and express it. And in the atonement, the ego - the SEPARATION - is erased.
Miracles assert only life. That there is nothing wrong. There is only innocence and wholeness.
"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."
Basically, the only way there can be a healing of any real kind, is if something which is NOT sick, is applied to that which is.
That which is not sick, is a mind which does not give any power or credit or reality to sickness. A mind that does not believe sickness is even real, or that a person can have something truly wrong with them.
Only an outlook rooted in holiness, looking out from that holiness, to see the holiness of others, can bestow holiness upon others. This supplies to them the holiness they were lacking.
"Miracles supply a lack."
"There are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less."
You have more life, love, wholeness to give, when you yourself are these things. Which means you have to purify yourself enough to be free from ego and separation and sickness/death beliefs. Once you are purified enough, you become miraculous.
"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
"I can only give the miracles I have received."
"Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first."
"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."
So if you want to be a miracle worker, a healer, you have to get yourself healed, and then you will have healing to give.
Healing occurs when one who has more wholeness, life, innocence, bestows that upon another mind and shares it with them, raising them up. All healing is resurrection. It is life-giving.
You cannot give life if you believe in death. You cannot give life if you believe sickness is real, or that the forms physical sickness takes is true, or that it's even possible for something to be wrong with a person.
The idea that something is wrong with someone, even in terms of it being a sickness they didn't seem to ask for, is no different than saying they are guilty of something. That they are less than perfect.
You must assert perfection and equality and light and love if you want to be truly helpful in undoing sickness and death.
This is why you are to become the light of the world. And everyone who becomes the light becomes a healer.
"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE."
"ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF?"
"The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear."
"Healing is a sign that HE WANTS TO MAKE WHOLE."
"Healing must occur in exact proportion in which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized."
"Healing is holy. Nothing in the world is holier than helping one who asks for help."
"The new emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."
"By accepting healing he can give it."
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."
"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."
"32 I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. "
Thank you Jesus.
Dictionary definition of intercession:
"the action of intervening on behalf of another."
You think miracles are just something you receive for yourself as part of your 'self study' and application of forgiveness for yourself, or of you 'accepting the atonement only for yourself'? When you accept atonement you accept it for everyone, AND forgiveness benefits everyone equally, AND there is no such thing as waking up alone, AND awakening means SHARING in everything.
So yes, performing a miracle means you may perform it FOR someone else. It is an intervention. And it does not require that person to be in a position to perform the same miracle on themselves. That is why it is helpful. Remember, miracles are given by "those who have MORE to those who temporarily have less."
In the separation from God and yourself, all that's happened is a part of your mind has believed in being separate. This "split mind" believes things which are not true, and not of God.
We call it the ego, but it's just a part of your mind's faulty belief. It believes in all forms of separation, suffering, specialness, exclusion, attack, destruction and death. It believes in everything opposite to God's nature.
In every way imaginable, with every attribute of God, it has opposed God and come up with its opposite. This egoic mind wants nothing to do with heaven, wants to destroy God's son, wants to kill God off, and wants to rule its own kingdom.
That mind which believes such insane things is in your mind, as part of your mind. You do believe this. That's why you have "an ego", or a part of you that is acting against you, against God, against life. When you, as a whole, attempt to approach God, heaven, light, the Holy Spirit, anything true or good or holy, this OTHER PART of your mind will object. It does NOT want it. It does not understand it, misinterprets it, sees it as an enemy, is threatened by it, hates it, and wants nothing to do with it.
You basically have this anti-christ in your mind, this "devil", this evil-seeming self, which wants to run away from God and go live in hell in its own little kingdom of death and suffering forever. It does not want help, it does not want salvation, it does not want healing, and it definitely does not want your real identity.
That part of mind is very confused, lost, alone, sick and afraid. It is weak and powerless. It is offended by everything and loves nothing. It is backwards and twisted, deprived and depraved. It believes it is at war with God, even though God isn't remotely at war with it, although God is opposite to its nature.
When you try to bring "yourself", your mind, any part of mind, into the light, this part of you will object. This part of you will feel offended by you reading A Course in Miracles. It will feel upset about what it has said and what it implies. It will believe that the truth is out to destroy it. It will hate the course. It will not want to wake up.
This egoic part of mind will resist the truth. It will dig in its heels and produce feelings of overwhelm, tiredness, blockage to energy flow, unwillingness to see or hear or read, avoidance, procrastination, disobedience, and all manner of defenses. This mind can also very much induce all forms of sickness as an attempt to escape from exposure to the truth. It does NOT want health or happiness.
Every time you "do the course" therefore, this part of YOU, this part of your mind, is like a belligerent unwilling child that you're dragging screaming and kicking into the light. It is terrified of God and does NOT want anything to do with ACIM. It will literally feel hurt and upset and offended and scared by what ACIM says.
As a result, very very often, you will find that when you try to do the course, you will have rebounds afterwards. You will feel upset, afraid, angry, hurt, offended, left out, ignored, as if the course hasn't acknowledged your existence or your specialness. You will feel like your very existence is threatened and will take steps to defend against it.
This happens simply because the mind is split. One part of you is trying to become more whole, the other part is putting up a fight and does not want anything to do with it. As you step into the light, the ego screams ever louder in its fear that you're torturing it or trying to make it encounter God. It sees this intimacy with God as a sure sign that it will be exterminated. It sees your efforts to be spiritual as offensive hateful attempts to destroy it.
It is absolutely no wonder then that as you take steps towards the truth, the egoic part of you that still believes wrongly will OBJECT, and sometimes strongly. It will try to reinforce and re-emphasize what is not true. It will tempt you to stay body identified and possessive of your physical treasures. It will try to get you to separate more. It will do whatever it can to preserve itself. Or in other words, YOU will try to preserve yourself because you think you are opposite to God.
We have to learn therefore that we are kind of "wounded people", and our wound is not very happy with the "remedy". It's like rubbing salt in the wound. Or it is painful to the touch. It's like a bruised part of mind which needs careful handling. Sometimes that means you have to go slow, take a break, and "throw your ego a bone." Do something normal, enjoy something physical, indulge or whatever. Just because that "addicted to hell" part of you believes that it NEEDS these things to maintain a sense of peace.
When you are seeming to appease the ego it will calm down, become quieter, relax, hide its defenses, pretend to be your friend, seemingly approve of your unsavory self-destruction, and even help you with your bad choices. It's when you start to move against it, in the direction of the light, that it will decide to no longer pretend being your friend. This doesn't mean it's becoming stronger, but it just means that PART OF YOU does not want to wake up.
"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend." UrT2E12
So we have to do what we can, at a gentle pace, to try to awaken from this self-made nightmare, keeping an eye on the fact that we DO NOT WANT TO, and that part of us is still addicted to hell and suffering and death. Part of us wants to die. And that part is going to take some convincing. But while we have these two parts - a willing part and an unwilling part, we're going to keep encountering the fact that whenever we try to purify ourselves by moving toward God, the unhealed part of us is not going to like it.
Eventually of course this will wear off as more and more of the mind heals, the egoic nature becomes lighter and less believed in, less offended and less upset by what we are becoming exposed to. It takes time and trust and patience. Be gentle on yourself and don't push too hard.
This is a long and winding road, with many ups and down, and hopefully overall steady and sure movement towards the light. The ball and chain around your ankle will gradually lighten as you courageously learn to let go of death and destruction. Two steps forward, one step back, is understandable. Keep going, you'll get there. It's guaranteed.
When the world is seen with false perception, that is, with the body's eyes being believed and seeing nothing else, blinded by perception of form, the world seems like a dark prison and God is nowhere.
When you lift up and see with Christ Vision, or true perception, which is a spiritual seeing by the mind itself, not dependent on the body's eyes or on photons of light bouncing off surfaces, the world vanishes. The spiritual eye is love looking upon love, Christ looking upon Christ.
However, just before this, in the in-between stages, when you are working on your forgiveness, healing and purification, there is an intermediary "mix" between these two. The spiritual eye is coming online, but the body's sight is still believed to some extent.
What this produces is that the world, which is like a veil of sin hanging in front of Christ's face, becomes more transparent. It's forms are less believed, it's matter is less blocking.
All sense of real sin is being lifted away from its appearances. Guilt is being unprojected. And this makes the world appear to gradually become brighter, lighter, more lovely, more forgiven.
However, it's only possible for this "world in the process of being forgiven" to show up PRIOR to seeing the face of Christ in full. If you were to reach true perception, you wouldn't be able to see the world at all, because the veil lifts at the very top, at the last moment, becoming completely invisible.
In a way, we could say that what appears to be the visible world, the physical world, becomes gradually more invisible. And the seemingly invisible world, the real world, becomes gradually more visible. And as Jesus says, "you cannot see both worlds."
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER. "
He also says that what you consider to be "false", you do NOT see, and what you consider to be TRUE, you do see. So if the real world is true, and Earth is false, which it is, then seeing the truth of the real world "blinds you" to seeing Earth.
So at the top, when you reach totally purified perception, the veil of physical matter, the granite block of sin, becomes fully transparent and disappears from sight. Like a dream that fades.
That "forgiven veil", is the forgiven world. By forgiving the world, you are shining it away. By forgiving it, you are overlooking it to the light beyond it.
"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."
"And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."
"Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place."
"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body."
The more you forgive the world and stop projecting sin onto it, the more forgiven it becomes. BUT ALSO, the more it disappears. It fades because it is not really there. This is why:
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
You cannot forgive something that is REAL. Forgiveness makes stuff disappear. You cannot forgive the world and KEEP it. Things you forgive are ILLUSIONS. "Illusions recognized must disappear." If you are to forgive the world, it MUST be an illusion. And it must disappear.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
I've recently been noticing that my work with the course has shifted to the undoing of guilt. And that this was not the case in previous years. Overall it seemed I was working on undoing fear much more often.
Just theorizing here, but maybe when we're starting out with forgiveness our mind is just too "low" in its degree of truth and light. Sin and guilt still seem too buried and unconscious, hidden behind blocks. Our conscious mind may more likely find itself so blocked that it deals with fear and punishment on a daily basis more than anything else.
Over time, we work on forgiving, and it gradually chisels away at this overall "large block" of mind-junk. From the bottom up, we are gradually removing layers of stuff and raising our overall level of awareness and mastery. While there may be some issues or lessons where we undo fear, or guilt, or sin, or are working on sickness perhaps, overall we're still deeply immersed in "the lower levels" of mind.
I've done such a lot of work on fear that I think I have a much better grip on it now. And while fearful challenges still arise, I am much less deceivable. So I feel that my focus is "rising-up" or "going deeper" into the prior level that comes before fear - which is guilt. If you recall basically we get into sin first, which demands guilt, leads to fear of punishment etc.
So my focus now, or what I'm most often presented with, is the undoing of guilt. In fact I recently seemed to be only just starting to become aware that I even feel guilty at all. I did not recognize it. I did not know that I was guilty and the guilt I was feeling didn't seem to fit into a common definition of what guilt is. I am learning about it first-hand as I dig into it. Because for example guilt can often express as anger or a strong desire to project, and can feel like being offended even.
What I have noticed is that in working on this guilt, which is dredging up a lot of old crap as well, fear goes bye bye very quickly. You can't be afraid of punishment if you are not guilty. Without guilt there is no fear. So I now experience that as I work to undo guilt about stuff, it seems to have a "more powerful" effect in lifting me upwards towards light and truth. It feels more rapid in its consequences, and the fear literally just vanishes without a trace without having to do anything to work on it.
I noticed this when one day, I suddenly recognized I felt very guilty that I thought I caused someone to be sick, although this was not true. I still felt it. And I acknowledged it and spoke about it and let it out. And since bringing that to light, the next day I immediately noticed I felt much less afraid. A whole swath of fear melted.
And then I also was working through some feelings about when my wife was in the hospital etc and how that felt, and suddenly was recognizing that it felt so hellish because I was actually feeling guilty, which was causing fear. Undoing that guilt has really shifted things quickly. It in fact removed what seemed like a looming resistance and sense of dread about what would happen next, that was hanging around all the time.
I know also from experience that if you go straight to the core, the belief in sin, which is really the ultimate turning point of a total change of mind, it has the power to undo not only fear but guilt as well, very rapidly. But you have to be able to unearth and look at the feeling and belief in sinfulness. Sinfuless feels pretty awful. I got in touch with it one time and it felt like a desire to be dead, so bleak and desperate and so strongly believing that I was criminal or evil or had done something so terrible there was no other way out.
But at the moment I think that level of ego crap is still mostly buried beneath the "guilt layer". As I move through the guilt and clear it out, I rise up in mind closer to complete forgiveness and atonement. And as I rise up I go deeper within and uncover the secret sins and hidden hates.
Overall there seems to be the stuff we go through to try to forgive specific issues, which vary a lot, but in the big picture there seems to also be this very gradual movement towards God, truth, light, forgiveness, which takes you through these clouds of ego crap. First through layers of fear, then through layers of guilt, then through layers of sin, and then into the light. We seem to be undoing this from the bottom up, gradually ascending as we do.
This may not be popular.
True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.
By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.
Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.
Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.
You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.
This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.
All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.
More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.
"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.
Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.
Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.
For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.
Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.
Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.
And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.
You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.
In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?
The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.
Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.
Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.
Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.
In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.
Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.
This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.
At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.
In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.
In this world, it SEEMS that death is linear, ie horizontal. You make a passage through time, the body gradually malfunctions, and eventually it dies. This seems to mean that death is the final result of life, at the end of a long road.
But let's consider for a moment, that perhaps death is not linear, but vertical. You don't become more dead by moving sideways, you become more dead by moving DOWNWARDS, away from God who is life.
If a person is closer to God, they are closer to life. They are high on life. If they are more distant from God, they are closer to death. They are removed from the present, riddled with guilt and lost in time. This is irrespective of the age of the body.
When someone enters into sickness they are entering into death. "Sickness is but a little death". But, if the sickness is healed, what does that mean? It means they have resurrected a little. They have moved closer to God who is life. Death has, for now, been surmounted. We do in fact move in and out of death, or rather UP AND DOWN between life and death, as we move in and out of avoidance of God.
Anyone who is young, or who is old, can be said to be more or less alive, not based on the age of the body in time, but upon whether the mind is close to or more distant from love. God is love, God is life, God is health and wholeness. If you are closer to that, you are more healthy in the mind, and this will result in a healthier body. Some people even become more healthier "later" in life.
Advancing upwards towards the light, is resurrection. Resurrection means "a return to life", suggesting a temporary absence or lack of life. A person can quite easily dip down towards hell, at some point in their life, hit rock bottom, and then return upwards. And in this upwards motion there is a resurrection and a healing. Life is restored, health is restored. The person is less dead than they were. They are more filled with the life of God. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."
The Course asks us to "swear not to die". It is asking us to swear not to move down into death away from life, or into the ego away from God. It isn't simply pointing at you causing the body not to die at age 90, it's telling you to stop killing it at all ages. Even that it may be in near-permanence for an indefinite time.
We need to think of death not so much in physical terms but in mental terms. A "more dead" mind is one filled with ego, fear and separation. An attacking mind is certainly not in-line with life. A heavily sick mind is half dead already. An attacking mind is also very much more prone to express sickness and attack the body, making it symbolize its distance from health and life. Remember "the sick are merciless and in contagion do they seek to kill", because in sickness we are defending against life.
Death therefore really doesn't so much have anything to do with the linear progression of time, or how old the body seems to be. It is much more, and perhaps only, to do with how vertically a person becomes closer or more distant from life itself. If we remove ourselves from harmony, peace, love, sanity, harmlessness, we are removing ourselves from health and vitality as well. We are darkening our light and attacking our bodies. The ego worships the "God of sickness" who is against health and against life itself, so the more ego-filled we are the more dead we are.
A destructive mind is a deadly mind. A constructive mind is a resurrective mind. Regardless of what happens to the body, or whether perhaps it is laid down or exited or disappeared, if the mind of the person in the body is filled with life and light, the body is much less prone to destruction, decay, damage or death. It has been infused with a higher vibration of order and sustaining of life, making it much harder for degradation to take hold. And a mind free from guilt completely CANNOT suffer. "The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body, for it cannot conceive of illness." etc
This may explicitly account for the cases of "incorruptible bodies" of some saints, whereby even though their soul/mind has left the body behind, the presence of LIFE and light and spirit, working through that body, infuses it with continuation. With life-supporting vibes. Or rather, attacks it much less, and so it is not left with an imprint of death and destruction. This causes it to remain in health and avoid decomposing because as an "energy pattern" or "thought form", it is a thought of life and not a thought of destruction. A thought FROM a living mind.
Death has to be considered vertical, in fact, because we know that death is a manifestation of fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening." Therefore death, which is the same as sickness, and all forms of sickness of the body, all malfunctioning, is really nothing to do with linear causes at all, and only to do with vertical causes. A fearful mind attacks the body and destroys it by pushing it away from heaven towards hell. A loving mind heals the body and maintains it in perfect health by lifting it up in ressurection.
What we call health then, cannot be described in terms of linear happenings. We have to think of it as a question of whether you are close to heaven (thus to order and harmony), or whether you are closer to hell (thus to disorder and disruption). The body symbolizes and represents where the mind is at, in its vertical alignment. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "A damaged body shows the mind has not been healed." This is a vertical axis of life vs death, not horizontal.
This also corresponds perhaps to aging. If we think of aging in terms of horizontal time measurements, we are maybe missing the whole point, because horizontal aging is an ILLUSION. Yes the body can transform into various states of what we might call maturity over time. But whether or not the body is healthy or sick is nothing to do with its age. It's more to do with how the mind is using that body at a particular time. Because "what you use the body for it becomes to you." When used for attack it becomes sick (dead), and when used to bring God's word it CANNOT be sick or die - it's too close to life.
So we could say that when a person's mind is closer to the light, the body is held in a state of health and healing. It symbolizes eternal life and immortality. It is free from pain, from scars, from damage, and represents harmlessness. The healed mind heals the body and cannot conceive of illness. It forces the body into a resurrected state, by the extension of love through it, lifting it out of suffering. Light, love, life, from above, shines downwards, and lifts upwards. A light-filled body cannot age or decay or become sick or die beacuse it is infused with POWER. Vertical life overrides horizontal death.
"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven (downwards from above) on a dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. And all around the signs of life spring up (upwards from below)."
Life, progressing from death to life, as in vertical resurrection, is a vertical movement towards God. Towards truth. Towards innocence. Towards guiltlessness. Since "sickness is but another form of guilt", and sickness cannot EXIST without guilt, the removal of guilt from the mind (as in moving upwards towards the light) causes the body to represent a higher frequency or order, and thus health. A higher mind is a more POWERFUL mind and it is filled with holiness and healing.
In fact as ACIM teaches, as the mind move upwards towards atonement, it is moving towards health and wholeness. And it enforces the body into a symbolic representation of that. It takes on "the power to represent an endless life." So at the pinnacle, the body is suspended in light and higher "vibration", free from attack, free from guilt, free from psychological torture. And this effectively leaves the body in a state of symbolic immortality. ie that it cannot become sick at all, and it has no death in it. Its appearance can also then be modified at will, to represent any age or gender or form. It becomes transparent and light and is not pulled down into suffering or the lower vibrations of decay.
So we really need to realize that in ACIM Jesus talks of sickness and death and health on a VERTICAL axis. Is mind high, or low. It it close to the light, or hiding in darkness. It is moving upwards towards God and atonement and LIFE, or is it moving downwards into sickness, damage, attack and destruction. The minds constructive powers have to be reinstated in order that it can take power OVER sickness and death, which really means, to RISE ABOVE IT, by moving the mind into a higher state, and therefore abolishing exposure to anything lower. Death is the lowest state and is simply "out of reach" for an enlightened mind.
We, all of us, on this planet, right now, are in various states of life vs death. We all need resurrection. Any measure of sin or guilt or attack or fear in the mind IS a state of removal from life. It IS a rejection of life and of health. Any movement into ego is a movement into choas and disorder and malfunction and failure. And death IS failure. It is a failure to live, a failure to be in the light, and represents the fear of God. Perhaps it's fitting to consider that death ends in the ground, while ascension takes you into the heavens.
"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. ****It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly****, having no function except communication."
"The resurrection ***is the denial of death***, being the ***assertion of life*** Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it.
Here the curriculum ends."
God and his Kingdom are a perfect hologram, in which the whole is in every part, and every part is the whole.
But then there was a separation. The separation was an event where we tried to deny the wholeness but keep the parts.
If another name for the wholeness is "non-duality" (or oneness), and another name for the parts is "duality", we tried to keep the duality and reject the non-duality. To "separate off" our selves from God, retaining only our separate selves without sharing anything.
This resulted in what we call seemingly spacetime - the dream of separation - which depicts "exclusive duality" as though it's ONLY duality with no oneness.
In spacetime we have perception. Perception can go to extremes of denial and acceptance of God. In false perception it rejects the oneness entirely, while in true perception it accepts it.
True perception shows you "the real world", which is another way of saying "the world as it is without the distortions of your insanity projected onto it".
This "real world"... has a quality of WHOLENESS. This wholeness is sort of like a dream version of oneness. It is also called the face of Christ. It's like the wholeness aspect of God's divine hologram but in dream form - as a "picture".
So as you reach the real-world level of perception, you're entering into a sort of holographic experience of spacetime. That is, you are accessing a sense of oneness and wholeness and unlimitedness, in which you expand to the size of the universe and seem to contain all of it within you.
In this view, you see that the whole is in every part. Every object's separateness no longer "means" or "tells you" that separation is true. Instead, you see the WHOLE reflected in every part. As though, all of the PICTURE of wholeness is present in every individual object.
This isn't merely the same as waking up and being more alert and seeing the same separate objects head-on with some kind of enhanced alertness. It's a mindset in which you have this greatly expanded wholeness, a sort of reflection of oneness, which is seen to TRANSCEND all boundaries and separations.
This transcendental experience shows you that the REFLECTION of God is in every part and speck of matter ("God is in everything I see"). All of God is pictured "in" every grain of sand. Not simply that God has squeezed himself into one grain, but that he is simultaneously in each and every individual grain, and not in any kind of compromising way either. ALL of him is in EVERY part.
Note however the main difference between the holographic experience of spacetime and heaven, is that heaven is an ACTUAL perfect hologram, whereas spacetime is an IMAGE OF a perfect hologram - a PICTURE. This is why it's also called the FACE of Christ and not Christ itself.
So in our waking up here in/from this world, we should expect to find that the seeming separate differences of objects matter less and mean less. Their forms don't tell us of a hierarchy. All differences become equal and irrelevant. We overlook them, which is forgiveness. And instead of focusing on letting the forms BLIND us to a oneness, we instead see a transcendental oneness pervading the forms and showing that the forms are a way of OBSCURING the hologram.
I have had an experience of God some years ago in which I came to this experience and saw very clearly this exact dynamic, in which the WHOLE was seen in every object, and each part contained ALL of God. And this revealed to me the way that when you focus on the separate objects and forms they OBSCURE the fact that God is all-in-all, and instead present a "broken picture" in which there is NO WHOLE IN ANY PART. And that's the difference between true perception and false perception.
I found a couple of segments in ACIM that speak to this sort of "holographic experience" of the world. Note here when it talks of a "picture" it is saying an image, not the ACTUAL thing but a PICTURE OF it - once removed from it.
"The Holy Spirit's Function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture IN ITSELF. To each he offers his identity, which the WHOLE picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit, which he insisted was himself. And when he sees THIS picture, he will RECOGNIZE himself. If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself." URT28E7
"I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS." UrT28E8
The ego has two parts to it, because the ego is a belief-system based on duality. Duality is based on separation. The ego mind is a 'split mind'. The ego mind is at war with itself and is in conflict. The ego mind pits one part of itself against another part of itself, attempting to make out that the two parts are not whole. It is a device for separation and self destruction.
The ego is therefore two-faced. It supports both sides of all arguments provided they are opposed to each other. It both attempts to protect itself and to hurt itself. It is a victimizer and simultaneously a victim. It exalts itself onto a pedestal of idol worship while at the same time loathing itself with hatred.
The first face of the ego is what psychology would call 'the persona'. This is a fake self-image, made as an attack on who you really are. It's a disguise. It's a veneer of positivity, attempting to focus exclusively on what you like, accept, allow, everything you deem special or valuable, all of your special/love relationships, your favorites, your preferences, and all forms of 'positive judgement'. The persona is the ego's surface facade, like the jewel-encrusted picture frame Jesus describes in ACIM, housing a dark twisted picture of hatred.
You can also see the persona manifesting in the world, for example in the design of many commercial objects, such as a car, whose exterior is made to look attractive and desirable and pleasing, while concealing all of the ugly, dirty, noisy, dangerous, icky 'inner workings' underneath. The persona focuses on a form of 'inclusion', and thus focuses on getting, wanting, desiring, taking, approving, and keeping. But, never to completion... always requiring that certain things are special because other things are not. It is also represented by our point of 'attention' or focus, which homes in on what we want to be aware of, and shuts out everything else.
The second face of the ego is the shadow. You can think of the shadow as the usually indirect implications of what the persona has given value to. So, if the persona is saying, this person is really special to me, as stated in many love songs, then this also means that 'everyone else' is less than special, i.e. in some way 'less than' or despised. So while we special-love some people, doing this automatically means that you special-hate others. That 'hate', seeming to be indirectly and less consciously focused on, goes 'into the shadows'. It gets stored and becomes part of the ego, just as much as the persona is part of the ego. The shadow is the part of the entire ego that has been rejected by the persona part.
So the shadow, albeit seemingly outside your awareness much of the time, becomes this storage place, or a 'room', in which you shove all of the bad, rejected, hated, feared, judged, condemned, unacceptable, wrong stuff that the persona directly or indirectly judges. The shadow houses everything the persona wants to get rid of. The ego persona loves to craft an 'idealistic life' where everything seems to be going smoothly and it includes only the stuff you seem to 'want'. And to achieve that, it has to suppress and repress and deny all of the other signs and symptoms of life sucking or not being what you want. So while you steadily build up a life of pleasantries and people-pleasing and denial and repression, you're secretly accumulating a huge shadow-full of destruction.
At some point that shadow content boils up into awareness, and attacks the persona-self. It attempts to destroy the persona self. So if you're identified with the persona-self, you'll experience it as though you are being attacked. This 'body of pain' (pain body) can come out of seeming unconsciousness and overwhelm the conscious mind, taking over the thoughts and producing total chaos in the person's life. And you will wonder where it came from. And this is also, btw, why 'bad things happen to good people'. Being 'good' is the persona, which generates 'hidden bad', which comes back to bite you in the butt.
So the ego has these two parts and both of them depend on and feed into each other. The shadow's rejection of 'the good' relegates the good stuff to the 'good room' of the persona, and the persona's denial of the bad relegates the bad stuff to a 'bad room' of shadows. It is self-conflict and self-abuse. Good and bad. Right and wrong. You can't believe one without believing the other.
Our challenge then is to stop using both of these. To learn when you are in the persona, which shifts and changes based on who you are with or what's happening and is thoroughly inconsistent. And to recognize when you might've shifted into the shadow-self, suddenly angered into a road-rage or filled with negative thoughts. We need to learn when we are in either the persona or the shadow, and learn not to choose either of these deceitful attitudes. They are both based in right/wrong, good/bad duality. You need to move instead to a point of view of, what is TRUE, and what is FALSE.
The truth shall set you free. Truth means, am I being completely honest and authentic by being in my persona-self, pleasing everyone and not showing anyone how I really feel, or censoring myself? Am I being really honest and authentic when I go into a rage and accuse others and speak hurtful words or attack myself with negativity? Is it TRUE and genuine that I am 'this fake self'? Is it true and genuine that I am an unworthy, hated, fearful victim? Is it true and genuine that I am an inconsistent, unreliable, fickle two-faced liar? We need to learn how to notice when we're in EITHER of the two ego faces, which particular facade we're putting on, and to decide to say NO to both.
When we say not to the persona and the shadow, we are saying yes to God. When we say no to dualistic thinking, we say yes to the mind of God. When we say no to the self-conflict that projects outwardly as parts of the world we like and parts of the world we don't like, we come into acceptance of the totality - what is. When we say no to the separation and split in our own mind, which we see outside of ourselves, we can come to an awareness of wholeness and presence. This is the way out.
But we have to always be careful, to stop feeding and building our shadow-self, an unconscious hidden face of the ego, by trying to be so perfect and ideal in the persona. They are both false. They are both lies. Who are you really? Where is your real personality? What is your genuine self? How will accept ALL of you, and not just a part of you? Each time you choose one thing and reject another, you are choosing one part of yourself and rejecting another. We need to learn to stop doing that. To use denial in a helpful way, to deny the ego entirely - to deny the persona and the shadow the ability to run our lives. To choose to be in the Holy Spirit.
Getting rid of our shadow stuff, all the stuff which our persona self thinks is the 'stuff that is wrong with us', that we 'need to get rid of', in order to 'become more spiritual', is a trap of the persona. It would have you get rid of all of the shadow, by shoving it into the shadow more, so that it is more unconscious, so that you can pretend to only be aware of the 'good stuff'. And then your focus on the good stuff will actually create even more bad stuff, because you can't sit on one end of the see-saw without the other end being affected.
The only way out is truth, honesty, awareness, responsibility, acceptance, wholeness, and the various other properties of a WHOLE mind, i.e. the right-mind, which becomes the one mind, united with God.
When I first began with the Course's forgiveness, it was much more focused on taking back my projections. The particular projections to be taken back revolved around other people and what they seemed to be doing to me. If things were not going wrong necessarily, I would lapse and not do any forgiveness.
People would say you only have to forgive the stuff that upsets you. And that's more or less the mode that I'd been in for some years. It seemed some part of me wanted to just get on with "my life" and have those assholes just sort of go away as a result of my becoming more honest and less blaming. When people appeared to not disturb me, I wouldn't seem to have any reason to forgive.
The radicalness of the Course, however, asks that we recognize not just that we have psychological issues "about" the world, but that the world ITSELF is also an illusion. That's a really HUGE leap in terms of beliefs and perceptions. That's a seemingly far bigger challenge to even comprehend yet alone overcome.
It isn't just telling me to stop projecting my shit onto people. Ok yes that's part of it. That's a good start. It isn't just telling me that I need to heal my past and let go of blocks to love and so on. Again yes, that's part of it. But there is more.
The body itself is an illusion. The world itself is an illusion. Other people's bodies are illusions. All forms are illusions.
So now, this is a much bigger endeavor. This isn't just a matter of undoing small mistakes in perception so that I can see this world better and feast my eyes on its form with a more loving attitude.
We have to realize that because this world is an illusion, IF you are truly waking up from this illusion it HAS to mean that we're going to not only overlook the world but that HOW it looks is going to change radically. Also what it means is going to shift. A sense of belief in it, or the notion that it is even REAL, is going to change.
If we're moving toward the real truth of God, and if this world is an illusion, its illusory nature is going to start to become apparent. The sense of it being real is going to start to dissolve. The appearance of form as irreversible and causal is going to be radically turned on its head. Our mind is going to move into a very different, very ego-law-breakaing state of awareness.
So then at some point, we have to move out of the "forgive people" mode and into the "forgive everything" mode. And by forgiveness we mean, recognizing the truth and using that truth to overlook and not be deceived by illusions. We might not be recognizing just how deluded we are, and just how deceived we are, that this physical world is REAL, that bodies are real, or that we're really actually "living" here.
The truth is far more radical than this. The truth is that this world is not reality AT ALL. It is literally nothing. A total illusion from top to bottom. Everything in it, all supposed life "forms", all sickness, all death, all suffering, all of the weather, all of the ways that objects affect other objects, all of the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, every property of matter, ALL OF IT is an illusion.
Believing that this stuff is real is a problem. It's insanity. It is not true perception. And if you perceive that this world is real, then you will not be able to perform miracles. Miracles completely defy all of the laws of this universe, coming from outside of spacetime, sourced in God's infinite love. If you're believing the world is real, there is no way that you're going to be able to overthrow the laws of this world. Your wish for it to be "true" - a real world - holds it in place, disabling you from having power (dominion) over it.
So this is a huge shift. Take the next step. Be willing to be open to the idea that there is no REAL sickness, no REAL death, and that this world is not really real at all. Then you will start to sense the power of God to have authority over all illusions and to perform miracles. It's one thing to do little forgivenesses here and there, it's another to realize you have to forgive the entire universe. That then this forgiveness doesn't just mean to see 'a real universe' as innocent, it means to see CELARLY and CORRECTLY, which MUST show you that it is an ILLUSION, not a real world. Otherwise you are not seeing at all.
I've been getting hints for a while, that there is a disconnect between inner and outer states, or between how I experience the world and what the world does. That it's possible to remain in a state of happiness or love, in spite of what's happening externally. That my inner condition doesn't depend on the outer condition.
The question came up, what if I could just remain happy regardless of what happens? What if how I feel isn't actually tied to the world or events or people? If I were to be happy while something was happening, I probably wouldn't care so much about it. It isn't an issue of what happens, but of how I experience it internally.
So there's the external happenings, and then there's the internal experience of it. What that also tells me is that who and what I am, isn't part of the physical level. It isn't the body or an emotion or an event or a reaction. It's actually possible to step away from the external stuff and sit above it, out of reach of suffering.
In truth then there aren't actually any causes of suffering in the world. There is nothing outside of me that can bring oppression. It really is only my mind that can affect my experience. And if I so choose, I can in fact elect to be in a state of happiness and safety which the world can do NOTHING about. Just as the course says, the world cannot give you peace, OR take it away.
It's kind of like saying, when you're in a good mood, nothing can bother you. You just float above it and are much less affected. When you are happier and stronger in light and life and love, you laugh in the face of death.
The simple secret of salvation then is that you cannot suffer unless you make yourself suffer. You can't suffer unless you step down from your throne of love, in which you share God's strength and power, and see yourself as a victim in some way. As soon as you choose to go into a fear state, the whole world starts to seem like it is out to get you, unsettling you, topping you off balance, making you lose your center.
So I started thinking about.. well, if I could just remain in a state of inner happiness, love, peace etc, it would not matter what happens outside me. It wouldn't even matter if everything was falling apart and going wrong. I would just remain happy and laugh about it. Whether I am happy or not should not depend at all on the world or other people. It depends entirely on my state of mind. And "the world was made that problems could not be escaped. Seek not escape from problems here", so it's really how I use and see the world that offers me escape from it.
As Jesus says, if we identify with love, we will feel safe, and will enter into the protection of God. If we tune to love, our mind will become whole and happy and healthy and our body will follow suit. Love is the single main ingredient of all miracle working, as expressions of love, which is also the power of God. If you are close to love then what you are literally moves away from the bodily level into the mind/spirit, above the battleground and out of reach of threat. Because you are not of this world.
I think we've been so used to living in fear, being out of touch with safety, that we just assume the whole world is unsafe. Everything is seen as a threat or attack, then we become defensive and try to make ourselves safe. But it doesn't work. And then we're insecure and feeling vulnerable and attackable, weak and victimized, offended and upset. Then we get really lost in this idea that I'm afraid or upset because of the world.
The only reason I am ever afraid or upset is because I've gone into fear in my mind, having rejected love in my mind, and this is an attack upon myself by myself. And now I look out through fearful sight and this taints everything I see. It now seems like because I am unsafe, everything in the world is reminding me of that unsafely. Everything becomes a threat because my mind is in a state of threat. Everyone becomes an enemy because I have become enemy to myself.
The key is that it's not them that's the problem. They're not the cause of my fear or upset. They're not doing anything to me. They're not putting the fear in me, threatening me, attacking me, or victimizing me. I only think they are because I'm confused and am not realizing that I'm doing all that to myself. Either I identify with love and feel totally safe and SEE safety everywhere, or I identify with fear/ego and see reasons to be afraid everywhere I look.
As Jesus says, "you can escape the world you see by giving up attack thoughts", ie "your attack thoughts are attacking your invulnerability." "You can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts." "It can be but myself I crucify" etc. We do stuff to ourselves and then it flavors everything we see. The problem isn't out there, it's in our minds. It's in our minds before we even project and make perceptions. It's in our identification. Either we are identifying with the body and with the idea of a fearful fake self, or we're identifying with spirit and with strength and safety and invulnerability.
As a man thinketh. Here Jesus tells you that if you want the world to not appear to be frightening, you need to change YOUR MIND, so that you PROJECT safety from a loving mind, and then perceive it as a result. This isn't a statement about not changing the world, only that you can only make the world appear to be safe as a side-effect of choosing safety in your mind FIRST, and then projecting it. This will change how you interpret the world that's perceived, once projected from an inner state. The inner state comes first. Choose love and you are safe. And you are safe because you are body and cannot be attacked.
"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, and NOT a cause."
"Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze."
"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision? And AFTER vision, who is there who COULD refuse what MUST come after? Think but an instant just on this. YOU can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And NEVER need you think that there IS something else for you to see."
"There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet YOU can give it, as it was given YOU. And AS you give it, it shines forth to call you FROM the world, and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love WHICH YOU HAVE GIVEN IT. And here will everything remind you of your Father and his holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought WITH you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude, because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs, in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them."
"What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."
"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."
You are in a dream world. Everything here is symbolic. Nothing that appears visible is whole, because symbols are not the whole of something. Symbols represent something beyond themselves, and all physical matter is symbolic of something greater.
Physical matter, at all, is symbolic of the idea of separation and fragmentation. The multitude. The opposite of oneness.
The physical body is symbolic of the idea that you are separated from the whole and are only a part of it.
Outer space is symbolic of the unconscious mind in which anti-matter is unconscious guilt, and stars are all that's left of a light which was once everywhere.
All bodies, be they stars or planets or people or animals, are symbolic of the ego, individuate identities roaming around cut off from the rest.
Clouds, above which the sun shines, are symbolic of blocks to awareness, in which sunlight on a clear day is symbolic of seeing clearly.
Light and darkness, visibility and shadows, are symbolic of the polarization of good vs bad, persona and shadow, as well as symbolic of the light of truth vs the obstruction of darkness.
Even in the physical world, when light shines, it obliterates the darkness, being symbolic of the way that the light of truth shines away illusions.
Things that happen in the world are symbolic as well, being shifts in symbolism and psychological content, and this is also why most of your dreams at night become even more symbolic representations of what happened in the day.
Waking in the morning is symbolic of awakening from unconsciousness and sleep. Going to sleep at night is symbolic of going into unconsciousness and dreaming of a world that doesn't exist.
The people you meet are symbolic of other stuff in your life. Phases of life are symbolic. Certain events happening and significant life changes are symbolic.
The sky is symbolic of heaven, the Earth symbolic of hell.
Each time that you experience rejection or abandonment or separation, it is symbolic of the separation from God.
Each time that you experience a sense of loss and grief, it is symbolic of the loss of God.
Each time that something suddenly comes out of the blue and changes things for the worse, it is symbolic of the moment of the separation from God and the sudden entry into terror and sin.
Everytime something is born or dies, it symbolizes the limitation of form and the fact that it must have a beginning and and, making it inherently mortal.
Each time there is intense weather and storms, it is symbolic of stormy attitudes in the public and the threat of punishment.
Each time someone says a prayer, it is symbolic of commitment to God and an acknowledgement of reality.
Birth is symbolic of the separation from God. Death is symbolic of succeeding in separating from God.
Pretty much everything that you do in your so-called physical life is SYMBOLIC. Your body is MADE of a symbol. All of the events in your life are symbolic. It all represents ideas and concepts in the greater mind.
By not realizing that everything going on in your life is symbolic, and that this is entirely a DREAM, and that there is not ANYTHING that isnt symbolic, you instead focus on appearances of objects and events, as though you're seeing the entirety of what it is. This means you are turning symbols into 'things' in their own right, as though they don't allude to anything else and really have no symbolic meaning. You look at meaningless "form" in this way and then project other meanings onto it, but the only reason you think it is meaningless is because you are in denial that you're in a symbolic dream.
All around you everything that's happening right now is symbolic. All of the objects in your room are symbolic or representative of something. Every event that happened today was symbolic of the separation from God. Every time something "happened" in form it was symbolic of sin happening, proving your guilt.
This world is not a world of end results or finite objects or mortal bodies or stuff that is "complete" in its own right. Nothing is WHOLE here. Everything is a symbol, and is less than whole, and less than perfect. There is stuff missing that you do not see. There is more than meets the eye.
If you look into it, you might start to recognize some of the symbols in your life, that certain people are symbolic of other people, or that certain relationships are symbolic of certain ways that you are relating to God. You think this world is physically real and objective and final. It is not at all. It is a dream, and dreams are always made of symbols, meaning that there is always something ELSE that they're not showing you. To OVERLOOK the symbols, to forgive, and to shift awareness to the WHOLE MEANING, awakens you from the dream.
Sweet dreams.
Maybe it's your hair, the shape of your face, or some other body part. Maybe it's how you speak. Maybe it's the way you walk or where you came from.
In one way or another, you probably walk around with layer upon layer of not being what someone somewhere thinks you should be.
You might think you are dysfunctional, or broken, or defective, or incapable, or somehow just fundamentally flawed. People might treat you like you're disabled, less than them, or inferior.
The problem isn't so much that other people are constantly bombarding you with these judgements, but that you've accepted them for yourself as though they are true of you. You believe in them and make them your identity, even if it hurts.
But this also means you have the choice, whether to let go of this false sense of worth and identity, or whether to hold on a while longer.
What if these views that you have of yourself are not really true about you? What if there's really nothing wrong with you at all? What if everyone has been mistaken about you, but even moreso, you've been mistaken about yourself?
What if you're still just as worthy and valuable to God as you always have been, and you just forgot for a while, thinking you were no longer acceptable?
Love loves you unconditionally forever and ever and ever. You are worthy of God's love, right now. You don't have to earn it. It's being offered unconditionally and freely without any strings attached.
Let yourself be loved.
Ok. Let's take a fresh look at miracles.
Your task is to correct your perception, but this does not take place in isolation. What applies to you, applies to others. The Golden Rule is always in effect.
If you extend love to others and be loving toward them, you will open yourself to receive love and share in love. If you do not extend love to others, you will shut down your extension and block your own receipt of love. You will either love yourself AND your brothers equally, OR you will hate both of you. This is inescapable law with no exceptions.
Your task isn't just to fix yourself. Your task is to REJOIN in Holy Relationship with your brothers and to HEAL BOTH OF YOU, by allowing the love in you to go out to them. Your task is to repair your connection with them and restore communication of love and sharing. You have to learn to love other people so that you will also be loved. And that is an outward expression or extension. It's reaching out with love and embracing others "as yourself".
The Holy Spirit is a gift from God. The Holy Spirit provides accurate perception of the "real world", forgiven and innocent. He is in you and in your brother, regardless of whether your brother is aware of this. In order for you to see your brother correctly with love, you have to look WITH the Holy Spirit. You will see the Holy Spirit IN your brother when you are looking at Him WITH the Holy Spirit in you fully.
Now, you of yourself cannot perform miracles or heal anyone. The light in you is healing, but you did not put the light there. God did. The love that is in you, which extends through you to others, is God's love. You can share in it, but not take possession of it. If you control it or block it or stand in its way, you hurt yourself and others. When you allow it to extend, IT provides healing. "Miracles are the Holy Spirit's gifts."
The Holy Spirit, being the idea of healing, isn't merely a static state of mind. It is a mind of love. It extends, and it HEALS. It can correct perception, dissolve error, shine away darkness, reverse sickness and death, and provide LIFE where it was lacking. When you become a "window" for the Holy Spirit to move THROUGH, this healing POWER goes out to the mind of another and heals them miraculously, which also restores health.
If your brother is lacking in some way, and calling for love, they have blocked their own ability to heal themselves. The light IN you is the same as the light IN them, being of God. This light is capable of healing them if you SUPPLY IT. The Holy Spirit is capable of SUPPLYING LIFE to others through you. You GIVE the Holy Spirit TO your brother, and HE supplies what is lacking, and they are healed. This is how miracles are performed. Miracle working is always about sharing love with others AND with yourself.
Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, for those who temporarily have less. That means if your brother is weak and you are strong, or he is deluded and you are more sane, the Holy Spirit in you shines on him and brings him up to your level. This is also why Jesus says "forgiveness is not complete unless both of you have been corrected" (paraphrase).
Miracles are not something that you do in isolation. Nor are miracles "just for you", like where your own perception undergoes a shift. They are a means of repairing and restoring your Holy Relationship with others. They undo the separation that keeps you and others apart. They benefit BOTH OF YOU. This is why they are a maximal service you can render another. "I am not healed alone".
Miracles are ENTIRELY about what you SHARE WITH other people. The amount of love you are willing to see in others, also establishes the amount of love you will see in yourself. When you "shine" toward others, heartfelt, loving past their body, and recognizing the holiness in them, you are extending love and "connecting" your mind to theirs. Minds can only be joined in love. When minds connect, separation is erased, illusions vanish, and there is healing. The power of love from the Holy Spirit moves THROUGH you and actively HEALS you AND the other.
Recently when I have been attempting to pray for someone "in isolation", and would ask that God heal them or a certain part of the body etc, I would keep experiencing healing in my own self. I kept thinking this was some crazy mistake, that I wasn't asking correctly or focusing my mind properly. But truth is, miracles heal BOTH you and others equally. So if you are to be a miracle worker, you better be ready to start getting healed.
This is also why you can only give the miracles you have received, which means you are only WILLING to see a certain degree of love in others, corresponding to how much you are wiling to see in yourself. To love others more you MUST love yourself more, which is why you are supposed to accept the atonement for YOURSELF, SO THAT you can GIVE the miracles (perceptual blessings, mind healing) you have received from that acceptance/receiving of truth/love.
"Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother". "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." All of these speak to miracle working by erasing the separation BETWEEN you and OTHERS. Separation is double-sided, it applies to you AND others. Healing therefore heals BOTH of you. *ALL MIRACLES* unite you with your brother, therefore ALL miracles are devices for undoing the separation BETWEEN YOU and healing your relationship/communion. They are applied to BOTH of you.
Now, the Holy Spirit is the only "cause" of miracles, although Jesus is also involved "miracles are corrections introduced into false thinking by ME". He and HS are One. But what makes YOU one of "God's miracle workers", is your willingness to ALLOW God's healing to be in you and through you. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." Meaning you have to learn to allow love to shine onto your brothers, through you, in order to stop blocking love's extension. Your willingness, which makes you a co-creator, allows you to "do His works".
What about miracles such as moving mountains? The Holy Spirit can do that. You, if you are willing enough "do not limit what I can do through you or you will limit what I can do FOR you", He CAN do extraordinary things. You "work" the miracle by allowing Him to move on God's behalf, which requires that you be a "perceiver of love" in order to make a pure enough request. Prayer is the medium of miracles and we do have to be in a "high" state of mind - a loving mind of miracle readiness - in order for miracles to be performed of this kind.
Just as it's not merely your perception of others that heals, but rather the Holy Spirit IN YOU that moves through you and heals FOR you (you are a medium, not an isolated thing), when you are perceiving correctly there is NO LIMIT to what "you and HE" can do together. It's teamwork. It requires you to have the right perceptual content - "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles", while also being free enough of ego and fear to let love extend ITSELF. *IT* does the healing. You, plus the power of God, can bring healing to the world.
"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating." --- "you share His function on Earth" ... " do His works".
So miracle working is entirely to do with upholding the Golden Rule, it applies bi-directionally to you and others at the same time, they heal both of you (unless you are already healed), and they ALWAYS involve OTHERS.
Here is a selection of pertinent quotes....
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient. ... The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide."
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"The Holy Spirit CANNOT fail to undo FOR you everything you have learned" ... "The little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything."
"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."
"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" ... "He will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I WILL LET HIM."
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"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."
"Miracles are ENERGIZERS."
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"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit’s form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows. "
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"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."
"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."
"Miracles are not of this world.
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"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth"
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"The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship."
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"What you acknowledge in your brother, you ARE acknowledging in yourself. What you share you STRENGTHEN."
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"Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed."
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"The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself."
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"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
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"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
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"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."
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"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others."
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"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both."
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"A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
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"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
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"Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? You could not do so, if you realized that YOU CAN ONLY DARKEN YOUR OWN MIND. As you bring HIM back, so will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."
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"The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you WITH them, and free YOU from the past. Would you, then, hold the past AGAINST them?"
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"And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he."
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"The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns ... That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."."
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"Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it."
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"But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."
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"I give the miracles I have received." ... "No-one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."
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"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.
The light in them shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."
There is a common trend towards trying to accept everything in the world. To allow it. To give it permission. To let it be whatever way it is.
There is one part of this which is beneficial. If you resist things, you make them real. If you control things, you make them real. If you judge and attack things, you make them real. It would imply that if you accept them "as they are", you can find some kind of peace, where you're not really attached to outcomes or conditions or situations or people. As if the world will just fluidly flow over your experience without triggering anything or upsetting you. Because you accept it. But this also can be a trap, and a massive justification for keeping suffering and death.
Because the fact is that this world is not real. It's an illusion, and everything in it is a lie. It's not supposed to be happening. It's not natural. Whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you. If you accept the world into your mind, you make it real. If you are in a position of "allowing" it, you are handing over causality and permission and power to it. If you are trying to simply be at peace with whatever happens, you are not owning the fact that you are making everything happen. If you focus on trying to transcend whatever's going on, which can bring a sense of peace, it does not necessarily bring into question whether things are happening or not.
The task at hand is more to do with learning to recognize that this world is NOT happening. There is not anything to really ACCEPT about it because it isn't really doing anything. You don't have to ADJUST TO conditions, or try to persuade yourself to be okay with suffering, sickness, unhappiness and death. You're not supposed to be having any of these things.
The only true acceptance, the only thing you should ever accept, and thus believe in fully, is THE ATONEMENT. God's truth. Reality. This world is not reality. In accepting the atonement you are accepting something that should be accepted. Something which will bring a cure. Something which will instill miracle mindedness and the ability to be invulnerable. Something which puts you in touch with the power of God, to have dominion over this fake world.
There is merit in not being in such a 'fight' with the world, not resisting it or taking sides against it or having this whole ego un-peaceful counter-attack scenario in your mind. Yes, so it's good to accept things on that basis, because it at least includes less conflict mentally. BUT, this also should not be on a basis that "the world is real" and "things are really happening" and "bodies are really sick" and so on. You should not be accepting that these things are true. You should not be "allowing" them as such. Otherwise you become a passive, miracle-less fence sitter with no power to do anything.
Detaching from the world is great. But it must include the *recognition* that the world is not real, it is entirely illusory, you should be not "agreeing with" it, you should not be justifying it, and you should not be confusing acceptance with authorizing death. It may seem paradoxical but accepting the TRUTH should entail the DENIAL OF the world, the rejection of death, and a demonstration of symbolic immortality in the body.
You are not supposed to just find a way to "let the world happen", you're supposed to become aware you are DREAMING IT and MAKING IT happen, and thus regain power OVER it to change it at will. That's a massively different position than merely trying to get comfortable with "real suffering" or "whatever happens that I did not cause." There is no causality in that kind of acceptance, it's a total passivity. Yes you can try to accept that you feel unhappy but you shouldn't be feeling unhappy. You can try to accept your body is sick but it is not supposed to be sick. Are you going to accept your death?
You might think well, if I am so at peace and accepting of what's SEEMING to happen in this illusory world, why would I bother changing it? Because if the body is sick, the mind is STILL sick. The body can't get healthy unless the mind is healthy. And the mind cannot get healthy while the body is being constantly bombarded with mind attack. "A broken body IS PROOF the MIND HAS NOT BEEN HEALED." So the body DOES have to get healed as well, which means the reversal of sickness and death. Death has to get UNDONE, not accepted. Otherwise there is no true resurrection of mind OR body.
ACIM does not teach to "accept everything that happens in a dream world". It teaches there IS no dream world and YOU are the dreamer who makes it be whatever you decide it is. And if you change your mind, THE WHOLE WORLD MUST CHANGE. This is a course in CAUSE, not being passive. "Members of my party are ACTIVE workers." Will you lay down and let death happen against your will, and try to "accept it"? You cannot be at peace with death. Death can only "happen" if you CONSENT to it, which means you CAUSE it, because you have an attacking unhealed mind that's not at peace.
If you want people, you must learn to undo the world and stop dreaming of nightmares. Not because otherwise you'd be at the effect of external causes of un-peace but because being at peace goes hand in hand with HAVING POWER AND BEING THE CAUSE.
I used to think that "false empathy" meant when you are basically empathizing with someone, sympathizing, or sort of getting into their emotional drama etc....
Now I see it is more than that. It means really `joining` with someone in, and agreeing about, ANY kind of ego scenario, relating to ANY appearance or ANY illusion that covers up the immortal, God-created Real Self.
If a person comes along and is in any way demonstrating belief in being anything less than God created them, perfectly whole and holy and innocent and invulnerable, then that's an ego drama. If I go along with it, buy into it, join with them in it, participate in it, take it seriously, listen to it, judge it, engage with it or any of that, that's me entering into false empathy.
It's kind of like a false Oneness... a false joining, that says, I will join with you in a subjective illusion and pretend it is objectively real, and the two of us will then be 'infected' with this ego attitude and at least we'll agree with each other that this it the truth.
Real empathy then would entail absolutely not joining in ANY ego whatsoever, overlooking all ego, persona, and appearances, not believing in or taking seriously ANY presentation that runs against that (including anyone seeming to be sick, diseased, afraid, upset, etc)... holding the light, holding the truth, being a beacon, a leader, and strength that invites the other person to remember who they really are.
THE HOLY TRINITY is a major part of ACIM's model of Heaven. More or less, the holy trinity is ALL THAT EXISTS IN REALITY.
"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD'S."
"The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exclude YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. "
"The Son of God IS part of the holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within ITS levels, because they are of One Mind and One Will."
"Only the levels of the Trinity are capable of Unity. The levels which man created by the Separation are disastrous. They cannot BUT conflict."
"Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left your Creator."
"He is first here only in the sense that He is first in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator because HE created His co-creators."
"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic." (note this doesn't mean he isn't real or eternal, he symbolizes heaven in his "perception" while his being remains fixated on God's reality, and he is a permanent creation.)
"Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity."
Separation is really about trying to do everything alone, without God. After all, if you separate yourself off from God, who was essentially doing everything for and with you, you end up in a position where you have do it all yourself. You then start to depend on yourself in every respect.
Depending on your own thinking, your own efforts to assign meaning, to figure out what things are, what to do and when to do it, making plans, making decisions, interpreting everything through your own personal beliefs, trying to single-handedly do everything without help.
It's as if we say, "I don't need God". And then we start developing all kinds of needs, lacks and limitations. And now we seem to have to fend off the attacking world single-handedly. And then we develop pride and prowess and abilities and skills and information and all manner of defenses to try to bolster our ability to survive.
But the fact is this. All of our efforts to do everything alone, has made us miserable and exhausted. It has produced every conceivable form of suffering and sickness. It has eroded all relationships and trust. It has made us seem small and weak and helpless.
We've basically tried to take on this huge burden of managing "our own life" to the exclusion of depending on God, and we've found that we're horrendously under-equipped. We've been just carrying a heavy weight of burden trying to be "the one" that does everything. And then to top it off we've framed our efforts at "independence" as something to be celebrated, complete with victories and successes, and all manner of self-appointed empty awards.
What I see ACIM telling me now is that basically, I have orphaned myself, and put myself in a position of loneliness and isolation, such that I've ended up having to carry the weight of the world. To do alone everything that I should be allowing God to do for me. It's like someone who refuses to accept any help and prides themselves on their seeming "abilities" to accomplish goals on their own.
But the course is saying hey, the Holy Spirit is here to do all this for you and through you, to mange your life for you, to look after your body and health for you, to think and inspire and heal for you. But it's going to require two things - a willingness to give up your position of autonomy, and a willingness to surrender to trusting in being dependent on a higher power.
It really boils down to a question of, do you want to be separate anymore? Do you want to be alone in everything you do? Do you really want to have to be the one that figures everything out and makes all decisions and solves all problems and heals all wounds?
The fact is this. The more you separate off from God, the less power you have. The more you isolate from help, the smaller and weaker you become. The more distance you put between you and God, the less capable you are of doing anything at all. You basically lose everything by moving away from him. You THINK that you're gaining everything, but it's really an illusion, and you end up with literally nothing. Or as Jesus puts it, you will think you are gaining the whole world, but will lose touch with your soul.
What we call an "ego" is just some soul who is trying to be separated off from the shared dependency of relationship with God. It's a self that doesn't want to share and doesn't want to be part of the whole. It's a self with an attitude problem of selfishness, autonomy, specialness and every aspect of the ego mindset that comes with that. It's just someone who is alone and afraid, lost and confused, and doesn't know how to get out of it.
The more you try to gain in terms of what you can do on your own, the more you lose in terms of what you share with God. The more you think you are becoming strong in your independence, the more strength you lose. The more you think that you are so confident on your own that you don't need anyone, the more afraid and vulnerable and limited you become.
The only thing that we're really being asked to do is to come home and rejoin the family. To stop being an outsider or a loner. To open up to sharing with God again. To re-establish your dependency on God for everything, and learn to not want to do anything alone any more. It's God's heart just reaching out and saying, hey son, I love you, come back to me, you're still welcome. Come home.
And so this whole thing is indeed like the prodigal son, running away from God believing you are so capable of going it alone, until you run into pain and misery and suffering, and then finally realize it is utterly impossible to live without him. And then you return to him, willing to surrender and let go of all efforts to do everything without him. To give up all judgment and all evaluation, all decisions and all plans, all interpretations and all meanings, and everything you thought you had to do when you had no-one else to depend upon.
Just to let yourself be a part of God again. Supported and protected, nourished and cared for, guided and directed, loved and made whole.
You want to perform miracles? You need to learn how to pray. It's right here in the miracle principles:
"11 Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed." - ACIM
You enter prayer to experience and receive God's love and to thank Him for providing it, and then you fill up with that love, and then you overflow that love to others, which is an extension of love - a miracle. If you can't pray/commune with God and receive His love, then you cannot work miracles, because all miracles come from God.
Again, if you want to work miracles, you need to learn to pray. Miracles aren't just shifts in perception or changes or mind. They are what flows to HEAL mind when love is allowed, and their extension extends that healing to others.
If you are working with ACIM purely on a level of fixing thoughts and changing perceptions so that YOU are more at peace in ISOLATION, you are missing the point of what a miracle is, and the power that is being offered for you to share. You are working on healing so that you can become a medium for miracles to flow through communion/prayer with God, not just so you can float around the world in isolation being a bit more happy or less reactive. The purpose here is to learn to share in God's love and to extend its miraculous power to everyone.
The world of physical form is a projection of the ego thought system. It is based on a belief in separation, which has produced 3D images of physical objects, all of which appear to be different and unique. And every form screams "we are not one" or "I am not the same."
Miracle mindedness, on the other hand, is an opposite state, in which there is no regard for differences, forms or appearances. All differences are completely ignored. All forms are recognized as a deception. All illusions are the same. All seeming levels and degrees and variations and intensities and difficulties and measures are completely irrelevant.
The world of bodies is the world of form. And form takes on many forms, being the forms of the same one error. The single belief in separation has produced a fragmented world, with an entire hierarchy of differences. Big and small and heavy and light and round and square and near and far and every other conceivable difference is represented here. But they are all forms of separation.
Separateness produces form, and form pictures the ways in which the separate parts are separate. One object sticks out more, another is smaller, another a different color. One has extra parts, which the others lack. One moves in a different way, while the others seem more or less alive. And this results in an entire world filled with contrast and conflict, competition and inequality. A world of a trillion truths.
"Illusions are always illusions of differences."
"Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside."
"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."
"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation."
"He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth, or any attribute they seem to have"
"You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest."
"the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal."
But miracle mindedness is not deceived by any of this. It is a state of mind of wholeness, not fragmentation. It completely ignores all forms of difference, all measures of value, all sense of degrees and proportions and ratios. It has absolutely no regard for the infinite ways in which separation shows up. It does not buy into the temptation to believe that one thing is NOT another thing, seeing ALL illusions as the same and equal.
To live in a world of form is to live as though surrounded by many different things. Countless objects, each with many parts and sub-parts. Even to the extent of all things being formed from tiny little microscopic parts. All of them different, all of them unique. No two objects are even alike.
And so you believe this is normal and natural. You think this is reality. You accept it as if the form of an object defines its meaning, its true inherent nature. As if apples are apples and oranges are oranges, and they have no thing in common. As if cars are not houses and dogs are not cats and Earth is not Mars and one body is not another body.
But moving toward miracle mindedness must entail the questioning of appearances. The questioning of ALL forms. Every disguise. Every temptation to believe that the form of an object is truth. To recognize that all objects are disguises. They are all projected images from an egoic belief in separation. Not one of them is anything else other than just another form of the same one error, the same one problem, the same one illusion.
This must entail moving away from a dependency on different forms. Believing that life is normal when you use a car key to open the car door, and a house key to open your home. Or that one food is different to another. Or that some kinds of weather are better. Or that some relationships are more special. Or that one piece of clothing is different to another and changes your whole appearance.
This whole "lifestyle" of living in a world of differences, has to go. We can't continue believing that there are in fact many things here. That is the deception. We can't keep believing that we're surrounded with an utter buffet of choices. As if there are even any different choices at all. As if things are really any different.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."
We have to stop being dependent on unique special forms, and particular options, and conditions and styles and themes and preferences. We have to let go all prejudices and all ways that we make some parts of the world special.
We should not believe that one form of sickness is different to another, just based on how it looks or its severity or its size or appearance or how it seemed to arrive. We should not be deceived that a dead body is more dead than a living one. Or that a small wound is more difficult to heal than a gaping hole. Or that there is any such thing as "orders of difficulty."
The illusion of separation has not only taken on many forms, it has resulted in a vast hierarchy. A tremendous amount of different values, different amounts, severities, intensities, difficulties, degrees of problem, sizes of activity, degree of value or credit, amount of importance, etc. We've built our whole lives on the basis of fictional differences, buying into illusion after illusion of how "this is not the same as that".
We have to put all of this aside and recognize that ALL FORMS ARE LIES. Every way that one form says "this is how I am not the same", is a lie. They are ALL doing this. Every object is doing this, claiming to be different somehow. And we buy into it. And now we believe in the differences, and set up a whole egoic thought structure of rules and laws and limits of freedom, about how one thing is more or less something than something else.
Miracle mindedness is the state you reach when all of this is undone. When you are not convinced by ANY forms. When you see clearly and recognize the truth that ALL forms are a temptation to believe something that isn't true. You are not deceived by size or weight or severity or strength or proportions or values or importance or colors or shapes or types or classifications. You just put them ALL into one category - they are all equally unreal, equally the same, ONE ILLUSION, ONE PROBLEM, ONE SOLUTION.
This is why in miracle mindedness there are NO ORDERS. There is no hierarchy, no levels, no separations, no divisions. There is no sense of one thing being different to another. No belief in the deception that a slightly broken body is different to a severely damaged one. Why raising the dead is really on different than curing a headache. Why converting water into wine is effortless. Why walking on water is no more special or different than walking on land.
Once all things are equalized, once all differences no longer deceive, once all problems are recognized as one problem, once all forms are seen to be untrue, and once you stop living in a world of many reactions and many relationships and many separate conditions, your mind becomes WHOLE. It becomes unified and singular and "one with itself." It is not divided or twisted or mis-shapen by differences of any kind.
"You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible."
Such a mind is miraculous because it utterly ignores differences. It can have power over them all because it is not deceived by them. It sees that to change one small illusion is in fact NOT different to changing a "big one".
That to raise the dead is NOT really a bigger feat than curing a headache. And it is precicely this equality and singularity which gives the mind its POWER. A power which is derived from being undivided and singular. You are a singular whole unified one being, presently confronted with a world of many differences and separations, learning to disregard all of these alien separations so that you can be restored to ONE SINGULAR STATE. One mind. One voice. One will. One power. One wholeness. One capability. And this capability has the power to move mountains, just as much as to reconfigure objects, or materialize different body images, or to do anything at all. Because a mind free from differences is a mind free from limits, and there is nothing your holiness cannot do.
The course is moving us away from fragmentation, towards INTEGRATION. Away from a split mind, towards WHOLENESS. Away from many, towards ONE. Away from separation, towards ATONEMENT. Away from hierarchies, towards UNIFORMITY. Away from exclusion, towards INCLUSION. And away from isolation, towards UNION. Away from rejection towards JOINING. Away from selfishness towards SHARING. Away from the eseparation, towards GOD.
"In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"When you maintain that there MUST be order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would WITHHOLD from truth."
"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY"
"there is no order of difficulty in healing."
"Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless."
"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient."
"This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles."
"The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same."
"To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES."
"Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other."
"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?"
"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."
"Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception."
"There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same."
"WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN."
"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness."
"He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them."
"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."
"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."
"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."
"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."
"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."
"As you survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any thought of hierarchy among them. "
"The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly."
"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. The body's eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, so only the mind is responsible for seeing."
"Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."
"It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."
"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."
"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."
As you work to forgive yourself and recognize your own innocence, you become more loving. But you're going to find that this cannot happen in isolation.
As you increase your light, and no longer believe sinfulness or guilt within yourself, you're going to encounter the fact that other people still regard themselves as sinful and guilty.
This puts you in a position where you "have more" than they do, and are in a lighter place than they are.
"Miracles supply a lack." "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."
If you were to simply "drop down" to where they are at, through false empathy, you will lose your light. You also can't maintain a forgiving perspective on yourself if you still run into the obstacles to peace that other people put in place.
So that means that sooner or later, as you continue to ascend into the light, you're going to have to start moving past other people's guilt. Whatever their belief or darkness is, if you don't forgive it in them, you can't maintain your state of mind.
"When I am healed I am not healed alone."
That means you begin to no longer support other people's self attack. You start to question whether they are guilty. And you start to support the light in them as well. You begin to steer them towards the light, so that you can remain in light.
As this progresses, it's going to become very natural that as you become more loving, you will automatically uplift others as well. You will have to not believe that they are guilty, in order for you to not be guilty. You can't have different rules for them and you - that's ego.
So that means that you becoming healed, you begin to turn into an instrument for healing.
"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."
This isn't even really optional, unless you want to go back into darkness. By stepping into light and recognizing the Golden Rule, and developing what is now a shared interest, you literally HAVE to have a healing and forgiving attitude towards others in order to maintain your own. This isn't a passive state of just sitting there observing, it's an active DOING and a going out and an expressing towards others in relationship.
This positions you as a healer and a forgiver of others. And I don't mean in the sense that you do forgivenesses about the stuff you think other people do to you. If you have BECOME healed, you are now in a position to undo the confusion of others and shine past their blockages.
Your mind becomes constructive, rather than destructive, as it realizes that only by supporting light can it move towards heaven, and only by moving towards creation can it move away from its own self destruction. This puts you in a position to constructively assist others who are trying to destroy themselves.
"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."
It is not only your duty and role, but also your right and privilege, to assist others in this way, healing them and enlightening them and steering them towards their innocence.
"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it."
"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
The correct and effective forgiveness of yourself does lead to an automatic function of healing on earth, in relation to others, which you share with the Holy Spirit. This function positions you as the light of the world.
"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world."
"Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."
In this function, this natural role, you profess Christ. And this professing or expressing of Christ is a healing function which is given to others. To those who have less light than you, in order to raise them up and resurrect them.
"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."
This is the point at which you become a miracle worker who is in service to others.
"Miracles are the maximal service you can render another."
Serving, therefore, is what you automatically do, or move into doing, as your own awakening progresses. If you have received miracles then it is automatic that you will give them. To receive them you have to recognize your innocence, which you have to believe is true of everyone, otherwise it cannot be fully believed. And this recognizing that the same truth (golden rule) applies to everyone makes you ready and willing and able to reinforce it in others."You can only give the miracles you have received."
Thus you join the great crusade, you become the atonement, you are now part of the plan and a mechanism which God is using to bring about the healing and awakening of your brothers. As a Teacher of God you now function as part of God's way of bringing everyone home, because atonement is more than just about your own personal salvation, it's about the salvation of the entire sonship.
Here's another angle on the problem of regarding ACIM as "non-duality."
In ACIM we're told that God is a creator, and has created sons. You are one of those sons, which means you are a child of God. It means God is your parent. God is the CAUSE of you, and you are an EFFECT. In the separation from God, or "fall of man", there was a rebellion against God being your parent. The sons of God rejected God's causation of them and wanted to reinvent/create themselves.
They developed a problem with God's authority. The wanted to have power over God and to be his equal, instead of being his child. They did not want to be secondary creations, they wanted to be primary. They did not want to be an effect of him, they wanted to be "free from his influence".
This then led to the making of a world of bodies and egos where we would try to reinvent ourselves and deifne what we are, without God. But this means that in order to wake up to reality, to become "one with God", to experience oneness and truth, you have to actually return to a role and function where you are SECOND to God.
It is not about returning to being first, or primary, or God's equal, or having the same function as God. It is not about you going to the top of the mountain and having nothing above you.
In order to get out of hell you have to undo your problem with authority. You can only have a problem with authority if in truth you actually are BELOW God and God is GREATER than you, so that there might be grounds for wanting to overthrow his authority over you.
"recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER."
If you subscribe to a non-duality idea of reality, where you claim to return to oneness, where you claim to be God, where you see yourself as not a fully-created separate being or a "child of God", and where you do not acknowledge God as your father, you are missing a HUGE portion of ACIM's teaching.
ACIM doesn't teach that you are going to just become the oneness and be God and rule reality. It says that you need to accept God as your source, receive your inheritance from him, that you are only what HE has created you to be, that your only function is to EXTEND him, and that you will forever be an EFFECT of him.
This idea of being an effect of God, second to God, is absolutely core in ACIM's metaphysics. There MUST BE a created second being, a child of God, a son of God, in order for there to have ever been a separation ie authority problem in the first place. There could be no rebellion without you being LESS than God, in a sense.
So non-duality doesn't usually accomodate this. Nor does traditional ideas of "its all oneness". It doesn't usually acknowledge that God has created anything, that he has children, that YOU have a parent, or that there is something BIGGER AND GREATER THAN YOU.
But ACIM is telling you that the only way for you to find salvation and return to reality is to accept that God is your father, NOT your equal. You cannot regain your inheritance without accepting that you inherited it FROM God BECAUSE he is your parent. And you cannot resume your role and function in reality as co-creator without acknowledging that God is the FIRST CAUSE and you are SECOND. You are a CO-CREATOR not the PRIMARY creator. God came first.
"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him."
Since for example in Adviata non-duality usually means "there is no second", it is TOTALLY incompatible with ACIM's teaching. It does not acknowledge God having a child, or of you BEING a child. OR that your ultimate role and maximal experience of reality is going to entail you being what SOMEONE ELSE wants you to be. That you are AS GOD created you to be, not what "you chose".
It thus requires humility to accept that God is greater than you and that in ultimate reality you are going to return to a position in which you are NOT FIRST, you are not the prime creator, you are not the all-encompassing source of reality, and you DO NOT MAKE THE RULES.
Non-duality rarely suggests any compatibility with this idea of being a CHILD of God, or of there being any grounds for an authority problem, or a necessity for its undoing. Usually it points to the dissolution of your self, the erasing of God's CHILD, and some kind of lofty return to you being "only God". As if you are the oneness and you are the ultimate. YOU ARE NOT!!!!
God is first, you are second. That is what acceptance of the atonement means. God is your father and he is greater than you, and you're going to have to "suck it up" and accept it instead of wanting to be the central figure and star of the show. You are a secondary being. Not less than God but also not greater, and not equal. You are not equal to ultimate reality. You are a part within it.
To recognize this is to recognize that ACIM cannot be non-duality because it has to accommodate SONS OF GOD in order to accommodate the authority problem AND its proper undoing. You cannot wake up to reality without accepting that you are AN EFFECT of a creator other than yourself, that you did not create yourself, that you are not "God" in this sense, and that your function is to PASS ON what you have RECEIVED from him.
"The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function."
What you are is given by God and decided by God. You will have to be willing to accept there is a creator GREATER THAN YOU if you want to experience the truth. As such non-duality is generally speaking a problem with the authority of God, because it positions you AS God or AS his equal, and this is inappropriate. It suggests even in some cases that God is dreaming and making death. To say "I am God" is the arrogance of the ego.
Unless you can accept that reality contains you as a second-level creation, you are not listening to what A Course in Miracles is saying. And you are then missing out on the beautiful relaltionship which comes from the recognition that you HAVE A REAL PARENT. Someone who is in fact literally protecting you always, is maintaining you forever, and is making sure that your innocence is permanently guaranteed FOR you. This is not all about "me me me" self-centered non-dualtiy "I will be God" garbage.
Forgiveness only seems to be needed, as a process, because you currently believe there are things that need to be forgiven.
In other words, you currently are experiencing unforgiveness, and therefore the world seems unforgiven and unforgiving. And therefore, you think that you need to forgive.
But this process of forgiveness, is supposed to take you from a state of unforgiveness - an unforgivingattitude, to a state of forgiveness - a forgiving attitude.
It's supposed to occur to you that the purpose of forgiving is to undo the perceived need to 'do forgiveness'. Because ultimately there is not anything that needs to be forgiven.
There is a forgiven world here. A world of innocence. A world with no guilt. But you don't perceive it because you have judged it as unforgiven and unforgivable, having judged yourself as such.
So it seems like you need to do some forgiveness. And as you do this forgiveness, what you're doing is re-accessing the awareness that whatever it was that you thought was unforgivable, is forgivable, and is in fact innocent. An ancient hatred has become a present love.
Whatever it was you thought was judged and hated, is innocent. Whatever it is you thought was really happening, is not happening and you don't even see it anymore.
So as you proceed with your forgiving, your practice, you should gradually come to realize, there is less and less to forgive, precisely because you're becoming aware of the real world. You're becoming aware that everything is forgivable and forgiven.
Forgiveness ultimately is not a process, but a state of awareness in which you see forgivingly, with a forgiving attitude, and this forgiving attitude does not show you things to forgive. It does not show you errors or mistakes. It only shows you innocence.
This attitude of being forgiving doesn't mean you are having to constantly forgive and forgive and do more work and counteract more crap that shows up. When you are in a forgiving attitude, you do not see crap. You do not see problems. You don't see enemies or things to forgive.
So its a bit of a paradox, that when you have a truly forgiving attitude, when you are in the Holy Spirit's mind, you see everything as forgiven already. You pro-actively fore-give, which means you give ahead of time, which means you extend love and you extend innocence and truth and therefore that is what you will perceive because that is your reality.
In your reality there isn't any 'thing' to forgive. All is forgiven.
So really, you think you need to do lots of forgiveness still. Yes, for a time. But only because you think forgiveness is needed. Only because you're not yet able to sustain a consistently forgiving attitude. Only because it hasn't yet dawned on you that everyone including you is completely innocent and calls only for love.
So as you work you way through this forgiveness 'process', this undoing, this purifying, you're really erasing the mistakes that you're making in your forgiveness, you're polishing up your attitude, you're getting ready to see with forgiving eyes. You're preparing to look upon the world with innocence in order to see only innocence.
This process is itself not forgiveness. This process is the way that you gradually wake up to forgiveness. It's a sorting out, of what is forgiveable and what is not forgivable. Eventually you will accept that everything is forgivable, and as such, will no longer seen anything as unforgiven.
A forgiving attitude shows you a forgiven world. A forgiving attitude doesn't give you lots of work to do trying to counteract illusions of judgement. A forgiving attitude is simply clarity. It's the clarity of truth, the clarity of awareness. A forgiving attitude shows your mind, clearly, that when you can see clearly and with truth, you are able to properly discern that THERE IS ONLY INNOCENCE.
All appearances of things not being innocent, only looks that way because you have blocks in your mind. All appearances that there is nasty dirty stuff and grievous enemies to overcome, is because of blocks in your mind. These things DO NOT REALLY EXIST.
You see them, you look upon them, precisely because your mind is distorted and is projecting images that aren't real. You see enemies because you are attacking your innocence. You see attack and threat and danger and victimhood because you don't realize that you can't be a victim. You see impossible things because you are not yet aware of how these things are impossible - you actually take them seriously and think they are possible.
So ultimately, this forgiveness process that we all undertake, it's really a transition away from "I need to forgive" towards "there is nothing to forgive". There is nothing to forgive because there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no attack, there is no harm. There is nothing to forgive because nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has happened. Holy Spirit sees this. You need to learn to see it too. And then you will be done with the 'effort' of forgiving, which ultimately is not a 'doing', but a 'being'.
Everyone loses when there is separation. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you fall on. It doesn’t matter which side you take. It doesn’t matter who wins the conflict. Everyone loses. Anyone participating in the ego’s game automatically loses.
If you can think of the ego like a third party, whose sole interest is to "come between", it has no real intention of acting for the benefit of either party. All it wants is to pit two people against each other, to reinforce division.
It couldn’t care less if you think you are the one who is right or not. It doesn’t care who is righteous or correct or better or worse. It has no allegiance to anyone. All it wants is to make two brothers separate.
As a third party, the ego schemes and plots to find ways to make two people fight. It does this when a person has a split mind, hoping to increase the split. It wants to intensify the division between that person and themselves, by intensifying the division between that person and another.
If you could see, that you and your enemy are both in the same boat, and you both have a common enemy - the ego - perhaps you will see the sense in uniting against IT, rather than against each other.
All it takes is to stop for a moment, and realize, you know what, "the ego" is trying to make us fight right now, to come between us and pit us against each other. "It" wants us to separate. It is playing us off against each other. Neither of us is going to be better off because if we become separate from each other, we both lose unity and wholeness.
The only sane option then is to unite against the ego, by stepping out of the argument and both brothers agreeing to a "shared interests", a common ground, in which they no longer see each other as the enemy, but simply recognize the ego is the "enemy".
When neither of you wants to allow the ego to get ITS way, you will side with each other and join as one. When you decide to do this, the ego has been completely disempowered. But if you do not decide to do this, you are feeding it.
I have found this useful in my own life in experiences of arguments with some people where, I stopped and said, you know what, the ego wants us to be arguing right now, it wants us to disagree, so that it can make us both unhappy.
And this totally cut through the whole argument because it reframed the entire thing in a fuller light, a broader picture, in which the ego was called out as that which was the "problem" and not either person. We were quickly able to then repair the damage seeing that we were in fact in the same boat with the same desire for "separating less".
The only war is a war in which everyone loses. There are no winners in the ego’s dream of death. If you play with the ego, you WILL lose. It is guaranteed. It’s the only rules of the game. Try to use the ego and you will suffer. The only way out of the trap is not to play it at all.
It is impossible to find a loophole, or a workaround, or some way you can find success, or a way to win, or a way to benefit more, or to be the one who comes away with no effects while the other suffers. It is absolutely impossible. The ego’s game is totally rigged against everyone involved.
As soon as you participate, you are guranteed suffering and loss. Even if you seem to "win", you still will suffer and lose.
Winning requires defeat. Success requires failure. To win is to lose, and to succeed is to fail. The only winners are those who have separated themselves from others, and that is a loss with far higher cost than any bounty can compensate you for. It requires you to be separate from yourself, and so now you are worse off, in the name of victory.
The only way out of this is to recognize the ego is a pointless, futile, hopeless, impossible mess of dead ends and failure and disaster. It simply does not work, ever. And therefore it is not working for you. It works only for itself and its own aims of separation.
Do not be fooled into thinking the ego can be your savior or your hero or your friend or protecting you or making you succeed or win. It will never do anything other than lead you away from God, away from your Home, away from yourself, and away from happiness.
The temptation to believe that you are smart enough to get way with using it and not pay the consequences, is a disaster for all concerned. There are no winners in the ego world. There is only loss. The only true gain is the return to God, to wholeness, to sharing, to shared interests, and to recognizing your brother as your equal and innocent counterpart.
Your brother is not your enemy. Your ego is. And its attacking you as much as your brothers when you separate from them. Separation is a double-edged sword. Both of you always suffer.
Everything in the world is an illusion. Everything. And this includes the bodies which are seemingly healthy, the bodies which are seemingly sick, and the bodies that seem dead. This also means that trees which have fresh green leaves are as much an illusion as trees whose leaves have fallen and are decaying. Images of a lovely sunset are just as much an illusion as stormy skies. Animals leaping around happily is just as much illusion as carcasses on the side of the road.
In the ego world, there are symbols, because it is a dream. And sometimes these symbols seem to imply that some parts of the world are different to others, or mean something that other parts do not mean. So we are used to the idea that a dead body is the idea of death. But bodies that are walking around are also not really alive either. We can think that when the leaves are falling from the trees, it's death happening, but perhaps we didn't realize when the leaves were on the trees that it was still a dream of death.
So in this world, there is deception all over the place. Things appear to be something they are not. The symbols that look like life only seem to be life, while the ones that look like death are only different in their forms. And it is us who have given meaning to them and decided "this one means death and that one means life". All of the forms, in whatever condition they are, are forms of death. As Jesus tells us:
"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. *****In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death.***** Yet both are judgments on ****what is not life****, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven (e.g. on Earth), only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true. "
So because illusions are forms (objects, shapes, materials, bodies, planets etc), their content is not true. They are illusions of life and death. An illusion of life is not really life. Life actually means ETERNAL LIFE, that which can never perish, that which is not born and does not grow and does not die and has no sickness or transformation. Life means that which never changes because it is permanent. Only in Heaven's reality is there eternal life, and that is the only REAL life there is. The rest of what we call life, the "life forms" of this world, are an illusion of life AT BEST.
"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."
Here Jesus is contrasting vertically the two states or levels. In Heaven all things live and cannot die. In illusions, all things die and cannot really live. The world we see is an illusion of a world that God did not create.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
So having been in this world a long time, we are likely very used to the deception that some things in the world are more alive than others. Some people seem to have more health than others. Some bodies seem more dead than others. This is an illusion. All bodies are illusions, and their condition or state does not make them more or less real. One is not really more or less dead than another. Even a dead body in the ground is, in terms of miracle mindedness, no more dead than a living body. This is why for a miracle worker "dead-seeming" bodies can be converted or resurrected into living-seeming bodies as a kind of "translation of form".
"EVERYTHING is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."
Again Jesus is telling us life is to do with mind and heaven, not to do with bodies. And it's reinforced by this idea.
""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! ***Without the idea of death there is no world.*** All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? "
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."
So every illusion, every part of the dream, all objects, all bodies, in all states and configurations, are all made of illusions, and ALL illusions are made of death. We have to therefore realize that death does not mean HORIZONTAL death, as in, at the end of the road of time for a given object. Or a state that follows on after another. Rather, the ENTIRE world we made, the universe, is all a dream of death. This whole planet is an idea of death.
VERTICALLY, anything on this level physically is an attempt to remove ourselves away from where eternal life is, away from Heaven. To move down a level. To drop into illusions, to sink into a dream world. And that world is based entirely on the idea that reality, Heaven, is not real. It's the idea of separation or opposition to Eternal Life, that you are exiled and outside of the Kingdom where eternal life is. And so it's the idea of NOT being alive. It's an idea of the opposite to life and permanence. And everything in it, no matter its form or appearance, is an illusion of death or partial life at best.
Even the most vibrant bunch of flowers is actually an illusion of not life. Even a newborn baby, of any species, is not a "new life" but rather a new form of death. Even as the season of spring seems to give life to new fresh growth, it is only later to transition into the season of "dying" and decay simply because both the birthing and dying are built into the system. Anything made of illusions has the mark of death upon it, meaning it already is formed from ideas of death and separation at the moment it is made. Every particle of matter is a separation idea and therefore an idea of opposition or attack upon God.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. ****Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it.*** Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust ****even as you made it.****"
So even at the instant that illusory things are first formed, they are formed FROM the idea of death and separation and limitation. They have it built in. If they are born at all, death is guaranteed and "happening" already. Because all forms are lacking in some way, they are all lacking what the other forms seem to have, and all of them are inherently limited and limiting. None of them are whole, none are complete, and not have eternal life. And every single body is an idea of being little and lacking and less than everywhere.
"This aching world (Earth) has not the power to touch the living world (Heaven) at all. 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."
So this world is not the living world. The Kingdom of God is the living world, because life means permanent life, not some temporary mockery of life. It is insane to think that real life is a matter of existing a little while and then dying at a bodily level. Life perpetuates and sustains and continues forever and cannot be destroyed. God creates ONLY the eternal.
"Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
"What God creates is eternal."
A big part of awakening then must entail the re-framing or re-evaluating of everything you see here. We need to realize the dream entails a hierarchy of illusions, and this hierarchy is entirely fictional. And everything it suggest through different FORMS is a deception and a temptation to believe something that isn't true.
Big bodies, small bodies, healthy bodies, dead bodies, are all the same illusion. None of them are more real than another. None of them are really closer to God. Big sickness, small sickness, tiny headache, massive tumor, none of them are any different. The only reason you would believe they are different, or more or less serious, is by looking to the appearance of their form and taking it as evidence or MEANING as to what the thing is. Every single illusion is deceptive. Every appearance is a lie.
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** ***They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful.*** Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
When we reach a state of not being deceived by ANY appearance, we are in miracle mindedness. Which is right mindedness. Here the hierarchy of illusions is completely flattened and meaningless. There is no difference between a form in one configuration or another. We are not deceived by physical form, shape or appearance. One type of appearance does not trigger worse reactions than another, or any reactions, nor means something different to the rest. A "dead" appearing body is not regarded as any more dead than a living one. As such raising the dead is seen as NO MORE DIFFICULT than curing a headache, because all illusions are the same and you are not deceived by them. You can raise the dead as easily as heal an upset feeling.
"You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first?"
When you are not deceived by illusions of life and death, forms of sickness, appearances of severity, you cannot be afraid, you can only be miraculous. Miracle mindedness transcends the world of illusions because The Miracle IS the state of Christ Vision which overlooks all forms. There is, from that position, nothing that your holiness cannot do. And it is from this state that you are a miracle worker. Here you are using miracles as demonstrations to PROVE that what appears to be death is not death, and you are under no laws but God's, where miracles break all the illusory laws of the world of appearances.
"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."
"Miracles reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for ****miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it.**** Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally KNOW what He is."
When we think of having lost someone, we might think of it in terms of ... they have gone away. And therefore I have lost them.
But I've been seeing that what really happens is ... we come to believe that we personally, ourselves, have lost something FROM ourselves. Some part or portion of our own self has become lost.
We can only really see ourselves as being in a "state" of loss if we actually believe that something has been taken away from ourselves. And this isn't just figuratively speaking, it literally goes to the depth of identity and says - some part of ME is missing.
If a person goes away and they are sort of technically lost or gone or absent, it shouldn't really mean anything in terms of whether or not you as a person are whole and complete. But if there is some ego or special relationship or body identification involved, or some kind of attachment, then when the person leaves you feel that YOU personally are losing something.
It's then not really about the other person going away, it's about actually believing somehow that WHAT YOU ARE has been diminished, what you have or what is yours or whatever, something has been taken from YOUR SELF and now you are not whole. Now you are less, lacking, in need, deprived, as if its not just a matter of someone having left - but actually a matter of something being ripped out of you like a portion of YOUR SELF has died. And now you really are grieving the loss of yourself.
So then we get into a state of experiencing loss and grief which seems to be about this other person missing, but it's really deep down a sense of YOU having died. Some part of you seems to be gone. Some part of you is lacking that is supposed to be there, they somehow became associated with the form of someone else you thought was separate.
Because ... if you were whole, how could you experience any sense of loss or lack or deprivation? If you are whole, you wouldn't be able to claim even that anything has been taken from you, that you're lacking, that you are in need, that you want something you do not have, etc. It's only by sort of taking the loss personally that you then go on to feel that you are actually at a loss - that something that "was yours" is "not there".
I am finding for myself that if I focus more on the Godly fact that God has given me everything and therefore I lack nothing, it becomes harder to claim or believe that I am at a loss. Or that loss is even possible. If I am as God created me then I must still be whole, I must be lacking nothing, in need of nothing, and can't in that wholeness justify or explain or rationalise that I have lost anything. Then what used to seem like, being hit with a sledgehammer and having something huge ripped away unfairly, softens into a mistaken perception of myself.
Indeed in that recognition of wholeness there is also a recognition of oneness, a oneness which binds you permanently to that other person who seemed to be gone, and proves to you that they have NOT gone, because they are literally YOU and are permanently a part of your self in oneness. PLUS you can still access them by being one with them in your mind. So you cannot ever lose them, provided you acknowledge the wholeness that you share.
Once you go into separation, ego, loss, the belief that "you lack", only then does it seem plausible to say that something is missing, something has been taken way (from who or what?), or something has died. And then it literally really becomes a belief that YOU have died, or some part of your own self has been lost. That you're no longer "whole" without some other separated-off person.
So I think we (speaking for myself) interpret losses of "other things" as actually loses as parts of our own self, due to the fact that we are all one. If we are one, and I "lose you", or you seem to be gone from reality, then part of my own self has been destroyed. And the belief in that is what causes the sense of loss - that some part of ME - as the whole - has been taken and is not there. It's not just about some other person, it's about seeing their absence as proof that somehow I AM LESS. And that's an ego thing.
It then boils down to whether or not you can accept that you are in and of yourself whole and complete and lacking nothing, missing nothing, deprived of nothing, and receiving love from God. As the course says, only you can deprive yourself of anything. So if you do NOT deprive yourself, how can you be in a state of lack? And if you do not deprive yourself, you do not deprive yourself of your brother either, and cannot buy into or believe they are "dead" or missing from your existence. Or from your SELF.
To be in loss and grief is really a state of believing that you are deprived, and that means you are depriving yourself. Only illusions can seem to be absent and what dies is not what the person really is anyway. Grief then means you are not recognizing that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are not lacking, that you are not in need, and that you have everything forever. That's self denial, at its root, even if on the surface it may point a finger and pretend to be about someone else. If you would remain in a state of wholeness and love, how could you experience loss at all?
We don't really ever lose anyone because we are all one forever. But believing in the loss of another must mean we believe in the loss of ourselves, per the golden rule. And it's really ourselves that needs to be put back together and remember our wholeness, so that we can end the sense of having lost anything at all. Real loss is impossible, when the truth is recognized.
I had a dream once where this man was trying to do something bad to me or was threatening, so I ran off and went up this hill where I met this other man. This other man at first seemed to be offering to shelter me from the attacker and to protect me from him, but it soon transpired that this other man was in fact the same attacker in disguise. Even though he was putting on a show to make me believe I could run to him for safety, he was in fact the very person I was trying to get away from.
This is how the ego functions. The ego is two-faced. It will pretend to be your savior and your attacker at the same time. It will pretend to be trying to make your life better while simultaneously making it worse. It will tell you it knows how to help you be 'less of the bad stuff' and 'more of the good stuff', while reinforcing the bad stuff and secretly being your enemy. It will even act like your savior, advising you to get rid of the ego entirely, which it knows will keep and increase the ego by getting you to side WITH it AND AGAINST IT at the same time.
The ego is a representation of SELF ATTACK, since it is what you used to attack yourself. It therefore is made of self attack - attacking of self. It is against itself and for itself at the same time. It will happily attack itself while trying to protect itself. It will choose to hurt itself while at the same time enjoying being hurt (pain=pleasure). It will warn you against death while bringing it about. It will tell you to go in a certain direction while leading you down the wrong path. It will tell you you're doing the right or wrong thing while doing the opposite. It is completely contradictory in every way. In particular we fall for its messages because we tend to want to side with 'good or bad' or one or the other polarity of its madness. But we need to recognize that ALL of the ego is false. ALL of the ego is a lie and a deception. The ego is a two-faced liar.
Even this 'anti ego' ego message comes to you in part from the ego enjoying attacking itself.
Cryptic!
There is a myth in the ACIM community relating to how perception works. It's based on the belief that we only have one perception, one outlook. There's us, in the body, perceiving. We read stuff about how perception shifts and how it changes what we see.
So we think ok, my one perception will shift and it will show me a different world. In other words, the bad stuff I was seeing will seem to disappear and I will see good stuff. We read about the spiritual eye and christ vision and we start to think that our entire perception is going to shift to ONLY seeing perfection and beauty.
This of course then implies that all the bad stuff, all the sickness, the wars, the conflict, the decay, it's all going to magically disappear from my perception and I will not see it at all. Which in turn means, all the hospitals will be empty, everyone with broken limbs will magically be fixed, it's my dream so the entire physical contents of the world will transform into a heavenly condition.
This is not what ACIM teaches.
Perception is a little more complicated because there are actually two perceptual mechanisms involved, and Jesus goes to great lengths describing them.
One perception mechanism, the spiritual eye, is direct "mind seeing", also referred to as the eyes of Christ or Christ Vision. This seeing does not rely on or depend on the body whatsoever. It is not limited by space or time or distance. The mind can be anywhere, go anywhere, see anywhere. It can see through walls.
In fact, the spiritual eye does not really acknowledge what ACIM refers to as "the veil" of physical matter, the granite block of sin. It looks right THROUGH it as if it's not even there and looks to the light of the real world beyond. This fixation on the face of Christ is one way of perceiving. But there is another.
The body has its own perceptual mechanism. It has physical eyeballs. Its form of perception depends entirely on illusions. And the body's perception is not capable of seeing anything else.
"Everything the body sees is an illusion."
"These eyes made not to see will never see"
"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."
"The body's eyes behold it as solid granite"
"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation"
"This is the function you have given your body's eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."
The body's perception relies entirely on the laws of physics, which the spiritual eye completely transcends. They rely on photons of light, concentrated particles of finite energy. Light has to collide with surfaces of physical forms, objects, matter, and be "denied" by the form. The light is thus "reflected" rather than passing through it. This reflected light then enters the body's eyes and passes images to the mind for interpretation.
This is a fundamental difference between the two types of perception. What Jesus refers to as "physical sight" can only "see" when vision is blocked. In other words, seeing has to stop at the surface of objects, in order to see them as being there. This seeing is therefore blinded by physical objects. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." Your eyes cannot see through matter.
Spiritual vision is the opposite, in that it does not stop at physical objects, it is not limited by matter or surfaces, it looks right through them as though they are just a very thin transparent veil. It overlooks the physical world because "to forgive is to overlook", looking beyond to the light.
Christ vision sees past the illusion of physical form to something beyond it - the face of Christ. Vision therefore doesn't really pay attention to what we would call physical stuff or the world of bodies, nor dose it function based on "seeing photons".
"This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ"
"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ"
"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body"
"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ."
"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all"
Essentially, body vision is blinded by perception of the form of physical objects/matter, but to the body this causes it to "see" them. ie my vision "stopped at" the surface. Spiritual vision does not use photons of light, does not depend on physical matter, and sees directly with the mind.
The thing is this. For anyone who has a body or is in a body, BOTH mechanisms for seeing are simultaneously functioning. It does not matter how asleep or awake you are, whether you have false perception or true perception. It does not matter if your mind is sick or healed. If you still have a body, the body's eyes STILL will continue to report images of the PHYSICAL ONLY world to the mind, at the same time as the mind trying to see past it. It will still see the forms of matter, bodies, wars, sickness and death.
This is also why for example you can read the ACIM workbook and STILL READ THE WORDS, even if you are making progress in opening christ vision, because you are still using the body's eyes at the same time. Those who wake up in the world are still perfectly capable of watching tv and choosing food and navigating around a building and driving a car.
This "double vision" of body sight and mind vision, will occur as a kind of parallel perception. As the spiritual eye opens, as your mind opens up to direct vision, as you overlook (forgive) the world of matter, your body is still going to function in exactly the same biologically limited manner. It is still going to relay messages to the mind as to what it senses and sees. And the mind has to sort out what these messages mean to it.
Mind, as the only seer ("only the mind sees"), is therefore receiving impressions either directly (the real world, face of Christ), or indirectly (via the body's eyes). It is experiencing TWO inputs for a while. In order to open the spiritual vision, investment in physical sight has to be diminished. But this only means that the images coming from the body are recognized as illusions not to be believed. Visions of reality are accepted as true, visions of the physical are recognized as false. There are two levels of perception:
"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye (which is now a second way to perceive), simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the ***two types or levels of perception*** is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind ***that has let itself be healed*** (has christ vision AND is using the body) will no longer acknowledge them. 3 ****There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others (seen with the body's eyes still), and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before****. 4 But the healed mind (having true perception, accurate recognition) will put them all in one category; they are unreal (recognized as false)."
This does not mean the mind is blind to sick bodies. NOR does it mean that seeing sick bodies is proof that your mind is sick! You see them because your BODY shows them to you, but your mind decides whether to BELIEVE what the body sees.
You still see physical signs of sickness because you're still USING the body. Even when the body is used by the Holy Spirit for communication and healing, even when your spiritual eye is very open, physical sight STILL functions and the mind DOES still SEE the images of the physical world. But it categorizes these images as "these are not reality, they are illusions." It is not tempted by them, deceived by them, nor does it believe they depict the truth. This means you are AWARE that you are in a dream ie "awake in the dream."
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die*** (via physical eyes).Yet they are not deceived by what they see (because the mind is not tempted and doesn't believe the physical is real)."
So you see (pun intended), while having a body, your mind is going to be in a state where you keep seeing the physical world, in its continued condition of constant inescapable corruption and death, complete with sick broken bodies and suffering and time and everything going wrong. BUT, the condition of your mind will be such that the MEANING of these images will be different. How they strike your mind will be different. And what you recognize them AS will be different.
You WILL still see the same FORM of physical matter, people with missing limbs, rotting leaves, dead carcasses, the signs of decay and weathering, rot and animals eating animals etc. But your mind will not regard them as true, real, valid, wanted, heaven, or God-created. They are simply recognized as an illusory dream. You will be aware that it is a dream. This doesn't mean you are blind to them, it means you see them accurately for what they are. True perception produces ACCURATE perception, which correctly interprets body visions, and is therefore NOT an INABILITY to see bodies.
Being in this position, where your mind can see beyond the physical world to the light of reality, where all differences and forms and shapes are not given credence, but where the physical is STILL included in what is seen due to still having eyeballs, you are now above the battlefield, in the world but not of it, aware of dreaming. And now you are in a position to be truly helpful.
What that means is, you can discern accurately what others are doing in the world. You can see their physical ailments. You can recognize their emotional and mental sickness - their call for love. And you are in a position to offer them help, WITHOUT making their sickness real. It's because you DO NOT believe the sickness (that you do see) is real, that you CAN help.
"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."
This is what makes you a teacher of God. Being in a position of greater truth YET STILL IN THE WORLD. Able to still REACH those who are still in bodies, able to heal both the minds AND bodies of others, able to see sickness and famine and war and death, and able to offer help. Able to heal the sick, transform matter, raise the dead, move mountains, etc.
This sets you up for the situation where there is a ground for performing miracles. Because only if you can be "more healed" (have opened christ vision, mind seeing past bodies) while simultaneously being exposed to those who are "less healed" (can still see them with the body's mechanisms), do you have any way to HELP anyone. You are still "where the sickness is" but are not sick yourself.
And miracles are a service. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less. They supply a lack. This is ONLY possible if you can be in the world in a healed state, NOT disappearing into a state of perfection. This is the function of a teacher of God. They help those who are less loving than themselves. They dissipate the fear in others. They raise the dead and heal the sick. This is ONLY possible because you have simultaneous Vision and body sight.
Christ needs your body to reach those who need reaching at a PHYSICAL level. Miracles are needed to demonstrate PHYSICALLY symbols of truth and to prove to those whose eyes are not open that there is a better way. The body is used to communicate to those who see only bodies, that their spiritual vision may open. And miracles are performed to liberate their minds from being blinded by perception of form. To demonstrate that the laws of the world can be broken.
ONLY when the face of Christ is FULLY seen, at the instant of atonement, is the investment in physical sight COMPLETELY undone. And investment only means dependence upon and belief in. The "veil" of physical matter, which the body alone can see ("only the body makes the world seem real"), appears as thin and transparent to the healed mind. It is seen through like x-ray vision to the light beyond.
And then eventually it vanishes from sight completely as the real world is seen but for an instant. Only as the world is not seen AT ALL do you stop seeing sick bodies. Because only as the BODY ITSELF is utterly transcended and let go does the mind awaken to a body-less reality. This means the mind goes beyond being awake in the dream (vision + body vision), and returns to a state of ONLY seeing with the mind (and only seeing the Kingdom of God). That's what it means to wake up FROM dreaming, in which for you the world ends.
This is why Jesus was able to walk the Earth in a highly healed state of mind, HELP OTHERS, perform miracles, SEE LEPERS, SEE THE DEAD, and demonstrate the laws of God. Without his BODY'S SIGHT, he would not have been able to see OR communicate with those who were limited to bodies. And because He had both christ vision and body sight, he could act as a Teacher of God in this world, before he woke up FROM the dream of death entirely.
"But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this ***no longer sees the world***."
"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, ***and disappears*** before His holy sight."
"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. ***What further sight is needed***? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love ***behind all forms***, beyond all purposes. "
"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and ***in that instant is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from which it came."
"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And ***gone are bodies*** (sick ones and healthy ones) in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, ***no walls, no bodies***, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
When you first find your 'next teacher' on your path, you will be excited because they represent the next teachings that you are ready to be exposed to, and it all seems new and exciting. There is a honeymoon period. It seems to you that this teacher will give you what you're missing.
Over time, you learn stuff, and you start to feel a lack of ease (dis-ease?) and discord and you grow disillusioned and frustrated. The reason is that the lesson here is less obvious. The teacher THEMSELVES are the lesson. Their challenge to you, perhaps the things they've been teaching you, perhaps hold you back in some ways. This is particularly true if the teaching is not teaching the whole truth.
What's required of you is to come to realize how the teacher has limitations and what those limitations are - to become aware enough of the truth that you can discern that this person is not all you thought they were and perhaps there is more truth somewhere else. In other words, you need to receive from the teacher what you came together to share, and then you become awakened enough to realize that its time to move on - that you need a new greater teaching that maybe someone else has to provide.
So the lesson isn't so much, what this teaching is going to transfer to you or tell you about or what tools they give etc. The lesson is, that the teacher themselves are an obstacle and an idol and you need to learn to detach from that and recognize the truth in yourself rather than thinking that it must 'come from' them. You might get to that realization by way of what the teacher is sharing with you, or IN SPITE of it, and especially in spite of it if the teacher is not telling the whole truth. Because if you're making progress, it's because you're waking up and that means you're shining more light and now you can see what you didn't see before.
The form that something takes is NOT its meaning. A form is like an instance, or example of something, or a certain variant of its possible range of states, or a specific configuration amongst many possible configurations. Something can take on a form, or take one form, or another form. There can be "forms of" things. Shapes, sizes, parts, configurations, structures, pieces, objects, bodies, states, conditions, etc it's all forms.
When you believe that something about the form is truth, now you are saying that the form IS CONTENT. That its inherent meaning or reality is tied to its form. So now if we say, well, my banana is looking old a rotten, we might now take this to mean the banana is dying and is not edible. Versus an underripe banana which is more firm and green, we might think this MEANS it is not yet edible. And thus we lock the form into certain judgmental definitions of what they are and what they can do.
When we mistake the form that something takes, for what it MEANS, and we derived meaning FROM it or based on it, we are deceived. This means we are listening to an illusory world asking it to tell us what is true. Form IS NOT meaning. Form is not content. Form does not have ANY truth. It is unsubstantial and meaningless and nothing. All forms are fiction and illusions. They are forms of error. They are mistakes, deceptions, lies, illusions, dreams and wishes.
To understand that everything in this world does not MEAN anything, we have to recognize that the form anything takes cannot tell us what it MEANS. One configuration of objects does NOT tell us anything. A certain arrangement of parts does not really mean anything. A bigger object or a smaller object, a certain kind of material, a piece of machinery, old versus new, none of it means anything different.
When we are in a thought system where we seem to ASK the world of form to TELL US what it means, looking to it as a source of truth and to inform us of what is THERE and what is happening, based on its particular aspects, we're literally asking a meaningless nothingness to derive meaning from itself. That a certain body in a certain state means one thing, and a body in another state means something else.
We start to then believe that there can be a DIAGNOSIS. Or a prognosis. Or a judgement or evaluation of what condition something is in, and the possible outcomes that may be consequences of that specific state. As if that means something or would lead to possible futures or potentials, while shutting off the path to other possibilities that aren't "appropriate" for this specific form. Possibilities that the FORM "claims" is not possible, BECAUSE OF the form.
So now a dead body rotting and decaying is believed to MEAN an irreversible process is taking place and the decomposition PROVES that life has ended. This is all completely bullshit and made-up. The body in this state is really absolutely no different to a body running a marathon. If we are DECEIVED by the appearance of form, then we are BLINDED. ALL appearances, all forms, all configurations, all shapes and sizes and colors are utterly meaningless and nothing true can be derived from them.
"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"
Recognizing all objects as EQUALLY meaningless, their forms now become irrelevant. Who cares if something is taking on a certain shape? What does it matter that there SEEMS to be a certain specific sickness? Why should our response or reaction be profoundly different when the FORM is in a certain state versus another? To have different responses or to react in fear is really a sign that you BELIEVE that the form MEANS something different in a hierarchy of illusions. That a body in "this state" means "its terribly bad", while a body in "that state" is "not cause for concern." This is all bullshit, both the good and the bad evaluations.
All forms are deceptions. That's why the world is an illusion. It SEEMS to be something that it is not. It appears to be something it isn't. IT IS NOT TRUTH. It attempts to demonstrate PROOF OF SIN, that sins and events and happenings are taking place as, as if the world and the body have some kind of power, causation, will, mind, or ability to produce certain specific outcomes, chain reactions, or consequences. None of these pretend causations are real. All of these forms are equally just fake images being projected. They are empty pictures on a blank screen.
This is why ACIM even starts out the workbook having you look around the room and identifying that none of this means anything. To apply a single response (unconditionality) to ALL illusory forms, to all objects, in order to train your mind in the recognition that the form DOES NOT MATTER. That the form IS NOT MEANING. That the form of one object is no more or less important or relevant or significant than another. To deprogram you from the belief that certain kinds of objects in certain conditions MEAN one thing while others are more preferable.
The world is just a giant soup of jumbled up bits and pieces of nothingness, scrambled together into untold seeming numbers of configurations, designed to make it look as if there are a great MANY DIFFERENT things. As if there are contrasts and conflicts and ways that one thing IS NOT LIKE another. That this object is not that object. That this sick body is distinct from that healthy body. These are all DECEPTIONS. All illusions, trying to make it seem like ONE THING is many things. That the ONE DREAM is composed of many parts. That the illusion of separation isn't just an illusion of separateness, but a collective of untold numbers.
The ONLY way to recognize that all objects are equal, is to recognize they are all equally THE SAME. And the since they are all illusions of difference, their differences cannot be TRUE. Their FORMS cannot be true, when they conflict and differ. To be truth they have to be IDENTICAL. But their forms are NOT identical, so sameness reveals that their forms are NOT TRUTH. And different forms cannot be KEPT if there is to be equality. Their forms and their appearances of difference must not BE reality, because they're all contradictory. Therefore ALL FORM IS A LIE.
Not one object means anything more or less than another. Not one body means anything more or less than another in any state or seeming condition. Extreme torment and death and suffering is not any worse, bigger, stronger, harder, more difficult to undo, or more powerful and causative, than the slightest hint of a disturbance. Form cannot be taken to be meaning, it cannot be content, it cannot tell you WHAT SOMETHING IS, and all it can do is present a smokescreen.
The world is nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's not there. Without its forms there is no world. It is empty and nothingness. A void of meaninglessness. And not one thing in it means anything at all. And so there is no order, and no levels of difficulty, and no hierarchy, and no inherent meaning in any of it.
Therefore miracles respond to it with a single response, an unconditional response, which must be love, because only love can be unconditional. And so to recognize the world is all nothing is to love it, and light will shine away the darkness of forms and separations.
"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."
"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE. "
"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning."
"Realize that, whatever form they take, they have no meaning and no power."
"Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
"You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you"
"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."
"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned it has any meaning in the Mind of God."
"Take not the form for content"
"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."
"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."
"I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning."
"Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true."
"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind."
To be a healer of another person's mind, you have to begin by forming a connection to that person. Somehow your mind has to be in a state where it has ACCESS to the other mind.
The only way to gain access to a brother is through joining in love. Only love can be truly shared, and love is communication. Love opens you up and plugs you in, facilitating oneness, union, connection and joining.
This means that at the very least, you cannot effectively heal someone if you have not connected with them through love. The gap of separation between you has to be surpassed first.
This leads to the question of whether you are being truly healing and helpful, or whether you are being harmful and attacking. If you are lacking in love in some way, there is an attempt to separate off your mind from another. If there is any belief in harm or hurting or scapegoating or making sins real, it's going to pull you away from their mind and erect walls that come between you.
This obviously tells you that it's not truly possible to even get access to the mind of another while you're in a state of attack. If you are not healing, you are hurting. "What is not love is murder."
In order to, on your part, cease contributing to suffering in the other person, you yourself have to be free from attack. When you are not in "attack mode", you are in healing mode. Attack mode separates you off, healing mode joins you together with your brother.
Love is a bridge, fusing minds together as one. In order to access the bridge you have to be sufficiently loving. A transmission of anything less than love places the bridge out of reach. But fully loving the other person is a very intimate, visible, exposed and embracing state.
So in one way or another, healing requires that you join with the other person in a fusion of oneness and love. Generally speaking this means you have to be in a loving state, generate love, or transmit and receive love.
The state of joined minds must transcend space and time. In fact you are able to do this at a distance ie remotely, for someone you are not even physically close to, because space doesn't enter into it. Your mind is able to communicate with another mind regardless of distance.
Which leads to realizing that the state of "sharing" places you more or less "in the mind" of the other person. You can visualize this in terms of you being physically one with the other person's body. You can visualize it as resonating with their frequency/energy. You can do it through feeling and empathy. You can also tune in by feeling that where you are, you are IN the other person or their body, as if you are where their body is, and your own body is overlapping theirs.
So there are two ingredients here. 1. Loving enough to activate a shared communication channel or bridge across which love can be shared. And 2. Transcending space and being one with the other person beyond bodies. In the sharing of space, you overlap with your brother and are in him.
This forming of a loving connection and sharing a space, now places you in a position to SHARE what you have to give. You can now offer and give and radiate and bestow love to this person in a blessing ("Miracles are a universal blessing from God"), feeling it within yourself, which is shared in intimacy with the person due to your overlapping oneness. What is yours is theirs and vice versa. What is happening in you is happening in them.
This sharing state of union now allows your mind to light up the other mind. To restore sanity to it. To supply a lack of love, life and energy to it. With your minds joined, in a oneness kind of state, you kind of now become "co-thinkers". A mutual team. Two minds acting as one. Kind of like siamese twins where the two minds have to cooperate to get anything done.
That now means that it requires for BOTH of you to agree to believe and express the same thing, in order for it to be possible. If one of the two does not agree, they are in conflict and the action is prevented. This means then that if the other person believes they are sick, and you do not, they are prevented from being able to believe in, strengthen and express that belief.
They are thus trying to assert various lies about themselves which are destructive. Their mind is weaker. You are asserting truth about them which is constructive. Your mind is stronger. Your mind can thus influence their mind and "override" their weaker belief. Or to put it another way, you can enlighten them by shining your light into their mind so that that mind is theirs and is strengthened in them, because you share the same light.
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ****the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.****"
The simple task therefore is to "supply a lack of light" ("miracles supply a lack" "given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less".) To supply the lack of light, you must shine brighter than the other person in terms of the degree of love.
To SUPPLY it at all, to get that light INTO their mind, your light has to not only be bright enough, but your mind has to be loving enough, so that your mind can actually gain ACCESS to the other mind through a connection of sharing.
To be able to "amplify" the light in another mind, like kindling a fire and enhancing the flame, you have to at first see the light in the other person. You have to recognize that they ARE light by knowing the truth about them. Which means looking to their christ self and beyond their body and beyond their sickness. You overlook those things through forgiveness, which is facilitated by a loving attitude, and look to their innocence and holiness. And upon finding the light in them, you acknowledge it is there.
"The miracle-worker ****begins by PERCEIVING light****, and translates HIS perception into sureness by ****continually extending it****, and ****ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT****." - this is talking about a SUSTAINED TRASMISSION OF LIGHT to another person and acknowledging/accepting that it HAS been received.
"****Its EFFECTS**** (increase in light, healing etc) assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."
In effect, your true perception, loving perception, allows you to forgive your brother and see the truth in him. See the light of christ or soul in him. And as you focus on constructively amplifying his truth, appreciating his light, his light is strengthened. The Holy Spirit in him is that light also.
"The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. It is strengthened ***by being given*** away. It increases in you ***as you give it to your brother***. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for ***this miracle*** to occur."
Here Jesus is literally saying that if you GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT (light) to your brother, it is PERFORMING A MIRACLE! Increasing your awareness of the Holy Spirit IN your brother, even if your brother has no idea that He is there, heals his mind.
This light that you shine, comes from God. God put the light in you, and you extend and express it. Your natural function is to "pass on" this light to others, to shine into them, to illuminate them, which shines away their darkness. The brighter you shine with love, the more sharing and connected you are, the more powerfully you will be able to "enlighten" them.
"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
This is clearly a simple matter of SHINING brightly at people. The higher the level of sharing in oneness, the higher the level of love and light and miraculousness and healing. High love plugs you into their mind and shares it with them, transcending the gap of spacetime and the bodies and the world. You dwell with them in union and joining and sharing of oneness. And as you dwell there brightly, you light up their soul for them to see.
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad.""Miracles unite you with your brother."
"Miracles make minds one in God."
What does it mean that you are not the body? It's not what you think.
What you are, is whole, within. Like you are this little orb of light which contains the whole of God.
As a whole self, you increase by extending and creating.
When the separation idea was introduced, it was suggested that there was something separate from you or outside of you, or indeed that you were separate and outside of yourself.
This was the idea of sin, and it ultimately led to the invention of the body through OUTWARD PROJECTION FROM THE MIND. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."
The body then is sort of this "shell", really an IDEA, which you have surrounded yourself with as a result of this belief that a) you are outside of yourself and b) there is something separate from your inner self.
It has thus formed a picture which seems to surround and enclose you. This is why when there is a body showing up it seems like you are "inside" it.
But it also then simultaneously seems as if you "are" the body and the stuff inside you is invisible and not yourself. This leads you to build a "bodily identity", to be identified with the body. In more extreme cases the outer bodily self seems to be the ONLY self, and the inner self is very hidden. We need to reverse that.
So the part of your mind that you split off and think of as separate from your inner self, forms a fake identity composed of a body image, which you now think is yourself.
So what happens when you stop having a split mind?
What is the purpose of saying "I am not a body I am free"?
The purpose is not to deny the body. It is not to identify yourself as being that which is inside the body while the outer bodily image remains either. It is not to disassociate from the body. It is not to escape the body. And it is not to think of yourself as "only mind and not a body."
The state you are meant to be returning to, is a state in which there is no separation in you, there is no sense of something having been split off as outside of you, and therefore of being whole "within" yourself. When you do that, what is going to happen to the body which was "outside you"? How is it going to even show up if there is no part of you that identifies AS IT because there is no part of you which exists outside of your inner self?
IT IS GOING TO DISAPPEAR.
It was only showing up there because your inner self projected it (the idea of sin projected outward) and it is only showing up because part of you believed that you were outside of yourself.
Your sense of identity formed a "bodily identity" or an identification not just with a body but AS a body. You can also think of it as an "external self". And however the mind is relating to its own identity, that is how it shows up. If the mind is thinking that it has separation in it, ie walls, it will materialize a body! And yet if the mind does not believe it has any walls within itself, the body will disappear because the mind is seeing itself as a WHOLENESS, not a split-off self.
This is also correlates to the creation of sickness. When the mind is more strongly believing that it is separated from itself, split in two and part of itself is outside the inner self, this belief in separation attacks yourself and makes you SICK. And that sickness will now manifest IN, or more accurately, is projected outward AS, a sick-looking body, which is really just a mental image of yourself as sick. The less you believe in separation, therefore, the less your mind is split and the less you believe you ARE an external self, the less your body image will show up as sick, and thus sickness will appear to disappear as well, leaving a "holy" and "immortal" body, just prior to its complete disappearance.
When that externalized identity is returned to your true "inner" identity, the "outer" illusory separate self is not there anymore. It's been integrated into the whole of what you are within. So there is no basis for the body. It has no grounds, no function, no purpose, no reason to be there. SO IT DISAPPEARS. The mind is not seeing itself AS one, it does not believe it has a second identity, so it STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY.
The presence of a body is simply a symptom or side-effect of you believing that you are not pure spirit and therefore you have a separate second identity. Identification "with" the body is nothing more than the strength of your belief that you MUST BE a body, because you must be outside of yourself , having gone "out of your mind."
It's not that the body exists on its own and you happen to "come into it" or incarnate into it or that it was there before you arrived or that it will remain after you leave. If you seem to go through that process of discarding bodies, you will reincarnate, because the discarding process (death) is really an attempt to SEVER yourself from yourself. What that means is, you have tried so hard to DISCONNECT your inner self from the part of you which became "outer", the part which identified with being "a body", and so CUT OFF part of yourself and destroyed it. All death occurs to the "projected self", not the inner self. And all death is just a testimony to how much SEPARATION and therefore false identification there was within you. And that mental state REMAINS, and will CAUSE ANOTHER BODY to be desired and projected.
That's what causes all death. Death is the self-attack of the inner self upon the outer self. Or to put it another way, what we think of as "mind" seems to be the inner self only, and we say that this mind-self attacks the body self, but the body self is actually another PART of your mind which is temporarily identified with being an external illusion. So one part of mind is attacking another part of mind. Mind is not just the part of you that is INNER, and it is not just the part of you which is INSIDE the body.
The body IS WITHIN THE MIND and it is an image being thought of, projected, imagined WITHIN the mind as a whole. One part of mind attacks the other and tries to destroy it, and that results in the illusory sickness and death of that other part of mind, but does not heal the desire to attack, and so the mind "makes" another body (reincarnation) and proceeds to attack it again. This will keep on happening until both parts of mind are rejoined as one so that there is no separation, then there will be no more bodies materializing as ideas of sin.
So then having destroyed part of yourself and yet still believing your identity WAS the outer self, your inner self is still projecting and split and MUST manifest another body. And this forms the basis for reincarnation - that you still believe you are a body and must have a body and so this magnetizes you to a body or causes one to materialize. YOU put your body into your mother's womb and YOU grow it and YOU cause it to show up the way it shows up. Sperm and egg coming together does NOT CAUSE bodies to appear. It is an illusion. Mind causes bodies to appear and arranges FAKE JOINING on an ego level (which must be an illusion of joining) to pretend that you are inherited from the dream.
So death is not a way to leave the dream, or to heal separation. It cannot accomplish this because it means that you simply attacked part of yourself with hatred and tried to destroy it and had identified strongly with "being a body" at least in part. The only way out of the dream is NOT THROUGH DEATH. "The dream is not left by death but by truth."
The dream is only left by truth by re-integrating the part of you which you split off and associated with a body, and returning its identity to be identified with the INNER self which remains hidden behind the body or seemingly trapped inside the body invisibly. You do not withdraw FROM the body, you withdraw the body itself. You withdraw belief in BEING a body. You must not try to "separate yourself from the body"!
If you do that all you're doing is adding denial on top of denial. Denial of the body is an unworthy form of denial - that's what this means. If you believe the body exists ON ITS OWN and HAS ITS OWN WILL and you then try to get away from it to "be only mind", you are SEPARATING YOURSELF MORE. You are trying to separate yourself off from the separate self which you already split off from yourself, adding another whole layer of denial and separation. This will make you more sick. The body in a sense should be embraced but only up to the point where you recognize that you are projecting it and therefore can un-project it through its PROPER UNDOING, by reversing your belief in separation. Without a belief in separation, there is no sin, and therefore sin cannot be made flesh and projected outward. No more body.
You withdraw the PROJECTION of the body through re-owning yourself and identifying with Spirit. This does NOT mean that the body exist at the same time as the spirit. It does NOT mean that the body WILL REMAIN once you have shifted identity to being ONLY spirit. It means the body MUST DISAPPEAR. It is only showing up because it is what you believe about your identity and what you think you are. When your mind is no longer believing that you are a body AT ALL and is completely whole and healed and no longer split or divided or separated off, there is no NEED for a body, no BELIEF in a body, no PROJECTION of a body, and your mind will STOP MAKING ONE.
That is when you are free. Not free of a body that carries on existing. Not free through deathin which the body CONTINUES. Not free because you laid the body down to die and then headed on over to God's party. But simply free of MAKING bodies at all. If you want to be free of reincarnation, and free of DEATH, you MUST STOP BELIEVING YOU ARE SEPARATE FROM YOURSELF, which means you must stop believing you are, or need to be, a body. And thus you will stop making bodies and your body will disappear entirely.
Doing this alleviates all signs of sickness and makes the body temporarily invulnerable and useful only as a communication device. Just prior to the body disappearing completely, it becomes a sign of immortality. Jesus writes about this clearly here:
"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."
And here...
"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. 2 Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. 3 Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. 4 Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."
Note that when he says "laid by" here he is not talking about making it die and laying it on the ground and letting it rot while you whiz off to heaven. He means literally, you stop making it, as evidenced by his statements about how he did exactly that.
Jesus already accomplished and demonstrated this through the PROPER UNDOING OF THE BODY through truth and the DISSOLVING of it through spirit identification, not "escape" from it through death or separation or denial or thinking that it still exist OR making it still exist. We are responsible for making ourselves show up as bodies, WE made the body with our mind and can un-make it! We made all sickness, all death, and the body itself. " "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."
Here is what Jesus has to say about this whole process, which ultimately is the completion of the atonement and the RESURRECTION.... and guess what... not just the disappearing of the body, but the disappearing of THE WORLD (this universe), which is only showing up based on the exact same principle of mind believing in separation, and MUST DISAPPEAR when mind has returned to spirit identification.
""My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body’s nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear.
"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body’s worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.
"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time that you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then — I cannot speak of that.
"A body can not stay without illusion and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion; There is no order of difficulties in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection: Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.
"These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen but an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven’s gate, where God will come Himself to take you home"
The truth can seem quite bizarre in comparison to what you've been used to. Your whole life you've spent having experiences of suffering, being affected, upset, threatened, afraid, guilty, ashamed, having various sicknesses, changes in emotion and mood, all kinds of stresses etc.
What the truth says it that YOU CANNOT BE CHANGED. Hmm.... if this is true, then what's with all these seeming attempts to BE CHANGED by the world? How can any of these forms of suffering be relevant is you are unchangeable?
"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4
It's a simple idea at first but it has very deep and far reaching consequences. If you cannot change you cannot be caused by the world in any way, you cannot be made to feel something in particular, you cannot have your self modified, your identity can't change, you can't even be hurt or become sick or have a change in mood.
If you are the unchangeable eternal permanent being that God created, which you are, then ALL of the seeming influences in the world are null and void. Not one single thing in the world has any power over you whatsoever. Not one influence, not one force, not one person, not one place, nothing. It does nothing to you, in the most extreme way.
So what's with this farce, this lie, this total world full of deceptions and untruths, things that claim to be happening to you, changing you, modifying you, defining you, creating and causing you, when in truth they are doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. A dream of nothing, causing nothing, doing nothing, with no effect.
"What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did." UrM6C3
"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5
When I think about how I used to practice forgiveness, it all seemed so mechanical. I didn't really understand what forgiveness was, even if some version of it was spelled out in various books. I didn't understand what part Holy Spirit played, or what to expect of Him. It seems to have taken a very long time to refine this.
At first, I understood forgiveness was about 'it hasn't really happened' and forgiving for what people have NOT done, and that this entailed some form of taking back projections and stopping scapegoating. I tried various people's techniques and so on for releasing what I'd taken back, and sometimes it seemed to work a bit, not often. Most of the struggle seemed to be remembering to even forgive at all, or how to do it.
Over time I adopted another method which I felt provided new insight into how this works, and that involved some fairly clear steps to take, including going into the feeling and finding out where it came from and seeing that I did it to myself and then trying to see out 'the truth' about me. And in some ways that seemed to be quite powerful. But it still was pretty much me doing this on my own.
If I would ask Holy Spirit to help me forgive, he would perhaps help me with insights or wording and so on. But still it seemed to all be about me changing my perception, finding the real cause, stopping believing things that weren't true, discerning what was true or false etc. And still Holy Spirit was sort of more of an advisor or guide.
More recently, however, I became willing to start to experiment with allowing Holy Spirit to come into me, Himself, and to do whatever he needed to do. It was kind of baby steps at first. Just exploring and learning to trust. I would invite Him into my 'body' and He would seem to move in me and do some energetic/emotional changes, if I was willing. Sometimes he would do this 'flush' thing where, once he has done some setup, excess emotions/fear/stress drain out of me. Or, he would lift this 'stuff' up from my feet all the way up to and out of my head.
While this was helpful to me I didn't know why other people weren't talking about this or doing this. I didn't know in what way it fit with ACIM, and yet I knew it was Holy Spirit doing this. He would say "surrender" or "relax" and I pretty much knew that right after that he was going to perform a healing of some kind. But like anything, in order to 'open up' to this stuff it requires willingness, trust, curiosity and the ability to listen, to ask questions and build a relationship.
More recently I gradually have received more clarity from various sources about forgiveness, what it is, what it does, and what other aspects of Holy Spirit's thought system I need to align with, such as taking responsibility, being unconditional, acceptance, etc. Michael Murray has a good handle on those 'tools' and the metaphysics behind it.
What came to me then was that instead of attempting this kind of mental-oriented process of forgiving through thought and perceptual adjustments, which is very head-oriented, I would begin to open up my heart to Holy Spirit and become willing to *receive* His healing. I think the turning point was when I realized that "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" really literally means that HE will do the correction, not just of my perception, but also of all the side effects, symptoms or consequences that came about as a result. And that includes things going on in my body, my emotions, and the world around me.
He began to literally 'cleanse' me of guilt and sin instead of me trying to wrap my head around them or see them from a different vantage point. I could talk myself into higher truth in an intellectual way, but here Holy Spirit was starting to stir in me and move through me and heal me. Preparing the way perhaps for working through me on behalf of others. This was something I desired and wanted to explore and open up to. Now when I forgive, I know that toward the end of it, and maybe even before I get done with 'my part', Holy Spirit is going to likely step in and do something. And I mean, DO something. Action.
As I explore this more, and open up to miracles, and make myself a channel of Holy Spirit's healing power, I am allowing my 'forgiveness' to be more a practice in, ultimately, receiving healing from God (mental/emotional/physical) rather than me trying to use my head to figure out how I'm innocent. It is more experiential. I want to *experience* God. I want to *experience* truth and not have it just be some mental exercise in discernment. And it's even more than that.
What about God? What about love? I feel a stirring that I want to spend the rest of my time simply focusing on .. how to be unconditionally loving, how to receive and extend God and His miracles, and how to just love love love love love. It's not mental. It's not intellectual. It's in the HEART. God is love. I want to be in the love with God. I want everything to be focused around and centered on love. And I want to be open to God being the one who heals my mind and emotions and body, and those of others too. I want to share in God's love and receive it, instead of thinking (with ego) I have to do all this work myself. Yes I need to still take some steps and have a willingness, but I realize more and more that 'waking up' isn't anywhere near as heart-felt a 'concept' as being reunited with God. Who wants to clinically wake up unless it's all about a grand reunion?
I want God to be in my practice of A Course in Miracles, and that has much less to do with the methodical mechanical forgiveness processes I used to think were 'the way to do it'. Maybe I needed them in order to realize they are unrefined or less effective than God's way. We are meant to open up to allow Holy Spirit to flow through us fully and openly, to direct us, to speak for us, to heal through us, and to be our mind. All this 'doing it on my own' stuff is very tiresome and unnecessary.
Thank you God for revealing the truth of your light and love experientially in my life and extending it all those I meet. As Jesus outlines in the beginning of the Text about miracles (in the unsanitized version):
"You should begin each day with the prayer 'Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."" - Jesus.
Introductory text prior to lesson 221 in the ACIM workbook - one of the Course's masterpieces on Forgiveness:
"What is Forgiveness?
Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.
An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?
An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances 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.
Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."
Someone who is in their right mind, who is sane, and who is correct, and who is not believing illusions, has a whole mind and recognizes what is true.
Their mind is filled with love because love is the quality of what is natural and correct. A natural mind, or being miracle minded, is a state of correct accurate perception. It's an awareness of the truth and a willingness to accept it.
If a person makes a mistake, produces an error, or slips into a fantasy, in which the truth is mistaken for something else, they go into illusions. Their mind has become incorrect. This is simply a mistake, an error they are making. It is not a sin.
In this state, the "curriculum" now becomes to "learn love" again. The aim is to restore the mind to its wholeness, to return to sanity, to regain right mindedness, and to recognize what is true. The only thing the student needs is the correction of the mistake.
A loving teacher, such as the Holy Spirit, recognizes that the student has simply made a mistake in their understanding or grasp of the truth, or what is real, and therefore needs a simple correction.This loving teacher offers and provides correction in a loving and gentle manner, which does not dwell on the error or make the student out to be sinful for making it, and especially He does not move into inducing guilt for having made a mistake. He is also not deceived by the illusion. He recognizes that all mistakes are simply innocent mistakes which do not call for any kind of punishment.
True correction, to such a teacher, is to restore the sanity of the mind. To return the mind to a loving condition. The curriculum thus is to re-learn love, and to accept what is true. To reintegrate the REAL ANSWER to correct the wrong one. And this real answers corrects the false conclusion which the student came to.
In order for the student to be corrected, they have to move upwards, back into the truth and into love. They have to become the truth and the love in order to BE correct. To be as God intended. To be real. They must become part of the atonement itself.
The movement away from the truth placed the student into a state of mistakenness, and since this seemed to be an investment in LACK of love, the correction is actually the SUPPLY of the lack of love to the student.
In other words, punishing the student for a mistake will not move them into a loving state. It will not correct them. What they need is to be treated with love and gentleness, and healed. The loving teacher needs to show the student a larger truth, a light, which correctly frames the mistake they made AS a mistake and not a true sin, so that they can SEE what the truth really is.
Upon seeing and recognizing the truth, the student can acknowledge it and move into it, accepting atonement. Their mind becomes whole again and they are restored to sanity and to love.
A miracle therefore, is the blessing of love and forgiveness given by the loving teacher, which could be any teacher of God, which recognizes the sinless innocence of the student, the fact they are temporarily mistaken, the recognition of the truth, and the offering of what the truth is. The truth is offered by being GIVEN to the student through an expression of love.
The truth, or love, must actually be GIVEN by the teacher, TO the student, or from the giver to the receiver, so that the student can HAVE what they were missing. The student must RECEIVE the love, the correction, allowing it to heal their mind and perception.
That which transfers from above to below, from "those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less", since "miracles supply a lack", is a blessing of love and life and clarity and power, which corrects the mind of the student and clarifies what is true. In this sense, a miracle falls like a drop fo healing rain from those who are closer to heaven, down, onto those who need resurrection, bring them back to life. We can thus say that ALL miracles raise the dead.
This is why a miracle can correct a mistake in the mind, undo level confusion, resurrect the dead, raise the level of communication, unite brothers, and intervene for their holiness. It is a blessing, an emitting of life and power, which is bestowed upon someone and shone into their mind, so that the person is reminded of what is true and awareness of light increases. Miracles correct the mistakes the student was making by shining a light which enlightens their mind.
"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
"The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."
"A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed."
"undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle.
"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"
"Miracles bear witness to truth."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.""Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels."
"I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.""Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions."
"The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears."
"A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.""Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
"The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false."
"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. 2 It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. 3 Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. 4 Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." 5 This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep"
The ego is simply an attempt to deny the existence of love. Using it, you deny the existence of love within you. This means you put in place a belief, that you do not have love in you. That you are not made of love or are inherently love.
Since love is the absolute core essence of what you are, your soul, to suggest there is no love in you is an attempt to say "love is not your identity." Your very "self" is brought into question.
This creates the belief in a LACK of love within you, and also the belief you are NOT love and cannot BE loved. This is brought about by the idea of sin, which suggests you are separate from Love - from yourself, and from God.
Since you believe it’s not in you, and you feel empty and lacking, you have now become "needy". You’ve invented a fake need - an absence of love. This compels you to SEEK FOR LOVE. You reason it is not in you, so it must be ANYWHERE else other than in you.
The problem is, it is not ANYWHERE ELSE other than in you, shared with God. So as soon as you start to seek for it, you move AWAY from where it is, and TOWARDS where it is not. It is not "out there", outside of you.
This compulsion to address the "hole" in your heart by finding what’s "missing", sends you on an extraordinary journey away from yourself. You are literally trying to "find yourself" anywhere other than where you are, within. You are also therefore trying to find love, anywhere other than where it is, within.
This then means you don’t believe the love is going to come from yourself. Someone or something OTHER than you has to provide it. So now, whether or not you have love, or even your self, depends on someone or something outside of you providing it. If they fail to provide it, it’s their fault. I they provide it, you worship them. Anything other than seeing it in yourself.
This also means therefore, you now believe that someone else has taken posession or responsibility for your love, and your self, as if having stolen it from you. You now see your self and your love, in other people, locked up inside them, as though it’s stuck in them. And now it’s your job to steal it back from them. You believe it belongs to you, and that you’ve lost it.
What you are looking for in them, however, is not real love. You already believed that there is no real love in you. You already chose not to have real love. You saw yourself as unworthy of it when you believed in sin (separation from love). This made you perceive that there is no love outside you either, because you will perceive externally what is within your beliefs. A lack of love in you will show you its absence outside of you. So real love is nowhere to be found.
Instead, what you seek for is a replacement for love, a substitute for love, and for yourself. You are seeking for specialness, some sense of "value" that you want and think is worth having - or which will save you from your emptiness. And you are also trying to find a substitute identity, something which can stand in for who you really are. Something which seems special and can somehow be similar to the love you lost sight of. You want to become spiritual and special and the best you can be.
This is all described in the laws of chaos.
Law #1) The truth is different for everyone - this results from everyone failing to see an equivalent love in themselves. What they see themselves as they believe is truth. If they are not all the same love, their own selves are different and conflicting, so now the truth is different because identities are different.
Law #2) Everyone must sin and deserves attack and death - comes about from having attacked yourself and believing that someone else did it to you. Disowning your own love and your own self was an act of becoming irresponsible, through disassociation, and therefore someone else is responsible for what you are. That means it seems like they took this love from you, so you are justified in attacking back to re-acquire what they stole, or to force them to give it to you.
3) God is believed to agree with your lack of love - since you yourself believe it is true, see love/God as separate, and as having attacked, you believe the truth is that love is no longer love. That means God is not love, so God agrees you are not love, which means God cannot help you to get your love or self back. If neither of you are love, you have to get it somewhere else.
4) You can get from others what you lack - since they stole it you feel justified in getting it from them. In the least, to have them willingly shower you with specialness. In the worst, to rip it from their dying limbs in a murderous attack. What is it that you are trying to get from them? A replacement for the love you lost - specialness and a replacement identity.
In addition to this process, the absence of love compels you to find a substitute in specialness. A lack of love makes the illusory world seem real to you. You are blind to its fantasy because your lack of love makes you feel imprisoned by it, like a needy inmate. Your mind now is in a split state, because you’ve introduced a separation between you and love. Between you and yourself. This has split your mind and you are now split minded, in two minds.
When the mind is split, it sees one half of the split as different to the other in some way. Typically this skews the mind‘s associations where one part of the mind seems to contain illusions of innocence, and the other part illusions of attack/guilt. One part is thought to be your self, the other not yourself. This is disassociation.
The mind associates more with the part which seems innocent as a way to avoid the pain of "no love", ie sin, and relegates the rest of the belief in sin to unconsciousness. This later is projected out and is not associated with as "my self". It is considered "other than me", even though it is inside the same mind. "Ideas leave not their source", so your "enemy" is now inside your own mind, making it able to attack you. It is you attacking you. All attack is self attack. (The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself).
The part of mind that tries to focus only on an ILLUSION of love, an illusion of innocence, an illusion of spirituality, an illusion of peace and happiness, remains in conscious awareness. It is what has been "permitted" into awareness. "You" then think that this self is ALL of yourself. You do not see the rest, yet alone see it as yourself. You think it is "outside you", because it is external to your persona, but is not outside your mind.
This special part of the mind, the persona, makes the world seem real and then attempts to section it off into "good and bad", "right and wrong", "spiritual and ego". This is because the mind has done the same thing to itself, labeling some parts as innocent and some as guilty. It separates the world and labels some parts or behaviors or diets or clothes or actions as "spiritual" and some parts as "evil". Then it pits them against each other.
The shift towards trying to include and accept only the parts which seem spiritual, and to reject the parts which seem evil, reinforces the artificial sense of sef which your mind is trying to build. It is trying to assemble a fake self, a replacement self, to replace the one you hid from yourself.
Since this all takes place within one "realm", whether your mind or in the world, it means you’ll create an ILLUSION of spirituality, and will try to change the ego into a "more spiritual" self. You’ll surround it with all kinds of things which look and sound spiritual, based on judgement and selecting between illusions.
The problem is that this fake self which is trying to only accept the most spiritual illusions as a sign of awakening, is also attacking the rest of the world, and yourself, to try to get rid of any trace of evil/sin.
In the name of "perfecting your self" - your fake self - you’ll attack your real self constantly to pick it apart and find any little thing wrong with it (which you judged/condemned as true of you), to get rid of that and keep only the best parts. This gradually rips you apart piece by piece. It is actually an act of self destruction, because eventually there will be nothing less. It is self attack in the name of self improvement or "self help".
The more that you try to develop a replacement self, and to make it spiritual, the less there will be of you. It will create a facade of niceness, seeming spiritual, trying to love everyone, being positive, people pleasing, idol worship, wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, getting dressed up for the lord on sundays to asuage guilt, having all the special books and charms and magical things. All to create an illusion of spirituality.
The problem is this spirituality is constantly under attack by the very parts of Self which that same fake self has judged as evil. Having made sin real, the "sinful others" - your own unconscious self, is now your constant enemy. You’ll try to hide from it and avoid it. You’ll try to keep it "in others" or "other than yourself". You’ll see it outside of you and attack it and condemn it to disassociate from it. And yet it will haunt you and keep coming back into your awareness, back into your life, to remind you of what you think of yourself. Because it is in your mind and you can’t make it go away without healing the split.
This fake spirituality takes constant defense. It is exhausting. It also does not work - to undo sin or guilt. Yet it is filled with promise and hope and yearning and striving and trying and being passionate about all these magical illusions of wonderfulness. And it still leads to death, be sure of that.
The more you seek for love the less love you have, the less life you have, the more you will become sick and die. "All sickness is a form of seeking outside of yourself." When this fakeness is pointed out, it is taken as a terrible attack. A horrifying truth. In particular when the special relationship is undermined, or shown to be fake, it can be very upsetting. And so wages the supposed spiritual war between good an evil. Between yourself and yourself.
The ego is simply a device you made to show you a distorted version of the truth. It only has one function, to block love. To shut out spirit. It will never have another function. But a person with fake spirituality will try to change the ego into something spiritual. To take it into the light. To make it be closer to God. This will threaten its destruction, and the "you" who is identified with it, will take this as an attack. This is the source of all ego rebounds, and much sickness, which implements defenses against truth to "protect" the ego.
The problem here is, your sense of identity has become associated with the ego. You are then trying to convert yourself from emptiness into "having love" or "being spiritual", but while still holding onto the ego. This makes you try to change the ego into something spiritual. It cannot change. It cannot become spiritual. It has a fixed function and a one-track mind focused on death. You’ll have a constant bouncing back and forth between fictional spirituality and despair and fear. Identifying with it automatically keeps it. Keeping it and trying to change it into the truth does not work. Ever. It has to be dis-identified from, to reclaim who you are.
But because we have identified with the ego, and we’re tired of suffering, and want to become more spiritual, we try to change "our self", which now is the ego. All this will do is transform the form that the ego is showing up as. It means changing up your life to "look" more spiritual. To do the spiritual things and not the non-spiritual things. To emphasize how evil the evil stuff is, and how spiritual the spiritual stuff is. To create a special little corner of the world safe from the bad stuff. For a while.
You can see many Christians doing this. Not all, but many. Some, in fundamentalist extremes of ego, heavily believe in "good and evil" and will do anything they can in a war against evil to judge it and make it very wrong, while also trying to cultivate an "image" of being more spiritual. This then entails wearing the "Sunday best", being "good", condemning "evil", adjusting behavior, avoiding sinful behavior, and generally creating an illusion of spirituality. It is very judgemental because there is so much separation in it.
You can also see this in most of the world’s religions. People with their false Gods, their idols, their shrines, their special songs, their statues, their rituals and traditions, their special clothing, daily behaviors, sacred images, holy locations, and various other magical things. You also see this in all super-positive approaches (magical unicorns) and all super-negative approaches (witchcraft etc). Both, being a belief in a special external power, or external love, are beliefs in magic. Just different sides of it.
These are all ego distractions of false spirituality. Also the new-age movement with its positive thinking, magical charms and paraphenalia, law of attraction, yoga, special kinds of body activities, etc is all part and parcel of an illusion of spirituality. Things which seem like they will achieve something, but achieve the opposite, is the hallmark of the ego. The test of any genuine spirituality is whether it "really works" to bring about more awareness of love.
All of this is an attempt to "find yourself". It’s the same thing as trying to find love. Believing that it is OUT THERE, and that if you just try hard enough you will find it. The ego has a response for you. It will tell you that you need to make a lot of passionate effort to become spiritual. It will encourage you to do lots and lots of "spiritual practice". Even if it overwhelms you. Why?
Because it denies that you are already very spiritual. It takes you away from the love that is already in you. Having a really strong passion for "finding the truth" and "finding love" and "becoming spiritual" actually makes you feel hopeless and worthless and unloved. It takes you away from the love that you are already. Appreciating what you already have (gratitude for what God has given) is a better strategy.
The more the ego can emphasize how much love you lack, the more it can compel you to seek for it. The more estranged your are from your own self, the more you think you will find it outside you or in someone else. The more you disown your own love, the more you will blame others for making it go away. And the more you try to find it, the LESS you will find it.
You already had it! Seeking for it makes it seem like it’s not here. Seek, and you will not find it. And you will not find love or truth, or health, or happiness, or wholeness, or peace, or willingness, or power, or unity, or joy, "in" the world outside of you. If you are doing that, prepare to be disappointed. This is the ego’s guarantee.
After you have recognized these illusions and have stopped trying to pretend to be loving or spiritual, through radical honesty and authenticity and responsibility, sorting out what is really true and what is really false, and have surrendered the seeking, and have seen through the TRAP of believing that you are not ALREADY love, you will return back to where you started from. This is the "journey without distance". Your destination, the love within you, where God put it, required no real distance at all. To find it, you didn’t need to travel in dreams at all.
Love is already in you. God put it there.
Your SELF, your real identity, is already in you. God put it there. No-one can give it you you and you can’t find it anywhere. Because you have not lost it.
The only problem you have are the blocks to the *awareness* of love’s presence WITHIN YOU. It’s already there!
It’s just covered up. It’s hidden. Love being hidden makes it seem like love has "gone away". This suggests that you really did become sinful, as if you sin made innocence become corrupted. You never did. You just *covered up* your innocence with a cloud of images of sin, and then tried to cover that up with illusions of innocence. Sin did not corrupt your innocence, or make you unworthy of love. It just temporarily blocked your awareness of it being PRESENT, right here, in you, as you, right now.
You have no needs. You need do nothing. You need not seek for love. "You are the love you’ve been looking for." All that is needed for enlightenment is the recognition of this truth. "Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all." It means recognizing where love IS, that you ARE IT, accepting that it is COMPLETELY TRUE OF YOU, your willingness to receive it from God, and your willingness to accept it is IN YOURSELF ALREADY! Accepting the atonement is accepting that you never did lose the love that you are.
You already have the light in you. You already have the truth in you. You just don’t believe it’s there or that you’re worthy of it, or that you want it, or that you need it, or that you can have it, or that it hasn’t gone way. Love didn’t leave you. Love didn’t reject you. You left love. This is the inheritance that we threw away. And which is waiting for us to reclaim. God has kept our love safe for us, forever.
We ALREADY HAD EVERYTHING we needed. God already gave it fully and shared it with us. It was after having it that we tried to throw it away. But we could not get rid of it. You can’t make love go away. You can’t get rid of God. But you can deny it is there by blocking awareness of it. Remove the blocts, and hey presto, OH LOOK, I AM ALREADY LOVE!!!! I’ve been the love that I‘ve been trying to find, all along! Surprise!
"The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world is the picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "The hell you made".
Okay so, apparently, we MADE some kind of a world, which was designed to attack God, is made of illusions, tries to shut God out, depicts the death of God's Son, and is totally opposite to heaven as a form of hell, where bodies sin and try to prove death can happen.
So now we're in a position where we can ask a really interesting question. What do we do about this? How is this resolved? What's the Holy Spirit's solution? How should we be regarding or viewing this hellish realm of sin and attack and death that we made? What is the way to return to Heaven? How does God deal with this situation?
There are many significant parts of the Course which talk about the fact of what this world IS. It's nature. As described above, an illusory hellish dream of sin and death. In some of the perspectives Jesus gives, he reminds us of how meaningless, pointless, non-existent, purposeless, substanceless this world is.
This seems to be a very important aspect of how we overcome it. A recognition of what it is and what it is not. No rose tinted glasses, no fluffy romantic language, no trying to make it out to BE Heaven or to BE God's creation. Just a simple recognition of its illusory nature, a picture of impossibilities and nonsenser. Just a straight forward honest appraisal of what we made and why it is not real. For example:
"(mind) ... it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
"There is no world" "The world sill spin into the nothingness from which it came." "Eternity will shine away the world." "A world forgiven cannot last."
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while." ... "The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?" ... "Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers." ... "Yet they are not deceived by what they see." ... Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
So in this perspective, Jesus teaches us that this world we made, is an illusion of a world, which we mistakenly think is REAL. And we're supposed to recognize it's an illusion/dream and not believe in it, we're supposed to recognize it holds nothing that we want, that it is unreal, that we are not of it, the body is not who we are, and really that none of it is happening. "All events are nowhere." It has no consequences, nothing that happens causes anything real, there is no real sin. "All changes wrought are substance-less." And this proceeds all the way to the world disappearing. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
There is no particular love-loss for the world in this view. It's just simple honest recognition of the fact that it is a world made from the denial of the Kingdom, dreamed in an attempt to attack God and His Son, it is illusory and has no real effects, no part of it is valuable or permanent, and it doesn't really exist.
There is, however, also an additional component to coming to recognize "awareness of dreaming of hell". To realize the world is not the real world. And this has to do with the Holy Spirit's reinterpretation of what we made.
The world we made, was made in total "false perception". The body was made to be fixed in a state of false perception, where it does not overlook/forgive ANYTHING. It is blinded by perception of forms. Its vision stops at the outside surface of nothing. It "sees" only what BLOCKS vision. "These eyes made not to see will never see."
The body's eyes can only report that "the world seems real" "it seems to exist" "it seems to be happening." They only see "sin is real" "bodies are sinful". We jumped all the way from perfect Heaven to total hell. We designed the world to be a total opposite to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But what does the Holy Spirit do with this hell that we made?
What he represents and makes possible, is an alternative way of looking at the hell we made. A re-interpretation of it. This doesn't really CHANGE IT, because it can't BE anything other than an illusion. You can't make it BE Heaven - God already accomplished Heaven's creation. But you can learn not to be deceived by it, so that when you see it, you don't BUY INTO IT. You don't MAKE it real to you.
"the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made".
"This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's ALTERNATIVE, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking BACK the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released, because the mind acknowledges "this is not DONE TO me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and ALL the dreaming of the world undone."
His goal is to UNDO the dreaming of the world. To take back the cause of it. To stop the making of it. To cancel it, reverse it, dissolve it, erase it, disappear it. To STOP DREAMING. This is His aim and guarantee. But before this happens, something happens to how you experience the world you made. We're introduced to this idea that the WAY YOU SEE, perception, can be modified and repurposed, so that you gradually invest in the dream less, believe it's illusions less, are convinced it is a picture of real sin and death less, and so learn to overlook/forgive/forget it.
This means that initially, it seems as if the world is really hell. Unforgiven, it is a "real nightmare". The body is designed to fixate on the nightmare and make it seem real. But we have the ability to change our mind, which changes our beliefs, which change our perceptions. We can choose again and NOT believe in what the world is showing us, and to regard the body as DECEIVING us. It's still a picture of hell. It's still "the strange world you made." It still seems to run by ego laws of death and everything in it still is limited and flawed, per the laws of illusions/death. But if you don't BELIEVE IN IT, you don't take these appearances at face value. You are not deceived. You are not tempted.
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."
"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."
"Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."
"And he will reinterpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."
"I am the light of the world" "It is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation. It brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose."
We're also told that God loves the world. Even though the world is an imaginary illusion of death, a picture of hell, somehow God still loves it so that He does NOT believe in it or mistake it for Reality. But let's be clear, that loving the world does not MAKE the world BE love. It doesn't MAKE it holy. It merely looks upon it WITH love and holiness, forgiving what is there, not believing in what it depicts. The picture of crucifixion turns into an empty MIRROR, in which you see YOUR reflection. In this, the world is meaningless in and of itself, so by taking away its meanings you reflect only Gods' meaning INTO it. This makes the world SEEM holy or heaven-like.
"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world."
"What the world is, is but a fact. (it is a picture of hell) You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose **how** you would see it."
"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right?"
What he's clearly saying here is that you have dreamed of hell, in an attempt to destroy God and His son. And Earth is still Heaven's opposite. But this hell only seems to have any reality while you believe it is real, while you are judging and deceiving. God does not believe in hell being real. He knows there is no real sin or death. So he looks UPON hell and does not make it real, does not see any proof of real sin in it, sees no evidence of real death happening, and so has no grounds for being anything other than loving. Laughing at it. Shining it away.
So now in the Holy Spirit's true perception, everything about the world is OVERLOOKED, ie not taken at face value. The world is regarded as a thin veil of nothingness hanging over the face of Christ. Substanceless, causeless, not doing anything, imaginary. An image of crucifixion still, but depicting nothing but a fantasy. An image of death and sin still, but depicting only an idle wish that sin and death can happen. It's not taken seriously. And so he does not see REAL sin in it. In this way, the picture of crucifixion is forgiven.
Here before your eyes is a vision of hell, a veil of death, which the body wants to report as real, but which the Spiritual Eye recognizes is entirely fictional and absurd. Not even worth paying attention to. But because the Holy Spirit does not see "real sin" in it, he does not project sin onto it, or judge it, or condemn it, or mistake it for reality. It is now a picture of death, interpreted as nothing, depicting fake sins, containing no real sin, and so it is forgiven. It is not seen as "full of sin". Nor is it sinless. It is a forgiven illusion, seen through and disregarded,.
And so instead it seems to symbolize innocence and holiness. If no attack or hate or judgement is laid UPON it, it's merely seen as a thin veil of illusions. It has lost its heaviness and darkness. It is now a very light picture of darkness. A thin picture of solidity. A loved picture of illusions of hatred. Because the world you made is always an illusion, always artificial, always not real, always false, always a depiction of impossibilities, and always nothing. Not taken seriously, it ends in laughter.
"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. (end of spacetime.) 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."
"Can what has no beginning really end? 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 illusion of forgiveness covers the evil world by not BELIEVING that it is real. By recognizing SIN does not exist. So this picture of sin is false. The perspective of the big picture reveals the world's illusion, and correctly perceives it as a deception. It REPLACES the world's meaninglessness. It SHINES AWAY the world because illusions recognized must disappear. A forgiven world is a world recognized as FALSE. A FALSE world, perceived WITH love, which overlooks and shines away the world. God erases the world with love. You cannot love it and keep it. A world forgiven cannot last.
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. 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. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (Earth, illusion), ***and do not want.*** The only effort you need make, to give this world (Earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (heaven), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all-embracing. Here is it nourished, for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real."
"When not one thought of sin remains" appears to be a long-range goal indeed. But time stands still, and waits on the goal of God's teachers. Not one thought of sin will remain the instant any one of them accepts Atonement for himself."
"***The world will end*** when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible.The final lesson, which brings ***the ending of the world***, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared *****to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach.*****"
"The world will **end** in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will **end** in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will **end** in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. **In blessing it departs**, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven (symbolically) is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is ***reflected*** (symbolic)."
To turn hell into heaven simply means, to learn to recognize that the world is not REALLY hell, it is not REALLY anything. It's claims are ignored. It's proof is thrown out. It's picture of death are laughed at. It's sins are not taken seriously. It's illusions do not deceive. The picture of crucifixion is SEEN WITH love, and a **reflection** of love and holiness is seen "in it". As if looking upon a picture of devastation and war in an extremely happy mood. What it claims to be is not what it is. You override it. And then the world disappears completely.
"**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."
"Eternity will **shine away** the world."
"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, **no walls, no bodies**, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
"The world (Earth) stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ***nothing more than just a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last **for only what it is.** (an illusion of a sin/attack/death world.) And now ***it cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of "separateness" into wholeness. We believed it was possible for there to be a lack of wholeness. This produced the idea of "over here" and "over there", each distinct and different and seeming to lack the some part of the whole, setting them apart.
This laid the foundation for both space and time - notions that what is here is not there, or what is there lacks what is here. And so each seeming part of it seems to have a different form, a partial collection of attributes which sets them apart from each other. And neither has everything.
"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness." And then we continued to subdivide and split the mind. We tried to assign certain collections of properties, aspects, characteristics, to some parts, and others to the rest. To break wholeness into seeming isolated chunks of form.
Each part took on a different form and meaning. Various forms or examples or versions of the same one error of separateness. This caused a multitude of differences to seem to appear, each held apart from the rest and separated out as if many things.
This inevitably produced an entire universe of many "forms of error", where each object or body is different to the rest. Each lacks what the others have, rooted in sacrifice and limitation. Not one is whole, and every one is partial.
And so each form appears to comprise different materials, shapes, structures, behaviors, colors, textures and appearances. From these scattered fragments of illusion, entire worlds seemed to arise, each unlike the others and unique in its appearance. Including every human body and every atom.
An illusion is the appearance that something is other than what it actually is - seeming to be something it is not. The single idea of separation, the one problem, shows up as multiple things and multiple problems. It is really one thing, but separateness leads to many forms. And every form is an illusion that the one error is many errors.
Each form says, "look at the ways I am not the same as the rest". And so as one form pulls itself away from sameness, another form does the same. And the two forms try to disguise the fact they are one thing.
And now each form seems to vie for attention. Every form is different, and therefore in conflict and competition. Some are larger, smaller, more or less important, more or less valuable, more or less serious, more or less difficult to deal with.
And now we have an entire hierarchy of illusions, from the gigantic to the tiny, and everything in between. The form that each form takes deceives by distracting you with its claim that it is not like the rest. My car is not a house. My boat is not an airplane. My trousers are not shoes. My ice cream is not a burger.
Every form is designed to assert a deception, a temptation, an illusion, that if its form is real and true, then it IS NOT the other things. This was founded in the simple premise that this world is NOT reality, or the negation of God, and so everything appears to be NOT the rest.
If you believe it, you are deceived. Because every form is a form of deception, an illusion that a singular idea of separation is many things.
One part says, I am not like the other part. Look at how I am different. Look at my different shape, color, size and makeup. Look at what sets me apart. Look at what I have which the other lacks. Look at our differences. Look how we are separate and not the same at all.
And to believe this is to be completely blinded to the the truth. Because if you fall for this and take sides, if you come to prefer one form over another, or think they are truthfully unique and valuable, then you have fallen for the ONE temptation of the world.
Every form is a lie. Every physical object and every body is a lie. Every planet and every star and galaxy is a lie. They are all designed to hide and disguise the one single illusion of separation.
So long as you are caught up in a life where the worshipping of DIFFERENCES prevails, where you prefer some forms over others, where you think that two things are not THE SAME, you are deceived and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as to fixate your vision on the perception of FORM, making the separation real.
The body's eyes look only upon the forms of error. Only the body makes the world seem real. Its fixation on differences, changes, inequalities and comparisons, blinds you to seeing any kind of singular truth. It sees a world of a billion truths, none making any sense or meaning anything at all. The whole message of ACIM is that we need to transition AWAY from a world of differences, towards wholeness. To repair the sense of fragmentation in the mind and restore singular oneness.
This requires seeing THROUGH the deception of form, and not believing it. Not believing that a car and a house are real differences. Not believing that a living body and a dead body are real differences. Not believing that some objects are more important or valuable than others. Realizing that we gave the world of forms ALL the meanings that they have.
To flatten the hierarchy of illusions is to recognize that ALL illusions are one illusion. A single error presents itself to you in every conceivable form of deception. If you buy into it, you think there is an order of difficulty, where some things are harder to deal with or change than others.
To recognize there IS no hierarchy, is to recognize that all forms are the SAME. That every form of suffering is the SAME. That every form of sickness and death and life is the SAME. That there is ONE thing here, not many. That the manyness and the differences are entirely untrue. That one thing is sneakily showing up as a massive multitude to HIDE its true nature of being just one thing.
This is why there is really only one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, that ALL FORMS of suffering have a SINGLE cause. This is why the workbook lessons have us NOT be selective in which forms we apply things to, so that we will learn that forms are meaningless decoys. This is why we are to recognize there is ONE problem not many. And this is why there is ONE truth and ONE law and ONE atonement.
Every form that the world takes is a lie. Every time it says you should want this form or that form, it is trying to get you to take sides. Every time you take sides there is war. Every difference of form IS conflict. Everything you see with the body IS conflicted, with objects vying for attention, some nearer some further, some louder some quieter, some more "appealing" than others.
All of this is ONE thing, one effort, one scheme, to TEMPT you to believe in the differences so that you will not recognize they are ALL THE SAME. That this whole world is entirely unreal. That not one form is more real or important or valuable than another. That there aren't billions of choices, there is only one choice.
ALL illusory forms are like two characters who act and speak and present themselves differently to try to create the illusion that they are not ONE actor. The mind is ONE actor, taking on the role of multiple simultaneous parts, pitted against each other. So long as you do not recognize that ONE mind is playing ALL the roles, of both victim and victimizer, you will be deceived by form.
In a world of forms, all the forms are untrue. Not one of them IS reality. And none of them show you what is true. To see only physical form is to see nothing but error and sin. True vision will show you that their many appearances are lies, and that there is a singular truth behind them. We are addicted to a world of forms, believing in specialness and made-up values. Made-up worth. Made-up importance. Goals and toys and special jobs and relationships and things you want and things you don't want.
All designed to keep you locked into a hell of form and separation. To keep you tempted that the next big thing will save you. That the next form the illusion takes will be the one you've always wanted. So that you never realize NONE of them are true, NONE of them are real, and NONE of them are what you really want.
That without deception, lies, falsehood and temptation, there is NO WORLD HERE AT ALL. Without form, there is no planet and no body. And behind all forms is the one lie that started it all, which the world of forms was made to hide - that separation is even possibe.
"A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts."
"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."
"For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?"
"Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other."
"Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment."
"Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true."
"The meeting of illusions leads to war."
"EVERY illusion is an assault on truth."
"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."
"The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."
"The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take."
"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion."
"For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms."
"The dream is but illusion in the mind."
"The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing."
"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."
"You are so used to choosing between dreams, you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL ILLUSIONS."
"This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake."
"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized."
"Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."
"Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth."
"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."
"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent."
"Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms."
"NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."
"What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false."
"Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived."
"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."
"For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others."
"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
"The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."
"This illusion can take many forms."
"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.""
"The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth."
"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."
"Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways."
"Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."
"Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes."
"The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms."
"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."
"Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"
"You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it."
"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship you ever made is PART of it."
"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs."
"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."
"Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power."
"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it."
"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."
"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."
"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. ... Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured."
"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen."
The entire ego thought system is an attempt to deny and get rid of God, ourselves, and truth. It is an attempt to displace responsibility for who and what we are, what we are experiencing, and how these experiences were chosen, onto someone other than ourselves.
The culmination of this behavior if death, in which we seem to successfully displace/project/disassociate ALL responsibility for living onto some external power, which decides FOR us what our fate will be.
Death is the ultimate statement and attempt to get rid of all will to live, all responsibility for choice, all power, all blame, and all sin. Turning the tables and having something external "cause you to die" can only happen by completely refusing to make a choice, to create an illusion of having no choice, and to then play along with that lie by "letting" something destroy you "against your will."
All victimhood speaks of the disownership and denial of self, the projection of sin onto others, the unwillingness to choose or to admit to anything, and the deliberate placing of all POWER into the hands of anyone other than ourselves. This has been our ego agenda since the beginning of the separation from God, which was an attempt to deny all power, to deny what we are, and to destroy what God has created.
The only tool the ego has, since it cannot change reality or make it truly be destroyed, is to "cover it up" with illusions of denial. This denial attempts to displace away from the present, away from Self, away from God, everything that is HERE to make it be "not here". This is simply an act of DISOWNING RESPONSIBILITY.
The antidote to this, and everything that comes from it, is to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER by taking responsibility for everything that you are experiencing. This requires that you learn that NOTHING can happen to you against your will, EVERYTHING you are experiencing is what you have ASKED FOR, and you HAVE received exactly what you wanted. This also means that you MUST have chosen whatever it is you are experiencing.
This ties in directly to the secret to salvation, which is the realizing that you are DOING THIS TO YOURSELF, which means that you cannot ever be a victim, no-one is EVER the cause of anything you are experiencing or feeling, no-one can attack you, you are invulnerable, and therefore you are SAFE.
It also ties into Jesus saying that "no-one dies without their own consent". This literally means that if you will take full responsibility, you literally CANNOT experience death unless you choose to. And this also means, that literally, nothing outside of you has ANY ability or power to CAUSE you to die, against your will. This is nothing short of immortality.
The benefits to you and your mind by taking full responsibility for everything is profound. It takes some practice, especially since in most ego dramas there is some perception that SOMEONE ELSE is responsible for what you are experiencing. It can seem that your body is sick because of something that happened against your will, or someone called you some names, or they attacked you, or there is something wrong with them etc. These are LIES.
These are ways that you will GIVE POWER to other people, which means DISOWNING that power, which means you will then *experience* a sense of POWERLESSNESS. In that powerlessness you will see yourself as weak, vulnerable and attackable, and justified in being constantly afraid because now you perceive that "a great power" is outside of you, able to do something to you against your will. A power so strong that, in comparison, the "lack of power" you see yourself as having is no match for it.
Being a victim is a deliberate act of giving your power away. It also reveals in *every case* that you MUST have chosen incorrectly, must have asked for what you have experienced, and therefore have done it to yourself. There is no wiggle room here. We're not able to maintain a belief in "justified victimhood" or "being unfairly treated" at the same time as being empowered. Believing in these reasons why anyone is justified in being a victim or projecting blame for it, is nothing less than a continued CHOICE to disown our power.
We may not realize how much power we have attempted to GIVE AWAY, especially if we are in a very afraid state of victimization. We have been so used to being POWERLESS that we think this is normal and natural. However, as you start to take back responsibility for *everything* you are experiencing, taking back all blame and all belief in an external cause, you will be pleasantly surprised as how EMPOWERED you feel, how much it boosts your confidence and certainty, and how much LESS AFRAID you are.
Essentially, by giving away responsibility, we are attempting to make our life the responsibility of someone else. Then we will seek for them to DO TO US how we want them to treat us - which is specialness. If they do not treat us right, and given we believe what we experience is THEIR responsibility, we will then blame them for failing to live up to our expectation. You can see this in almost all parent-child relationships not to mention all other special relationships.
Also, in this act of placing blame for sin onto SOMETHING SEPARATE AND EXTERNAL, we actually attempting to separate *GOD* off, make him be other than one with our identity, to make out that He is the sinner, that He is now an "external, separate cause", that His Will is now acting AGAINST our will, and therefore we are justified in being angry at God. And then when it SEEMS as though an "external cause" is the reason for why we die, against our will, we are literally acting out this accusation that we are dying because IT IS GOD's WILL. Having made our will be against God's we now see Him as acting against us and trying to kill us. This is what happens when we try to kill God.
The truth is, God is NOT separate from us, His Will is NOT opposed to ours (ours is opposed to His), and He is NOT a separate cause out there doing stuff to us against our will. It is OUR authority problem which makes God out to be an attacker. Every death is a statement that we should die because it is God's will, which is a completely unfounded claim against God, trying to make God out to be a sinner and us His innocent victim.
Now, when we are in our ego and we're getting all caught up in some argument or drama with someone else, what happens is our mind forms "connections" to the other person. These are ego connections. They are psychological distortions resulting from false perception, which perceives that what you are experiencing is "caused by" something outside of yourself.
Seeing cause outside of you will ensure you see "effects" inside of you being directly "tied to" that external cause. So long as you keep visualizing that there is an enemy out there, you will not be able to let go of this sense that you "haven't let go" of this. The person will keeping popping up in your mind and you'll keep having FEAR about what they are doing to you. This is because you believe THEY are responsible for what you are experiencing.
This can become quite heightened, because the ego attacks itself and through conflict it attempts to "join" separate pieces together. The more you are being irresponsible by projecting others as the "cause of you", the more you will not be at peace because you can't LET GO of the perceived situation. Your perception needs healing.
Have you experienced how when you are concerned about what someone is doing, you just can't stop thinking about it? It keeps coming back into your mind. This is because you have become ATTACHED to this enemy, which keeps haunting you. Attachment means the ego is holding on tightly to its vision of an external cause. To let go of that attachment requires one thing .... TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU ARE EXPERIENCING.
Since all ego dramas and fights and wars and conflict involve this "attaching" process of making YOUR wellbeing dependent on something external, the antidote is to SEVER THE TIES OF CAUSALITY with that other person. This means, making statements or at least having a willingness to admit, that they are NOT THE CAUSE of what you are experiencing, they are NOT responsible for what you are experiencing, the power you see IN them is NOT THEIRS it is your own which you attempted to GIVE to them, and to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER.
Here is an example.
Pick some person who you think of as being an enemy, against you, threatening you, accusing you, attacking you, blaming you, judging you, or in any way somehow acting against your will.
Recognize now what the content of your perception is. Somewhere in your perception you have DISPLACED a sense of power onto the person. You see them as HAVING POWER OVER YOU. And in that same perception, you see yourself as having LOST power to them.
Recognize also that you feel that THEY are responsible for how you feel, what you are experiencing, and what's happening to you. It's their fault. They are the one doing it. Cause is outside of you, and you therefore are being turned into an EFFECT. Note that all emotional reactions from the ego are the result of seeing yourself as AT THE EFFECT of the world. Perceiving a cause outside of you automatically means that YOU have to adjust to "become the effects" that this cause is projecting. These "effects" show up as emotional disturbance and reactions of hurt, fear, anger, etc.
Recognize also that you are attached to this person, they seem to have a way to ACCESS YOU, they are connected to you in some energetic way, and you can't seem to be at peace about them. You feel threatened by them, unsafe, unable to muster enough power or courage to stand up to them, and you feel like you are being victimized.
Now. Here is the good part. SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM THEIR CAUSALITY. Say some things which confirm the truth, that there is NO TIE OF CAUSALITY between that person and you. I am now going to demonstrate an example and if you follow along using a person in your life, you WILL NOTICE how this changes your mind and your feelings.....
I am not being affected by that person. That person is not being affected by me.
I am not being caused by that person. That person is not being caused by me.
Nothing I am experiencing is coming from that person. These experiences are my own. I am choosing all of these experiences. Everything I am feeling I am choosing to feel. They are my own feelings and I put them there. This other person did not put them there.
Nothing the other person is experiencing is coming from me. Whatever they are experiencing is their own choice. They are choosing all of their experiences. Everything they are feeling they are choosing to feel. Those are their own feelings, not mine, and I did not put them there.
My feelings of hurt any upset are not being caused by them. Their feelings of hurt and upset are not being caused by me.
I am not responsible for anything that person is experiencing. They are not responsible for anything I am experiencing.
They have done nothing to me. I have done nothing to them.
I am not at the effect of that person. That person is not at the effect of me.
That person hasn't done anything to me against my will. I have not done anything to that person against their will.
I completely forgive that person because they have not done anything to me at all. That person completely forgives me because I have not done anything to them at all.
Everything I am experiencing is my own choice. I have put these reactions and feelings into my own body. I am the one who did this to myself. They did not do this to me. I must have chosen it.
(this ties directly into..) "I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I MADE THE DECISION MYSELF,
but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise,
because I want to be at peace."
You can go on and on like this for as long as you feel you need to, SEPARATING CAUSALITY from seeming like it is coming from someone other than yourself. Or rather, deprogramming your false perception of an external enemy, and TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT so that you realize you are only doing this to yourself.
This puts all POWER back into your own hands. You will REGAIN POWER, you will feel stronger, you will feel less afraid, you will feel like you have LET GO of the other person, you will stop having obsessive thoughts about them, you will not FEAR being victimized by them or what they are going to "do to you", and you will gain a lot more confidence.
Essentially, this is a process of forgiveness, whereby you are admitting the truth and owning up to NOT being a victim, to having simply made a mistaken choice, and that you no longer want to see someone else as attacking you. Blaming anyone else for attack is a lie. All attack is self attack.
It is YOU who needs to stop attacking yourself, not other people. Putting the blame for attack onto others SHIELDS YOU from admitting that you are doing it to yourself, because projection comes from DENIAL. Admitting the truth, taking responsibility, and owning up to WHO YOU ARE, gives you back YOURSELF, and empowers you greatly.
What Jesus is teaching us in the Course is simply that all attack is self attack, we have accused ourselves of sin, and we need to admit that this isn't true. The things we do after accusing ourselves of sin, to deny and project it on others, isn't even the main problem. It's part of a cover up. We need to learn to STOP DISOWNING OURSELVES. Stop giving YOUR power away to external causes that don't exist.
When you take back all of YOUR power, which you share with God, you will not be able to see yourself as powerless, or needing to be afraid, or a victim. Stuff won't bother you. People won't be able to attack you. You will gain STRENGTH in the truth. True innocence is STRONG, not weak and vulnerable. You are truly innocent when you take responsibility for everything because it simply means there is no blame or guilt, just a mistaken choice, which can be undone.
As you take back this responsibility, you will find AT FIRST that it seems to your ego that you are taking "the blame" for everything. This is a hurdle, because you still believe that you really did do something wrong. Not blaming it on someone else simply blames you. This has to be undone through forgiveness. If I say, "I am responsible for this", my ego will take it to mean, "I really am a sinner". This is its defense against the truth. We must go past this to realize that it is possible to BE RESPONSIBLE without being guilty.
Jesus talks about this in the urtext, not sure if FIP etc, but He mentions how as you start to take responsibility, your ego will at first perceive it to "imply" that you are the one who is truly a sinner. And this can feel painful. But gradually, the MORE you take responsibility, the more you take back your POWER, the more you will NOT believe in real sin and will more easily stay in your strength. Your strength will shine a stronger light and will help you to SEE that you are simply taking steps to BE YOURSELF.
Taking 100% responsibility for everything you experience is the key to salvation. It can take you all the way to the atonement. It will give you back so much power you will be surprised how invulnerable you feel, how much less afraid you are, how easily you approach people and are not put off by doubts or anxieties.
Taking full responsibility ultimately also means, YOU CANNOT DIE unless you make it happen to yourself. No-one dies without their own consent. It also means NOTHING CAN HURT YOU against your will. It also means YOU CANNOT BE SICK, and neither can your body, because sickness of the body is all an attempt to BE IRRESPONSIBLE by projecting sin onto others. Sickness accuses your brother of being a sinner. That's not responsibility. Taking responsibility will HEAL YOU AND YOUR BODY.
You could say, if you like you think of miracles as shifts in perception, say that taking responsibility will SHIFT your perception miraculously towards the truth. This isn't the full story of what miracles are (expressions of love, able to do anything) etc... but your holiness CAN do anything if you will OWN UP TO IT. It's kind of like an act of COMING OUT AS CHRIST, admitting that YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, revealing yourself, stopping hiding, stoping distracting away from whey you are, BECOMING VISIBLE, and therefor becoming INVISIBLE to the ego. The ego cannot attack you when you are responsible and empowered.
The power you will gain and share with God by reclaiming your right to it (miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first), will astound you. You literally are plugging yourself back into the Power of God. And there is nothing you cannot do.
Fear, which is really uncertainty, is the ego's version of certainty.
If you're afraid, you are grossly uncertain. As uncertainty increases, fear increases.
And yet at the same time, as you become more uncertain, you become more certain that things are uncertain. Uncertainty becomes real. And if uncertainty is real, you definitely are justified in being afraid.
So whatever fear you're having, it's because you're uncertain about something and have moved into the ego. The ego is not certain of anything. Uncertainty can't be the truth, which means fear can't be the truth.
Reclaiming a sense of certainty, confidence, clarity, surety, automatically alleviates fear. But you must become confident about what is really true (God's truth) rather than confident about the ego's truth.
When you are afraid, you are confident that you are in danger. Its a strange thing, to be sure that real certainty is threatened, or to be sure that invulnerability is threatened.
Truth is, you can't be sure that uncertainty is the truth. You think you can, and while you're in uncertainty you'll keep looking for a sense of certainty. But you're already certain, just about the wrong thing. It's a bit of a mind-bender, but to get out of fear you need to be less certain that uncertain things are the truth.
What CAN you be truly certain of? This takes some honesty. Are you absolutely SUUUUUURE, like, really really really sure, that outcomes are terrible, or that people are plotting against you, or that you aren't safe? Are you REAEAAAAALLY sure about that?
If you test that, in the extreme, and if you demand total honesty from yourself, you have to admit to yourself - no, you're not sure. There's so much uncertainty that you do not really FEEL sure even if you're certain about being uncertain, lol You tend to feel what the surface appearance tells you, so if you're sure about uncertain things, you'll FEEL uncertain. But if you're sure about certain things, you'll FEEL certain.
The only thing you can be certain of and feel sure of and re-assured by, is God's love and God's truth. Ego's truth will never reassure you. Be more certain that God's truth is true and ego's truth is false. You are not in danger. You are safe in love. You can be sure of that.
When you're having an emotional reaction to anything, you usually believe it's because something outside of you is causing it.
But more accurately, you previously created a self condemnation within yourself and this is rising to the surface of your awareness. It's like a bruise which it *seems* like someone else is activating or triggering.Its your guilt about separating from God - your sin.
Our reactions are often so quick to happen that it seems like someone or something outside of you 'causes' the feeling.
So I'm sitting here, and if someone comes along and pokes me with a stick, if I suddenly feel angry and annoyed, initially it might look like I've been made to feel this way BY that person. Or that I'm only feeling this way because of that person. Its an illusion of cause and effect.
But what's really happening is, my mind already contained guilt and anger and upset which was buried unconsciously, and being poked with the stick has somehow triggered it off, like a memory or an association, and its come up in my mind quickly and now I'm experiencing it. It's easy to bridge the gap and say, well this person has inflicted a 'fresh wound' upon me, but really it's something that was already in me.
Remember as ACIM says, "we but accuse our brother of our OWN sins." - meaning that our brother does not HAVE any sins that we can accuse them of - its all your own stuff that you project onto them.
The only reason we are here in bodies is because we tried to separate from God by condemning ourselves, attempting to destroy ourselves and to punish ourselves. WE are the ones who believe in our own sinfulness and our own guilt. It's got nothing to do with anyone else and nobody else put it there. And it is this inner self-guilt that becomes 'activated' in EVERY situation where we think someone or something else does 'something' to us to 'make us' unhappy. We simply 'recall' our own guilt and re-suffer.
So instead we hire people to come along and to seem like they are the cause of our suffering, because this triggers off our AGREEMENT that what they're insinuating about us is true (that we deserve punishment or mistreatment), even if we protest violently that this is uncalled for. We cannot get upset UNLESS we agree with the person, and we cannot get upset UNLESS we already believe deep down that we deserve this treatment.
Its not other people that take our power away. We are the ones who keep trying to GIVE it to other people, to give them our own self-responsibility in an attempt to ask them to take over the rights and responsibilities that WE have for ourselves and for our own feelings. We want someone else to be to blame for the separation from God because we have blamed ourselves heavily and can't bear the burden. But OUR suffering has NOTHING to do with anyone else.
So its extremely convenient when someone comes along and triggers you or pushes your buttons. And even though you will react in such a way as to suggest your entire reaction is their fault, or you were just sitting there innocently minding your own business, the fact is they would not be ABLE to upset you if you were truly free of your own guilt. So all they are really doing is helping you to become aware of what you are hiding from, and your hidden unconscious self-hate is actually calling for you to be punished, which is why you hire and attract people to do it to you, for you, even if you fight with them about it consciously.
Ok so, this is really all about taking responsibility for who you are and what you feel and what you believe is true about yourself. You need to learn to decouple and detach the lie, that how you feel is caused by someone else. How you feel is NEVER caused by someone else. Whoever is in your life that is pissing you off, ITS NOT THEM... its not their fault, they're just helping you to see that you pissed yourself off. You HAVE to stop blaming other people for what you are feeling. Fully. Totally. "You are never upset for the reason you think" and "anger is never justified" (ie blaming another).
I have been finding that I am so incredibly used to being a victim, that whenever someone does or says something to 'upset me', and I experience a reaction (which is really just my own self-attack surfacing in my awareness) I immediately add two-and-two together and find the other person to be 'guilty of' upsetting me. It seems like they caused the upset, and its all their fault. I actually buy into this really quickly. And it totally glosses over the fact that I am only experiencing what is already in me, what I already believe it true about myself, and I am only reminded of my own self condemnation.
So what I have to learn to do, which I am experimenting with now, is to remember to remind myself... "I am completely responsible for these feelings". Whatever my reaction is, I have to stop blaming the cause of it on other people. I have to stop seeing myself as having been at the 'effect' of anyone or anything other than myself. If anyone else has 'done this to me', then I am a victim. If I am a victim I can't find peace, no matter how much I protest. No matter what my feeling is, or how much it seems justified or unjustified, or how much it *seems* to have been activated by another person, I HAVE to get to where I admit honestly that EVEN THIS FEELING is not there 'because of' that other person, it's there because *I* put it there because its MY self-attack. "The secret to salvation is this - that you but did this to yourself."
To stop being a victim, or seeing yourself as victimized, you MUST own up to the fact that everything you are experiencing is YOURS. It is your own inner experience. It is not someone else's. It is not something that anyone else put there or created or caused or made happen or reinforced in any way. Its yours. This is your shit.
You have plenty of your own shit in your own mind which you put there to cover and explain absolutely all of your reactions and upset feelings and unhappiness, without needing even one other person to explain why you feel this way. You're doing a fine job of condemning yourself without needing to resort to trying to claim that someone else has 'added to' your load.
Nobody else has ever done anything to you. Period. Let that soak in for a minute. Nobody else has EVER done anything to you, and ALL of your reactions and feelings and experiences are INSIDE YOU, because you put them there. They're YOURS.
You are completely responsible for everything you experience and everything you feel and you are NOT at the effect of anyone else, ever.
Now, this is very tempting for the ego/hurt parts of yourself to want to skapegoat and this happens very rapidly and automatically when you are not being truly honest or observant. And you are so used to this happening that every single time someone or something outside of you 'goes wrong' or 'offends you' or 'attacks you' or 'does something to you' or whatever... you immediately launch into the mistaken perception that this OTHER has 'caused you'. Caused-you, in general... ie... they are the cause, you are their effect, you have no say in who you are, and you must change to match what they say you should be feeling. Victimhood.
So.... now your job is different. Your job is to notice whenever you are in the midst of an 'interaction' with someone or something, in which it has triggered off some feelings. Some upset. Some hurt or anger or whatever it is. If you are not happy, then chances are you are currently `holding a grievance` which you THINK is a grievance against someone else. You blame them for it.
BUT... your job now is this.... you MUST CLAIM OWNERSHIP of every part of what you are experiencing. All of your feelings of hurt, anger, rejection, pain, loss, suffering, sadness, offense, frustration, unfairness, etc... all of it... it is YOURS. It's inside you. And the ONLY reason you are experiencing it is BECAUSE YOU PUT IT THERE. We have to learn that it is NEVER about the other person, you are NEVER affected by someone else, you are NEVER at the effect of the world you see, you are NEVER experiencing something as the effect/result of someone or something else, and nobody has EVER done anything whatsoever to change who you are.
It's actually completely true that nobody has ever done anything to you. As in my quote yesterday - "you are completely harmless and you cannot be hurt." Only you can do this stuff to yourself. Only you can STOP doing this to yourself. This doesn't require a crazy mental somersault or perceptual trampolining in order to see it this way. It's actually the way it IS. You're just allowing yourself to acknowledge things for how they really ARE instead of making up the story that someone else is to blame.
When owned up to with responsibility, you have ONLY done this to yourself. Everyone else is innocent. You have never been hurt by anyone. You ARE immortal and invulnerable. Admitting to this and seeing this is simply the truth. There is no distortion in it and no fairytale needed to paint a picture to make it believable. The truth is that everything you're feeling, you are choosing to feel, on your own, without any help from anyone else.
As you learn to OWN what you are feeling, something really interesting happens. Or at least this is what I am finding. If someone does something that usually I'd say "they caused me to feel xyz"... if I say to myself, ok, I'm upset and feeling hurt and angry... but its NOT because of them... these are MY feelings, ALL of this experience is MINE and has nothing to do with them.... this ownership/responsibility does two things. 1) It completely detatches from the other person and withdraws all blame from them and correctly identifies WHERE the problem is (its in me, in my mind, not in the other person), and 2) It puts me in touch with what is MINE and who I AM.
What I'm finding is that as I own my feelings and stop blaming them on other people, ALL of them... I am owning up to being MYSELF. My 'personality' is coming out. I am feeling freer and happier. My unhappy feelings are dissolving away very quickly and I remain in the victim role for FAR less time. Taking this responsibility immediately detaches me from the other person, and severs the 'tie' that was trying to pin my feelings on someone else. The door is closed, and now I'm within myself. And as I sit with my own feelings in awareness that these are MY own feelings, no matter what seemed to happen, it shines a LIGHT which dispels them. It makes me laugh. I end up laughing rather than crying.
Owning my feelings completely undoes the foundation of victimhood and completely removes victimhood from my perception, which means I now see myself as NOT victimized which means whatever I'm feeling is my OWN creation which means it's really quite hilariously silly that I've chosen to create this feeling. It shows me how ridiculous it is to choose to feel this way. Why would I choose to deliberately feel upset? I am recognizing it is not TRUE that its someone else's fault and its not TRUE that I have been attacked, and this therefore (through oneness) reminds me that I can't have been attacked therefore there CAN'T have been any effects, and therefore I have no reason to be upset. So I can let it go much more quickly and return to happiness.
I'm finding my 'personality' is coming out a lot more, my persona is diminishing, my happiness is increasing and I see myself as much less victimized. I have less reason to be afraid because I'm starting to believe that nobody else is doing anything to me, and that they can't. And by owning my own feelings I am owning BEING ME which means I am allowing myself to be myself freely without all this conditionality of my fake ego victim self. Yay.
Good times. Freedom.
Here are some of the miracle principles with particularly speak to the idea that a miracle is something that you receive from God, and GIVE TO another person. Remember giving and receiving are ONE.
3 - Miracles occur naturally as EXPRESSIONS of love.
8 - Miracles are healing because they SUPPLY a lack. (remember he who temporarily has more gives to he who temporarily has less)
16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to GIVE as to receive.
18 - A miracle is a SERVICE. It is the maximal service you can render to ANOTHER.
19 - Miracles make MINDS (plural) one in God.
21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS.
24 - Miracles enable you to HEAL THE SICK and RAISE THE DEAD because you made sickness and death. (the dead aren't going to be raising themselves, they need YOU, the un-dead, to perform the miracle!)
27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me TO ALL MY BROTHERS.
35 - Miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, but they may not always have observable effects.
40 - The miracle acknowledges EVERYONE AS YOUR BROTHER and mine.
45 - A miracle is never lost. It may TOUCH MANY PEOPLE you have not even met.
AS you can see, if you study the miracle principles it is CLEAR that a miracle is NOT just a shift in your own perception, OR just a healing in your own mind. It is something SHARED and EXPRESSED to others to help them. It's not all about your spiritual ego.
Now, you could loosely interpret most of these in a mindset of, well, this is only speaking of my 'perception' and 'seeking not to change the world' and all that... you could read into that if you want. You could say that your forgiveness just blesses people in a kind of passive way. But miracles are much more than this. This is what we have to wake up to. It's much more than just dealing with your own separate identity. It is about sharing God with others!
What is the title of the book?
"A Course in MIRACLES".
You'd think anyone who knows of Jesus would want to know how he performs miracles, right? He already demonstrated them and now he has given us a manual to learn how to do the same. Hello!
The idea of death was made as the opposite of the idea of God. The separation from God was total opposition to God's nature. It's an assertion that God does not exist, blotted out and dead.
Whatever attributes God has, death is the idea of the total absence of all of those attributes. A total lack of life, of love, of happiness, of peace, of sharing. Anything that God is, death opposes.
"The thought of death is ... the opposite to thoughts of life." UrW167L8
God is creation, and so death is destruction. God is permanent, and so death is change. God is love, and so death is murder. God is reality, and so death is an illusion.
In order to oppose God, the truth must also be opposed. That which is false is asserted as true. True and false become swapped. The truth of God becomes a lie, and the lie of death becomes a reality.
As a result, all of the attributes of God are assigned to death, while all the attributes of nothingness are assigned to God.
Death is now seen as inevitable, real, permanent, eternal, irreversible, powerful, known, true, dependable, trustworthy, welcoming, wanted, attractive, loved, salvation, peace and happiness. God is now seen as uncertain, changing, vulnerable, hateful, vengeful, nothing, meaningless, lifeless, mindless, unloving, destructive, dark, murderous, unwanted, rejecting, an enemy, selfish, unsharing and unreal.
The result is that we have a belief in death, which takes on every possible form. It takes on physical form, as well as in the form of changes of mind, states of feeling, types of thoughts and senses of identity. Every illusion, all of space and time, every perception arises in the idea of God's opposite.
"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come." UrW163L2
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?" UrM28A1
Anything less than the true nature of God is a form of death. This includes any sense of unhappiness, any notion of attack, any kind of sickness, any temptation, any desire for bodies, any false perceptions, any fear or guilt, any idol worship and any way that you see yourself and others as less than having eternal life.
There can't even be atoms and molecules and bodies and planets without the idea of death. Death is change and change is time and time is death. To be separated from life, from God, is to enter into an illusion of dying. Spacetime is the idea of the death of God, in which God appears to not exist.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him." UrW230W32
"And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born." UrM28A6
Every aspect of ego, every form of separation, every unloving relationship, every body worship is all a form of death. If you believe in anything but God's reality you believe in death and are trying to die. We came into this world precisely because we wanted to play with death and to pretend that we can die. We are immortal beings, making a world that is always dying in which we can pretend to die.
"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9
Undoing death is resurrection. To resurrect is to side with eternal life and reject every form of death. Sickness, which is "a little death", must be forgiven and reversed. Death of a body must be reversible. And an entire world rooted in death must be undone. Without the idea of death, spacetime cannot exist. And without death, there is no world and no separation from God.
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. 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." UrT12G3
"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real." UrM28A3
"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it." UrW163L7
"There is no death. The Son of God is free." UrW163
"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8
"There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever." UrW163L9
In the oneness of God, there is no taking of sides. There is only one side, and everyone's on it. Because there is no split, there is no war.
This state of the "absence of conflict" is a state of peace. It is also very quiet, because there is no war, no shrieks of terror, no invasion and no destruction.
To attack is to not know, because it is an attack on knowledge which is an attribute of peace. To attack peace is to not know reality, and is insane. Those who attack are unaware of who or what they are attacking, and attack in the darkness of their own minds.
"God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind, it does not see whom it attacks." The stillness of God is quiet and peaceful, because in reality there is only harmony and unity. In the "separation from God", the tiny mad idea introduced the idea that some parts of existence could have something that other parts lacked. This provided the starting point for conflict.
Only when there is more than one side, and the potential to side against something, do you have conflict of any kind. War is impossible without separation, specialness, selfishness and isolation. To exclude is to attack, and heaven is only a realm of inclusion.
As soon as we added the idea of exclusivity we entered into war. This is when the war on God began, and it has not yet ended. All of the history of space and time has been a state of war. Even the physical objects, shapes, sizes, distances and so on, are forms of conflict. They conflict because they are different and do not share. They take sides against each other and differ, therefore conflicting.
"It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict."
Even the slightest removal from God is a state of conflict, in which there is no peace, no quiet, no relief, and no stillness. Everyone is constantly on-guard, seeing themselves as deprived and in need of defenses. To be un-whole is to be lacking, and in need, leading to a sense of vulnerability. Without conflict you are invulnerable.
Within the conflicted world of spacetime, including the Earth, everything conflicts all the time. Sometimes there appears to be what we might call "compatibility", in which there is less conflict. There can seem to be lulls in the fighting, interspersed with escalations of tension. Sometimes these break out into what we call wars or arguments or fights but the truth is that the whole system is a constant state of war, until the world disappears.
There was indeed a "war on God" which began at the separation and is ongoing until the atonement is complete. It is not so much a war between good and evil, because the good retains awareness of peace. The good is conflict-free. Only the evil believes in conflict and conflicts with itself. And thus self-attack is its entire system of thinking.
"Do you not realize a war against yourself would BE a war on God? Is victory CONCEIVABLE? And, if it were, is this a victory that you would WANT? The death of God, if it were possible, would be YOUR death. Is this a VICTORY? The ego ALWAYS marches to defeat, BECAUSE it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war. Only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown."
If it is peace that you seek, then it is the end of conflict that you seek. To end conflict there has to be oneness, a singular side which benefits everyone and excludes no-one. There has to be an unconditional love and a total sharing of everything. This is the only way to end the war. So long as anyone is left out or opposes or attacks or separates themselves off, there cannot be peace.
Some pursue an escalation of conflict and attack and isolation in an attempt to bring an end to the conflict. This is the idea that if you "get it over with" or take it to the extreme, you'll alleviate the horror of the battlefield and constant suffering. Thus suicide starts to become appealing and death suggests a way out of the war.
But death is not the end of conflict, it's simply another form of it. It's just another way of saying that life and death are opposed and attack is a remedy and annihilation is a solution to conflict. It's an insane idea to suggest that dying is better than finding peace, or that death can bring peace. Only God can bring peace. "Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God's ANSWER is its end."
God's answer is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the call for a ceasefire. The Holy Spirit is offering healing and reunion and appeals to everyone to join together. All of his solutions are for the benefit of all without exception. His miracles extend to untold numbers of receivers. And his answers are in favor of everyone without taking sides. He is the idea of a return to peace and a real solution to all conflict.
To the ego, the Holy Spirit is the destroyer of worlds, the bringer of the end of space and time, the destructor of bodies and the final blow from God. But in truth the Holy Spirit is the resurrector, the restorer, the healer, the teacher, the therapist, the comforter, the friend and the help that God has sent to bring an end to destruction and death. He is literally the end of death and the guarantee of eternal life. And in eternal life, there is no more war.
God has absolute power. And yet, God shares all of His power with us. And this doesn't mean, in some watered-down version or less capable version, but we actually in our natural divine state are meant to fully share all of God's power, and to extend it. This means, creatively, the ability to do anything. It also gives us an incredible experiential strength, an invulnerability, an immortality, eternal life, and nothing short of the complete inability to be affected by anything. We're talking, beyond superhero status here. Miraculous, complete unwavering certainty and absolute knowing.
Now, this generally isn't the kind of experience that most of us are having day-to-day. Most of the time we're in a state of quite significant dis-empowerment. Somehow we seem to be out of touch with a sense of certainty, we're not confident, we feel vulnerable, we see ourselves as weak victims, easily affected by the world and quite easily losing our peace over stupid little things. We quite literally walk the earth in basically a state of immersion in FEAR, with a sense of dread and foreboding about going anywhere and doing anything. We don't really feel like we're some kind of master of reality or that we're completely impenetrable and invulnerable. So how did we get into this state?
Basically, any way that we use or side with the ego and its thought system, undermines us. It always entails some form of denial, blockage, shutting out, disowning of one's self, self-rejection, censorship, unconsciousness, a projection of the power of 'cause' onto external people and events, seeing oneself as victimized and affected by the world, suffering in the body, things happening that we didn't choose, the list goes on. All of these things, if we believe and involve ourselves with them, cause us to seemingly experience a state of disempowerment. In other words, we've at some point actually chosen to deny and project our power onto others, so that we appear to be weak and afraid. On purpose. So yes, we actually choose to be victims and we live a fearful life thinking this is normal.
So now the question is, how do we get that power back? Well, for starters, we're going to begin by noticing that we currently believe we can't get our power back because a) we don't even recognize that it is OUR power, b) we've locked it up tightly in the hands of other people, c) we don't think we have the power to take it back, d) we think we're going to have to muster some incredible courage to confront some terrible enemy in order to win it back (which we don't have nearly enough of, making the prospect of it seem terrifying). None of these things are true, but this is what we're starting with in our 'forgiveness process'.
So we actually need to question whether these perceptions and beliefs are actually true. Rather than simply react to them or think that we have to go up against them, we need to stop, backtrack, and ask ourselves, is this even true? Is it really someone else's power? Is it really not my own power that I'm afraid of? Is my fear even really 'because of' the power I see projected or is this state of fear maybe a device that CAUSES me to lose my power? Did someone take this power from me or did I actually willingly give it away? Is there really a big reason why I can't take it back?
The truth is, only you have ever tried to give your power away, and only you have ever accomplished the illusion that you can do this, and only you can undo this by changing your mind. Only you have done this to yourself. So taking your power back is going to mean a) being more honest about what you did to yourself, b) being more responsible for everything you are experiencing, c) recognizing the innocence of others because they are not the cause of your disempowerment, d) recognizing with greater clarity that you are afraid of your own power not the power of others, e) discerning that the power you see out there is in fact YOUR power that you disassociated from, and f) taking steps to reclaim ownership rights of that power and g) admitting to who you really are.
You are a powerful child of God. Not some weak scared child of God. POWERFUL. Compared to most people who live in a state of fear 24/7, even the ones who fake it by pretending to be confident or arrogant, they too are just as much under the belief that they are victims - they've just become a bit better at being victimizers too as a defense mechanism. It pales in comparison to the sense of certainty, stillness, presence, confidence, knowing and truth, that will reside in you when you actually perform forgiveness properly and reclaim what is rightfully yours.
You must therefore learn to see yourself not as a victim. You must drop the victim role and become more responsible for everything you are experiencing. When you are engaged in ego with someone or having a fight or arguing or are upset by someone etc... those are precisely the times where you need to learn to exercise greater honesty, responsibility and awareness, that no you are NOT upset because of that person, they are NOT the cause, and what you're feeling is YOUR responsibility. You are doing this to yourself. You have to become willing to accept this at all times, in all situations.
What happens if you cannot accept that you are completely responsible for your life? It means that you believe other people are responsible for it. If they're responsible for it, they have the power to determine what happens to you and what you experience. Thus they have power over you. And you will become terrified and weak. You must choose not to see yourself this way. You must remember to take full ownership of who you really are.
The entire purpose of all your projection, all your scapegoating, all your self dis-empowerment and all your efforts to 'get rid of' what is inside you, is basically just another part for your attempted *suicide*, as part of your *death wish*, in which you are trying to stop being the Son of God. Trying to get rid of yourself and give all of yourself away to other people for them to dictate who and what you are, is just a part of you trying to destroy yourself. You must stop this.
And so this means that when you stop doing that, what you're doing now is owning up to who you really are, you're being true to yourself, you're not abandoning yourself, you're reclaiming responsibility for the power that God is sharing with you, you're being restored to a position of being UNAFFECTED by anything external, and thus you are reclaiming your INVULNERABILITY and your IMMORTALITY (not that they could ever be truly lost, lol).
What you WILL find, I promise, and I say this because this is what I am experiencing myself, is that when you keep taking this responsibility and ownership of the truth in you, taking back your power, being true to yourself, being even more honest about the fact that only you can do stuff to yourself and everyone else is NOT the cause, the more EMPOWERED you are going to feel. And this is actually going to feel like you have some kind of ... power, inside you, some kind of invulnerability... some kind of strength of certainty... some kind of sense of joyful knowingness... that seems to just be there naturally without you having to do anything else. You didn't have to build it up, you didn't have to increase it or focus on it or amplify it with affirmations. It's your NATURAL STATE and it simply feels like you are psychologically strong, immoveable, and unaffected by anything.
And if like me, you do this, you will start to be quite surprised at how you have a lot less FEAR when you are out in the world. You will feel more sure of yourself. You will have more confidence to talk to people. You will have this sort of sense of, I can't be attacked - invulnerability - a sense of being SAFE - that allows you to then have the confidence to approach people. And you will also find as I am, that you will approach people from a place of greater love, you will become much more willing to express the truth and say loving things right out in the open, and be far far less concerned about the stupid victimization attitudes such as 'what will they think of me', 'I better not be myself in case I upset someone', 'I better be very controlled in case I make someone hurt me', 'I hope it's safe to go there', etc.... all of those things start to melt away, replaced with a POWER that just beams with a sense of joy and confidence.
The only thing that needs to happen to 'acquire' access to this power is to STOP DISEMPOWERING YOURSELF. Stop going along with the ego. Stop listening to it. Stop using it. Stop being irresponsible. Stop blaming people. Stop believing that people affect you. Stop projecting causes outside yourself. Stop literally 'giving away' all of the power that you have to choose everything that you experience. As soon as you think someone else has control of it or is responsible for it, that's in, you're instantly disempowered and in a victim role, fearing for your life. You don't want to be there. It feels like SHIT to be disempowered. And once you are disempowered you will strongly believe that OTHER PEOPLE have CAUSED YOU to lose your power. That they scared you, did something to you, took it away from you, showed prowess over you, threatened you, or whatever. All of those beliefs are BULLSHIT. Nobody has any power to do anything to you whatsoever unless you GIVE IT TO THEM.
And when you give power to others, you are literally giving it to the EGO. It is the EGO that you are EMPOWERING, when you give your power away. Do you think the ego loses out on the deal, or that it's only you that suffers? Nope. You empower the ego. You make the ego seem like it has control over you. You make the ego seem like it can tell you what to do and scare the living shit out of you. It has no ability to do this. Only you can seem to create the illusion in your own mind that it has this ability, or that it has done so. And then you're literally listening to one part of your mind have power over the other part, pretending that the two are not even associated. This is a split mind.
Take your power back. It's yours. Nobody has any rights to it. Nobody has power over your power. You will be thrilled at how much better it makes you feel to not live like a victim your whole life. It's a strength you never imagined you could experience. And it is the missing piece of the puzzle that you could never seem to find to help you to feel confident around people, or to have enough 'balls' to talk to them the way you want to, or to set boundaries, or to have healthy relationships of any kind. This all comes as a natural side-effect of taking your power back and realizing you have far more true power than you ever thought possible, if you'll just stop disowning it.
And let's finish by acknowledging, this strength is actually not your 'own' strength. It's a strength you SHARE with God. God, as love, gives you this strength, when you love yourself. And he gives you this strength so that you can share it with others to increase the strength within them. And so becoming empowered HAS to also mean, relinquishing control over your life, relinquishing reliance on your separate ego self, on your own separate mind and thoughts and abilities, and instead placing yourself into God's hands. Then you truly become empowered above and beyond anything any ego could ever dream of. The big ego trap of becoming empowered is to suggest that *separate you* can become powerful - thats the spiritual ego. It's bullshit. You don't want that. You want to share the power of God. It's the only way to truly experience eternal life.
"I am not weak but strong. I am not afraid but all powerful" - ACIM
I've come to realize, through painful lessons and helpful support, that I've for a long time now been using my learning about 'truth' as a way to justify being 'right' about that truth.
It's a trap. It's not just that in some situations I am 'actually right' based on the facts of the matter, and that therefore I get lost in being 'right' about being right. It's not just about that form of blindness to and use of the ego situation to make myself look even 'righter'.
It goes way beyond that. Because the fact is, the ego has taken all of what could be considered 'truth', A Course in Miracles truth, even very high lofty metaphysical truth, and this ego in me has used it repeatedly to make myself ultra-right whenever anyone ELSE is not complying with this 'truth'.
When someone else is not matching up to this lofty truth, I start to spout off this truth to them. I start to correct them. I even judge them as 'doing it wrong' or 'failing to be truthful' or whatever. The more 'insanely wrong' they seem to be the more I react with 'noooo, that's not the truth'. Doesn't help.
I've been pushing and enforcing 'truth' onto people for a long time. Correcting people. Analyzing situations to prove why someone is not being truthful. Using what seems to be 'honesty' and 'clarity' as tools to point out where other people are being less than honest, so that my ego mind has an opportunity to jump all over them.
Yes we're talking 'holier than thou' with a capital H.
This is the ultimate ego trap, using the highest-possible 'truth' to make others wrong, by pointing out how they are 'incorrect' or using their mistakes to point out how they aren't 'doing it right'. And all along, it's me not 'doing it right', because I'm stuck in the ego.
Being stuck in my ego mind and relying on its accumulated concepts, causes me to attack others with this vantage point, seeing them as stuck in a place of listening to the ego too much, when in fact its me listening to the ego.
Hmmmmm.
And all of this is a substitute for trusting God.
"Fear is trusting in your own strength"
Here is a very good description of what miracle working (for others) is about and WHY your brother needs YOU to perform a miracle FOR them.
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
Notice that the miracle worker‘s "task" is to heal those who have sick minds (and consequentially a sick body).
Notice also that because your brother is in denial, they have obscured their OWN willingness to heal and now NEED YOUR HELP.
Notice finally that the light in ANOTHER MIND (E.g. you as a miracle worker) must SHINE INTO THEIRS, in order to HEAL the sickness in the mind of the brother.
Since all miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, and miracle DOING expresses FROM miracle mindedness (right mindedness), love must actively be given/radiated/extended/sent to do this. The light in your mind has to shine into another mind. This heals their mind. FOR them.
This is how you release your brother. This is how you be "a physician of the lord".
"Miracles supply a lack"
"Miracles are given BY THOSE who temporarily have more, TO THOSE who temporarily have less."
"Miracles are a spark of life"
"Miracles RAISE the level of communication."
"Miracles mean LIFE, and God is the giver of life." Through miracles, you GIVE LIFE to those who are lacking it (which is sickness), RESURRECTING THEM. Miracles heal the sick and raise the dead.
"Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself."
Lately I'm noticing more and more often, I just don't want to blame. I'm believing in "real sin" less and less.
I didn't see this coming, and it's not that I've been deliberately working on not being blameful. But I'm starting to see why this makes sense.
When I blame, I am believing that there is some "other" that's not me, that I'm finding responsible for some kind of guilt or sin. This so-called other is actually a part of my own self which I split off in my mind and attack. This attack seems to cause a hallucinated projection onto other people, in which the disassociation from the "conscious" part of my mind makes it seem like it's all to do with someone else.
But the truth is that my attack is actually coming from me, and it is going TO me. And in fact, I am not even really attacking anyone else at all. I think I am, but I'm not.
In the ego's thought system of denial, it really does seem like it is not only possible to find someone else guilty for our own belief in our own sinfulness, but that they can receive ALL of the blame and we receive none of it. We actually think we can scapegoat someone and make them wrong and find them guilty and that this has NO effect on ourselves whatsoever. i.e. Do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.
This is of course a complete illusion. While it persists, we go around blaming people because we think that we CAN, as a viable "option" for getting rid of our own sinfulness. Introducing a separation between cause and effect, we think we can be free of the effects and responsibilities of our sin, and someone else can take the hit. And we want to make especially sure that the separation between both is strong so as to be strongly convinced no nasty effects are going to leak back onto ourselves.
But what has to dawn on our mind is not only that we are responsible for 100% of what we are experiencing, but also that everything that has happened we have therefore done to ourselves, and therefore there ARE no causes outside of us, and thus there are no grounds for blame.
This also reveals to the mind that while it thought it was capable of attacking someone "else" with no effects on itself, it actually WAS attacking itself. At first it will think that it was attacking both itself and others, but then it will also dawn that it was in fact ONLY attacking itself. In our egos we live in private worlds of self-attack, at war with ourselves, in our split mind with multiple personalities. It doesn't even really involved anyone else at all, we just pretend it does. When we are willing to become aware that we are ONLY doing it to ourselves, then a whole new kind of experience starts to emerge. This is what's starting to happen to me now.
I am getting this feeling that I just don't WANT to blame people for anything. I haven't deliberately been trying to stop blaming as such, it's just sort of emerging. Some part of me seems to be aware that if I blame, in the act of blame, there is an attack and that *I* actually receive at least some of the effects of that attack. It's not true that the other person is 100% separated from me, and it's not true that they are really guilty. If I am being responsible, it MUST mean that I am doing this to myself and am attacking myself.
So each time I go to scapegoat, i.e. pretend that I even CAN scapegoat, I'm starting to learn or realize that the "blame" is ACTUALLY from myself, to myself, and I WILL experience effects from that. I am becoming aware of those effects, rather than being unconscious of it. And the fact is, outside of denial, this self attack HURTS ME. I do not want to keep hurting myself. It is a natural response, really.
If you could be aware that you can ONLY do anything to yourself, and that if you attack, YOU will be the one who gets ALL of the effects, you would not attack.
It is only because we've been unconscious and split in our mind and believing that there is an "other" that all of the responsibility can be given to (disowning of self), that we even CONCEIVE of the idea of displacing blame onto this "other". Or even that doing so might cause us to NOT be experiencing the effects of the sin. It is only because of DENIAL that it even seems possible that this would be helpful in alleviating guilt.
So while I am in denial and am being dishonest and irresponsible and believing that i am really sinful, I'm going to be really compelled to try to split myself off from that and project it somewhere. But the truth is, I'm not escaping it. Self-attack is self-attack. Nobody else is even being attacked by me at all, so it's not even as though there is this motivation to "be nice to other people". My self-attack has NOTHING to do with anyone else at all, and in truth, NOBODY receives any effects from it. No real effects anyway.
So it's not even as though I'm doing this out of GUILT in relation to trying to be kinder to others. That would actually be a form of self sacrifice which is ego. Instead, it's just the natural dawning of AWARENESS, that because I am responsible, I literally AM doing unto MYSELF as I would have MYSELF do unto me. I am attacking myself, and it is my belief that I am really sinful that is the root of this attack.
So as we have the courage to look at our own belief in our own sinfulness, in the idea of "real sin", and are finding some genuine healing atonement for this, it seems like the truth that we are only attacking ourselves becomes more obvious. I just am becoming aware that if I attack, *I* will feel hurt, and I just don't want to feel that anymore. I don't want to keep finding myself sinful, because now it's not a game of whether or not anyone else is being forgiven (you cannot forgive anyone other than yourself, and there is no need to!), it's a game between me and myself now and how I want to be towards myself.
I don't want to blame others, because I don't want to blame myself, because I don't want to keep finding myself sinful and guilty. I am just losing interest in it. It hurts to hurt myself. I don't want that. This is how my interests become shared interests with others. This is what leads to literally doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, which really means, you are DOING LOVE to others BECAUSE you love yourself. You cannot really do anything to others unless it IS love, because everything else is really self attack.
So it's funny but, in situations where I would've gone right into blame and accusation and scapegoating, I just can't seem to believe my own bullshit anymore. I know its dishonest and irresponsible and denial and not true that it's anyone else's fault. Nobody has done anything to me. No-one is the cause of my upset. I am choosing it. I'm doing this to myself. And I want to stop doing that. I want to recognize my true innocence, and learn to love myself again.
Surrendering to self-love shared with God. I am worthy because in the atonement, it is true that I have not really done anything real, and therefore am still innocent. Accepting that produces a justification to love yourself.
Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.
In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.
Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.
More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.
We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.
"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM
"I am as God Created me." - ACIM
"Only the truth is true." - ACIM
Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.
The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.
It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.
The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.
I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.
If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.
It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.
But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.
God knows.
God just is, like it or not.
God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.
We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.
Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.
The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.
This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)
This leads me to a different but related point.
I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?
Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM
I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.
"How can I help?"
Fear is a psychological tool which you use to put yourself into the role of victim, where you then see yourself as being affected by something separate from you.
You are powerful, strong, confident, certain, loving, aware, filled with truth.
However, when you disown these properties, you do so by creating a split in your mind. You use separation to try to separate yourself from these properties, to disown and push them away, and you literally give them TO something separate from you.
So you take all your power, all your certainty, all your inherent love, and you separate it from yourself and push it outwards onto someone else.
This now means that in your perception, you see yourself as lacking confidence, lacking power, lacking certainty, and that will be experienced as "being afraid". It is a state of powerlessness and weakness and a vulnerability to be affected by a power greater than what you seem to possess.
You seem to them possess less power than what is outside of yourself, because you have displaced your own power out there and see yourself as having "less". Therefore those outside of you seem to have "more".
It will seem then that you are afraid because those outside of you have more power than yourself, ie have power over you, and are capable of causing you or affected you in some way. They seem to have control over you, able to decide against your will what you will be or experience. And that's frightening. But it's not the cause of the fear. It's just how the fear is experienced once it's put in place.
Fear is always an act of deliberately disowning yourself and giving yourself away, which RESULTS IN you perceiving that what you've given away is now outside of yourself in someone else's hands. It then seems frightening that they can use this power against you, which creates this whole victimhood story about what they're doing "to you" and why you don't have the power to stop them. But that's a cover-up for the fact that you are using fear IN ORDER TO see them as victimizing you.
That power which you perceive as being in them and not in you, is your own power, which you have disowned. You've tried to set up other people as more powerful than you so that you can appear weak and afraid and in threat of attack. To choose to be afraid is to deliberately position yourself a a victim and to see yourself as in danger of dying. It is a choice to try to bring about your own death. That it seems later as though someone else is going to "cause" this death for you, is a total cover-up lie which you orchestrate in order to make it seem like YOU are not the one choosing it.
Death is an attempt to relinquish the power and ability to choose, to cover up the power of choice, to disown everything about yourself and to allow the external separate imaginary source of power to decide FOR you what is going to happen TO you. But all along this fearful CHOICE is still a choice. It just looks like it's a loss of choice or of having no choice at all.
If you are afraid, you absolutely DO have a choice and you absolutely ARE using your choice, in a mis-creative and self-destructive way. To be afraid does not call for pity. It calls for you to get honest and reclaim responsibility for the power that you keep trying to make out that others are taking from you against your will. It's YOUR power that YOU have GIVEN to them BY your will! You need to take it back.
You only experience fear when you have disowned yourself and are being irresponsible for who and what you are - when you are unwilling to fulfill the FUNCTION that God has given you to represent Him and to extend love and power. When you try to give this function away, other people will seem to wield this function over you against your will. Or in other words, when you attempt to not want to fulfill this function, this function will seem to fulfill itself in opposition to you, because you are in opposition to it.
To escape from fear will NEVER be successful so long as you continue to believe your own lie, that the power you're afraid of belongs to everyone other than YOU. That the power you see in someone else is not your own power. If the power you see projected onto others is not your own, and it has power over you, then you will believe it is inherent to them and that it is real or true that they own it. They have not stolen it, you've given it to them.
Having made this seem real to yourself, which means you trust it (fear is trusting the ego), you will think that the only way to be safe in the face of something scary is to become "just as scary" or intimidating or have some sense of fake power or aggression or anger, in order to go up against this formidable foe to overpower them. It thus becomes a fight against a fictional enemy. The suggestion to stand up for yourself or to assert yourself then becomes a really frightening challenge, because it means being at WAR.
Confrontations with real-seeming enemies are not really solutions to the problem. Sometimes this seems to be the only thing you can do to stop them from attacking you, but this is according to the ego's rules. The only reason a so-called "attacker" is showing up in your life is to show you that you keep giving your power away and that you've put your own power outside of yourself. The challenge is not to make the enemy real and fight with them to "win", but to recognize that the power that you think is in them is YOUR OWN, to own it, take it back, be responsible for it, and thus return to a state of certainty and a stillness of confidence, a clarity about your power which makes you unmoved and unmovable, and a clarity in which you realize it was YOU that you have made into an enemy.
You don't need to fight an opponent to gain equal power. You need to realize it's your own power and reclaim it, to stop perceiving yourself as a victim, to stop using fear to project "cause" (really blame for causing sin) onto others, and to therefore become invulnerable. There is no need for the invulnerable to defend themselves or to fight or be at war. They are immovable, unchangeable, invulnerable, and cannot be attacked. That's what you really need to get to. And that means stopping putting yourself into the psychological perceptive mode of seeing yourself disempowered while others seem to be more powerful.
Ultimately you are doing this to yourself because it is a part of your own mind which you are up against, it's a part of your own power that you're threatened by, and it's a part of your own Self that seems separate from you and having a will of its own. This is all happening inside your own mind and has nothing to do with anyone else out there. There is no-one else out there. This fear is all just your own self-attack. Fear is a defense against the truth. Fear is denial. And no-one who is afraid is "innocent" of causing things to go wrong. It's all chosen on purpose.
"Be not afraid", Jesus would say... not because there is a real reason to be afraid, but because being afraid isn't becoming of you - it's a choice to be weak when you could be powerful, and it's not your best move. It works against yourself and is a way of you hurting yourself. You don't need it.
When I had an awakening experience in the presence of God, it was so profound. I had no idea it was going to happen and had no idea that God would be so loving, gentle, soft and joyful. I especially did not know that God was not far away, but right under my own skin.
I was aware that God was real and that I was becoming merged with Christ and that my ego self was just about going to disappear. I felt myself "pull back" from the dream as though snapping out of it, into a state of such intense awareness the likes of which I had no idea was possible. I thought I was awake every day of the week when I got up in the morning, but this was a whole other level of wakefulness.
Later, when I had to go back to work, it was surprisingly bizarre how I seemed to be aware of something as though it was totally obvious, and yet nobody else seemed to be aware of it. I couldn't figure out why they didn't know about it.
They acted like they were in some kind of unconscious sleep, seemingly awake but somehow not, totally oblivious to the presence of God which was everywhere. It was like there was this huge elephant in the room that I was aware of, and nobody else even had the slightest idea that it was there.
Trying to interact with people was very peculiar because I had to sort of pretend to be at their level, and all the things they thought were important were not important at all. It was kind of funny how fixated on "small stuff" they were.
It was like looking in on the scene from outside of it, watching the people go about their lives seemingly normally but as though they were half asleep, not even realizing what they weren't realizing.
As I "fell back asleep" over the following weeks, I returned to the same state of mind as them, more or less, and once again was not aware of the presence of God. At this time was quite devastating and I had a huge sense of loss and grief.
But from time to time, God pops in to say hello and I gradually inch my way back to an awareness that I now know is possible. But I can at least understand that when we do wake up, it's going to be a bit bizarre being in a world where almost everyone is still sleeping. I guess we'll have to tiptoe quietly.
The only thing that we need to really do is to surrender to the will of God. To accept it. To accept the truth. This is the same thing as accepting the atonement.
Here's the fact of it all.
God's will is the truth. You can try to deny it, but you cannot change it.
You have immortality and perfection already because God created you immortal and perfect. This is why you need do nothing. You are already complete. You already have eternal life. There is nothing left to do. You cannot add anything to this or take anything away.
So anything else you are doing, any other attitude you have, it's really a form of DENIAL. Denial is the opposite of acceptance. Either you are willing to put aside and drop and let go of EVERY STORY that you've built to defend against the truth (which has made you sick), or you will continue to have fake experiences of suffering.
You can't change God's will. God has not changed his mind about you. It's rock solid, set in stone forever. More permanent than sin. More unchangeable than death.
So..... what is it we are doing? We're saying, oh, I'm not worthy of love, or... I've got some "reason" why I am not the way God created me... or, something's wrong with me, or I want things to be different to God's creation, or I don't want God's love I want something else, or... I think I can make something better, or I prefer my dream of death, or whatever... all these other "alternatives" which pretend to be desirable, wanted, chosen, possible, plausible, a replacement for the only truth.
All of it is false, all of it is a lie, all of it is denial and none of it works.
Only the truth is true. Only God's truth is true. There is absolutely ZERO room for negotiation. God's will cannot be opposed. You cannot create an alternative to heaven. There is nothing you want more than to share God. Nothing else can make you happier. There is no other source of love or life.
What are you going to do? Keep trying to find salvation somewhere else? Keep trying to accept something less satisfying? Keep looking for love in all the places that it does not exist?
At some point we have to simply SURRENDER and GIVE UP this futile search and ACCEPT that, all along, God's Will has been the only will.
This is what the prodigal son story is about.... finally surrendering and ADMITTING YOU ARE MISTAKEN and then giving up your futile attempts ... returning to God and ALLOWING HIM to be as He is. To be your truth. To let go of every other authority problem.
To those who say the course is not about surrender, because it never mentions surrender.... it is ENTIRELY about surrender. Letting go of the ego, giving up the fight, accepting the truth. It's all surrendering of what is not true, and accepting what is.
Can you just be honest and admit the truth that God does love you and you are loved and you are immortal already?
We do not recognize an illusion when we see one. Since birth we've been looking at this world believing it's real. It seems real enough. But "there is nothing so blinding as perception of form."
The problem is, we don't have something MORE real to compare it to. There is no frame of reference to evaluate it or contrast it. If you could see something truly real, it would frame this world AS an illusion, it's illusory nature would become obvious, and you would be able to tell that this world is clearly false and unreal. But you have to have a sense of what true and real things are like in order to be able to compare and contrast, that this illusion is opposite to that.
Think for a moment then about reality, about God, about Heaven, about the nature and quality of infinite immortal being. Contemplate what God is like. The eternal nature, the endlessness, the freedom from sickness and death, the inability to create anything less than perfection. Then ask yourself, is this thing you are looking at, THAT? Does it match up? Does it correlate? Does it seem like something God would create, something immortal, unlimited, perfect, beautiful and pure?
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
With something to compare it to, it becomes more obvious that the things of this world, the stuff you've been looking at since birth, MUST BE an illusion. It must be something manufactured, artificial, pretend, fake, unreal, deceptive. It cannot really exist. There is no cancer in God. There is no insanity in God. There is no dog shit in God. There is no crying in God. There is no attack in God. There is no fear or threat or danger in God. Can this appearance of sin and attack exist WITHIN God's perfect being? Not even slightly. So what is it you're looking at?
It has to be something that is not really there. It has to be a lie, an illusion, a deception and a temptation to believe in something unreal. It's some kind of hallucination. It's make believe fairytale dreaming. It can't exist. It can't really be there at all. It seems to be but it's not. It is really nothing, pretending to be something. The impossible, pretending to be possible. It can't exist in God. It has no real cause. It hasn't been created. Remind yourself of this, and it will become clearer and more RECOGNIZED, that what you're seeing is an ILLUSION, some kind of invented puff of smoke masquerading as something else. It can't be real. It can't exist. It's not there. It's gone.
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
There is only God and His Kingdom. "Only the creations of light are real."
The 'lords prayer' is commonly known, and goes something like this...
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thine kingdom come, thine will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
Amen."
Now, last night this came to mind and it came with a different perspective. Usually when I think of this prayer, it's kind of viewed as a measly peasant, beneath and below God, asking for God to guide and have mercy, make our day go well, etc.
But the perspective I got was, if you view this prayer from 'level 2' i.e. the level of Truth/Holy Spirit, and you're above the battlefield, looking down on the world from above, centered in God and looking out FROM God, then it takes on a much clearer meaning.
It talks then of the Father we are WITH, that we are in Heaven WITH God, and that we are willing to extend God's will to the Earth.
It also then thanks God for providing everything we could ever possibly need for us, including perhaps the immediate instantaneous miraculous manifestation of food? The daily bread may be given by God manifestationally, instead of, like, from the grocery store.
It speaks then of forgiveness, oneness, in that in order for us to be forgiven, we need to be forgivING, so that we can see that both ourselves and others are EQUAL in our innocence. That's not a worldly ego perspective, that's the perspective of Holy Spirit.
Lead us not into temptation, simply suggests that we are not in temptation now and we'd like to keep it that way. Therefore we stay IN God, above the battlefield, in order to be immortal and invulnerable and free from illusions or fear. To be delivered from evil means to stay in Holy Spirit and to be sustained by God all through the day, IN God, rather than like, separate from God.
Then we acknowledge God has absolute power and glory and is eternal, like us.
So I guess the main thing here is, who are you praying this WITH. If you pray it with the ego, it means a much less powerful and reinforcing message than if you pray it from Holy Spirit's vantage point, where you are up there in truth and light with Him.
Thought I'd share that.
For the ego, an answer is not an answer that solves a problem. Instead its answers are merely manipulations which describe the problem and compound it.
Sometimes the ego makes it appear that a problem is being 'solved' by, apparently practically, doing some thing to the situation to rearrange the furniture and manipulate objects into a different configuration. But this still keeps the scenery and does not solve any of the OTHER problems which are all kept completely separate.
The ego is not really a problem solver, but a problem inventor and problem keeper.
God is different. God has an answer, but God's answer isn't informational. God's answer doesn't just manipulate forms and try to create a 'picture' of there being an answer.
Instead, God's answer is actually an EXPERIENCE of the problem not existing. God's answer HEALS the situation completely, now. God's answer UNDOES every perception that a problem exists at all. And God's answer applies to EVERYTHING the same, solving all experiences of all problems simultaneously.
God doesn't solve one problem only to keep another. God is the solution to all problems, permanently. And God doesn't solve one problem only to bring back 1000 more problems in different forms later on. God undoes every problem, completely, permanently, and maintains a state of 'problem-less-ness', SO THAT there will be no problems.
God's answer is the only truly practical real answer, because it actually fixes what the real problem is. The ego never fixes the real problem whatsoever. And as you solve the real problem (ego separation), life MUST return to ORDER.
And so as you shift from ego-based problem solving to God-based problem solving, you'll notice that you're not going to just start asking God what the answer is. You're not going to just start asking God to come in and solve a finite form of a problem. You're also not going to be asking God to spend ages and ages describing every intricate detail of the problem at length. This is a trap I fall into, thinking that getting God's longwinded explanation is better than making up one of my own. Do I want diagnosis and a STORY or do I want the problem healed?
Problem-solving with God is immediate, instantaneous, full and completely restorative. It is healing. It is a shift away from 'diagnosis' to 'solution'. It is a shift away from delving into the story and history of the problem, and directly into the removal of it, permanently.
God heals permanently, God is permanently healed.
God is always light.
When we resist God, we try to block the light.
This blockage produces an illusion of the absence of light, ie a "lack of light."
This lack of light may seem like darkness. But this darkness is entirely dependent on the block remaining to obscure the light. When the block is removed, the light will be present and there will be no darkness.
God's law is that light always dispels darkness, and that the illusion of darkness only shows up when the light seems to be blocked/denied. This works the same as clouds - when the cloud blocks the sun the cloud seems dark, but the darkness is an illusion. When the sun shines upon the cloud from below it is illuminated.
"Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition." UrT1B22A
If there is a lack of light, also called a lack of love, this is merely a seeming absence. It's like there isn't enough of something, or it's being held back. It is not the presence of something.
A darkness is merely the dimming of light, producing an illusion that there is less light. But this isn't the same thing as a "presence of darkness." Your world doesn't become "filled with darkness" at night, it just has a lack of light.
Darkness is not causing the light to go away. The blockage to light is what obscures the light and makes it seem like it has gone away. The blockage directly causes a shadow or darkness to appear, but the darkness is entirely dependent on the blockage because the blockage is keeping the light from shining.
If the blockage were to be removed, there would be no lack of light, and no illusion of darkness, and the light would shine so much that there would be no darkness. Light always dispels darkness this way.
Someone who is blocking the light/love of God is merely mistaken. They are putting up a block trying to deny what is still true. This is seeming to shut out the light and love of God, but only in an illusory way, because God's light and love cannot be affected.
So blockages to light are really just forms of denial, in which we try not to admit that the light is still there, and hide it from awareness, covering our eyes to try to be blind to it. And we may go so far as to hide in the illusion of the darkness to pretend there is no light.
Doing this isn't a sin, it's just a mistake. It's an attempt to not extend God's light and love, or to put the brakes on creation, so that God is prevented from shining/extending outward. Trying "not to shine" holds the light in and doesn't let it out, producing an illusion of an absence of light - a darkness.
"God's extending outward, though not His completeness, was blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one." UrT6F2
If the denial of light, or the block to awareness of light, is recognised for what it is, without getting into ego, then it calls for an obvious remedy. It is seen as merely a lack of love, and the obvious response is that love needs to be supplied. So you give love/light to supply the lack. This is what miracles are for.
"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less." UrT1B8
There is no "sin" involved in this, only mistakenness ie denial of the truth. An unwillingness to admit that the light is still there.
"Sin" is a faulty interpretation of this whole scenario. It ignores that the block to love is the "cause" of the darkness, or that if the block were removed the darkness would be dispelled. To suggest this is to suggest that you could heal the darkness and replace it with light by removing the blockage.
The ego does not want this to happen. Ego is the idea that the blockage is not the cause of the darkness, and that the darkness exists in its own right. Such that whatever has put the darkness in place is irreversible, because it seems to have no cause other than itself.
Ego doesn't just see a shadow projected from the blockage. It takes the darkness and considers it as standalone thing, and fails to recognize that there is a lack of light/love. Instead it interprets that the darkness is the PRESENCE OF something else. Something which has its own existence, its own power, its own will, its own causality. Something which can make the light go away. Or as the course describes, this is the belief that darkness can hide.
"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide. Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark." UrT1B22B
When a "lack of light" is interpreted to be the "presence of darkness", this is the idea that evil exists. That there is a power capable of causing light to go away. And then there becomes a vested interest in staying in the darkness in order to "exist". This is why the ego dwells in shadows and cannot exist in the light, and why it wants to keep the illusion of darkness going.
So we turn a lack of love into a "real sin" with "real consequences". We hold the lack against the person, and instead of saying that they are merely mistaken and we need to give them more love, we say that they have failed to love and do not deserve forgiveness. Therefore their blocks to love are irreversible and their darkness its produced is permanent and they are now wretched and darkened beings.
In effect, what should just be a simple error easily corrected by love, is misinterpreted as something real in its own right with its own meaning, proof that evil is real and exists, and holds that against the person as their truth. We take what should be easily forgivable and turn it into a crime, as though to say that they aren't just making a mistake, they are positively making an act of assault.
"The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom." UrT5G8
So essentially the idea of the belief in sin, or interpreting things as sins, is rooted in taking something which is actually an absence, and interpreting it as the presence of something. It's not just an error, it's a crime. It's not just a mistake or something to be learned by a child, it's a deliberate attempt to harm and offend. It's not just an innocent lack of wisdom, it's a positive desire to do horrendous things on purpose out of malice and spite.
So really when we interpret someone as sinning, we're sort of saying "you're a dark evil person for being this way", rather than that "you are just lacking some light and need more light." Any sense of accusation, scapegoating, making guilty, turning what someone does into a crime, holding the mistake against them like it proves that they're unworthy of love etc, is all the ways that we convert a mere "lack of" love into a "presence of" evil.
True perception accurately and correctly views all illusory things - all blocks and the results of those blocks - as nothing more than temporary errors, which can be perfectly corrected without any punishment or need for chastisement or blame or hurt. And no death sentences or justified revenge. It merely sees an innocence and a mistakenness within the confused/lost person, rather than converting that mistakenness into "you're doing this on purpose to hurt people because you're evil and deserve attack."
There are only mistaken innocent souls who lack wisdom and are lost and confused and choose incorrectly, who need simple gentle correction by a loving hand such as the Holy Spirit. A simple classroom of children learning how to stop hurting themselves. When we turn this into a bloodbath or a warzone or a battlefield or a place filled with enemies and opponents and competition, we're moving into the belief in sin.
The belief in sin is the belief that darkness is real and contains real evil and can really produce real powerful consequences in its own right. This completely ignores the truth that there is only love and a lack of love, and never a sin. Nothing is a sin, because sin is nothingness misinterpreted as something. Your brother's sins are not sins, they are just mistakes calling for love.
"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son." UrT27H14
The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.
You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.
Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.
The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.
Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.
It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.
To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?
When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.
Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.
The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.
In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.
"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."
What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.
You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.
It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."
"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."
"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "
"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."
Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.
For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.
"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."
"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."
The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.
When I rest within, go within, focus within, dwell with God within, stay within, remain calm, be at peace, connect to my holiness, step back from the world, disconnect, etc.... I feel that where and what I am is centered and calm and dwells inside of me.
Within me according to ACIM there is an inner altar, where we are host to God. And also that deep within us there is a place of complete holiness. And we're also told we can find a state of rest in an "I need do nothing" state, where we can experience a sense of calm and rest "in the midst all the busy doings on which you are sent".
The more that I forgive the world and recognize it does not exist, the more I only have "left" what is within me. If everything seemingly external or outside of me, which also includes the body, is not there and does not exist, because there is no world, then all I "have" is what is within my mind. In my awareness.
I find myself becoming aware of this inside state of calm and holiness more and more often. If I put my attention there, it's like turning my mind away from the world and looking within. Focusing on where I am coming from, not on where I am going to. Stepping back from the world and stepping back from my stepping out, and simply remaining deep within. And this inner state is abstract and simple and one and whole, not a myriad of forms and differences.
Within me there is a place of peace and calm and surrender and inactivity. It's a quiet, holy state. It isn't out there, or externalized, or projecting, or losing center, or being caught up in illusions, or upset, or thrown around by the world. It's like just sitting centered within yourself and in what you are and not leaving yourself. Not abandoning yourself. Not being pulled away on another wild goose chase.
When I move away from this state, which seems to be very natural and easy to move into as well, my focus and attention shifts to the external world. To the body. And now if my mind goes into ego, and it goes into believing the world is real, it now starts to lose sight of that inner calm. And now the mind seems to reach out, attach, hold onto things, psychologically and energetically.
Each time this happens a seeming "bridge" forms, which is based on the idea of horizontal cause and effect, or being affect-able by the external world. It feels like a cord, tying me to something. And by believing in external causes and sinners I then feel this sense of vulnerability and accessibility, wherein because I am forming these bridges of horizontal causation with external things, my attack can flow out across these bridges, and external attack can flow in to me as well. They are beliefs in affecting and being affected.
Once I am attacking and receiving attack, my psychological experience is that I am vulnerable, attackable, unprotected, and what is external can seem to come all the way into me and make contact with what I am, and attack it, and now I am affected, and now I am having effects and upsets and emotional reactions. And now I am thrown off center and am lost, and have lost sight of my inner self, and the calm is disturbed, and all sense of holiness and peace thrown out the window.
Then I forgive. I remember there is no world. And as I forgive I dismantle these inroads, these bindings and attachments and beliefs in something external having access to my inner self. And as I do, as I recognize the world is not real, it does not exist, it is not causal, it is not happening, this wipes the world off the plate of my mind. Everything external is a lie. And now what is left? All that's left is what I am within me. And what I am is deep within. And it is calm and peaceful and holy and innocent and light and gently happy and in the presence of God. And it is already there, waiting for me to just uncover it and be it.
So now what I'm noticing is, I am spending progressively more and more time within, being what I really am, and less and less time without, lost and being untrue to myself and wildly reactive and upset and terrified, caught in a dream and tempted by illusions. So it seems then that remaining within, centered, in my inner calm place, is where I really am, and if I were to just stay there, I would not lose sight of myself and bleed out into the world. And I wouldn't react to figures in a dream, or even feel particularly engaged with the world.
It then is like being passer-by, remaining within, with God, and looking without, but not moving out into the world mentally. Not abandoning my post. Not running away from the inner altar. Not getting distracted and deceived and alarmed and threatened by the external. And so I just remaining within. Like a turtle in its shell, just peeking out at the world but not thrusting myself into it. Not losing my center or going off on some tangent of a wild goose chase after dreams and fantasies of physical spiritualization.
So then if I walk the world, from within, and an remaining within as I do so, keeping in the inner holy calm while I do so, I am no longer lost in the world. I am above the battlefield. I am outside the spacetime. I am further than any illusion can reach. I am beyond the ego. Because ego is always all about going without, externalizing, abandoning yourself, leaving yourself behind, moving away from what you are, seeking and not finding, seeking anywhere but within where you already are perfect. And now I be passerby, watching, noticing, but staying close to God within.
Paradoxically, when you go within, you access the light, and then the light can project and extend outward. You do not shine the light by trying to force light out of you into the world. You do not shine light by leaving your light bulb. You do not illuminate the world or be the light of the world, by confusing yourself with what goes out. Love and light extend on their own. You only have to go within and join with the SOURCE, plug yourself into the electrical socket, and then you light up, within.
"Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin."
And once you have an inner light, it automatically radiates and extends and shares. It seems counter intuitive but the only way to give to others is to receive. And as you receive the inner light you automatically give it. Provided you don't try to take it away from yourself and sacrifice it in trying to give it to another. You are to be the light bulb, not the photons. You have to be in the inner holiness in order to have power over what is exteranal.
Going within allows you to extend and project light without. You have to move within, and become closer to God, in order to have something worth giving. And as you give it, you do not abandon your intimacy with God otherwise you stop having anything to share. And as you connect to the inner light, this also transcends the outer, and so joins you with other minds in light, because it is deep within you that you are connected to others, who SEEM to be external and separated off. We are joined together by mutually going within, so that we transcend the world, and thus are not at a distance.
There is a saying, "If I do not go within, I will go without". And this is the whole thing. When you stop dwelling within, you lose yourself and lose everything. You lose touch with what you are and with God. And the light dims and you cannot shine. In a sense, by moving inward which seems to be away from others, you actually reach a state of joining and sharing. You can't access this joining and sharing state by forcing yourself outward, because that actually produces special relationships, attachment, ownership and control.
All that remains when there is no world, and there is no body, and there are no temptations, and there is no distraction, and you are not confused with the world, and you do not believe you are a physical object, and you recognize the world was just a dream, and you reach enlightenment, which is what God gave you. What is coming from God. And what comes from God is received within at your inner altar. And this is where you are host to Him. And when this is all you have left, and you have nothing of the world, you are ready to go home.
Since all things physical are rooted in separation, it is impossible to do ANYTHING in this world without it being in some way connected to being separate.
Eating, breathing, talking, touching, fighting, whatever, everything physical is not God’s nature.
We tend to section off certain physical things as somehow “meaning” that they are good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, more or less spiritual. But physicality can’t really be said to be selective in terms of what it represents.
A war, a butterfly flapping, people hitting each other, baking a cake, painting a picture, on the physical level it’s all still forms in a dream, images made of ideas of separateness and conflict. But somehow arbitrarily we’ve assigned all kinds of hierarchies and categories to physical things to say that some are better than others.
Given that you can’t DO anything in the world without it being rooted in separation, it then comes down to PURPOSE. And by purpose we have to mean that how it is being USED or toward what ultimate goal. The use of it isn’t inherent to the thing itself, because purpose is about mind and the meaning the mind gives to things.
It is mind that judges murder as bad, or as worse than kissing. It is mind that decides that a dead broken body is more evil or proof of sin that a healthy athlete running a race. It is mind that decides to say that people shooting others with guns is bad while hugging is good.
Ultimately the strange truth is that all things physical cannot be used to determine “what it means”, or whether it is a good thing or not. Our categorizations of stuff comes from judgements, and most of those judgments are rooted in ego. It is technically the ego that says that physical war is ”an ego thing.” Which is kind of a confusion of two levels - mental and physical.
Let’s remember the world is a dream. And the dream is made of symbols. And the symbols can sometimes look what we have decided is nice and other times not nice. Even the death of the body has been artificially endowed with negative meanings, while the non-dead bodies have been endowed with positive meanings. Yet:
“The body cannot be meaningfully invested with attributes of Christ OR the ego.” Because the body is actually “nothing.”
So if we stop completely trying to evaluate whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, spiritual or not, based on its FORM … we might be better off. This means all illusions are equal and there is no hierarchy. Just because something looks like “a big disaster” doesn’t mean it IS actually in truth “worse than” a seemingly small problem. These are DECEPTIONS based on being blinded by perception of form.
A headache or cancer are technically both equally unreal and untrue, and one is NOT technically worse than the other. One is not more serious than the other either. Both are supposed to be regarded as equally meaningless and their forms are meant to be regarded as illusions of deception. We are not supposed to buy into how stuff looks on the physical level, as though differences mean something.
This is a bit radical because it means putting physical war and murder alongside kisses and hugs as equals. And not just categorizing the arbitrarily as opposites. It means that terrorism and abuse are “just another form” of the same illusion as someone throwing a birthday party and giving gifts. Because the FORM something takes is not its real meaning.
As the course teaches, when we look to the form tell us “what it means”, and USE and depend on the form to “describe” its meaning, we are deceived by illusions. A healthy body is not better or worse than a sick body in this sense. But the world is very accustomed to evaluating rightness or goodness based on what form something takes. Technically a nuclear bomb is no more ‘evil’ than a feather falling to the ground lightly.
“Let me not use this as a sign of sin and death, or as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming.” This applies to all the seemingly physical FORMS of “bad things” in this world as much as anything - you should be able to find a way to laugh at it and see it as affirming a mental purpose of peace.
In terms of judgement, meaning, purpose, evaluations of whether its good or bad, judging whether it is spiritual or not, an ego thing or not, more or less ego based, etc…. that’s all mental stuff happening on a separate level from the physical. We have to give stuff all the meaning it has because it has none of its own. It’s a meaningless world. It has many different forms and we seem to prefer some over others, but truly we are not supposed to. The form illusions takes is not supposed to sway us whatsoever.
So then it comes down to the mind’s USE of the form, the PURPOSE it gives it from a higher level. What is it for. What meaning do we give TO it. What goal will we use it to serve? Who are we looking at it with - ego or holy spirit? You could say that a physical war could be used by the holy spirit’s vantage point to welcome laughter and happiness, just as much as you could say that a happy dance with hugs and kisses could be used by the ego as a sign of treachery and betrayal and conflict.
We’re not supposed to be dividing up the world based on what FORM things take, whatever category we put those forms into, or what meanings we give to those categories. Otherwise we start to try to “spiritualize form”, by saying that certain behaviors, acts, physical movements, styles, wardrobe choices, words, whatever, are somehow “more spiritual”. And before long we’re creating an illusion of being “physically spiritual.”
Of course a mind at peace, coming from Holy Spirit, may well tend to be guided to act in a certain way, to avoid certain things, or to do other things. But the things that are done are done for a higher purpose. And the form that these things appear to take may be misunderstood as “not looking spiritual.” There could be a higher purpose at work even if on the surface something does not “look spiritual.” Who are we to judge anything?
Can physical forms of separation and attack be AVOIDED in this world? Probably not. No matter what you eat, no matter how you move, what you do, it’s all still technically unreality and an attack on truth. Forms of sin and weird strange behaviors. You can’t avoid it. The whole system is one of death. But you can change how you look at it, what meaning you give to it, and what you make of it. And that’s all you can do with it. See it differently.
The key to seeing it differently is detaching from HOW IT LOOKS, disregarding the form, not trying to make the form take on a certain shape in order to be more spiritual, and not feeling guilty about what form it does take. Even going to the toilet is technically an act of war on the physical level. Nature’s nature is to devour. Everything you eat requires something else to starve. There is no escape from problems in this world. But you can change your mind about it and how you use it.
We don't want to ask for help. Because in our ego we think we don't need help. Because we think we're so amazing and masterful all on our own, that we can do everything on our own, and don't even need any help. This means we believe there's not even anything wrong with us, and that we're amazing super advanced beings already. But the fact is that we need to admit that we are LESS THAN PERFECT, having attacked ourselves and limited ourselves. And we are IN DENIAL about this. We don't want to admit that we suck.
Admitting it is frightening because it means realising that we're "not in a good spot". That we might even be believing we're in danger or are living in fear or are full of guilt or are sick or whatever. But ADMITTING this also means, your mind is going to accept that you DO NEED HELP. And only by recognizing that you are in NEED, will you be willing to ASK FOR HELP. Only by recognising that you are NOT DOING WELL, will you reach out, or acknowledge the fact that you cannot get out of this all by yourself.
Only by having that honesty to admit to failure and lack and not knowing how to get yourself out of it, resigning as your own teacher, will you ASK the Holy Spirit to help you. And then you will be WILLING with a little willingness to LET HIM help you, to let him heal you and guide you. If you can't admit that you are crap all on your own and you don't know what to do about it, you're never going to get to the point where you realize you need God to save you, in which you will turn to him.
People sometimes only reach this when they hit rock bottom and crash agains the rocks and realize they can't help themselves, which is an excellent thing to recognize because it finally means you surrender your egoic efforts to save yourself and become open to something from outside the ego. This is when we are wiling to admit ego defeat, ie failure, which is a GOOD THING, and can then crack open and let some light in from beyond the ego. This is when we want a better way, because our tolerance for pain and suffering has reached its limit.
Those who have suffered and have been tested and have failed and have realised the meagre limitation and powerlessness of their ego self, have been blessed with an opportunity to find God, to turn to him and to trust him. If we're not willing to "admit defeat", we'll just keep fighting ourselves all on our own and continue the suffering, trying to tolerate the pain and misery for as long as we can stand it.
"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
There is a reason why the Holy Spirit is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Heaven is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Christ is invisible to the body's eyes. The body's eyes CANNOT SEE REALITY and they never will. That which is invisible "to the Earth" is real. What has "become" visible - this planet, is FAKE VISIBILITY. It is a block to sight, crammed in front of your face so that you will be distracted by illusions and NOT SEE. The time will come when all things VISIBLE will end. That includes this planet. Christ Vision is how you see the invisible, which MUST ENTAIL no longer seeing that which you THOUGHT was visible, which is in fact non-existent.
"When you made what is NOT true visible, what is true became invisible. But it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity."
"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world. Nor can his song of union and of joy be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him REPLACE the body's eyes."
"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. "
"How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."
"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear."
"Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. "
"What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible."
"For, in the NEW perception, the mind CORRECTS it when it SEEMS to be seen, and it becomes invisible."
"These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon."
"For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness."
"But the time will come when all things visible will have an end. The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen"
"Here is what is really here made visible, while all the shadows which appeared to hide it sink to obscurity."
"Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you. Today we are trying to use the new kind of projection."
You are outside of the world, looking in upon it from the outside in. From this perspective, the body is given no value at all. The world is recognized as completely fictional. The body is used temporarily only as a tool for sensing the vibrations of the illusory world, so as to detect its current configuration and seemingly interact with its inhabitants.
At no point is the body mistaken for your self, nor awarded attributes it does not have. It is not regarded as spiritual or scared or special or worshipped. All sense of personal use of the body has gone. It is rendered nothing more than a functionless instrument through which light may flow into the dream as the light of the world.
In this view, the body is not mistaken even slightly for your sense of self. It's appearance says nothing about who or what you are. Its particular configuration or attributes make no statement whatsoever as to your true nature or creative abilities. It is merely a picture, a portal, into a fake world, through which you briefly peer in order to look at the surface of objects and see bodies moving around.
You recognize that everything the body senses is not real or true. It picks up on vibratory signals of a world that seems to be there but which is not. It shows you pictures of this pretend world, registers sound vibrations, and even seems to be able to touch the surface of imaginary objects. But there is no delusion that any of these things really exist or that these signals are conveying the truth. All they do is relay messages about what seems to be there, but which is not believed in. And so the mind does not use the body to "sense reality", it uses it only to sense unreality.
The dream world continues to depict scenes of fighting, abuse, conflict, physical and mental sickness, trees, buildings, storms, war and chaos, and all manner of activities. Flowers growing and dying, birds eating, fish swimming, and every imaginable form of forms changing form.
The mind observes this through the body senses which register perceptions of such things occurring, but the mind is not deceived by any of them. It knows it is witnessing a lie, a false world, a temporary fiction, which has no inherent truth and absolutely no reality. And it uses the body thus only to temporarily interact with those who see themselves as bodies, that there might be communication, teaching and healing, to guide them similarly to the recognition of a sane perspective on this world and on the bodies they utilize.
For now the mind is standing on the outskirts of the world, not immersed and not lost within its illusions. It is no longer tempted by appearances. It knows with certainty that nothing is happening here, and even when the ego demonstrates its prowess in manufacturing scenes of horror and destruction, these happenings have no influence over the mind. It reacts not and is unmoved and undisturbed by such illusory occurrences. And it continues to look past all of them to the real truth, which these appearances once hid, to the real light and the real show, which is occurring beyond the world entirely.
The mind then has lost interest in the world. It has come to recognize the world has nothing to give. It has surrendered all investment in the world and all attempts to believe it can do or achieve or give anything of value. It is recognized as nothing but a distractor device, made of denial, pretending to be something but is ultimately nothingness. There is no further worshipping of idols, there is no emotional investment, there is nothing that it wants in the world, because it knows the world has nothing to offer. It is nothing but a prison for insane minds who come to suffer and die in dreams of pain. And it is clear there is no such thing as sin.
Such a mind is the light of the world and has come to bless, only because it recognizes the truth and does not fall for the traps and illusions of a world of errors. It does not believe anything the body witnesses or suggests is happening, and realizes the limitations of the senses. It uses them only to serve to the extent they are able and is under no delusions that they represent reality or its experience. The body is known to be only what it is and nothing more, and it is nothing but an illusion. It has no life nor death.
From this view, the world is recognized as nothing. A sphere of un-happenings and illusory events. All events are nowhere. All changes wrought are substance-less. Not one thing occuring has any truth to it. Not even the dying bodies are really dying, nor the sick bodies really sick, nor the living bodies really alive. It is all the same, one illusion, one picture of strange objects and interactions, none of which are real or true.
The hierarchy of illusions has been flattened, and along with it the illusion of orders of difficulty. Nothing is regarded as more or less important or valuable than another, nor more difficult to reverse or change or heal. Nothing is given to the world but the love that would dispel it. And no meaning is attributed it beyond the meaning of forgiveness. Every occurrence has no effects. Every cause seen as an effect of dreaming. And nowhere is there a real consequence believed.
Only for a time does the teacher of God occupy a body thus, using it as a scalpel to dissect the illusions of the world and see beyond them to the truth. The mind no longer loses sight of what is true and real beyond the world, fixated on the reality of light outside the dream. There is no longer deception or temptation capable of inflicting suffering. And not one single aspect of the world has the power to do anything.
The world has been forgiven, overlooked, and not believed. The body is nothing and unnecessary. All the pleasures and pains of the world have been surrendered as useless futilities designed to waste time and avoid the truth. Death has no further appeal, for it is realized it accomplishes nothing real at all and is a worthless pursuit. No one in their right mind chooses to make such demonstrations occur, and what use is a dead body as a tool for communication and healing?
As a teacher of God, you have one foot in the world, but your spiritual eye perceives the light beyond it. Your mind is aligned with the truth but your body is doing body things. You don't fall for the ego's tricks, nor do you react to its worst attacks. You know that nothing can affect you because you have remembered what you are. You are as God created you, and you live outside of the world in another world of light, a world untouched by sin and danger, out of reach of war and pain.
Nothing can disturb you because you are safe in God. The dream of exile is nothing but a strange dream where strange things don't really happen. Where nothing can be believed. And where there is no truth. It is but a desert, arid and empty, a lifeless container of nothingness. And not once has it changed anything real or true. You come a while to offer a message from beyond, to remind your brothers what they believe is not true. You set them free by example and demonstration of your freedom from the world's evidence of irreversible sin. And they see in you a light shining from beyond your body.
This world isn't real. It is not your home. It is false. Nothing in it is true. It holds no value. It is not what you want. And eventually you will learn to recognize it as nothing, realizing that to gain all of heaven you are giving up nothing at all. And not one memory of the dream world will linger as you awaken beyond the world into the reality of the Kingdom. For everything you ever thought happened was nothing and nowhere. Only love is real and only the living world of light is true. And in this light you will know what you are and have always been.
"W-pII.14.1. I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. 2 In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. 3 In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. 4 I am the holy home of God Himself. 5 I am the Heaven where His Love resides. 6 I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own."
The mind of Holy Spirit is bi-directional, in that it both gives and receives equally. It isn't just a mind that gives, or just a mind that receives.
In the ego's mind, giving and receiving are separate, creating the illusion that cause and effect are separate - that you can give without receiving (attack), or receive (get) without giving.
In Holy Spirit's mind, what applies within applies without. What applies to you applies to others, and vice versa. It is a mind of complete equality.
Holy Spirit's mind is also a miraculous mind, in that because of the complete absence of separation between cause and effect, or inner and outer, or self and other, all illusions of separation are undone within its perception.
As we go `up` to the Holy Spirit's mind from our ego mind, we can be tempted to believe in ego terms that our journey is one-directional. We might say that we take our illusions to the truth. But it is also equally correct to say that the truth shines light upon our illusions.
We might also think one-directionally that we go and accept the Atonement for ourselves, but Atonement means at-one-ment which means it applies to us equally along with everyone else.
We could also come to think that a movement "towards" the Holy Spirit is a miracle, like a shift in perception from 'less' to 'more', or bringing illusions to truth. But what we're actually doing is leaving behind a thought-system of one-directionalness and separation, and moving into a thought-system of oneness and equality. It's apples and oranges.
We could therefore think (with ego-separation logic) that moving towards Holy Spirit is a miracle, but a miracle, being from the Holy Spirit's mind, must be bi-directional. It must be an act of both giving and receiving. It applies to you AND it applies to your brother. It heals the separation between you by recognizing that your brother IS your brother and not a stranger, and blesses both of your minds with healing.
The ego always thinks with one-directionality because it wants to keep giving and receiving separate, it wants to keep cause and effect separate, and it wants to ensure that every interpretation of what the Course means or what the Truth is like falls into its way of thinking about things as separate.
Miracles are unifying and are expressions of unity (love). This means not just that they lift you and your brother into Heaven or revelation, but that they also "bring" or "extend" Heaven into the Earth, shining it away. This is why, I believe, miracles subsequently are gifts you can give to others, and are not just something you claim for or use for yourself.
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."
"Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."
"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."
"Their Father gave the SAME inheritance to both. Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."
Here's the facts.
God already gave you everything. He shared all of creation with you. You share with every brother. Everyone shares the total abundance of Heaven together. It is yours permanently because that is God's will.
You cannot make it go away. You cannot defile it or break it or diminish it. Nothing you do can make you unworthy of it. It is already yours because it IS YOU. It's built into what you are. You are an aspect of Heaven itself. You are the gift of God.
The only other option you have is to GO INTO DENIAL and pretend that you do not HAVE the inheritance that God has provided. This denial does not actually undo the inheritance, nor does it destroy it or make it undone. All it does is COVER IT UP with blocks to awareness.
Since you cannot change God's will, all you can do is block awareness that it is permanently true. You do this through denial which makes you unconscious. You attempt to shut out of awareness the unavoidable reality of your inheritance, believing that if you just hide your head in the sand like an ostrich you won't be "aware" that the truth is still true, and therefore "that means it's not there." This is self-deception at its finest.
All that is required therefore is the removal of the blocks to the awareness of love's presence. The love is still there. The inheritance is still there, and God kept it for you permanently. You don't get to cancel it, but you can hide from it. All you need to do therefore is remove the blocks to awareness, which is nothing more than DENIAL and a LACK OF ACCEPTANCE, which lifts away these barriers in your mind and increases what you are AWARE OF.
And in so doing you reveal to yourself what is ALREADY THERE and what is ALREADY YOURS. This is how you ALLOW yourself to reclaim your natural inheritance from God, which is always yours forever.
One of the major teachings of A Course in Miracles, also present in Buddhism and Hinduism and many other belief systems, even present in the very first lessons of the Workbook, is that the physical world is a world of illusions. That many different objects only appear to be different, and their differences are meaningless.
In effect, the teaching is that you cannot judge a book by its cover, and you absolutely cannot take the objects of the world at face value. While most of the world believes that the world contains many many different things, different forms, objects, bodies, types, shapes, sizes, configurations, combinations etc, in truth there is actually only one thing here.
At first, to a person who is somewhat "blinded by perception of form", the world appears to be a tremendously complicated place filled with many different things. The differences are identified by how they appear, or what materials it seems to be made of, or how it behaves, or how it's constructed, or what it is used for, or what the symptoms seem to be etc. But these are all disguises.
Such a person will then believe that there really is a major real difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, between a car and a house, between a man and a woman, between a cake and some icecream. Places will all seem to be different and offer different seeming experiences. The next new toy will appear to be something you've never seen before. And everywhere you turn every single object seems to be distinct, separate and unique.
In such a view, uniqueness is valued highly, as though being unique and different sets you apart and identifies you and defines you. As if you stand out and be yourself by being unlike anything else. This merely emphasizes the sense of separateness between things and reinforces the belief that space and time are real.
The more a person thinks that there really are real differences between things, the more they will buy into what we call the "hierarchy of illusions". That is where some things are considered to MEAN something different to others, such as that a death is far "worse" than a mild headache, or that a million dollars is better than 1 dollar, or a burning house is a far worse problem than just that your fingernails need clipping.
For such a person, the world is seen as having the power to cause them, to victimize them, to do things to them. They see the world as both offensive and attractive. Some parts of it they will separate out and label as desirable, wanted, meaningful and valuable. At the same time other things which induce more unpleasant reactions will be relegated to hell and labeled as unwanted.
A person then will be living half a life, separated off, trying to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. Always on the run and living in fear, trying to hide from and prevent all the terrible suffering and tragedies that happen, while simultaneously strongly investing in, believing in and wanting to keep, the very same world which induces these things - for its supposed benefits.
This is clearly an insane state of mind, in which a person is in a relationship with a fickle, unpredictable, demanding, controlling, overpowering world, which sometimes throws them a bone and gives them something to seemingly celebrate, while quickly turning around and slapping them in the face the next day with some horrifying problem.
Such a life is a rollercoaster of constantly being thrown around by the waves of whatever's next, with no real peace and no consistency and no true invulnerability. It is a life of fear, wrapped up in an interpretation which frames parts of it as a life that is wanted. A life of judgement, in which some aspects of the world are despised and rejected while others are overly embraced and absorbed into. This is not a spiritual life, it's a life of contradiction and conflict.
What we have to all come to realize, and what a person generally WILL realize given enough time, is that the offerings of the world are not REALLY different things. It may take exposure to a great many things the world seems to separately give, in order to "tire" of the lure of these differences, to transcend them, to see through them, and to realize they are all the same.
This is real spiritual progression, where a person begins to see that the differences between objects are all artificial and meaningless. That having that super precious rare gem is not really that important, versus having a glass of water. Where the extremes of the values of things versus others, flattens out, and a person becomes far less attracted to, or put off by, any particular "temptation" that the world is offering that day.
What this means is that the learning becomes generalized. As a person matures more spiritually they will realize there isn't really a significant difference between things. That in order to retain a sense of integrity, peace, consistency and honesty, the difference forms of things have to be ignored. In order not to be constantly thrown around on the rollercoaster of hell, reacting to everything as if it means something, you have to learn to become more stable and unconditional.
Not changing moods based on conditions, not adapting to what's happening, not allowing the world to do things to you, not seeing yourself as either victimized negatively OR positively, not giving power TO the world to change or define you, not allowing circumstances to dictate what will happen, not giving away power to the extremes of the hierarchy of illusions, and no longer falling for the temptation to believe that the world in certain configurations means hell on earth.
Being deceived by the forms and differences of the world is unconsciousness. It is a state of unawareness and spiritual irresponsibility. It indicates a person who is selfish and wants to get things from the world, but at the same time doesn't want the world to give them the wrong things. It's a person whose relationships are all based on specialness and unholiness, a person who is themselves not whole, who is in denial of wholeness and therefore distanced from God in their "independence."
In order to wake up to reality, a person has to learn that this world isn't really offering anything different. It is really regurgitating the same stuff. It spews out the same illusions in different forms. Masses of materialistic products are made in which everyone now tries to create every single possible variation of a thing. And how many such variations does anyone really need? Their differences are insubstantial and superficial. Their different appearances are regarded as the defining factor as to how valuable they and what price tag they come with. But it's all made of the same lies and untruths.
The real truth is that there IS no difference between anything in the world. All appearances are illusions. All forms and shapes and sizes and amounts and values are utterly deceptive. They are all designed to tempt you to believe, to deceive you into believing, that physical reality is real when it isn't. That there is a world of many things, all of which are unlike the others, offering you constant distractions and side-quests and tempting pathways, all of which lead to the same ultimate end in death.
The truth is that there is not really any choices in the world. ALL of the things the world offers lead to death and destruction. Whether it appears to temporarily give you something you want or to take it away quickly, all forms end in death. They are made of death because they are made of the attempt to separate things out, to attack the other, to be unlike, unequal, in a constant state of war and conflict, incapable of peace and never offering anything consistent.
Fluctuating illusions cannot be reality. If something can change its form and be something one day and something else the next, it has no real permanent identity. A flower goes from a seed to a bloom to a wilted mess and not one of those states is reality. It is all the same thing. Be not deceived by what you see in the world. The world presents a picture of nothing pretending to be something, and it has absolutely no meaning.
The entire drive of A Course in Miracles is to teach us and help us to practice NOT being deceived by physical differences, by appearances, or by any sense of there being any variation in importance or relevance between one object and another. As we look around the room and OVERLOOK any particular reason to categorize things or to say they are more or less applicable to the ONE truth, we are training ourselves to no longer be deceived by the world and its lies.
"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."
"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."
"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change. The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."
"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."
"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"
"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."
"Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same."
"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."
"This world SEEMS to hold out many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."
"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness; the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery, - it is all the same. For you can NEVER choose EXCEPT between God and the ego."
It basically works like this. You believe you are not loveable and are separate from the love that you ARE. You experience a sense of lacking love. This creates a false need. The need motivates you to search. You search externally outside of yourself for what you've lost. You deny your own value and lovability so you project this onto others. You set them up to look like they can save you, that they are better than you, that they are above you, and that they will fulfill your need. You put them on a pedestal in order to put yourself down, and you worship them hoping to get some small scrap of love (that you don't deserve).
We do this with our children. We project so much of our own missing value onto them (by sacrificing ourselves), that we turn them into idols. As idols, they are more important than we are, they are more valuable than we are, we would just about kill ourselves to save them, and we worship them. We set them up to look like they can do no wrong. We enter into denial about any flaws that they might possibly have. We see them as 'can do no wrong'. We imagine that they absolutely are supposed to love us back and that they are only loving and completely overlook any faults. We make them seem like they are our savior and that they have something we don't have, capable of doing for us what we refuse to do for ourselves. And ultimately we live vicariously through them because we've made them into 'everything'.
This all can seem extremely noble and humble and prideful and correct. But it is filled with self deprivation, self denial, unworthiness, self sacrifice, martyrdom, loss, exhaustion, having no time for yourself, being less important, and generally all forms of inequality. Inequality also includes of course the flipside of idol worship which is what happens when YOU believe you are the idol and that the child (or other audience) should worship you. This is just another expression of the same egotism and may result in the child becoming the idol-worshipper (of you). If you are the idol, then you believe you are secretly flawed and NEED to have people worship you to prove that you are good enough - except you never believe it, and it never works, and it's never enough. Idol worshippers are the more obvious victims of the world (those who are bullied), and idols are the more obvious victimizers (those who bully). BOTH of them believe they are not loveable.
This dynamic also extends to all other special relationships, because they are all based on you having a LACK of love, and therefore being compelled to find it in another. The other now contains something valuable and special that you want but don't have. You want to get it from them. Except that you don't REALLY want to receive it because doing so would undo your belief that you're not worthy of it. So you would steal it away and destroy it, to deprive yourself. "If I can't have it, nor can anyone else."
Another great example of idol worship takes place in many Christians/Catholics who worship Jesus. They will put Jesus on a pedestal and endow him with all kinds of special value and worth. At the same time, they will claim that they themselves cannot possibly have EQUAL value, so they must be unworthy. Secretly they STARTED by saying they are unworthy, and this is why they see Jesus AS worthier than they are. They may thus 'worship' Jesus AS an idol (even though he doesn't want this), and continually believe that Jesus will save them for them. They will, however, constantly REFUSE to believe or admit that they in any way deserve saving, that they can be saved, that they can be loved to the degree Jesus would offer. That is, unless they believe they have atoned enough to be the 'chosen ones' who are in Jesus' favor and better than those suckers who are even less worthy and who clearly are going to hell (throwing them under a bus).
So with one hand they are trying to reach out to Jesus to say, "hey, please love me for me and save me from my (wretched) self because I can't", while the other hand says "stay the fuck away from me I am not worthy to be your equal." The ego here has conflicting voices - one which sounds like it is filled with adoration and justified worship, but the other which clearly does not REALLY want Jesus to love them fully. If Christians were to fully receive and acknowledge Jesus's love for them, they would have to ADMIT that they too are just as loveable as he is. Otherwise, how could they possibly receive His love? This is what they do not want, because they do not want their own love which God already gave to them.
When you idolize someone you make them more valuable than yourself because you've projected your own value and worth. You then say you want them to save you FOR you, but secretly you hope that they won't. It becomes especially toxic when the person you idolize refuses to be your idol. If they pull away from you or separate from you, they might occasionally throw you a tiny scrap or mosel of attention, which you think is all you deserve. And when that scrap comes, you feel like the entire relationship has been saved - finally you got a blessing from that person on-high and now that means they love you and that they will save you. Your tremendous need/lack of lovability gets a little bit of attention and now it seems like there's hope. And then they withdraw their love again and you feel devastated.
The problem is, you're not really devastated by their lack of loving you, you're devastated by YOUR not loving you. When they withdraw their idol status without you withdrawing your idolizing of them, ie they separate or distance themselves or fail to deliver, you are left with nowhere else to go. You can't get the love from within or from God because you don't believe that is where the love IS, and if your idol ditches you your mind is now reminded of just how empty it is. This is painful and is experienced as loss and grief. The loss of your own self. The grief of your own separation from God.
This is a spiritual lesson, and a hard one. And essentially it is the only lesson. You believe you are separate from love and will never get back to that love, or that it is NOT love, and now you've projected the source outside yourself where it does not exist. To resolve and complete the lesson, you have to UNDO the beliefs you've formed about YOURSELF which tell you that love is not who you are, love is not what you deserve (from within), that you do not love or forgive yourself (and God), that God is not love, that you are not loveable or worthy of love, and that you are not yourself. This belief in separation is what drives the entire projection and idolization of external love. But YOU ARE THE LOVE YOU SEEK.
God knows this. He hasn't forgotten you. Holy Spirit knows it. Jesus knows it. The angels know it. Even you as Christ know it and can't forget it. But somewhere along the lines some part of your mind became convinced by a lie - a LIE - that you are not love itself. This needs correction. And it cannot be corrected by anyone else outside of you because they are not the source of the correction OR of the separation. You might blame them because they seem to be separate from you and they seem to not be fulfilling your 'secret bargain' to love you for you, but it's not really their fault. It's not their fault they fail to love you for you. They're not supposed to. You need to learn to love yourself again so that you no longer NEED to get it from somewhere else, and consequently so that nobody else CAN take it away or deny you.
You are the way, the truth and the light. You are Jesus's equal. You are equal to your children. You are equal to your parents. You are loveable by God and in God and as God's extension of love. And you are absolutely worthy of the joy and happiness of RECLAIMING YOUR VALUE.
The truth is that this world is merely an EFFECT, coming from the mind, and mind is the only cause.
Since the world is only an effect, we are deluded when we believe that it has some kind of causal power. We look at the things that seem to happen and we say, this caused that, and that caused this, but this is not true. Effects are not really causing anything.
To recognize the world is nothing but an EFFECT, is to recognize that its seeming ability to cause things is only an illusion. You as the dreamer of the dream are NOT being caused by the dream. You are cause, the dream is the effect.
This means if the world can't cause anything, it has no power, it can't create, it can't change what you are, it can't act against your will, it can't do anything to you, it can't hurt you, it can't make you sick or suffering or dead.
Effectively, the world IS NOT CAUSING YOU AT ALL. It is literally not doing anything whatsoever.
You are only ever caused by God - forever an effect of God. Gladly what God chooses that you be, is good, and gives you eternal life and happiness. You are caused by God, you are not caused by the world. The world is doing nothing to you at all.
"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects."
"There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."
"It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."
"You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real EFFECTS. For that would change its CAUSE, and it is this you CANNOT do."
"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream."
"He CANNOT doubt his dreams' reality BECAUSE he does not see the part he plays in MAKING them, and MAKING them seem real. No-one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming FOR him."
1. "The Separation is merely another term for a split mind."
So the so-called "separation from God" or "being separate" or "believing in separation" is in YOUR mind, in the form of YOUR mind being SPLIT. It splits by attacking, which is sin, which creates a divide or gap, which is also spacetime, and separates part of mind off from the rest.
2. "Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING."
You use projection, which is also exclusion and dissociation, in order to increase the separation IN YOUR MIND, by continuing to SPLIT YOUR MIND between seemingly internal and external parts, while identifying only with the internal parts, and with the body which is a symbolic separation device.
3. "In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look."
You see a projection of YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look, and then you think that the "separated off" exclusively guilty parts you see are not part of you, but they are, because ideas do not leave their source/mind.
4. "A split mind CANNOT perceive its fullness, and needs the miracle OF its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it."
YOUR mind needs healing in order to stop being split and return to wholeness. It's not just a matter of not "believing in separation", your mind must STOP SEPARATING itself into two parts. The SPLIT in the mind has to be healed. It's like a psychological wound, a deep rift driven down the center of you.
5. "Your mind IS one with God's. Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving brother, I am deeply concerned with your minds"
Denying God is denying wholeness, which therefore induces a state of believing you are less than whole, therefore partial, therefore split apart into parts, therefore separated off and divided. Your mind is in fragments until it becomes healed and reintegrates as a whole mind, one within itself.
6. "It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick."
You can undo the separation in your mind, AND in your brother's mind, to heal others of the separation. Separation induces illness because it is a denial of wholeness and therefore is against immortality and life. A whole mind is a healthy mind, which in turn induces physical health. Mind is healed by INTEGRATION.
"The purpose of this course is integration."
"The lack of integration which this split state implies"
"Fear produces dissociation because it induces SEPARATION. Healing ALWAYS induces harmony because it proceeds from integration."
"The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split, and WANTS TO KEEP THE SPLIT, it will believe it has ONE goal by MAKING IT ONE."
"True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration."
Consider for a moment, a definition of yourself, in which YOU CANNOT CHANGE. You are absolutely changeless. You exist always the same, fixed, absolute, certain, permanent. Something that never alters, adjusts, transforms. Something incapable of becoming anything, losing anything, having anything taken away from it, or added. Just the same, always and forever, always existing, always being, always you. Same old you since you were created.
Then with this is idea it being IMPOSSIBLE to experience change, consider the contrast this produces to all the forms of suffering in the world. Someone doing something to you, being affected, upset, made to feel this way or that, moved by the wind, affected by the environment, threatened by the politicians and the warmongers, altered by sickness, pushed around by health concerns etc. All of it... all forms of CHANGE. All things which say "I can change you and you will change whether you like it or not."
What are you and where do you stand and how are you able to play any of these games if YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE? If you cannot be changed by anything, you are invulnerable, immortal, eternal. Always perfect, always strong, always beyond the reach of every kind of influence, every force, every attack, every threat to your nature. You cannot change, you have never changed. You remain as God created you and always will be the same. So can you believe you have been changed, caused, forced, yet again, to become something you can never be?
"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4
"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence? You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it." UrT13C8
"You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact." UrT6C6
"In the longer practice period, we will think about your reality and its wholly unchanged and unchangeable nature." UrW67L2
"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created." UrM19A2
"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever." UrW190L6
"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response." UrW152L5
"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." UrT30D8
"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." UrT5G11
The world appears to have a huge amount of stuff to offer you, things to get, somewhere to go, places to see, accomplishment to be made etc.. But. .... there is nothing in the world that you really want, and you need to become totally empty handed in order to want God. Who really wants to own even the tiniest part of a false world? Letting everything go and wanting nothing is the only way to detach from the world and go home to God. Wanting means you lack, and getting will never bring satisfaction of that belief in lack. Only God can fill the hole that he seemed to leave when you rejected him.
"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want"
"How far away from this are you who stay bound to this world. And yet how near are you when you exchange it for the world you want. Now is the last step certain; now you stand an instant's space away from timelessness. Here can you but look forward, never back to see again the world you do not want. Here is the world that comes to take its place as you unbind your mind from little things the world sets forth to keep you prisoner there. Value them not, and they will disappear. Esteem them, and they will seem real to you."
"Until you realize you give up NOTHING; until you understand there IS no loss; you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen."
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean? It cannot mean that you have less because of it."
"In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."
"Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."
"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own."
"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS."
"Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"
""What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which ALWAYS speaks for the right choice, because he speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt, but cannot destroy."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you. As self value comes from self EXTENSION, so does the PERCEPTION of self value come from the projection of loving thoughts outward."
We are infinite beings. We are immortal. We are invulnerable. We are pure and perfect and holy. We are completely innocent. We cannot be harmed. Nothing can happen to us. We are permanent and we cannot change in any way.
So I ask you then.. how can such a being come to believe that there is, in any way, shape or form, anything that can or has happened to you that you are victim of? How is it possible that you believe you have been hurt and changed and upset by anything or anyone?
The only way for this to be possible is to NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
I repeat, you are an absolutely immortal innocent permanent being that is completely invulnerable to ALL illusions and events. Literally you cannot be changed in any way whatsoever. So WHO is this 'me' that is so certain that they are so damaged and upset?
Who are you? Or rather, who, as someone who cannot be harmed, are you pretending to be? What harm are you pretending to endure? What victimhood role are you PLAYING at? What disguise are you wearing as a mask to portray yourself as not who you are?
Nothing that God created can be affected. Nothing that God created has been affected. You are created by God. Ergo, you cannot and have not been affected. Who you really are, that is.
This other self... its strange. It believes it is vulnerable to attack, being ganged up against, can be hurt, has been hurt, is weak and frail and diseased and sure to die. What a bizarre character to play the part of, given you are permanently invulnerable.
Ok so right now you are experiencing some shit. Crappy day. Noisy neighbors. Dog shitted on your grass. Something went wrong. Something broke. Someone attacked you. Whatever. Drama. All this crap is an illusion. The suggestion that it is happening to YOU is false. YOU are not even affected by this whatsoever, not even one tiny bit. How can YOU, who are created by God as perfectly joyous and happy and complete, be in any way less than totally beaming with light all the time, oblivious to and impervious to the entire ego world drama?
Our entire problem is that we believe we ARE the person who is attacked, that we CAN BE an identity other than the one that is our real identity, that we have BECOME someone who is affected and modified by all manner of fuck and shit in the world. All of this is ultimately completely impossible.
Somewhere under WHATEVER the fuck your drama is today, someone underneath MY drama today, and beyond our ridiculous made up identities - characters in a play, there is a completely healthy, absolutely immortal, totally happy, joyous vibrant loving peaceful whole complete being, to whom nothing has ever occurred and never will.
So if you can just sense that a little bit even for a moment, or even just imagine it, maybe it will frame your whole stupid drama in a different light and help you to recognize, that ALL of the ego's experiences are a complete FARCE. Even a comedy. A fiction. Happening to a fictitious character that is NOT you.
You are NOT the person who is being attacked. You are NOT the person who is vulnerable. You are NOT the person who is upset. You are NOT the person that is struggling and suffering. That's not who you are at all.
You are pure love.
In ACIM the idea of evil is defined as 'ego', more or less. Not just individual egos but also a collective one.
The ego uses temptation to distract you from the truth. It is capable of creating scenarios in which it seems like you want and enjoy things which you would normally not want or enjoy.
It is also very cunning in that it can use your very own weaknesses against you. If you think that some person or project or activity might be 'the answer' and that it will save you, even though it's not true, the ego will encourage you to pursue it. And it knows you are likely going to go along with it because you yourself are the one who is believing it will work, or is what you want.
I have only recently discovered that my own ego has been 'playing me', using my own self deceptions to lure me away from the truth. It's particularly bad if I am very mistaken about something, like I think I'm onto some kind of solution or really great thing, but really it's another ego bullshit wild goose chase which will have me 'seek and do not find' for a long time.
In other words, if I choose to believe in an illusion and I give it faith and am convinced of its supposed value, this becomes a blind spot in my awareness. My ego comes along and says "why don't you do that thing, you know you want to, you know you like it, you know how appealing it is". And then I'll be all gooey eyed with hypnotic spirals spinning in my eyeballs while I salivate over this very appealing, attractive opportunity. All the while, my mind is completely distracted from God.
Notice though that the ego thus really has no power of its own. It can only use the things I have agreed to as a way to tempt me away from the truth. If it weren't for me getting gooey eyed over some new piece of technology or some amazing movie or some pathway that seemed really enticing, the ego would have no way to deceive me. I have deceived myself, willingly, and that is all the ego needs.
It can trigger off a memory of these tempting offers just at the right moment, knowing that their allure will particularly hurl my awareness off in a different direction, like some rat in a maze that just caught a glimpse of a big chunk of delicious cheese. Suddenly all my senses are ignited and the unfinished business I have with this 'promising savior' has captivated/captured my attention. I fall for my own traps.
It's good to be aware the ego is actively tempting us in this way, using our own mistakes against us, and trying to get us to reinvest in anything other that what we really are. There is nothing guilty or bad or wrong with enjoying life, but if we are psychologically using it as a false savior, then we will fall for temptation - the temptation to believe the truth is not true and God does not deserve our attention.
Watch out ... for yourself :-) You are the one who gives the ego the fuel it needs, and you thus hire it to serve your false interests. It is merely a reflection of your own self deception. It is not against you but for you. You want it. But you need to want God instead.
"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me." UrW304
There is a trap which people may not be aware of, which can cause you to get very stuck. And the more egoic you are the more likely you are to get stuck.
The problem is, what we are "being" in our mind and identity, directly influences what aspects of the world we focus on and what we see IN it.
If we are being very separate and body-identified and full of guilt etc, the world will actually seem to take on these qualities and reflect back an experience of it being fragmented, discordant, warring, unsafe, etc.
This doesn't depend on the things that happen in the world, or the specific forms or objects or people. It's more to do with how it registers to your awareness, that it means to you, what you read into it, what stands out to you and what it means.
You actually have a SUBJECTIVE experience of the world. All perception is subjective. The world does not objectively exist. Only heaven is objectively real. In the world what's going on in YOU, directly CORRELATES to what you "make of" what's out there.
THIS can become a horrible trap because if you don't realize that your inner state is influencing how you see things, you could think that the world "is just like this". That if you FEEL that the world is dangerous and guilt-ridden and fearful and full of sin, it's because YOU are being these things.
If you don't realize that your experience of the world is a MIXTURE of the world itself and your inner state of mind, you could by mistake believe that "the world is just like this". As if how it appears to you, what it means to you, what you focus on in it, is INHERENT to the world itself.
For example if you are filled with guilt and shame and fear and darkness, the world will see to be a very dark guilty nightmarish place. You will focus on separations and physicality. The solidity of matter will seem heavy and impenetrable like a prison. Things will loom over you and threaten you. You won't feel safe anywhere and everything will seem evil. And then you will think the whole world IS an evil place, and it's impossible to escape it.
If you're sort of living in an experience of "a world" that seems like that, you will reason to yourself that it makes sense for you to act certain ways, to defend yourself from it, to not love it, to hate it and resent it. You might be thinking that you hate the world because it's a horrible place. But the reason that it seems horrible is because you hate yourself. You are MIXING your attitudes about yourself, WITH your perceptions of the world. You are FLAVORING the world with your mind.
Essentially, you cannot see OUTSIDE OF your own sense of identity and nature. You project this identity and nature onto spacetime. You then "relate" to this projected mixture of objects and meanings and regard it as "objective truth", but it isn't. It's a sort of blind closed-box experience, in which YOU are making the world seem to justify hate and resentment.
The problem is that then you will feel that you cannot forgive the world. No-one who believes the world is evil and horrible can forgive it. If it REALLY IS these things, you cannot forgive it. You cannot feel safe in it, you cannot trust it. You know it would make no sense to trust an UNTRUSTWORTHY world. And the idea of TRUSTING it seems completely risky and opening yourself up to attack. Forgiveness is unjustified and attack is justified.
God also DOES NOT love "such a world". He does not and cannot love a world in which there is this content of fear and guilt. Because in order to BE IN such a world, his mind would have to contain fear and guilt, and then he would be lost in unreality and attack, and find it IMPOSSIBLE to forgive and love such an "experience" of a world.
But we are told God does love "the world", because he sees it WITH love and GIVES love and thus his reflection of love is upon it. And thus he EXPERIENCES love because the love is in him. As in "God is in the world I see because God is in my mind." The reflection of heaven is possible when YOU are being heaven-like, and holy-minded, and forgiving of yourself, such that you PROJECT this out and see it REFLECTED back to you.
Essentially, THE WORLD IS A MIRROR. It is NOT a separate thing from you. It is not "having its own" stuff. Believing that the world is separate from you and has its own objective truth which you have no influence over, is the ego mindset of false perception. It causes you to focus on separations and differences and sees no cohesion or unity. This is a mistake, because the egoic mind is experiencing "the world" AS THOUGH IT IS ITSELF.
If you are experiencing the world LIKE the way you experience yourself, but you BELIEVE that you are "separate", you will believe that your experience of the world has no CONNECTION to your state of mind, and that now means YOU ARE TRAPPED. You are lost in a mirror, believing that what you see in the mirror is NOT YOU and is nothing like you. Yet alone that you might be putting it there.
In higher states of mind you come to see that because you are holy and innocent and loving and inclusive, because you are not separate and not attacking, you don't see these things "in the world". Or rather, you experience the world in a way that de-emphasizes these things. You don't experience or notice or pay attention to differences and separations. The more whole YOU become, the more the world SEEMS more whole.
So the big trap is, which most people are falling into, is that the more you think the world itself is SEPARTELY evil, the more you will emphasise that YOU are separated off, and your mind will become darker and darker. The darker your mind becomes the MORE the world will seem darker still. And you will think that your HATRED of it is totally justified and makes total sense. You will point and finger and believe the world ITSELF is inherently evil, and its evil has nothing to do with you. That it is NOT a mirror.
And that means you're quite capable of driving yourself into a "pit of hell", a nightmare of your own making, where you keep attacking the world over and over and making your relationship to YOURSELF worse, which makes your experience of the world worse, which just keeps you going down and down further into a hellish experience because you don't realize the world is a mirror. If it IS a mirror, and you treat it like it is NOT a mirror, you will think IT is "getting worse", when really YOU are getting worse, and you will justify hating "it" (as if not you) even more. This is the split in the mind.
The more you dissociate, separate, project guilt, attack, be unforgiving etc, the more you experience that the world has NOTHING to do with you. That its conditions are an inherent evil of its own, objectively evil. That you are not contributing to this evilness in ANY way. And that's a serious trap, you can get very lost in believing that you SHOULD hate and be outraged toward the world because "it" seems like a horrible evil place. But it isn't inherently a horrible evil place. YOU are being horrible evil in it, and it's making you FILTER your perception to show you aspects which seem to reflect that back to you.
The world IS a mirror, and if this is not recognised, you will see no way out. To get out of the hellish nightmare, you have to be able to RISE ABOVE, ie transcend, which means YOU have to become more heavenly if you want to experience the world as more heaven-like. YOU have to become less separated off if you want to experience the world as a less separating place. YOU have to stop attacking if you want to experience that the world isn't attacking you. YOU have to be what you want to SEE in the world.
And that means that no matter what you are experiencing the world as NOW, that's just the result of what you chose to BE previously. If you want to see the world in a better light, YOU have to get yourself into a better light. And then the qualities you saw IN the world in the darkness WILL DISAPPEAR, or become less emphasised, because YOU are being a better person.
Ultimately this leads to you reflecting heaven within yourself, which results in you projecting heavenly qualities, which results in the world appearing to reflect heaven back to you. And that allows you to transcend all the limits and separations and differences, allows you to ignore hierarchies of illusions, stops you being deceived by forms, and allows you to overcome temptations.
Essentially your EXPERIENCE of the world becomes more like a oneness the transcends all the forms things take. And then the world reflects the MEANING of God. When you reach that state you're in the real world, the world you made is the forgiven world, and you're ready to go home to heaven.
"In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves." UrT14E5
"This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this." UrM12A1
"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4
"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that." UrT21A1
"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E3
"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this." UrT25D1
"In His (Holy Spirits) perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5
It is difficult to learn that there is not really anything I can do to force healing or awakening onto others. Love isn't forceful.
If I see someone suffering, and if I've become mistaken in believing that this is real or true, then I will try to save them from it. But I've already attacked them by seeing them as less than immortal and buying into the illusion of them having a real problem. So then having attacked them, I also now try to become the hero savior who has come to free them from the very sickness that I have projected onto them.
I can offer love and healing, if there is willingness or readiness to receive. Jesus said to me a while ago "since when was loving someone a crime?". Love can heal. Love can produce miracles. But if the person does not want these things, love doesn't intrude.
In ACIM Jesus speaks of how love does not come where it is not welcome. It doesn't intrude on the alter upon which you placed other idols. It doesn't force change.
If God, unconditional love, forced healing onto us, the entire world would have been dissolved into light instantaneously. So this leaves people asking, why does God 'allow' suffering and death? The short answer is, because He loves us. Yes, God allows death because He loves us. And that's justification for many people as to why God sucks or doesn't exist. BUT... that's the short answer.
The longer answer is, death and suffering are not REAL, and our belief/experience that these things are real is actually our sickness, our mistaken perception, which God's love would want to HEAL, so that we can return to an awareness that we have divine health, that we are immortal, and that we cannot die. That's why God doesn't stop us from destroying ourselves (up to a point) - he knows death is not real and nothing can truly hurt us. All suffering is an illusion of suffering in a state of unconsciousness.
God would awaken us to realize our immortality and invulnerability. He would awaken us to love. So we can't just say God sucks or doesn't exist just because we suffer and die. We have to realize we are the ones who choose to suffer and die. As Jesus explains in ACIM, "no-one dies without their own consent". So let's stop blaming God for that one.
God does love us because death and suffering are not real. Thank God death and suffering are not real. Thank God He has created us eternal regardless of how things appear in the world. And thank God it is still possible to choose love instead of suffering. God wants us to realize that in REALITY we do not suffer or die and nothing has happened. If we're not perceiving and experiencing that reality, it's because we are mistaken and need healing. So we need to choose to receive that healing from God.
Choose again!
Ego is identification with form. That means, first believing in separation, so that there can be different things, and thus forms. And then attempting to be ONE WITH those things, so that they become associated with what you ARE, as part of you.
This begins with the denial of self, which is also the denial of God. We place within ourselves a belief that we are LACKING self in some way. That we are not enough, that we have been diminished, that we have experienced a loss of self.
We attack and hide from and distort our view of ourselves and thus believe we are a wretched wicked evil monster, sorely lacking and impoverished and powerless and lost.
“Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost.”
The belief that you lack in some way, produces a sense of being “not enough”, and that something is missing. Therefore you Are lacking and “in need.” This in turn produces a compulsion driven by a NEED to get what you are missing. What you are missing is ENOUGH SELF, or wholeness.
But with the belief that you are not enough of a self - or unwholesome/unholy, at the root, this belief is not questioning. Instead we accept it as true, see ourselves as lacking love and identity, become very much “in need”, and then feel compelled to fill those needs. By not knowing who we really are, and seeing ourselves as empty of self - as if nothing at all - we then start to try to DEVELOP a self - to get a self.
This produces DESIRE, which is “wanting to get” what you do not have. The more the ego sees itself as lacking, the more it wants to get, and thus the greater its desire. It’s a kind of psychological mechanism where we’re trying to rectify a problem - a lack of self - by trying to get it from somewhere, to alleviate the feeling of dis-satisfaction, not being enough, not having enough etc. This can become desperation.
This intense wanting turns into seeking. We will seek to find self or identity or value anywhere other than where it really is. It really is buried underneath the belief that we are LACKING in some way - sinful, guilty, diminished. But the ego mindset doesn’t want to question the denial of self, it wants to keep that in place. Effectively, the ego mindset then WANTS to LACK self, AND wants to gain self, at the same time. And thus it can never reach a point of satisfaction.
From the strong drive to “find yourself”, and driven by the sense of lack of self, you feel a compulsion for MORE. You need more, of everything. You need to gain. You need to make up for what you seem to be lacking. You need to fill the gaping hole of emptiness within. And so this produces GREED and SELFISHNESS, because we now seek to get more and more and more to try to satisfy the emptiness. Even though we don’t really want to satisfy because we want to deny self.
The way by which we then attempt to GAIN SELF, or to get MORE SELF, is to IDENTIFY WITH form. To identify with separate things. Things which we think are valuable or important. Things which differentiate and make us unique. Things which, by way of association, rubs off on us favorably and gives us a sense of being MORE than we were. The ego thus identifies WITH OBJECTS, with bodies, with thoughts and feelings, with the mind, in an attempt to increase its sense of existence - of being a self.
We thus literally identify with a country, a culture, a body, a relationship partner, their body, valued treasures, objects and toys, buildings and land and vehicles, money, sex, and all kinds of things. We identify with them by trying to ATTACH SELF to them, to in a sense posses them, by trying to equate the object with our sense of self, to suggest “this thing is the SAME as me” or “I am the same as this thing.” It’s an attempt to find ONENESS WITH FORM, ie oneness with separateness, which is impossible.
Ego is amplified by an increase in a sense of “setting it apart” from the whole, by which it reasons that it if can become a more significant SEPARATE thing, it is more established and exists more and thus has more identity - more self. It in a way wants to be the whole, such as to be the OWNER of the world, but it also thwarts this fundamentally by its belief that it MUST be less than whole in order to seem to “be something.”
Psychological ownership, psychological possession, psychological attachment, identification, trying to be one with form, trying to gain more self, forming a self image, trying to enhance the self, trying to improve the self, trying to make the things that ego is identified with be in themselves better so that it rubs off on us and we can take credit for it, are all the SAME method of trying to BECOME something we are NOT, in an effort to become a real self that “we are.”
Since all temporal things, all different things, all forms, all objects, all thoughts and feelings, are transient and temporary, they fundamentally do not last. The ego knows this in a way, and is constantly in a state of dissatisfaction that it not only never has enough, it aways feels a compulsion to become MORE SELF. This is due to the deep belief in having NO SELF, which it MUST maintain in order to seem to be relevant.
But temporary things come and go, and so the ego then experiences a sense of LOSS. It now loses the things it wants, as those treasured things leave its existence. Whether it be a person’s body that dies, or some family member falls ill, or a possession becomes broken, or some toy is lost, or money is wasted, or whatever, there is a disappointment.
But it’s not simply a matter of feeling that something valuable has gone away, it actually it is much more selfish than that. Loss is driven by the recognition that the things which you were IDENTIFIED WITH have gone away, and therefore PART OF YOUR SELF has gone away. Through the loss of idols and favorites and possessions and things we have owned and become attached to, even things with sentimental value, the ego is not upset about the THING being gone - it’s upset about ITS SELF being gone.
And so loss is really experienced by the ego as a reminder of the loss or lack of self, a reminder of the inner emptiness that was there before the compulsion to ”seek and do not find.” It is a triggering of the sense that you have lost YOUR SELF, and now you are diminished, and now you are lacking, and now you have less, and now you are not enough.
This produces what we call a feeling of loss or grief, but it’s not REALLY a grief over the loss of some valuable thing or person or place, it’s a much more selfish upset that what you wanted from your neediness has been lost and so your very IDENTITY has been lost. And then you are sad because it is YOU that has died again. Ultimately all sense of loss over external things are just reflections of the inner sense of the loss of a real self, driven by self denial.
What needs to take place to undo all of this madness, this impossible seeking for something that does not exist anywhere except underneath the self denial, is to undo the self denial. To stop denying that you are a fully created and WHOLE self, that God created, and that you are still the whole of that self.
It requires a shift in IDENTIFICATION, in which your sense of “what am I” stops being attached to and possessing of things like the body and thoughts and feelings and objects, and instead recognizes self to be one with the spirit - the soul, the Christ holy self. But not only that, but the identification with and as the WHOLE KINGDOM OF GOD, in which identity is SHARED and whole and one, because it is NOT based on separation or lack.
And this will require what will seem to be the dismantling of the false sense of self, rooted deeply in lack and imperfection and the absence of identity - an insecure and impossibly unhappy and deprived self. This self is BASED ON self denial, so the denial has to be lifted and the mind has to re-identify with spirit. Fundamentally this requires the recognition that your real self is NOT lost, nothing has happened to it, it can never be changed, and you are still as God created you to be forever. You are Christ, not anti-Christ.
When there is no self-denial, there is no lack of self, and so there is no neediness, and thus no wanting, and thus no desire, and thus no seeking externally, and thus no drive to get or to attach or own or possess, and thus no attempt to ADD MORE SELF to yourself in an effort to BUILD a self to overcome the shortcomings of the one you hate.
Self hate and self denial and self attack and self destruction all have to end, as you open up to accept and recognize the real self that you really are. Without the belief in being anything other than God created you to be - and which in truth you STILL ARE, there is no basis for the ego whatsoever, and so it cannot exist. This ends with the return to simply knowing yourself as you really are in reality - the whole of yourself which needs nothing.
This was something that our spiritual guides often told us years ago, and at the time it seemed to have some meaning. But I didn't realize just how far reaching it is.
You get to choose... everything. Total responsibility.
Part of our problem, being unconscious, is that we have attempted to HIDE the fact that we are responsible, and that we have a CHOICE. We seem to not even realize that we have a choice. The hallmark of the disempowered, victim mindset is the apparent absence of the freedom to choose.
In the victim mindset, it seems the victim didn't choose what's happening to them. And death is the ultimate expression of this where, allegedly, it "just happens" on its own. Not only that, there's nothing you can do to stop it or resist it. No choice whatsoever, or at least, that's how it appears.
So if you're in a situation where you are "being a victim", you for sure will in some way believe you do not have a choice. Instead, you'll talk about how such-and-such is going to happen and how you can't do anything about it.
An example of this is the weather. The weather is forecast and then everyone goes apeshit about how such-and-such a weather "is going to happen" (to me) because "they said". This is the victim mindset. You don't want to own the fact that you are responsible for the weather, or that you have power over it, or that you can choose it, or that you ARE choosing it. The weather forecast is just reflecting back to you what YOU already set in motion.
It always boils down to the belief, and the perception, that you do not have any choice and that choice has been taken away from you by some outside force and there's nothing you can do to change it. And these proclamations about how disempowered you are will always be loud and convinced as though you're saying, I don't want this to happen, but at the same time, really not doing ANYTHING to change it. This is "complaint".
Complaining is the act of making a situation real, seeing yourself as victimized by it, completely disowning your power to do anything to change anything, and yet making a great big tirade about why its unfair and who's fault it is and how there's nothing you can do about it. So you basically stay... STUCK. That's why complaining about the situation only KEEPS it, compounds it, and makes it worse. Complaint that you have no choice is a CHOICE to NOT have a choice.
You DO have a choice! But you're not going to be able to access the POWER of that state of "freedom" unless you're willing to drop all the victimhood shit and OWN up to actually having power. Why don't people want to own up to being responsible, or having freedom, or having a choice, or being able to make a change? There's no downsides to that, other than that it means less allegiance to the ego.
So you're not stuck. You can choose again. You have the power. You are free. And everything that's happening NOW is your choice. And if you don't like it, RECLAIM your power to choose and choose something else.
If you are trying to be separate from God, you are trying to be the antichrist.
If you believe in separation to any degree, this is the same thing as believing that you are in darkness, and therefore that you are evil.
Although you may say you don't believe in evil, or that it is relegated to only those who are in the extreme of it, evil basically is the opposite of 'live' (spelled backwards) and, more than just a play on words, is the attempt to be different to what God created.
In that sense, most of the people in the world are evil.
However, evil is not real. It is not possible to be really evil, because evil means darkness and darkness is an illusion. It is not possible for darkness to remove the light or replace the light. On the contrary, light shines away darkness by its mere presence. This is why darkness has no real power over God's Kingdom.
Similarly, what you think of yourself as being dark, which can take on many forms such as believing you are unworthy of love, that you are guilty or afraid, etc... these are all forms of believing in darkness. You think that darkness has come to block out the light and that it has succeeded. That is a magical belief and is essentially 'evil', if there were such a thing.
Efforts that you might make to make darkness real, or to side with darkness, or to think that darkness has some kind of power over the light, are efforts to enact 'magic'. These can be nothing more than attempts to make illusions real or to turn things which are untrue into true. This is always impossible of course, and darkness really does not exist at all.
So while you might be currently pretending to be the antichrist, fear not, because your efforts have no real effects and God still knows that deep down you're really Christ. This will never change. And your attempt to make yourself into the antichrist (the ego), really is just a make-believe fairytale about it being possible. It isn't.
Regardless of how evil you think someone is, or what special cases you reserve for evil, or how evil you think you are, and believe me if you think you're anything less than 100% innocent you believe you are evil, it doesn't matter to God. God loves and forgives absolutely all, knowing that we are really incapable of sin and that evil is not reality.
You're not really evil. Your darkness is just an illusion you use to pretend to hide the light, and what you keep in darkness or keep from the light seems to take on a kind of reality. You hide it to protect it because exposure to the light would show you that it is not true and does not matter. Unconditional love would sweep it away and pay no attention to it. You only keep your, twisted, wicked evil ways hidden, because to expose them to light would show you that you are just mistaken and cannot ever be evil at all.
You are christ, holy and innocent, permanently loved by God, incapable of sin and are absolutely forgiven. If you are the antichrist, it only means you are christ pretending not to be christ. Ultimately we are all christ and there is no antichrist at all.
'I'm not the antichrist but I play one on TV"
Your miracle WORKING, DOING, PERFORMING, is supposed to restore the right mindedness of SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS *NOT* IN THEIR RIGHT MIND!!!!!!!
"We said in a previous section that ***the miracle is an expression*** of miracle-Mindedness. Miracle-Mindedness merely means Right-Mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker ***nor of the miracle receiver***. However, ***as a creative act***, the miracle need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. *******In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind.******* But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness ***in someone else.***"
"All forms of not-Right-Mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement FOR YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places himself in the position to recognize that those who need to be healed are simply those who have NOT done so. "
"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from overevaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner. "
"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."
"It must be understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle to another, he IS shortening the suffering of both."
"Miracles supply a lack."
"Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less."
"Miracles strengthen both the giver and the receiver."
In every way, being right minded does NOT entail a state in which OTHERS ARE FREE FROM SUFFERING. And because of this, MIRACLES have a PURPOSE to offer healing TO THOSE WHO ARE LACKING or who have not yet chosen to enter miracle mindedness themselves. This is why "Miracles are a SERVICE, they are the maximal service you can render to another." Miracle working is all about what you DO to HELP OTHERS who are NOT WHERE YOU ARE AT. And this easily proves the fact that just because you are healed it does NOT MEAN that you no longer see people in need, lacking, sick, suffering or dying. You simply do not believe it is true of them, but you STILL HEAL THEM THROUGH MIRACLES.
Miracles are a CREATIVE ACT. "Miracles are a spark of life".
WORLD IS STILL HELL EVEN WITH FORGIVING PERCEPTION - YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE IT AS A FORGIVEN ILLUSION OF HELL - AND LOOK PAST IT TO HEAVEN.
In the following statements, Jesus talks of how even in a state of true perception, or christ vision, this world is still seen as containing hellish things happening. Not that they are regarded as real, and in fact they are dismissed as unreal. But this doesn’t mean things aren’t still going wrong in the world. There are still sick bodies seen, there is still suffering and death happening, bodies are still attacking each other, murders are still happening.
The point is, just because you forgive the world it doesn’t mean it turns into a place where nothing bad happens. Nor do you become blind to people’s suffering. The important thing isn’t whether or not the world has "improved" in its events and happenings and problems, the important thing is realizing NONE OF IT IS REAL. Those who are expecting to see "heaven on earth" with everyone getting along, are in for a long wait. True perception and forgiveness cannot show you that. Perception is an effect, not a cause.
We will learn to recognize this world is an illusion. We will learn to disregard what seems to be happening in the world. We won’t dress it up in wishful thinking that everyone suddenly is getting along just because you are waking up. True perception is accurate perception, not rose colored glasses. The world, Earth, always remains as it is. Shit still happens in it. People don’t suddenly all start loving each other. Earth, a world of forms of error, cannot be but hell. It is illusion, a dream of everything going wrong.
Your corrected mind must OVERLOOK this world. Forgiveness means not believing this world is really happening. The forms in the world are still going to be in conflict, competition and attack. You can’t stop that. But you CAN come to see that it is NOT TRUE. Everything the body’s eyes report is a lie. Your mind has to learn to disregard these images. To not believe them. To not see the sin and think it real. A forgiven world, however, cannot last, because forgiveness UNDOES IT.
You have to look PAST the world of sin with forgiving eyes and not see "real sin" in it. You must see it as meaning innocence instead. But this DOES NOT stop it from having totally shit things happening in it. You will still see sickness and death, but reinterpret it as JUST A DREAM. Not real. Not heaven. Nothing. At the same time, you are to look PAST IT, through it practically ignoring it, to a LIGHT which is FAR BEYOND IT.
The light is where Heaven is. The light is where love is. It is BEYOND the illusory veil of matter that coves your sight. Your task here is to SEE THE WORLD LESS, and SEE HEAVEN MORE. To tune OUT of the world, and tune INTO Heaven. The aim is to no longer see the world AT ALL, and to ONLY see Heaven. You cannot see both worlds. Sight of one denies the other. More Heaven, less world.
Eventually the world disappears into the nothingness from which it came. All that remains is Heaven, and Earth has left no trace at all in its going. It was always just a dream, always an illusion. It could never be heaven. There is no world. Only Heaven is real. The world is barely even a thin veil across your sight as you look BEYOND it to the face of Christ. It may well seem forgiven and lovely but it is not the direction of your FOCUS. Your eyes are on Heaven, not on the world, and that is why you OVERLOOK it, and that is why you give it NO REALITY, and that is why it looks devoid of attack. That "holy world" is essentially NO WORLD. Only God’s creation has reality.
In summary, corrected perception/Christ Vision shows you:
1) the physical world is a thin veil illusion regarded as UNREAL and ILLUSORY, which appears to be a "beautiful illusion", a forgiven world that is, nevertheless, FAKE. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the forgiven world IS 100% DREAM ILLUSION, and so once the healed mind recognizes it, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot keep the world AND SEE IT CORRECTLY. You cannot keep the world AND BE FORGIVING. You cannot keep the world and SEE GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God."
2) sight of something BEYOND the image of the world, beyond forms and bodies and worlds, a light of Christ. The face of Christ, which shines BEHIND the appearance of physical matter. Seen shining behind the transparent veil. Sight of THAT is what makes you happy. It is because you are looking PAST the illusory world TO reality - a world of light - that you are at peace. Not because the world itself becomes heaven. If you believe what the body keeps showing you, you will NOT SEE the face of Christ. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one (Earth) denies the other (Heaven). You have to choose one. Heaven is your home. It is the only sane choice. Earth is nothing, isn’t real, and doesn’t exist.
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
"...When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. 8 And so it is with healing. 9 The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.
M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."
"In this world, it is impossible to create."
"It is impossible to see two worlds." (And there are two)
"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these."
"It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance."
"A mind and body cannot both exist. 5 Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 6 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. 7 If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."
"5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen . 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. "
"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. 2 Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. 3 It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. 4 Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. 5 What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. 6 The definition of reality is God's, not yours. 7 He created it, and He knows what it is. 8 You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion."
"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer."
"Son of God, be not content with nothing! 2 What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. 3 God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. 4 You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. 5 Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. 6 Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. 7 You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. 8 Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. 9 By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. 10 But it is not there . 11 And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself."
"The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. 2 Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. 3 Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. 4 And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. 5 Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. "
"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear."
"What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? 8 He is invisible in such a world. 9 Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. 10 Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes."
"Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. "
"The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.
T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there."
"Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality."
"Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. 6 The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. 7 Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see."
We often talk about the versions of the course, the editing, whether all the facts are included etc. And then on top of that we try to understand its metaphysical model, its concepts and ideas, and argue over which model is the right one.
But what we should perhaps really be more concerned with is whether true information has been lost. ie whether we have the whole truth represented in word form, or whether key detail has been lost.Information is ... the minimum amount of detail that is needed to represent something with perfect logical accuracy.
In its simplest form, for example, let's say there are two squares next to each other. One is black and one is white. You can distinguish that there are two, because they contrast to each other. This contrast is information. If you were to, for example, color both squares white, you cannot tell whether its one square or two squares. Information has been lost.
In information theory, which is used for such things as data compression algorithms for example, and also in science, there is something called entropy. Entropy is a measure of the absolutely minimum possible size that the information can be, in order to fully and accurately represent something.
When you have files on your computer, or images for example, you can "compress" them. Usually this is based on representing larger repeated things with smaller symbols. You can get back exactly what you started with by "de-compressing" it based on the symbols. But this can only be done up to a point. There is a threshold at which you CANNOT compress the files any smaller, without losing information. All the "information" needed to fully describe the image must be retained in some form.
With images for example, the jpeg file format is not an accurate representation of the image. It LOSES ACCURACY as a trade-off for making the files smaller. The more accuracy it loses, the smaller the representation becomes, the blurrier the image is. It starts to develop artifacts which are visual errors. From that "overly reduced" data, you CANNOT get back the original full fidelity and quality of the original image. Key accuracy of information is LOST.
When we conceive of truth, when we try to describe reality, or talk about God and his creation etc, these lofty and rather abstract metaphysical ideas, the temptation is to make the representation of that truth, the symbol of that truth, be as SMALL AND SHORT as possible. We somehow think that less is always more, and that "simpler" must be more true. This is NOT true. TOO FEW words is INACCURATE.
When an accurate representation of something is reduced SO much, it has to in fact LOSE very important detail. The information becomes blurred, vague, generalized, overly abstract, and really does NOT contain the subtle nuances that are actual aspects of the whole truth. It may SEEM like it represents the whole of the truth but it doesn't. It's an APPROXIMATION, like a jpeg image, which is "sort of close" to being accurate and gives you some idea of it, but IS NOT accurate.
Examples of this happening include "reductionistic" statements like "Everything is God." Well now. For some reason that sounds all mystical and special and lofty. But, such a vague statement lacks enough detail to be accurate. You cannot GET BACK the full story when you BASE logical conclusions on this information. The reconstruction of the whole story is corrupted.
You could say for example, well, it seemed like the Son of God feel asleep and dreamed of death. But ... since ITS ALL GOD.... THIS MUST MEAN, logically, that God HIMSELF fell asleep and dreamed of death. That is absolutely what it implies. You can argue that "no it doesn't" but all you're doing is trying to pretend that it is accurate because the BS alarms are going off to indicate errors. The fact is that the information that's given is NOT ENOUGH, it DOES NOT accurately represent the whole truth, and it's too vague.
MORE WORDS IS BETTER! Or perhaps we can say, you want ideally the fewer number of words which FULLY AND ACCURATELY represent the whole truth. I you can be sure this is not going to be 3 words or even 20 words.
So yes, even in terms of thinking about abstract spiritual stuff, even in terms of oneness, god being all, everything is mind, son and father blending into each other, going beyond words and concepts... all this stuff.... when you are USING LANGUAGE and logical constructs to THINK about it..... and you strip SO much away that you start losing vital information, going BEYOND the entropy threshold, you are literally turning a detailed and nuanced truth into a blob of mush and mud and blurriness and meaninglessness. Because you think that is what spirituality is like .... this oneness thing... must mean, we only need to use one word. Not even close.
There IS an entropy limit beyond which you cannot go, in logical reasoning, in discussion, in theorizing, in metaphysics, in conceptualizing reality, where if you DO go beyond it, you have chopped out SO much information that you're not even really talking about the whole truth anymore. You're making a vague approximation which is NOT accurate enough. And it is therefore MISELADING. The more you push it towards eradicating as many words as possible, down to like "everything's God"... you have seriously censored significant major truths.
If for example I have a flower with 6 petals and I tell you that I have "a flower", but I don't tell you that it has 6 petals, in your mind you may envisage a flower with 8 petals. You are wrong. I did not give you enough information to represent the whole truth about what I have. There is information loss. I have been TOO VAGUE. I have reduced the accuracy of the representation of truth BEYOND the limit of information entropy, and have gone into the realm of a LACK OF TRUTH. A loss of precision.
It is funny then that when we talk about "its all one thing", we are actually LACKING truth, while pretending to talk about truth. We are not being accurate because we are not giving enough information. In fact we're trying to SPIRITUALIZE WORDS by having the fewest words possible. Less words is not more spiritual! In fact less words can be corrupting and destructive and a complete misrepresentation of the truth.
There are some people that go so far with their stripping away of any notion of anything informational - which usually means anything separate-sounding - any contrast or delineation or division or any notion of a "something" or two of anything.... that they enter a logical realm of total abstract bullshit. It devolves into meaningless drivel with specialness all over it. Ego loves to do this because it thinks a count of one is more spiritual than a count of two. It's concept of truth is flawed.
If for example it is true that God has at least one son. And if we say that this son IS God. And that is ALL that we tell you. If we tell you that is the WHOLE truth. Then someone is going to think ok.... the son IS God, so.... when the son fucks up and dreams of death and imagines murder, this must be God doing it right? Sure thing. God is now dreaming of death. We weren't specific enough or accurate enough.
It's a nice idea to imagine that God is this total 100% abstraction which is SO abstract that there is NO detail to it, no properties, no structure, no qualities, no characteristics, nothing. Just a nice blob of existence sitting there all by itself. That is NOT an accurate enough representation using words and symbols and language. It is a massive information loss. And God DOES in fact have properties, qualities, a "nature", a premise, law, mind, thought, causation, will, love, etc. The attempt to reduce truth to NOTHING, is an attempt by the ego to destroy the truth!
We HAVE to understand that God is for example infinite and absolute. We have to properly specify what God'e nature actually is before we can start basing conclusions on it. If you knew that God is causal and a creator, you would also know that God MUST have creations which MUST in turn have creations. The logic in this is utterly impeccable. But you can't see that or come to that conclusion is you DON'T specify that God is causal, or that his creations have to inherit through extension, or that he is a creator at all.
So when you become too vague, thinking it is spiritual, thinking you are representing truth more, thinking that "its oneness" is the most spiritual thing anyone has ever conceived of. ... it is not true. You CANNOT go that far into the loss of information and represent the whole truth using language and logic. But people are doing it all the time. "It's all God" ... well, sort of... but no. It's not. God has creations. "God is everything" .. well.. sort of, but no. God is not an illusion. Did you specify that? You need to.
So in terms of the editions of the course and the editing and the words in the book and the repetition of concepts and ideas and whether it contains ALL distinct information, fact, accuracy, precision and is "complete" informationally, you really need to think more in terms of ..... is there a full and accurate representation of the whole truth here. Is there ENOUGH words to represent the whole message. And that does NOT mean there should be too FEW words OR more than is needed. More words is not always an improvement either.
We might ask if something has been LOST, vital information, which is not repeated, which is missing, and that without it the picture is incomplete. It doesn't matter so much if the same ideas are presented many times, or if the concepts taught are built upon by others, etc. We need the whole accuracy and full scope of the truth, enough description to leave no loopholes, but we don't necessarily need 550,000 words to do that. But what matters is when you become SO reductionistic that you chop out VITAL information and disappear up your own arse.
So perhaps we can steer away from all these super-short ultra-vague trying-to-be-mystical statements of vagueness, and instead realize that you HAVE to use enough words in order to fully communicate an idea. You can't JUST say "God is" at this level and expect someone to understand that this DOESN'T imply that God is a piece of dog poop on the sidewalk. A more accurate, more detailed definition is needed, to close loopholes and stop logical errors from happening. This is why ACIM is presented as rather a lot of words, and not just one.
The course tries to represent a picture of the whole truth. It tries to talk about God and his nature. It doesn't do it in 2 words. It does it with a great many words because Jesus knows that you CANNOT represent the nuances of reality in such a small number of symbols. There is a certain level of entropy to this. You can't properly represent God, creation, kingdom, sonship, holy spirit, souls, your creations, eternal life, immortality, etc... in two words.
It has nothing to do with a person's inability to "grasp the truth of oneness" either. No one is grasping the truth of oneness by using the word oneness in a sentence. Oneness actually encapsulates rather a lot of details which you might not think are a part of it. Oneness doesn't forego God having a son. But it implies that there is no son at all. That is wrong. It is not an accurate representation and not enough information. The son is literally lost in that formulation.
Nor is someone being "all spiritual" just because they talk about God as if he's SO abstract that you can't say anything about him accurately at all. We might as well say that God is so beyond everything that you can't even say that God is beyond everything. What then? If you're GOING to use words, and language, and logical arguments, you CANNOT REDUCE IT beyond a certain point and expect to be accurately representing it.
God is ... much more than... just oneness.
In ACIM circles a lot of said with regards to "the separation", and usually always in terms of the separation from God. Some kind of giant distancing which occurred a long time ago and is so vague and nebulous that no-one is aware of it.
What is less obvious though is that the separation also took place between members of the sonship. Individual brothers experienced separation between them, which became a kind of competition and war.
This separation now in fact plays out in ALL relationships on earth. Every way that you are considered separated off from others, are not them, are not joined with them, do not share with them, IS the separation playing out.
Jesus also remarks how when the ego uses projection to try to project blame/sin, it is trying to perpetuate the separation. This is because anything that increases the rift between you and your brothers IS increasing the separation.
It might not have seemed so obvious but the separation from God IS playing out between you and other people right now. It's not distant and vague or happening in the distant past. It's right in front of your nose right now.
The way that you consider yourself to be identified with your body, is one way that you separate off from others. The body is used as a kind of anchor to keep you away from other people. Only when it is used to allow you BYPASS the body and join with the minds of others, is it being used for a holy purpose.
So yes there was separation (belief in) between you and God, but this also affected all your relationships, including those with your brothers, AND also with your own creations. Your direct immediate way of relating to ANYONE testifies to whether or not you are still perpetuating the separation or are healing it.
This is why our brothers are so important or are considered part of our salvation. It is REQUIRED that we rejoin with others in order to undo the separation. There is no way to leave them out of it. We have to learn how to share again, which can only happen by transcending physical boundaries.
"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability."
"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."
"Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about ANYTHING, you have identified YOUR SELF with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALONE. This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not SEEM to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your brother. "
"How EASY is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No-one who has received it for himself COULD find it difficult. For, BY receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to RECEIVE together, and give as you received. Standing BEFORE the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."
You cannot define yourself. God created you. You had no say in this because you didn't exist at the time. You came into being by his will alone, and per his design. Whatever you are, is given by him, and cannot be changed.
Some would possibly interpret this as imprisoning, as though grounds for rebellion. As if you want to change yourself but are not allowed. At best, you can deny what you are, as God created you, and pretend to be something you are not . But you can't actually remove what you are deep down.
You are free to do this. You can pretend to be anything you want. You can pretend to have authority over him and to have created yourself. You can redefine your images of what you are till the cows come home. But still you cannot replace what God has created.
This means really that no matter how you define yourself, you will never be wholly satisfied. This is because God has already laid claim to the perfect definition of you. The definition which results in you being at your happiest, most satisfied, most joyful and creative, and most accepting of yourself. To reject a perfect identity is to settle for less.
So if you are in the business of having to be the gatekeeper with an authority problem who wants to tell God what they are, you can go right ahead. But it will not ultimately satisfy you. Nor will it bring you total happiness or creative power or love or joy or peace or meaning. It can't, because there is only one perfection and that's the one God has chosen you to be.
You can own up to accepting a kind of "off the shelf" identity from God, accepting that you are as God created you and have never changed. Or you can deny that and go into a kind of nightmare of confusion about who and what you are, endlessly searching for the self you lost, and trying to replace it with make-believe fiction. But only accepting God's definition of you will truly fulfill you.
You can "try on" all manner of bodies. You can wrap yourself in wardrobes of clothing. You can put on masks and dress up and role play and pretend to be various things. But they ultimately are all empty because they lack the wholeness of God's definition of you. You can't find love and wholeness anywhere else. He has the monopoly on that.
Some rebel against God because they don't like this sense of not being free to deifne who and what they are. They think they have the right to redefine themselves in their own image and likeness, to whatever whim they please. Indeed they ARE free to do this. But that does not mean they can ACTUALLY accomplish it, or that it can make them happy. You can deny your reality, but you cannot extinguish it.
Somewhere deep down you know that only the self that God created you to be is the one you can fully accept and be true to. It's the only definition of you that is sane, and the only one that works. You are part of the functioning of the machinery of heaven. You have been given a function and a role to play, assigned by God's will. If you do not want to fit into that and fulfill that function, then you will rebel and try to invent other functions.
Only the function God gave you can work. Only God's will for you can make you happy. Only God's mind can keep you alive forever. And only accepting yourself as you really are can bring you peace. But you have to want 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."
Minds are not separate, they are joined. We are part of a collective, which is connected by the Christ Mind. My mind contains your mind, and your mind contains my mind.
"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."
Because our minds are WITHIN each other, what I choose to do with MY mind, IS in fact a PART OF your mind choosing it also. What I seem to choose "for myself", I am choosing for BOTH of us. This reflects the course teaching that "nothing is for yourself alone."
If I choose to recognize the unity of our minds, while you are attempting to see our minds as disconnected/separate, you will not be able to do so because a unified view is stronger than a separating one. Thus I can prevent you from being sick.
If I agree that you are sick because I also want to be sick, then together we both consent to being separate and nothing prevents this separateness, so we both enter into sickness together.
Similarly if we have both entered into a sickness of mind together, we have entered into "vulnerability", and now it will appear that I can negatively influence your mind, but only by reinforcing and playing upon and amplifying what you already believe yourself. It's a kind of consenting to be affected.
It is also true that mind can express the power of God, which has the power to heal and to enlighten. You actually DO have the power to CAUSE mind to change. You can influence the minds of others, and they can influence your mind.
This is why when you are healed in some way, your healing also heals others to some degree, because they are part of you. And when you have healing thoughts, these thoughts go out to the whole sonship and give it healing, just as thoughts of attack attack the whole sonship - or try to.
It's because our minds are joined that there are no private thoughts. We are permanently in a kind of "mind-meld" where we are WITHIN each other's minds. And that means there is this kind of tug-of-war situation, or a link, whereby if I lift my mind up your mind will be dragged up as well.
When Jesus chose the resurrection and returned to heaven and holiness, his awakening INFLUENCED all of us. We are all effectively less insane because Jesus, who is a PART OF US, is now very sane. And his mind is giving our minds strength.
It is because your mind has POWER and IS part of other minds, that the responsible choices you make with YOUR mind is "on behalf of" the whole sonship. And influences everyone.
It is because our minds are joined that we have ACCESS to each other. It is because our minds are joined that we can INFLUENCE each other. It is because our minds are joined that we can HEAL each other, as well as try to reinforce each other's insanity. It is because our minds are joined that we HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY and are our brother's keeper.
While other minds, which are part of US, are not freed from ego, neither are we. This necessarily means that we cannot rest, and have work to do on behalf of the sonship and the atonement plane, which is NOT DONE, until EVERY single mind returns to the sharing of oneness in God.
The easiest analogy is that we are like SIAMESE TWINS, two beings whose brains are joined together for example. We therefore are DEPENDENT on each other, and what either one chooses affects the other. This is because of the law of God that everyone is one and everything is shared.
It is because of this that a MIRACLE can heal others and raise them from death!
"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true."
"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct."
"YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone."
"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing."
"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts."
"The idea for today is obviously the reason why your seeing does not affect you alone."
"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."
"But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."
"That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
"Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined. This is rarely a wholly welcome idea at first, since it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility, and may even be regarded as an "invasion of privacy." Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts."
"Miracles seem unnatural to the ego, because it does not understand how SEPARATE minds can influence each other. Nor COULD they do so. But minds cannot BE separate. This other self is PERFECTLY aware of this. And thus it recognizes that miracles do NOT affect ANOTHER'S mind, only its OWN. They always change YOUR mind. There IS no other."
"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate. And thus, it is their JOINT decision to be sick."
"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."
"The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them. Their OWN thoughts have made them vulnerable."
"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."
"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad."
"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
"However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME."
"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."
"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."
"You are more than your brother's keeper."
"I 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."
"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less." Unless perception, at every level, involves selectivity, it is incapable of organization. In all types of perception, there is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, of organizing and reorganizing, and of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential aspect of perception, because a judgment MUST be made for selection. "Lack of lack" is a concept which is meaningless to a perceiver, because the ability to perceive at all RESTS ON lack."
"What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments, and there is nothing BUT perfect equality? Perception is automatically useless. Truth can only be KNOWN."
"Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends ALL of the laws which govern perception. Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."
"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."
"In electing the ability to perceive instead of the will to know, man placed himself in a position where he could resemble his Father ONLY by perceiving miraculously. But he lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a miracle."
"Unless perception rests on some knowing basis, it is so unstable that it doesn't mean anything. Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning. "
"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."
"Perception is fundamentally unstable."
"The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure."
"Gone is perception, false and true alike."
"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love."
"Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."
"The miracle is a way of PERCEIVING, not a way of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not ask questions at all when you know."
"Since perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this implies variability by definition."
"The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."
"Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form."
"Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will also ultimately replace (or correct for) them."
"For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."
"Perception, at its loftiest, is NEVER complete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven."
"But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."
"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."
"Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not."
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while."
"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers."
*****"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die."*****
"Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
******"The body's eyes will continue to see differences."******
"But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them."
******"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before."*****
"But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."
This is a vital teaching because it is the reason why, even with a healed mind, even in true perception, you CAN STILL SEE the various bodily states of other figures in the dream. Sick, suffering, and dying. And the ability to SEE these things, has absolutely nothing to do with YOU BEING SICK. You seeing these things has absolutely NOTHING to do with you projecting sickness, judging, attacking, or believing in sickness.
YOUR mind still SEES the same FORMS, through the body's eyes, but RECOGNIZES that none of these IMAGES are REAL. It recognizes them all as UNREAL. It disregards the differences and does not BELIEVE that they are REAL SICKNESS or REAL DEATH. But the mind NEVERTHELESS, SEES THESE THINGS HAPPENING IN THE DREAM STILL.
This is why you as a miracle worker are then able to RECOGNIZE that some person has a broken leg, or just got hit by a car, and has a NEED for a miracle, which you can SUPPLY.
There HAS to be a potential for inequality between your mind and what is seen, otherwise it violates several miracle principles. For example "Miracles supply a lack" "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less". It would not be POSSIBLE to supply the lack of love/life to those who have less, IF every single thing you SEE is an EXACT EQUAL MATCH to the content and condition of YOUR MIND.
If you were only seeing the world as a "mirror" of yourself, and if you were the only dreamer, than it would be true that what you see is ONLY what you believe yourself. But the fact is that there are distinct differences between seeing with Christ Vision and seeing with body vision, and both of them happen at once until you reach the atonement.
Many people believe that you only have "one perception" and that this perception gradually shifts and changes and "turns into" true perception. THIS IS NOT TRUE. And when you believe this, you will believe that you simply "cannot see sickness unless you are sick". It disregards the fact that the body has one kind of perception, the spiritual eye has another, and they BOTH happen at once. All the way up to ascension to Heaven you're still going to be receiving signals from the body, into your mind, which you will perceive, ALONG WITH, perceptions you are having of what is BEYOND what the body is showing you, the face of Christ. BEING HEALED, DOES NOT MAKE YOU BLIND TO THE SICKNESS THAT THE BODY CAN STILL SEE.
The body is permanently stuck seeing with false perception. It sees with false perception even if you are 99% done with the curriculum. "These eyes made not to see, will never see". And yet the body, while you have it, WILL continue to send you images of hell, pictures of objects and bodies moving around in various states.
The fact is that you don't JUST have this one kind of perception. You develop Christ Vision AS a SECOND WAY OF PERCEIVING, which occurs initially IN PARALLEL to body eyesight. The development of Christ Vision and your gradual ascension towards true perception WITH it, awakening the spiritual eye, is the perception you TRANSFORM, and which later becomes perfectly healed. Meanwhile, the body is STILL going to send images to the mind. These images will now begin to change in their seeming meaning or "how they strike you", how they register, and will transition from "seeming to be true/real" to "seeming to be false/unreal". YET STILL SEEING THEM.
At this point you still have TWO INPUTS OF PERCEPTION coming into the mind. One is coming from the body senses, the other is coming from the Christ mind. From spirit. The spirit-to-spirit perception is happening at the same time as the false perception of the body. Only when the true/christ perception is perfected, does the body perception become SO "seen through" and disregarded as false, that it starts to disappear, and eventually you ONLY see with Christ Vision. Which means seeing the face of Christ ONLY and NOT SEEING THE WORLD OF FORM OR THE BODY OR WITH THE BODY.
Many people don't seem to understand the mechanism of perception. Jesus explains it in the course. The body's eyes send signals to the mind, which passes through a belief system which filters and changes the meaning or projects meaning onto the images, changing them and then presenting them to the mind which looks upon these filtered images and "sees". The belief system therefore acts as an interpreter of the signals that are coming in from the body.
When the belief system believes in ego and separations, it categorizes the images from the body's eyes in many different conflicting ways and the mind looks upon these categorizations. When the belief system is unified and cleared it becomes empty and transparent, seeing in a correct and truthful way. The body still sends images into the system from "outside" and the belief system now reinterprets (holy spirit) and frames them from a perspective of truth, which causes the images to be recognized as images of unreality and are all false. The mind thus categorizes them all as unreal - that everything the body sees is an illusion.
Here the mind is SEEING the reinterpreted layer of filtration, through the Holy Spirit's corrected perception, and is seeing the truth ABOUT the images coming from the body. The truth about these body signals is that they are false and unreal. The mind at this point is still able to receive these images and look upon them and interpret them as unreal illusions. This is how the mind can still "look upon dreams a while".
Simultaneously, as vision by body eyes is continuing, Christ Vision is developed which does not use the body's eyes at all. It is a "direct seeing", the seeing function of the mind. "Only the mind sees". This seeing initially takes place through true perception, shared with the Holy Spirit, whereby the body signals are OVERLOOKED (forgiveness) and all things physical are *seen through* as if they are a wall of illusions trying to deceive you. Temptation. You look through this, with the mind, literally, and see PAST the surface of objects showing up in these images. BEYOND these images, there is sight of the face of christ which is BEYOND the physical.
As the mind learns to use the spiritual eye and christ vision this strengthens and the signals from the body are labeled as "false" more and more. They are recognized as "false perception". "The world is false perception". It looks past the false perception that IS the world, and sees beyond it to another world, Heaven. The forgiven world is OVERLOOKED. The veil of "matter" becomes thin and transparent and eventually is seen through (not believed) so much that it disappears entirely. This is the state of perfect christ vision, which sees ONLY the face of Christ and does not even see with the body's eyes at all. The body is forgotten, it disappears entirely, and you return to God.
IN Heaven, you now resume mind-to-mind communication which could be considered "the vision of the son of God", where there is "no thing" to see, nothing separate to look at, only God and creation to know and be aware of.
Until you get to perfect pure christ vision you WILL still see with the body's eyes to some degree. And because of this, you WIL be able to still see the forms in this world. Doing whatever they do. Just because you are becoming more spiritually awake it does not change in ANY WAY the free-willed activities of other brothers in their bodies. If they are sick, or well, or alive, or dead, or attacking, or being friendly, all of it can be easily seen and accurately rendered to the mind. The mind has perfectly clarity about it, and can even see more in it than was seen before. It is thus perfectly possible to still SEE someone having a broken leg, without it in any way implying that YOU have a broken leg or a belief in sickness.
For a while, you have this "double vision", two types of perception, two mechanisms for looking. Which is why you are perfectly capable of being wholly truthful in Christ Vision while at the same time SEEING the body's images and recognizing them as wholly false. This is how God's teachers look upon dreams, recognize them as illusions, can recognize anyone in distress, can see sick bodies and healthy bodies, can tell the ways someone is mistaken, can recognize the errors someone is making, can discern correctly what is true and what is false about what they see, and thereby are in a POSITION TO HELP THOSE IN THE DREAM. BY OFFERING THEM MIRACLES.
Upon entering the separation, we immediately entered into states of suffering. This happened because we rejected our wholeness. By choosing to believe we could be separate from God, in the fall of man, we were choosing not to be the whole of who and what we are.
We rejected our wholeness and wanted to be partial. We started to believe in lack. We saw ourselves as special and wanted to hoard some things for ourselves selfishly, meaning that we also wanted to be deprived of what others had. We introduced this depravation and suffering into our own minds.
"If you will accept yourself as God created you, ***you will be incapable of suffering.*** But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the ***acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE***. Your Father created you ***wholly*** without sin, ***wholly*** without pain, and ***wholly without suffering of any kind***. If you deny Him, ***you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind***, because of the power He gave it. "
This meant that upon the very instant of beginning to enter into separation, in the fall, we introduced suffering into our own minds. This suffering is nothing more than the seeming lack of wholeness. Simply by rejecting wholeness, we placed our minds in every conceivable condition that you might think of as suffering.
For example, all of "the separated ones", by rejecting their whole identity, actually came to be uncertain whether they really exist. They rejected their souls and began to experience a tremendous uncertainty about whether they were even real, or even existed at all. This is because we rejected our Father, and therefore rejected the belief that we had been CREATED. So this brings with it a fear of not existing (fear of death).
"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in your mind that it may even doubt whether you really exist at all."
Also in the separation, by trying to be partial and special and not whole, we introduced the idea of lack and scarcity. We saw ourselves as lacking, or being less than whole. This alone lays the foundation for feelings of inadequacy, shame, unworthiness, weakness, fear of not having what it takes, a desire to hide, powerlessness, deprivation, scarcity, lack of abundance, fear of loss, constant anxiety about being overcome, and perpetual stress.
"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience.""Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones."
So by going into the separation, we immediately placed ourselves into suffering states. It's not like something in life happened to cause the suffering. It's not about some event taking place on a timeline. It's not about people doing stuff to us on a Tuesday. It all began and has its deepest roots in the separation from God itself. That's where it all started.
Your sense of suffering, lack, unworthiness, inadequacy, fear etc, can be compounded, and seem to increase or decrease, based on reactions to life events and so on. But fundamentally it isn't the world that's making you suffer, or any specific person, or any even major event. It's the separation from God. It's the lack of wholeness in your mind. It's the rejection of your soul. That's what's making you suffer, and that is the core root of ALL suffering. Which as the secret of salvation tells you, YOU are doing to yourself.
This really is also the source of all sickness and death. By believing that we are not as God created us, we reject eternal life, and believe in death. By seeing ourselves as unsufficient, a failure, lacking, unprepared, incapable, disabled, broken, etc, we form an image of ourselves as a body, representing what we think is true of us, and this now symbolizes and pictures our inner condition. So now the body is sick and frail and disabled because the mind is sick and frail and disabled."If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."
The resistance against the truth, puts the brakes on the extension of creation, rejects your natural functioning, and places you into a state of malfunction. This is the root of ALL forms of sickness. Worded in another way, it is a fear of the state of wholeness, a fear of approaching that state of wholeness, and therefore a fear of awakening to wholeness.
"All forms of sickness even unto (physical) death are PHYSICAL expressions of the fear of awakening."
This tells you also that if you were not to be afraid of awakening, if you were to embrace wholeness, if you were to open up to your perfection, and if you would deny and reject anything not of God any power over you (including death therefore), your mind would not be in a state of fear and would not need to defend itself against the truth, sickness would vanish and the body would return to a symbol of health.
It ultimately isn't stuff in the environment, little viruses, people's attacks, weather conditions, poisons in the food and water, or anything else in the world that is making us suffer. It is solely our own seemingly broken relationship with God. It is the connection between you and your soul, which has become blocked off and rejected. It is the denial of your SELF, that is making you have an ego exprience.
All pain is therefore induced by the denial of God. "The denial of God is the ego's religion." This denial of God produces a false "God of sickness". And this God of sickness demands the rejection of health both mentally and physically.
"Allegiance to the denial of God (and thus your wholeness) is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."By even dipping your little toe into "the separation", by even perceiving at all, by believing a single illusion, you are entering into a realm of suffering and pain and fear. You cannot feel safe until you are whole. You cannot feel free from death until you embrace your eternal life. You cannot end suffering or be happy until you know you are with God.
"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. "So we can look externally all day for illusory sources of suffering. We can attribute the cause of death to anything OTHER than ourselves. We can blame the whole world for causing us to suffer. We can use the world as a gigantic scapegoat. But it will never change the underlying fact that WE cause our own suffering through our belief in separation. And this is the ONLY cause of suffering, sickness and death.
"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hides its nothingness."
"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers."
"Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to recognize it and go the other way."
"Our efforts will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one problem and one answer."
"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."
For those of us, us "separated ones", who see ourselves as trapped in bodies, and prone to suffer, we need to be gentle with ourselves in recognition of WHY we suffer. We see ourselves as unworthy and insufficient, lacking and unwholy/unholy, imperfect and flawed, weak and frail and afraid, guilty and shameful, not good enough, disempowered, lost, alone, withering and dying. We believe this because we believe in being separate and are deceived by illusions.
It's quite natural to then become afraid of failure at every step, because if you know/believe that you are less than whole, you know that you do not have everything you need. And you then see yourself as incapable. And in recognizing your limitations, you will not trust that you can do things. You will undermine yourself, sabotage your efforts, avoid, procrastinate, and generally "fail" to live. And in seeing yourself as inadequate you will avoid doing anything because you know that you do not have what it takes to do it.
All this undermines your sense of confidence and certainty. It places you into doubt and fear and weakness. So you have to now be gentle with yourself in trying to "recognize your disability", which is mentally imposed, and work to undo this disability. To overcome your belief in being limited and confined and broken. Because by recognizing your immortal perfection you can rejoin yourself in wholeness and undo the illusions of damage and reverse your belief in being a frail lifeless piece of garbage.
We are all here as "recovering" death-addicts. We are all trying to find the strength to carry on. The will to live. We have to develop trust in a truth bigger than ourselves that we are far more powerful than we realize, are fully capable, and "there is nothing our holiness cannot do." This is a pathway in becoming re-empowered, re-energized, and alive again. It is the path of resurrection from death. You are coming back to LIFE, because you are crawling our of your hole of self torture and torment and hell, and are rising up the stairway to heaven's gate, where God is there to welcome you Home.
This is where my mind went last night. I had no idea God felt so highly of me. Holy Spirit guided my thoughts.
God loves you.
God knows you.
God created you.
God designed you.
God chose you.
God still wants you.
You are God's treasure.
God cherishes you.
God holds you like a most beloved thing.
God feels happy with you.
God is pleased with you.
God is joyful that you are exactly perfect.
God values you.
You are worthy of God.
God sees you as being worth something.
God feels you are important and special to him.
God smiles upon you.
God wants you.
God is overjoyed that you can share with him.
God actually thinks you are highly valuable to him.
God knows you deserve to be loved.
You are worthy of receiving love from God.
You are worth loving.
You mean something to God.
You mean everything to God.
You are God's child.
God is very happy that you are like him.
God knows you are perfect.
God knows you are innocent.
God sparkles with delight at your beauty.
God wants you.
God welcomes you with open arms.
God desires for you to exist.
God wills to protect you always.
God wants to protect you because you are his treasure.
God treasures you and is enamored with you.
God adores you.
God loves to give you everything.
God loves being with you.
God is very close to you.
You are very intimate with God.
God protects you and surrounds you with himself.
God envelops you in his love and safety.
God knows he has created something very good in you.
You are a divine creation of God.
You are completely loved by God.
God deeply cares about you.
God sees you as permanently holy.
God recognizes you and knows you.
You belong to God.
You are God's personal property.
God maintains you with his power forever.
God shares all of himself with you.
God hides nothing from you.
God is open with you.
God wants you to be happy.
God wills that you be perfect and whole.
God has given you eternal life.
God depends on you.
God knows you are completely dependable.
God trusts you.
God is ecstatic at how lovely you are.
God created you with all his heart.
God loves you unconditionally.
God can never stop loving you.
God wants to love you forever.
You will never be alone.
You can never be out of his sight.
God will always be with you.
God wants to be with you always.
God enjoys you.
God is certain of your endless innocence.
God will never accuse you of anything.
God will never hold anything against you.
God is your family.
God is your creator.
God holds you like a perfect star, high in heaven.
God wants you to be surrounded with love.
God wants you to never be alone.
God has even created your brothers to enjoy being with you.
Everyone loves you like God loves you.
God finds you worthy of inheriting everything he has to give.
You have everything that God has.
God has opened himself up to you fully.
God himself shines upon you to light your way.
God goes with you everywhere.
God will never hurt you.
God will only heal you and support you.
God understands you perfectly.
God knows you completely.
God accepts you entirely.
God is very happy with you.
God sees you as deserving everything good.
God wants you to have everything.
God blesses you and harmonizes with you.
God wants to help you to create with him.
God is overjoyed to see you being yourself.
God loves you laugh with you.
God is your best friend.
God is completely benevolent toward you.
God beholds you as magnificent.
God finds you to be glorious and grand.
God could not have created anything better than you.
You are the absolute maximum of God's perfection.
God has pulled out all the stops for you.
God suspends you in his perfect love and adoration.
You can never offend God.
You can never make him stop loving you.
God will love you for eternity.
God loves you very much.
"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."
"The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves WITH me, and, because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you."
"God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity, on whom God loves with perfect love?"
"Every brother God loves as He loves you; neither less nor more."
"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."
"God loves His Son."
"God wants us to be healed"
"God WANTS you to behold what He created, because it is HIS joy. Can your grandeur be arrogant, when God HIMSELF witnesses to it?"
"God wants only His Son, because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations, as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation."
"If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows his children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed."
"Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them, and in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change." "God knows what His Son needs before he asks."
"God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the appreciation of His Son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator, and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the love and the loveliness of God, as perfect as his Creator, and at peace with Him. Blessed is the Son of God, whose radiance is of His Father, and whose glory He wills to share as His Father shares it with Him."
"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God. When you awake in Him, you will know your magnitude by accepting HIS limitlessness as YOURS."
"Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of WHAT GOD KNOWS ABOUT YOU, and in this light, error of ANY kind becomes impossible."
"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence?" "And so is Heaven's Son prepared to be Himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him"
"If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?" "God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly."
"God knows you NOW. He remembers NOTHING, having ALWAYS known you exactly as He knows you now."
"God knows you are deserving of life"
"And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."
A year or so ago, someone close to me was sick. We weren’t sure what really happened. It was very strange. It seemed to come out of nowhere overnight, had no apparent cause, and seemed impossible to diagnose.
The person seemed to turn into a bit of a monster, was confused and paranoid, suddenly dropped a whole bunch of longheld beliefs, and seemed to turn into another person. This was baffling and very upsetting.
I took it upon myself to try to "figure out" what was happening. So I started to research. I went online and was googling like a madman. Sometimes I ran across something which seemed it "might" explain what’s happening. Some things seeemd to fit.
Each time I found something, I started to exclaim "this is what it is", or "this is what is causing it!" I started driving the person nuts with my explanations and ideas of what I thought the problem was. Each time that I found something, it seeemd like the true cause. But later, it turned out to be, maybe not "it". Something about it, didn’t quite fully explain all the symptoms.
Did that stop me? Nope. I thought that this meant I should seek even harder to find the truth. That I should have the "ability" to find the truth out there somewhere. I was convinced at the time that the truth IS out there somewhere. That if I just try hard enough, I will find it. That "cause" is out there somewhere. Identifying the cause would seem to suggest what is happening, to explain it, and that this would lead to a SOLUTION.
It never happened. Each time I went seeking, I felt more desperate. Each time I searched, I came up more and more empty handed. I felt exasperated and frustrated. It became obsessive. Surely the truth was there somewhere, and dealing with this person being the way there were was intolerable. I wanted to find the truth. But I was looking for it "out there", and could not find it. The more I sought and did not find, the more upset I became, the more desperate I felt, and the more I then felt COMPELLED to search even harder.
This turned out to be a good thing after a while, because I FAILED. I totally failed to find the truth out there. I "exhausted" all efforts to search externally. So my mind gradually was using up its last vestige of a sense of "possibility", that the truth was out there. I started to notice something. The truth does not seem to be out there! Anywhere! I lost faith in the world and SAW THROUGH the illusion that the world contains the truth. Any kind of truth. Anywhere.
It was a very short hop from this perception to realizing, bringing into question, that perhaps.... THE TRUTH IS NOT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. That it literally cannot be found. That seeking is a EGO TRAP. The more you seek for truth out there, the LESS you find it. And that’s because, in truth, the truth is INSIDE YOU. Each time I basically "left my inner truth", believing I "did not have the truth", I went searching for it in the world. I really believed strongly, the world HAD the truth in it SOMEWHERE. But it did not. I inadvertently proved it to myself.
So I failed, and that was great, because this idea suddenly popped in, that there is no truth in the world at all. NOTHING in the world is true. This was quite eye opening. It meant that, for example, the sickness which I’d been trying to diagnose and fix this whole time, ALSO wasn’t the truth. It also meant, it wasn’t being caused BY anything out there. The truth was NOT out there. There must have been another cause, an inner cause.
And so began a whole new phase for me, of withdrawing my belief from the world, learning to recognize it is COMPLETELY FALSE, that it is not true in any way, and that also sickness is entirely fake. These were important steps in the direction of forgiveness, and completely shifted the way I was looking at the sick person 180 degrees. Clearly, it wasn’t a question of "what out there is causing it". It was a matter of, "It is NOT being caused".
Gradually as I’ve been practicing this and growing stronger in the recognition that this is true, that earth is 100% false, and nothing in it is true, my miracle-working has gone up. It is my job now not to figure out, "what caused that", but to learn to NOT BELIEVE that it is caused by anything other than the mind. That there is no truth IN what I’m perceiving. People showing up with sickness, are trying to assert a lie. Sickness is recognize more and more as FALSE, an illusion, with no truth to it.
Miracle working **ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES** NOT BELIEVING THIS WORLD IS THE TRUTH. If we believe it is the truth, we will keep it, lock in its form, have no will to heal it, and be convinced by illusions. The truth is not in the world or in form. "Never was love in the world." It is not out there. It’s inside. IT comes from God. God is the only cause, not this world. Mind is the only cause of what’s out there.
What appear to be causes in this world are LIES. Fiction. Fantasy. Illusions. Dreams. Make-believe cause that suggest, yes, the world has truth in it because the world has a causal power. The world causes nothing. It is nothing but effect. Cause, therefore truth, is somewhere else. Truth is always equated with REALITY. Since there is NO truth in this world, not in false perception or in true perception, THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. And therefore it is NOT THERE, and whatever is showing up as "sickness happening" IS NOT HAPPENING.
What is not a CAUSE, is nothing but an EFFECT, and therefore has no reality of its own. Because the world is an effect, and has no truth/cause in it, IT IS NOT THERE. It is not happening. Separation never happened.
Jesus:
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."
"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."
"The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has but one Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen."
"There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."
"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects."
"what you made has no cause and no effects at all."
"But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause because the function of causation is to have effects"
"The world is but an effect, it is not a cause at all."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less"
"The world you see does not exist."
"Nothing the world believes is true."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality."
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home."
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."
We can't really blame the world for being shit. It was designed on purpose to be shit. We wanted a shit world so that we could have a shit life and shit on God and pretend everything is shit. If we hold its shittiness against itself we're just failing to acknowledge that we wanted it to be shit in the first place.
We designed it to be shit and demanded it be shit, and now it's being shit, because that's its function. It was never meant to be shitless. It's just totally shit because we said to God, you are shit, and here's a great big shit world to prove it. And tried to cover up God's nice spotless porcelain reality with our shit streaks.
We put the shit there and made it shit. It is following our shitty design spec perfectly. We can't really blame it for being so shit when we're the ones that told it to be shit in the first place. By recognising that it can't be anything other than shit, and that its total shittiness isn't it's fault, due to being the result of having shit for brains on our part, then we can let it off the hook for its shitness and stop accusing it of hurling sins of shit all over the place.
All that happened is we shittily mis-used our shitless free will to make something shit and we did it on purpose and now we've got a shit world running on shit, behaving like shit and always being shit precisely because that's what we wanted. A nice big festering shit party to keep the nice clean God at arms length.
If we want a world that is not shit we need to first let go of the shit world and recognize its shittiness isn't its fault and it's not shitting on us. We need to realize we are doing the shit to ourselves cus we made the shit. We forgive the world for its shittiness merely by recognising how shit it is without adding to the shit or throwing more shit at it. We let it be free to be shit and free have its fetid stench be flushed down the cosmic toilet where it belongs.
Then we can realize its shitness isn't something we want because we are no longer willing to tolerate shit, and we want something less shit. So then we go off to the shitless land of God and let the shit world flush down the toilet like it's supposed to. We listen to the Holy Spirit Cosmic Plunger and let him do his scrubbing work to erase all sense of the world shitting on us, and make ourselves nice and clean on the inside, and then we can let the shit world gurgle down the drain. Bye bye shit world, hello sparkling fresh reality.
"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
Ego is simply the idea that I am less than the whole (while also trying to be more than God). That I am not one with all. I am reduced and limited, lacking in some way, special in other ways due to what I seem to have that other lacking partial people don't seem to have, but nevertheless deprived and only ever partially satisfied.
It's what we might call a narrow mind, a mind which has narrowed itself down and confined itself. It does this by trying to be one with things which are not the whole. To put itself into little fragmented prisons.
Trying to be one with a body, or a thought, or the mind, or a feeling, or a role, or a culture, or a country, or a car, or a relationship etc. Trying to become something, as a redefinition of what we are as the whole. Trying to become a hole, and to have holes, as something unholy.
Our whole sense of who and what we are becomes confused with this sense of being things which are limited and lacking. We literally think we are items of clothing, and a fleshy ugly body, and a house, and anything else we care to associate ourselves with or glean credit for.
The main impetus of awakening is simply moving the sense of identify back towards the whole again, or what the course calls reintegration. The re-integrating, uniting, becoming one with, the lost parts of ourselves that we have rejected and called other or enemy. The rest of the sonship, the rest of the Kingdom, the rest of God.
"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. NOT through destruction, NOT through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace will join you there, simply because YOU have been willing to let go the limits YOU have placed on love, and JOINED it where it is, and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace." UrT18G16
"The purpose of this course is integration. I told you that you will not be able to use it right until you have taken it. As long as your identification vacillates, you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you." UrT1B16B
"What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?" UrT5D11
"True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration." UrT1B32B
"You should split yourself off from error, but only in defense of integration." UrT2B27
"Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation. The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator." UrT6C1
"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is not enough, because it is communication FROM God. But it is not enough until it is shared. " UrT4H20
"The part of your thought which you have given TO the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay." UrT5H12
I've seen that many people think we're supposed to "forgive the world", in that we find ways to "see it differently." Because this is PART of what the course says. Change your mind about the world etc.
But this tends to lead us to a sort of assumption that the world is the TARGET of the forgiveness, such that we're trying to be nicer to IT. As though we'll end up with a better, happier relationship WITH it.
But I see this as short-sighted. Because in fact the way forgiveness works, we have to actually overlook bodies, and look beyond form, and see past the veil of matter. The aim is to see the light of Christ, the face of Christ, which is HIDDEN BY the world.
It's by overlooking the world that we look TO the light, and find the real world. Which is not the physical world. And then INDIRECTLY, the physical world becomes forgiven or seen in another light.
I think when we consider the purpose or functionality of forgiving the world as looking squarely AT the world in a different way, we're missing the point. We're not really supposed to be prioritising finding a better way to look at bodies and planets. The purpose of forgiveness is to NOT SEE them, so that we are restored to being able to seen heaven.
In fact we're told that we will awaken to the Kingdom when we put our full attention on it, essentially forgetting the physical world entirely.
We have to be careful then with this idea of forgiving "things", or bodies or places or stuff in the world. Our aim isn't really to first and foremost cosy up to matter and snuggle into bed with it. It's to find a way to rise up OUT of and BEYOND, to recognize it as nothing and see it diminish in our sight. Its undoing is the atonement - the cancellation of the dream.
It's easy to think that we do a forgiveness, for example, by "forgiving that person for what they did" or whatever. But what's the end result, keeping the person in a body and seeing the body and trying to be nicer to it? This can't really work because to see the body requires guilt and grievances. The aim should be to see their body LESS and to see their spiritual self MORE.
I see that some people have become lost in this, thinking spacetime is God's murderous creation, and seek to "forgive the world" DIRECTLY instead of indirectly, thus holding it up in front of their faces and screaming love at it to try to make it be something it's not. This is not going to work, because the world isn't real and isn't capable of reciprocating or creating.
We're not here to have a special relationship with an illusory fictional planet. We're here to undo the story and collapse space and time and watch the world spin back into nothingness. Because we don't need it. God already gave us a Kingdom.
"Forget not the Kingdom of God (heaven) for anything the world (spacetime, earth) has to offer. The world (of bodies) can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it (if you see it, your view of God is blocked). You cannot behold the world (see matter) and know God. Only one is true." UrT8F2
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK (not see the world). Look, then, BEYOND error (beyond spacetime), and do not let your perception rest UPON it (upon the physical), for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. Accept as true only what your brother IS (spirit), if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT (bodies), and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely (as matter)." UrT9C1
One of Jesus's big teachings is. ... love your enemies. But I'm finding that a lot of people (largely less spiritual people) have a MAJOR issue with this.
Particularly around issues of abuse, victimhood, trauma, rape, child abuse, torture, those sorts of things. Things where it seems like the victim has been unfairly treated, where there has been violence and trauma and great difficulty. In amongst these unhealed wounds it is very hard to look upon the 'sinner' as sinless.
Jesus' teaching IS clear, that regardless, EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO LOVE EVERYONE.
That means loving your enemies, loving criminals, loving hateful people, loving bullies, loving rapists and murderers, loving hitler, loving terrorists, loving serial killers, all of it. Jesus loves all of them and is asking us to do the same. How many people are going to CRINGE at the thought of that?
Just because someone acts out from ego and does something stupid or crazy like hurting another, does not mean they are sinful. It does not mean they aren't calling for love and help. VERY likely the person is themselves a "victim" of some form of "un-love" from themselves and others, which has led to their current state, with which they need help and healing.
MANY people in this world would not say that they are willing to love someone who has done something horrendous. This is a DIFFICULT area for even seasoned forgivers. It's easier to forgiven friends and family and coworkers, much harder to forgive those figures who seem to represent tyranny and murder and horror.
The thing is, if we don't love these people, we are just as bad. What is our alternative, to hate them? But this is what many of us do. We hate the people that we think deserve it because of their crimes and behaviours. We don't want to love them, we think they don't deserve it. We want to see them dead. Well, what does that say about us, murderous hateful vengeful people? Do we want to be that?
It will take a lot to step up and be willing to forgive what appear to be sins and crimes and terrible acts. It will take a lot to forgive them because "they know not what they do", and to RECOGNIZE in them a call for love. To be able to discern, there is far more to the person than just this particular area of behaviour or egotism.
There is some good in everyone. No-one is purely evil. Everyone is welcomed by God. I'm often reminded that God loves ALL the people that I don't love, which is humbling. If God is loving them, why aren't I? I have to be willing to love everyone unconditionally and without reservation otherwise I am NOT BEING LOVING, which places me entirely into a category of a nasty hateful person. I don't want to be that and hopefully you don't either.
Jesus essentially teaches in the cours the difficult truth - that what is not love is murder. If you do not LOVE the murderers, you are murderous yourself. That's a tough pill to swallow because now it renders victims and sufferers as just as much murderous if they don't love their victimisers. A difficult lesson for sure. But we HAVE TO TRY to find a way to love everyone if WE want to experience love.
If you don't love them, you don't love yourself, because they are part of you.
"What is NOT love IS murder. What is not loving MUST be an attack." UrT23E2
"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." UrS1C5
"And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies." UrT27F6
"Do I DESIRE a world in which I have NO enemies, and CANNOT sin?" UrT21H6
Some important reminders and notes about why you are here and what your true calling is. I use this as a clarifying reminder to myself when I often forget...
Being the light of the world - your true calling - your true mission and purpose - the meaning of your life - what you really want to do in life:
You have been chosen to represent God
Be in the position of having awakened, and therefore are looking down on the world from a wiser higher place, and therefore see all others need help to awaken
The great crusade which Jesus calls us to embark on, as active workers, that awakening is not complete while one soul sleeps, and that lack of love in others is intolerable.
The crusade is the atonement, which is the long-term total plan for the complete awakening of ALL souls
You have a special function to play in the atonement which only you can play, which means not only you can awaken yourself, but also that you will be specifically guided what to do and where to go etc
Choosing to represent the truth and be in truth makes you a spiritual LEADER and not a follower, and therefore your role is to lead others not follow them, unless they are truly your teacher or guide
Teachers attract the students who are ready for their teaching, to impart the greater light they have to those who temporarily have less
Jesus will send you the people that he wants you to perform miracles for and you have the capability to do so, and exercising this ability is the expression of Him
The disciples were instructed to go out and be physicians and heal the sick, as well as healing themselves
Jesus asks us to DO something to correct the error, not just learn about it
Jesus asks us not to be content until the whole world has joined us in our awakened perception
It is an invitation to everyone to wake up and return to God, this is the curriculum - learning the truth, so teachers of the curriculum (teachers of God) teach the truth and help others awaken
Teaching is by example and demonstration and doesn’t just mean ‘passively being a light’ that has no power or effect
We’ve disowned ourselves, disassociated from who we are, given away our power, and projected responsibility for everything outside of ourselves as ego. We need to take that all back and reclaim who we really are. And that means helping everyone else to do so also, because if it applies to us it has to apply to them too since we are all One
Being loving means offering love which heals and sheds light on suffering and undoes ego and restores health and awakens minds and brings God’s sons back to Him, which we are to help in the process of
It is natural to want to help others when you are aware that you are love, when you are not absorbed with your own ego mind’s control, and are therefore free and available to serve - to serve God and our brothers, rather than the ego, because then your hands are empty (come unto God with empty hands) and that means "sign me up God!", I'm available.
Miracles intervene for holiness of ourselves and our brothers and are expressions of love to our brothers meaning we need to extend that love to them and help them.
You are the light of the world. You are its salvation.
Resurrecetion and salvation is all about finding freedom from GUILT. Which means reclaiming your INNOCENCE. Guilt is the subtrate of the ego, of all sickness, all forms of suffering, the world, and even death. Without guilt there is no separation, no misery, no spacetime and no ego. Guilt is death just as innocence is life. The attraction of guilt is the opposite to the attraction of God. Guilt is hell, innocence is heaven. We must purge ALL GUILT from our minds and reclaim the innocence that was hidden!
"****Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing.****" "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."
"Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered to the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation."
"His real escape from guilt can lie only in the recognition that the guilt has gone. And how can this be recognized as long as he hides it in another, and does not see it as his own?"
"From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end."
"Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness." "With everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice." "The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct, if it is understood."
"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is NOT its goal, and the ESCAPE from guilt becomes its aim."
"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."
"Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt."
"In the crystal cleanness of the release you GIVE, is YOUR INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You MUST be holy, if you OFFER holiness."
"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack MAKES GUILT REAL, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been."
"Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released"
"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well."
"God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt."
"The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."
What's stopping you from performing miracles?
It's because in some ways, you don't believe you are worthy of receiving them yourself.
If you believe you are sinful and therefore guilty, because of something you think you did, you're going to be certain that you should NOT receive love. And because of that belief, you will be just as certain that other people should not receive love through you either.
You can walk this Earth for years under the oppression of that belief in sin, all the while blocking the expression of love, and therefore inhibiting God's miracles. Not only are you preventing yourself from being healed, but you're also keeping your brother in darkness and suffering.
This is not a guilt trip, by the way. I'm not trying to say, you darned idiot what do you think you're doing. I'm saying, God is OVERFLOWING with abundance of love for you and everyone, and WANTS to heal you and forgive you. But you're not letting Him.
If there's some big sin in you that you are quite sure can never be healed or undone or reversed or forgiven, it's so bad that nobody would love you because of it, then you're not going to allow or accept being unconditionally loved. And so if you don't believe you can be loved, forgiven and healed, you also aren't going to be WILLING to heal others.
When I accepted the atonement regarding what I thought was a real sin, discovering it was NOT real, and that therefore I was still innocent, I was overjoyed. I actually felt joy. Such a tremendous relief. And Jesus said to me "because you have received this for yourself, this will enable you to perform miracles".
The same is true for anyone. You have to be willing to dig out your sins and guilts and offer them up in the atonement, through forgiveness, to realize that you ARE forgiven because you DID NOT SIN. "And in that view, all your sins are forgiven." This will set you free!
You will then ALLOW, DESIRE, and WILL for yourself to receive love, because you will recognize that you are now WORTHY of love. This sense of worthiness comes because you can clearly see, in the atonement's truth that you did not really do what you thought you did, that this MEANS you are still innocent. That therefore means that you are still lovable. And therefore, you ARE worthy of love!
If you are worthy of love, then you will also be WILLING for love to be expressed to and through you, and therefore you will not only be WILLING to perform miracles for others, you will become ABLE to perform miracles for others, because you will have plugged yourself back into God's power strip and will no longer be obstructing the flow of power with your belief in sin.
If you have shame, unworthiness, loneliness, a sense of guilt or fear, any kind of regret, if you're sick, suffering, anything less than love, you KNOW there is some belief that you have that you're sinful. That because of something you REALLY DID and therefore REALLY ARE, you are no longer eligible for love. Well let me tell you this. You are fucking eligible for love right now and always because God Himself does love you with an unconditional, unlimited, non-expiring and absolutely perfect love which HAS NO LIMITS and cannot see you as sinful, no matter WHAT you think is true of you!
It's not a matter of whether God finds you worthy, or whether you can be loved, it's a matter of YOU not agreeing with it!
Sickness in all its forms includes not just physical sickness but mental, emotional, financial, perceptual, sickness in relationships, vocational, etc.
Sickness in all its forms is an attempt to PROVE that God does not love you.
You're holding the sickness out there as evidence and saying, see, THIS proves that I am unworthy and unloved. Hah. Let's see what you've got to say about THAT!
The thing is.... You cannot prove that God doesn't love you, because it isn't true. You can only truly PROVE something that is true. If it's not true, you're not going to be able to prove it at all no matter how hard you attempt to do so.
So really your sickness is an ATTEMPT to TRY to prove it, even though it is not provable. And the ego in you is insane for even trying to prove it, because this is in DENIAL of the fact that it can't be proven. You WILL NOT and CANNOT change God. Your sickness is an attempt to change God, by attempting to change what God created - which is you.
It won't work. And you'll spend a lifetime trying to make it work AND FAIL. Thank God. Because you will never ever prove you are unworthy of love.
So it's really fruitless and pointless to spend all the effort attempting to prove the unprovable, or to make possible the impossible. You CAN'T be unloved by God.
So then you'll have to eventually ADMIT to this fact. And when you do you'll set yourself free of the game that you're playing with yourself. You have to admit that you chose this sickness and have put it in place and are attempting to make it the truth, when it isn't. And it requires an awful lot of upkeep to try to make it convincing.
A sickness therefore is a DEMAND that you insist God does not love you because of 'this' - whatever this is - whatever the sickness is, and you show it in order to block love.
You're like, well, God doesn't love me, see? I've got this to prove it? What about this (as you hold up your disease or your sense of poverty or your broken life). Basically you're holding this thing up to God and saying, see, there's no way you can love me because of THIS. How could anyone love THIS? Or, how could anyone love me when I've done THIS to God's son?
So your question is, how can I be loved? How can love be possible? Because by believing that UNLOVE is possible, or that you can prove your unworthiness, you also believe that worthiness is impossible. But your worthiness is not only possible but permanent.
And God responds. .... Through Holy Spirit ...... Even 'this' sickness you made does not show me that you aren't good enough. It doesn't make you less than you are and fails to convince me that I shouldn't love you anyway. Sorry but I will always love you and there's nothing you can do to change my attitude. Even this is not enough and never will be to make me hate you for sin you think you perceive. You've done nothing of any consequence and this can be undone. It isn't worthy of my condemnation or judgement and I will never find you guilty. There isn't anything you can do to upset me or make me not love you because you are my child, and my love for you is unconditional and everlasting. Let go of this supposed cardboard sickness you think proves you're not innocent, and allow me to love you for you so that you can return to peace and happiness. Put down your arms and surrender your weapons used against yourself. Put aside your grievance against yourself and let yourself recognize you ARE love. I love you just the same.
Nothing in the world is doing anything to you whatsoever. Not even seeming physical attacks, physical sickness, or death.
All of it must be seen as having NO EFFECT on you as a son of God.
If it has no effect on you, then it cannot be a CAUSE. If it is not a cause, it cannot have SINNED against you. And therefore it must be harmless and forgiven.
Then the world is recognised as NOT DOING ANYTHING, it is recognised as merely a dream - an effect of dreaming, and not a cause of anything at all.
When the world is recognised as CAUSING NOTHING, changing nothing, doing nothing of any real value, all sense of blame and bitterness and hate and rejection are taken away from it.
It is then merely seen as harmless, powerless, guiltless, and not sinful. It is then just a kind of harmless dream, which no real consequences and no inherent properties of any kind. Just a projected image.
Physical death does nothing to anyone real. Nothing real can be threatened. Souls are utterly unaffected by death or by anything in this world.
Similarly the things of this world must be seen and recognised as NOT PEOPLE, the bodies are not who we are, not who anyone is. They are just shells in a strange shape which are formed to look as though they are people with faces. These are not real people.
Nothing real has ever died. No-one real has ever been attacked. Nothing real has ever been sick. No-one real has ever murdered anything. There is no sin anywhere. The world is a dream. The world and body do nothing to you or to anyone. The physical does not rule the mind. Mind is the sole cause.
"This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect." UrT21H8
"What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." UrM6C3
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness." UrW190L5
When you are innocent, you can ONLY see innocence. When you are guilty, you can ONLY see guilt.
IF you think that you therefore can objectively, unbiased, clearly discern, "whether or not" your brother is innocent or guilty, you are severely mistaken.
You cannot put your own guilt on a shelf in order to see your brother's innocence, nor can you see his guilt when you are innocent.
You literally see the content of your own mind projected outward. If you are have guilt in your mind you WILL find your brother guilty and MUST judge him to be so. Yet when your mind is healed, suddenly you no longer see the guilt in your brother, it is not there, and never really was there. It was yours.
"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." This is also why when you are having an angry crappy day you think everyone else is unhappy also, only to find that when you cheer up, it suddenly seems like everyone else wasn't even unhappy.
So the ego has given us this kind of fictional claim that we actually can be "neutral" or an objective observer who can discern right from wrong, good from bad, and make valid educated judgement calls, based on what something is or is not or appears to be. But the truth is, such an "ability" is 100% impossible. You simply are incapable of this kind of "discernment" or judgement or selectivity.
You simply cannot sit on a fence and observe passively and say, yes, I see that this person is guilty and their guilt has nothing to do with me. That's a lie. If you see guilt, you are guilty.
It is the ego that says you can "get away with" one thing applying to your brother that does NOT apply to you. That is nothing less than getting away with murder. If you can cause something and escape the consequences, while your brother suffers the consequences for you, that is murderous. Everything about the ego is murderous. And it is also in denial because it's literally impossible to "really murder", just as much as it is literally impossible to "judge correctly".
Since it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to truly tell whether you brother is guilty or not, and you can ONLY see what you believe is TRUE OF BOTH OF YOU (this is the Golden rule), you really have to find a way to stop judging that "them and not me" are wrong. It makes you think that you are not included in the guilt or have escaped the guilt, but this is DENIAL and projection. You actually are still seeing yourself as guilty, but now indirectly through others.
That's what the whole ego is based on. "Me or them" "Them or me" but not both. In the thought system of Holiness, whatever applies to you applies to your brother equally because you are equals at all times. If they are guilty, so you are you. If they are innocent, so are you.
You are effectively BLIND to "whether or not" your brother is one thing or another. ALL that you can find to be TRUE of him is that he MUST be innocent, because the only way for you to BE IN THE TRUTH, is for YOU to be innocent (whole, loving), and this will make it IMPOSSIBLE for you to see guilt in your brother.
You and your brother are innocent. This is the only true judgement. And this is why the Holy Spirit ALWAYS finds both of you to be innocent forever.
Those who are holy are not worried about the ego. They don't fear attack. Who they are, is so innocent and free of sin and guilt and fear.
Since there is no sin in them, there is nothing to latch onto.
The only way that the ego can attack is to attack that which is already less than innocent. You have to somehow believe in ego, which is a belief in attack, in order to be attackable and to create effects of attack in you. If you don't believe this, attack cannot produce effects in you.
You have to have some kind of sin in you in order for it to be able to even conceive of attacking what you "are". If you "are" sin then you're automatically a part of ITS thought system, and therefore ITS attack thoughts can seem to attack what you are.
This is the same as how in Christianity it's taught that the devil cannot attack you unless you have sinned, and that once you sin this gives him "access" and "permission" to come into you and have his wicked way. This is an analogy for the ego.
If you do not step off the innocence pedestal and put some kind of sin into your self, to change your identity from "innocent person" to "sinful person", the ego has absolutely no grounds to access you whatsoever. There is nothing true that it can claim about what you are. You are innocent. You are out of its reach. It cannot even conceive of a way to access you, not through magic or hatred or energy attacks or wars, nothing. Absolutely nothing can touch those who are truly without a belief in being sinful.
So when you choose to believe something that is a part of the ego's thought system, this automatically gives it access. If you believe sin is real, it can attack you. If you believe bodies and worlds are real, it can attack you. And where there is attack, there is the potential for sickness and death.
But if there is no sin in you whatsoever (no real sin), and there is therefore no belief that you are made of guilt (not guilty), and there is no belief that you need be afraid (not a victim), quite LITERALLY, and absolutely, the ego has NOTHING it can do to you.
Its thought system does not apply to you. And the ego is nothing more than a thought system based on illusions. Its illusions do not even TOUCH the innocent. They don't even come close. They simply don't apply, cannot be applied, and have no way to corrupt or reach out and infect the innocent. To do so is TEMPTATION, but it is up to the innocent to not be tempted. And when you, as innocent, are truly convinced of your PERFECT INNOCENCE as given by God, there will be no way to tempt you to believe in sin.
This is what temptation means - to attempt to pull you into the ego thought system where you can be attacked, but not yet having actually accomplished this. It is an "offer" by the ego, which you do not need to listen to.
When you are purely innocent you also do not need a defense of any kind whatsoever. Your innocence IS perfectly protected and beyond the realm of all illusions. Illusions disappear in your presence. You have the authority of God. You also won't have to be constantly putting in effort to be vigilant for the ego's temptations, because once you are FULLY CONVINCED of your innocence and immortality, you will awaken and be permanently safe from all illusions.
This is why nothing real can be threatened, BECAUSE nothing unreal exists. And this is why "a guiltless mind cannot suffer." You ARE immortal!. You just need to stop confusing your identity with that which is mortally untrue of you.
How can innocence sin?
I sit beside the ocean.
The world comes and goes.
Nothing happens to me.
In our special relationships, we think of a particular person as our savior, idol, bestie, or appointed partner. We adore them with very exclusive terms and special attention. Things that we reserve only for them and for no-one else.
This is the main mode of functioning of love in most people. Special love, for special people, in special ways. Or in other words, limited love, in exclusive situations, with a very small handful of individuals.
The ego in us loves this. It loves to love only a tiny subset of the Sonship. It loves to isolate and limit and constrain all love to one special chosen target recipient. It loves to really strongly play up how important and special and relied-upon that person is, because what this indirectly implies, is that everyone else sucks bigtime.
Special relationships therefore feed the ego 'persona' - the parts of life that it wants to keep and approve of - which is a very limited slice of reality - which it will eventually still attack and destroy. And while it feeds this persona, it relegates everything else to prison, which goes into your own mind as your 'shadow' self, filled with rejection and hate and attack. And that shadow self will attack your persona self and attack your special relationship and eventually try to destroy it. And as such romance turns to resentment. That's what the ego has in store for you when you play along with the special-love game. It ends in tears.
Ok so, being a bit dramatic ;-)
The point is, most people are stuck in this game, and there is a whole other way to experience life. And that means, bringing specialness into question, which is especially difficult when you have special relationships. It means that you will have to confront a sense of not depending on special people, but instead depending on God. It means you will have to examine why you can only love this one person and not everyone else, and also find out what it is within yourself that refuses to love everyone equally. Typically it's because you do not want to love yourself at all times, but only when you yourself are 'special' to yourself, which is probably not often.
Sometimes therefore special relationships have to go through a transition in order for the relationship to become 'holy', which means, the specialness (which is really a form of conditionality and limitation) has to be brought into question. And indeed, it may have to be released, which can be very painful, in order to make way for a greater expansion of love that overflows beyond the borders of the special relationship. How can you be unconditionally loving and uncondtionally yourself without letting go of the specialness that limits and imprisons you?
This doesn't have to mean the end of a relationship or necessarily its destruction, but at times it can seem that the special aspects of the relationship undergo a breakdown, to reveal a deeper unconditionality, a deeper more genuine more honest love, that doesn't put on a mask of pretense and perhaps doesn't play into the appearance of a typical special relationship. This means the relationship is becoming holy, in which the 'real selves' are starting to relate on terms of deeper honesty and greater willingness to love. Love actually increases, but it becomes in a sense less personally confining. It become more freeing, more allowing, more accepting, and that's different than how a special relationship typically starts out.
What remains then is a TRUE relationship, not only with another person but also with yourself, where you yourself are more genuine, where you are not dependent on the other person for the source of your love, where you are able to be of service, where you love them unconditionally, love yourself unconditionally, and also love beyond the walls of the 'relationship' unconditionally. What applies to you must apply to all. And as such, as you mature into unconditional love, you are maturing into a relationship with the entire Sonship, based on love instead of rejection and special attention.
This ultimately is the only way to love yourself.
As you attempt to get rid of parts of yourself that you do not like, such as parts that you have condemned as sinful and guilty, you will gradually be running out of Self to get rid of.
Yet, trying to keep only the good parts and get rid of the bad parts appears to make you seem like an increasingly good person. And that's because you're progressively denying more and more that there is any bad stuff in you.
If your strategy is to become more innocent by denying your own belief that there's unlovability in you, and if the only way to get rid of those unlovable parts is to unlove them even more, pretty soon you're going to be perfecting your innocence. And that really means, you will find that there is none of you left to BE innocent.
This attempt at denial and suppression of your belief in your sinfulness, will eventually put so much self-hate into your unconscious that it will erupt into consciousness and be perceived as an attack. You won't be able to keep it concealed forever, and the more you censor yourself the more you'll feel threatened by anything that lets the hate leak out.
This is the ego's strategy for finding a way to prove that you're innocent. It logically concludes that if it can isolate outside conscious awareness all of the stuff about you which is less than innocent and good, and if nobody (including you) ever sees the bad parts, then you'll finally be recognized as innocent.
And conveniently you'll find lots of opportunities to project and blame the relegated self-hatred in yourself onto others, giving you yet another way to displace your sinfulness and get rid of it. Or at least you believe you're getting rid of it, when in fact you are just lost in a private world where your unloved parts are at war with your acceptable parts.
Eventually the end of the war will only happen when you run out of goodness, because the ego suspiciousness will always undermine the potential for you to be truly good. Good is never good enough, and your efforts to people-please will always make you suffer. Your attempt to wear a mask of innocence is actually an attempt to destroy you, because it creates in your mind the very toxic enemy - your own hated self - which will haunt you incessantly.
There is no real escape in this arrangement. There is no real way to be free of guilt without self-sacrifice. There is no way you can truly be free of it without dying. And this is why you see death as a logical and worthwhile conclusion to your efforts at being "good" all the time. Being good, in denial of being bad, leads to death and is a choice to die.
It is a choice to die because feeding your persona and trying to *pretend* that you don't believe in your own guilt is diminishing what's left of you. Pretty soon you'll run out of anything that's good enough about you, and meanwhile your hated self will be making plans for your funeral.
While sin and guilt are real, or true of you, there is no escape. While you believe in them, you will try to cut off parts of yourself that you deem the locations of that sinfulness, and attack it to try to get rid of it. You will attack it with denial and disassociation as well as hate.
The only true escape for you is to learn that you have not really sinned and that guilt is therefore never justified. When you can see that you must be innocent because you did not sin "in reality", you no longer need to try to make yourself be innocent in the face of sin being real. Instead, you are simply innocent because there is no real sin. And this is forgiveness, and it is also the atonement.
So either you will use the ego's strategy to make you innocent, which will kill you, or you will use the Holy Spirit's strategy to make you innocent, which will save your life.
Forgetting for a moment the bigger picture context, which the ego always ignores, it can seem like this world makes sense.
The body seems to be able to see the world. Becoming sick seems to be something unwanted and an attack on us. The body seems to have senses of the environment and tells us what's there. The world seems real and outside of us.
But when you reintroduce the big-picture context of what happened before this world as made, it puts everything into a completely different perspective. It give you something to contrast again, to compare, is this true, or is it an illusion?
Before this world, you had vision, the ability to see in the light. There were no obstacles. When you made the world and the body, you created a kind of bubble, populated it with objects, painted the interior walls to shut out sight of God, and then fixated on the forms.
You made a body which was designed specifically to not see God, to focus only on form, to obsess over appearances and to be completely distracted by images seeming real. You made this world and the body to BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND and NOT SEE. The whole purpose of the world is to DENY GOD.
The body was given so-called sensory organs, allegedly permitting you to see and sense the world. It was given eyes to be able to seeming have sight.
But all of this is completely inside out. And the reason and purpose of it is completely backwards.
The body's sight is made to make you BLIND. It is made to PREVENT VISION, so that you will be fixated on appearances, illusions, distractions, so that you DO NOT see. The more that you gain sight of form and bodies, the more blind you become. You SEEM to be seeing "more", but you are seeing LESS.
Similarly, it seems as though sickness is something we don't want and is attacking us against our will. We seem to "not want it". But the Course tells us that in the big picture, we put sickness in place on purpose to DEFEND ourselves against life, We actually think we are defending our SELF because we have identified with a fake ego self, and that self seems vulnerable (because it is an illusion) and needs defenses. So we defend the body in order to try to SAVE OUR LIFE from the attack of truth, which attacks the body and MAKES IT SICK. So now, in the big picture context, sickness is self-attack and a WANTED attempt to die, in the name of preserving your life!
We came into the world not to experience something real, but to get away from reality. We gave our body sensory abilities so as to NOT to sense what exists, but to confuse and block the ability to sense. We created eyesight to SUBSTITUTE for being able to see. The body can't see shit.
In this world, vision is blindness, sickness is self defense, life is death, death is life, what seems it will save you destroys you, defenses are attacks, everything is backwards and inside out and upside down. Nothing is as it appears. Even "nature" is unnatural. Everything about the ego's laws are unnatural. What is "supernatural" is actually natural. Miracles are natural. When they are not happening, something has gone wrong. They are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME.
To be free of this must entail the undoing and letting go of, dissolving of, disappearing of, all of these illusory forms and things that we MADE UP solely for the PURPOSE of avoiding God. We can repurpose them temporarily and learn from them and use them for awakening, but they are only useful teaching devices for as long as we NEED to be taught, or rather to unlearn. Then we will let them go. Who would want to keep a body which sees only an inversion of reality, blocks vision and defends against God? It is unnatural. It is not needed.
There are a number of words Jesus uses in a very different way to how we use them. He literally redefines and teaches us a new meaning of these words. This is because we've taught ourselves incorrectly what something IS, and have mis-identified things. In ACIM His use of terms gives them a whole different meaning.
Some examples:
Life. You think it means bodies that "are alive". He means, that which has eternal life in Heaven and extends forever, which never perishes and cannot die.
Death. You think it means death of the body. He means, anything even slightly less than 100% perfect life. Even a slight grievance. Even a slight sickness. The entire dream world and everything in it.
Murder. You think it means some person in the extreme attacking another. It really means the dynamic of a separation between cause and effect in which you perceive something applies to you that doesn't apply to someone else, allowing you to escape the consequences of what you cause. The entire ego thought system is murderous. "What is not love (100% love) is murder."
Insanity. Any state of mind which is not total wholeness and holiness. A split mind. A mind which believes illusions are real. A mind which sees itself as separated from its creator. All states of dreaming. Happy dreams, unhappy dreams. All states of perception. Seeing yourself as a body. Believing in death.
Sickness. You think it means just body sickness like having a disease. Jesus means a sick mind which produces a sick body, all states of mental unhealth, death, forms of physical sickness, illness, fear, unforgiveness, guilt, body-identification, belief in sin, level confusion, magic, etc.
Fear. You think it's some feeling you have when you are scared and that the rest of the time you are not afraid. Jesus says the entire world is made of fear which is the opposite of love, all states of sickness including death are fear of awakening, and fear includes every state of the ego thought system.
Sin. You think it means something you did. Jesus redefines it as something you think you did which you didn't do in reality. Sin is the authority problem. It's reversal of cause and effect, opposing God's will, which has produced an entire world of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." In sin, the death wish is formed, making death inevitable, unless you undo sin.
Love. You think of special love, an emotion of love, private love, exclusive love. Parental love. Small amounts of love. Jesus says all expression of real love are maximal - maximum total unconditional whole-minded full-hearted unlimited universe-sized love.
Forgiveness. You think it means pardon. Or you think it is a process. Jesus states it is a constant state of mind in which you recognize there is nothing left to forgive because you have not condemned yourself. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, yet you are one with others. Forgiveness is the atonement.
Ego. You think ego is just some little bit of egotism or selfishness. Jesus redefines ego as the separation idea and an entire thought system which has manifested as a physical universe, complete with dream bodies and war and death.
Perception. You think perception is you being inside your body peering out through your eyes seeing stuff in a certain way. Yet Jesus says the world is perception, physical objects are mental images, the whole world is your perception within your universe-sized mind, and it's not so much to do with how you see something that's out there. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes what you see.
There's many more things which we do not recognize as being what they are. And so it may be easy to mis-read what Jesus means by certain words. We have to unlearn all of our previous definitions for things and broaden the scope of them. Jesus is accurate and truthful in HIS understanding of what things ARE, he knows what is fear and what is death and what is life, in the most accurate of ways. Our definitions are limited and basic and incorrect. Dictionary definitions are also flawed. This is part of what makes learning ACIM challenging, he's using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.
There isn't really anything that you need to do about the ego. It's really a matter of recognition. You simply don't as yet recognize it for what it IS, and you think it is something else.
Recognition requires you to have a full picture, all the information, nothing hidden, nothing missing. And in this light of the whole truth, everything is put into its proper perspective.
In this perspective, which is sanity and true perception, there is simply a factual awareness of what the ego IS. With no delusions about it. The fact that it is a lie, and there is no ego. That the ego is false and unreal and doesn't really exist.
In recognition, it simply becomes apparent that the ego never really was there at all. And now you can see the sense in this. It's the idea of nothing, which for a while seemed to be something else wh
ile you were confused and failing to recognize illusions for what they are.
So it's like, when you get into the recognition state of mind, the ego is properly framed, and everything is in its right place, and what is false is obviously false, and what is true is obviously true, and it takes no effort whatsoever to make it be that way. Because the ego just IS false and it never can be true.
You don't have to make the ego be false, you don't have to do anything to change its meaning. It simply already is false. And so all you end up doing is just noticing its nature and dismissing it because it obviously is absurdly impossible.
It doesn't require you to fight with it, change it, attack it, try to make it into something else, or to do anything to it at all. You simply need to get a good clear look at it. And in that clarity it is shown to be only what it is, nothing more and nothing less.
And that is the recognition of sanity, which is enlightenment. The simply recognizing of what is really true, and what is actually false. The final sorting out of whether or not the world exists. What is is made of. Whether it's even possible that it's happening. And whether you are deceived to want something it seems to offer in madness.
Until you get to a place of complete simple "accurate perception", as Jesus calls is, looking straight and honestly and not being deceived or distorted or confused or distracted or lost or insane, you'll probably be unsure about the world, and the body, and the ego.
They'll seem to have properties they don't have. They'll seem real, happening, true, existing. They'll seem to be a real threat and danger. They'll seem to be alive. They'll seem a whole bunch of things that they are not, because you do not recognize them for what they are. You are deceived by them.
And recognition brings with it the clarity of simply "knowing" or being in alignment with knowing what it IS and what it ISN'T. Because true perception is simple accurate seeing or reality-vision. Truthful perception. Honest perception. And that is all that you need in order to be sane. Plus the willingness to accept it.
To admit and accept the truth, which is to accept the atonement, is simply to recognize what is true and what is false with no confusion between them. The spiritual path entails the sorting out of which is which, the undoing of that confusion, and getting everything straightened out in your mind.
Once you get a final look at the truth about this world, the body, the ego and death, you will never take it seriously ever again. You'll remember to laugh at its utter ridiculousness. You'll recognize its impossibility. And you'll not even give it a second glance as you return home to God.
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
"I will forgive and this will disappear."
"A world forgiven cannot last."
"Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all."
"Only the truth is true and nothing else is true."
The aim of our purification, of sorting out the true from the false, is to become fully committed only to the truth. This means purifying or filtering out anything which is not of God, and accepting everything that is of God.
It's kind of like firmly taking sides. You are to fully and completely side with heaven, and completely refuse to accept anything illusory. To become completely 100% clear about what is true, totally distinct from what is false. Having absolutely no false mixed in with the true, and being entirely clear about the difference.
"For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
Being able to work miracles for example requires maximal love, which is a state in which there is no fear at all. When there is some fear mixed in, you're essentially an unhealed healer, and can only partly heal. You call forth two simultaneous opposing goals, and so you ask for healing and attack at the same time.
"The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly TO CHOOSE ONE AND RELINQUISH THE OTHER"
So there is one goal of the Holy Spirit which is pure life, and the ego's goal is pure death. And we're talking here in the extreme of contrast. In accepting truth, we need to accept all of the truth and nothing but the truth. And we need to properly use denial to reject anything that is not true. And you can be sure that ALL illusions will tempt you toward the false.
"It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter. And it is here correction must be made."
"But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world."
"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true."
Until we get there, to that place of certainty and doubtlessness, of acceptance and clarity, of clear recognition and the Holy Spirit's perfect judgement, we will find ourselves in a kind of muddy middle ground. We will in our minds have some commitment to some of the truth, and some to lies. We'll be partly convinced by the ego and the body and the world. We'll fall into temptation and be deceived.
"The reason this is upsetting you is because the Atonement is a TOTAL commitment."
"I have no function but the one God gave me. This recognition releases me from all conflict, because it means I cannot have conflicting goals." "Doubt is the result of conflicting wishes."
"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE."
When we are in this in-between state we are "in two minds", because it means the mind is split between two masters. It is trying to achieve two opposing goals at the same time, producing tension and thwarting and cancellation of power. In this "untrained" state we are ineffective and disempowered, we keep hurting ourselves by mistake, and we are frequently lost and confused.
"You cannot be faithful to two masters, who ask of you conflicting things."
"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing."
This middle-ground is where most of us find ourselves most of the time, perhaps sometimes moving closer to a clearer unequivocal immersion in reality, and at other times descending into the darkness of false perceptions. In this state we are not certain, which means we are afraid. We are not clear on what is what, so we are confused, and as a result are able to be deceived, and so fall for temptation only because we don't recognize what's happening.
"A mind and body cannot both exist."
"Time and Eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other."
"The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives, EXCEPT truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled, and CANNOT both be true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy."
Without a clear full and firm commitment to truth and reality and the laws of God, our whole perception falls down into a fight with the world. We see bodies and suffering and enter into false empathy. We become forgetful of who we are. We buy into mortality and fear. And then we have reactions based on making illusions real, trying to solve unsolvable problems and trying to escape from hell.
"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."
The only reason for this is because we have our feet in two canoes at once, and they're heading in different directions. We want the world and we want heaven. We want the mind and the body. We want bodies but without problems. We want worldly magical solutions to make bad stuff go away so that we can get what we want. And so we are torn and adrift and lost.
It is clear then that in order to really access the power of God, to work miracles, to have conviction and fearlessness, to be certain and empowered, to be not deceived or tempted, we have to more consistently side with God. We have to be more fully vigilant for the Kingdom as the only reality and the only truth. It's always when we're in this no-man's-land of in-between that we can't tell which way is up.
"If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."
I find that when I am more firmly siding with the truth I can dispel illusions more easily. I can rise above the battlefield, pay less attention to bodies, be less deceived by what I see and assert more strength and light. When I become out of touch with heaven I sink into the darkness and lose sight of the truth, becoming confused and tempted, deceived and lost, and this arising of false perceptions always leads to suffering.
It's salvation that we really need, and salvation is true perception. It is also miracle mindedness. But we can only get into that state and stay there if we're really fully committed to the whole truth all the time. To get there and stay there will take a lot of purification because every attitude, every grievance, ever unforgiveness, has to be purified of its support for death, its siding with darkness, its choice for fear and for guilt.
"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one."
We are moving into the light. When we are fully in the light there will be no more hesitation, no more guessing, no more uncertainty or temptation. Until we get there, we will continue to be thrown around on the rollercoaster. Tempted into the belief that the world is hell, and tempted away from the recognition that it is nothing. Only as we rise above and into the light do we regain our sanity.
"Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one."
So ideally, in the long run, we want to get into miracle-mindedness and stay there all the time. Into forgiveness, the state of christ vision. To stay above the battlefield, away from deception, identified with spirit, owning of our immortality and siding with God's laws only. That's how you are fully siding with reality and full against unreality. A clear distinction between what is true and what is false.
"The former needs YOUR careful protection, because it is a state of miracle-READINESS. This is what the Bible means in the many references to "Hold yourself ready" and other similar injunctions.
Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do."
"As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles are inseparable."
The way Jesus describes the separation from God, there's a huge laundry list of aspects to this "state" that we've entered. The whole entire ego thought system and all its contents, has been given many labels by Jesus. Labels which simultaneously apply to all of it.
He describes the separation as a "detour into fear" for example. He describes that any state where there's even a slight lack of love, as a state of sin. He describes the whole of spacetime as the idea of death, in that "without the idea of death there is no world" - an entire dream of death. He describes that any state less than wholeness will induce sickness and disease.
He also equates sickness with the denial of God. He equates sin with insanity. All forms of unforgiveness ie judgement come into it. All physical sensory states of false perception. Every conceivable form of attack and murder, war and destruction. ALL of it applies to the WHOLE system. Even though it may appear that all these things are *separate things* unrelated to each other.
That means that everything in the ego thought system is a state of fear, death, sickness, judgement, false perception, confusion, insanity, sin, murder, evil, unreality, war, conflict, suffering, denial etc.
What this then tells you about the true nature of fear, is that when you are afraid, you're not just having a small emotion of fear. You're actually "doing the whole system".
You're being entirely ego. And it's a total package deal, in which you are doing all the other aspects of the separation as well. Fear is an attack, fear is denial, fear is conflict, fear is insanity, fear is sin, fear is death, fear is sickness, fear is deception, etc.
If you also consider the split mind, given that Jesus also refers to the separation as a matter of dissociation, going into a dissociated state means one part of your mind is seemingly cut off from the other. This happens in fear. In fear you believe that you are a victim and not a victimizer, that something is happening to you against your will, and you're not the cause of it. It's a state of projection and blame. Fingers are pointed anywhere other than yourself, so that you're totally out of touch with the fact you're threatening yourself.
All special relationships are affected by fear as well. There is mistrust, inequality, and idol worship, all of which inspire a sense of fear that the other person will take away what you lack. Or even the fear that you've given them the right to do something to you. To be special is to be at war, which means to be conflicted, therefore uncertain, therefore afraid. The entire fall of man is a fall into fear - a detour into fear.
(re leaving the garden of eden, being cast out of heaven) "There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended. "
We need to understand how and why fear is not just fear on its own, separate from guilt, or separate from death, or separate from sin. We need to RECOGNIZE that ALL the attributes of the ego ALL go together. You can't be participating in one without the other. Fear is actually death. Fear is actually sin. Fear is actually every possible aspect of the ego system rolled into one. Just as death is sin and war is murder and blame is guilt and insanity is judgement.
When you are afraid, you are not "just afraid", helpless and weak and unvinvolved, or cut off from the other ego aspects. You must also be being unloving, attacking, murderous, blameful, judgemental, hurtful, guilty, deceptive, confused, insane, sinful, etc.
Eventually we have to realize that all aspects of the ego system are ONE system, one idea, one problem, one state, calling for one solution. To not be deceived by the idea that you can be participating in only a little part of the system and not the whole thing. All illusions of the separations between these different things are not true. The entire ego, the whole separation idea, is rolled into every part of it. It is all the same.
Whatever you are perceiving, whatever you are believing, you ALWAYS believe that you are experiencing the truth.
If you are feeling guilty, you believe this is the truth. If you are projecting guilt, you believe that its true that the other person is guilty. If someone else seems to do something to you and you perceive it this way, you believe this is the truth. Always you are locked into an idea of the truth, regardless of whether this truth is ACTUALLY true.
You can even believe that death is real. You can believe that death is salvation. You can believe that attack is salvation. You can actually walk around believing that it is "totally true" that death means life and there is no God. You can be convinced this is the truth. It doesn't matter that you're grossly mistaken. One thing holds consistent - no matter whether you side with Holy Spirit or ego, SOMETHING is always the truth for you.
Now, whatever your grasp of truth is, this is manipulated by your beliefs. Beliefs are "truth modifiers". You use them to redefine the truth and to make something else be the truth that isn't. This is the ego's tool to convert the MEANING of God into something that God does not mean. It changes the meaning of the truth, the meaning of your identity, the meaning of what and who you are. You use belief to convert yourself into a sinner who deserves to die.
Ok now, given that you always believe you're experiencing the whole truth, this can lead you to not suspect that your grasp of the truth might be faulty. You believe you are complete right now, whole right now, aware of everything right now, that you know everything right now, that you are aware of the entire content of yourself right now, and that this is completely true. EVEN THOUGH... this is not true at all for most of us.
We are always convinced by truth, and we are allegiant to it and protective of it.We will defend it up and down. We will not want to question it. The ego's purpose for questioning truth is to replace it with something even less true that it still thinks is the truth. It does NOT want you changing the truth back toward the REAL truth. So it becomes very easy to mangle and distort the truth and to be caught up in thinking it is REALITY and to be totally convinced that you are RIGHT about it, but to still be very mistaken.
And given you can be really convinced about this, that really forms a strong barrier against even suspecting something is mistaken or that you might be wrong. Why would you even think to need to correct something if you are sure it's already perfect? Why would you even suspect that there is a happier way to exist when you already believe that your SUFFERING is happiness? Why would you want to live forever when you already believe that death is your ultimate salvation and that you will die no matter what, dam it?
You can be lost in the truth. Lost in what the truth seems to be. This is why it's like a hallucination.... you're seeing something that's not even really there and you think its real and you're scared and upset by it as if it's totally real, and yet it's just some silly illusion. You can run away from imaginary monsters and cower under a bush. You can be frightened by what seems like real political nightmares. You can be troubled by what looks to be a genuine threat of terrorism. And yet... this is all still just a dream. It's not TRUE.
Snapping out of a state of 'fixation' on an hallucination, snapping out of a strong conviction that someone else really is wrong, snapping out of believing the story, snapping out of reacting to the world that APPEARS to be real.... it's not easy. But it's what we need to do. We need to wake up.
It's okay. ... you are safe... in heaven.... with God... right now.... and nothing has gone wrong.... and God still loves you.
True perception is the ability to discern clearly, the *difference* between what is TRUE, and what is FALSE. To discern BOTH of these correctly is a state of RECOGNIZING what something is, and what something is not.
It contains BOTH these properties of a) seeing the truth and recognizing it AS true, and b) seeing the false and recognizing it AS false.
True perception does not mean ONLY seeing "truth". It means seeing the what is true ABOUT what is showing up. And the illusory world of earth is still going to be showing up with people in various states of awakening. True perception will show you what about those things is TRUE, and what about those things is FALSE.
True perception means CORRECT perception, not a perception which sees nothing but truth. CORRECT perception perceives CORRECTLY. It RECOGNIZES that the truth is true, AND that what is false is false. It does not fail to PERCEIVE what is false (people in sick bodies, disasters, wars raging still, people fighting etc), it simply knows THAT IS FALSE AND UNREAL.
This is why, in true perception, you NOT ONLY see the truth and recognize it as true (real world/reflection of heaven/face of christ), you ALSO *SEE* the false and recognize it as false (other people still choosing to pretend to suffer, the earth itself AND the real world being ILLUSIONS that don’t really exist).
This is why, it was perfectly logical and possible for Jesus to SEE that people were calling out for help and asking for healing, even though *HE* knew that only the truth was true. HE knew that sickness was FALSE. He was able to PERCEIVE AND DISCERN that sickness was FALSE - that even though it was showing up, it was FAKE SICKNESS. This does not in any way mean that he did not SEE that "people were sick". He simply recognized it as NOT TRUTH, and so was able to HEAL IT. It means he RECOGNIZED it for what it was and what it was not.
It is not true that you will become blind to all suffering when you are in true perception. You will become LOVING, and you will see the CALL FOR LOVE in all those who "temporarily have less". And you will give miracles of healing BECAUSE there is a need and because you RECOGNIZE that other people are asking for HELP, because they believe they’re having a nightmare that YOU know cannot be real, by which they are not bound.
Perceiving what is true MUST logically also show you what is false. That which is false will be recognized AS false. This is only because perception still sees a "fake world" that we made - earth and this universe. It recognizes it as false, while still seeing it. It does not BELEIVE it. And so, while in that state, you can BE HELPFUL, because OTHER PEOPLE are not currently willing to share your perception.
This means, other people and how they are and whether they are sick or not, IS NOT PART OF YOUR PERCEPTION. They are not inside your perception. Their sickness is NOT your sickness. You recognize that "their sickness" is what THEY are responsible for choosing.
Believing that other people’s sickness is your sickness, that you share a mind WHILE YOU PERCEIVE, that they are just part of your projection, IS LEVEL CONFUSION, because it is confusing the properties of a mind that is ONE, with the realm of PERCEPTION which is an entirely separate level. Within perception, other people DO NOT SHARE your perception, and they are NOT part of your mind, and their sickness IS NOT your sickness.
Your willingness to undo their fake sickness is a SERVICE. A miracle. If they will not accept it, or are not ready for it, or do not want help, they will NOT become free of their fake sickness no matter how much YOU perceive correctly that they are not really sick. That’s because they have their own free will, because each is an independant son of God.
The more I learn that I am responsible for everything I experience, the clearer it becomes that anything I experience is not "because of" the world.
It used to be that everything I experienced seemed to be a reaction to the world, seemingly caused by it. I could not separate out myself from any of it, and any upsets or problems I was having were always tied into what was happening in life.
By taking responsibility and recognizing the secret of salvation, that I'm doing this all to myself, I let the world off the hook, so to speak, in that it is not really the "cause" of anything.
Yes sometimes things in the world happen which may trigger a certain response in me, but the triggering isn't because of the world, it's because I am triggerable. Which means something in me is unhealed, like a bruise or wound, which seems to be touched upon or poked at by worldly events. Up comes the old hurt, as if the world caused it, but it was already there, buried.
So over time, I see that if I am in any way upset, unhappy, angry, afraid, guilty or sinful etc... it's not really because of the world, the situation, or other people. It's because this is happening inside my mind, and it's really something to do with my own mental attitude or beliefs. There's some pain I'm healing or it's time for some emotional release or some other thing that's caused by me.
The more I "own" this, the less I try to pass it off as being the responsibility of the world. I stop blaming others for it. I stop accusing the world for it. I stop disowning it, through disassociation, and I stop projecting it away from myself onto the world in an attempt to be rid of it.
I am less in denial as I honestly admit that any and all fears and upsets are "my own stuff". If I'm angry and barking I have to admit this has nothing to do with anyone else. If I'm afraid I have to admit I'm using the world wrongly and reading meaning into it from within. Am I looking at the world through my ego or the holy spirit? It must be one or the other.
What this leaves me with, over time as I practice and reinforce this more, is a growing sense that if I am ever upset or unhappy in any way, it's because something in coming in between myself and the world. It's not because of the world. And it's nothing to do with who I really am behind it.
Let's say that behind this stuff there is a real me, which is always loving and light and shining with joy and happiness. All this self does is extend love and respond with love all the time. But overlaid on top of this self there is all this past stuff, ego baggage, lies and illusions, which comes in between me and the world.
If I look "through" this wall of lies, it changes how the world appears and I become lost in it, accusing it of sin. But if I get step back and get out of it, I become aware that this is just "my stuff" TEMPORARILY getting in the way.
If a situation arises and I become triggered and upset, and then I remember this is my own internal problem nothing to do with the situation, and I address this problem within myself through some kind of healing process, and it goes away, I'm then left looking at the situation "without" my reactions to it. And going back and forth like that shows me that, because my baggage was "additional" to the situation, it wasn't INHERENT to the situation. So it really wasn't anything to do with the situation in the first place.
This shows me that, really, the world is a forgiven "real world" of love and light, IF I can experience it without internal baggage. When I become caught up in my ego stuff, it's a state of *temporary* insanity. If I get lost in it, I need to get myself back out of it with honesty and healing and Help. And then I can return to happiness and truth again.
The more clear I become about this, discerning that if I'm not happy it's my own doing, and if I'm upset it's because of my own belief, and this is all what I'm doing to myself, I can become clearer and clearer that it really has nothing to do with the world. So then I stop looking outside myself for causes and reasons and sinners and people to blame or pin it on. I don't go into confusion as often as to "who" is doing what to whom.
If I'm cranky, having a bad day, upset, emotional, frustrated, afraid, whatever it is, I try as best I can to remember, this has NOTHING to do with the world. It has nothing to do with anyone else. This is entirely me doing my own thing to myself temporarily. And in that recognition there is also a kind of sense of security that, because it's mine, it's not really the world ganging up on me, or frightening me, or ACTUALLY attacking me.
So what we're doing here is we're learning that the world IS NOT attacking us. Bad things are not really happening. We're not being thrown around on some kind of emotional rollercoaster as a result of the world being shit. And in fact, events can still transpire with OR without me having an emotional snowball at the same time.
Which is interesting, beacuse now the Holy Spirit suggests in the midst of strife, where I think I "should" be upset "based on" what's happening externally, to "laugh". And so I force myself into a laugh and lighten up and step back. And at first it seems silly but I then I ask myself, why not? Why do I have to be upset in this situation? Do I really have to? Am I locked into that reaction? Maybe I can still go through the SAME situations, but not taking them at all seriously.
Someone's sick? Maybe I can be happy and laugh about it. Job sucks? Maybe I can rise above it. Scary things seeming to happen? Maybe I need to get out of my ego's "experience" of the world and get into a higher view.
And as I do, I find that there IS a higher way to experience what's happening. There is a happier, lighter, "does not believe the world is real" state of mind and perception and feeling, which is joyful and happy and non-serious, which I am cultivating. It's a different approach to the world, through the Holy Spirit, which is turning the course's truth into much more of an experience than a theory.
I don't HAVE to have a given amount of xysz upset as a result of a given scenario. I don't have to be immediately caused by the world to enter into a prescribed reaction. I don't have to just fall into temptation and go down with the ship. And this stepping back is such a globally applicable thing that it applies to the whole world.
So life is transitioning from... stuff happens, I am affected ... to... I'm not affected by anything external, I work on fixing up my inner experience, going within to the truth of me, and the rest is all just a matter of laughing at the world as nothing serious. I don't have to have the reactions the world says I should have. Because the world is not the cause of anything.
I am peeling myself away from its causality lies as I recognize I am the cause and it is the effect. I have power over the world, not the other way around. Isn't it quite amazing to discover that a world which used to "bully you" with its insane attacks, is finally recognized as causing NOTHING at all, is totally harmless and inert, is not a threat, does not upset you, and can bend to your holy will? :-)
As I uncover who I really am behind all of this ego attack/defense/distortion, a light is emerging which calls for greater peace and more frequent happiness. A way out of hell. I need only remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence in me and the world will be revealed as a place of peace and love. Because without the projection of my self attack upon it, that's all that's real about it.
When you are having true perception.... "M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be ***HEALED*** will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There ***will be those who seem to be "sicker"*** than others, and the *******body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before*******. 4 But ***the healed mind*** will put them all in one category; they are unreal.
5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories (false and true) are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world.*** (through the body's eyes) 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."
As you begin your journey towards truth and are using the body's eyes, which SEEM to see the physical world, but isn't REAL sight, and is actually a state of not seeing anything real, you start to open the spiritual eye and develop christ vision. The whole workbook is designed for the purpose of developing christ vision, which, by the way, entails the simultaneous use of the body's eyes to READ the workbook lessons ;-)
The body's eyes, made not to see, are always functioning as biological machinery in the same way. They are sense organs, which pick up photons of light which are DENIED by surfaces of objects, and bounce into your retina, sending "signals" of "images" into your mind. The eyeballs obviously do not see at all even at the physical level, they are just relays or sensors, which pick up light and transmit it to the brain, where the mind then "sees" the images. Only the mind really sees.
The thing is that, if you BELIEVE these images depict truth or reality, that you are seeing reality when you see physical objects, you are deluded IN your mind, and your MIND is having false perception. That is, your mind is believing in, investing in, and "making real", the images coming from the body's eyes. So now the body is fixed having false perceptions of an unreal world, it's trying to send these pictures to the mind and the mind is deciding one thing: "are these images real, or are they unreal?" "are they true, or false?".
So yes, you can continue to SEE THIS WORLD.... EITHER as "it is real" or as "it is unreal". It's not a matter of "do I see the world or not", at the level of perception. Perception EITHER sees the ILLUSORY WORLD and BELIEVES it is true (false perception), or it SEES the SAME illusory world and BELIEVES it is false (true perception). In both cases, the world IS SEEN STILL!! It's a dream! Either you are seeing the nightmare dream of false perception or the HAPPY DREAM. A happy dream is the illusory world RECOGNIZED as being UNREAL!!! You are happy BECAUSE You know it is BULLSHIT!!! How else COULD you be happy but to recognize that images of hell are NOT TRUE?
In order to come to realize that these images are false and unreal, that the physical world is an illusion, the mind has to learn to FORGIVE. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". Through forgiveness, you train the mind to recognize illusions as illusions, to NOT believe they are real, and to NOT see value or truth in them. This results in the continual transmission of images into the mind by the body's eyes but when the mind looks AT these images, it learns to OVERLOOK the ILLUSIONS they are trying to present, the temptation, and the mind learns to CATEGORIZE ALL of these images as UNREAL. Yet, the mind STILL IS SEEING THEM. It simply shifts its vantage point and sense of TRUTH, to be able to discern that NONE of these images depict truth or reality.
Therefore Christ Vision is gradually developed in parallel to having body eyesight, and the more that you progress in forgiveness of ILLUSIONS, which means THE WORLD, the more your mind is able to recognize the world is FALSE, and the world now registers with you experientially as something false. You still SEE IT, but it doesn't seem believable. It doesn't strike you as "really happening". In this state, your mind can be SIGNIFICANTLY HEALED, and very very close to awakening, while STILL seeing simultaneously with the body's eyes.
So what now is happening is, your mind is being STILL presented with images of hell - physical world - which it can still see, but these images become so OVERLOOKED, that they start to become transparent as if you are literally looking THROUGH them rather than stopping at the surfaces. You start to glimpse the face of christ BEYOND the physical images, beyond the universe, beyond the body. And so now you are starting to see God "in everything you see" because you are seeing God BEYOND the physical illusion of objects.
In this state, you are a teacher of God, who is still in the world, having a body, SEEING WITH the body's eyes, AND simultaneously seeing with Christ Vision which OVERLOOKS what the body sees. In this state, it is TOTALLY NORMAL to be able to still see the bodies of other people, moving around, doing things in the physical world, while ALSO overlooking them and recognizing them as unreal. Since the body's eyes do not "Switch off" at this point, it's kind of like you're getting bombarded with images of hell at the same time as trying to approach heaven. And so you have to learn to NOT BELIEVE what the eyes are showing you. BUT YOU DO STILL SEE IT "mixed in" with your Christ vision.
Jesus speaks of this again in this statement:
"M-12.6. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. 2 God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. 3 It is a conscious choice. 4 For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. 5 The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? 6 Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. 7 They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. 8 Yet they are not deceived by what they see. 9 They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. 10 Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. 11 And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
Notice how it says that such persons are AWARE of dreaming, which means they can SEE the dream world - the physical world. Notice how it says THEY WATCH DREAM FIGURES come and go, shift and change, AND ... SUFFER AND DIE! All seen from A HEALED MIND!!! They CAN SEE bodies being sick, they CAN SEE "people" suffering, they CAN SEE DEATH, EVEN THOUGH they themselves are having a very healed mind, a very "sick free" mind, which does NOT BELIEVE IN sickness, and IS NOT PROJECTING SICKNESS ONTO OTHERS. And this is because the body is still dangling in front of the mind picking up signals from the dream world. The body will continue showing the mind pictures of sickness and death EVEN IF the mind does not believe in sickness and death. The result is that the images are SEEN, but they are NOT BELIEVED. They register as UNREAL, FALSE, NOT TRUE. It's a shift in vantage point which makes the whole world be RECOGNIZED as an illusion, instead of BELIEVED to be real.
In this state, it is perfectly possible for a teacher of God to be "in the world but not of it". To walk around the Earth, seeing bodies still, but overlooking them as well. Seeing people with broken legs, severe diseases, missing organs and so on, or even states of death. But the miracle worker in their right mind DOES NOT BELIEVE any of these things are true of any brothers, and they do not AGREE WITH what those brothers ARE BELIEVING about themselves and their bodies. The brothers ARE recognized as calling for love, since it is forgiving to recognize this and not that punishment is real, and as such there is EFFORTLESS perception of the "need" that people SEEM to have. And that means, you recognize who is viable as a recipient of A MIRACLE. It means you CAN SEE A CALL FOR HELP.
This combination of body vision and christ vision is precisely why JESUS was able to walk the Earth, SEE people sick and dying, and DO SOMETHING. He could tell that someone's body was showing up to his mind as "it is in the form of sickness", EVEN THOUGH he did not BELIEVE in sickness being TRUE. He did not merely "switch off" the ability to SEE the body at all, at that point. He did not have a state of "if I see sickness, I am sick". You have to remember there are TWO functions of seeing happening at once. In His mind, in his Christ Vision, he OVERLOOKED the sick body and it registered to him as NOT REAL. But in his body vision he could still SEE the state the body was in. And this is how he was able to SEE, those who were suffering and sick, even though HIS MIND did not believe the images he was seeing. HE was not sick. HE was not projecting sickness. HE was not MAKING people be sick. He knew the were not REALLY sick. But he also knew he could SEE that THEY believed they were suffering. So he HELPED THEM!
This is precisely the scenario that sets up a foundation for being a MIRACLE WORKER. Because now a teacher of God is HEALED, and yet CAN SEE those who are NOT healed. The teacher of God now has an abundance of love, while recognizing that those whose dream bodies still seem to suffer, are SEEMING to LACK love, and are "in need". That they are, from their own perspectives as individuals, suffering. Their minds are sick, their bodies are sick. And this establishes the dynamic where the miracle worker IS HEALED, but OTHERS ARE NOT. Thus, "Miracles supply a lack". and "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." It would be absolutely impossible to EVER be in a situation where you HAVE MORE, while others HAVE LESS, if the commonly-held mistaken view of how perception works were correct. And it would VIOLATE numerous miracle principles.
See, this is how most people think of perception, and it's wrong... the idea that "I have perception", it's one thing, it looks upon the world, and "I need to shift it". And the idea that projection makes perception, implying that whatever I see, I am putting there. So now it's like, my perception was aiming at hell, because I was putting hell there, and I need to redirect it towards heaven, so that I will perceive heaven and NOT SEE HELL at all. This is a big problem. Because if that's your model of perception, it means you become BLIND TO what is happening in the world as soon as you no longer believe in it. So like, if you stop believing sickness is real, in this model, you would literally expect to not be able to SEE anything that is sick, ever again. And this would imply, if you see sickness, YOU are sick, or you are attacking, or you are trying to make your brother be sick. That their sickness is your sickness. And this essentially makes you TOTALLY INCAPABLE of seeing whether or not your brother is in need of help.
Also in this broken model, it results in a situation where there is total inner and outer equality between what you believe and what you see. Therefore, you will assert that the outward picture (equated also with what the body sees) matches my inner condition and the world is like a mirror. So I see only myself. I'm all that exists (narcissistic, selfish). And thus you can never be in a position where "you have more" and someone else "has less". It means thus you never see any reason to help or heal or supply a lack for others, because you think "their sickness" is just a reflection of "your sickness." You think if you see sickness at all (e.g. broken leg), YOU must be making it be broken, and you need the healing, and no-one else needs anything. This is in TOTAL DENIAL of the way the body's sight functions continually in parallel to spiritual sight.
This is a very prevalent belief about how perception works, and it is totally bullshit. Or rather, it's only one half of the picture. It leads to a justification for NOT PERFORMING ANY MIRACLES FOR OTHERS. It completely WIPES OUT, the entire situation where miracles given to others could EVER be seen as "needed" or "making sense" to "called for", because the person now thinks that all they see is themselves. That the whole world is their own self. This thus becomes SELFISH. And it cancels the entire practice of miracle working in the world. It completely obliterates any reason why you would be able to SEE the "call for love" of another, yet alone giving a reason to respond to it. And this model of perception is treasured by those who do not want to work any miracles ever. It is a miracle-fearing, course denying paradigm of a mistaken understanding of how perception functions.
There is SOME truth to this false model, in the sense that it IS describing the transition from false perception to true perception. It is describing the healing of the BELIEF IN sickness being real or true. It IS a movement towards healed perception and christ vision. It IS the opening up to forgiveness and the overlooking of illusions and lies. It is recognizing the you DO project stuff onto others and see it. And it recognizes that YOUR MIND DOES need healing when you see illusions AS REAL. But that's a far cry from believing that you must not see the world AT ALL in order to be healed, which denies what the body's eyes are doing. It is taken in isolation to mean, THE BODY STOPS SEEING ANYTHING, or that, you will see through the body's eyes and NOT SEE AND BROKEN BODIES, with is totally a level confusion. It completely IGNORES and shuts out the FACT, that the body's eyes CONTINUE to send images from the physical world into the mind, right up until the atonement is accepted and you leave the world behind.
The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other, but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. seen.9
The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other proportionately, linearly, because "you cannot see two worlds", but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. Meaning you're going to HAVE TO still keep seeing the physical world UNTIL you are practically ready to ascend to heaven.
WHEN Christ vision is absolutely complete, the face of Christ appears. That means, heaven becomes "visible". And it also means, Earth become "invisible." Literally. If you look upon the face of christ it should last merely an instant before God takes you to Heaven. The forgiven world has disappeared from your sight. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." And then perception ends entirely, the body's vision ceases to send anything to the mind, because the mind is now free of bodies forever. And that's what it means to be 100% spirit identified. And ONLY THEN, when you no longer HAVE A BODY AT ALL, ONLY then do you no longer have a PERCEPTION with which to see the illusory world of hell and death.
UNTIL THAT HAPPENS, you WILL continue receiving images from the body's vision! You WILL continue being able to see bodies in various states of health. YOU WILL be able to discern "who" is calling out for love and who isn't. Who is SICK, and who isn't. Who is DEAD, and who isn't. Who is mistaken and delusional and who isn't. But your mind will recognize these things are not REAL. The people BEING sick DO think it is real, but you do not agree with them. And this is how you are able to set them free and weaken their belief. This is how you are able to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD. To help others, to heal the sick, to raise the dead. To let the Holy Spirit USE YOUR BODY'S EYES for HIS PURPOSES! Because he is very much ready and willing and desiring to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD TO HEAL THOSE WHO ARE IN THE WORLD. And that DOES include healing of sickness in mind AND body!!
Only when you ascend to heaven and leave the body entirely will you cease to be able to see the suffering of others in this world. And until then, you are to be a miracle worker. And if you're not doing that, you're in denial and being selfish.
When I recently started to recognize that the whole world is fundamentally unreal, I started to experience "faith" in God. It seemed to require an UNBELIEF that this world is "true", in order to shift my allegiance and dependence over to the unseen Source.
Jesus talks about faith in the Course, in reference to putting our faith in the ego (faithlessness). We have faith in what we believe is true.
"Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. How can this be reversed?" - lesson 91. "Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols" - lesson 50
And from Chapter 17 "the call for faith": "Had you not lacked faith that it could be solved, the problem would be gone". "There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve."
If you believe the world is real and the problems are real and people's sicknesses and suffering is real and sin is real etc, that's a lot of faith being put into the ego. You are siding with it and you are siding with this world. You are convinced by physical appearances and believe this stuff is really happening. There is no faith there.
Now, prior to this shift for me, I've experienced many years of talking to Holy Spirit and Jesus, working with Angels, and having various other interactions with "the other side", and came to depend quite strongly on their guidance each day. And that over time developed trust. But, it didn't develop trust to the level that I'm starting to experience now. It really required me to question whether the ENTIRE WORLD was real and a source of truth.
Some major chunk of belief in the ego world has been withdrawn from it. You have to realize that this world does not contain any truth at all, and notice the ways that you keep trying to find truth in it, and how futile that is. It's like, all this time you were believing in the world and listening to it and trusting it and taking its word for the idea that it was fundamentally real, had factual truth to it, COULD be trusted, and that it was just something wrong with you that was making you incapable of successfully FINDING its secret truth.
And now, suddenly its cover is blown, you have been disappointed by it one too many times, it has lied to you, it has promised that you'll find truth and yet failed every time, and so now you have come to your senses. You withdraw your allegiance from it, withdraw your trust and belief in it, and now are all the wiser. It is NOT to be trusted and cannot be believed, because the truth is not out there. To get this, I think you have really open up to the idea that the whole world is not real in its entirety, including everything in it - people, bodies, planets, space, time, suffering, loss, pain, death, etc. All of it. A big giant lie.
Then you compare this world to God's truth and you start to find out that EITHER God's truth is true or this world is true. Because this world contains so many things that simply cannot fit into God's truth. You must learn and trust that God is unconditional love at all times, which MUST mean, God cannot and does not create suffering, sickness, despair or misery. He would not create death.
"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."
As you open up to this, it should dawn on you not just that your mind inside your body has ego in it, but that the body ITSELF is ego, and the physical universe ITSELF is ego. ALL OF IT! This will be somewhat mind blowing. But at the same time you'll discover that it makes incredible sense. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of things that Jesus says in the course suddenly click into place, clear as day. "There is no world", literally, because it is not real. Not just a metaphor, not just an interpretation of your mistaken perception's view of a real world, but literally this whole physical universe is just a DREAM. It really is true.
This is a major turning point in your awareness to realize this. Because now the foundation for all of the ego thought system is exposed. So many mistaken perceptions and beliefs and values are now brought into question in contrast to this new truth, that God's truth is true, God's truth CANNOT create worlds like this, and therefore this world CANNOT be reality. "This world is not my home".
For me, it was at the dawn of STARTING to accept this truth, that I started to find myself experiencing "faith". It was as though I was faithless before. I had now "sided with God". The world seemed much less believable, much less real and trustworthy. I started to notice when I was looking to anything IN IT as a "Source" of truth, or as a solution, or as an answer, or as a way to solve problems. The idea of the "source" of truth had shifted away from this world and began taking root in God. A God, a reality, that is beyond this illusory world entirely.
As Jesus explains, "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."
What this means is, your sense of REALITY and TRUTH shifts to an UNSEEN world, the world of Spirit, which is God's realm. Even though you may not see it, and you may not directly experience it yet, you have some amount of BELIEF that it contains the truth - a truth which must be more true than the physical world in its entirety. That trust, that belief, which spans and overlooks and bypasses physicality, produces FAITH.
Faith indicates that you trust something that is REAL, and are shifting to an awareness of its existence. At first it may seem distant and remote but over time that faith is going to increase. It's real faith because it is faith in reality. It also means that you're starting to recognize and depend on a SOURCE which is not of this world. A source which provides not only answers and truth, but a source which has power, which is creative, which can express through you, and which performs miracles. It's a source of abundance, a source of correction, and a source of being SUSTAINED by God.
That means, you are now shifting from a "horizontal" belief system in the ego, a linear belief system, where you look to other locations in physical space as the source and cause of things. Before, you believed the only way to be provided for was to earn money at a job. Or you believed the only way to heal was to identify a linear cause in this world. But now, you're going VERTICAL. And that means, you're looking to a SOURCE which completely transcends this world, whereby you actually have access to a creative, abundant source of everything, which can flow through and to you from an unseen place. A supernatural source of support.
Your faith in that source starts to rewrite all the rules about HOW you are going to be able to accomplish things in this world. How money is going to come to you. How health is going to be restored. How relationships will improve. Where you should go and what you should do. It all starts to be inspired by AND empowered by an unseen Source of supernatural POWER, which is God. And this reliance on this Source means that all the laws and rules of this world will be broken in demonstrating faith in it. Miracles. Spontaneous financial abundance. Spontaneous solutions to "problems" which has no basis in the physical "natural" world. It's not going to "come from" this world, because this world is not a real CAUSE. It's going to come from BEYOND this world, supernaturally!
When you go to do things, you will start finding yourself placing an otherworly level of trust in something you don't even see. If it says to go do something, your trust that it is true allows you to trust it and go do it, EVEN IF there are "natural" egoic reasons why not. And as you go do it, with FAITH IN that supernatural power, you go forth miraculously and with light and an empowerment that defies the laws of the ego world. It would seem crazy to depend on a Source of strength that you don't even see yet, but your faith in it will bring forth "witnesses", ie demonstrations and PROOF, that you were right to trust it, and this will only further amplify your reliance upon it.
Now you are no longer alone, you are no longer fighting through life with little power, you are no longer scraping to survive. You have all of Heaven behind you! And not just remotely, but like, working through you, orchestrating events, causing healing miracles, giving you strength that you could not have had if the ego were your source. Bypassing all illusions and all physical laws completely.
God really is a "supernatural God", a miraculous God. This is what we are to come to learn to trust and depend on. Removing our faith in the ego's world and the ego's laws and the ego's version of reality, we are able to shift allegiance to trusting and depending on God for everthing. For me I feel like I am only just getting started in this, and experimenting with it, but I can only see an exciting trend in future towards INCREASE in this faith, INCREASE in miraculous living, INCREASE in abundance from God, INCREASE in joy and happiness, and INCREASE in trust.
Later, as Jesus promises, that which you had ego-defying faith in, beyond the world, which was unseen, will become more and more seen, and more and more demonstrated, to the point where it is no longer unseen. It is all around you and through you. And you will become more directly in the experience of God, finally FULLY believing that only His truth is true, and that there has never been another truth to replace it. YES!!
A belief that sickness is real must be a belief that God is sick.
Sickness is an attempt to redefine God as less than whole; suffering, and preparing to die.
What we give reality to, or see truth in, becomes our perceived reality. If we believe that sickness is real, we will in some way experience sickness, because we put it there.
If sickness is real, it cannot be healed. Having given reality to it, it has been established with a sense of permanence and held in suspension.
To attempt to heal that which is real, is nonsense. Reality needs no healing. To attempt to heal a real sickness is nonsense. While the belief in sickness remains active, it is actively producing more sickness.
Those who are sick would like to enjoy health. But they do not have this option. They are fixed in sickness, because they believe the world is real. If the world is real, and they have ambition to go from "real sickness" to "real health", it will not work. A healthy body and a sick body are both illusions, and the experience of sickness as real maintains it.
The only way that sickness can be cured is by recognizing sickness is not reality. Giving it no truth, and giving it TO the truth.
One the one hand we may be saying, I want to not be sick, or I want that person to not be sick. But at the same time, we are saying this because we are experiencing "real sickness" and do not like it. Who would enjoy being "really sick"? If sickness were real, we would seem to "really suffer".
Divine health focuses entirely on God's truth and life. It has no room for even a thought of sickness or separation.
Forgiveness overlooks sickness and error from the start.
"The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real?" - ACIM
"Your brother's errors are not of him, any more than yours are of you. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked yourself." - ACIM
"You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything." - ACIM
"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind." - ACIM
Here Jesus has told us that forgiveness overlooks error from the very beginning, because forgiveness is FORE-giveness. It gives truth ahead of time so that it does not PRODUCE errors. Error (judgement) enters in as a FAILURE to be fore-giving - an error in forgiveness ("he who would not forgive must judge").
A form of error is SICKNESS. To overlook sickness we must learn not to make sickness real, which is making the error real.
Therefore to heal sickness, we must withdraw all sense that the error/sickness is REAL, to begin with, otherwise we will be fighting against our own decision to believe in the sickness, and will be in conflict with ourselves. Likely we will wage war against the sickness like it is an enemy, which will only mean that we're waging war against our own desire to keep sickness a reality.
We need to be single minded. One minded. Whole minded. One focus on perfect health and truth, with no room for producing error, and therefore no room for believing that sickness (error) can be in any way real.
When you see or experience sickness, you are in error. You believe the sickness is really happening. You believe you are experiencing it. You are choosing it, and adding to it. You must unbelieve it.
There IS no real sickness!
There IS no real death!
There IS no real sin!
God's truth is the only truth.
"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. 2 Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. 3 This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. "
Basically the first law means that because you believe there is the absence of love/God within you, there are blocks to awareness, thus divisions, thus levels and hierarchies, and now everyone is separate and in competition. If love is not in you, you now have to find it outside of you.
"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."
Since we're all separate and no-one apparently has love in them since it's been denied, we must all be sinners and therefore we all deserve attack and death. Another way to put this is that we now see "someone else" as having denied the love in us, its their fault, so we are justified in attacking them to get it back (even though we did this to ourselves).
"This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. 6 For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son's belief in what he is, and hate him for it."
We then believe that God cannot be the source of love and therefore if God is not a source of love He must be evil and therefore is justified in hating us and wants us to be dead. So our own rejection of His love, creating the illusion of His absence, has rendered Him seemingly like an enemy, and we cannot "go there" to get love or salvation, so we have to find it elsewhere.
"The ego values only what it takes. 2 This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. 3 This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. 4 By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself."
We now perceive that we must take from others in order to "get" what we are in need of, and that be taking from them, you can have it. This is a reversal of the fact that in order to have anything real you have to give it/extend it from God. The ego says you can "gain" or increase by accumulating from others against their will, so since all love is now considered "finite and limited" there is only so much to go around, taking it from others must cause them to have less, and so now you can gain by having more.
"But what is it you want that needs his death? 2 Can you be sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what it is for? 3 And here a final principle of chaos comes to the "rescue." 4 It holds there is a substitute for love. 5 This is the magic that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness that makes it "sane."
In the fifth and final principle, basically we believe that this substitute for love - specialness - can be taken from others by force, causing in the most extreme cases for them to be drained of it thus murdered, and so their death has given you life, for which you are justified due to their sinfulness. We presume that this magical specialness will cure all of our pain and lack and needs and is what we are "lacking" and thus it will bring us salvation, make us sane, and take away all the emptiness. Except, it does not work.
The only solution to the emptiness is to return to awareness of love's presence within, by undoing all stages of separation and denial and becoming aware again that the truth is true - that we are already love, did not separate, have not lacked, and therefore need do nothing to be the love that we already are.
"What YOU have "given" life is NOT alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive APART from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death."
"If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible. There is either a god of fear or One of Love."
"For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."
In heaven, cause or creation produces an effect. This effect is not just an "end-result", but also a beginning. Ends and beginnings are one. A creation inherits from its creator all of the creators abilities. The creation is FULLY given, endowing the creation itself with the same exact capability of creating freely in the likeness of its own creator. Nothing is lost and the "child" creation is not in any way less creative or capable than the "parent" creator. The child can in turn create, and so too its children, with no loss or reduction in the creative ability passed on to each generation. This continues endlessly and immortally in "one continuous line of creation".
On Earth, the story is very different. When we try to create something here, we endow it with a very limited ability of its own to create in turn or in its own likeness. We can build machines which build machines, but only up to a point. Creation here produces effects, but the effect is practically a dead-end. Sometimes we can create things which seem, in turn, to have some limited ability to create other things. But very quickly, the creative flexibility and freedom is diminished down to nothing. After hardly any time at all, all creative ability is lost, we end up with a dead end, and in fact this produces death itself. This world was made as an idea of bringing an end, or putting a stop, to everlasting life.
We're quite proud of being able to reproduce human bodies which pass on traits and give similar potentials to their offspring. This is about as close as we come to any kind of "lineage" or unlimited line of creation. But it still falls far short of the unlimited creative potential of Heaven. Each body eventually typically meets death, because it is limited and most minds in bodies attack their bodies, producing aging and sickness and death, which is the choking-off of creation. With each death, the line of creation comes to a close. This is symbolic of nothing short of the "end of creation" and the end of extension, in which the lineage dies off. To the ego, beginnings and endings are not united, and endings bring a stop to extension. Creating something which cannot itself create, leads to death.
This is why death is so unnatural. It is an attempt to stop creation entirely, to halt the extension of heaven, to cease to do God's will, to stop the flow of life-giving forces from God, to stand in the way of love's expression, to limit and retard the father-son cause-effect relationship, to produce effects which are nothing like their cause, to put a stop to life, to strangle the son of God until there is no life left in Him, and to squeeze every last drop of life from Him. And because death is SO far against the nature of God, SO antithetical to eternal life and constant extension, and so limiting to the unlimited expression of immortality, that anyone exhibiting death in this world cannot be carrying out God's will, nor following the laws of Heaven.
If we are to truly be demonstrations of God's Will, of eternal life, of endlessness, of permanent constancy, of continuation and the total freedom from limitation or reduction, we simply have to overcome death in all its forms so that absolute life can perpetually flow freely and without hindrance through us and as us. We are to become living demonstrations of immortality, a shining light in a dream of death, demonstrating that it is God's will that there be no end to existence, and proving that there IS no death or need for death in the creative life of a Son of God.
This section from "the healing of the dream", Chapter 27, is radical, awesome and mind bending all at once.
It speaks of how forgiveness, which you apply, should not simply forgive, but must also heal YOUR BODY, in order to demonstrate to your brother that HE is forgiven also. That unless forgiveness does this, forgiveness is not COMPLETE.
Some may think this is ridiculous, incorrect, or meaningless. Why show your brother a healed imaginary body? Why bother to heal the body at all? Yet Jesus is VERY clear, that until our forgiveness produces healing of BOTH YOU AND YOUR BROTHER, through a miracle, it is not done.
He goes even further to say that PROVING through DEMONSTRATION that your body is HEALTHY, by healing it along with your mind, speaks far more powerfully to your brother’s sinlessness than anything else you could do.
This is why Jesus also says elsewhere, "the mind AND BODY need atonement", "the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle DEMONSTRATES this", and "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it HEALS THE BODY."
Open your mind. Take a deep breathe. This speaks to the real power of miracle working even at the PHYSICAL level.
"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless? And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just because they would entail effects that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that they are merely errors. Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself.
5 A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him.
6 A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. And hopelessness and death must disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto His Own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.
7 How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself. Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. It does not come from pity but from love. And love would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with no effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is given you to see."
We have many names for death. Headaches, cancer, diabetes, wounds, heartache, unhappiness, grief, lack, depression, insanity, all of it is really death. According to ACIM anything even slightly less than total immortality - eternal life - is a form of death.
"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release."
We have categorized all these sicknesses as if to say there is an entire hierarchy of illusions, some more severe or more dangerous or more total. But they are all one thing, really. Fear of cancer is really fear of death. A cold is a small death. Being sad is death. Anything which moves us away from eternal life is attempted suicide. Any slight lack of absolute joy and worthiness is a sense of having died.
So it's not like, you've just got an issue with a certain kind of sickness, or an inherited specific problem, or a propensity to contract certain issues in certain situations. It's all really one thing. One illusion, all of it is death, and it has only one solution.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
Each time we are unhappy we're moving into death. Each time we're afraid of sicknesss we're moving closer to death. Each time we hold a grievance we want some death. Each time there's a slight twinge of annoyance we're going into death mode.
When we are as God created us, willing to be only that, we are immortal. "You are immortal and you cannot die." And that immortality is accompanied by God's will, joy, love, eternal life, peace, happiness, constant perfection, holiness, creation, etc. These are our natural birthright, given by God. When we move in any way against these things or reject or deny them we are attempting death.
"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. "Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is JOINING."
Each time we move into unconsciousness in some way, into some kind of life-denying rejection of love and joining, a breakdown in our holy relationship, we are trying to bring about death by making ourselves UNAWARE of the truth. This unawareness, attempted unconsciousness, is attempted death and attempted murder. It's not in our best interests, although ultimately it's just a dream and not a reality. But dreams can be nightmares to those who don't want life.
A Course in Miracles is a course in life. A return to immortality. Resurrection from a state of death. We are literally coming back to life, coming home to eternity, and returning to immortality in God.
"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."
"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."
The PURPOSE of a "course", is that you TAKE the course, so that you can learn how to do something, and then AFTER you have taken the course, you are now ABLE to do that thing WITHOUT needing the course itself any more. A course in "mind training" trains your mind, so that ONCE TRAINED, your mind is able to DO something it could not do before.
But with ACIM, a lot of our focus is taken up with struggling TO learn the course, arguing about what it even says or means, and believing that to learn it is to understand what it says. We're fixated on and lost in the pages instead of USING it to undo the NEED for it.
The whole POINT of it though is to TURN YOU INTO A MIRACLE WORKER. And having GRADUATED from the course, you should then be able to perform miracles and be a teacher of God like Jesus.
We spent a lot of time being hung up with the words, what it says what it means, what the metaphysics are, the implications, taking it like a kind of philosophical study, sometimes using it, applying it, as if applying it or doing the lessons is the PURPOSE of the course. But the purpose of the lessons etc is change your mind to get it into a state WHERE you are THEN able to USE what you have learned.
The lessons teach you something and then LATER you USE what has been taught. And yet people get so hung up on the idea that the lessons themselves, or applying the principles, IS the whole course. Well, within the context of the course itself yes, but the whole purpose of even doing this "mind training" is so that you END UP with a trained mind that CAN ACCOMPLISH something.
We shouldn't get so hung up on the course ITSELF. It's there for a reason to serve as a tool and mechanism to guide and direct us and give us tools to work on our minds and heal our hearts. But that's only within the context of "learning it", ie taking the curriculum. Once you get past the course, so to speak, or you graduate from it, you then are in a position to really USE it consistently AS a miracle worker. That was the whole point of taking it, to FINISH IT, and move on.
Like if you were spending 4 years in college or whatever learning how to be a car mechanic, you don't spend the rest of your life in college learning how to be a mechanic. You go BE one. You take what you learned, you rely on your training, and you USE it to accomplish things you could not do at the beginning.
A Course in Miracles is no different. It's a course in learning how to perform miracles to help those who are less able. If you are just aiming to spend your whole life in a love-affair with its words or dwelling on what it says and how it's written then you are STUCK in the classroom not wanting to go out into the big wide world and "get a job" as a miracle worker. The course is meant to be GRADUATED FROM at some point. You're not meant to become a "lifer" who just dwells on it all the time. Put the wheels on the car and make it go!
"Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."
"This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are not alone."
Years ago I had no clue what "atonement" meant, other than being able to quote the Course as saying "nothing happened". This was more or less meaningless to me.
I went about my efforts at "forgiveness" and made some headway but it wasn't until recently that I started to realize just how important the Atonement is.
If you were to do nothing else other than to accept the Atonement, that would be all you need to do. It encapsulates all of forgiveness within it. It shares the same mind of Holy Spirit that forgiveness shares.
Previously I was not really "accepting" that nothing had happened. I tried to tell myself "this hasn't really happened", but it would seem fake and not believable. It didn't even seem especially important or powerful or capable of helping very much - just one more handy phrase to throw at the illusion of being attacked by the world to try to make it go away.
But the atonement IS the cure. It IS salvation. It IS the state of mind in which all has been forgiven and undone. It IS a reflection of your true nature and your innocence. In it ,your innocence is guaranteed and expressed. It is the light which shines away all darkness. It is the beacon of truth and the source of extending miracles as an expression of love.
I could not accept it before because I didn't really know what role it was supposed to play other than some intellectual fact about how none of this happened. I just couldn't accept that nothing had happened. Too much was tied up in illusions seeming to be real. I was too much in belief that I was dealing with a real world with real problems. Even after "doing a forgiveness" I would not be accepting the atonement, not really actually convinced of it or able to genuinely ACCEPT that it was true. And to experience it.
But we must get ourselves into the Atonement if we are to be free of the ego, free of illusions, and free of death. It's not an optional thing. It's MAJOR. It's the doorway home.
The secret to salvation, or the key to salvation, is said to be that "you are doing this to yourself". That concept is like a key that opens the door, because it reveals to you a way to access the Atonement. But it is itself not the Atonement. As an analogy, it is the key, which helps us to access the Atonement, but the Atonement itself is what lies on the other side of the door that the key opens.
Until we can get our mind to the place where we BELIEVE that fear is not real, guilt is not real, sin is not real, separation is not real, and REMEMBER that in God's view we are still completely innocent and MUST be forgiven and lovable/worthy of God, only then are we able to actually ACCEPT, and agree with, and align ourselves with, what the Atonement claims is true.
Only then can we even see, accept, or experience, that all the illusions we thought had really happened did not really happen (due to their unreality), and that therefore we ARE still as God created us. We have to take forgiveness all the way to this truth in order to complete the process and gain access TO a state of forgiveness, in which we and others are seen as FORGIVEN, having done nothing at all. Literally. That literally nothing happened in reality.
Then we will be WILLING to accept and receive God's love again, and share and extend it to others as miracles.
For years I thought scapegoating only happens one way. Usually you find a target and you blame everything on them and attack them. Yeah, not pretty. Usually the target is someone who you are are offended by, threatened be, some kind of "enemy".
But, what I've discovered is, it's possible to use a person that you are very close to, care about, love, etc... in a scapegoating way as well. It just doesn't look like scapegoating because it has all this "I want to help you" stuff thrown in.
You care about the person, you want to see them happy, you want them to not suffer, etc... various forms of "special love".
Usually in projection it's the "icky stuff" that gets projected. The shadow. You repress stuff with your persona and condemn it and project it. You project the sin and guilt most often. But sometimes, you also project from the persona.
This on the surface shows up like a kind of "positive projection" where you think you're just trying to help, fix, save, protect, care about, etc... but these are all ego attitudes. They're the ego's version of healing, the ego's version of forgiveness, the ego's versions of being helpful. They all have strings attached, are codependent, and are conditional.
Guilt within oneself can be repressed and denied, and then you go into a state of believing that you're guilty for causing your loved one to feel unhappy or being sick or having problems etc. So then you try to fix them, save them, change them, coerce them, control them, trying to "make their lives better".
But there's always this unacknowledged neediness, this dependency on getting the other person to heal so that YOU will get some benefit from it, and trying to use their situation of suffering as a way to prove your innocence. If you can undo their suffering, which you believe you caused, through your initial sin, it exonerates you.
This is how the unhealed healer operates. It's a state of believing you are helping when you are hurting. It's much less obvious than typical scapegoating because it does not LOOK LIKE an attack. It's wrapped up in care and special love and victimhood and being a savior and a hero etc. Even in terms of believing you are trying to prevent the person from suffering, sickness, even death. It seems noble. But it's bullshit.
For me this one has been much trickier to recognize and easier to fall into. What doesn't on the surface look like an attack, or making an enemy, is still an ego mechanism for trying to get your needs met. It's still manipulative and controlling. "I need you to be well" has this dark underlying tone of "if you don't be well, I won't love you".
The unhealed healer doesn't have the real love to give, to cause real healing, so doesn't know how to really heal. What passes for healing is not really healing. What passes for concern, worry, caring, is not really healing.
The real problem is the belief you sinned, are guilty for causing someone or something to be negatively affected, and now feel remorse and a sense of guilt that you need to do something to get someone else to reverse so that you can feel better about yourself. "They are healed, so I am not so upset now about what I did" kind of thing. And if they refuse the control and the subtle manipulation, out will come the ego claws "how dare you not get better!". lol
Quite the trap. But there is a way out. You did not sin. You are not guilty. So you do not NEED to fix your projected self condemnation.
We have to be careful when using terms like "real world" and so on. There is a propensity to associate "real" with "ultimate reality", permanence, eternity, heaven etc. As though describing "places". Like you can be "in" reality or outside of it. If something is considered real, you might equate it with Heaven for example.
But this is not really what ACIM means when it refers to things as real. For example it tells you to "make the world real unto yourself", while in the next breath "there is no world".
Real, in these terms, really means "aligned with truth". Or let's say a person is insane, and to that insane person they experience things in an unreal way, a distorted way. When they return to sanity, they return to "reality". In other words, to "what is", or the truth about what is here, rather than the distorted view of it.
So the world we made, Earth, can "become real to you", in the sense that it it can be seen with Christ Vision from a perspective of real love, which lends it the meaning of love. Or moreso, truth. And so now the world is seen in the light of truth and for what it "really is". But this doesn't mean it's real as in ultimate reality. It means you're having what Jesus describes as "accurate perception" of it.
That accuracy, without distortion, is what it means when he refers to "the real world". A world as seen through loving eyes that reveals the "true nature of" the world. The true nature of the world, however, is that it is still an illusion of a world.
So when you make it real unto yourself, that means to love the world regardless of it being an illusion. To see it "with reality" or aligned with truth. Rather than seeing the "unreal world" which is seen through false perception, a distorted, condemned, dark version of the world. A misinterpreted world.
This is why "the real world" is called the real world. It doesn't mean it is reality as in, the location of Heaven. It doesn't mean it is "where ultimate reality is" either. But it does mean this is a state of mind and awareness in which the world is seen through vision, through sane eyes, recognized for what it actually is, rather than having bought into lies, illusions, deceptions or temptations. A clear mind, a right mind, looking with sanity upon simply what it is and nothing more or less.
We reach "the real world" through this process of sorting out perception and aligning with truth. Becoming able to see, without ego distortions and interruptions, what is actually there. What is there, as the world, without our projections of sin and guilt upon it. A forgiven world. A world seen through love's eyes. And in fact a world that God loves. BUT, this does not "make it real" in the sense of it being now some kind of permanent eternal reality. It just means it is now seen in the light, seen with truth, seen with sanity, and recognized. Its "true nature" or "the reality of it" is revealed. But the world's true nature is still that it is an illusion.
This is why "the real world still is but a dream". We move on from the real world.... the forgiven world... the world seen through "realities eyes" so to speak, to go "to reality", where we can now rightfully associate reality and location, or reality and permanence, or reality and eternal life. The Kingdom of God, where everything IS real, is recognized, and ALSO is eternal.
False perception is an illusory world seen in an "unreal way", which makes it seem like hell on earth.
The real world is an illusory world seen in a "real way". This makes it seem like heaven on earth.
Heaven is a real world, the Kingdom, seen in a real way.
There's a radical teaching in the course that the human body should be in a state of perfect health in order to demonstrate a healed mind and symbolize eternal life. This means that if the body is in any way sick or dead it is conveying a message, through example, of attack and accusation. Obviously if a persons mind is healed but their body is not, this would be a conflicted state where the person really lacks conviction in what they claim to believe, because they have not succeeded in healing the body.
If it's true that health and wholeness are real to a person, then the body must portray this physically also, otherwise no-one is going to believe them. As Jesus says, no-one can learn through double messages, so we can't have the mind being healed while the body is sick otherwise we're trying to communicate two different teachings at once. On the one hand our mind says "I believe in healing" while the body is screaming "but here's the proof that I don't".
This isn't a teaching that many see, recognize, or accept.
"Sick bodies are accusers"
"A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed."
"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."
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.
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."
"Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."
Our mind in its natural state is joined with our Soul and with God. In this state, it receives the causal expression and extends it. In a sense, the mind does not have its own content, it just extends what it receives.
After separating from God and ourselves, the mind is cut off from its "owner". This is due to a separation introduced between cause and effect. That which at the effect, the mind, starts to see itself as causeless, and so begins to make up its own ideas about what it is and what is true.
This turns the mind from being an extender of truth, to being a solo broadcaster of imagination.
The problem then is that anyone with an ego tends to broadcast a lot, and tends to receive very little. Being alone or isolated or trying to live without God makes us weak, vulnerable, afraid and helpless. Yet it also makes us spew out "noise", the noisy broadcasts of the ego, which basically is an attempt to be recognized as the cause of oneself, rather than being caused by God or Soul.
In a world where so many people are broadcasting themselves, there isn’t much listening. Consequently, even though people are broadcasting loudly, 24/7, everyone is talking over everyone else. People then are not really being present, available, un-distracted with themselves, or able to pay full attention. That means that those who are broadcasting, paradoxically end up not being heard.
This is because the rest of the broadcasters are not willing to receive. So no matter how loud you shout, if everyone else is also shouting your expressions will be stunted and stifled and you won’t feel like anyone really listens to you. In fact, the more that you shout louder in an attempt to be heard more, you will be heard less.
Many people in this world are expressing the ego. Few are expressing silence or stillness or presence or quietness or a willingness to receive. If you yourself become willing to receive from Spirit, your own mind will become quiet and you will subsequently become willing to receive ie listen to and pay attention to, what other people are expressing. Without distraction from your own thoughts or memories or judgements or attempts to process or reflect on what someone said.
Learning to listen is part of waking up, because it entails your own willingness to listen to Spirit. That means instead of running your own show, you turn your mind and your life over to the care of God. You become willing to receive input from Spirit. You become willing to trust Spirit. You become willing to let Spirit guide your every action, to even speak for you and through you.
The willingness to receive is what has become blocked by the ego. Separations and blocks to awareness are attempts to not listen to God, to hide from God, to replace God’s Word with your own, and to make up your own truth. Becoming willing to accept Atonement entails becoming willing to receive from God, to be guided by God, to allow yourself to accept love, and to let miracles be performed through you.
Therefore as you tune into Spirit, handing over your stolen life to its rightful owner, and giving back control of the mind to Love, you automatically become a better receiver and listener. You become better at being present. You become more available. And you start to allow others to fully express, willing that you receive everything they are offering. This simultaneously creates space for them to fully express themselves, to be heard, and to know that their expressions are not being met by deaf ears or a wall of selfishness. This holding space alone can be very healing.
You simply need to put all of your ego distractions aside, pay full undivided attention to the person, let them express absolutely anything they want to without interrupting or interfering or offering advice or any kind of transmission, without your secret mental judgements or attempts to chew on what they expressed, free of your reactions and defenses, just totally being fully present for them.
Do this for someone and you’ll be offering a tremendous healing service just by listening attentively without judgement. Afterwards, even if their ego erupts in a free-flow of expression, they will feel so peaceful and relieved that finally they could express themselves fully without someone being self-absorbed with their own ego reactions.
Give the gift of unconditional receiving and listening to someone this year. Let them have the microphone 100%, not 50%. Let them tell you whatever they want to tell you and just receive it.
Giving and receiving are one.
Have you ever noticed that the physical form or shape of objects, is touted as making something "unique", but really they're all the same thing?
In the company I work for I have to add thousands of products to a website, and so I see all these variations on a theme.
Then I find myself asking myself, why would anyone want to have 3000 different types of this item? One with a little but of a more rounded look, one with more fancy bits, one in a different color, one with shiny metal on it. And companies are churning out these products by the thousands as if they are all important and worth having. We have become quite obsessed with possession of such crap.
After a while I become completely disillusioned, which is a good thing.
The human race has become really good at manipulating forms, designing objects, and creating appearances of differences. The explosion of "creating" (making stuff) is on a roll.
Since the industrial revolution especially we've really gone wild exploring every conceivable "version" of the same thing, every way to take advantage of material properties and differences, and all the different forms we can come up with.
Amazon now sells almost half a billion products, and most of them are just variations on a theme. There are now 60,000 t-shirts for sale. Do you really think the differences between these t-shirt is SO VAST that they are all completely unique? How many ways are there to cover up the upper torso?
This is something of a madness which humanity has pursued and doesn't really know how to stop pursuing. This notion that if the form is different, it is a unique thing. some forms or shapes are more desirable, and finding the "best ones" is some kind of salvation. This is mental illness.
Unique tools are needed to solve unique problems. The ego loves this. It loves to create new appearances of unique situations which call for a custom solution which is nothing like any other solution, does not extend to solve any other problem, and keeps the solution isolated and limited to this one need.
This belief that all forms are unique and different and worth existing, is the ego's insanity. Exactly why do we need 60,000 t-shirts, or 100,000 different kinds of trousers, or a million songs?
You might say well, this is human nature, to create and express and explore. No, it's not. It's UNNATURAL.
Personally I have grown significantly disillusioned with physical objects. To want to have certain special objects or toys or whatever, to try to receive their specialness or to think that I am somehow better off by choosing exactly the right items.
I used to buy into the illusion of differences of form much more and wanted to have this item or that item or be very careful about choosing. Now I care much less. Much more laid back in terms of how I think these things are going to save me or how I need to have the best this or that.
Sure it can be fun to shop, no harm done. But perceptually and psychologically, "civilized humanity" has become lost in its obsession with forms - particularly the illusion of form, its appearances and its special isolated different properties. This is a huge world filled with junk.
It's funny when Jesus talks about this and how we think that we're doing important things, earning little bits of paper and metal discs, spending them on ridiculous things we don't need or really want, to decorate and adorn our fake bodies and our fake homes, all as substitutes and distractions away from God. lol
"This world holds nothing that I want".
"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.
It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of health. Protect the body, and you will be saved.
These are not laws, but madness. "
In heaven, we are powerful creative beings and co-creators with God. The proper use of our creative power is constructive and cooperative and aligned with God's will. We create only perfection, beauty, happiness and eternal life.
"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."
"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."
God gave us freedom to create, but that freedom includes the potential ability to TRY to use freedom to imprison freedom, to create something without extending God, to will that we be unwilling, and to deny reality.
This mis-use of creative power that essentially runs against the very nature of creative power itself, produces what's called a "mis-creation". It results in nightmarish hallucinations of impossible things happening, a world without God, a place of suffering and mortality. These "creations" are the result of mis-guided, insane, contradictory, amateurish and childish uses of creative power.
"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not."
The stuff we mis-create (make), which includes spacetime and Earth and bodies and death, is like a lower and more primitive form of expression. It's really an attempt to create a dead-end, or a world which cannot co-create and cannot live forever.
We use our infinite power to create an uncreative world that we do not want. We're still being essentially creative, but we're creating stuff that isn't ultimately real or true or alive. The "content" that we come up with isn't aligned with God's nature. Like we've "devolved" somewhat and everything we create is lacking in some way (lack of love=sin - a world of sin).
"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."
"The instinct for creation is NOT obliterated in miscreation. That is why it is always invested with reality."
"You are much too tolerant of Mind-wandering, thus passively condoning its miscreation."
"While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."
"Both the Separation and the fear were MISCREATIONS of the mind, which have to be undone."
So essentially mind has one of two "modes", it can either create constructively in line with God and love, or it can mis-create which produces fearful things which seem to lack perfection and do not last.
If we completely leave out any sense of judgement about miscreation being wrong, or a sin, or something to be guilty for, or to attack the miscreation or condemn it in any way, we would see that it is simply a mistake. It is just a mis-use of the mind by someone that doesn't recognize the futility and self-deception and pointlessness and confusion that is inherent in trying to create the uncreateful.
We could look upon such miscreations, such as Earth, without any judgement. We could think of it as like the creation of a child that has not learned or perfected or mastered its abilities yet. It makes things which are broken, primitive, don't work, contradict themselves, are full of limits, are ugly, designed to malfunction and to fall short.
And then we could consider what God's attitude would be as a loving parent. God would not condemn or hate or judge harshly what had been mis-created by the child. He would recognize the shortcomings, the mistakes, the limitations of what had been made, but would see it as at least a "good first effort" by his children, with potential for improvement. And he would encourage them to continue perfecting the use of their creative power.
"It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."
If we think of the world therefore as "somewhat bad, not all that bad, a good try" ... recognizing it for what it is and is not, realizing the mistakes inherent in its making, we can be what we call "forgiving" toward it.
Forgiveness could be described as a loving attitude that you have towards something unloving. A less limited viewpoint towards the limited. A more inclusive mindset towards something made to exclude. A less judgemental or attacking perspective on something which was made as an attempted attack on God.
Instead of the world being seen as a horrible hellscape, or as a half-empty cup, we can see the half-full cup and at least give the son of God credit for "trying" (lol). Even if that trying involved some failing. We can let the world be the limited broken thing that it is, while being mindful to "do better in future". To master our creative power and to create greater higher works of art that are more aligned with God and more in-keeping with sanity and harmony with eternal life.
God doesn't condemn or judge our mis-created world. But he would rather that we return to co-creatorship in heaven with him to create only the eternal and the loving.
"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."
It sounds like maybe we have a guilty conscience for what we think we've made, doesn't it? A guilt over an attack on God, a guilt about having mis-created, a hatred of what we mis-created, a sense of shame and fear that the hideous thing we made is lurching at us and trying to kill us, even though we are its maker. It's like we made a terrible mistake (a supposed sin) by mis-creating, and it induced guilt, and now we're living with the fallout of believing God would hate us for it.
Jesus also warns us that if we somehow regard the world as a sin, something to be hated, even destroyed, then we're actually denying the fact that we have very powerful minds that can create entire worlds. We need to acknowledge what we HAVE "created", even if it was in a spirit of fear and murder (unmiraculous creation), as being a not-entirely-evil "first attempt" that at least demonstrates the sheer power we DO have to create, even if WHAT we created falls short in so many ways.
"...it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the un-mindful (physical). There is little doubt that the mind can miscreate. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of its power, one is also denying the power itself.)"
Earth and its surroundings, spacetime, is simply something we've mis-created in a mis-use of our divine power, in a form which is unlike what God would create, and of a nature which tends to attack itself. It is seemingly partly creative and partly destructive, partly good and partly evil, partly light and partly dark. It's an expression of the belief that an opposite to God is possible, even if such a belief is mistaken.
What we created (made, dreamed, hallucinated) is not real and cannot last. But for what it is, it at least shows that we do have infinite power and we did come up with something. And we keep mis-creating horrible nightmares as we go along. It's just that we need to create higher, better, and more loving creations. We need a higher prayer, a higher song, a better way, a more beautiful content.
Meanwhile, in our forgiveness of what we did mis-create, we must find a way to acknowledge and respect its maker. Even if we did "a shit job of it", it at least reveals some of our qualities, here and there. There are aspects to the world which are symbolic of light things, as well as dark things.
There are some forms of beauty, forgiveness is an earthly form of love, bodies can be repurposed to serve the mind, and perhaps the decrepit shit-heap that we came up with isn't entirely devoid of traces of the son of God's perfection. Even in subtle ways perhaps there is a trace of beauty, of order, of health, of cooperation, of peace, and of love, intermingled with the mis-created forms.
"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."
"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection."
We made a chaotic universe, complete with every imaginable form of limitation and difficulty and problem and struggle. A world whose nature and laws are not the perfect unity and harmony of heaven, and which indeed attempts to be as opposite and lacking as possible.
But we still must look on the brighter side and find the proper higher interpretation of it. The way God would look upon the rudimentary and somewhat laughable deformities made by an inexperienced child. The world is what it is, complete with all its faults and partial symbols of heaven. And it will end, because it mis-created as an idea of limiting existence and life.
In heaven perfection is even greater, even more broad, even more natural and ever-present. It is the absolutely perfectly divine expression of a perfect creator. And it is your true home in which you co-create absolute perfection and beauty with God.
"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."
"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."
As you become more aware that you are doing everything to yourself, and you gradually learn to take responsibility for everything you are experiencing, at some point you'll start noticing more and more that you keep attacking yourself.
Whereas before you noticed perhaps when you were attacking other people, and were thinking that this had no effect on you, and somewhat learned to forgive them and see their innocence, now the focus shifts a bit more directly to yourself.
"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" takes on a more obvious meaning. You literally keep attacking your own self.
The way these attacks happen is through moments of fear and guilt.
I'll be in the middle of some form of questioning, or self doubt, or worrying about something, and Jesus will poke me... ."Paul".... and then I know that means, I'm making some mistake here. So then I stop and just look at what I'm doing.... and usually it'll be sort of obvious that I'm either in fear, or I'm in guilt. Those are the two main ones.
Often though it's not so obvious what mistake I'm making. Sometimes I have to open up and try to figure it out, especially if I'm far into it. It can be quite confusing and obscure. Fear is not always obvious in its many many forms.
In general, I undermine myself all the time. So what I've become aware of is that, just as the Course says, I keep doing stuff to myself. I keep having attack thoughts and mistaken perceptions which *directly* work against myself.
So its kind of weird when you realize this, that you actually are at war with yourself. You keep on believing, thinking, perceiving, feeling and doing stuff that undermines you, thwarts you, detracts from your confidence, makes you feel unworthy, doesn't give yourself credit, diminishes your value and all kinds of other stuff.
So now it's sort of a cleanup job. You have to realize all the ways that you keep being AGAINST YOURSELF. At the very least, you have to realize you are against yourself, at all.
This being against yourself was completely covered up in a state of denial, when you were more involved with projecting onto others. And that projection really strongly distracted you from *recognizing* that you were attacking yourself. It convinced you that it was always other people who you needed to attack, who were receiving the effects of your attacks, and who this was all about. Once enough of that projecting is undone and you learn to do it less, it suddenly becomes apparent that it's actually not them that you've been attacking, its YOU.
So now you have to deal with yourself. But this is kind of interesting now, because it means that you now know you're really dealing with YOURSELF, not other enemies. You are your ONLY enemy. And there is a lot of hope in that, because it means that you are more aware that you have an opportunity. Since your enemy is yourself, you recognize that if you simply stop attacking yourself, and learn to recognize the ways that you do attack yourself, then there is basically NOTHING STOPPING YOU from becoming a far more capable, empowered, aware, happy person. There is nobody else and nothing else to influence you to stop you once you're on this fast-track to your true self.
So now the challenge for me and you, is recognizing more often and more clearly, when we are attacking ourselves, and learning what that attack comprises - is it fear, is it guilt, is it unlove - and CHOOSING AGAIN and learning not to do that to ourselves. As we do this we will grow in confidence and certainty and love and happiness, on our way home to God.
The idea of your persona is that it rejects everything you don't like, keeping only the good stuff.
If you get really good at using your persona, you will get really brutal at cutting out things which seem even remotely bad.
Eventually you'll be trying to be SO good and perfect, that there will be practically nothing left to relegate to your 'bad' category. Like you hear people saying, "nothing is ever good enough for them" - a sign of a lack of self acceptance.
And if that carries on, there will be nothing left to get rid of, you will cease to exist. Death.
So you can see, the persona, which seems all sweet and nice and special and important, glowing with a false innocence, is in fact the ego's wish to destroy you, piece by piece, by gradually stripping off more and more parts of you and relegating them to hell, in the pursuit of 'being a God'. And along the way it will complement you on how fantastic your 'good bits' are, even though your 'good bits' are soon to come under scrutiny.
The persona attacks everything that is contrary to what it wants to keep. And its eventual mission is the total removal of absolutely everything that could be conceived of as less than absolutely perfect. It thinks that by doing this, what you'll end up with is some kind of totally 'perfect self'. The perfect ego, a shining glory, the jewel in the crown.
It should be clear that the only ambition the ego really has is to get rid of you. The only purpose of the persona is to slice you up and separate you out and throw large chunks in the trash. What it keeps, it temporarily exalts like some kind of hero or savior or idol. But slowly it continues to find flaws in that idol, demanding even more vigorous 'purification' and sacrifice.
It says, well, if you give this up, and give that up, you'll be better off. It tells you you don't need all of what is, you only need the special good bits. But it doesn't tell you what happens if you take that to its ultimate goal. Keep going, and there will be nothing left of you. You'll live in a world where everything and everyone seems like your enemy, you are totally cut off and alone, depressed and frightened and weak, barely recognizing that you even exist, BUT .... drumroll... you'll have your perfect little fake self. Yay. And then you'll die alone.
So you can see... as you dabble even a little bit in being dishonest, inauthentic, not yourself, or trying to manipulate reality to get some kind of special value, special attention, special love... you're basically buying into a death trap. The temptation is you will indeed seem to get some special love, but.... it calls for a sacrifice. You've got to give up an arm and a leg for it. And then it's still not enough.
This is the promise the ego has for you. Go along with its plan for salvation, seem to achieve some kind of fake goal, or seem to find some kind of fake trophy, or seem to present yourself as some kind of ruler of the universe, and, in return, all of the rest of what you really are will be suppressed and attacked and gotten rid of.
Ultimately, the ego's perfectionism guarantees that NOTHING is acceptable. And sooner or later this will become apparent. Until you wake up and realize there has to be a better way.
You don't need a persona. You don't need an ego. You have God.
I complain that food manufacturers constantly package food in containers which are way larger than the contents, and when you go to open it up you find it's half empty and feel deceived. It IS a dishonest practice. At first it was the 'oh potatoe chips need extra air space to cushion them against breakage' but then it was... well, here's 20 other foods that don't have this risk but still come with a large airspace. The packaging mis-represents what you actually will get. Ok, that's just a deceptive shitty lie.
Ok. That's my complaint. Now, let's look at what has happened because of this complaint.
I've started out by seeing myself as being victimized. I ask, who am *I* in this scenario. There's the food manufacturer over there and there's the product sitting in front of me and I'm seeing this scenario where I'm looking at ME in a particular way. I think I'm looking at the food container and complaining, but that's actually a few steps down the road. What happened before my angry reaction was me seeing myself 'in' the scenario as a victim. ie..
1) If the food item has more empty space than needed, I have decided that this means there is dishonesty. It's dishonesty on the level of form and implies deceit.
2) If there is deceit in the food item, and because I say it means they are being deceiving, and because I have an interest in this food item, I am now a part of the story and it is ME that is being deceived. It's personal!
3) Now that it's 'affecting me' (because of the way I CHOSE to position myself as the victim in the story), I am now justified in anger and annoyance. Now I can blame them. Now I can say it's their fault that I am angry, because what they did happened before what I did. But this covers up the fact that what I did (made it real, gave it meaning it doesn't have, treated it as non-neutral), happened before anything else.
4) If I am seeing guilt in the food container then who is experiencing guilt? I might be trying to get THEM to experience guilt but it's a part of my reality, so *I* am experiencing guilt, albeit displaced. That means there's guilt in my mind, and I believe in my own guilt. That means I believe I've sinned, and I'm trying to pin it on the food container and the people who made it wrongly.
So as I find the huge airspace in a bag of chips annoying, or the gross vomit-like quality of tv dinners to be nothing like the beautiful arrangement on the box cover, or the totally unnecessary container size housing rather less product just to get me to think that I am getting more than I am, I have this opportunity to realize.... this is ONLY there to trigger my own self-attack and to remind me that I am CHOOSING to see myself as a victim, and I'm only choosing that because *I* BELIEVE* I am deceptive and dishonest and guilty. Hmmm.
So... then it boils down to this. I can't hold THEM guilty without holding myself guilty, because this guilt is mine. Hmm. Ok, I forgive them BECAUSE they did not do anything, I DID IT. And I forgive me because I did not really DO anything, nothing has happened. And I am forgiven already because none of this happened in the first place, it's just a dream that isn't real. And I am actually whole and one with GOD right now being HAPPY rather than right. Yay. We are ALL innocent and equal and One and none of us are guilty at all.
Ok now to eat some chips.
Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, isn't really optional. It's not something you can choose not to do, and it isn't something to aspire to. But that's how it's often viewed.
There is a metaphysical truth that, at the very least, other people ARE you, so how you are treating them you are treating yourself directly. But I think this leaves open room for error because there are some other parts to this that you may not realize.
First of all, you can only share love. Love IS sharing. It means joining and communing and being equal and being ONE. This is the underlying truth on which this idea is based. You CAN only share love. So this really means, you CAN only "do love" to others, you cannot actually really do anything else to others.
So when it comes to "how should I treat other people", the ONLY option that you can REALLY pursue is to love them. Love will be extended and shared to and with them. If your attitude is NOT love, IT WILL NOT BE SHARED.
So that means you CANNOT do unto others anything other than love.
There is also more to this.
Your mind, when you are believing that YOU are sinful, will become a split mind. It's a mind that believes separation has really happened. And this separation has happened INSIDE YOURSELF. Your own mind has become split. Part of this split will entail that a portion of mind remain in your awareness - conscious awareness - and a portion will be sectioned off and repressed as a place to shove your unconscious guilt. But the splitting off of that second part of mind (which produces a shadow, at war with your conscious persona), is now experienced as "not myself"
And so then you are in a state of disassociation from your whole self. The part of YOU that you think is not you, which you are trying to get rid of like crazy, you will believe you are separate from it - that it's not you. And so when some person comes along you will see them as "not you" also, and will then see IN them your own "not you" part of your own mind. You will relate to your own "not you" mind as though it belongs them them, since it doesn't belong to you. And you will attack that part.
So now you think you are "doing ego" to someone else. That you are treating them with less than love. And that means it now seems optional as to how you treat others. But really you are not even doing anything to them at all. If they were awake they'd know this. You are just attacking your own self indirectly. So you're not ACTUALLY doing anything to others, if it's coming from your ego. You literally ARE only attacking yourself.
So now we have this situation.... either you love both yourself and others, or you go into a private world where you are attacking yourself, but believing everyone else is involved. Nobody else is involved AT ALL.
Thus it's not really a case of having to then figure out how to "do unto others" in a better way. You're NOT doing unto others. The only thing you CAN share with them is LOVE. If you are not in love with yourself, you will do nothing "to" them at all, because unlove is a WITHDRAWAL from sharing.
So now we shift from trying to "do unto others as you'd have them do unto you", to something more like "do unto YOURSELF as you would have YOUR TRUE SELF do unto YOU."
Translated, that means learning to undo your own belief that YOU are sinful, which will result in you becoming aware that you LOVE yourself. You WILL then be able to extend this love to others. So learn to do unto yourself what GOD would do unto you, which is to recognize you are worthy, forgiven and innocent forever. That should be your aim, and don't be so concerned that you even CAN do anything to anyone else.
It's not because of some kind of guilt-ridden ambition to be nice to other people that you're doing this. Since you can't do unto others unless it IS love, you can forget about believing that you're mistreating people. You are only capable of mistreating yourself.
So often I believe I know. I think that I have the facts or the information. Or that I have experiene. Or that my assumptions are true. Or that I know better than someone else. Or that they are wrong so I must be right.
But I am reminded to ask myself, do I really, REALLY know? I mean, do I actually have direct knowlege that this thing is true, or even an ability to do so, or am I just making shit up as I go along?
The other day I was worrying about an outcome in a situation which I felt "sure" was going to go only one possible way. Holy Spirit said, "you don’t know".
At first I could not accept that I did not know. I thought I DID know. I thought I had a very good story or reason to explain what was obviously going to occur. But... I allowed myself to question that. Did I REALLY know, or was this just my best educated guess? Did I REALLY know, or was I just relying on my ego intellect or my past or my judgements to assume I know?
And gradually over the course of a few minutes, as I allowed myself to question this... to consider,... maybe I do not actually KNOW.... maybe I am just making a strong guess and passing it off as knowledge, gradually what at first seemed like a fact "orbiting" off in the distance poking fun at my convictions, became much more centrally accepted within.
I had to admit. I actually do not know. I do not know what is going to happen. There was, along with that, a kind of peace, because now the whole drama story of doom and gloom of what was "sure to happen" no longer had a basis. Without the assumed outcome I was trying to control and avoid to prevent its awfulness, maybe I didn’t need to do anything at all. Maybe I simply was mistaken and maybe there is in fact a possibility and a hope that I had not considered.
While I am busy focusing on depending on my own self and my own knowing and my own figuring out, I am not being open to the facts or reality. I am being closed off and not listening. Nor am I leaving room open for a miracle, for healing, or for completely unexpected outcomes. Possibilities that I had not even thought were possible.
While it’s important to recognize that I do not know "anything", the key here is identifying that I do not know anything *independently* from God. So if I am trusting my own know-how and pride, then I am not knowing the truth. If I put that aside and admit that the stuff I thought I knew, was not real knowledge, I actually become open TO real knowledge.
We are to give up fake knowing. We are to surrender trying to think we know things which are not really truth. We are to let go of false beliefs which masquerade as very certain convictions and definite consequences. But as we give these up, this fake knowledge, this fake certainty, this fear which pretends not to be fear, this prediction which is simply imagined and unreal, it makes way for revealing TRUE knowledge.
True knowledge is the ability to know God, to trust God, to not need to control things, to allow and accept reality, rather than trying to interpret it change it or form false beliefs about it. Be willing to admit you know nothing, and it will open the doorway to knowing everything there really is to know.
There is some small part in the course where Jesus talks about how, at a very high level, in the transition between ego and spirit, more or less upon entering heaven, that it becomes possible to literally directly know everything, experientially, rather than having to rely on your own "accumulated" scraps and memories and learning. We have taught ourselves a lot of bullshit which we have to become willing to give up, recognizing that it is just "made up". Stuff that we make up is not truth. We do not really *know*, when we are trusting these beliefs.
Beliefs are not truth. Beliefs are not knowledge. I do not know what anything is for. I do not know what anything including this means.
Anything this side of the separation from God, comprises the ego's thought system, and the ego THINKS in terms of exclusion. "If this is true, and that is different, that is not true".
Anything the OTHER side of the separation from God - God Himself, creation, sonship, souls, heaven etc, is NOT governed by the ego thought system. It's rules and laws completely defy the ego. God functions in *inclusive logic*. The way that God "reasons" is totally unlike the ego.
When we use the ego's thought system, and the ego's way of thinking, to try to understand the meaning or nature of GOD's system, it is absolutely guaranteed every time to produce false conclusions. The ego looks at God and sees separations where there are none, and sees unity where there are divisions. It CANNOT see the whole of God's nature comprehensively or inclusively without rejecting some parts of it as false.
Any study of heaven or God or creation or anything not of the ego, cannot be accurately done *using* the way the ego thinks. It's not merely a matter of just "thinking about it better" - the ego's use of logical exclusions is fundamentally a FAULT based on separation that instantly pollutes the conclusions you'll come to.
The only way to correctly discern the nature of creation, heaven, sonship, God etc, is to THINK LIKE GOD. And this thinking like God comes to conclusions which are TOTAL NONSENSE to the ego's thinking, seems like they are "false conclusions" when in fact they are true, and produces the total opposite of what the ego would conclude.
This is why huge chunks of A Course in Miracles's metaphysics and statements have been GROSSLY MISUNDERSTOOD and mis-taught since the beginning of the Course's inception. And we are making this same mistake to this day.
In God, it is logical to say, "If this is true, and that is seemingly separate from this, that must be true also." See how that seems to make no sense to the ego? It sounds false, but it's not. Example: "If God has given all of His love to me, and there is another soul here, then God must have also given all of His love to that soul as well." The ego screams, "no" "that can't be" "there's not enough love to go around". And this is because the thought system of God is based on SHARING and INCREASE, which the ego totally opposes and cannot see sense in.
The ego says, "if I give this to you, I will lose it." God says, "if I give this to you, it will increase and we will both have it". They are fundamentally different modes of reasoning. The ego says, "if this statement Jesus just made about heaven is true, this other statement is saying something seemingly different so it must be false". God says, "this statement Jesus just said is true, AND that other statement is true, and there is NOT a contradiction."
The ego is fundamentally incapable of accurately depicting or representing God's nature. It's thought system, it's very WAY OF THINKING about God, is broken. It is limited. It CANNOT think "like God" in order to be able to "map God" or accurately "see" God. Instead it dissects God and splits Him up unnaturally and joins parts together which are not joined.
Any discussion about the nature of God or his creation MUST be made based on how God thinks, thinking about it LIKE the way that God thinks about it, which means "holographic logic", otherwise all manner of false conclusions will arise.
And MAJORLY FALSE CONCLUSIONS HAVE ARISEN pertaining to everything the course says about God's nature, heaven, the sonship, the existence of individual free-willed souls, the performance of miracles, the demonstration of the end of death, and various other things, which has massively watered-down A Course in Miracles and turned it into a sanitized powerless blob-forming heaven-splitting sonship-denying miracle-less lie.
We need to learn to "think like God thinks" if we are to be part of Holy Spirit's thought system. It' snot just a matter of still thinking like the ego but in a happy way. The Holy Spirit's thoughts are TOTALLY UNLIKE the ego's thoughts, and his reasoning and logic are TOTALLY UNLIKE the ego's reasoning and logic. To grasp heaven and to attune ourselves to it, we have to embark on embracing an entirely new way of thinking, one which does not dissect Jesus's statements and does not see contradictions where they don't exist.
God created you perfect. It's a done deal. You're already complete. You cannot add to yourself or take away. You can't be changed. You are permanently as God created you. He didn't leave anything out or fail to share anything or leave you less than completed. You can't be perfected or improved upon. You're already absolutely divine.
So the one lie is, anything that tells you otherwise. Anything of the ego that suggests, you need to do this or that, go here or there, learn this or that, attain this or that, become this or that. It's much more a case of, sinking into and accepting, owning up to, admitting to, become re-awakened to, what is ALREADY THERE underneath all this bullshit that we've dumped on top to PRETEND we are not immortal.
e.g. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"
But in truth you are unhurtable, invulnerable, immortal. So all this time spent trying to prove otherwise, is futile. It doesn't change anything, because it's literally impossible to change your soul. All we can do is deny it and pretend it's not divine.
So we have this divine self in us, as us. It's all we can really be. And so what is all this other stuff? All the seeking, the searching, the figuring out, the unraveling, all this work and effort, all the effort of striving to belief, trying to convince ourselves, isn't absolutely all of it completely pointless? The truth about what we are can only be accepted or denied, not changed.
It seems then ultimately the entire thing about awakening to our divine holy self is simply that we stop doing everything ELSE that is taking us AWAY from it. If we would stop weighing ourselves down we'd float right up to the surface. If we'd stop attacking ourselves we'd be perfect already. If we'd stop resisting the truth we'd just melt into being ourselves. If we'd get rid of all this ego stuff, which is the attempt to be something we're not, we'd simply return to being what we really are already.
It seems counter intuitive because it's more like retracing your steps and going backwards, going within, returning to, rather than building something new. The whole effort to "become" is an ego effort to DEFINE what you are. Or moreso to redefine it. Which is always a lie because you can't be changed.
So every opinion about ourselves can't be true, unless it aligns with our nature as God created us. "I am still as God created me" states this perfectly. Simply, nothing has happened to you, nothing has changed you, and this whole dream has been an excursion into nothing. We simply need to accept that WE ALREADY ARE perfect in God and stop trying to prove otherwise.
This is why the Atonement is simply a matter of ACCEPTING what is already true about you, and nothing else.
""I am as God created me."
This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world. From time to time we will repeat it, as we reach another stage in learning. It will mean far more to you as you advance. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God.
Here is the Word by which the Son became His Father's happiness, His Love, and His completion. Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.
Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth."
There are various feelings you can seem to experience, but they are not real feelings. When you're in the ego, lost and confused, you'll discover a wide variety of different feelings.
Ego emotions include sadness, grief, loss, frustration, anger, excitement, guilt, fear, dread, anxiety, worry, hurt, shame, embarrassment, unworthiness, and all kinds of other sensations. These all include some element of suffering and unhappiness.
It is easy to think that all these feelings are normal human emotions. Everyone has them. They seem commonplace and everyone has felt them. But can they be real feelings? Can they be states which God Himself ordains?
If God's will for you is perfect happiness, then anything even slightly short of perfect happiness must involve the ego. As soon as we're entering into guilt, fear, any kind of emotional turmoil, we're in an insane state of mind.
It's true enough the mind can invent all kinds of states and sensations, which we experience and register as "how I feel". But at some point these feelings have to be brought into question, because they are not really ever valid, real, or of God.
So if I'm feeling angry, I'm going to at some point have to look at this and recognize, this anger is not something God ever feels, and it cannot be real. God is never angry and His creations cannot be angry. So if I am angry, I am having a false, illusory feeling. I feel it, seemingly, I experience it. But it's false. It's a made-up artificial feeling.
All the ego emotions are made up. They are not of God, nor are they God's will. If I feel guilty, I've invented a lie about myself. If I feel sad or grieving, I'm very deceived and believing separation has really happened. If I am afraid I'm believing in sin and punishment. If I'm feeling hurt, I've accused my brother of attacking me.
Mixed into all the ego feelings there's always an element of me hurting myself, me trying to hurt others, and some kind of accusation or judgement. These aren't true feelings. An enlightened person should not ever be experiencing these feelings because such feelings cannot exist without ego.
It's not enough to say, well, there is anger arising but I am separate from it. That's bullshit. Someone is causing it and choosing it. God's children are never unhappy or angry or upset or afraid or guilty or suffering in any way. God's children are entitled to perfect peace, permanent happiness, and constant joy. His angels never stop smiling.
Trying to justify that these emotions are "valid" is an ego attempt to make it okay to suffer and to feel states which are illusory. When I am "not at peace", I MUST have made a wrong decision. I made the decision myself. I chose to not be at peace, meaning I wanted to feel something unlike God feels.
If I am feeling anything other than how God intended that I feel, I have invented a false feeling. It seems perfectly possible to experience these feelings, even very intensely and deeply. But they MUST be states of mental illness, they must be forms of attack and denial, and they must involve my ego.
Any time that we are sad, it is because we think there is something to feel sad about. There is nothing to feel sad about. God's Kingdom is perfect and there is no basis for any kind of unhappiness. If we are unhappy we are mistaken. If we are feeling anything other than joy we are blocking awareness of love.
So there are fake feelings and there are real feelings. Just as my only real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God, so too my only real feelings are the feelings I feel LIKE God and WITH God. Those include joy, happiness, bliss, peace, love, holiness, innocence, safety, and gratitude.
Anything less than true feelings must reflect states of darkness and deception. Something has gone wrong if we are not happy all the time. Something is not working correctly if the mind is experiencing a nightmare.
We MUST therefore bring into question ALL false ego emotions, regardless of their seeming reality, intensity or justification. They are not true, they are not real, and they do not exist. It is not simply enough to question thoughts and beliefs, we must also FEEL the love of God at all times.
Whether it be truth, or love, or the Holy Spirit, or Christ, the Holy instant, or your soul/one self, something that has come from God has to be the thing that corrects your mind. Your ego mind cannot correct itself. Light must enter from outside of it. You can't solve a problem from inside the problem.
Something of God has to help you. This is because LOVE is the active agent that CAUSES fear to disappear and GIVES life in order to UNDO death. Something that HAS life in it must give that life to that which lacks life. The lack cannot be supplied by that which is lacking. Those who have MORE, give to those who have less. Those who have and ARE love, give to those who lack love.
Your task is to RECEIVE an "off-the-shelf solution" from God, a solution that is GIVEN to you and done FOR you, such that all you need to is accept it and receive it, and then extend it to others. Love and life does not come from you, it comes through you. Correction does not come from you, it comes through you. Healing does not come from you, it comes through you.
"Truth will correct all errors in my mind. I am mistaken when I think I can Be hurt in any way. I am God's Son, Whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God."
"Never approach the holy instant AFTER you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is ITS function. Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function."
"referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency."
"Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."
"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him."
"He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."
"No needs will long be left unmet, if you leave them ALL to Him Whose FUNCTION is to meet them. This is His function, and NOT YOURS."
"Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be. It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal. I need ADD nothing to His plan, But to RECEIVE it, I must be willing NOT to substitute my own IN PLACE of it."
"We thank you, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end. Help us not interfere, and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for every trial we think we still must meet."
"The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in answering your EVERY question what to do. He KNOWS. And He will TELL you, and then do it FOR you."
"Salvation comes from my One Self."
"The love of Christ will light YOUR faces, and shine from them into a darkened world that NEEDS the light"
"Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead."
"And God Himself shall wipe away all tears."
"The answer is GIVEN. Seek not to ANSWER it, but merely RECEIVE the answer AS it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do NOT attempt to make yourself holy to be READY to receive it. That is but to confuse YOUR role with His. Atonement CANNOT come to those who think that THEY must FIRST atone, but only to those who offer it NOTHING MORE than simple willingness to make way for it."
"All this is GIVEN you, who would but SEE your brother sinless. All this is GIVEN, waiting on your desire but to RECEIVE it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see. Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him."
There are two worlds. The Kingdom of God, which really exists, and the world we made to oppose the Kingdom as an assertion of death and non-existence.
The Kingdom of God is a permanent, real world. It is Creation, in which everything is alive and has eternal life. All is immortal, perfect, loving and at peace. Nothing can ever happen to this world or anything in it, except through the joyful extension of God's will to create and share and celebrate.
The world we made, was made as an opposite to the Kingdom. It is encapsulated by spacetime and takes on the form of everything material, physical, energetic etc. All of it is an illusion, a dream, an imagined world, where strange things seem to happen and impossibilities seem possible.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."
"Earth, Heaven's opposite in EVERY way."
The simple but seemingly difficult challenge for us, is to put all of our attention, belief, trust, identity and intimacy into the hands of the Kingdom, and NOT into the hands of the world we made. To overlook the world we made and look past it with Christ Vision TO the Kingdom is our goal.
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
"Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is: "Be vigilant ONLY for God and HIS Kingdom."
"This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF. The ego speaks AGAINST His Creation, and therefore DOES engender doubt. You cannot go BEYOND belief UNTIL you believe wholly."
"Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION. Truth is WITHOUT illusions, and therefore WITHIN the Kingdom. Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."
"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, death."
This seems difficult because it's asking us no less than to identify as being something beyond all bodies, to recognize others as not bodies at all, to find nothing in the world we made that we value or want, to recognize the world has nothing to offer, to let go of all delusions about the world being real, to fall for absolutely no temptations to believe otherwise, and to completely transition to identifying and recognizing ourselves as ONLY spirit.
We are OF another world. We seem to be IN this world. But we need to become absolutely clear that there is no world here. This doesn't seem to be easy and in fact seems difficult given the sheer extent of how much we believe in, react to, identify with, and are convinced by the illusory world presented to us. But it IS our final goal, in the atonement, to completely peel ourselves away from this fake world and all it seems to offer or suggest, and put our hearts entirely into the hands of God.
"God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to 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. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes."
This means we have to literally wean off the world. We have to want the Kingdom with all our willingness and hearts and minds. We have to recognize that immortality is the only truth and mortality is a completely powerless fiction. That only God's truth, as His Living Kingdom, is true and real and acceptable and attractive. We must believe strongly and fully in the reality of God's creation and our immortality, and disbelieve and overlook all suggestion to the contrary.
To do this we have to learn also that we are not a physical body, nor is anyone else a physical body. We have been very confused that people are their bodies, and when things happen to bodies we recoil and react as if the person is affected. This only means we are confused in thinking these immortal beings are susceptible to suffering. Bodies must be overlooked. The world must be overcome. We must attune to the spirit world and return to it through truth and sanity and recognition.
Only the Kingdom of God really exists. Only the Holy Trinity is real. Only the creations of light are real. There is no world here.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
Nothing belongs to you exclusively. Everything is shared by everyone inclusively. This is the law of God.
"We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth."
"what is Yours belongs to me as well"
"As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me."
"We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth."
"everything WE do belongs to you as well"
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part."
"Sharing the perfect Love of the Father, the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise He will not know the Father or the Son."
"And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."
"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole."
You have nothing that is yours alone. Which means you have nothing special or exclusive or just for you. This means you aren't special, have not been granted special favor, and don't have any treasures that belong just to you. This however doesn't mean you have nothing at all, because in fact you share everything with everyone. God's Kingdom is not a place of exclusive ownership. It's kind of like an open buffet. Everyone is welcome, everything is for everyone, everything belongs to everyone, and everyone has simultaneous access to everything. It's completely open and unlimited.
"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."
God who is complete, cannot add anything to himself. He is already infinite and everywhere. He is kind of like a closed system that way. However, all parts of God host all of God, because every part of God is God. And this means every part of God shares the whole of God. All of God belongs to every part of God, and every part of God is whole.
God can therefore create by sharing himself. He hosts his creations within his own being, literally sharing his own existence. But this requires that anything he creates, must be created to purely and completely share all of himself. Any created being must have full access to everything God has, and must inherit everything from him.
Inheriting from God does not mean you receive a windfall that's exclusively just for you. It's not like winning the lottery. Everything that exists still belongs to God, and is him. But he creates you by allowing you to share everything he has. He gives himself to you in your creation. You inherit God, and inherit everything from God, but God is a co-owner of everything he shares.
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him."
"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever."
"And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him."
"The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."
This means that you are created to share everything, and the only way you can exist at all is if you share absolutely everything. God cannot add anything onto the outside of himself, so can only share what is inside of himself. You are hosted by God within his own being, and your entire function must be to share everything openly and fully. Only by sharing it can you have it at all, and you must be willing to give it all in order to have it.
This creates an environment in the Kingdom that we might describe as a totally open society. It's a relationship in which everyone has total full access to everything at all times. Everyone has all of God. Everyone is plugged into God. Everyone has FULL access to everything that exists, simultaneously and in parallel. One being having full access does not deprive any other being any kind of access. Their access overlaps.
"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."
"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
You can exist only if God shares everything that exists with you. And now both of you have everything that already exists. And you can only exist if you are willing to fully share everything that exists with everyone else. Which means that no-one anywhere in the Kingdom has anything that anyone else lacks, and no-one lacks anything that anyone else has. Everything belongs to everyone forever.
This also leads to the fact that no-one can have anything that belongs ONLY to them. You have absolutely nothing that is yours alone. The ego begs to differ, because "the ego is the idea of selfishness." It is the part of you that believes in specialness and in exclusivity. It wants to have everything for itself, such that it shares nothing with anyone. The ego is the antithesis of sharing and openness, and wants exclusive rights, ownership and control. It was the desire not to share that led to the separation. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."
What this leads to is the truth that, in and of yourself, by yourself, alone, you have absolutely NOTHING that belongs exclusively to you. Nothing you can put your name tag on, nothing you can say is legally yours, nothing that is just yours and no-one else's. If it seems that you have such things, possessions, toys, clothes, cars, houses, bodies, whatever, which seem to be exclusively "yours", and no-one else's, then you are aligned with the ego.
We need to recognize that in and of our own selves, we can do nothing. We have no life without God. We have no power without God. We have NOTHING without God. You don't even have any existence without God. You have nothing that is personal just to you which is yours alone. Nothing belongs just to you. In effect, you are utterly powerless and tiny and weak and afraid and empty and non-existent if it all boils down to "what is only mine".
"I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF."
"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength."
"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none."
This is where it becomes interesting. You alone, on your own, in isolation, have absolutely NOTHING. That is to say, ignoring God for a moment, ignoring your inheritance, ignoring anything that anyone else has, you actually have absolutely ZERO "for yourself'. Zero that is "of you". Nothing that has been sourced in you, that you have invented, within yourself, which is unshared or belongs to you alone.
That really means that you don't have any kind of special talents or abilities that can be said to "make you unique". You don't have any special "super powers" that others lack. You don't have any exclusive "something", some kind of special secret treasure, that no-one else has. You don't have any possessions that really are yours alone, which is easily proven by the fact that anyone can take them away from you, and they all can be lost, because they were never really yours to begin with.
So you are empty. Without God, you are nothing. Without God you don't even have existence. HOWEVER, you are not without God. If you are willing to go beyond your ego, you in fact regain access to your inheritance. You become once again a member of the Sonship. You open up to receiving your inheritance, which is everything real, in exchange for giving up the NOTHING that you have otherwise. "We will gain EVERYTHING by giving HIM the power and the
glory, and keeping NO illusions of where they are."
"As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"
"for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing" "Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"
"Of yourself you can do none of these things."
"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light."
So here are your options. On the one hand you have what the ego is offering, which is absolutely nothing, disguised as something special and rare, something which is exclusive just for you, something special, which makes you important and unique and different. But which really is made of nothing at all, and is not something you can really have, nor can it last forever. And by trying to have it, you may seem to gain the fictional world, and lose your soul.
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" The alternative on offer, is that you are invited as a guest to join in the Kingdom of God, in which you are allowed to participate openly, freely, and fully. Provided that you are willing to share everything that exists with everyone. And provided you are willing to share your entire self with everyone. And provided you are willing to grant everyone total free access to everything at all times.
And provided you do not in any way attempt to hoard anything for yourself, to have any trace of selfishness, nor to regard anything as belonging ONLY to you. That nothing belongs ONLY to you doesn't mean you have nothing, only that what you HAVE isn't ONLY yours to have and must be shared. You DO have power, but it only so long as you acknowledge that you SHARE this power with God and with everyone. To take it away from them, to have it just for you, is to strip it from yourself and be powerless.
Provided you are willing to enter into a relationship with the whole sonship, where everything belongs to everyone equally, then you can enter the Kingdom of God. To receive your inheritance isn't to receive a big special christmas gift that no-one else gets to play with. All things that are real, that you can actually HAVE, have to belong to everyone. It belongs to God, it belongs to you, AND it belongs to all your brothers. And everyone can access all of it all the time at the same time. "To have all, give all to all."
So you can either have basically nothing for yourself, disguised as receiving the illusory riches of the world, which appear to be valuable bullshit items that you don't even really want, and which have no real value, but which appear to be extremely valuable treasures. Or, you can openly share non-exclusive rights with everyone, to own ALL of the Kingdom of God, ALONG WITH God and with everyone else, in which everything belongs to everyone.
The gifts of God are given in order to "passed forward". He gives you the power to create, so that you can share and give what you have been given. Quite simply, "give what you have been given" is the only rule of the system. Give the love that God has given you. Nothing is ever given to just you alone, it is given FOR everyone.
"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."
"Healing must be for everyone"
"It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you."
"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."
"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."
"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."
"Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons?"
"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."
"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE."
Quite simply, you either can be utterly powerless, afraid, weak, lacking, deprived, miserable, sick, unhappy, lost, desperate, improverished, bereft, and empty, OR .... you can acknowledge that the ONLY real thing you can HAVE is everything God has given already, and you can ONLY have it IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SHARE IT. Be selfish and end up alone and with nothing, or share with everyone and gain everything there is to have.
You can truly have what EVERYONE has, and only by ackowledging that it belong to them as well, OR you will end up empty handed. To try to take possession of some part of heaven for yourself, all of heaven will slip through your fingers. The more you try to own something, the less you have it. The more you try to depend on yourself alone, the less you become able to deal with life. The more you try to "go it alone", the more helpless you become.
God is your strength! His shared strength is literally YOUR strength. Without God, you have no strength at all. Of yourself you are nothing and have nothing. He is the battery-pack which fuels your power. However, because you are OF GOD, you HAVE EVERYTHING AND ARE EVERYTHING. God's power belongs to you, God's life belongs to you, God's entire creation belongs to you.
Everything real is YOURS. It is not just partly yours, it is FULLY yours. But it is also fully everyone's. You cannot have it by grasping for it to keep it for yourself, you can ONLY have it by acknowledging that it is EVERYONE'S RIGHT. And therefore you have to be open to GIVING IT. You must give what you have received, be open to sharing what you have, and everything must belong to everyone.
To admit that you have nothing SPECIAL about you, is humility. But this does not leave you powerless. It simply leaves you without a SPECIAL power that you invented. It strips you of your "super powers", your fictional sense of personal strength, and your illusion that you can do this ON YOUR OWN. You cannot do ANYTHING on your own. You are helpless and powerless on your own. The ONLY way you can live at all is to join with God and let him help you.
This is why you have to surrender your ego. You simply can't do life by yourself. When you try to you will depend on your own exclusive strength, which is pitiful at best and nothing at worst. And you will not be able to deal with anything. Only WITH God do you have stength. Only WITH God do you have anything at all! But with God, you are ALL POWERFUL. With God, you CAN DO ANYTHING.
"You can do ANYTHING I ask." "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "Do his works." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."
"He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"God gives WHATEVER belongs to Him, because He gives OF HIMSELF, and EVERYTHING belongs to Him."
"The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them."
"It knows that it is EVERYWHERE, just as it has EVERYTHING and FOREVER." "No-one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor COULD he value the body's offerings."
"Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special."
"No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT."
"Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."
"Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness."
"When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary."
"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them."
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."
When I am upset, feeling unhappy, having a cry, feeling guilty or afraid, or whatever, Holy Spirit is gentle and compassionate. He often says, "I know". Sometimes I feel a hand on my shoulder from Him or Jesus.
They are compassionate in that they know that *I* believe I am experiencing something upsetting, that *I* feel sad or whatever. They are there for me, and they don't judge it. They don't even use the opportunity to push me towards some kind of forgiveness or greater awareness. They just hold me and hug me.
However, the fact is that all upset feelings come from a mis-perception that I chose. And I chose that mis-perception so that I could further my separation from God.
So for example, I might feel upset because I saw myself victimized by someone. I might feel sad about how someone rejected me or whatever. And those feelings seem genuine, it seems like I really feel this way and that it's very sad and unfortunate. But, once I'm done with feeling, at some point I need to find the willingness to move beyond this.
I've witnessed how, in particular, when old hurts come up from the past, to be healed, they always feel like how it felt at the time. They're always based on how I was perceiving when I was younger and less aware. Even though at the time I did not understand what was going on, or what it meant, how it made me feel at the time based on that perception is now the feeling that I need to work through and release. But I've also seen how obvious it is, that these feelings were just how I felt 'within' the framework of a certain way of looking at life, and there is usually some kind of mistake in that.
I saw myself as hurt because I didn't perceive correctly. I saw myself as unloved because I didn't recognize my infinite lovability. I saw myself as unworthy because I devalued myself sort of 'by accident' because I didn't know what i was doing. And so I created feelings of unworthy and unlove and so on, which I must 'heal' and release, but even though these feelings seem like they reflected some kind of 'truth', they're not really the ultimate truth.
I need to become willing to admit that, once I've allowed myself to feel and release the 'energy' produced by a false perception, that the perception ITSELF was faulty. And it was the fault perception that LED to faulty feelings. Unhappy feelings come from unhappy perceptions. So I need to now be willing to see differently, to look for a greater truth, to own up to the part that I played in choosing to suffer, to take back my power, to claim responsibility for doing this to myself, and to realize that nobody involved was doing it without my will.
So there is a 'forgiveness' process that needs to occur, above and beyond unhappy feelings, to correct the perception that led to them. And even though Holy Spirit knows this, he seldom prompts or forces me to 'go there' especially not right when I'm feeling how the feelings felt. I let myself fully feel because this releases the energy, even though it's a FALSE energy, to clear it out. To cathart it. THEN my mind is clearer and can have a cognitive shift, as well as being more willing and able to now apply a 'forgiveness' to change my perception.
It's important to let yourself feel and let out the trapped negative emotions, but recognize also that they are only there because of a mistaken way of looking at life, and that mistake needs to be corrected at some point. When you are ready. And not before. And nobody is pushing you or forcing you to have to do that, especially not when you're in the middle of a deep release. Trying to rush someone out of feeling into truth isn't compassionate.
So it's possible to have compassion for someone who is feeling upset even if you know that their upset is false, and there really isn't a need to be upset. Holy Spirit knows that nothing has gone wrong and there is ONLY reason to celebrate, but to tell me that in the middle of me believing heavily that I've been wronged, isn't entirely helpful because I can't hear it until I'm ready and willing. We really believe we've done something terrible to God and deserve to be punished for it, and as we work through those feelings, Holy Spirit is very patient to give you time to 'process' the consequences of a mistaken decision. And then at some point, when you're ready, you will undo the belief that caused it.
When I used to consider "the secret of salvation", which is the idea that you are "doing it to yourself", I could recognize the need for total responsibility. I saw that anything which I thought someone was doing to me, from the outside in, I must be doing to myself. But I didn't entirely realize a key portion of this.
What I see in it now is more. I see that we are immortal beings, who can never be attacked or hurt or damaged or upset in any way against our will. The ownership and identification with this is our true responsibility.
This lays a new foundation. Because now it means that if I am suffering, or seeming to suffer at the hands of another, or because of the world doing something to me, it must mean I have secretly attempted to stop being immortal.
The "what I a doing to myself" isn't so much the appearance of what others are doing, but is in fact the DISTANCE between my immortal self and the mortal victim self I'm portraying myself as. Between the invulnerable self and the ego. It is the traversal of that distance that I am responsible for, and which is my own attack upon myself, placing myself in a state of weakness.
Even if it may appear that the world is seeming to be the cause of something, happening to my body, inducing fear, causing effects in me, it cannot be true. These things are not put in place from the outside in, they're put in place from the inside out.
If I stop recognizing my immortal invulnerable nature, and attack myself first, I will lose track of who I am, question and doubt myself, go into uncertainty and fear, and project the idea of causation outside of myself. Then I will see myself as potentially caused by the world, instead of by God.
That faulty perception of myself, that body identification, that self denial, is something I am doing to myself. And it means I'm putting myself in a position, in a role, where I seem vulnerable and in need of defenses against a cruel and unsafe world. But I can't blame the world for being in this position, when it's me that's putting myself there.
Even more so, the world is my dream, in my mind, coming from me decision. If I dream of my body being attacked surely I have consented, and have attempted to use the body to prove I am not immortal. I have done this to myself. I cannot be attacked if I am permanent and unchangeable. Portraying myself as a victim must mean I'm attempting to destroy myself, and that is my own doing.
The responsibility is not in terms of what others appear to be doing to me from the outside in, but what I have attempted to do to my immortal self, to my unlimited mind, to render is less than whole and lacking and limited. That is an internal attack which merely is disguised behind the outward expression of that deception.
The immortal cannot suffer. The immortal cannot be sick. The immortal cannot die. The immortal cannot be attacked or hurt. The immortal cannot be upset or have their peace disturbed. The immortal are responsible because they know themselves and have owned up to their true christ nature. They no longer deceive themselves with the idea that a fictional alien will can act against them, and so their mind is not split.
The secret of salvation tells us we are responsible for all of our own suffering. It tells us that it doesn't matter what the seeming cause of suffering is, there is only one cause, and it is in our own mind. It tells us that we are doing it to ourselves. And who are we, that this is being done to? We are immortal beings. And so if we seem to suffer, we must have undermined our own invulnerability. Just as "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."
You are not weak but strong. You are not afraid but all powerful. You are not an illusion but a reality. You are not mortal but immortal. You are not vulnerable but invulnerable. You are not destructible but permanent. You are not guilty but innocent. You are still as God created you.
While you have an ego, you will actually defend it and protect it. You will be afraid of the truth because the truth shows that the ego is not real, and if you believe you are the ego, that means you are not real. That would of course be frightening.
It's not so much that our ego resists waking up. It can't wake up. It's just a machine, a structure made of illusions. But WE resist waking up because we're identified with the ego. We interpret the truth through it, ask it what its interpretation of the truth is, and take the truth's "attack" on it personally.
If for example you are identified with the ego and the truth tells you that the world is an illusion, or that your body is an illusion, you - identified with ego - will take that personally. You'll think that it means you are an illusion. Obviously that's confused but you also think it's real, so you'll see the truth as an attack on your very existence.
This is why it can be so difficult to accept the truth and wake up. Our ties to the ego make us believe the illusion is real and that we are the illusion. IF that were true, it's totally understandable that you wouldn't want to let go of your self.
This can be why, when you open up to some truth, letting the light in, you will on the one hand welcome courageously but on the other hand react to it like it's come to destroy you. You will have an ego rebound and feel upset and angry and scared, as though you're being threatened.
Often when I am in a flow or a upswing of inspiration, teaching, writing etc... I am opening up to new truths and expanding my awareness, but at the same time, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I start to have a lot of emotions come up for release. And if I push too hard, I will actually start to feel afraid and guilty. This is the parts of me still attached to the ego which do not understand or accept the truth, and perceive it as meaning all kinds of wrong conclusions. I've found particularly that when I talk about unconscious guilt it can produce a lot of fear because my ego interprets it to mean the guilt is real and therefore I should be afraid.
Exposing yourself to the truth can therefore produce all kinds of reactions, including sickness. Sickness defends against the truth, because you think the truth has come to attack the ego. So basically if you're closely attached to and identified with the ego, the truth will seem very threatening and you will likely produce a lot of sickness in an attempt to protect your sense of "self". It's just self-preservation. The only distortion is that your sense of identity is misplaced so you're taking things personally that do not really apply to who you really are. They apply to the ego, but not you.
Sometimes then I have to take a break from "too much input" and from pushing myself into so much truth at once. But I think over time my rebounds have in general become less intense now. I can talk about the truth for longer before my sense of reality feels the pressure and starts to retaliate. I guess that's good, it means that I am not as ego-identified as I used to be, or that I've woken up some.
Jesus also talks about how when we are at first taking responsibility for everything, we may take it to be a major attack, because to the ego-identified self it implies we must be very guilty. But over time, as we dis-identify with the false self, we don't take it as personally, or to mean that we are guilty as much. Over time it becomes easier to take responsibility knowing that it does not imply you are guilty, as you start to "separate" yourself from the ego's interpretation of it.
Starting to grasp how I have chosen everything I am experiencing, has been blowing my mind and expanding my awareness, but also scaring my ego identification some. Time to relax a bit.
A miracle, is actually a THING. It's discreet thing. Like a ball of energy, if you will, expressing from you and causing something to happen.
"Miracles are a spark of life."
"Miracles are energizers".
"Miracle impulses".
"Miracles are thought creations."
There is actually a SOMETHING that arises out of the christ mind and expresses and transfers from the giver, TO the receiver.
A pulse of electricity.
A ball of fire.
A spark of presence.
The Holy Spirit.
Whatever you want to call it. A miracle begins with an impulse and then something happens. Something comes OUT of the mind, EXPRESSEs, and applies TO something.
It's NOT just a matter of your holiness sitting there "shining" and rubbing off side effects.
Jesus also refers to them as a POWER SURGE.
"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."
If that power surge were CONSTANT you wouldn't be able to switch the dam thing off. And we are told that "the number of them you can perform is unlimited", meaning you are not ALWAYS performing miracles, you DO IT and then you stop. And then you do it again. It's an ACTION. A DOING.
This is something IN ADDITION TO a STATE of right mindedness or miracle mindedness. The STATE of miracle mindedness is NOT the same thing as multiple unlimited miracles which are PERFORMED.
What many people describe as miraculous is MERELY the state of miracle mindedness. In that state, you are READY, WILLING, and ABLE to perform miracles. But this is entirely distinct from miracle WORKING or DOING.
"it is a state of miracle-READINESS."
"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do." You must be:
READY to listen
WILLING to learn
and ABLE to do."
"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."
Many people completely IGNORE "miracle doing" in ACIM and focus entirely on "miracle mindedness", because they think they are supposed to change their STATE of mind and get TO a state of true perception/miracle mindedness and then they're done. This completely IGNORES EXPRESSION of miracles FROM the state of miracle mindedness.
There is an EXPRESSION FROM the state of miracle mindedness. An expression. Like when you DECIDE TO TALK. Something expresses, temporarily. Something is generated. A thought creation happens and GIVES LIFE to something. Something goes out, a spark, a power, a force.
It's not the same thing as the miracle mind sitting there just doing what it does all the time. It is a distinct, momentary, separate DOING, EXPRESSION, a decision to PERFORM, to DO something, for a specific person, at a specific time and place.
And this EXPRESSION emits a POWER SURGE which is a SPARK OF LIFE, which proceeds out of your mind into the mind of another and heals it, with the consequence being the body is also healed.
This is what miracle WORKING means. You DO something. Something happens out of the ordinary. It is NOT the same thing as being miracle minded or right minded or christ minded or any other kind of STATE of mind. It's an EXPRESSION of a POWER which has causal effects.
"Thus is the body healed by miracles."
"Members of my party are ACTIVE workers."
"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."
"The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love."
"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."
"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
(an expression, is not a state).
"Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind"
They ARISE FROM, a STATE of miracle mindedness. They are EXPRESSIONS! Something comes OUT of the state of mind and causes something to happen!
If I am upset, I must be mistaken, and I must have chosen wrongly.
"I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace."
If I am feeling anything other than love, joy, happiness, peace, then I've made a wrong decision. And it was me who decided it, meaning that I decided not to be happy by believing something untrue - something that is incorrect."I made the decision myself but I can choose otherwise."
If for example I'm feeling loss, I might believe that this loss is legitimate, due to the perceived loss of a valuable person, the loss of a body, the loss of a favorite object or whatever.
But I am a son of God, and there is no loss in sons of God. Therefore what is this loss but a lie? It must be being felt due to a mistaken belief. Somewhere in my mind, if I am feeling loss, I am mistaken, because nothing real can ever be lost.
So my feeling of loss, or unhappiness, or sadness, or grief, or anger, or guilt, or fear, or any other kind of ego emotion that does not exist in God, isn't just "a feeling" sitting there on its own wanting to be felt. It's the RESULT of some decision I made, at some time, to believe something mistakenly, which has resulted in this less-than happy feeling.
So behind the feeling of loss or sadness or anger, there is always something else going on.
"Anger is never justified"
"I am never upset for the reason I think."
If I would be willing to look and find out what it is I believe or have chosen, that is producing a negative feeling, and question the basis of it, it would stop PRODUCING the effect of the negative feeling.
This is somewhat radical because it starts to reveal that any unhappy or unholy feelings you have, you don't necessarily HAVE to have. You don't necessarily have to cry about the loss or whatever, IF you can find out what is CAUSING it and correct the real issue. The issue is always some kind of mistakenness, some wrong belief, some faulty conclusion or valuing, which is resulting in the "effect" of ego emotions being generated. You don't' have to suffer through it.
"It's not God's will that you suffer."
By all means do not deny feelings if all you really can manage is to be swept up in them and feel them. Sometimes you have to have a huge catharsis which is ok. But I also often find myself upset and Jesus is prodding me that I don't really need to be feeling this at all, nor do I have to go through the motions of the release of it through normal human-body means.
If behind every emotion there is a thought or belief or decision, then its my mind that needs to change in order to stop manufacturing this emotional sickness. All negative emotions are what it feels like to believe things which are not true.
It's quite plausible, that you will reach a state where you no longer need to feel any ego emotions ever again. In fact very often now when I go to feel and show a willingness to "just feel it", regardless of its validity, the Holy Spirit steps in and starts to perform a healing on me. He removes it for me when I let him.
"He will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let him."
"I choose to let him by allowing him to choose for God for me."
And so gone are the days of having to just be on an emotional rollercoaster, being thrown around by unhappiness and crying all the time. If you will allow yourself to go deeper and receive healing, to uproot the cause of the feeling, then you can collapse the feeling entirely. It then become no longer necessary to be unhappy or to cry or release or cathart. And ultimately, you will no longer have to cry ever again.
Only the happy feelings that you share with God are real, just as the real thoughts of life and love that you share with him result in and cause those happy feelings. And only the thoughts I think with God are true.
Recognizing your own immorality is important and key. But recognizing the immortality of your brothers is also vital.
If your brother is an immortal being, nothing can happen to him. He can't be attacked, he can't be destroyed, he can't have anything wrong with him.
Just like you, your brother's immortal soul is incorruptible, it cannot change or be changed, it is eternal and will live forever. It is not at the effect of anything, not even your brother can change his own self, nor even God. His nature is fixed forever.
What this then tells you is that, by being aware of this, there is no grounds for projecting guilt onto him, attacking him, believing there is something wrong with him, seeing him as a sinner, or trying to destroy him.
All the ego's murderousness arises from the belief in death, the belief that you are something that can die, and that your brother is something that can die. Why would you even attempt to attack him if you saw his perfect invincibility?
What basis would there be for insinuating that he is guilty of anything at all, if his innocence is eternal? If he is so free from attack and there is no attack in or upon him, because he is absolutely invulnerable and pure, then it would be impossible to find him guilty of anything.
Just as the forgiveness of yourself hinges upon the recognition of your own immortality, in which you cannot possibly have the slightest trace of death or malfunction or sin or attack in you, so too your brother exhibits the same safety and protection.
You cannot change your brother's reality. You cannot attack your brother's reality. You cannot hurt your brother, destroy your brother, make your brother unhappy, cause your brother to have a shorter existence, or change your brother in ANY way.
And since you cannot do that, you have not done that. And therefore the recognition of this is YOUR salvation, because you must be innocent if you have been utterly incapable of changing him. His perfect truth, his purity, his innocence and his immortality teach you that you also must be this way, just as yours reminds him of his own.
If you think your brother is in some way sick, or damaged, or guilty, or wrong, or defective, or malfunctioning, or temporary, or limited, or exclusive, or in any way something less than immortal, you are NOT SEEING HIM.
If you could see him and feast your eyes upon him you would see only a perfectly pure innocent being with not the slightest hint of mortality or curruption in him. And then it would be impossible to judge him as anything but perfect. It is because you choose to look upon illusions about him and NOT see him, that you judge him as sinful - or rather, judge your interpretation of him as sinful, because you do not recognize him.
The forgiveness of your brother is rooted deeply in simply recognizing his real nature. In seeing his truth, forgiveness is complete. Only in failing to recognize his nature do you enter into beliefs in death, in which a basis for judgement and a justification for attack arises. Without death to tarnish his immortality or yours, there is no attack and only love - no death and only life. "Your Brother's Sinlessness" UrT22C
"My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light." UrW335L1
"Before your brother's holiness the world is still, and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete, that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night." UrT24G1
"Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father." UrT24G2
"When you accept a brother's guiltlessness, you will SEE Atonement in him." UrT13I1
"Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness." UrW181L2
"If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin." UrT28E7
"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE." UrT28H6
"Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him." UrT20I3
"Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his." UrT10H14
There is a huge amount of resistance to the idea that ACIM is teaching us to perform LITERAL miracles. As in, healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, etc.
The resistance comes because the ego's thought system is completely proven false when a miracle happens. The ego has absolutely no way to understand it, no way to stop it, no way to interfere with it, and does not know what is happening. This means the ego is going to have a huge resistance to the miracle.
So anyone with an ego left, is going to be resistant to the idea of miracles, because the ego does not believe in cures, or sudden revelations, or instantaneous healing, or defiance of the law of gravity, or any other thing which the miracle demonstrates is possible.
Miracles are expressions of love, therefore expressions of truth. When the truth "happens", it will demonstrate HOW, and the FACT that, all of the ego's so-called "laws" are not true. The miracle bypasses space and time and completely ignores ALL ego laws and just does whatever God wills.
From the ego's perspective, it is frantic to try to deny and block and explain how the miracle did what it did, to try to diminish it and cover its effects so that it will be less obvious that the ego has just been shown to be totally false. Anyone with an ego, which is almost every Course student, is going to therefore have a huge resistance to "real miracles" because they are seen as an attack by the ego. They are the truth, come to demonstrate that the ego's ways are completely illusory and cannot be believed.
There is nothing a miracle cannot do. And that totally blows the ego's mind.
To the ego, miracles should not be possible. There is nothing in the ego's thought system that supports them. When they happen, the ego may go into shock or fear or denial to try to resist it.
If you were in Jesus's presence and some person had died and He told them to come back to life and they did and they stood up and were not dead, you would be like, holy FUCK!
If you were in Jesus's presence and a person that you knew for years who was born blind, suddenly had real eyeballs, and can see perfectly, and there is absolutely nothing in your ego belief system to support how this is possible, you might well run the hell in the other direction!
If you were in Jesus's presence and his body suddenly disappeared in front of your eyes, then reappeared, then disappeared, then reappeared, several times, like someone was flipping a light switch, you'd be like, FUCKING HELL! What the fuck is going on?!!
If you were in Jesus's presence and He suddenly turned the tree you were sitting under into a bunch of flowers and handed them to you, and you took them, and then the flowers turned into a snake which you threw to the ground, and then the snake turned back into a tree, you'd be like, HOLY COW! What the F just happened here?
But in each of these situations, Jesus's demonstration of miracles would have educated you on WHAT IS POSSIBLE, and those possibilities would have taken your awareness far outside the realm of the LIMITATIONS that you are used to believing cannot be transcended. Obviously if Jesus's body is switching on and off like a light switch, it shows you that the body is not really physical. That alone will blow your mind but also you will never again be able to believe completely that bodies are real.
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIM
So it's simply that students are anti-miraculous because their ego's are still strongly believing in a state of being where NO MIRACLES happen, a highly unnatural state where there is NO LOVE. That's the ego's entire focus. It doesn't believe in miracles, it doesn't believe it's possible to change one object into another, or that bodies can come back from the dead, or that sickness can suddenly disappear, or that people can grow new eyeballs out of nowhere. It doesn't want anything to do with this ego-law-defying demonstration of truth.
Also given that all resistance to the truth produces sickness and miracles are demonstrations of the truth, people could actually CHOOSE to become sick as a defense against witnessing a miracle. If the miracle were sufficiently outside their mind's ability to accept it as real, they might cling tightly to the body through sickness and pain in order to try to escape from it. Ultimately you could say that all sickness is caused by a refusal to accept that miracles are possible. Or that people get sick because they choose NOT to perform miracles.
There is only one trap. The ego has only one tool. Do you know what it is?
Separation. The ego wants to come between you and God, between you and yourself, between you and others.
It has one devious way of doing this, which in all its forms is exactly the same trap.
As soon as you believe in separation, you perceive a difference between you and God, between you and your real self, or between you and others, you have fallen for it.
As soon as you see difference, you will see a different meaning for each party, and will award each of them a different label. One will be more good, one more bad. Or one will be more right, one more wrong. Or one is better looking, or one is more spiritual, or one is more mature, or one is a better friend, or whatever. Conditionality.
To put it even more simply:
The ego wants you to TAKE SIDES.
By taking sides, it gets you to believe that one of the two SEPARATE CHOICES are better than the other in some way, more preferable, more desirable, more true, more credible or worthy or real.
The instant you do this, you COME BETWEEN yourself and God, yourself and your real self, and yourself and others.
Let's be clear about the ego's motives.
The ego does not give a shit who wins the war.
The ego does not give a shit who is better or worse.
The ego does not give a shit who is good or bad.
The ego does not give a shit who is more evil or holy.
The ego does not give a shit who is right or wrong.
The ego does not give a shit who is winning.
ALL it wants to do is SEPARATE what once was one, into separate parts, to distinguish what it is that keeps those parts separate, and to emphasize that difference as much as possible.
IT DOES NOT MATTER which side you take, where you fall, who you align with, or what you think is a better option. If you are choosing darkness and evil, you are just as much falling for the trap as if you are choosing to try to make out your are "good" and well behaved. If you are the winner of the war or the one that gets destroyed, it doesn't matter. The ego doesn't give a shit. All it wants to do is COME BETWEEN, to keep apart, to separate out and to stop there being unity or oneness or wholeness.
So don't fall for the primary trap, the only trap, of believing that you are escaping the ego by going into one of two sides or one of two possibilities. Or that you're more spiritual by siding with appearances of spirituality (the spiritual ego). Or that you're less spiritual if you're siding with appearances of darkness and rebellion.
BOTH the dark (the shadow self) and the `light` (the persona) are parts of the EGO SPLIT MIND. And both of them are dependent on each other. And both of them are attacked by each other. And both of them are doing things which are mistaken. They both uphold the separation.
It doesn't matter what side you pick. IF you pick a side, that is what matters. IF you go along with the illusion that one party is better than another, or one choice is better than another, you are fucked.
The ego's major weapon with illusions is to get you to be convinced that how something APPEARS tells you what IT IS, and therefore its FORM tells you of its inherent qualities. This is totally deceptive. It makes it APPEAR as though some things in the world are innocent victims and other things are victimizers. Some things are good/light, some things are dark/bad. And then if you start to defend the good stuff against the bad stuff, or feel sorry for the victims, or go along with this whole charade of separate enemies, YOU HAVE fallen for the ego.
BOTH sides of every argument lose. BOTH victimizer and victim lose. BOTH sides of every war lose. As soon as you enter into separation and conflict you're losing yourself, losing God, and losing your brother. You cannot fight and win and be free of this fact. The ego's lie is that you CAN fight and win and be free of this fact - that you can get away with it, or one side can actually conquer the other, or that someone can "win" at this game of life.
THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN THE EGO'S DREAM OF DEATH!
Anyone who plays the game LOSES. Anyone who plays the game or goes along with the game comes to believe in separation, and DIES. The only way out is not to play the game at all.
A couple of days ago, I rubbed my eyes a bit too much and triggered some swelling. Maybe a small blood vessel was broken or something. My upper eyelid swelled up and was red and sore and uncomfortable all day.
I at first wasn't sure whether to try to perform some kind of miracle on it or not. I knew that if I were to "fight it" I would be making it real and making a drama about it, which wouldn't help. At first that made me feel like I had to just accept it and live with it.
But part of me also wondered, what is it that stops me from accepting a complete and total healing instantaneously right now? Why should I tolerate this? How can I accept it and have it disappear as well?
So then I went to Holy Spirit. I asked, should I do something about this?
He said no.
But I had this sense that, I hadn't asked the right question. I indeed needed to DO nothing in the truest sense that, really, this thing had not really happened. But this also keyed me in to realize that, I needed to believe that it had not happened in order to truly embody the need to do nothing.
So I set about cancelling it by collapsing every belief and sense of truth about what had caused it. I told myself plainly that it did not exist, was not there, was already healed, there was no swelling, no soreness, no discomfort, no damage.
I undid all belief in the various causes that I'd convinced myself of such as "because I rubbed it" or "too many tears" or "didn't want to see something" or that issues about certain people were responsible.
When there were no more imagined "reasons why" it should be there, I really got into the sense that it is gone already and did not exist at all. This is an important point because we need to assert the state that we choose to manifest right now, not something off in the future. It's like painting a new picture of what you believe is real now - a vision of divine health and present happiness - rather than in any way accepting that sickness still exists.
So as part of that, I started to affirm gratitude to God that He had already healed this, that it was already resolved, already undone, had already disappeared, and that there was now a completely restored and healed eyelid free from all problems.
This was when I think Holy Spirit stepped in and suddenly I started with the energetic shaking. But also something 'new' happened, right after I thanked God for having healed it already.
Thanking God for healing in effect invites the receiving of healing while simultaneously affirming that the problem is gone, which is the proper mental "direction" for allowing God to extend and flow. God works in the now and in the awareness that the problem is solved already, so we need to learn to shine "thank you that it is healed already" (acknowledgement of receipt) rather than "please heal it because it's not healed".
Note that in the bible there is a phrase about asking, and that if you believe you have received it, you shall have it. The believing it is received, through thanks to God, and therefore acknowledgement of its PRESENCE, is the key to miracles flowing.
The area in question suddenly was filled with what I can only describe as an extremely high "heat", so hot and intense that I wondered for a moment if something had burst or become worse. It was very intensely focused right in the middle spot where this issue was located. It seemed to cover an area no more than a couple of millimeters, and held there in one spot.
I just observed it for what seemed like maybe 20 seconds or more. It didn't move or change. It was just there. It seemed hotter than any physical heat you could experience. Yet it didn't burn and was not uncomfortable at all. It was not pain. It almost felt like an intense presence, hard to ignore. Like some kind of "liquid fire".
I've heard some Christian healers etc talking about Holy Fire and this idea that Holy Spirit can bring some kind of intense healing "fire" from heaven or something, which heals stuff. I am presuming this was my first encounter with it.
I then relaxed and eventually went to sleep. I could already tell even then, that it was much less sore, I couldn't barely feel it anymore, and it was much more comfortable. This morning the problem has almost disappeared. It looks and feels a lot better.
Sometimes I am grateful for little, relatively minor physical issues, because they can present good opportunities for practicing miracle-working and healing. They indeed are lessons when used appropriately.
"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. But do you believe it?"
Before the separation from God and the fall of man, quite simply you were only as God created you, happily co-creating with God in joy and love in Heaven. That is reality. You live there forever.
But then you went into denial and believed in things which were not possible, as if they were. You denied God's will and shut out your freedom. This put your mind into a kind of sleep state. Within this state, you have dreamed of a planet, walking around its surface in a pretend body, wondering who you are and where you came from.
All that needs to happen is for you to wake up to Heaven's reality again. To simply stop sleeping, stop dreaming, come to your senses, return to sanity, and merely recognize what is actually true. God's truth is the only truth.
All you have to do is accept that the dream has not happened at all, and nothing in it means anything nor has any consequences. Who you are, in Heaven, outside of your dream world, has not changed or been affected. You still remain as God created you.
The instant that you wake up to reality, the entire dream and all its contents will be forgotten, as if they never happened. No matter how radical that seems or what it entails, the entire undoing of the universe, it will be like nothing even happened. You'll just carry on co-creating with God.
Jesus encapsulates this simple overview in this eloquent way:
"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
So there is a really simple fact. Reality, The Kingdom, is totally real and totally safe and totally permanent. Everyone in it is happy and alive forever. Those who are seemingly sleeping find themselves in a giant dream world that they think is really happening, but is not. Not even slightly.
So what is spiritual awakening? It's merely coming to remember and recognize that only God's reality is real and there is no other reality. There is no dream. There is no sin. There is no death or sickness. There are no illusions. There is only the Kingdom. Everything is fine as it always was. You have just been having hallucinations for a while in a long drawn out dream state, so long you mistook it for permanence.
It's like, there's a giant party happening in Heaven right now A huge creative celebration. You're down here in hell pretending to be suffering and unhappy. None of this stuff even exists. There is no world. There's only the Kingdom.
It's like, there's a street party outside your window, but you're stuck indoors occasionally catching glimpses of what's going on. You long to be able to join them. Someday you fling open the door and realize there never was a wall or a house or a reason not to celebrate. You merely enter the flow of the procession of creation.
It's like, you're in your bedroom and you fall asleep and start having an elaborate dream, featuring a heroic body and all kinds of happenings. You mistake the dream for the only reality. Then you wake up, and the entire dream disappears and you suddenly remember you are in your bedroom where you really live. Nothing carries over from the dream state.
So it's kind of funny because, Heaven is totally okay right now. God is absolutely happy. All the souls and angels are having a great time. They're totally finding this whole dream world hilariously silly, laughing at how everyone down here is taking it all so seriously. Knowing from their perspective that the Heaven they are in is real, and the world we seem to be in is totally fictional. A strange realm of fantasies and imaginings.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."
Everything is fine. Everything real is still as God intended. Nothing has ever gone wrong. Nothing real's been hurt. You haven't sinned. No-one ever died. We're just having a bad dream and someday we'll wake up and laugh that we ever thought God's Kingdom could be attacked or changed in any way.
"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
You are one with your brother. What applies to you applies to him, per the Golden Rule. What is true of him is true of you. What you do to him you do to yourself.
Therefore, when you go into separation, you create a separation BETWEEN you and your brothers. You accuse yourself AND YOUR BROTHER of sin, simultaneously.
The result of doing so is that you arrest the extension of the mind, which INDUCES ILLNESS. The body thus becomes sick, as part of your effort to accuse yourself and your brother of being sinful.
This means that YOUR BODY, and its condition, are part of a COMMUNICATION that you are having with your brother. Whatever your body seems to say about you, it ALSO says about him. Sickness is not in isolation, it is a double-edged sword. It may seem only to state that YOU are sick, bit it ALSO states that HE is sick.
You cannot believe in your own sickness WITHOUT believing in your brother being sick. This is why your body becomes a two-sided weapon through which you are attacking yourself AND your brother. This is why sickness takes on forms of contagion, which represent the desire to kill your brother and yourself simultaneously.
Since your body is a "physical message" to him and yourself, which you believe, it is also your attempt to FORCE him to believe the same. Due to the golden rule, whatever you make true of the body, you are claiming is also true of him. Thus your body in is sickened state, actively condemns your brother and attempts to teach him he is not innocent. Thus it imprisons him.
More to the point, when your mind is reunited with your brother in joint union, and the gap of separation if healed away, the body in fact becomes a messenger of healing. It now symbolically communicates to BOTH of you that you AND your brother are innocent. In fact it now becomes a way to TEACH him that HE IS HEALED, and therefore prevent him from believing that he has sinned.
Through a demonstration of a physically HEALED body, there is no longer proof of sin, no longer tangible evidence of accusation, and now your brother is exonerated. This has a HEALING EFFECT on his mind and HE IS HEALED ALONG WITH YOU.
The body sends a MESSAGE to your brother, with a power greater than a thousand tongues, TEACHING HIM of his innocence OR his guilt, depending on what you are teaching yourself. When your mind is healed it WILL NOT teach sin, and will NOT make the body sick, and WILL heal your mind, and your body, and his mind, and his body.
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For ***here is his forgiveness PROVED to him***. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
The body is used to PROVE that you have forgiven your brother! Which is why "a broken body shows (proves) the mind HAS NOT been healed."
"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."
Your body must demonstrate "because you did not sin against me, my body is not attacked, and we must both therefore be innocent." And in order to accomplish this, MIRACLES ARE REQUIRED THAT HEAL THE BODY, so that the body CAN be FIXED AND HEALED, in order to allow it to teach ONLY innocence.
That means even if your brother attacks and damages your body, YOU RESURRECT IT, in order to PROVE TO HIM that you have forgiven him. When there is no sin, there are no effects of sin, and all sickness and death disappear.
Since my wife "died" in January, my perspective on this world and the body, sickness and death has changed drastically.
My wife (her body) was afflicted with various disabilities and medical conditions for over 12 years. For the past 4 years she lived in a bed, and unable to walk. We're talking amputations and strokes/paralysis and heart conditions and sleep disorders and cancer and diabetes and kidney failure, brain damage and dementia, eye problems, breathing problems, digestive problems, multiple trips to the ICU, declared brain-dead one time and barely making it through a triple-heart-bypass another.
The horror show compelled me to want to perform miracles, to heal her body and undo her limitations. Like any person would, driven to alleviate suffering and to make things easier. Avoiding death became the whole focus. And obviously this revolved around my mistaken belief that she was at least in part a physical body. A body with seemingly "real" sicknesses and serious problems.
For years we had this dynamic of me trying to get her (body) back to health, to keep her (body) going, to keep her (body) alive, to resurrect her (body) and fix her (body) and undo everything that happened to her (body). But it all took a toll and over time her body's condition deteriorated. It just couldn't function enough anymore to keep her going. While I helped in some ways, I failed.
Just before she passed, I reached a point where I finally found a willingness to consider, maybe I should just stop trying to keep her (body) alive. Maybe I should just let her go and let her die. All the years of fighting against it, resisting it, avoiding both sicknesses and interventions, trying to prop her up and keep her ticking, it all just kind of came to a point of surrender. It was long and cruel and stressful and fear-inducing. She'd had enough long before, and so had I. Eventually it becomes so ridiculous you just can't keep going.
It was then within a week or two that her body was really giving out, and quickly led to a brush with death, and then a very rapid but mostly peaceful passing. All the time spent resisting death, trying to stop the body being sick, and trying to keep it going indefinitely, culminated in what seemed to be a total failure. A failure to raise the dead, a failure to be miraculous, a failure to stop death itself. But despite appearances, it turns out that wasn't a bad thing.
Actually death turned out to be liberating for both of us. It wasn't what I thought it would be like, and nothing like I feared. In fact, as she continued to live in spirit and communicate me on many occasions in many ways, it proved to me that she was far better off now. She was thrilled and excited and happy, peaceful and calm, liberated and empowered. After she went through a kind of rehabilitation period, she showed up even more, refined and purified and centered in her soul.
Meanwhile her body was on ice shoved in a cardboard box, awaiting cremation. As I looked upon it I could shift perceptions back and forth between believing it was her and that it was nothing to do with her. Clearly something had left it, regardless of how convincing it looked and seemed to have all her features intact. But it wasn't her.
I deliberately viewed the corpse a few times to make the most use of the opportunity to forgive and see it correctly. To distinguish that the body was not her, and to separate out her spirit from the form. So now I was presented with this intense contrast between - the body says she's dead, and the reality and experience of spirit/mind says she's totally alive. And they can't both be true.
It became apparent while communicating to her and thinking about the soul's journey, spanning lifetimes and many bodies, that it never really was 'the plan' in this life for her body to reach an resurrected state. We had this dream that we would ascend to heaven together, and that was a total flop - but partly because in the big picture plan of atonement she is due to wake up in another lifetime, and I'm due for some radical change.
And that was ok, because there was a bigger picture. The really big picture has souls using bodies across many lifetimes, and they are just as easily discarded when no longer functioning well as they are picked up in the first place. They are just tools, devices, vehicles, that we temporarily use for a purpose and then throw away as worthless.
The destruction of the idea of saving her body from death, the complete failure to cause her to avoid death, the surprising discovery that death was liberating and "not all bad", the experience of her continuing to live and interact, the expansive perspective of the soul and its use of bodies, and the way her passing into the light lifted me into the light also, has altered how I look at all this.
What has become super clear is that as soon as we identify with bodies, we immediately go into fear, and start feeling compelled to defend the body against its own nature - its ultimate purpose of dying. As a body we want the body to carry on forever. I wanted to be with my wife's body forever. Then the body snuffs it. Good luck with that, cus you're all gunna die, unless you stop being a body.
By believing a person is a body we develop an entire culture of body preservation, keeping people in their bodies as long as possible, freaking out when the body is attacked or sick, not allowing anyone to leave their bodies voluntarily, trying to stop the body being sick, and generally just resisting the body's death at all costs. It all adds up to a mindset of the fear of death and an attempt to protect and defend the body at all costs. Until that entire mindset goes crashing against the rocks and is smashed to smithereens.
That's what's happened for me. The whole mindset of "lets keep the body going forever" has been destroyed. All the cultural and social ways that we have concern for it, fear of dying happening, avoiding things, trying to create security and safety, freaking out when "someone dies", valuing the body, wanting it to live, even the idea of using miracles to rescue the body endlessly, all has been destroyed for me. And that's a good thing because it was all rooted in believing bodies are people, valuable objects, and something to keep.
I've shifted from a horizontal to a vertical perspective. I would even go so far now as to say "let it all die". Not just the bodies, but all the things of the world. It's dying anyway, and it's going to. All the resistance I had and the fear of it happening was pointless and worthless and ended in a total inability to stop it. It was actually good that I ended up at the end of this lesson surrendering and "letting death happen". Because funnily enough, that was a key to stopping preserving it through the wish to defend the body at all costs. I'm guided now to simply "let her be dead". Because in truth, she isn't.
Trying to prevent death induces it. And I also realized that trying to stop sickness is just making it real and fueling it. So you can imagine that being exposed to someone with many severe sicknesses for a long time has drilled this home for me. I had to get past her body, get past believing she was sick, get past trying to resist the sickness, and get past believing she could even die. And she's proven to me many times over now that she absolutely has not died.
That then becomes a strange irreconcilable contrast. On the one hand the body is sprinkled in the wind as ashes and is no more, seeming to suggest the person is totally destroyed, and yet there she is even more alive than ever, happier than ever, having a great time. When I told her it would be great to be able to see her walking again, and she showed me herself running through fields, she even said "I can fly!". So she's having a great time, and what appeared to be "death" on a physical level did nothing but leave her better off.
So now my whole perspective on bodies and the world and sickness and death is different. I've used her death against death. I see people believing they are bodies, when it's been shown to me that people are not bodies. I see people fearing the body's vulnerabilities, when it's been shown to me that this is because they think they are bodies. The whole culture of body preservation and trying to stop people being sick is a joke. And even in this world the idea of voluntarily going to heaven is illegal and taboo, forcing people to suffer horrible conditions until they "naturally" snuff it.
I know this sounds a bit potentially anti-miraculous but, the hard lesson has actually been to let someone die and to stop fighting it. It was actually less spiritual and much more psychologically unhealthy to believe someone was a body and to be constantly worried for their safety and fearing for their life. What dies is not even a real thing, its not the person, and they cannot die. What dies is a lie, and death is a lie, and the whole basis for avoiding it is a lie.
So now I am much more flippant. Not to say like, okay, go ahead and die on purpose just so you can realize that being in heaven is totally amazing. Because we are still using bodies to learn shit. But in the big picture souls don't give a shit about the body really, they just use them temporarily as learning devices. Then they throw them in the trash. In and of themselves they are worthless junk. They are nothing. They are not people and they are not life.
My view now is much more aligned with my wife's view, seeing from her perspective and from the vantage point of the bigger picture. Souls coming and going, taking on bodies and then discarding them. Not identifying with them. Not falling into the trap of believing they are people, or the nightmare of fear that comes from that. My fear of death has melted because a) dying and going to heaven is wonderful and b) I can't die. Just as my wife can't die.
I've lifted up out of the body-identified body-worshipping death-avoiding culture of the world. Avoidance of death is definitely the same thing as promoting it. Nothing real can be threatened. The whole problem of the world is people believing they are a body and not knowing they are spirit, which results in a nightmare of danger and threat and attack and vulnerability. Then everyone starts barricading themselves in trying to avoid the bad stuff happening, and the sicknesses set in and the people want it to all go away so they can stay in their bodies forever and never go home to God.
I couldn't care less about stuff dying now. It's everywhere and relentless. It's the way of the world, driven by laws of death. Stuff is dead before it's even born. Everything here is guaranteed to end, to rot and decay and turn to dust. So I say, let it. Fuck it all. Who gives a shit about it anyway. It has no effect whatsoever on our reality as spiritual beings. And trying to stop it happening is madness. But what does it matter when an illusion dies? It really means nothing at all. The death of an illusion means nothing.
No-one who believes that bodies dying means something can work miracles. No-one who believes that a person is really sick can work miracles. No-one who believes that death can actually change the sons of God can work miracles. And no-one who fights against it happening can have any power over it. I had to go through the lesson of associating my beliefs in sickness and death with my wife's body, so that as her body died so too did my beliefs in these things.
I failed to raise the dead or to stop sickness happening, and it was the best thing I could've learned. The lesson is that death doesn't matter. But the key is to let death be what it is, because in truth it is not anything. Surrender the fear of death and let it all go, let it all die, and you'll be free from it. And then maybe you'll be ready to be a miracle worker. To surmount death is to transcend it, and you can't do that while you're resisting it. But letting it be also lets it go, and then you can rise above it and have power over it.
"But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it."
"But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."
"Behold the body, and you will believe that you are there. ⁴And every body that you look upon reminds you of yourself; your sinfulness, your evil and, above all, your death."
"There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created."
"And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. ⁷The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."
"The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body."
"This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. ²We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. ³But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. ⁴Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."
"False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. ²It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. ³Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God’s substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. ⁴At last the gate of Heaven opens and God’s Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him."
"The “self” that needs protection is not real. ²The 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. ³Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"
"From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto is home."
A Course in Miracles itself contains some structures. There are for example two basic "levels" or states that are contrasted. There's reality vs illusions, God vs ego, life vs death, awakening vs dreaming, light vs darkness, health vs sickness, heaven vs hell, the Kingdom of God vs Earth.
So let's say that upon reading about these things, we start to form a structure in our mind, sort of a framework. We've got this one box over here in which we put all the reality stuff, and another box next to it but opposite, in which we put all the illusory ego stuff.
Now, here's where a big mistake happens. It's possible to INTERPRET what each of these boxes MAPS to. Or what they refer to in your environment. Whenever the Course says "reality", WHAT in YOUR world view is that REFERRING to? Which PART of your view of all of existence, is it speaking ABOUT? Which means some portion of "existence" in your world view has to be where you put the "reality" box, and another portion has to be where you put the "illusion" box.
If you discern this correctly, you'll map the reality box onto the Kingdom of God which is NOT OF THIS WORLD, and you'll map the illusion box onto THIS WORLD, Earth. This then means that Earth is an illusion. "The world you see is an illusion of a world" "The world was made as an attack on God etc." In this view, "there is no world" is referring to the illusory world which is in turn referring to Earth and all the galaxies etc.
But there is another way to MAP the course. This alternative approach SHIFTS the framework down a level. It considers that all the "reality" box stuff is actually TALKING ABOUT or referring to, THIS WORLD. e.g. the universe, Earth, bodies etc. Everything the course says about real stuff a person will think is referring to THESE THINGS. And here's the rub.
In order for the course ITSELF to seem to make sense, its STRUCTURE has to remain intact - the contrast between the real stuff and the illusory stuff. So that means you now need somewhere to PUT the "box of illusions". SOMETHING in your "environment" has to be ASSIGNED to the box of illusions, otherwise you can't make sense of it at all.
So if Earth and bodies are considered "in the reality box", you now have to find another thing to assign "illusions" to. And what might that be? Well, since if bodies are real we don't want to ever challenge that idea, so it can't be anything PHYSICAL. So this then leans towards something psychological, something perhaps to do with the MIND or the realm of perception. You have to connect the references to illusions SOMEWHERE in your experience.
And so what people do is, they take a necessary "step back" from "the world" which they think is REALITY, Earth, bodies being real, and HAVE TO displace the illusions into some kind of INTERNAL box, a hidden box, a more nebulous perceptual box. And so now the meaning of illusions is RELEGATED entirely to the inside contents of the mind. It all now becomes a model in which illusion means "my FALSE VIEW OF the world", and awakening now must mean "seeing the world as reality".
Of course if the world IS reality, correct perception would SEEM to line up with the idea that all you're supposed to do is learn to LOOK AT the world correctly, "as God intended", and then you're more or less done. ie true perception is now passed off as "seeing the world as God's most beautiful handywork." And therefore that if I don't LIKE the world for some reason, I must be HAVING ILLUSIONS, in my mind, in my perception, which is causing me to NOT APPRECIATE the world that God supposedly created "outside myself."
There is a great deal in the course which COULD by some seem to be suggesting this is correct, especially given that people seem to find themselves ISOLATED to a single body. "The minds are trapped in their brains." And from that perspective, where you think your mind is CONFINED to your brain, or your self is confined to your body, it SEEMS to make sense that the rest of the world and the body are God's creations. It doesn't seem to challenge it. But this is only because the perception of self and mind as LIMITED TO ONE LOCATION goes unchallenged. It's completely ASSUMED that it is normal to find yourself "inside a single body." And in this view, it seems to make sense that "everything else" is God's doing.
But there are some significant distortions that have to be introduced into what ACIM says in order to make this FIT. For example, the course is very clear in stating that "the body does not exist." "The body is a dream". That doesn't fly well if you believe God created the world. So in order to COMPENSATE for that, to ADJUST the course's meaning so that this basic core belief goes unchallenged, a person will REDEFINE THE MEANING of various terms.
"The body" may now be thought of as being some kind of internal "ego attitude" or "mental self". The "world you made" may be considered some kind of projective, perceptual, interpretation OF the world. "Earth" even has to redefined in light of ACIM stating that Earth is heaven's opposite, so now you have to conceive of references to Earth meaning some kind of "inner planet?". Statements about the sun disappearing have to also be reinterpreted to mean some kind of "inner attitude ABOUT the sun". These modifications are absolutely NECESSARY AND UNAVOIDABLE if a person is to try to maintain a sense of CONSISTENCY in their thought system.
But here's the problem. Just because a person is grasping the internal STRUCTURAL relationships in various parts of the course, the relationship between reality and illusions for example, and just because they are maintaining a clear delineation between the two in THEIR view of the world, it doesn't mean their view is VALID. Consistency is not necessarily validity.
It is possible for example, for a person to take *everything* the course says, and essentially RE-MAP it to MAP IT ONTO, this prior-belief that God created THIS world. It takes a huge number of modifications to the meaning of statements to do this, but if a person does this with BELIEF it doesn't matter to them. They just believe it's correct. It SEEMS TO MAKE SENSE to them, because it is CONSISTENT.
But the problem is you can really go DEEP into this and expose yourself over and over and over again to the same interpretation of the course, become very deeply rooted in it, believe you are "getting it", but all the while are interpreting that it is REFERRING TO stuff that it isn't actually referring to. In fact, a person can become extremely comprehensive in their awareness of what the quotes say, studying the text umpteen times, doing the workbook endlessly, and STILL believe that God created the world.
They will think "when it says body, IT MEANS...." and then will attach that to whatever TARGET they think the course is talking ABOUT when it says "body". There is this TRANSLATION happening all the time, which now requires a person to be an expert translator in order to "understand" anything it says. And it's now possible to think you are understanding it because it seems CONSISTENT, while being TOTALLY INVALID. Because if when Jesus says "the body" you think he means "my internal attitude and NOT my physical body", that's now leading to a TOTALLY DIFFERENT interpretation. It now makes the person have to REINTERPRET EVERYTHING, rather than just taking it simply and literally.
What does this DO? It basically establishes in a person's mind a very DETAILED, reinforced, faith-given, heavily-believed-in "model" of what is real and what is not, WHICH IS FALSE. And a person can study the course for DECADES believing that THIS is the correct interpretation of what the course MEANS when it says stuff. What it is REFERRING to. Don't be fooled - someone can have been doing ACIM for 40+ years and be totally mistaken about everything.
So by failing to see what the course is REFERRING TO with each of its statements, an entire layer of interpretation and displacement is occurring which results in the person becoming STUCK AND TRAPPED. They are stuck because they THINK that they are relating to reality, when they are relating to an illusion. They THINK they are accepting what the course is saying, when in fact the stuff they are accepting is REJECTING what the course is saying. And so they think they are doing something they are not doing. WHICH IS INSANITY.
One of the really serious things that happens is this. If it is believed that God created the world, but if this is NOT TRUE, the person believing it now looks upon this world as if it is REALITY. If it is NOT TRUE that this world is reality, but the person believes it is, that person now technically has FALSE PERCEPTION. False perception means you are viewing illusions and mistaking them for reality. Just because a person BELIEVES that this world is reality, doesn't make it true. And believing it is true, is being MISTAKEN, while believing you are NOT mistaken. And so the person becomes BLIND to the fact they are mistaken - they are insane, while believing they are sane.
If the world IS an illusion and you believe it is reality, you are deceived and are believing falsely. But to the person doing this, who believes "the world is real", THEY believe that regarding this world AS REAL is TRUE TO ITS NATURE. That seeing this world "truly" or as God intended, is TRUE perception. So if this world is NOT real, that person now has false perception but believes they have true perception. That is a state of profound confusion.
There are things which the course states plainly enough which are hard to deny. For example it actually states that THE SUN WILL VANISH. It also states that the stars will disappear. Which means, ALL GALAXIES. Believing God MADE THEM this is totally contradictory. What is a person to do? They would have to relegate these references to "they must mean something else". And then they'd seek for something else to pin it on. And good luck with finding "a sun" and a whole bunch of massive galaxies that exists only in your "inner perceptions about the world that's real."
And how about "Both heaven and earth are in your mind"? Surely this isn't saying that your mind is SO VAST that it actually contains a physical planet and an entire kingdom, whereby all of the animals, mountains, oceans, forests are all INSIDE YOUR MIND, meaning your mind must be HUGE and powerful? Well, that's what the Course IS saying. But those who don't believe this, relegate it to a nice comfortable safe "this must just be referring to some perceptions I'm having inside my little body." And that's an extremely TINY (non-threatening) interpretation of what ACIM is meaning.
These are basically the two major views of ACIM. Either God created the world or he did not. If he did, rather large chunks of ACIM **do not mean what they say**. In order to "make it make sense" the whole thing has to be interpreted as poetry, metaphor, and re-interpreted at every turn. Even the meaning of common words HAVE to be completely redefined, like "Earth", "Sun", "Body". Nothing is then taken LITERALLY. The course is no longer believed to be simply plain and obvious or honest and straightforward, but rather some kind of obscure and subtlety poetic array of metaphors that have hidden subtle meanings hardly anyone can understand. And Jesus is quite clear he has taken every effort to make this course as obvious and unambiguous as possible.
The simple view that God did not create this world is FAR MORE ACCURATE, requires massively less "reinterpretation", is EASIER to understand, is much more literally connected to what Jesus actually SAYS using terms that we are familiar with, AND makes a whole lot more sense. The HONEST view of ACIM is that it is telling the truth when it says the sun will vanish, the earth is not heaven, that this world is cruel, and that bodies are illusions. This true view of the course removes an entire LAYER of interpretation and "mapping", taking out the FILTER which some people interpose between themselves and EVERYTHING it says, incapable of taking Jesus at His word EVER.
This view of the course is also far more radical. Therefore potentially more threatening to the ego. It is therefore less popular, and more challenging to accept. If it's true bodies don't exist and the world is fiction and you made it all up and your mind is bigger than the universe ("your mind has the power to make worlds"), that's a much bigger mind bending conclusion with extraordinary implications. It challenges your every belief, all your values, everything you have a special relationship with, the notion of bodies being life forms, and even brings into question whether anything you see is real at all. But this view of the course does have one thing going for it. It doesn't require you to MANGLE THE HELL out of everything it says in order to make it make sense.
"There is no world" is simply literal. "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both" is now literal. Miracles can now literally heal the sick and raise the dead IN THE WORLD, not just in your mind. Miracles are no longer mere shifts in perception but capable of transforming matter and BREAKING ALL THE LAWS OF THIS WORLD including the laws of physics, which supports Jesus walking on water LITERALLY. And it also now means that it is possible to overcome PHYSICAL death. And in this view, the world is recognized as AN ILLUSION, NOT the Kingdom of God.
This view of the course is VASTLY DIFFERENT to the conclusions drawn from the other view. The contrast is practically night and day. The THOUGHT SYSTEM that arises is totally different. And the kind of BELIEFS you have to have to invest in them to make them true are TOTALLY opposite. It's literally the difference between believing that God made the Earth and believing God did NOT make the Earth. The difference between THIS IS REALITY, and THIS IS NOT REALITY! It's a hugely different view. And it hugely affects how you perceive and relate to this "world."
You CAN only believe one or the other, if you are consistent about it. Which ever one you side with will completely gravitate ALL your views towards it. In order to keep it consistent, you will HAVE TO adopt every single view that is based on that belief. And that means you will have to view everything "the other camp" believes as TOTALLY FALSE. And not one thing the other camp says will be accepted as true because it would undermine the CORE belief that God made the world, or not. And this is why there is a huge divide in the ACIM community between those who think the world is reality, vs those who do not. It's extremely pivotal and fundamental. And they can't both be true.
So you have taken a side. The question is, whether you are on the side of actual truth, or the side of fiction.
Let's talk a bit about this notion that all you have to do is transcend "what's happening" in order to be at peace.
The major assumption here is that stuff is happening "on its own". The world is ticking over, events are occurring out of nowhere, no-one is necessarily responsible for making anything happen, attack thoughts pop into the mind seemingly out of nowhere, shit just happens, suffering happens, sickness happens, death happens. Seemingly all on its own with no input from you. So then you try to escape it.
This assumption is only possible if you perceive yourself as having NOTHING whatsoever to do with "causing" the world to be this way, causing sickness, causing suffering or death. The viewpoint is one of total powerlessness, in which the world seems to be the CAUSE OF YOU, the dream decides your fate, things happen to you against your will, and you are entirely at the effect of the world. It's a position of victimhood.
But this for everyone is usually the kind of mindset that you start out with, in the ego, identified with a limited body, perceiving the world as a huge objective reality that does stuff on its own. And then you come to the course and start trying to digest its teachings WITHIN that kind of viewpoint without questioning it. Without questioning the assumption that the world is running on autopilot, or that the body gets sick because of outside influences, or that death will "happen to you" when it decides to.
Finding yourself in a world that's attacking you (causing you, making you affected), you seek for SALVATION or ESCAPE, and you think that you will find it by some kind of AVOIDANCE of what's happening. That if you could crawl into a hole and hide and get away from the causes, you would find some kind of peace. This is entirely an ego strategy. It keeps the attacking world real, maintains external causes, and keeps you at the effect of everything, but then persuades you that if you will step back and sit on the fence just enough maybe you'll be beyond the reach of its influence. That it's totally normal for a hideous disease to be ripping the body apart so long as you're smiling, or that somehow it's natural to still get angry but "observe" the anger from a detached viewpoint. Split mind anyone?
This leads many people along the EGO path of seeking for salvation by some kind of "transcending" of what is happening. That is, firmly believing that what happens is entirely permanently outside your control, you have no power over it, it will STILL continue to do what it does, and there is nothing you can really to do STOP IT. And that therefore your only solution is to "change your mind about it" or try to "see it in a different way" so that, perhaps, you can WELCOME IT, or not interpret it as an attack, or position yourself beyond it somehow.
And so then the entire effort to progress spiritually becomes about a kind of withdrawal from the world, an attempt to transcend it, an attempt to bypass it, an attempt to KEEP THE WORLD functioning the way it does, keep the attacks, keep the wars, keep the sickness, keep the suffering, and keep the death, but find some way to "be at peace with it". Or to be happy "in spite of it".
The thing is, there is SOME truth to this, because the world is in fact not real, it's a dream, and taking it seriously makes you unhappier. Believing in its illusions and temptations produces stress. Reacting to it increases suffering. etc. So you reason that you will find more peace if you will sort of calm yourself down, become tranquil, try not to be upset by it and thus reach some kind of peaceful state. While the world keeps being murderous against your will. And then along comes death, and what can you do to stop it? Hold up a peace sign? Throw some vitamin water at it?
What happens here is that people find a kind of escape from suffering through avoidance and "re-framing". It's perfectly legitimate to reframe the world because the world is a dream and not to be taken seriously. But at the same time, while people will take "causality" away from the world as if to say, you are no longer "at the effect of" the world, they still won't go so far as to OWN THE CAUSALITY. They won't admit to having power over the world, nor admit to DREAMING IT. It's like becoming a passive dreamer who is still unconscious of the fact that the world is coming from their own mind.
They see no purpose or power or ability to actually INFLUENCE it in any way. And this is a result of the ASSUMPTION that the state of major limitation you find yourself in is "normal" and natural. In this state there has been no transcendence of the order of difficulty in miracles. The hierarchy of illusions has not been dismantled or flattened. The power of the mind has not been admitted to or owned or mastered. Miracles are not being performed. Healing is missing. In effect, every way in which you would be THE CAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENS, is completely ignored.
So what happens is, we still believe the world is the cause of everything, the world still spins on its own, events still happen outside your control, people still attack, the environment still causes your body to be sick, the death still decides when your time is up. But supposedly you are happy and at peace. And yet you are powerless. Passive. An "observer". A fence-sitter. Sitting there on a cloud doing basically nothing to engage with the world, heal sickness, cast out death or overcome the LAWS that you made up to govern you.
If you are under no laws but God's, why are you pinned down by gravity? Why are you restricted by space and time? Why do you depend on air and food? Why when "sickness happens" do you not realise you PUT IT THERE? Why when death seems to loom are you not seeing that you HAVE POWER OVER SICKNESS AND DEATH BECAUSE YOU MADE THEM UP AND CAN ABOLISH THEM BOTH?
Being "not at the effect of the world" does NOT mean "I don't let the world affect me". It means YOU STOP HURTING YOURSELF. It means YOU take responsibility for CAUSING everything, and you choose to stop attacking yourself. It means you stop believing there even IS an outside cause or power or will or mind that can affect you against your will. It means you stop believing that the body EVER "gets sick" through any process other than YOUR MIND ATTACKING IT. And it also requires the recognition that even death has NO POWER OVER YOU, and therefore you DO NOT MAKE IT HAPPEN, and there is NO cause anywhere to make it happen against your will. Jesus: "SWEAR NOT TO DIE!"
This is the part of ACIM that so many poeple do not want to see or admit to or own up to. That the world is not simply "not causing you" to be upset, but that YOU ARE CAUSING IT. SOMEONE is responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. Nothing happens without a MIND CAUSING IT. The planet does not even EXIST without a mind dreaming it. Sickness does not happen unless a MIND decides to make sickness. Death does not occur unless some MIND CHOOSES to make death appear to happen.
It is not anywhere near enough to simply seek out being "at peace" in a kind of escape from "a real world that does stuff to me on its own". That is not mastery. That is not transcendence, it's avoidance. There is no power in that. It's a state of passivity and really not much different than laying down and allowing death to happen "on its own". Being not "affected by" something does not mean it still HAPPENS and you are "okay with it". You have to look at WHY does it even HAPPEN AT ALL? It happens because YOU are responsible for making it happen. That's a whole different ballgame.
It's not merely about what the world does and how you respond to it, it's about YOU ARE THE DREAMER WHO IS MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN. And therefore you can choose to NOT making it happen, or to undo anything you have made. It is a position of POWER. It is a position of being able to HEAL whatever occurs. It is a position of miracle working and supernatural power. It's not a state of contemplating your navel and becoming mostly peaceful then having the body "become sick and die" in a total display of victimhood.
You are to not be affected by the world. That does not mean the world still does stuff "on its own" to you against your will. It means realizing the world DOES NOT do stuff on its own, YOU DO IT, and then deciding to STOP DOING IT. So that the world CANNOT DO ANYTHING without your consent. Because you do it all to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. This is why there is no power or cause in the world capable of bringing oppression, making you suffer, sick, sad or afraid. The world is the EFFECT OF YOU. Which means you, in your unlimited nature, should be able to CHANGE IT any way you see fit. Because you are the dreamer.
It's also not enough to meditate and "watch thoughts come and go". WHO MAKES THE THOUGHTS? You do. Stopping making the thoughts is correcting the problem at its CAUSE, rather than allowing the thought-generation to continue and to then try to BYPASS it. That is not peace. A healed mind should not be GENERATING attack thoughts. There should be no need to "observe" thought processes, given that those troublesome thought processes should not even be HAPPENING in the first place. It's not your job to let attack thoughts keep occurring by try to sidestep or ignore them (actually a form of disassociation). It's your job to uproot those motherfuckers at their source and stop making them.
The course says not to seek to change the world, but to change your mind about the world. A lot of people SOTP THERE. But it goes on to say, that if you change your mind about the world, THE WHOLE WORLD WILL CHANGE. Because your mind has the power to CHANGE THE DREAM. That is a VASTLY different standpoint than one of "only" changing your mind "about it". You never really change your mind ABOUT the dream anyway.... as you change your mind, the dream changes. There is no "about", unless you believe that the world is a SEPARATE THING FROM YOUR MIND.
"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."
"You made the world."
"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."
If your focus is to try to LET STUFF STILL HAPPEN and "just observe it", you are turning yourself into a fence-sitting inert powerless action-less miracle-less passive recipient of death.
Jesus states that "members of my party are ACTIVE WORKERS."
There is miracle mindedness, that is one thing. It's a state of true perception and readiness to perform miracles. But then there is MIRACLE DOING, or working, which is an ACT of CAUSING illusions to change or disappear. Miracle DOING is the part that so many are afraid of and do not want anything to do with. Because that means having power over the world and not just seeking out an escape from it.
"Your function on earth is healing." "You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."
If you want to be a miracle WORKER, not just "miracle minded" or "transcendent", it has to go WAY beyond passivity or trying to meditate or trying to let stuff keep happening without any ABILITY to do anything about it. Faith without works is dead. You must EXTEND LOVE, CAUSE HEALING, and REVERSE DEATH. This is not a spectator sport UNTIL the entire sonship is awakened.
All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.
"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."
Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.
The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.
In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.
"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."
What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.
The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.
It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.
"They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.
Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.
"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."
Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.
To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"
Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?
But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.
At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.
So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.
You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.
People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.
So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.
It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.
It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.
"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."
I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.
Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.
You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.
At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.
"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."
What this tells us also is that this DREAM was co-created with brothers, there is NOT just one dreamer.
It also means, we need to learn that other people have THEIR OWN free will, and their own choice, and have to choose atonement for THEMSELVES.
This also means, that you choosing atonement for YOUR self does not automatically heal or undo or force anyone ELSE to accept it. And this in fact is why you then become part OF the atonement PLAN and are to help others!
It also means that you are clearly NOT responsible for the choices of other free-willed beings and must RESPECT THEIR FREEDOM in order to respect your own. That means you have to ALLOW others to choose whatever THEY want to choose, and that's not something the ego is very happy about because it frequently wants to run other people's lives and tell them what to do and accuse them of doing something they should not be doing.
Free will also indicates that even if you purify your perception and becomes true perception, it WILL NOT prevent you from seeing or perceiving the MISTAKES that other people are freely choosing. Nor does it make it impossible for you to see their bodies, nor does it make it impossible for you to see that they are SICK.
All it means is that you now RECOGNIZE CORRECTLY what you are perceiving, which means you recognize the person's sickness is FALSE instead of TRUE. Seeing sickness as false does not mean seeing no sickness at all, it just means you are not deluded into thinking it is a demonstration of truth, and so it is not REAL to you. You thus can still discern that other people are calling out for help and that you CAN then help them.
Many people have come to believe that there is only one dreamer and therefore one perceiver, and therefore anything happening to other people is "part of your dream" and so part of your own mind and so something YOU are putting there.
This then suggests if you change your mind it must somehow make other people's problems disappear. But I think if you are honest you will admit, THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED, and it is simply because your PERCEPTION OF the world has become more accurate and true, you are not perceiving LESS and other people STILL HAVE INDEPENDENT FREE WILL.
You have to recognize and allow other people to have the TOTAL FREEDOM to choose for themselves, OTHERWISE you cannot acknowledge your own total freedom to choose atonement for YOUR self. This is why we have to learn to let other people have the freedom to WILLFULLY come to God by their own choice, and not force them into it. God does not coerce and nor should we.
This is also why it can be difficult to try to OFFER teaching to others, because generally speaking, any "student" is inherently UNWILLING, and that is why they NEED to learn, and yet the teacher is offering something to them. In order TO teach it, willingness has to happen somewhere in the student, and sometimes to bridge that gap the teacher "tries" to "get" the student to see what they are seeing, and that can potentially become a slippery slope of demand or coercion. No-one learns against their will, and this is why the Course says not to terrorize your students. It's a very fine line between offering something to those who are WILLING, versus trying to get someone to see sense when they are UNWILLING. It is only when students are unwilling that conflict happens. And then you have to let go and allow them to have their beliefs. This is respect for their free will. They are not "supposed to" "get it", against their will.
Come visit planet Earth (death), it's a really great place to be. Rated "zero stars", it's a popular attraction. Wouldn't you like to stay here for ever and ever? It's got bacon. ;-)
Hear what previous visitors had to say about their stay...
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"You do not want the world. "
"The world provides no safety. "
"This world was over long ago. "
"The world you see does not exist. "
"Nothing the world believes is true. "
"Love was never in the world of dreams. "
"There are no satisfactions in the world. "
"It is the world you see that is impossible. "
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. "
"Without the idea of death there is no world. "
"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing. "
"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. "
"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. "
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness. "
"The world was made that problems could not be escaped. "
"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. "
"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ. "
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. "
"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. "
"Only in the world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. "
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home. "
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten. "
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state. "
"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible. "
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. "
"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad. "
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. "
"Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. "
"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach. "
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. "
"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. "
"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. "
"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world. "
"For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. "
"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself. "
"The world believes in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it is not outside you. "
"Injustice is the basis for all the judgments of the world. "
"Where is the world, and where is sorrow now? "
"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. "
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it"
"How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source? "
"If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes that it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. "
"Judgment and love are opposites. From one comes all the sorrows of the world. From the other comes the peace of God."
"The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate. "
"The world uses its special relationships as a final weapon of exclusion and a demonstration of separateness."
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. "
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release."
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you."
"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it. "
"Earth sucks. It's a shit hole. I'm never going back." (haha)
A course in miracles never mentions the phrase "shift in perception" except in the following paragraph, which is actually a paragraph heavily focused on how miracles relate to TIME. Whenever the Course mentions miracles, there is no trace of any reference to shifting of perception anywhear near it or in the same context.
Here is the only time it says "shift in perception":
"The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary."
Now. What IS horizontal perception, and what is vertical perception?
Horizontal perception is believing in the appearance of the ego world as though it is real, as though there are causes within the world which produce effects within the world. It means you believe in level confusion, magic, victimhood, and all the other signs of the ego. It means you believe and see that something outside of you, to the side of you, has "caused" effects in your life. This is an illusion and it is not true.
Vertical perception is a shift in VIEWPOINT, and a shift into a different state of mind, into the Right Mind, which THEN PERCEIVES the true order of the levels, and the truth that mind is cause and the world is effect. It is a recognition of where the ego shit is coming from. Who is the dreamer. It is a pretty profound BIG shift to go from horizontal perception to vertical. Your little shifts in perception are NOT IT, but they may lead to it eventually.
To get into the right mind is NOT something you are going to be able to do when you start applying forgiveness. It is not something you will even barely be able to do until much later.
Further, Jesus is miraculous right now, and yet he is awake all the way. He has no illusions left to get rid of. There is nothing in his "perception" that needs shifting. Yet he is miraculous, right now. Awake and miraculous. If a miracle is a "shift", if it is the "shifting itself" that is miraculous, then he would be INCAPABLE OF any miracles since he has nothing left to shift. Or in other words, miracles would only be possible FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT YET LOVING AND MIRACULOUS.
This is a complete 180 degree flip, by the ego, based on how *IT* interprets what a miracle is, as part of ITS DEFENSE against miracles. IT thinks that IT does something which causes ITS perception to change, dualistically, from one illusion to another, to a preferable illusion, and that this is "miraculous". Fuck that. It is not even slightly miraculous. It would mean that a person just BEGINNING to apply the course, in their very first CORRECTION of perception, would BE A MIRACLE WORKER. That could not be further from the truth. No-one at the BEGINNING is a miraculous as at the END.
Miracles are also expressions of love. Is someone who has accepted a LITTLE BIT of truth, loving? No. They are only slightly less hateful. Are they expressing unconditional love before, during, or after their "shift"? No. Not until much later. Much, much later. Therefore they are not "expressing love" yet, and therefore are not miraculous.
Also the course says "Miracles are everyone’s RIGHT, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST."
You CANNOT perform miracles until you have done a shit load of purification work. That purification work, IS the work of "shifting perception" towards the truth, it IS the work of accepting CORRECTION of your perception. But it is not the "being corrected" or the "purifyING" that is miraculous.
Purifying the mind is a long slow process. It can take years even lifetimes. These things LEAD TO the development of the ability to be miraculous. Otherwise, hey, anyone picking up a course book can suddenly walk on water, proving the ego’s "horizontal perception" laws are bullshit? I think not.
Being miraculous is your inheritance, it is NATURAL, and it should be the way you are ALL THE TIME. And you WILL NEVER LOSE THE ABILITY to be miraculous when you wake up. Jesus is miraculous NOW, even though HE is completely without any ego to shift. Miracle-mindedness is quite an advanced state of mind. It’s not something watered down and insignificant like some person having a private little change of mind. Miracles are BIG ASS profound demonstrations of the power of the mind!
Miracles are also expressions of love and they are expressions of the atonement. They express FROM the atonement, and from the Christ mind. They do not express FROM THE EGO, nor do they express as part of your purification work. But they may start to express as a RESULT of your purification work after some time, but only because you are becoming WILLING to RECEIVE them. THEY happen because you LET GOD HEAL YOU, not because "you" - your ego - did a little bit of work.
The purpose of purifying and correcting perception is TO REMOVE BLOCKS TO AWARENESS of Love’s presence. To remove the BLOCKS. Not to "make love happen". You UNCOVER love. You reveal it. You allow it to shine. You put aside your denial and your fear and you ALLOW love to love. This is not something you do as a one-off. It is not something you ONLY do when you are "shifting". It is your NATURAL STATE which is buried under piles of shit in your mind. It takes a lot of dgiving out before it even starts to become apparent that it is there, OR that you become able to LET IT EXPRESS.
When love is uncovered, it is free to express itself. Jesus describes this automatic outpouring of love, which comes AFTER a LOT of purification, here:
"The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends without your help, but you are needed that it can begin. Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of what it is. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and received. No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."
So you have to do quite a lot of "work" before you’re going to uncover love enough that it can go about doing what it does through you. IF you are blocking it, it cannot extend through you. Love MUST extend through you to perform a miracle. "Miracles cannot be accomplished in a spirit of doubt", so if you just did your little "shift" for the day and bemame SLIGHTLY more loving, but are still riddled with fear, YOU DEFINITELY ARE NOT performing miracles that day.
Miracles express from a higher level of mind, like drops of healing rain, falling down upon those that need healing and life. They express the VERTICAL perception, which is quite DIFFICULT to get into fully when you have a lot of ego to sort out. Getting squarely into the right mind, consistently, is pretty advanced and most of us are nowhere near it. I know I’m not, and I have not seem much evidence of many others being there either. Where’s the miracles?!
Since being miraculous is a NATURAL PART OF LOVE, because all expressions of love are miraculous, and because love has life-giving properties, a miracle can only "shift your perception" through a healing that you RECEIVE from God. IT comes "down" to where you are, frees you from a bunch of fear, and therefore you naturally rise up closer to God. But the miracle itself is not your rising up. The miracle is the expressing of love. The miracle is what is coming TO you from God TO heal you SO THAT you might become closer to Him and join him in being loving. You can’t give love if you haven’t received it.
So the shifting, as most people think of it and use it, that shift is not miraculous AT ALL. Not in itself. If it comes about because of an actual MIRACLE being experienced and received, which may only occur when you ACCEPT ATONEMENT to some degree, then the shifting is a SIDE EFFECT of the miracle doing what it does.
Shifting "into" vertical perception first and foremost is not the miracle itself. Shifting TO that perception is required BEFORE the miracle is possible. Once you get INTO that perception, THEN miracles can express, because only then are you willing to receive them. They express FROM vertical perception.
During an intense, drawn out forgiveness process I was practicing on myself, which Holy Spirit was helping me with, the first time that I became willing enough to drop false beliefs to go ALL THE WAY to the atonement principle, and accept, however dimly, that somehow I MUST be innocent still because sin did not happen..... which was only like a year ago after practicing the course for 15-odd years, that was the FIRST TIME that Jesus said to me...."NOW you will be able to perform miracles." It took a LOT of purification for me to become willing enough to "go there", to get into the right mind and perceive from it, just for a short time, as a glimpse of truth. TO receive LOVE from God for the first time.
So miracles are not shifts in perception. They are a permanent WAY OF BEING that is natural to all of God’s creations. They are what naturally happens when love expresses. When love is blocked, "something has gone wrong", causing miracles to NOT HAPPEN. Having blocks to awareness is this problem. MANY BLOCKS must be removed before love is even remotely going to be able to flow through you. IT takes a lot of development of TRUST and willingness and fearlessness to become miracle minded.
Being miracle minded is a A FINAL NATURAL STATE of mind, not a little blip along the way. And if you have fears, particularly FEARS OF MIRACLES, they will not be happening. And MANY people are very afraid of miracles.
The watering down of miracles has come about largely through this error (Holy Spirit’s word) of thinking that a miracle is "only a shift". If a miracle is only a shift, when the shift is done, there is no more miracles. Meaning, love, which is always miraculous, would have to stop being love. This is clearly mistaken. Believing miracles are shifts, is a FANTASTIC WAY to KEEP REAL MIRACLES AWAY FROM YOU in fear and in an unwillingness to entertain the possibilities that miracles present. It happens because people are afraid of the power of the mind and want to keep the course nice and tidy and quiet, studied in private and kept behind closed doors. LET THE MIRACLES OUT!
It should also be noted, that you cannot become loving without becoming miraculous. Miracles are inherent to expressions of love. Not just some.... oh I feel warm and fuzzy about you.... we’re talking about massive POWERFUL love here. The Power of God, nothing less. "There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do." "All Power in heaven and earth has been given you."
By all means keep on a-shifting. It’ll purify your mind and help you to get out of the way of love. But then watch out. Love is going to start expressing, and some pretty law-defying, ego-breaking, "impossible"-seeming stuff is going to start happening. And you will WANT to perform these miracles because you are WILLING to receive them and therefore ACCEPT that everyone else is worthy of them also. "You can only give the miracles you have received".
Notice that this says you GIVE miracles. Notice also that several of the Miracle Principles talk DIRECTLY about miracles you perform FOR others. "Miracles are the maximal Service you can render to others". A SERVICE. Nothing to do with your little perceptual shifts. They are. Interpersonal expressions of love and healing and truth. And that does mean, you’re going to be going up to people and offering miracles of healing live and in person! ARE YOU SCARED OF THAT?! That’s a problem. That will keep miracles from happening. You have to go out on a limb to reach the fruit of the tree! Miracle working can be a RISKY business requiring a LOT OF TRUST!
Miracles are capable of raising the dead, reversing all sickness, undoing all suffering, solving all problems. There is nothing they cannot do. NOTHING. Make a big list of all the things you think miracles cannot do, then throw it away. Including the literal moving of mountains.
We are to be miracle workers. Love expressers. Divine beings. Healers. Light bringers. Saviors. Demonstrators of the truth. Anyone who REALLY believes the truth is true will be willing to ACT ON IT.
Very simply the entire separation from God is a matter of becoming confused about what is true and what is false. That which is really true (God's truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is false, and that which is false (ego truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is true. This produces a state of TOTAL CONFUSION. But this all hinges around your BELIEF in what is true and what is false.
Wherever you place your sense of "what is true", you will anchor yourself to that and BELIEVE that it's completely true. You'll also believe you are 100% sane to believe it. And you'll defend it to the death because you think it is your life. Even if you're becoming identified with something very untrue and you are very mistaken, your BELIEF that it's true will blind you and distort your perception.
You will SEE or regard genuinely true things as enemies, the opposition, false, unwanted, attacking you, trying to steal away your truth. And only anything that supports, resonates with, seems to confirm or justifies your current truth will be seen as accepted, truthful, allowed, welcomed. So you could be right in the middle of being extremely confused, believing something totally false is true and real, defending it with your life, trying to keep everything else from undermining it, believing you are TOTALLY justified and sane, while simultaneously being very very mistaken.
So wherever you are AT right now, whatever your belief system is, whatever is TRUE for you, you actually believe you are FULLY in the truth right now. Doesn't matter how mistaken you actually are. Even if you believe death is life and hell is heaven and the Holy Spirit is your sworn enemy, which the extreme of ego does believe, you'll think you're totally totally "right" to believe what you do, that's it's reasonable and makes sense to you. And any insinuation that you might be mistaken will be experienced as a threat, an enemy, an attack, by some person who is obviously "wrong", and are seen as someone you have to defend against and counter-attack to keep them from infiltrating your sacred truth.
Everyone does this. Every single person with an ego is doing this. Because every such person believes something is true which isn't, is mistaken and confused, and wants to protect and defend all the lies that they think are not lies. And so what happens is, if you try to tell someone something that isn't "their truth", it will conflict with their truth instantly. And this will be experienced as conflict and there will be a war that comes from it. Particularly if a person is very strong willed or stubborn, they will resist being questioned or undermined moreso than others. Or in other words, there is an unwillingness to learn, and too much faith placed in being right/true already instead of humility or self-honesty.
Others may be in general more open minded or more willing to listen and consider alternatives which may well lead to them having to question their own beliefs. And that's a position of greater self honesty and willingness. It takes a "little willingness", therefore, to be willing to open up to the possibility that you might be mistaken. That what you really firmly think is true, might not be. And if indeed what you believe is not actually true, but you think it is, you will make no progress towards God without being a little bit willing to question just how true your beliefs are. His truth cannot become true for you, until you can accept that your fake truth is FALSE.
This is more or less why the majority of people (truth defenders) do not agree with each other, and also is why most of those who do agree with each other are either mutually sane or just happen to share the same delusions. This is how the ego forms "allegiances" with people who seem to oppose their truth the least, forming a circle of "friends" who support and uphold their mistakes without questioning them. This is all begun in the ego's FIRST law of chaos, which says that the truth is different for everyone!
Everyone believes they KNOW the truth. They HAVE the truth. This is a fundamental carry-over from BEING the truth prior to the separation. Everyone attached themselves to SOME kind of truth no matter whether it's true or not. It's only a matter of sorting out what is *actually* true in terms of God's truth, from what is a fake truth in terms of ego, in order to proceed in the direction of Atonement. While we cling to lies, we are kept in the dark and away from eternal life.
The thing is, you can present a greater truth, you can explain it, you can show it and demonstrate it as clear as day, but if someone is not WILLING to undermine what they believe is already true, and doesn't see a reason to abandon their existing false beliefs, they simply will stay right where they are. Because they think they already have all the answers. All of the truth. And that they're very right about it, having convinced themselves over and over again WHY this truth is supposedly true. And this especially becomes a problem when very abstract or fundamental "cornerstones" in the belief system are upheld, supported, and reinforced, by a whole host of beliefs that keep the person highly unwilling to question fundamental issues such as whether the body or the world are real, or whether you are supposed to die, or what miracles are capable of.
We build great defenses against admitting to being
mistaken. We resist it. We in fact experience "the real truth" as an opponent or enemy, come to war with us and destroy us, and it keeps going on and on about this and that as if trying to make something "false" true, when you obviously know better. In other words, the real truth, at first, is experienced as the very thing we DO NOT WANT. Our ego ensures we see it as our nemesis, come to destroy us. The idea of oneness alone is enough to scare the pants off the ego since it implies the end of separation and thus the undoing of ALL false beliefs and false identities. This is why the ego wants NOTHING to do with the Holy Spirit. And this is why we have profound RESISTANCE to accepting the atonement.
Anything of the true nature of God, anything to do with God's laws, anything to do with the Holy Spirit, anything to do with breaking the laws of physics of this world, anything to do with performing extraordinary supernatural miracles which would probably shock most people, anything to do with Spirit, anything to do with receiving input from outside of this dimension, anything which would prove you are not a body or that God did not create the world, or that death is fake and can be undone, anything like that... which would bring doubt into the mind about what our MISTAKEN beliefs say is true, is seen as a THREAT, and a danger, and an attack. And WE DO NOT WANT IT. And seeing it as a threat we put up defenses against it, which by the way induces sickness.
And yet, all of these things are truth based, all of them are of God, and all of them are benevolent. So it is not that the truth IS an attacker, it's that it SEEMS like an attacker when YOU are an attacker. When YOU believe in a false truth you are believing in attack while BELIEVING you are peaceful, BELIEVING you are being neutral and objective, but are seriously biased away from truth. This is why most people DO NOT WANT the truth, they do not want miracles, they do not want the Holy Spirit to do anything. The very idea of Him having a power that causes things to happen that you can witness scares the pants off people who would much prefer to be in control of life and keep A Course in Miracles nice and small and safe and tolerable. Which has resulted in the various watered down "sanitized" versions of ACIM being spread and taught.
So this is a fact.... if you are not in God's truth, you will experience God's truth as a sworn enemy that you DO NOT WANT, and which you think is WRONG. And that means in order to approach the truth and genuinely wake up and become spiritual, you may well have to encounter or at least deal with, your false perception OF the truth and therefore get past this belief that true things are false, that holy things are hateful, that life is death and that the Holy Spirit can't be trusted. It more or less means... opening up to accept what you DID NOT WANT TO accept, and that REQUIRES you having a "little willingness" (eventually total willingness) to question your beliefs about what is true already. And that's going to require some radical self honesty and impeccable reasoning.
The Holy Spirit only wants to help you and heal you and give you love and support. He is not a threat at all. But He DOES represent the opposite of the FALSE truths (lies) that you've told yourself, and that means THROUGH those truths you will defend against him. This is how we chose AGAINST Heaven in the first place, substituting truth for another truth. We tried to MAKE God out to be evil and opposite to what we want. We tried to replace life with death, and now *actually believe* that death is salvation. That means the road back home MAY SEEM to be unwanted, uncomfortable, undesirable, upsetting, frightening and something you DON'T WANT, merely because of how confused you are. It may seem to had in the WRONG direction, just as Jesus says that often our greatest advances are SEEN as our worst retreats and vice versa.
WILLINGNESS is key to going home. No-one comes to the Atonement without it. God does not coerce. And the Holy Spirit will not do ANYTHING on your behalf until you are willing to invite him to do so and trust him to do so. Your free will is respected. But you DO have to be willing to want a different truth. To reconsider that what you believe, may not be true. That maybe even though you have *A* truth right now that seems consistent and whole, maybe it's NOT. Maybe it's not actually God's truth. And maybe that means you're going to have to surrender and let go some stuff that you valued, believed, and wanted, that isn't serving you on the way home. This is the work we have to do. And it takes a lot of willingness and honesty and surrendering of what is not true or worthy of a Son of God.
Moving towards God can ONLY occur through your FREE WILL. And this is why there is a required "development of trust" and a "sorting out" of what is really true and what is really false. Trust has to be developed by gradually putting aside fear and TRUSTING the Holy Spirit to do something for you or "to you" on your behalf, for your highest good. To accept HIS truth and way of perceiving with forgiveness. What is false has to be sorted out from what is true so that you are not confused about which is which, and can have accurate true perception. True perception is a state where the truth is RECOGNIZED as true, and what is actually false is RECOGNIZED as false. It's not merely a state of only perceiving the truth, it's a state of perceiving TRUTHFULLY so that false things REGISTER as false. And only in that state of SANITY and clarity and accuracy are you ready to go Home.
A little willingness is all it takes to get started. To be a HAPPY LEARNER, willing to learn "new tricks". Willing to question what you assumed was always true. And willing to open up to a new truth that's bigger and more true than anything you dreamed of.
"The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS WILL. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare YOURSELF for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to YOU to establish the conditions for peace. GOD HAS ESTABLISHED THEM. They do NOT wait upon your willingness for what they ARE. Your willingness is needed ONLY to make it possible to TEACH you what they are."
First we must acknowledge, there is miraculous stuff going on in Heaven, which has nothing to do with perception or the realm of illusions. e.g.
"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"
"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light."
"You are a miracle" (in heaven)
"The miraculous power of the soul"
"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." - "The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."
"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."
There is clearly something automatically miraculous about all things divine. We're also told that "miracles are natural", and what is natural SHOULD be something inherent to reality and the Kingdom, not something that is later considered unnatural or that ends.
So miraculousness, is actually a quality of reality, a quality of God, not necessarily something to do with perception at all. The soul also has a miraculous power which has absolutely nothing to do with the realm of perception. The Holy Spirit also, who really lives in Heaven, is miraculous.
We also must consider a simple idea, that Jesus is just as if not more miraculous and unlimited in his supernatural power NOW, as he ever was on Earth. It would be kind of silly to suggest that he "shifted perception using miracles" and then STOPPED being miraculous.
This is one of the key reasons why miracles cannot BE shifts in perception. There is only so much perception to shift. Once perception shifts to true perception, this would suggest there is no longer any use for miracles. Yet the course describes true perception also as "miracle mindedness". Why would we attain miracle mindedness, which is supposed to be a close reflection of reality, and then switch off all miraculous ability as we go to heaven? That does not really add up.
Rather, the picture forming here is that miraculousness is actually a miraculous nature, founded in God, the true nature of all things in the Kingdom, the nature of the soul and creation (creating life out of your own being is miraculous - "miracles are a spark of life").
And let's not forget the course tells us YOU are one of God's miracles, meaning God is a miracle worker. And God does not have perception. So we really can't continue with this idea that a miracle is a shift in perception, or even in fact ANYTHING to do with perception as such. As least, we must not EQUATE miracles with perceptual shifts or think of them as synonyms.
There is also the fact that "miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear". And that "miracles are expressions of love", and "all expressions of love are maximal". What does this suggest? Simply that even if you are working on your forgiveness and healing, shifting perception, changing beliefs, you likely still have way too much fear and doubt to be MAXIMALLY loving. To have NO fear. Which is a requirement for performing a miracle.
So "beginners" to the course, even intermediate and advanced students, may still not be loving ENOUGH to perform miracles. This is why the course says
"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."
We have to actually do quite a LOT of work to remove blocks and ego from the mind BEFORE we can even get close to the state of miracle mindedness, or maximal love, to be able to BE a miracle worker. While the ego would love to label just about anyone a miracle worker, as a kind of spiritualized ego, the fact is you are not a miracle worker until MUCH LATER in the course's progress. Which means again, any shifts in perception you have, ARE NOT miracles.
As we remove blocks to love, we remove blocks to the NATURAL NATURE of our being - our miraculousness. We re-access and become able again to wield without fear, the ABILITY of our mind to perform miracles. It requires love, as a main ingredient.
Miracles also express FROM a loving state of mind. If you do not have a loving state of mind ALREADY, you will not be able to perform a miracle. If your mind gets INTO a loving state, THAT itself is not a miracle. The shift from where you are, to where you are trying to be, is not miraculous. The place you END UP AT is miraculous.
Now, let's also be clear that miracles CAN CAUSE a shift in perception. For example:
"Miracles unite you with your brother"
"Miracles raise the level of communication"
"Miracles make minds one in God"
So they are ways to heal your psychological interconnectedness with others. But the change that occurs, the effects, the shifts, they are not causal. They are the results of the miracles happening. If perception shifts, that's an effect, not a cause. Let's also throw in this point.
If you are advanced and have done a lot of purification and are now close to miracle mindedness, you do not NEED shifts in perception for yourself. You don't have stuff left TO shift. Does this mean you are now done performing miracles? Absolutely not. You are supposed to be returning TO being MIRACULOUS ALL THE TIME.
Remember, "miracles are NATURAL, and when they do NOT occur, something has gone wrong."
and "Miracles should be happening all the time"
So a person awakening, a person being more loving, a person close to true perception, SHOULD BE miraculous all the time. AND performing miracles frequently.
"Every day should be devoted to miracles."
Let's also make a distinction here.
1) Miraculousness is the true nature of divine mind. Everything in heaven is miraculous forever. Jesus is still miraculous. Holy Spirit is miraculous. Your soul is miraculous. Angels are miraculous. Being miraculous never switches off. But you can deny it with the ego.
2) "The Miracle", is a synonym for the STATE of atonement, true perception, salvation, miracle mindedness, right mindedness etc. It could also be considered a synonym for the Holy Spirit and Christ Vision. This is a STATE OF MIND, a "place" in awareness that you reach. This state of miraculous, but it is not the same thing as miracles. It's where miracles COME FROM.
3) Miracles, individual miracles, plural, are many in number. They are performed typically FROM the state of miracle mindedness. From the top down, not the bottom up. This is why "I can only give the miracles I HAVE RECEIVED" and also why "Miracles FALL like drops of healing rain". The come DOWN from a higher state of mind and resurrect. "All around the signs of life spring up"
All individual miracles are one, but they literally are numerous and individually performed. They operate to LIFT UP the mind from states of false perception, TOWARDS true perception. That is, being performed FROM a higher level, they have power OVER all that is below, including perception, form, bodies, and worlds. They can raise the dead, physically and psychologically. They can heal the sick on any level. And they can restore sanity and induce revelation.
When performed, they elevate your own mind to a higher level if necessary. But if you are already high, they are given to those who have less, merely reinforcing what you already have. This is why
"Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."
Note that being a service it does not mean that you are the main beneficiary. But you also are not excluded because you give as you receive. It's just that we need to realize, miracles are GIVEN TO OTHERS.
So here is a key fact. Miracles are NOT JUST ABOUT YOU. They are not something that just has an influence on your own perception or mind or body. They literally are capable of DOING SOMETHING TO OTHERS. This is why they are capable of raising the dead and healing the sick, OTHER than yourself.
So this naive idea that "miracles are what happens when I shift my own perception", has to be thrown out. It is woefully inaccurate and limited and not at all what the course actually says about miracles. It's something some people made up a long time ago when misinterpreting the course.
The time will come when miracles are not needed, but only when everyone has atoned. This does not MEAN the end of miraculousness. Miracles resurrect the dead in every way by GIVING life.
"Miracles are a spark of life"
"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life"
When everyone is resurrected, God isn't going to stop giving life, nor are you going to stop being miraculous. Do you think Jesus today is incapable of performing a miracle? Quite the opposite. And he doesn't even HAVE perception!
So miracles can lift the mind up, "shifting perception", but that depends entirely on whether there is anything TO shift. The shift is an effect, while there is something to affect. If you confuse the shift with the miracle, you throw out miracles as soon as you are done with shifting.
It is also necessary as part of the atonement that you perform miracles FOR OTHERS, rather than just selfishly focusing on the shifting of your own perceptions. There is no point becoming miracle minded if you are not going to USE your miraculous nature to perform miracles. Miracles express through you, extending to others, as part of your nature loving of other people.
"Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind." (and they do NOT arise from a mind that is steeped in ego problems that's trying to shift some perception).
"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."
"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do." You must be: READY to listen, WILLING to learn, and ABLE to do."
"Only the last is involuntary, because it is the APPLICATION of miracles which must be Christ-controlled. But the other two, which are the voluntary aspects of miracle-mindedness, ARE up to you."
Note that just because miracle APPLICATION is christ controlled, and "involuntary", does NOT MEAN that miracles DO NOT get performed through you or that you do nothing. You work with Christ and the Holy Spirit and THEY make the miracles happen through you. You area team. You have the power of God in you.
So no, miracles are not shifts in perception. They are a form of healing and demonstration of God's power. Miracles CAUSE stuff to happen, and not just to YOU! Miracles have the power of God in them. They are able to give life and supply a lack. They can heal the bodies of others. They can heal minds. They can even cause inanimate objects to do things they "shouldn't" be able to do, by breaking the laws of the world. e.g. Jesus turning water into wine, turning a tree branch into a snake, walking on water etc.
Shifting perception is indeed part of purification, but it is not to be associated with a miracle. You can shift your perception quite a lot without miracles being involved. You might not even perform a single miracle after many years of course practice. It require a lot of mind healing to be able to DO them. To express FROM a healed state.
And let us also remember, miracles actually occur as a result of IMPULSES. The impulse is like a little spark of living energy which arises in the mind. "Miracles are energizers". They actually are like little expressed mini creations which transfer FROM you TO another and have effects on them. They go out and do something. It's like a pulse of life force. Inspired by Christ. Passing through you onto others.
So if you want to be a miracle DOER, a WORKER, you need to first approach miracle minded states, and THEN you can perform miracles. This is why actual miracles are quite rare among ACIM folks at present, we're simply not far enough along in our purification to perform them. Jesus has set a high standard for us to live up to but it's exciting to continue to move towards our natural birthright of being a miracle worker, in this world and beyond.
In heaven, you and your brother share everything. Not just as two beings who "trade", but as two beings who are one. You overlap, sharing the same space. You are in him and he is in you. He literally is you, while also being himself. The two of you share everything as the Christ mind or One Son/Sonship. Along with everyone else also.
There is therefore a part of your own self, which is in your brother and is your brother. It's like you live inside of each other. His own self is part of your own self. Therefore the wholeness of who and what you are is not just you, it's that you are also him, and you are also part of God.
In the separation, the aspect of you which is hosted inside your brother, and which is one with his mind, was "sectioned off" through the separation device of the body. The body seemed to "fence in" the part of you which seems to be "you alone", and "keep out" the part of you which is literally in your brother "as" your brother.
Part of your mind is now seemingly housed inside the body prison, while the other part of your mind is seemingly housed inside your brother's body. And since the two appear in the form of "being separated by physical distance", it creates the illusion of a "gap" between not only you and your brother, but between you and the rest of you, which is in him and as him.
The initial function of bodies as separation devices was to make it appear that you are not in your brother, you are not one with him, you share nothing with him, you are not equal to him, you are different to him in every way, he is a stranger to you, you do not know him, and you do not recognize him or yourself. And the body paints a picture of an identity which is not in any way what you or your brother are really like.
This egoic view of him confines him to a body, and therefore also denies that he is in you. And so it reduces him and yourself you being less than whole. Bodies isolate the "self" portion of you while rejecting the "shared" portion of you. So now you and your brother find yourself inside prison cells and trapped in brains and kept apart and not communicating.
The body makes it appear that there is NO relationship between you. It demonstrates the proof of sin that separation has occurred. The two bodies being unalike do not share the same truth, and so are in disagreement, and are therefore at war with each other, just by virtue of their different natures. Which in turn, when identified with as your self or as your brother's self, makes it appear that you are fundamentally in perpetual war and competition with everyone. And everyone lacks what everyone else has."There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."
"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone."
"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."
In this state, you are in special relationship. Which we really should call, no relationship. It is a breakdown in communication, it is a lack of sharing, it is a broken interaction. It really is a lack of relating at all. And in this relating, neither party is viewed as a whole being, because wholeness means sharing and the part of you that is seemingly separated off inside your brother is rejected as "him alone". So now you are not your whole self, and he is not his whole self. And neither of you are wholly relating.
"Yet the special relationship which the EGO seeks, does NOT include even ONE whole individual. For the ego WANTS but part of him, and sees ONLY this part, and nothing else."
"An altar is erected IN BETWEEN two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body, raise another self that TAKES HIS POWER FROM HIS DEATH."
"The special relationship is totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you must also value the body."
When your mindset is one of being only the you that is in your body, as a body, you cannot help but relate to others in a dysfunctional way. And may struggle to relate at all. You may think, "I cannot relate to them because I am not physically like them."
The gap seen between you also produces justification for getting away with murder, a breakdown in cause and effect, and justified selfishness. Any attack you make upon another you do not realize is attacking the part of you which is shared with him. And the more you push him away in a lack of love, the less you accept yourself.
To have holy relationship doesn't merely mean that you love another person a lot. It doesn't mean, that you are still a separate person trapped in a body whose whole self is in that body, and who then relates lovingly with other people. This is still special love. To be truly loving and holy you have to be whole, which means you have to recognize that your identity is shared with your brother. That there is a part of you IN him and a part of him IN you. And that through your oneness you transcend the body boundaries, and therefore ARE NOT bodies.
You can't be all of yourself while isolated to space and time. You can't fully relate to anyone if you don't recognize that they are simultaneously you, and therefore that you see yourself in them and truly have something in common. You cannot treat anyone correctly unless you have a vested interest of treating yourself correctly, having recognized that you are in them, so that what you do to them you do to yourself.
To relate in holiness isn't two separate wholes relating, it is a relationship in which two are one. You are not just loving another, you are loving yourself AS another. And you are loving the self that is in you and the self that is in the other, as yourself. And the two of you as one together share everything.
"Miracles are a way of loving your neighbor (brother) as yourself."This must entail the shared/joined state of mind, which is more than just two minds sitting next to each other sending love vibes from afar. It is two minds FUSED together sharing everything to such a degree you cannot even tell where one begins and the other ends. Where the identity of both individuals is recognized as the same, being one in Christ. Two Christs, who are one Christ. Where what is theirs is yours and what is yours is theirs and both of you have everything simultaneously.
"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."
Each soul also knows all other souls completely. And you are part of God. And you are the whole Sonship. And you are the One Son, and Christ, and a Soul. And you are all Souls. And you are all Creations and all of Creation. And you are part of God Himself.
"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."
"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."
"The soul is the idea of self fullness."
To relate fully to your self, you have to relate to the whole of yourself. The whole of yourself includes the part you fenced off in your body, AND the part that is in literally in your brother. He has to be recognized as part of your self, in order for you to have shared interests with him. Because by recognizing that you are IN him, you recognize that how you treat him is how you treat yourself. You cannot "see the Christ in Him" without recognize that Christ SPANS the two of you and INCLUDES you both as one identity.
When you do not recognize yourself in your brother, a wall or gap starts to form between you, you lose recognition, you become blinded by form, you start to focus on the body, sickness arises, and you begin to attack. The formation of this "separation gap" in between you and your brother makes the world of bodies and sin. And it is there that you enter into illusions of suffering and death, war and competition, disagreement and hatred and fear.
When you re-embrace your brother AS yourself, recognizing that in actual factual truth this is how God created you - joined with everyone, you are putting aside that gap between you and are overflowing your body. You are now extending PAST the body and past the body of your brother. Because your full self transcends these imprisoning boundaries. You are everywhere. You are everything. And only by relating to yourself as that, can you be fully yourself and fully awake.
Two separate things bumping up against each other is no more relationship than two separate things being at a distance. But when the two separate things realize they are not separate and they fuse together and become one, in which each of them is in the other, like yin and yang, there is now a union and a harmony and an equality. To be equal with something means to BE IT, not just to be like it. a = b means a IS b, no just that a and b are alike.
Bodies present a picture which is a complete lie. It is totally opposite to the nature of reality. It is an attempt to pull deeply relating immersed beings away from each other and lock them up in little isolating prisons in the farthest corners of the earth. Kept apart, they believe they are their prisons, and that they have no relationship. And every way they relate is on a basis of a lack of self, the attempt to get self from the other, and the attempt to lose even more self in doing so through sacrifice and loss and bargaining.
When the body is your identity, and you think that the you that is solely within your body is all of yourself, and you have a "bodily identity" in your mind as a picture of who and what you are, you are cutting yourself off from yourself and from relationship. In order to become spirit identified, you need to identify with the spirit that is both in you AND in your brother. You cannot find yourself without sharing yourself. And you cannot accept atonement without sharing and extending it either. You have to give what you have received.
This is why the body has no part to play in a holy relationship. This is why focusing on the body is a rejection of health, because health comes from wholeness and from extension. When you do not allow your SELF or identity to extend past the body and past your brother's body to the SHARED identity that is the Christ in both of you, you cannot be healthy, because your mind is split BY the body. If you allow the body to separate you off from others, you have a split mind and are choosing death.
When you join with others, which does not mean ego joining or a special relationship joining or bodies joining or two separate selves remaining separate and hooking up, mind extends past limitation and separation. It transcends the gap. And now the two that were on either sides of the gap span across the gap and erase the gap. And there is no gap. And in this view the bodies actually become healed because the mind is healthy. In effect, mind has to adopt a state completely "alien" to the body in order for the body to be healthy, which overrides the body's laws with the laws of God.
Reunion with others is reunion with your self and with God. You are a "whole part" of the hologram of God's creation. What you are is what your brother is. Your minds are one. Your souls are connected. You both overlap with each other. You share the same space. You overflow bodies and transcend their limits. You are everywhere. You are infinite, immortal and unlimited. You are the whole Sonship and the whole Son of God. And you are part of God Himself. And what God has put together no man can put asudner. You are eternally married to all beings forever and ever.
There are two types of prayer. One works miracles, the other doesn't.
1) Pray for someone because you believe they need praying for.
2) Pray for someone to acknowledge that they don't need praying for.
The first kind is very common and it's because our ego first of all shows us that something is wrong with someone. This means we have made the problem seem real. The person could have a serious disease or disability, some financial crisis, just lost a job, is having relationship issues, or whatever. Particularly if this so-called "problem" can be seen visually, we especially believe in it.
But the problem is, just the mere act of believing that someone is ACTUALLY having a problem, that they "really are" sick, that something is happening that's "bad", or something has gone wrong... . just that basic assumption that this is REALITY, or truth, is actually an attack on that person.
This is what ACIM calls false empathy. It means you've actually entered into believing in and are agreeing with what seems to be happening, as though it is true and real. You take this for granted, because you are so incredibly accustomed to perceiving with the ego this way. You have been extremely fooled by appearances and keep buying into them like they are facts. In this world there is temptation and trickery EVERYWHERE.
If someone breaks a leg, you immediately just accept that their leg is broken. If something goes wrong, you immediately accept that it really has gone wrong. If someone becomes sick, you totally believe that the person has become sick. And whatever it is, if it seems to be 'happening', you just assume that it has to be this way.
Then you get stuck in what basically is a belief in SIN, which is the idea that something has really happened already, there's been a real serious consequence, and it cannot be undone. Sin is the idea of irreversability of separation, so as you just idly accept that stuff has gone wrong and nobody can really do anything about it, you're really buying into the illusion and have fallen for its trickery.
So then having made the problem seem real to you, and maybe even you yourself have become upset about it, maybe even afraid about what will happen to the person, you will then feel COMPELLED to try to do something about it. And then you will turn to God and you will pray. And you'll do this because you are making mistakes. It is a mistake to believe that God has not already given you the answer to all problems. It is a mistake to believe that this person has a real problem at all. And it is a mistake to think that you need to get God to do something about this real-seeming problem.
But you'll do it anyway. This is then praying with the ego.
You might say something like... dear God, Holy Father, please send lots of love and light to this person, help them to overcome their fear/sickness/problem, give them strength and courage and help them to not have this problem. Thanks.
Well.... there is some amount of recognition of truth in that, in that you're at least attempting to connect to a higher love and send that love and focus on a possible outcome or state of being which is less problematic, less corrupted. But you're also confused because you're only asking for this because you think the person has a dire problem. And in fact, the worse you believe in the person's problem, the more compelled you will be to think you have to pray extra extra much, because this really big problem calls for you to pull out all the stops and do a really great big prayer. Well.... thanks for attacking the person with everything that's already happening to them, right along with your prayer.
There is another kind of prayer which is a prayer of forgiveness which doesn't seek to DO something to or about the problem, but instead seeks to UNDO your faulty perception about the problem and the person's faulty perception about the problem. This is a prayer that you do WITH Holy Spirit, instead of with the ego. When I did one of these prayers last night, Holy Spirit said to me "it's about time!", lol
So what you need to do, is realize that everything in front of your face, every body that you see, every problem that you think someone has, no matter how much it appears to be true and real, no matter how serious it is... ITS AN ILLUSION. And it is your job in your forgiveness prayer to completely IGNORE that illusion. You should not even be addressing or giving energy to all the reasons why the person has a problem, or making it more real, or reacting to it out of fear or desperation or seriousness.
Instead, you need to be acknowledging, recognizing, remembering and affirming, all the ways in which the person DOES NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM. You don't go saying, well this person has xyz problem, please fix it. You need to instead say, this person DOES NOT HAVE this problem, this person IS NOT SICK, this person DOES NOT have reason to be afraid, this person is HOLY AND INNOCENT, this person HAS NOT SINNED, this person is CHRIST, this person is a picture of TOTAL HEALTH, this person IS NOT REALLY DISEASED, this person CANNOT be guilty, etc.
You need to focus on who the person REALLY IS in Christ, as Christ. You need to affirm and see and clarify the REAL TRUTH about the person, not the fake truths which masquerade as things that you see or sense with your body's senses. And this means, that as you do this prayer/forgiveness, you need to OVERLOOK ALL APPEARANCES, not take them seriously, and make statements which fly in the face of what *seems* to be happening. This is how you cancel out the problem. This is how you make the problem NOT EXIST.
This is where it can be a real challenge, because in the ego we are really really used to seeing the world in such a way that we constantly are making problems real, are believing appearances, totally buying into illusions that victims are really victims and not willing participants, etc. We keep falling for these illusions and each time we do, it PREVENTS us from looking to the real truth.
What you need to learn to do, and this WILL take lots of time, is that no matter how things seem or appear to be, or what seems to be happening, no matter how serious it seems to be, YOU IGNORE THAT, and you FIXATE your vision only on the absolute TRUTH about the person/situation. You hold fast to a single, core truth, aligned with God's will. You affirm what HE has created and its absolute purity and innocence.
You believe strongly in what He has provided and the FACT that He has already created perfection. And therefore, no matter how it seems, and no matter how stubborn the symptoms are, and no matter how many people are telling you to give up, and no matter how much you are telling you to stop trying to kid yourself, you keep on ignoring all appearances and continue to affirm the single one truth. You HOLD YOUR GROUND.
This is one of the vital steps in miracle working. You must believe what is true of God, and not what is true of the ego/illusion/dream, and DO NOT WAVER. If you waver, if you go into fear, if you start buying into how things look, if you go along with appearances, or are fooled by the appearance of failure or "its not working" or "I might as well give up" or "this can't be healed" or whatever... its bullshit. It's ego. You will have to learn to ignore all of that. You have to learn to OVERLOOK/forgive every single appearance of every piece of this entire world. Because it's going to keep trying to convince you that God's will is false and irrelevant. God DOES want permanent healing and he IS READY to provide it right now AND ALREADY HAS.
If you waver from that, especially if the situation seems really serious or even if the person DIES, and if you think well... it looks like we failed and we might as well give up forgiving and stop praying or affirming the truth, then yes, that person will STAY DEAD. But what happens if EVEN in the face of death, you continue to affirm the truth of eternal life? What if you IGNORE appearances and do not take no for an answer and you get really certain and firm that this problem is NOT reality, it is NOT the truth, and the truth is with God? Maybe then with determination and persistence, that person is going to raise from the dead.
So this is how miracles work. Four fairly straightforward steps:
1) Believe in God's truth, and do not be tempted by illusions to waver or fear or doubt or be deceived by how things currently appear.
2) Bring in Holy Spirit and express and extend His Power, his consistency, his absoluteness, such that you are filled with God and are extending only love, not beliefs in attack.
3) Recognize the oneness between you and your brother, He is you, therefore you must recognize you are both One, are both Christ, and all other appearances are illusions that aren't real. Acknowledge only the absolute truth about the person.
4) Command authoritatively and assertively, even aggressively, for the problem to leave right now. Speak directly to it, not about it. Do not ask God about what to do. Do not ask God to do it. God has already set you up with a perfect connection to Him to funnel his power. It's just waiting on you to give the command and extend the authority of His Truth.
You are a miracle worker.
In ACIM we're often talking about "the separation", or being separate. This is a way to describe a divide between two things. But another way is to refer to two "opposites". Heaven and hell, life and death, reality and illusions, etc. The separation was an act of opposition against God, producing an opposite state of mind.
When we're in a "separated state", we're in a state of opposition. This means we have an opponent, which we are totally un-like. And it also means we are at war. And because we are un-like our opposition, we do not "like" it. And this produces great tension.
When there seems to be opposition, there is tremendous temptation. The more extremely opposite two things are, the more they contradict each other and are in conflict. They can be in a state of extreme disagreement. In this disagreement, there is a maximal likelihood or temptation that conflict will arise, given how much the two seem to be at-odds with each other.
Tension arising from arguments, disagreements, conflicts, debates, righteousness, defensiveness, denial, protection of one's truth, opposition to or disbelief in the enemy's view, is all very likely to induce a form of war. There will be fighting and bickering and hatred and weapons being thrown and a taking of separate sides.
It's very difficult to "stay out of" such a conflict, when faced with extreme opposition. And the more they oppose you the higher the temptation is. If someone is digging in their heels and does not want a single shred of what you are offering, for example, there will be a stand-off, rejection, a communication breakdown, and a high chance of attack. They may want death, while you want life, but it won't stop them from trying to destroy you.
In this world, things which seem more alike or have something in common, seem to also experience an illusion of less conflict. I found this to be true when, for example, a person who was highly obnoxious and aggressive decided to walk a road with me one day. This person would take up a very opposing position of rebellion and anger, and this would produce a high likelihood of temptation and a flare-up of aggression. He was easily triggered due to his unhealed pain.
I decided on this occasion to pretend to be like him. So I sort of acted like him and agreed with him and spoke things he might speak, even though what I was agreeing to was not what I believed. And strangely this person started to see me as a friend or ally. I was actually doing this to try to protect myself at the time, but it showed me that it's really the distance or contrast between opposites that incites violent reactions, and so long as I did not "oppose" overtly, this person didn't target me at all.
There is similar temptation in ACIM circles, on any forum or discussion. When someone believes something opposite, particularly if it is wildly or deeply opposite, this produces a great temptation. Someone who is very patient, forgiving and calm, can perhaps resist the temptation. That takes some profound mastery. Someone who can't keep their cool in the face of intense conflict and contraryism, however, will likely lose it. How do you not be tempted by extreme evil? "One ring to rule them all"?
There is the most temptation or "tension" when something is completely opposite and contradictory. This is as if to say, someone is 180 degrees from you across the table and going head-to-head. There is also tension from misunderstanding, when someone is at 90 degrees, whereby the two do not look at anything from the same angle, like they are talking entirely different languages. They conflict more on a basis of not even understanding what each other is saying.
You'll perhaps notice that all the wars in the world are generally based on two parties very strongly disagreeing. They oppose each other. One tries to suppress the other to protect their own truth. They don't see it possible that they can live together in peace or accept each other's extremism. And just the mere existence of the other seems enough justification to destroy their heinous hedonism.
"Tension" is that sensation of very strong discordant energy between two opposites, and as each party has a stand-off and doesn't want anything to do with each other, it intensifies the tension. It's as though they rip apart from each other and pull on the fabric of existence in an effort to put as much distance between them as possible. The sense of resistance and rejection of each other heightens the tension, until breaking point.
The opposite of that tension is peace and harmony. But this can only exist either when the two opposites are able to be totally at peace with other without trying to disagree with each other, or when there are no opposites. It should also be obvious that you can't really hold a position that disagrees with someone else and be at peace. Like "let's agree to disagree" is really just a standoff, not an agreement. Either you have to be inclusive or you will be exclusive. And the only way to truly agree is that both believe exactly the same thing.
This all seems to be the same basic temptation presented over and over again in many forms in this world. Groups of people disagreeing with other groups. Nemesis and enemies going at it all over again. People getting heated because they think their beliefs are under attack. The sense of offense and hurt from other people seeming to be against your ideals. Everyone trying to correct and destroy everyone else that is different to them. Conflicts based on different bodies and genders and so on. The whole world is riddled with such temptations.
"Everything the body sees is a form of conflict." - ACIM
Sometimes when there is less contrast between two things they seem to get along. ACIM refers to them as allies, where the two are still in subjective egotism, but because their egotism "matches" they become in a way blind to each other. Neither of them "stands out" in opposition so they seem to be in harmony. But it is an illusion of harmony between two equally insane individuals. And if one of them defects, the claws come out and they scream betrayal.
Atoms and molecules conflict with each other, just by being different. Difference IS disagreement. Bodies conflict with each other just by being different. The first law of chaos is that the truth is different for everyone, and everywhere, and for everything. Every single particle of matter is different to, therefore in conflict with, every other. Everywhere you look, everything the body sees, mountains and forests and oceans and cities, it is all conflicting in its form. To be unalike is to be discordant and at war.
"The world was made as an attack on God."
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
And so where there is conflict or difference of opposition, there is temptation, because there is extreme disagreement. Difference IS attack. And if you buy into the opposition or give it any power whatsoever, you set it up as an enemy in your mind. And then you will feel attacked by it, and will be attacking yourself, and will retaliate defensively, trying to preserve your sense of truth.
All special relationships demonstrate this. They're all founded on an illusion of peace, brought about by two conflicted individuals, who are at war with the world, finding an escape from the conflict seemingly with each other by having something in common. They hide from a mutual enemy together in the confines of an exclusive relationship prison.
"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."
So you've got a world of differences which tempts war, and two people who are at war with the world, who "take sides" together because they see an absence of war in each other, because they both are warring in the same way. They both hate the same stuff, they both exclude the same stuff, and so they are narrow and closed off in a similar way. And this produces an illusion of love. The same happens when siding with political parties or sports teams or segments of society or religions.
But this love is very volatile and unstable and riddled with conditions and contradictions. And if any of those conditions are not met, it quickly devolves into the special hate that it's based on. If one person even decides to be more unconditionally loving, the other conditional person may see this as proof of defection, and that the other is against them and unwilling to hate with them. And then it's bye bye relationship.
I think its probably true of most people that we tend to avoid conflict and try to create an illusion of peace in life. A safe house to live in. A way to avoid sickness. An avoidance of bad people. Trying to eat the right food. Staying away from known threats and dangers. All to try to pretend that the world is not a world of conflict, to make a nice comfortable corner in the desert where you can hang out with a false sense of security. Until shit comes knocking.
True peace can only come from a transcendence of opposition. But it has to also come from "taking sides with God". That doesn't mean being against anything because in God there is no opposition. God is all encompassing and love has no opposite. It is really only the opposition to God that believes in opposites. This is why the ego attacks and hates the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit completely ignores it. He doesn't attack the ego at all, He just shows you that it is invalid.
To take sides with God is to be vigilant for his truth and his Kingdom. It means to believe only what God believes, if God had beliefs. To know what God knows. To be under no laws but his. To recognize that opposition is truly fiction and there is only one real world, one reality, one truth. This light then shines and shines away the darkness of rebellion and of sin and war. And in the final recognition that there is no opposite to love, conflict disappears forever.
A lot of people interpret forgiveness to be some kind of process you do to fix your mind.
But ACIM seems to say something different. For example:
"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears."
So, hang on a minute. Joe Smith doing ACIM thinks he's "doing forgiveness", and has a little procedure he practices and tries to take back projections and undo judgements and so on and he thinks he is forgiving. But ACIM say, ONLY Christ forgives. So isn't Joe's ego claiming to be doing forgiveness?
Forgiveness is actually the state of TRUE perception, which is the end goal of the course, and not exactly something that someone is in white they're undertaking the course, especially not in earlier stages.
How about the fact that we're also told that forgiveness is a form of LOVE ... how often do you hear people saying that forgiveness is the SAME thing as love? Hardly ever. But full maximal love is quite a highly advanced spiritual state. Forgiveness and love are basically the same thing, but who ever describes forgiveness as love?
"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."
Then we're also told that it is perhaps not even our FUNCTION at this point to forgive. For example:
"The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."
So we're being asked not to take over the Holy Spirit's function of forgiving. And it even suggests that in terms of us being forgiven, it is not US that forgives ourselves. More to the point, it says that we ARE forgiven already - as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, and our work is more to do with acceptance of this truth rather than the production of this truth. WE don't put forgiveness in place!
"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."
Essentially, forgiveness is a final state of true perception which is the same thing as accepting atonement and achieving salvation and resurrection. It isn't a step along a path. It isn't a process or procedure or technique. It's the end result natural state of a healed mind that is loving, and BE's FORGIVING toward everything. It is the nature of a loving mind expressing and relating from love with love.
When you're IN that state of mind you are being one with Christ, and with the Holy Spirit, which is why you then can claim to "be forgiving." But really until you reach that state, and you're still in false perceptions trying to undo your hell, what you're DOING isn't really forgiveness.
What if every reference to forgiveness in the course is a reference to the END STATE, and not a process?
What if we're being asked to "practice forgiveness" only in the sense of trying to get ourselves TO the state of forgiveness? And what if we should not be calling that practice "forgiveness", but rather perhaps - purification, or mind training? Or accepting that we've been forgiven already?
I think the term forgiveness has been rather hijacked by a lot of people, students and teachers alike. It really refers to the purified state of miracle mindedness, whole perception, true perception, a healed mind and heart, a state filled with love, identified with Christ, and the perfect enlightened recognition that there is nothing LEFT to be forgiven - that only innocence exists.
We can practice moving toward that state as our goal, but what we're doing to get there must not take over the Holy Spirit's function or presume that we are "being forgiving" when all that we're doing are a few basic steps to reclaim slightly less insanity. Forgiveness is really on the level of miracle working.
"Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others."
Forgiveness that is not COMPLETE forgiveness is not really forgiveness. COMPLETE forgiveness immediately BE's forgiving toward everything without need for thought or practice or procedure or technique. It is loving relationship.
"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."
"And that, in COMPLETE forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, YOU are absolved completely."
"Remember that you who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness."
"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."
"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."
Note that there are TWO aspects to miracles. Most people seem to refer to miracles as getting into a certain state of mind, having shifted perception and ending up closer to the Holy Spirit. The mind becomes "miracle minded", aka right-minded.
But that is only the STATE of mind. That isn't what MIRACLES are.
Miracles are EXPRESSIONS FROM that state, which produces a DOING or PERFORMING of miracles. A WORKING of miracles.
You get into a state of miracle MINDEDNESS, so that you can be a miracle WORKER, who DOES/PERFORMS miracles.
"The former needs YOUR careful protection, because it is a state of miracle-READINESS. This is what the Bible means in the many references to "Hold yourself ready" and other similar injunctions."
"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do." You must be
READY to listen
WILLING to learn
and ABLE to do"
When you are READY TO DO, you are then ABLE To do, and WILLING to do. And now you actually DO.
"Do his works."
This is where you EXPRESS a miracle, which is GIVEN to someone, which can energize them and give them LIFE, and raise them from death. This is where a miracle CAUSES a healing.
"Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. It is purely a means, while any type of healing is a result."
"Miracles are NOT incompetition, and the number you can do is LIMITLESS."
"You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do."
"Miracles are expressions of love." "Miracles supply a lack."
"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement."
Just so we're clear then, your have a mental state which can be either miracle-mindedness, or anti-miraculous (egoic etc). Blocks to love, and fear, prevent you being in a miracle-minded state. Once you are IN a miracle minded state, and given that mind must project and GIVE what it has, MIRACLES (plural) now EXPRESS FROM that state, and are gifts of life which you GIVE TO OTHERS.
"Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." "Miracles are GIVEN by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."
When people talk of shifts in perception they are mainly talking about PURIFICATION, and not miracles. And if they are talking about miracles, they are talking mainly about receiving healing or possibly receiving a miracle. But a miracle expresses FROM a loving state of mind, and you have to be IN that state of mind FIRST in order to PERFORM them.
"He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
You need the use of miracles for yourself to get YOUR mind into a state of miracle mindedness. You MIGHT call that perceptual shifts. But then once your mind is the right-way up (right minded), you are now able to GIVE what you have. "I can only give the miracles I have received." And now you can use miracle WORKING to PERFORM miracles for others, energizing them and resurrecting them.
So a miracle is not a shift in perception. That's just the RESULT of healing, when a miracle is APPLIED. Healing is an EFFECT of a miracle. When you have become healed, you can now be an instrument for healing and give healing to others, APPLYING what you have. This can in turn "shift their perception" as an EFFECT of their mind being healed.
In ACIM circles there is a ton of emphasis on people trying to get into the STATE of miracle mindedness, not recognizing it as CAUSAL POWER, and nowhere near enough emphasis on EXPRESSING from that state as a MIRACLE WORKER. But you can't have one half without the other. All loving people are miraculous and can GIVE LIFE to others."Those who are healed (miracle minded) become instruments of healing (can perform miracles for others)."
"It is the privilege of the forgiven (miracle minded) to forgive (undo the unforgiveness in others)."
"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the levelconfusion of others."
"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
"The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."One of the ways the ego deceives you is to make it seem like you are not yourself. It wants to suggest that something has changed about you, since God created you whole, and that you are now missing something.
The only way it can make it seem like you are missing something is to HIDE it or conceal it. It's not actually capable of getting rid of your real self, because God made you PERMANENT. There is no real way the ego can stop you from existing or take away your reality.
The ONLY trick the ego has is to pretend that there is something about you that is missing, by trying to BLOCK YOUR AWARENESS from being aware that it exists. It does this by applying distortions to your perception which seem to make it hard to SEE what is really right in front of you and obvious.
These blocks to the AWARENESS of God's presence are the only problem. They need to be removed, in order for you to become AWARE again that you DO still have everything that God gave you, you ARE still immortal, you HAVE NOT been changed and NOTHING is missing.
So what the ego does, is it covers you up a little bit, maybe with a lie or a deception or some darkness or a temptation or some other mechanism of illusion. It makes an illusion that makes it seem like something's gone wrong, something's happening, there's been a loss, or an emptiness, or a hole has been made in the Son of God, or something's been taken away, or whatever.
So this ego PRANKSTER tries to TRICK you into believing that it's actually TRUE that something about you is missing. It tries to get you to believe that it's true you've lost your love, or your power, or your strength, or your sanity, or your connection to God, or your peace, or your identity, or whatever. As soon as you believe it's lie and fall for its trick, you are now in a state of confusion.
Confused, and convinced that you actually HAVE lost some part of yourself, and that this part of yourself IS NOT where it should be - ie within you - where God placed it - what do you do now? Perceiving a lack, you feel a need, and that need automatically asks to be fulfilled because it's a magnetic belief in 'not having' which draws itself in the direction of 'getting' - ie re-acquiring.
So now you go off, distracted, looking everywhere you can possibly look, EXCEPT for where this missing thing IS, which is in you, because its' not really missing AT ALL it's just being covered up, and what results will you encounter? You'll look high and low and everywhere in-between, everywhere EXCEPT underneath the blanket that hides it. And it won't be there. And you will not find it, because it's not anywhere that you're looking.
This is how the ego has you "seek and do not find".
It's also how the ego has you "seek for salvation" (a solution to the problem of something having gone wrong), outside of yourself, in places where you will never find it, even though you have this big HOPE of finding it there. The ego would want you to keep DOING stuff to trying to REPLACE what you think you lost, even though it's not reall lost. And all this doing will entail 'trying' really hard to accomplish what you ultimately cannot accomplish. And the more effort you put into 'finding' what you think you do not have, the less it will work and the more frustrated you'll be.
So all you need really to do is to LOOK AT the ego's smokescreen, QUESTION the ego's bullshit deception that says you are lacking something, figure out that what it says you're lacking is just HIDDEN, look at what is hiding it and how it is functioning, STOP DOING IT - ie UN-DO the action of hiding it, and lo and behold.. abracadabra.... IT IS REVEALED TO YOU!
Eureka! You found it. It is already in you. It always was. It was never lost. It wasn't removed. It wasn't really damaged. Nothing really happened to it. This LOVE that you are, is still perfectly intact, perfectly whole, perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly powerful and immortal and innocent. It has never changed. And so as you remove this BLOCK to awareness, instead of trying to REPLACE what the block says is missing, you simply uncover the truth of what is, what always was and what always will be.
There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing lacking in you. There is nothing missing from you. You have not been hurt. You have not been damaged. You have not sinned. You are not guilty. AAAAAAALL this other stuff that says otherwise is just a COVER for your immaculate divine innocence and invulnerability. And all your worries about all this other bullshit is all because you think it's telling you the truth. None of it is true. The only truth is that you are STILL as God created you, even if you've been hiding it underneath layer upon layer of illusions.
It's going to be a wonderful day when you finally realize that you are still as God created you and nothing has happened.
Every person is an equal member of the Sonship, meaning that everyone is your brother or sister. Everyone exists on an equal playing field, and the one "parent" is God.
This means that whether you are a parent or a child, and no matter the nature of the relationship between the two, everyone involved is still a brother or sister in the Sonship.
In order for this to express itself fully, it means that all relationships must end up where everyone is equal, no-one has power over anyone else, no-one is anyone else's property, no-one is controlling towards anyone else, no-one blames anyone else, no-one depends on anyone else, no-one expects anyone else to provide for them or decide for them, and no-one is more or less than anyone else.
This is the natural order of the family of God. We are all equals and all have the same inheritance. We all have the same parent and we're all identical in our true nature.
Typical chlidhood and parenting tends to lean much more towards inequality, control, protection, dependence, blame, manipulation and ownership. Those are not modes of relationship that are natural, and are rooted in the ego thought system.
When a child is born and begins to grow, they see themselves as completely dependent on the external world and on parents to supply their every need. And indeed the ego has set up this world so that it's practically impossible for a child to exist independently without starving to death. They have apparent "needs" and need help to survive. This doesn't mean the parents need necessarily own or control or be attached to them, but that's usually what happens.
Later, the child still believes they are dependent on the parent and that it is the parent's fault that so many things are the way they are. They will blame the parent, seeing them as causal, while at the same time attempting to break away from being under their thumb. "The thumb" is usually maintained far too long because the parents tend to form an identity around their role and don't want to let it go. They want to keep having the same relationship of parent to child, ie based in ownership, protection, control and so on. This generally works against the child becoming "independent" and an equal.
Often the case is that the child never really becomes an equal to the parent and there is a constant umbrella of control, dominance, shame and guilt under which the child remains, never breaking through to the light. The parent may not want to let go of the identity they've formed and it can be extremely painful to do so, especially if the raising of children has been the intense focus of their lives for many years and has entailed a great degree of self-sacrifice, leaving a gaping hole in their lives if the role were to end.
The child also will continue to blame the parents well into adulthood, because this is all part of the child's perception that they are a victim at the effect of the external world. They cannot really be independent until they have severed ties with their own ego identity, which means uncovering the true nature of themselves, healing all past hurts resulting from the dysfunctional relationships, and becoming aware of their true relationship to God.
It is, however, possible for the child to eventually stop projecting onto the parent and for the parent to stop projecting onto the child, and for both to give up on "specialness" which has kept the relationship strangled and suffocated in layers of denial and resistance and judgement. Special relationships can turn to holy relationship when forgiveness is used to undo the illusions of the relationship, which are many.
At some point it's possible for the child to become equal with the parent, which must also entail the recognition that the parent is a "temporary guide" who was there to help with lessons and adaptation to being in the world, but who ultimately is an equal brother/sister. Both child and parent are children of God, on exactly the same footing and terms. If the relationship between them can reflect holiness and forgiveness and equality then it has "matured" all the way that it can. If this doesn't happen, the fictional roles and dynamics of parent-child domination and submission will continue, and there will be further tension and conflict.
Acknowledging our equality in the Sonship requires acknowledging that God is the Creator/Father/Mother, and that what applies to oneself applies to all other people including our parents and children. When we go before God, we all go together and our relationship to God is direct, one to one for each of us, with no go-between.
We must learn to undo all of the illusions of the typical parent-child relationship, the entire social structure based on it, and learn that we are all equal under God. This could eventually result in a radically different kind of society, if this were understood and practiced on a mass scale. It need not be that children are property or that they are forced incessantly against their will to comply and obey, rather than being empowered and set free. It need not be that only two people are burdened with the entire upbringing of the children. We are all in this together.
I don't know how many people here work with the Holy Spirit, what kind of relationship or communication you have with Him, if any, but I'd really love to find a way to help others to become more connected with Him and working with Him.
As the Course tells us, the Holy Spirit is the only Therapist, his entire function is Healing, and He has been created joined with us in our mind to bring healing, miracles, reassurance, comfort etc. It seems also the aim of the Course and workbook is to put you in touch with this Teacher who then leads you the rest of the way in your curriculum.
There are many benefits to working with Him that you may or may not be aware of. I experience these benefits on a daily basis, and they are so valuable I don't know what I'd do without them. I also don't think that I am even experiencing a full range of what the Holy Spirit is capable of and have more growth to achieve in trusting Him and working with Him.
I wish I could say, "just do this", and then you'd end up receiving His healing etc, but I don't know what the "protocol" is as such, or how it plays out for different people. All I can tell you is roughly how it developed for me and maybe you can find that useful.
I was going through a rough year or so a couple of years ago, with lots of emotional upsets and stresses. I had already been talking with Holy Spirit/Jesus for some years and learning to trust their guidance. But here I needed some kind of relief from the emotional turbulence.
It would get to where I just couldn't tolerate it anymore and so would become willing to give up. I would then lay on my bed and start surrendering. I would have to admit I didn't want to be unhappy and I wanted some peace and relief. I would literally say "I surrender" over and over again. I surrender I surrender I surrender etc.
I found that if I would not leave any time in between each word it would help me to feel a sense of letting go, giving up control, admitting to being mistaken, etc. I also would ask Holy Spirit to help me. At first, to help me forgive, and was mainly doing the "act" of the healing myself. Taking steps mentally or whatever.
But gradually in the surrendering I started to ask Holy Spirit to help me heal. This wasn't literal at first but it started to become so, whereby I started asking Him to come into me, to join with me, to heal me. I didn't realize what I was doing exactly, but I basically was inviting Him to come "into me" and into my body. And he did.
I would start to get a sense of an electrical or energy feeling in parts of the body. Body parts would start to vibrate or shake. It wasn't significant at first. It gradually developed as I developed trust. I became just willing to 1) relax physically, 2) surrender, 3) invite him in, 4) stay out of the way and trust Him to do whatever He wanted to.
Over time this increased in its power and it became less necessary to get into a whole mode of being ready for it, and it started happening around the house. It started happening whenever I asked for it. And particularly if I became willing to start applying forgiveness. Whenever I would start forgiving or accepting responsibility or having some kind of healing thought, He would step in. Now, even the slightest willingness towards forgiveness that I demonstrate "invites him" and He starts shaking me all over the place with healing.
What he is capable of, is unlimited. He mostly heals emotional upsets. He can pretty much remove all of the "charge" of any unhappy feeling. But he also has done physical stuff, removing pains, healing heartburn, healing a burn from hot water, healing my eyes, etc. Mind, body, and emotions. Healing on all levels. In fact, I hardly ever have to cry any more. When I go to cry, the instant that I become willing and I start to feel, Holy Spirit steps in, takes over, shakes the crap out of me and removes all the emotion.
I get this happen now EVERY day, many times a day. I get this supernatural healing all the time. Without it, I have absolutely no idea what state I would be in. I am so grateful for everything He has done and continues to do, and really wish that other people could experience the same thing. I once asked Him why this was happening, He said "because you invited me in."
I highly encourage you to try it. Lay down, physically relax the body (which is somewhat necessary as part of surrender), surrender mentally/emotionally as best you can, invite him into you, trust him, and let him literally come into you. See what happens. It can change your life.
"He will remove all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM."
TL;DR: "love people!"
As I lay down to rest, I started to get a stream of insights about miracle working.
If you ask God, e.g. "God please heal that person's broken leg", this is already starting on the wrong foot.
The thing is, the broken leg is not the problem. The broken leg is just an effect, a projection, of something going on that is hidden from sight. Something in the persons mind.
It doesn't matter what it is, what physical problem, be it a broken leg or brain damage or a weak heart or cancer or diabetes or swelling or whatever. They appear to be physical problems, but this itself is a temptation. In fact, seeing these things is actually UNFORGIVENESS. It is false perception. And there is nothing healing about that.
The broken leg isn't really what "needs healing". There isn't really something "lacking" in the leg. Instead, we need to think towards where the problem is and what it is.
"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."
"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."
"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision responsible for the condition of the body."
"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."
As implied by miracles, "miracles supply a lack". We're also told that a miracle worker weakens a brother's belief in sickness by strengthening the holy spirit in them. We're also told "miracles are energizing" and "miracles are expressions of love."
So what it is that's really lacking? What is the deficiency or the thing that needs resolving? There is not enough love in the person. They have a lack of love, which is fear and sickness. It shows up in the body as sickness.
The body kind of symbolizes the mind's condition. So as the body seems to "wither" and "grow old" and "weaken" and seem like it's dying, it's really a SYMPTOM of a mind which is lacking love. The mind's power or light has become weak. It has lost strength.
Similarly we're told that we're supposed to be "shining" some kind of light into the other person's mind:
"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ***the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs***, because that light IS theirs."
"The mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. ***Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds***, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM."
"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. ***Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them***, as I can enlighten yours."
"***The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light***, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. "
I am continually, continually reminded and prodded by the Holy Spirit, that the ONLY thing you need to perform a miracle is LOVE. Love has the power of God in it. And love IS light. Miracles are also EXPRESSIONS of love, like the shining of the light into the mind. So it makes sense to say we are to "broadcast love into their minds" in order to heal them. We are to SHINE INTO our brothers to heal them.
The focus then isn't at all on picking out symptoms or physical ailments and trying to "target" them. Those things should actually take care of themselves and be automatically healed, when the CAUSE of those symptoms is corrected. The CAUSE is the "lack" of love, light, energy, power, in the person's mind. It's seemingly lacking because they are blocking it and have thus reduced their own light, so they now need your HELP to increase their light FOR them.
The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist and HE is the light that extends through you into the mind of your brother. You are to "inflame" and "magnify" the Holy Spirit in a brother's mind. To increase it in him.
"When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him ONLY by perceiving the SANITY in him."
"This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. "
"Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING."
A key thing to realize is that love isn't just love. Love and light are ALIVE. Real light is literally alive. It has eternal life and radiance. It is strong and vital and powerful. This light is the light of God because "All love is of God" and "There is no love other than God's love". So to give love is to GIVE LIFE, which produces resurrection.
"Miracles mean LIFE and God is the giver of life."
"Miracles are a spark of life."
In essence, if you think of a person as a living entity made of love/light, and if a sick person is someone who is denying their own LIFE and diminishing it, and this "absence of life" shows up as sickness and forms of death, ("sickness is but a little death"), then the lack of love that you SUPPLY to the PERSON, to their mind, shines light INTO their mind for them and supply the lack of love, which in turn heals the mind. This, by cause and effect, then causes their body to regain life and vitality.
"The mind being sane heals the body."
"Now is the body healed by miracles."
It is the spark of life/light in your brother that needs to be amplified in order to bring "healing" to their mind and body. So if you think of them like a candle, it is your job to supply a lack of light, to the candle, to increase its brightness. To shine or pour or extend extra light INTO the mind so that it brightens. This brightening automatically heals the mind and body. You empower, energize, uplift, and strengthen, your brother by giving him the love he deserves.
"In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. "
"For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness."
"Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less". What is it that you temporarily have MORE OF? It is the light and love in you. It is the strength in you. The truth. The power of God which you host. The light of Christ. You who temporarily have more give what you have to another, supplying the lack of love, and invigorating and resurrecting them from the inside out.
There is also hidden benefit to this giving of love. If you yourself have some love to give, but you yourself also need healing, to the ego this would mean you only have so much and cannot exceed what you have. But in experience, this isn't what happens. In fact, as you begin to give the love you have, and continually transmit it to another, send it into their mind, enlighten them with it, it in fact HEALS YOU as it passes "through" you. And the more you work on sending it, the more YOU get healed as well. It uplifts both of you.
"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."
"he is healed along with you."
"Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to you and your brother."
"Miracles are the maximal service you can render ANOTHER"
Even if you start off slow, or lacking, the more you focus on sending love, in particular, EXTENDING GOD'S LOVE, the more your own mind lights up with the light of love and both of you are healed. So in fact you can HEAL YOURSELF, by GIVING the love of God to another. You can give yourself what you DO NOT SEEM TO HAVE (having blocked it on you), by giving what God has TO another, repeatedly, so that it heals you and lifts you up as you do so, reawakening your own love.
Ultimately it is God who supplies the miracles. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me (or you) to all my brothers." The Holy Spirit is also the mechanism of miracles. He has the power of heaven and earth. You are a host to them. You have to acknowledge that they are the SOURCE of all power, light, and love. "God is the light in which I see." "God is my strength" "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power" etc. "You are forever a host to God." The light, love, life, strength, power, will that is IN you, God put there, for you TO GIVE.
"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever."
"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION."
This must be acknowledged and your function or role must be filled, as the light of the world. Which is, that you are an extender of God's Will and healing. "You share the Holy Spirit's function on Earth." "Your function on Earth is healing." "What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."
To do this you have to work on undoing your authority problem, because you have to be willing to allow God to be the source of your power and love (your creator), and recognize yourself as a CHILD of God, and as a co-creator/extender/relay of God's Love. Then through expressing love/light/power/will/strength/truth you can reflect your co-creating function in heaven while you're here. You more or less don't need to "do" much.
"The power of God and not of you engenders miracles."
"You do not do them." (they are done through you)
Or rather, you must not interfere, and you ALLOW and TRUST the Holy Spirit to do the healing while you transmit and hold the light. For this to happen you have to have developed trust in Him and allow Him to be in you, you must DEPEND on Him and be willing to LET HIM heal through you. This will mean having to put aside ego and purify your own mind, accept some atonement and forgive, so that you can be a functioning transmitter of God's light.
You ARE required to be very loving and fearless and strong while you do this, otherwise you cannot allow the power to move through you.
"Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear."
"Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin."
So what it boils down to is, extend a crapload of God's love to another person. Directly to the person. To their mind. To their soul. Take what God has GIVEN you, and GIVE it to another. Bypass the body. Don't even pay attention to the current physical state of the person because that's based on where they USED to be at, and it's secondary, and doesn't need "direct" healing. Empower and resurrect them from the INSIDE OUT, and this light will automatically radiate out from them and bring healing to their body as THEIR mind lights up with strength and life.
The light in your mind, which is God's light, must shine/extend into another mind, to heal it. Offer God to your brothers. Open up your mind like a strong flashlight and shine into someone. Join with them by going INTO their mind and glowing your love there. Remind them of the living truth. Light them up and love them directly, mind to mind.
Experiments are in order! Go to it.
I'm seeing that a lot of people literally do not know how to be a certain way. We're all sort of hardwired into our personalities and they have a number of limitations. Where one personality trait seems like a plus, it always has a flipside. Every pro has a con. Every talent has a curse behind it.
This is how everything is in spacetime. In order for any form or illusion to have any properties at all, it has to lack some other properties. A little bulge over here results in a lack of something over there. Something that sticks out means there's less of something. A 'commitment' to one thing produces a movement away from its opposite.
This seems to be true of the body and the personality at this level. We each sort of have a random set of character traits, a real mixed bag, like we reached into the lucky dip and pulled out the first 5 things in a weird combination. And that means we didn't get this trait or that trait or that special trait. So now we're stuck with being a jumbled up collection of parts and pieces.
I for example am wired to be very sensitive which results in a lot of empathy and acute awareness of feelings and so on. But that means I'm not very comfortable being bombarded with a lot of stimuli in a social setting, so socialising is quite awkward and like a minefield. I can't go deep AND broad at the same time. I don't do "smalltalk" well at all.
Then you have someone who is a social butterfly, extroverted and adept at being the life of the party. They can talk 'shallow' with countless people and flit around sampling everything as they go, seemingly confident and outgoing. Yet they also likely lack empathy and depth and don't really get deeply into anything with anyone, afraid to reveal their deeper feelings. Yet on the surface they seem super confident.
I've seen also how there are some people who seem very confident and attractive and have a ton of one-night-stands and are very much single, but have an incredible inability to have a deeper commitment to anyone or a proper relationship. A bias in favour of one thing seems to produce a real disability in another area. Like, we actually can't have our cake and eat it, we have to always be one thing or another.
I used to think there were people who "had it all", and were just somehow "better" than others. ie Better than me, or that I was better than them. But that's not the case at all. Even those who stand out as seeming superstars have a host of issues and blindspots. Being good at one thing usually means being bad at something else. This is just how things work when they're made of separations and illusions of form. Every gain is a loss. There is no "total package" because there is no wholeness here.
I'm finding it at the moment interesting to look at what things I'm good at AND what things I'm not good at. Because if we just focus on thinking that we're 'right' with regard to our pros, we don't have the humility to recognize our shortcomings. Seeing our 'issues' from the outside in comparison to others is quite useful in deconstructing the ego and not buying into the illusion that we're perfect in our imperfection.
Fortunately who we really are is above and beyond all such limitations and biases. If we can recognize the unique configuration of "what we're born with", both the positives and the negatives, we can more easily detach from it and rise above it rather than seeing ourselves as defined by it.
"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct. Nor at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are. God gives special gifts to His teachers because they have a special role in His plan for Atonement. Their specialness is, of course, only temporary; set in time as a means of leading out of time. These special gifts, born in the holy relationship toward which the teaching-learning situation is geared, become characteristic of all teachers of God who have advanced in their own learning. In this respect they are all alike." UrM5A1
Thoughts are attempts to create. They are attempts to give and express. They produce effects. They are not passive or neutral. A negative attacking thought is an attempt to use thought for destructive purposes. That means to "mis-create" or to attempt to "create destruction" or to "not create", ie to create a lack of love (an emptiness/sin).
Let's say that expression/extension is life, and is a matter of thought. As you express anything, you are creating or miscreating. Either way you are producing an effect. Mind, as it thinks, is applying itself. It actually causes something to happen.
When we having loving thoughts, the thoughts we think with God, they have a miraculous healing power because they are thoughts of wholeness, holiness, innocence and harmlessness. They are creative thoughts. They are miracles with the power to affect others.
When we having attack thoughts, thoughts thought with "the ego" or "lacking God", lacking life, we are thinking destructively and are attempting to bring about a less-than-creative outcome. This has an effect just as much as holy thoughts, except holy thoughts are far stronger because innocence is strength.
A thought you have of someone is not just a separated-off commentary, it is an expression and a transmission. It is a creative act. You are trying to give something to them and send it to them. And there are no private thoughts, so they will receive it. This is also how people perform "psychic attack" by thinking negatively or fearfully of others.
Jesus indeed even goes on to say that we curse others through what we might call a "spell", which is an attempt to reinforce the ego beliefs others have already chosen, which further imprisons them. Your thoughts are capable of imprisoning others just as much as setting them free and healing them.
Perhaps we don't want to admit that thought has such a power or influence because we are really afraid of thought and of the responsibility which comes with "thinking well" of ourselves and others. And the fact that this is also the secret of salvation. The ego interprets responsible thinking as a reason for guilt and blame.
The thoughts we have of others aren't merely mental chatter, or a conversation. They are creative acts. You give people your thoughts. You communicate them to them, sharing the thought with them, to either strengthen or weaken them.
If you have high uplifting thoughts of others, you resurrect them with your mind. If you have fearful victimized concerned guilty thoughts about others, you imprison them and attack them. If you feel lovingly toward them to are thinking them into health. Thoughts are powerful, they are not idle.
"If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought."
"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."
"ALL thinking produces form at some level. The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them."
"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers"
"And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"
"It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.
People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them." "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thinking."
""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."
"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."
"The truth is that you ARE responsible for what you THINK, because it is only at this level that you CAN exercise choice."
"You WOULD be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking IF IT COULD NOT BE UNDONE."
"It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of mis-Thought can result in real healing. When you are fearful, you have willed wrongly."
"He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM
Meaning, forgiveness is a fixation on the truth that Christ is real and nothing of the ego is real. It fore-gives by having a purely forgiving attitude so that there are no errors introduced into your own perception, so that you do not see sin as real. This means you are overlooking the ego and not believing in it. You are not supposed to believe the ego even really exists!
If you fail to do this, if you are not truly purely forgiving, which occurs in the Atonement and the acceptance that nothing "real" has happened, therefore innocence prevails, then you will enter into a psychological condition which Jesus has named "judgement".
Judgement becomes your attempt to evaluate or justify WHY you did not forgive, by explaining using various other reasons what the cause is of what you're now seeing. Since you're making a perceptual error and are hallucinating errors, you will see sin as real and will attempt to explain why it is real by judging, ie evaluating, fake reasons.
Also judgement means that you are attacking, are condemning, are attempting to give reality to illusions, and are seeing someone as less than holy. This then takes on and accounts for all forms of what you think of as judgement, which is a judgemental attitude, but really encompasses the ENTIRE ego thought system. Every part of egoic perception is judgemental because it's a split-mind thought system of self-attack and condemnation. It points a finger of blame to scapegoat and enter denial, and finds someone guilty.
The belief that sin is real is judgementalism and is the opposite of forgiveness.
A major mistake all egoic minds make is believing that one part of the ego mind is holier than another, and then pits that one part against the other. One part is called holy and the other part is called evil. And then there is judgement against those that are considered sinful, even though the entirety of that attitude is judgemental. You see people in Christianity doing this where they become very polarized and anti-sin, waging a "spiritual war" against the devil, because they believe it is REAL. But it's not just Christians that do this, everyone with an ego does this.
You WILL be judgemental if you are not forgiving, and the only sign of true sanity is One who has absolutely no belief in "real sin" whatsoever. That mind, Holy Spirit's thought system of real truth, demonstrates and proves that there is no real ego at all. Nothing has happened. The atonement.
People will then say, if you want to do the Course correctly, you need to not be judgemental. So then people repress their ego and hide their judgements. If they believe sin is real they will continue to judge on some level even if they don't express it. And it will be an unconscious self attack. You can't just "stop judging" in expectation that this will solve everything, because the only reason you're judging is because you believe the world/body/ego/sin is reality or truth. You could take that path IF it would lead you to the insight that NONE of that is real, but I don't generally think that's happening for most people.
Instead, focus on forgiveness which is the true undoing of judgement, which must lead all the way to the Atonement if it is to completely uproot the core belief about the separation really happening. Only then will judgement cease, because judgement is really an EFFECT of non-forgiveness, not a cause in its own right.
P.S. I don't mean this post to be a "judgement" about judgemental Christians. Not all Christians are judgemental by any means. But they do often present a good example of this happening due to their belief in real sin and can't help but be "against" sinners. Some of the most intensely judgemental people I've met claim to believe in Jesus with the most gusto and passion, yet were horrible to be around and so incredibly righteous. Their personas were huge and they were in such denial. This doesn't mean Christians can't be truly forgiving and not believe in sin, just that many don't get that far. This is the lower level of expressing Christ's truth and is an attempt to express it within the context of the ego being real, so is really a major "level confusion". Christians can become Christ if they can let go of a belief in real sin and the entire package of evil/hell/sickness/death/vengeful God that accompanies it.
The course is really all about healing. It's asking us to heal ourselves, and to heal others. Your mind needs healing because it is confused and insane. When your mind receives healing it becomes able to extend that healing to heal others.
"The Disciples (that's YOU, if you are following Jesus's teaching) 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. "
"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."
"I can only give the (healing) miracles I have received."
"Now is the body healed by miracles."
"When I am healed I am not healed alone."
We're trying to heal our perspective, our outlook, how we see and who we see with. To awaken to a recognition of our healed self, letting go the wounds and illusions of damage that we thought were real or part of our nature.
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."
You are simply to heal yourself, ie let yourself be healed. Then you will be able to offer healing to others. Not only will you offer it, you will possess it and be able to give it. Having forgiven (healed) your mind, you will be able to heal other minds.
"I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."
"It is the privilege of the forgiven (healed) to forgive (heal others)."
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs. "
"The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF?"
You are a healer in training. You are a miracle worker. You can GIVE LIFE where it is lacking. You can raise the dead because "miracles supply a lack" and "miracles are given by those who temporarily have more (are more healed) to those who temporarily have less (are lacking healing)."
"Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible. But if you are AFRAID of healing, then it cannot come through you. The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are NOT healed, and cannot heal. This does NOT mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind. For if it were, there were no NEED for healing anymore. But it DOES mean, if only for an instant, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient. Miracles wait not on time."
Let's redefine forgiveness, to be less about me fixing up what I'm projecting or trying to fix my own suffering, and more to do with whether I am GIVING love or not. Let's think of it not JUST as a going-within, a taking back of projections, a taking of responsibility, and a claiming of atonement for ourselves, and recognize it ALSO entails a GIVING outward, an expression of love, a healing force, and a resurrection of OTHERS.
Therefore it is actually a "forgiveness process" to GIVE LIFE to others, to not only see them correctly, but to RESTORE them to wholeness by giving them love. By working a miracle for them and providing a SERVICE. That is forgiveness, not just sitting on a fence passively looking at someone with a smile, or trying to solely find peace for yourself. That is selfish.
Atonement is about sharing, in which giving and receiving are one, and you can't have one without the other. To receive but not give is not atonement. To bring darkness to the light but not bring light to the darkness is not atonement. You cannot exclusively receive atonement UNLESS you are willing to GIVE it. It HAS to be given otherwise you cannot receive it.
"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."
To forgive is to HEAL, both yourself AND the other. Both the giver AND the receiver benefit. It is not about you exclusively doing this for yourself, it is much more to do with SHARING and including. Restoring your brother to health SO THAT you can also be restored to health. Giving love SO THAT you can receive love. You cannot have anything unless you give it. And the resurrection of your brother is YOUR salvation.
Forgiveness is not about being selfish, or trying only to resolve your own issues, or attempting to find peace just for yourself. You cannot have peace in isolation. You cannot be happy while you ee yourself as separate from others.
You cannot experience love if the love is not going OUT. One part of our work is to uncover our blocks to the light within, SO THAT the light can SHINE outward and be given to others. You are not a lightbulb in a box, you are meant to be seen and received. You are a GIFT to others, and your healing is one with theirs. You are a gift to your brother that God has given to be shared.
If you exclude your brother from the healing, if you do not give them love, if you do not see THEIR salvation as part of your own, then you are not being forgiving. Forgiveness is not one-sided or exclusive or about just you.
It's not a question of "how do I forgive", it's about "how do I forgive FOR US." It's about you giving to the whole sonship, and participating in the great crusade to resurrect EVERYONE. How can YOU find peace if others are not at peace? How can YOU be healed without the healing of your brothers?
"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."
"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here."
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."
"So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: 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."
All sickness is merely a lack of love. When love is lacking, life is lacking. There is a diminishing of light, of presence, of strength. In the darkness there begins to be limitation, deterioration, fragmentation, weakness and corruption.
The simple task of miracle-working then becomes to "supply what is lacking". What is lacking is love. This is why "Miracles are expressions of love." "Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."
If you have more of this "life", this light and love, this power, you give it to another. What can that mean other than to simply extend love from God to the person. God is life and to give love is to give life. "Miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God".
Can it be any simpler really? To give life is to resurrect, to strengthen, to encourage, to uplift, to inspire, to rejuvenate, to energize. "Miracles are energizers." A lack of love or life is a lack of "energy", for want of a better word. A seeming withering or weakness, a reduction in the brightness of the spark of life.
Let's simply say that love is life, it is light, it is power, it is strength, it is innocence, it is invulnerability, and it is healing. If someone is seeming to "lack love", remembering that "sin" is merely a seeming absence of lack of love, and the "proof of sin" are merely the outward appearances of the "presence of an absence", then simply supplying the lack corrects the problem.
"Sickness is but another name for sin (a lack of love/life). Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."
Where there was darkness light is given. Where there was a manifestation of a lack of wholeness, wholeness re-establishes life. Where glimpses of death seemed to be showing up, they are merely shadows of the seeming absence of life. Evidence of sin, or of "unforgiveness". Because "forgiveness is an earthly form of LOVE."
Miracles are restorative. They resurrect and raise the dead. They raise the dead in the sense that someone lacking in love is "not fully alive." "No man who lives in fear is really alive." Fear is another name for the absence of love and life, especially since love is safety.
A lack of life is an illusion of a state of death, and "sickness is but a little death". The miraculous power of God that is love, enlivens and renews and undoes the consequences of wrong decisions. It removes the interference to perfection. By infusing the other person with life you are "raising them up", in terms of psychology and energy.
A person with more "life" in their mind and experience will stop manifesting symptoms of death. As the inner spark is ignited and amplified, the outer manifestations of that raised, more enlightened awareness, must give rise to what would outwardly appear to be the disappearance of sickness and death. And thus will the body literally appear to return from death.
Miracle-working is about giving love and life. It is about FUELING another through a flow of energetic healing power from God. People in absent states suffer from "drained batteries" if you will, and need to be recharged. Emphasizing the higher truth of the person, giving love, and extending God to them, must lift their spirits. You have to "pour love into them."
Miracles energize the weak and give them life. Loving expressions support and uplift and empower. What has light has life, and what has life is immortal.
"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."
"Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through prayer, love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."
"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."
I choose to be afraid.
I project the fear outward and identify targets that are causing the fear.
The existence of these targets 'explains why' I am afraid.
Explaining why I'm afraid justifies and proves why I am afraid, and gives it extra weight, making it real.
I then say, oh my, I'm afraid, I don't want those targets to attack me. But this is a two-faced ego lie.
I want to see them attacking me because it justifies keeping my fear. I want them to make me afraid. And until I stop identifying them as the cause or 'reason for' the fear, I will just stay afraid.
The truth is, there is a secret reason for the fear which has nothing to do with who or what it is projected onto. They are not the cause of it. They are not the ones who are creating it or making it happen.
I am secretly making it happen by trying to defend myself from God. My secret wish is to be separate from God and to deny that God exists. My secret wish is a suicidal death-wish in which I want death in place of Life. That's the whole reason why I'm in a body - to escape from God.
So every time I become afraid of 'something', that's not really what I'm afraid of or why I'm in fear. I'm in fear because I am conveniently using them as a scapegoat for why I NEED to be afraid. I want to NEED fear because I NEED fear to separate me from God and fulfill my hidden agenda.
The people or events or objects or body functions that are 'making me afraid' are very conveniently HELPING me to reject God. Thank you, fears, for helping me to stay separate and choose death, exactly as I wanted.
See, underneath the farce of projected fear, there is a death wish. And that death wish wouldn't be there if I did not WANT it. I wanted it because it was my CHOICE. I CHOSE that I wanted the opposite of God and did not want Life. It was a decision I made. So the only reason I am now afraid is because I want to be because it's helping to support my underlying death wish.
Can I be afraid if I get honest and own up to using fear to cover up MY deliberate attempt to be dead? Can I believe that other people are causing the fear if I get honest and own up to the fact that I want them to help me justify keeping the fear, so that I can shut out love and be autonomous?
I have to admit that fear is a choice, just as death is a choice. And it's ME that is doing it TO MYSELF. This is the key to salvation.
I can decide I do not like what I have chosen for myself and admit that I chose it - it was not created by anyone else or anything else - and nothing else is keeping it in place other than my secret wish for death. Do I like the results? Do I want it? Shall I keep it? Is it working out? Am I enjoying the results? Probably not.
Maybe it's time I admit that I chose mistakedly and it was a poor choice, and that I want something better. Maybe I'll admit that it is pointless to deny God because it doesn't make God go away, and being without Him is always going to be a less enjoyable experience. I can be stubborn about it or I can give up trying to be dead and ACCEPT LIFE instead.
We do have this choice. We make this life-or-death decision every single time we choose ego over God.
The good news then, is, since we were the ones choosing death and fear, we can choose again and choose not to be dead. Yes, death is a CHOICE. If I choose to accept LIFE then I will permit eternal life to lift me up and sustain me forever. There is nothing 'the ego' can do to prevent this because the ego is nothing more than my insane mistaken choice to try to reject God.
So what's it going to be today? Life or death? You choose.
I'll give you a hint. Death actually isn't death, it's just a dream of death, which is just denial. It doensn't actually do anything to the Real You. YOU can't die. So trying to do so is a waste of time.
Give up. Surrender. Choose God again and be happy.
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."
Something that I am really connecting with strongly at the moment, is the very ultra-simple truth that I am GOD’S CREATION. This is reflected in ideas such as:
"I am forever an effect of God,"
"I am still as God created me."
I focus simply on the fact that whatever I am, I MUST BE what God has determined me to be. I come from Him, and from nothing else. I am the extension of Him, per His Will. And everything I have He has given me.
It bypasses all lower level ideas and concepts and simply focuses on WHAT I AM, in relationship to God. The primary relationship of cause and effect between Father and Son.
This entails acceptance and acknowledgement of having been created BY God, and that therefore I am His child, and must be EXACTLY as He created me to be.
I am still as God created me.
God designed me to be perfect so I must be perfect.
God created me therefore I am exactly what He wanted to create.
I must be innocent because God created me innocent.
I must be sinless and guiltless because God did not design me with sin or guilt in me.
I cannot die because God did not Will that I be dead.
As you play with this idea and elaborate on it, you can come up with some very powerful yet simple, holy ideas about your real self.
God is the cause, you are His effect. I acknowledge that since God caused me, I must be whatever HE wants me to be. I must be as he designed me. I must be loved and holy. I must be perfect and divine. I must FOREVER be immortal and flawless and deathless and ageless and free from all corruption.
Acknowledging that I am God’s effect or creation, means admitting to being Christ. Jesus said to me, putting words in my mouth, "I need to restore my identity as Christ." This line of thinking does exactly that.
I will to simply remember my true nature. To remember who I am and what I am like. To recall why I must be free from anything God did not put into me. To recognize why I must be still as he designed and in perfect accord with His will and blueprint.
I can ONLY be what God has chosen to create me as. I cannot change this. I cannot redefine myself. I have no say in or power to alter myself. I have never changed since God created me. I’m incapable of being or doing anything God did not build into me to be capable of.
Therefore I have a "function", which God has set in place, a role if you will a machinery, a way of operating, a potential and capability, a talent, which God has given and is irrevocable. Nor can I add the slightest anything to His design. Nor can I take anything away.
I can ONLY BE what God wills me to be. I come from God. I am His holy extension. I am like Him. I am in His likeness and of His nature. I have INHERITED Him. I am HOST to Him. I am what He would have me be, and nothing more or less.
I am God’s Son, God’s child. I am from Him alone. Everything about me is HIS choice. I can only accept and celebrate that He has given me blessings and freedom and joy and beauty and power and everything of Himself. He has shared Himself with me. He has GIVEN Himself to me. I am HIS property.
The relationship of communion with God is the fundamental primary relationship of the soul to its creator. It is the recognition of what you ARE and MUST be, because of WHO created you. And it is the acceptance that you CANNOT BE anything else, nothing else is true of you, and only His truth about you is true.
You are anchored to your true identity as Christ because this is what God has willed. He created you Christ. You ARE Christ. And nothing beyond God has any power over you to define, change, attack, distinguish, affect or alter you in any way.
You are God’s creation. Holy, innocent, and free.
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
"And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend, as you extended when you joined."
Some of us like to describe reality as oneness, or perhaps that "its all God", or "non-duality". A state with no separations or differences. But there is a problem with this.
If you take something and you "boil it down" to something else, you end up with this idea of something very simple. Something seemingly singular. Perhaps even a single word which represents it. So maybe we'll say that there is just oneness and that's an entire description of reality.
But the problem is this. If you can't take that boiled-down simplified concept, and arrive at the original state, condition, nature, contents, of reality by building upon it, extending it, then something has become lost in the process. If you START WITH e.g. "God is all there is", you can't logically get to "God has a son".
There is an analogy in the world of data compressionm like when you "zip" some files on your computer. When you try to compress a file, you can do so losslessly or with some acceptable loss. If you want to get every single byte of the file back in its original condition when you decompress it, you have to use a lossless algorithm or process.
Whatever it "boils down to" or compresses to, it has to be detailed enough that when you reassemble the original file, every single detail is still there. If you omit even a tiny bit of "information", you can't get the original file back. How much it can boil down is determined by how much information there is, and relates to the "entropy" of the data. This is why your big image file cannot be compressed below a certain level. It has to maintain enough information to get the original back.
What happens is, if your method of boiling down leaves out some details, omits some information, doesn't fully and accurately represent the original data, then when you go to re-expand the file you don't get back the same data you started with. It becomes "inaccurate." Something has been lost in translation. That means, whatever you boiled it down too was too generalized, too simplified, too basic, and not descriptive enough. Trying to get back the original data is then impossible because too much information is lost. So the simplified file no longer accurately REPRESENTS the "actual reality" of the file.
The same thing happens when we try to describe reality and use concepts or terms which are TOO simple, too basic, and omit too much information. They seem like nice handy symbols but logically they are lacking too much information. You should be able to take a simplified description of reality and derive the full contents of reality from it, by "decompressing it" or reversing the boiling-down process.
You should get back what you started with. So if your description is the "starting point" you MUST be able to fully ACCOUNT FOR every possible detail or characteristic of that reality. And your description of reality in its "most condensed" or most simplified form MUST have enough descriptive information, otherwise you simply cannot end up with what you started with. And when you try to do so, you will produce massive errors.
Particular culprits of this kind of loss of information are conceptual terms such as oneness, "its all God", "God is", "non-duality", "no differences", "no separation" "no self" "unity" etc. These all sound plausibly realistic or representative of the full details about reality, but they're not. They in fact are too generalizing, too basic, and not accurate enough. They leave out some details. And so when you then try to base the description of heaven, for example, on this "premise", on this basic generalization, you CANNOT get back the details of heaven. And in fact you will get back conclusions you did not bargain on.
So if you say ok, it's all oneness, or one thing. Well, now you cannot get a son of God out of that. At all, in any way. Or if you say "its all God", you cannot get out of that an accurate description of why the son of God dreamed and God DID NOT because God has been too mixed in or included in the tiny mad idea. Or if you say it's non-duality and there are no separations, you can't get back the fact God has a Son, yet alone that there is a holy trinity and a bunch of creations.
So there is a big risk, actually an error, in using these really super basic ego-logic-derived terms and concepts to try to describe the reality or God. There is such a thing as something being TOO lacking in detail to accurately describe it. Yes God HIMSELF is one, and reality itself is singular, and there is no opposite to reality, but this unfortunately is not the WHOLE STORY. And so major aspects of the picture become lost in the process of over-simplifying. To the extent that they BLOT OUT key characteristics of reality's true contents.
When you look at what ACIM says about the contents of reality, it is a very different picture to just "its all one" or "there's only God there" or "there are no separations". Yes, there are aspects of reality which ARE only one, or that it IS all just God, but that is only PART OF the story. There are more facts, there is more information needed, and more has HAPPENED in reality because God is a creator. Just the fact God creates results in these ideas being not sufficient to ACCURATELY AND FULLY describe reality.
So if God is to for example have even one son, we cannot JUST say that it's all one because that's now illogical. Yet it IS all one, and that is always true, but it MUST also be true that there is SOME WAY for there to be a son. Otherwise God is not a father or a creator and he is alone and cannot love and there is no extension of life and so on.
In fact the PUREST possible non-duality concept logically ends up with the conclusion that God is dead because He has nothing to give or extend or share or create. It makes him lifeless. You get all kinds of utterly nonsense conclusions deriving FROM that "basis" of what reality IS, when you leave out some facts. So if you start out your reasoning based on things like "its all God" you WILL end up with some horrendously wrong conclusions.
So if you take for example what ACIM says, which is that God has one son, which is also many sons, who have their own sons ad infinitum, and also there is the holy spirit and the angels, apparently in many legions and with a hierarchy, and who knows what else you've created, to describe that ACCURATELY, you can't JUST say "its one thing". A blob is one thing. A state is one thing. A singular entity like God is one thing. But there is MUCH MORE going on in reality than that according to what Jesus tells us. And we should be trusting his word.
So describing it as oneness, or generalizing too far and blotting out the details, or boiling it down so much that the nice soup mixture of various key ingredients becomes just a singular meaningless slush, is actually an error in logical reasoning. It does NOT accurately describe reality or what is happening in reality. It does not accurately describe God's nature either.
It in fact in some ways it can be far better to be MORE DETAILED in describing the nature of God and His Kingdom than it is to be LESS detailed. Just saying "God is" is a premise SO BASIC that it is massively open to huge false conclusions when you try to derive the Kingdom out of it. If God is were the WHOLE story, God would not have a creation at all.
The ego only leans towards less detail because it reasons, if I remove all sense of separations and divisions and multiplicity, I will end up with ONE THING, and this one thing SEEMS like it might most accurately describe the idea of what is all encompassing and infinite. Except that it doesn't. Its a total fail.
It does not take into account that God has a mind, has thoughts, creates beings, or that there are relationships, or that the beings he creates have their own children, minds, and will, or that there are millions of angels for example, or that God doesn't will to be alone. That all goes out the window because the EGO'S conclusion about God IRONS OUT all the details to the point of nothing - the loss of information. It's a great way to become BLIND to what reality is really like.
In the ego's thought system, its sense of logic is that something is either this or that, but not both. This results in differences, and it sees the existence of the separation between those differences as "separation". It even labels that separation as "ego". And then it seeks to get rid of those separations, to attack itself, to remove all separations, in order to end up with "no separation", thinking that this is what it will be like when you have "undone the separation", and must therefore describe God.
And so it reasons, reality is one thing, a oneness, a pool of singularity in which nothing happens and there is no creation. This is only PARTLY correct because it loses too much information. And so the ego cannot accurately describe reality with THIS thought process. You have to become open to thinking outside the box and using God's reasoning in order to describe what God and His creations are like. And since God does have at least one son, it certainly is not a state of logically pure non-duality, nor is it "only oneness", and certainly it's not "just God" because he has ADDED you to Himself.
"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN."
If you end up with "it is oneness" or "its all God", and then you decompress that idea to address for example the issue of the making of death, you have to conclude God is death, or God is a body, or God separated from God, or God is a pile of shit, or God went insane, or even God is an illusion that doesn't really exist. Without enough information you cannot "get back" the full picture of what God is, what has happened, what we dreamed, and what has not really occurred, without making some CRAZY false conclusions.
Heaven is vertically opposite to the Earth. Heaven is love, yet love has no opposite. The earth is the opposite to love and does not exist, hence "there is no world."
"Never was love in the world."
"The truth is simple; it is one without an opposite."
"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."
"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."
The Earth is made of fear, guilt, and sin. It is an illusion. It is the idea of the opposite to love, and opposite to God. Yet, an opposite to love does not exist.
If you take heaven an earth and put them alongside each other, seemingly with a separation between them, you are suggesting that you can evaluate them as though comparable equals. This is dualistic, horizontal logic. Heaven’s relationship to the earth is NOT horizontal.
Heaven, love, God, creation, do not HAVE an opposite. They are ABOVE, on a higher level. Earth is BELOW, on a lower level. Their relationship is not horizontal, it is vertical.
Heaven is infinite. Earth is finite. Heaven is reality. Earth is illusion. Heaven is truth. Earth is a lie. Heaven is everywhere. Earth is nowhere. Heaven is all that exists in God. Earth is nothing that exists anywhere but in a fiction.
You cannot compare them like apples to apples. You also cannot suggest that if you remove the separation between them, then they will BECOME ONE. That would only happen in a horizontal logical comparison, which is how the EGO THINKS about oneness.
Compare them vertically, and what happens?
Vertically, because love has no opposite, it means:
1) There is no world. It does not exist ANYWHERE.
2) When the "real world" disappears, and the supposed "separation between heaven and earth" is dissolved, this does NOT mean that they blend together into ONE state that includes them both. IT DOES NOT. It means, that which was EVERYTHING REAL - heaven - is all that will be left. That which was NOTHING REAL - earth - will be recognized as ceasing to exist.
3) Earth is not a part of heaven. It never will be. There is no world. Not even the "real world" exists but as a dream. Dreams end and what was dreamed ceases to exist anywhere.
4) Earth does not "Translate into heaven" as a way for it to BECOME heaven, to be included in heaven, to turn into heaven, or to blend with heaven. What was thought to be there, as a world which DOES NOT EXIST, disappears entirely, being recognized. Jesus teaches "Illusions recognized must disappear", not "illusions recognized are kept and transformed into part of heaven."
5) The removal of the separation between heaven and earth does NOT MEAN that heaven ceases to exist afterwards. Opposition is the idea that exists only in the illusory earth. Heaven does not oppose. Heaven does not participate in the separation or in becoming one half of a duality. Heaven recognizes there is ONLY heaven. "There is no life outside of heaven." When the idea of separation disappears, the CONTENT OF THAT IDEA will disappear, which was entirely ONE SIDED! The ego’s opposition to Heaven was NOT part of Heaven’t opposition to the ego. Heaven does not attack or separate. Heaven is not a PART OF the separation idea. When the separation is undone, vertically, ONLY THE WORLD DISAPPEARS, NOT HEAVEN. What remains is ONLY HEAVEN.
6) This is the meaning of "nothing unreal exists" - the earth DOES NOT EXIST. Trying to find a way to make it continue to exist "in God" or "fused with Heaven" is DENIAL, based in fear. Heaven/God/reality is all that exists. Ego/separation/earth/illusions is UNREALITY and does not exist. Never do the two become one. Only one of them is TRUE. The world is FALSE. Never will "what is false" be converted into or kept or become a part of heaven or ANY state of oneness no matter what you call it or how you try to read into it.
7) There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. It is an extremely radical idea. It threatens the ENTIRE ego thought system. Resistance against it is the sum total of ALL of the resistance of the entire ego thought system. No-one with an ego wants to admit it is true. It means nothing in the world, no forms, no bodies, no pretty animals and rainbows, no lakes and mountains and oceans, no special relationships, no bodily relationships, NONE OF IT EXISTS.
That’s why this threatens so many people. Believing YOU are made of or are a part of the ego world (earth) makes you certain that IF it does not exist, NOR DO YOU. And that is interpreted like a threat of DEATH by the ego. And then the person will put up *defenses* against the truth, moving into sickness in an attempt to explain why the world is real and part of God’s creation. It is nothing less than the fear of death.
It takes WILLINGNESS to accept that this is true and that Jesus is literally telling us there is no world here at all. This is also why Jesus repeatedly says that "nothing you see means anything" and "the world you see does not exist". Literally, planet earth does not exist. NEVER will it be a part of heaven in any way under any circumstances or interpretations whatsoever. Love has no opposite. What is not love does not exist NOW, even if it’s showing up as a fake planet. And it will not begin to exist LATER, after the universe disappears.
Only love is real.
Here is why your body's health is a DEMONSTRATION of what your mind believes is true. A broken body shows that the mind is NOT healed, and a healed mind PRODUCES a healed body. "A sane mind heals the body."
The body MUST demonstrate health otherwise it is TEACHING ATTACK and accusing your brother of not being innocent. EVEN THE BODY has to show innocence, physically, otherwise you are communicating to your brother that he is a sinner! Only through your health is it PROVEN to him that he is EXONERATED! You are either teaching "behold at your hand I die" or "behold at your hand I live". Your body is doing one of the two, and if it's that you are dying "because of" external causes you haven't corrected, you ARE accusing your brother of sin.
"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."
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"You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them. Your ego cannot tolerate ego-weakness, either, without ambivalence, because it is afraid of its own weakness and the weakness of its chosen home."
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"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."
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"Those with broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego, because of its belief that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its OWN temple. A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. A damaged brain is also hardly a danger. ALL symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this, the mind that so meets them heals ITSELF."
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"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN.
Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams."
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"For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just ONE instant of your love WITHOUT attack is necessary, that all this occur."
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"Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself. A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him, you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him.
17 Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony which can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him. A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed and has forgiven what he did not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost and healed along with you."
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"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone. "
One of the simplest but biggest lessons is learning that people are not bodies. And nor are you.
The human body is an illusion which is bring projected by the minds of those who seem to inhabit them. The body is a wall of flesh around the mind designed to keep others out, and to imprison the soul. It is a device for separation.
The purpose of its image and form and shape is to blind you when you look at it, so that you do not see the real person. When you look at a person "as" a body, you are not seeing them. You will see the outer surface of their body, which seems like a person, with shapes and eyes and a mouth and so on, but these are actually decoys. They hide the spirit.
The big problem the world has is identifying with bodies. That means both identifying or associating other people with their bodies, and also identifying or associating your own "self" with your own body. This is a state of mental illness because you are not a body. While you see yourself as one, you will see other people as one also.
The senses of the human body were also designed so that you DO NOT know what exists. The eyes were made to fixate only on the surface of objects so that you would be blinded by appearances and unable to see God. The ears were made to listen to artificial sounds which are all illusions, in order to block out the Voice for God. All body senses do the opposite of what they seem to do.
"To sense is not to know." So when you use your body senses to sense other people, including seeing their bodies, you *seem* to sense them but you are in fact sensing illusions - things which are not there, as if they are. This is insanity. The body is not really there. It is a projected 3D image like a thick layer of clothing hiding the spirit and it doesn’t really exist. You have to be mentally ill to see one. Which accounts for most of the planet.
If you have "special rules" or values or judgements which apply to some types of bodies and not others, you have egotism. This is unloving. Relating to special bodies is not love. The body is in fact designed to reinforce specialness, exclude others, and block wholeness. A special relationship with a special body is based on separation and exclusion. This doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice, or that you should be special with all bodies. You should relate soul-to-soul, mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart.
It is not possible to have some bodies be special while others are less so or different, and maintain that there is equality. It is also not possible to accept all bodies equally. Bodies are NOT equal. They are fundamentally different and unalike. They were designed to BE different so that you would isolate yourself and others to specific locations in space, identified by and separated by the differences in their forms. To be equal is to not relate to bodies at all, but to the Christ beyond them.
It is literally impossible to have unconditional love for bodies. Bodies cannot be SEEN, or maintained, when love is truly present. When love is present, there must be wholeness, in which partial bodies made of parts are impossible. This is why "to see a sinless body is impossible." It is also why "a mind and body cannot both exists." You cannot see the body and behold spirit. It is also why "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."
It also means that if you have issues about some body types, preference for some body types, favor toward or against some body types, or any kind of special belief about some particular body and not others, you have a split mind and are blinded by sight of form. Worse, you have blocked sight of yourself, have identified yourself with a body, and no longer seeing your brother at all. Unconditional love goes beyond sexual preferences as well.
Absolutely all body preferences must be put aside. Jesus says that you must not have issue with certain "body forms" or "body structures". The PERSON, is not the body. You are to love ALL PEOPLE, ALL THE TIME, EQUALLY. And to do that you need to generalize the learning that NONE of the appearances of bodies are true. That differences are not really there. That forms are lies. And to look past ALL bodies to the Christ within/beyond, which requires paying literally no attention to bodies at all.
So if you think you cannot or will not love certain types of people, all that has to go, because there AREN’T certain types of people. "You cannot enter into relationship with any of God’s children unless you are willing to love them all and equally." This includes loving murderers, rapists, paedophiles, warmongers, criminals of all kinds, your arch nemesis, all enemies, everyone from your past, your neighbors, the government, people of other races and genders, and absolutely everyone regardless of any reason why not. Because they are NOT thsoe things.
Jesus loves everyone equally. Holy relationship means WHOLE relationship with THE WHOLE of God’s Kingdom. And in God’s Kingdom there are no bodies at all because we are all perfectly identical in the image and likeness of God, as One. "Healing is when two minds perceive their oneness and become glad."
Love the heart, not the hologram.
Nothing happens without someone's mind deliberately willing it to happen. There are no exceptions to this. Separation did not happen without someone choosing it. Atonement does not happen without someone choosing it. Sickness does not happen without someone choosing it. Healing does not happen without someone choosing it.
Everything thus serves a PURPOSE. Everything is being USED. Everything has a FUNCTION. You make a choice, and if its a poor choice you will produce suffering and negative consequences. "I made the decision myself." You will need to "decide otherwise" if you want the result to be different. Whatever your mind sets up as a PREMISE, produces a logical OUTCOME. This it true all the way from God to the ego.
While there may be an ILLUSION of accidents, chaos, lack of order, unintentional outcomes, slip-ups, mis-haps, things that you did not will, stuff happening that you did not choose, random acts of nature, and all the other bullshit illusions of unintentionality, ALL of this is a lie. There is ALWAYS intention and deliberation and choice behind everything because you have free will. Nothing CAN happen without you willing it. And anything that does not happen is because you did not will it.
You move with utter deliberation. You make a choice and you execute it and it produces the EXACT result you intended. The only time you seem to produce results you did not intent is when you ACTUALLY DID intend it but believed that you were intending something else, because you had a split mind. This ties into the secret of salvation, which is the recognition that whatever you are experiencing you are choosing and there are NO other causes of your suffering, sickness, or death, other than YOUR deliberate decision to make them happen.
Nothing is accidental. Everything is planned. All acts are intentional. Everyone is always deliberate at all levels. What happens is what is being chosen to happen. If you do not like what you get you need to change your mind. Your mind has creative POWER. It causes effects. If you do not like the effects your mind made a wrong decision. Make the right decision and you will have salvation. Creating unconsciously is mis-creation only because you keep using your own toolset against itself, which hurts you, seemingly by mistake, but actually on purpose. If you don't want to hurt, stop hurting yourself.
There ARE no victims or victimizers. There are only choosers and consenters. You are a powerful creative force. Creations or illusions come out of you. Whatever you decide to produce will be produced. If you are producing a shit life it is because you are making shit choices. You HAVE the power to will in line with God's will, to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, which WILL make the way straight and bring total healing. If you will ONLY to heal, you will ONLY be healed.
This is single-mindedness, the opposite of split mindedness. This is an un-divided will, the opposite of a split will. This is being of one mind, the opposite of being in two minds. Nothing can oppose you because you are free.
Some years ago I had a dream of angels. In a pretty courtyard, a portal of light opened up, a few feet above the ground. There then floated through beautiful white-light angels. They all looked alike. They floated and then stopped, until deciding to move. When they moved they moved entirely deliberately. They floated to a new position and stopped mid-air. When they decided to move again, they moved and then stopped. It was completely intentional. Nothing happened that they did not choose. Every motion and action was on purpose. It was beautiful to behold.
"There are no accidents in salvation."
"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."
"Non one dies without their own consent."
"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."
"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible. But if you are AFRAID of healing, then it cannot come through you. The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are NOT healed, and cannot heal."
"Sickness is not an accident" .... "Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done."
"My Self is ruler of the universe." ... "It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. "
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHICH VERSION OF THE COURSE YOU USE
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME! THE COURSE IS NOT A BOOK.
A Course in Miracles is a metaphysical course. It is also holographic.
If you were to "get" a single sentence Jesus has spoken in its fullest meaning and accept it, you could wake up. It does not require you to study specific words or versions. It does not require you to do the entire workbook.
I know this may sound controversial. At some point you are supposed to even leave the course behind and go to God with empty hands. The course is a stepping stone, a guide. It is not an experience of the truth.
The course is holographic in that the whole truth can be found in each part. Holograms make no sense to the ego because it has attempted to demonstrate through physical objects, that what is true of one thing is not true of another. It sees only separate problems defined by their FORM, the solution to which fixes on isolated problem and not any others - a learning which cannot be generalized.
Physical objects are the mind's way of projecting an image in which it seems like God does not exist anywhere, by making it appear that there is nothing the same anywhere. God is the same everywhere, he is the All in All. And he is fully present in all parts. The ego does not understand this because it will ask, how can All of God be in one part, and All of God be in another part? But God can, because God is omnipresent.
Similarly with the Course book(s), Jesus has expressed WHOLE TRUTH, using various words, many times over. The reason the Course repeats so much is because the SAME CONTENT is expressed in many different ways. So as you read it, it builds upon itself, because really, what you are learning is a "core truth" which is very, very simple and deep and profound yet which is expressed over and over again.
It is almost like a fishing net, which has been cast outward in many seemingly different "forms", talking on what seem to be many separate topics, in great detail, so that the MANY VARIED EGOS in various states and conditions can start with where they are AT, taking the course to be a specific form, and then WORKING THEIR WAY TO THE SOURCE, by realizing that each part IS NOT SEPARATE from the rest, and that there is a common thread, a very abstract yet wholly simple truth, hiding behind every single word. One Truth. One Answer.
Jesus in fact expressed the entire Course from a single state of mind, from love. In ego terms, that should mean that He only needs one expression, one WORD, which would be sufficient for you to awaken. As Jesus explained, even the term "God is" is sufficient. It contains the WHOLE TRUTH. The Complete truth. There is nothing missing in that.
Similarly for example, "nothing real can be threatened", contains the whole truth. Every aspect of that truth is reflected in it. If you could just GET that one thing, and get it really deeply and fully and really grasp the totality of it, the absoluteness of it, then you would be done waking up. So do you really need thousands of pages of text? Do you really need 365 workbook lessons?
Jesus didn't write a linear book. He didn't take the route that most authors take where they write things in a sequence along a timeline, with separated out content, and where each piece of content is tied to a particular form, and therefore to digest the "full story" you have to read the entire book, every word. Jesus's book is totally different to that.
Even though it seems to speak on many many different ILLUSIONS of topics, such as ego, mind, death, sickness, healing, miracles, heaven, worlds, separation, holy instants, brothers, etc... He is expressing ALL of it from ONE truth, one perspective (sitting in Heaven sipping tea), and that ENTIRE truth is contained in each part. You could get by with a single page of the text and wake up from it.
This is why the course is so DEEP. It has nothing to do with the HORIZONTAL digestion of the Course, how many words there are, how many words you read or practice, how much you memorize, which parts you quote in isolation, or which version seems more or less original. The course does not proceed in the horizontal. It is NOT attempting to get you to make "horizontal progress"!
It does not care how much time it takes or how many lessons you've done or which version's material was left in or out. That is not the DIRECTION in which your mind needs to progress in order for you to wake up! Your mind does not need to take on board 10,000 words. Your mind needs to TRANSCEND THE WORDS. To generalize the learning.
To transform what APPEARS to be thousands of words and to consolidate and reduce them down, boil them down, to a VERY, VERY SIMPLE core truth. You do that by going INTO the course, not moving through the material sideways or in a linear fashion!
The metaphysics of the course is DEEPER than the words, the meaning of the words is DEEPER than the words. There is an ABSTRACT TRUTH being presented here, a truth which *SPANS* the entire book, and is THE SAME EVERYWHERE. Page 1. Page 100. Page 1000. It's all the SAME CONTENT!
You are supposed to be GENERALIZING the learning. What that means is, you see SIMILARITIES in many different seeming parts of the book. Over here in chapter 1 Jesus talks about a miracle in this way, over there in chapter 12 Jesus talks about a miracle in that way. They correlate and are BOTH fragments of the same truth expressing. A piece of the hologram.
BOTH of them point to the same thing. If you are understanding the meaning of what's being said, your mind will develop a CONNECTION between the parts, and will therefore move towards a MORE ABSTRACT TRUTH than either of the parts suggest in their form. Your mind will start to build a "picture" or an overall concept or piece of the metaphysics, based not on a single quote or piece of form in isolation or certain versions, but based on the UNITY between them which transcends the forms of the words.
Just as the Course says you could gain vision from looking at a table in the correct way, so too you can gain vision from looking at a single sentence in the course in the right way. This is why a statement like "there is no sin" gives you a sigh of relief. It is HEALING, not because of what the words say or which words are used. It is healing because it is ABSOLUTE TRUTH expressed in one of many forms, reminding you that something FAR DEEPER than the form is real.
It does not matter which version of the form of the course you use or work with. It does not matter who edited in or out anything it says. It does not matter who influenced it or which forms are more original or less edited or which predate others. It is irrelevant. The course is RESILIANT and RESISTANT TO EDITING, because you cannot EDIT OUT the holographic truth.
A feature of holograms is that THE WHOLE TRUTH is present in every part. If you remove some of the parts, it DOES NOT DIMINISH the whole truth. Every OTHER part that remains, still has the WHOLE TRUTH in it. If you know anything about holograms such as those little 2D ones used on credit cards - when you move your vantage point you see a DIFFERENT SIDE of a 3D OBJECT... because every little particle of the holographic image CONTAINS THE ENTIRE OBJECT, making it possible to see multiple different perspectives at the same time. Try it yourself. To the ego, this should be impossible.
The course is the same way. If you take out AN ENTIRE CHUNK of it, just chop out 90% of the chapters in the text, YOU WILL NOT be removing even 1% of the CONTENT of the course that remains. The WHOLE TRUTH can still be found in the remaining content. You could even pare it down to just 2 words, like God Is, and THAT STILL contains the ENTIRE COURSE. So to think that someone's editing, even aggressive editing, has POWER OVER THE TRUTH, to strip out and steal away and leave out ANYTHING MEANINGFUL, is absolute bullshit ego drama. The truth is INVULNERABLE!
Taking out or changing some words WILL NOT, and SHOULD NOT (for anyone discerning) confuse or distract anyone from the truth. Believing otherwise means you are obsessed WITH FORM and are TOTALLY MISSING the content, which means you're NOT EVEN GETTING THE COURSE from the parts that you DO have access to! The Course contains such a STRENGTH and CLARITY of truth, do you really think that changing a bunch of words can corrupt it beyond all recognition, beyond all usefulness? You cannot remove the ALL from every part without changing EVERY SINGLE WORD. And then you might as well read the phone book. And even the phone book can be used to wake up.
The truth is not a form. It is not a version of some words. The metaphysics is essentially THE SAME in every single version ever released. If you think the differences are important, then you are not transcending the form and are not seeing the metaphysical foundation. WHOLE TRUTH cannot be edited out!
The metaphysics are based on extremely absolute logical progression, which is absolutely black and white with absolutely no wiggle room or room for confusion or misunderstanding.
The metaphysics explains the entire separation and every facet of the ego's working, as a logical progression, because all thought systems are logically consistent throughout. Once you can see the logical CLARITY, which is why Jesus uses extremely black and white terms as much as possible, you will GET the metaphysics and be able to see it and USE it, to clarify the MEANING of the words. The words do not provide meaning! The meaning provides the words! Content over form.
It is not necessary for anyone to read the entire text. It is not necessary for anyone to do the entire workbook. It is not necessary to read the manual for teachers, or absorb every word of every pamphlet, or listen to every single publication by well-known teachers. All you need is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit IS THE ANSWER TO THE SEPARATION.
The Course is only meant to put you in touch with Him and to recognize Him as your teacher and healer and helper, and to learn to allow Him to HELP YOU WAKE UP. Being in touch with Him and relying on and developing TRUST in Him, is MORE IMPORTANT than any words in any version of the Course anywhere. He is the ONE who Jesus appointed to help us. He is the ONE who will awaken us. He is the ONE who heals us. He is the ONE who KNOWS EVERYTHING and who can tell us anything we need to know, and direct us very specifically.
"I don't need to know what to say or what to do knowing He goes there with me. I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" etc...
It is THE EGO that wants to hang onto every word and quotation of the course, to take parts of it in ISOLATION and dwell on the FORM, in order to SEPARATE the course out into multiple separate problems, to confuse and obscure the message and the meaning.
It does not matter WHAT WORDS Jesus wrote. It does not matter what they mean in English language. It does not matter that you try to "let the words" tell you the truth without you interpreting. That STILL won't get you to be awake. You have to go beyond the words. They are just symbols, pointing you to the truth.
For some people, reading the entire text is helpful. Maybe many times. For some people, doing every single workbook lesson is helpful, maybe even many times. But NOT EVERYONE needs that. What is NEEDED, what is required, is to learn your personal curriculum which you will experience in your regular daily life, learn your lessons, apply the course principles and demonstrate the truth. Be a living example of the teaching, not someone who bashes others over the head with a book. There are already enough bible bashers in the world.
Sometimes people "get" the meaning of the course much quicker than others. It totally depends on the person. Sometimes there has been enough gained from the course writing itself that you no longer "need" to go do lessons or read the words. The core truth is generalized and the abstract nature opened up to. You get in touch with the Holy Spirit who is God's APPOINTED TEACHER, and you listen to Him and allow Him to TEACH YOU DIRECTLY. To help you to forgive and heal. To help you to APPLY it, and to RECEIVE HEALING.
What's right for one person may not be right for you. You have no idea. One person may need years and years of pouring over the urtext. Another may need just one reading of a FIP version. Someone else might need constant references to a sparkly or original or whatever edition. It doesn't matter. OUR CURRICULUMS ARE DIFFERENT, so there is NO ONE RIGHT BOOK to recommend for everyone to use, or which everyone should be using. And NONE of the books contain the experience of the truth.
All who are to meet will meet. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. There are no accidents in salvation. We are all on seemingly different paths, all leading to God. And no-one will be left behind. But don't fall into the trap of turning the course into FORM or having IDOL WORSHIP of it, or hero-worship of the people who we've made SPECIAL for having worked on certain versions. Much appreciation to them for their SERVICE, but they are NOT IMPORTANT. All that's important is that YOU become WILLING to accept the atonement yourself.
It is very important in the development of trust, that we learn to make room for SPIRIT in our lives and hand over the responsibility for decision making to the Holy Spirit. This means ASKING the Holy Spirit WHAT TO DO. And this includes even in small matters which seem very specific. Just because the matters are small does not mean that you are not advanced.
We are asked to hand over all decision with increasing frequency, allowing him "to decide for God for me." Which means we have to talk to him and we have to listen to his response. We have to open up to trusting and being willing to RECEIVE GUIDANCE. And we have to learn to TRUST this guidance, seeing that it works, seeing that it is always for the best, seeing that it is never harmful, and seeing that it CAN BE trusted. Thus we develop trust.
By giving him all decision making it also absolves us of guilt, because then we are simply following his WISER advice. Part of this is because our attempts to judge anything correctly are heavily flawed and ego-driven because we can't see the big picture and we don't have access to all the variables. We are meant to relinquish judgement, which means we then can't know what anything means, or what to do, or where to go, or how to act. And thus we have to ASK FOR HELP. And our egos really do not want to give up control.
This is an absolute vital and required practice as part of doing this course. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS, and turn to his advice ESPECIALLY in serious and difficult decisions, decisions about health, about life and death even, as well as what's for dinner and which way to go on a walk or which item to buy at the store. ALL THINGS, ALL decisions. Deep trust and handing over of ego autonomy and trusting in your own strength.
It is not only perfectly acceptable AND curriculum-aligned to seek for spiritual guidance, it is in fact what Jesus WANTS us to do. And that includes getting guidance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit, using it, AND sharing it with others to help them. It is a sign of spiritual maturity to do this because it means you're having true humility and are willing to serve God's will.
My wife was in the ICU for the second time, having been oxygen deprived, and was being declared more or less brain dead by the doctor, who told me to my face that she would never recover. She wasn't breathing well and he said we might as well let her die. I however did not trust this advice. The man seemed like the devil incarnate to me, certainly skilled in his profession but still an ego.
I instead sought the Holy Spirit and Jesus to decide for me and tell me what to do, knowing that I myself COULD NOT. I trusted their advice MORE than anyone. Their advice was to "resurrect her". And because of that, I made the decision that she would NOT be terminated and that we would wait.
In the next few days I did my praying and affirming and attempts to heal and so on, whether it helped or not I do not know. But a few days later, she began to wake up. The doctor at first accused me of lying when I told him she'd been trying to communicate. He was rather arrogant that he knew better and that it was impossible. He was completely convinced she would never recover.
But when they tried leaving off the sedation she suddenly came around and was talking. And a couple weeks later she was back at home to continue living. Had I listened to the advanced educated human ego advice of the chief doctor, she would've been put to death. Because Jesus told me what to do, and because I trusted it, she lived.
"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."
"Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice period to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:
"What would you have me do?" Where would You have me go? What would You have me say, and to whom?"
"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. "
"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."
"When you have learned how to decide WITH God, ALL decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently, as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. "
"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. "
Besides projecting your guilt onto others, you also project your WILL and your POWER.
You take a chunk of your own power, which is tied to your will, and you give it to someone else. As you shift ownership of the guilt into someone else's hands, you are not just handing over guilt but also "who is the cause" of the guilt. That causality, that power to cause, is your own will. So you simultaneously hand over your own will to the other person.
Then the other person now looks like they have an extra amount of willpower - an "alien will", a separate will. It seems like this will has power to do stuff, sure. But the problem is you now perceive that this will is separated from your own will and that it has power over or against what is left of your will. A split mind has a split will in conflict with itself.
This makes sense, because really you can only do anything to yourself, so YOUR OWN WILL that you put into the other person DOES seem to have the power to do something to you. IF it were really the will that belonged to someone else, it would NOT have the power to do anything to you.
So literally you are then acting against yourself, through someone else, using your own will as your own attacker. So even when you are victimized, it's still you doing it to yourself. Nobody ever does anything to you.
By disowning your will and handing it over, you strip yourself of seeming power, and become weakened or powerless. You have to do that because you can't see yourself as a victim if you are powerful. Nothing can happen to you but by your own will, so you literally have to lay down your own power and 'pretend' that you are weak, vulnerable, at-the-effect of the dream, and susceptible to being easily influenced. None of that is possible for those who are powerful, so you have to disown your power to do so. And since nothing happens without your consent, and BY your own will, you have to GIVE your own will to someone else in order for them to seem to use will against you. Otherwise they have no power over you.
You can't, however, get rid of power. Instead you displace it onto the people that you're projecting the guilt onto. You give it to them. And it is by giving them power over you, at least in your imagination, that you literally give them the 'power to do something to you'. They don't really have this power because it's really just your own will that you are afraid will attack you. But while you project and hallucinate that it is IN someone else, you associate it WITH someone else so that you can disassociate from your guilt, so now you think it is NOT your will that you see out there.
So really you are just afraid of your own will that you projected onto someone else, staring you back in the face and threatening to attack you. You think it's that person attacking you, but its really you. And you're afraid of the sense of power that they have, particularly the more you give it away and the weaker and more vulnerable you see yourself. They seem to loom large over you like there is nothing you can do and nowhere you can go to be safe from it. But it's really YOUR POWER that you're afraid of - the projected power that you need to reclaim.
So on the one hand, taking back that guilt and dropping your false innocence and letting go of victimhood seems like something you don't want to do, especially because it means you would have to own up to being guilty. But on the other hand, when you do take it back you are ALSO TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. You are literally taking back your own will, that you lost and displaced. The other person does not HAVE any power over you and the idea of an alien will was entirely an illusion. Nothing's stopping you from taking your power back. You just have to recognize IT IS YOURS and it is not theirs, because you gave it to them (or tried to).
So now you take back your guilt but also you take back your power, take back your will, and this renders you much less able to be victimized, or to believe that you are victimizable. Your sense of vulnerability will reduce and you will feel 'stronger' and more confident about being able to stand your ground. You won't NEED to stand your ground 'against' the oppressive others, however, because by taking your power back AWAY from them, they now are not artificially empowered and you no longer PERCEIVE that they have 'extra power' to do something to you. And so you are not threatened. And so you can now feel safe.
You are safe when you are in your own power. You are safe when you do not give your own will to other people. You are safe when you do not choose to be a victim. You are safe when there is nothing to be afraid of because the only thing you were afraid of was YOUR OWN WILL. You are only afraid of it when you disown it, and when you reclaim it you are EMPOWERED.
Then, when you take your guilt and you take it to Holy Spirit to let Him decide if you are innocent, and you ACCEPT that you are innocent, you will be even MORE empowered because you won't be weakened by guilt. Innocence needs no defense. True innocence is powerful.
"I am not weak but strong."
"I am not afraid but all powerful."
-ACIM
When your sense of identity has become confused with the ego or body, you see it as your SELF. You associate your existence with it as though it is you.
In order to then preserve your "own life", you will defend the thing you are identified with because you think it is really you. When it is threatened, you are threatened. You will therefore seek to maintain and preserve IT at all costs.
When the truth comes along to reveal that you are not the ego or body, your ego-identified self WILL perceive it as a threat. It’s a threat because IF the truth is true, it proves that the ego is not real. If YOU are the ego, that means YOU are not true and you don’t really exist.
What could seem more threatening than this implication that "you are going to be undone", or "your life" is going to end because what you ARE is being attacked by the truth?
In the name of protecting what you THINK is your life - your self, you will DEFEND your "self". Or at least, you think you are. You are defending the ego because you think it is your self, not recognizing it as not you, because you don’t recognize who you really are.
To defend yourself AS the ego, you will USE ego methods to protect yourself. The ego has only one tool - separation, which is the same thing as denial. In the name of what you THINK is protecting your SELF, you will implement MORE separation to try to put safe distance between you and the truth.
When you emphasize more separation, you split your mind, increase mental illness, and foster sickness in the body. This is unavoidable. Choosing to withdraw from truth is choosing to withdraw from life and health and wholeness. The defense that SEEMS like it is there to PROTECT you and save your life, with the purpose of self-preservation, is actually HURTING you. It makes you sick.
The ego is insane and every guidance it gives is a lie that does exactly the opposite to what it claims. It claimed that you protecting it (you) would make you safe from attack. Instead, it attacked you and now you are sick and worse off. The signs and symptoms of sickness start to show up in the body as well. You tried to protect yourself and you were attacked ("if I defend myself I am attacked").
In this state, you are WILLING TO TOLERATE SICKNESS and KEEP IT because, to your ego-body-identified self, the purpose of the sickness is to KEEP YOU SAFE. While you perceive that you NEED this defense, to keep your "self" safe from the truth, you will NOT be willing to drop the sickness. To do so would make you LESS safe and expose you to the perceived attacker. No-one in their right mind would want to become more vulnerable to attack, so it seems a reasonable to maintain and increase the sickness.
Even though the sickness is intolerable, and suffering is awful, you unconsciously chose it on purpose. Consciously now, because you are in denial and implemented denial in order to make the threat go away, you have blocked awareness of the choice you made.
You therefore don’t see that you did it to yourself. You then will see the symptoms of sickness as unchosen, unwanted, undesired and unacceptable. You will seek externally for possible "causes" trying to explain what caused the sickness to show up. It was you.
The secret to salvation is that you did this to yourself. The sickness is protecting you from God. The more you can make the body sick, the more pain it is in, the more you will focus on the body. You withdraw and contract yourself towards it, hugging it tightly in pain, because doing so reinforces your sense that you ARE the ego body. The more identified with the body you are, the more you are trying to make your ego-self strong. The more tightly you cling to it, the sicker it becomes.
The body is the primary place where you escape from God’s wrath, and yet escaping to it attacks it. An increase in confinement and isolation and body-identification seems to prevent God from stealing your identity away - your self, which you are trying to protect. But the more you BIND yourself to the body in suffering, the sicker you become. You simultaneously believe you are actually becoming SAFER from God, but are horrified that you also are in a state of suffering. The sickness seems to prove that the truth is attacking you, and that you do not want it.
The ONLY problem here is a mistaken sense of identity. If we did not believe we are the ego or the body, we would not perceive our SELF as under threat from the truth. We would have no reason to defend ourselves because we would be strong and truly safe. And recognizing ourselves as immortal we transcend the NEED for sickness. Without a purpose of protection, sickness HAS no purpose, and not perceiving a purpose in it, you will withdraw your belief in it. "Illusions recognized must disappear". Sickness will vanish.
Atonement cures because it removes the perceived NEED for the sickness. Accepting atonement is a willing acceptance of the truth without resistance or fear. In that willingness there is no more identification with ego or body. Nothing to defend, nothing under attack, nothing real can be threatened. In this is the TRUE escape from all sickness and death forever. Atonement is the resurrection of God’s Son to eternal life.
When I write or read ACIM stuff, after a while I'll start to feel upset. I may feel overwhelmed, or agitated, even hurt, and might feel like I want to cry. It's almost like someone just said a whole string of lies about me.
I look at what part of me feels this way and I acknowledge what it is likely feeling. It feels offended by everything the truth says. It feels threatened by it. It does not want anything to do with the stupid-ass course and does not want to wake up at all. It wants it all to go away. It wants the truth to shut the hell up. It sees it as constantly attacking it, and it won't leave it alone. It feels victimized and threatened and hurt. It is offended by everything the truth said, as if it were all a personal insult and attack. It is frightened about the notion of the truth being true, and hates the Holy Spirit.
This "part of me" does not want anything to do with ACIM, or any spiritual path, or any kind of waking up, or anything to do with God. It just wants to be the way it is. It is reluctant to have anything to do with God or making truthful statements or reading what is true and or studying. It just reacts to it all from an ego perspective.
This is something maybe not spoken about by many people but it happens with me all the time and I think it probably does with most people too.
This stuff happens because the ego's vantage point is actually totally opposite to the truth, opposite to God, opposite to reality. It interprets everything to do with God as false, wrong, bad, evil, vengeful, an attack, offensive, abusive, hurtful, to be avoided, etc. Every possible attribute of "evil" is assigned to God by the ego. Every possible way to want nothing to do with it is given him. This is simply because the ego believes that what is true is false, and what is false is true, and in this it is actually insane and confused.
Then, there is my mind, which is "doing this ego", or is identified with the concept of it. So part of MY mind or self is latched onto this perspective, caught up in it, identified with it as if it is true of my own self, as if it IS me. So part of my mind is turning my back on God and is peering back at God through highly negating opposing ego glasses, and everything it sees is backwards and upside down and inside out. But it doesn't realize this. And so as I look "through" the ego, everything true is false, and everything real is an illusion, and God is death and death is life.
We have this stuff going on in us so long as we are identified with the ego/body. A bodily identification, an ego-thought-system identification, a sense of limitedness or exclusion or specialness. That collections of vantage points seems to form "the ego self" or false self, an "area" of our mind that is temporarily flipped inside out. And so long as we're still bound to it in that way, exposure to the light will be experienced as attack by darkness. And moving closer to truth is experienced as reality falling apart. And trying to open up to love and sharing and union is interpreted as a threat to my very life.
It's tough to go through this because on the one hand the majority of me is wanting to awaken and be loving and spiritual while this ego portion wants the exact opposite. And so doing the course, reading the words, doing the lessons, writing about the topics, whatever related to it, sooner or later pushes these buttons and out comes the tears and the tantrums and the emotional breakdowns and the resistance and the procrastination and all the rest of the dysfunction.
We perhaps have to be gentle with ourselves, with the part of our self that is still confused, still bound and identified with a way of perceiving that is backwards. And some times that part of ourselves needs a break, it needs a rest from course shit, it needs to stop reading and writing and thinking about it 24/7, and it needs to just live and do some basic earthly ego things for a while, to cool off, to feel less threatened and pressured. Because that self, typically filled with childhood traumas and twisted early beliefs, is completely confused about God and truth and everything real.
It wants nothing to do with it. And actually it can become seemingly "happier" when you ease up on threatening it. Gotta throw it some bones sometimes. Relax, take a study break, go shopping, eat some fun food, whatever. Be "normal" for a while. This can actually bring you a feeling of peace, at the ego level, temporarily. Then when you are rested and ready to press forward, go exposure yourself to what the ego interprets as "its demise" all over again.
"NO evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do NOT want."
""Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do." How simple is the obvious! "
"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. "
"You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. "
Where do you find a sense of certainty? A sense of something you can trust? A sense of actuality or correctness? Where do you find a truth, that is so acceptable and so full and complete that you have no doubt?
I find that as I try to find answers in, and with, the ego, i.e. with my own mind and faculties, I cannot come up with a satisfying answer. I instead come up with a multitude of possible answers, all of which are different and none of which really give me a sense of .... yes, this is IT, I found it!. .. Or at least, if I think I found it, then later I'll realize it doesn't quite fit. So none of the answers work. None of them.
In fact, the more that I get into 'I need to figure this out', or 'maybe it's this - maybe it's that', .. the more I try and effort to investigate and find "the truth" in this way, the worse the situation seems to become. Confusion increases. I move away from a sense of certainty, peace, truth or acceptability. I move towards increasing UN-certainty.
Key insight: Trying to figure out and explain what's happening using my own separate ego mind/intelligence creates MORE confusion! I'm barking up the wrong tree!
So I dig and dig and get clever about what 'might' be "the answer", only to sense that this answer is flawed in some way, it doesn't quite explain things, and I just can't get a feeling of 'absolute certainty' around it. It seems like it *might be* true, it's *possibly* a description, it's *could be* what's happening etc... but never a sense of .... "this is".
And you know what, the more I try to do this the worse it gets and the more confused I become and the less I have peace.
So, the lesson here is, clearly... I have made the problem real, and now I am reacting to it by trying to explain or justify or intellectualize 'why' it is happening... rather than IF it is happening. And that means, I'm using the ego, I'm trusting my own self instead of God, I'm looking for answers in the ego world outside of me, I'm trying to find ego proof of the truth, and basically am constantly coming up empty handed.
It can become... exasperating, trying to find the truth where the truth IS NOT. The secret truth is: EVERY ego answer is NOT TRUE! The ego does not and cannot KNOW truth AT ALL!!! All it can do is speculate and guess and wonder and deduce and pretend it has the prowess to figure this all out on its own. And it will never be able to find the truth. The ego cannot wake up to reality!
So the question becomes, where I am going to get my sense of certainty from? Where is the real truth? Where is a truth or an answer or whatever that I can really believe .... yes... this is exactly IT. And I can tell you, it's very possible to come up with numerous ego explanations or rationalizations that all say... yes... this is exactly it, that this is an exact match to the situation and it really seems to be 'this'... only to find loopholes, inconsistencies, doubts, and then some 'other' possibility comes along. This is all because I'm searching within the realm of relativity, partiality, differences, a lack of wholeness and a world of lies.
So where will I find THE answer? What is THE answer? Where will I get that sense of... certainty, peace, joy, and KNOWING, that comes from the 'real truth'.... something I can really get behind and know, this IS it.
What is the real truth? God IS it, of course! God is WHERE the truth is. God is the certainty I seek. God is the answer that I can actually TRUST.... to trust that it will be consistent and unwavering and complete. There is no sense of consistent truth like that in the ego's world. No matter what the ego's explanations or meanings are, NONE of them are the whole truth. And none of them bring the feeling of... ahhhhh yes... that God brings.
But then, you have to realize this... God isn't an explainer, as such. God doesn't spend time diagnosing, or figuring out, or doing any of those activities that the ego mind does in attempting to find out what it thinks is happening. In fact, God doesn't even deal in the realm of 'maybe'. God HAS the answer already, whereas the ego is SEPARATE from the answer so has to go SEEK for it!
"Seek and do not find!" - ACIM
And the harder you seek the truth, the further you get from the TRUTH! Doh!!! I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time :-D
So ... God has really no interest in spending time trying to discern what illusions are doing or what to do about them to 'fix' unreal problems. God doesn't make problems real then OBSESS over trying to solve them, not realizing that believing they are a problem IS the problem.
So as I go to God, I see that God's 'way' is different from the ego's 'way'. God's way is more to do with.... a constant, direct, immediate correction and healing, which solves the problem, instead of all of the dwelling on basically 'keeping' the problem that the ego loves to indulge in while disguised as a problem solver. Hah.
So again... this is about learning to trust He who KNOWS, versus being lost in he who 'thinks' he knows.
And perhaps it's not until we can really let go of all efforts to 'explain real illusions', that we will turn to God in surrender and trust and allow Him, instead, to bring healing to the situation FOR us.
Thank you God.
"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."
Actually think about why this makes sense. God is infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, He exists in a totally expanded abstract state in which He is everywhere. Totally spread out to infinity. He is not localized anywhere. There is no way that God can be "only" in one location, and not another.
The idea of a body, is the idea in SPACE and TIME to being spatially and temporarily separated out from the whole. It's the idea of limitation, confinement, imprisonment. "The body is a device for separation". The body was made to represent the idea that you are NOT everywhere, and therefore your mind is trapped in your brain. That you are "located" inside the body, not outside the body.
God, however, who is everywhere, cannot be squeezed down and inserted into the insides of a body, in exclusion of being also outside of the body. He cannot separate off a part of himself and put it "into" a body separately from being outside the body or in all other bodies also. Being everywhere means NOT being in any specific location to the exclusion of any others. Nor does that mean he is in all bodies. He cannot be in ANY bodies.
"God cannot enter a body"
Similarly, you who are trying to be One with God, to experience God, to express God, so long as you confine yourself to a body, limit your awareness to only the body's senses, regard yourself as being "in" or "having" a specific body, or in any way are not experiencing yourself as being infinite, unlimited, larger than the universe, all-expansive, all-encompassing and omnipresent, you are NOT experiencing the fullness of what you are.
And the fact is that God is not going to ever narrow himself down and put himself into a body. He remains in an expanded, abstract state at all times. The only way for you to MEET him and to be in total communion with Him, is to expand your self, expand your awareness, to go beyond the size of the universe, to infinity, to such an extent that you become just as ever-present and transcendent of space, place, location, or time, that you exist EVERYWHERE with Him.
That is the only way that you can be One with God. That is the only way that you can commune with Him, join with Him, be IN him, and experience Heaven. You literally cannot do that by being in ANY WAY limited, in any way less than WHOLE, in any way smaller than the entire magnitude of infinite creation. You are vast, unlimited, and only complete when you are EVERYWHERE. Not confined to your little body, not confined to only one body, not confined to ANY bodies. Larger than the planet. Larger than the solar system. Larger than the galaxy. Aware of EVERYWHERE simultaneously. That is who you are.
So I hear some people saying, believing, thinking, interpreting, that they are having experiences of being one with God in a body, being awake in a body, experiencing the fullness of God in a body. They are mistaken. It is literally impossible to have a FULL complete total experience of God while maintaining the body. Because the body is localization. It is limitation. You cannot keep localization and be infinite and unlimited. You cannot be finite and specific and located in space or time and be simultaneously infinitely abstract.
"The body cannot stay without illusions." "The body cannot remain." "To be WITHOUT a body is to be in your natural state." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "You are not a body." "The body is a limit."
"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
You can approach God, you can get closer to God, you can feel the warmth of the light, you can radiate love and joy into the world as though joined with God, but you cannot FULLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY immerse yourself in God while maintaining isolation, localization, temporal separation in one moment of time. To be eternal is transcendent of time and space. It means you not only exist EVERYWHERE you also exist EVERYWHEN. You exist in and beyond all moments of time. It makes you a time traveler, transcendent of the temporal order, not merely "I'm in 2019".
Do you really how VAST you are? Do you realize how VAST God is? How totally utterly unlimited? Then look at the body, look at how it IS a limitation, and that having one, using one, seeing one, or believing one exists at all, is causing you to NOT BE WITH GOD.
"You cannot behold the world and know God."
"To see a sinless body is impossible."
"God did not create the body."
"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."
You HAVE TO LEAVE THE BODY to be with God. You have to leave the body entirely, permanently, never again to need a body EVER. You have to overcome reincarnation. You have to overcome death. You have to overcome the NEED to be in a body AT ALL, if you want to be with God. You cannot KEEP the body and maintain that kind of abstract infinite knowledge. "You cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." You cannot STAY HERE in this fictional world, and be totally joined with God. You can perceive him perhaps, you can see him perhaps, you can love with him perhaps, but you cannot be ONE with Him in a body.
Is Jesus in a body? Nope. I rest my case.
We're asked to demonstrate that nothing our brother does has the ability to affect us.
We're asked to show by example that our brother has no ability to hurt us or harm us or upset us or offend us.
If we demonstrate this, we are showing the truth to our brother who, if they are attempting to do something to cause us to be upset, must be mistaken about what the truth is. Truth cannot be attacked and attempting to do so is utterly wasted.
This demonstration shows them what the truth is, by demonstrating that the True Self is beyond the reach of all ego attacks and all ways that the ego targets individuals.
What cannot be affected by the world reveals that what our brother does has no effects. This proves to them that regardless of what they think they did, even if they did it seemingly intentionally, it has had no effects at all and so did not happen.
This is a demonstration that they did not really sin, or that whatever sin they seemed to do had no power to do anything to anyone. This literally requires complete invulnerability and demonstrates immortality.
If you can be sick or upset or offended or hurt by anyone or anything, you are demonstrating that you are less than immortal. "Sickness is an attempt to demonstrate that you can be hurt". - ACIM
If you cannot be hurt and are not hurt because you realize that you can only hurt yourself and you stop doing so, then nothing anyone attempts to do can hurt you. If their attempts to hurt you fails, or in other words, their attempts to sin do not produce any effects, this proves to them that sin can be undone and that nothing has happened.
This demonstration of innocence proves their innocence as well as your own. It teaches that forgiveness is called for and is present and is given, and that whatever they thought they did or whatever reason they seemed to have for doing it, it is completely irrelevant and nonsense and false and unreal.
This educates your brother that they are innocent in spite of what they think they did, which may be shocking to them but it will set them free. It will heal their mind and show them that what they believe about themselves cannot be true. They do not have the power to affect the Son of God. They do not have the power to destroy God's Creation. They have no authority over Christ and who they thought they were is not who they must be.
Be a living demonstration that this is your complete, whole truth, at all times, in order to be the salvation of the world. If you choose to go into upset and offense and reactions and fear and suffering, you are failing to fulfill this function and are in denial about who and what you really are. You are not being true to yourself. Only by being true to yourself can you be the truth to others.
You are not saving the world when you are offended by what other people do and feel hurt by it and react based on that, even if it is with good intentions or an attempt to help. You are not the salvation of the world if you keep attacking yourself and hurting yourself and then are accusing others of putting this hurt into you and are using that to justify retaliation or judgement. You are not anyone's savior if you are upset by anything anyone does or says or attempts to make happen.
These are all false attempts at salvation, designed to make it look like you care and want to save the world from suffering, but is really an attack. It is an attack on yourself and on the other person when you take their attempted attack seriously, fail to overlook it, and fail to demonstrate that it is meaningless. When you take it seriously and react to it and then try to fight with it to stop it, you are delusional and are fighting with your own self-attacking perceptions. This isn't helping anyone. It is the ego's version of salvation and is a complete lie.
You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that the world IS saved from attack because attack is impossible. You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that there has been no sin, can be no sin, sin has no effects, everyone is equally innocent, and God loves everyone just the same. You are only a savior when you are able to show that you are unharmed, unharmable, harmless and cannot be harming to others, because regardless of what transpires, it does not change you whatsoever.
You are immortal. You are the light of the world. You only function is salvation.
The tiny mad idea, a thought of separation, produced a "dream".
The dream is comprised of illusions. Thoughts of separation must always be illusory because reality is not separate. A thought of separation is also a thought of death (opposite to life).
Thoughts of separation must always produce "form". Form is a limited illusion. It just means, the "form" that the illusion takes - its appearance, which differentiates it from other illusions. All illusions are limited. All illusions are forms. Forms can be subtle, mental, energetic, emotional, or physical. They are all dreams, but of varying degrees of deception or "solidity". As Jesus says, waking dreams and nighttime dreams differ only in their form - both are illusions.
A thought of separation HAD to produce what we call a physical universe in order to fulfill, in the extreme, the death-wish which was put in place when we "sinned". Sin was believing that separation was possible, which began the dream in the first place. As soon as it began, death was written into it and this HAD to lead logically and consistently to what appears to be a "universe", containing a "world", in which there are "bodies", which can seem to die.
People within that world, inhabiting bodies, have in their minds *identified with* illusions and are now experiencing a layer of illusions ON TOP OF the illusion of the physical universe itself. They mis-interpret it and project stuff onto it. This is a *secondary layer* of illusions. The first layer of illusions was dreamed by the whole of the Son of God, and the second layer is added by individual ego-identified people.
When this layer of illusions (delusion) is seeming to happen, people mis-percieve "the world", or the physical universe in general, and do not recognize it. They distort it, attack it, judge it, and see their own sin in it. This is a false perception of a false perception. The universe was false perception in the mind of the Son of God in the first place, and now we are further mis-perceiving it even more.
"Individuals" have their own mis-perceptions of the illusory world, but also the illusory world itself is a mis-perception in the larger shared mind.
When we apply forgiveness, we are correcting mis-perceptions, which are beliefs in sin being real, and are taking back our projected hate from the illusory world. This causes us to BELIEVE LESS that the illusion of the world is actually reality. We were deluded so long as we thought the world was real. What we thought ABOUT the world was a mis-perception OF the world.
Believing the world is real, is believing an illusion is real. The world is not real. I it an illusion. It is a dream of a world. And being part of the physical universe, the same applies to the whole universe.
When the mind is purified of these mis-perceptions OF the world, we come to a CLEAR perception OF the world, which is "True Perception". This true perception looks "with truth" upon what the world "is". It *recognizes* that the world is an illusion, NOT a reality. "Making real" the physical world enforces upset and victimhood. Making it unreal, recognizing its urneality, frees us from suffering.
Being able to clearly perceive that the world is actually an illusion, is sight of the "real world". It is the real, as in actual, world that's there. Or to put it another way, we're seeing the "true state" of the world, which is that it is not real.
Jesus referred to it as the real world ONLY to contrast it against a perceived "unreal world" which is what you perceive when you are attacking yourself and projecting it onto the illusion of a world. Self-attack distorts your perception and shows you a world of hate. A forgiven self shows you an illusory world which is forgiven - the forgiven world, the "real" version of the illusory world - recognizing that it is NOTHING MORE THAN AN ILLUSION.
At that point, you have true perception and are seeing correctly, recognizing the world was never real and the physical universe that seems to contain it is not real whatsoever. This is where you then have a tiny step to take to cross over to the "REALLY REAL" "world", which is God's Creation, God's universe, which is beyond all physicality. In the light this produces, the physical world, which was an illusion, eventually disappears from the mind of the collective Son of God, BECAUSE it was not real. All the stars disappear in light, etc.... and the "truth of" the "real world", the true-perception of the lie, easily allows you to translate that to mean that only God's reality is true. The world is forgotten, and God is remembered.
Let's think about projection as more like an energy thing. You are a light, and you shine outward. You broadcast and radiate energy.
It depends what's in you, at the root of the light, as to what will shine out of you. If there are clouds of darkness at the source, it blocks some of the light coming out, and darkness seems to come out instead. But if the light source is free of blockages, the light shines brightly and strongly.
Another way to think of the blockages is as filters. They filter the light. The more opaque they seem to be the less light permeates through. And different kinds of filters block different frequencies and "color" the light. Anger might produce a red light, maybe fear produces a dark green light, and perhaps guilt is orange.
This light emits out of you, out of your body, our of your face, through your eyes. It in fact influences your vision. You look out through the light that you shine, so if it's blocked your vision is blocked as well. And if the light has taken on a lesser color, your seeing is also flavored by that sentiment.
You thus look out and have a direct experience of what we call the reality of the world. This is in two layers. There is a contribution from physical sight, but there is also this overlay of colors and energies, or emotions and felt experience, of meaning and purpose, which you project onto the physical. Anything less than love distorts how you see, and therefore what you project. And what you project narrows what you see, and thus defines it.
If I am in fear, I try to shine, but the shining diminishes, and leaves a lack of light, which seems like a darkness. And now I shine out what seems like a darkness, and my vision becomes dark, and I see reflected back to me that darkness. The darkness interferes with what I'm looking at and filters it. Now everything seems frightening and dark, because I am looking with fear and darkness.
"I can obscure my holy sight, if I intrude my world upon it. Nor can I behold the holy sights Christ looks upon unless it is His vision that I use. Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me."
You might think that the things you see in such looking is objective and passive, that you're seeing what's really there. But you're really seeing a distorted version of what's there, filtered through your blocks to light. You can only really see what you put there to see, and whatever you're seeing you have actually projected. You see fearful things because you are looking in a fearful way.
You then might think that you see many things which seem objectively fearful, that dramas are amassing, and problems are mounting, and dangers are looming, and risk is increasing. And you will take this to be the whole of reality, because you don't see anything outside of the confines of the filter of darkness. And this further deceives and tempts you into fear.
"The world you see is but the idle witness that you were RIGHT. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and, as it gave it BACK to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF. See only this, and you will also see how circular the reasoning on which your "seeing" rests."
Soon, you don't recognize that you are projecting fear, and instead believe you are seeing the whole of what is really there. This is because you've lost context, due to blocked light frequencies. And now the world appears frightening and dark and terrible, with no way out, like a living hellish nightmare. And everwhere you turn you are confronted with fear and threat and danger. As if it is an inherent part of everything.
But if you can step back and check yourself, check your broadcast, check what kind of energy you're emitting, what kind of light you're shining, what you're giving, then you may be able to realize that you're actually making things look frightening. It's because you're projecting fear from within you, and not because the fear is starting outside of you. You either project fear or love, and everything else is just a variation of that.
Then you have to recognize that you have fear in you before you project it, and you can only see it when you project it. And you aren't seeing fearful things unless you are making them fearful inside of you first. Wihch means really there is a fear in you, lurking behind your projection, behind the radiant glow of your energy, which is blocking your light much closer to the source.
So then we have to look deeper within, much more intimately, much closer to your self, much nearer to where the projecting begins. The issue that's interfering with the light is happening much sooner and closer to home than you thought. It's in your mind, it's even prior to your projections. Somehow there is a fear in you that you didn't realize was there, which you've just been projecting all over the place and believing it's outside of you.
This begs the question, if there is fear inside of you, and the fear is not in the world or caused by the world, what is making you afraid WITHOUT the world? And that line of questioning has to lead to realizing that you likely have made yourself guilty, are punishing yourself, are threatening yourself, and are believing you have sinned against God. Because really it all goes back to the original sin and to what you think you did that made you worthy of suffering and punishment.
Always the projection of your inner content is extremely deceptive. It's fine if you are coming truly from an inner peace and a loving heart, which projects innocence and safety and sinlessness, rendering everything appearing to you as completely harmless and beautiful. But if you have blocked this love, and thus have guilt and fear in you, then this is going to fly out of you at the earliest opportunity, from the cess-pool of your mind.
Minds area always projecting, because it is their natural function. They give or express what is in them. It expands and moves outward. All minds shine like lightbulbs, regardless of whether the light is filtered or covered up. It's not a question so much of if you will project, but whether you will interfere with the natural extension of love, trying to pollute it with egoic beliefs and dark veils and false beliefs. Or such things as hidden hates and secret sins and unhealed wounds.
If I look to what is coming out of me, which I can FEEL, if I've crossed the line into believing that the world is the problem, I am already very deceived. If I am buying into the projected version of what was inside, believing it's outside, I'm already way down the line of the chain of causation. I have to look at my energy, what does it feel like, what am I broadcasting, what's coming out of me, am I attacking and fearing and accusing and trying to find scapegoats, or am I loving, safe and happy?
A scapegoat isn't just some person you pick out, it's the target of your energetic broadcast. It's a psychological thing you attach your inner gunk to. The mind looks to scapegoat, ie to find something to associate its dissociated guilt and fear with, so that it can attach it to something outside of you. Kind of like flying a kite, anchored in your mind, on a long tether, flying in the sky in front of your eyes, dangling like a carrot of temptation.
To scapegoat is to project ego, just in the mere act of projecting it, regardless of what is being said about a person or how they're being used. If I'm projecting fear or sin or guilt, I am scapegoating. I'm actively trying to get rid of my inner content. It's being pushed out of me, hurled onto the world. It's actively RADIATING out of me like an energy broadcast. I'm putting it onto the world.
It may land and attach to certain people or bodies or objects or events but it's always going to be something physical, because fear always blocks the light and narrows vision to illusions. And once I'm seeing fear and guilt outside of me, I see it as making me afraid and guilty. And now I'm stuck with a backwards perception and am deceiving myself. I have to realize I'm the one who is making the world frightening, by putting my inner fear onto it and singling it out as a target.
"When vision is DENIED, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The PURPOSE now becomes to KEEP OBSCURE the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to BE a cause. This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as STANDING BY ITSELF, and capable of serving as a CAUSE of the events and feelings its maker thinks IT causes."
I have to watch myself doing this. It doesn't happen at an intellectual or theoretical level, it happens experientially and in a felt energetic broadcast. It's a psychological state. It's not a story or a concept about someone - that's just some form it might take later. It's more to do with, whether I am blessing with love and light, or am I cursing with nasty dark harmful energies, trying to attack psychically or whether I am providing the gentle healing remedy of a miraculous expression.
It is actually especially useful and a relief to recognize that nothing in the world is causing any of your upset, any of your fear, any of your guilt, or any of your belief in sin. Nothing, not ever, has any influence on you, but yourself. Becoming lost in the world and believing it's doing stuff to you, or your happiness and peace depends on someone else changing, that's all about being lost and confused in your own projections. It's NEVER about other people or the world. It's all to do with what you are doing to yourself on the inside.
To be wiling NOT to project hate, attack, anger, guilt, shame, blame, judgement, fear, sin, etc onto others, and to not let it leave your mind (seemingly), keeps it from latching onto external targets. It renders everyone innocent and loved, because really your upset has nothing to do with anyone else or the world. Then you can go deeper and unravel the mystery of where this interior bullshit is coming from, why you've attacked yourself, finding the reason why you cannot be sinful, and finally to embrace the atonement for yourself.
ALL of your problems are INSIDE OF YOU. And NONE of it is caused by anything outside of you! And it can ONLY be corrected INSIDE of you where the problem and solution are together. You are responsible for how everything looks to you, because it entirely depends on what you chose to believe about yourself, and how that radiates through your vision. Light IS vision, and seeing IS projection. Project only love to see through the eyes of christ, by seeing yourself as christ first.
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."
"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."
""This is the ONLY thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the COMPLETE escape from sin, ALL to be given you. Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear." "You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."
"My self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."
"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing."
ACIM is not really non-duality, or duality. It's sort of both. ACIM makes this clear statement about the nature of God and reality:
"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you" UrT16C3
This is the holographic principle. There is a whole (God) which has parts (sons of God), and each part contains the whole (oneness with God). The one whole is shared by the whole and the parts (brothers, inheritance etc).
Most people think of reality as sort of "one thing". Like one large area or an expanse or some kind of bigness. But that's more or less the same as the idea of spacetime or the universe. God is not actually like that. God is holographic.
In a holographic system there is a singular wholeness, which we call God. But there is also a characteristic of this wholeness - the entire wholeness is in every part. Every part of God contains the whole of God. ALL of God pays FULL attention to EVERY part simultaneously - because God is infinitely transcendental and can do this even if it sounds impossible.
God is also a creator and is capable of fully absolutely creating secondary beings who are like himself. But he cannot add-on anything outside of himself, so instead he adds on INSIDE of himself.
He does this by SHARING himself entirely with that which he creates, and that means that his creation has to also SHARE all of itself with everything. This is a kind of "internal expansion" of the Kingdom. It does not involve creating OUTSIDE the kingdom or beyond be pre-existing totality of God.
This sharing produces fully-created beings who inherit everything from God and share everything with God. They have a oneness with God. But they ARE fully created individual beings. They are completely full in every sense of the word. They contain everything like God does. Which means they absolutely exist, and yet at the same time are one with the absolute.
This results in a holographic system in which God is the main whole who creates "additional wholes" that share everything with him and with each other. Each part of God has the whole of God in it. Each son of God contains the whole of God and everyone else. We are all unified and merged and fused together.
This doesn't mean we lose our duality. It doesn't mean we lose individuality, or that we can't tell where we end and God begins. We DO have a discrete independent existence as absolute beings. But we ALSO have total oneness with the whole.
This seems like a paradox to most people. But it is actually miraculous.
Because a holographic system has wholeness to it, we identify that wholeness as "oneness" and might call it "non-duality". However, a holographic system ALSO has parts to it - whole parts, which share the whole and yet are whole in their own right. These "parts" might be called "duality".
This means that IN REALITY, the nature of God as a holographic system comprises BOTH ... non-duality AND duality, fused together as one. Everything is God, but God has parts which are living beings in their own right.
This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. And it means that there is material which in a certain CONTEXT is focusing on the non-dual aspects of the hologram, such as the oneness and the "God is" and "there is no opposite" and all that. But in other contexts it also speaks of God's infinite creations, the many sons of God, your own creations, your own kingdom, permanent brothers and so on.
ALL of these aspects of the course are simultaneously true. Even if they sound contradictory. If God's reality was NOT holographic they would indeed be contradictory and you'd have to resolve that by separating off some parts as "ego" or "separation" or "illusions". That's what many people do, in error. Because they don't realize reality actually is a holographic system not a "blob".
Ultimately then ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. But it is PARTLY non-duality and PARTLY duality. The two are fused together in a kind of "trans-duality". Transcendent of both exclusive-oneness and exclusive-separateness. God is not EXCLUSIVE anything - God is INCLUSIVE. Which is why the "non-duality" INCLUDES "the duality".
By duality here I do not mean spacetime. Spacetime is duality WITHOUT the non-duality, ie exclusively dual. That's not the same as the trans-duality of God in which every part is the whole. In space time, every part is PARTIAL and incomplete. The opposite of duality is not-nonduality, it's transcendental of the whole "either this or that" mindset.
"The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception." UrT8H2
"There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible." UrT8H2
"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." UrT9E5
"Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole." UrW320W113
"The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small." UrT10G10
"It shines in every part of Him, as in the Whole." UrT17E16
"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS." URT5F9
"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." UrT7J6
"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness." UrT6B13
Perhaps one of the key features about the ego which many people do not realize, is that it is constantly attacking itself.
The ego IS the idea of self attack. It is the idea of you, attacking you. It is self destructive, which is why it leads to sabotage and suicide. It is just another word for your own will to will against your own will.
It would perhaps seem too insane to consider that the ego actually attacks itself on purpose, and this alone might deter you from even considering it. But the ego is not sane.
The ego is not like the kinds of people that you think are normal people. You think that due to separation, what one person does to another they do not do to themselves. You think that you can attack without consequences, or be attacked by another without them receiving the attack.
The ego's main plot here is the idea that, because you are separate from your brother, what applies to him does not apply to you. This allows both parties to get away with murder. Or appear to. And this creates an illusion in this world, as though it is "ego" to attack someone and get away with it.
But beware. This is a decoy!
If you fixate on this idea that one person does something to someone else, causing effects in them, without receiving the effects - which certainly APPEARS to be the case almost all the time due to separation, then you will not notice the ego's underlying insanity. You'll think that it makes total sense that something can apply to one person and not another, or that you can cause effects which you do not receive - ie giving and receiving at not one.
The ego's secret insanity is that it deliberately attacks itself, and it is NOT escaping the effects of the attacks it tries to cause, nor does it want to. It is both its own attacker and its own victim. It deliberately wants to hurt itself. It also seems to simultaneously want to get away from that hurt. It should be fairly obvious that it is completely insane, to the highest degree, for someone to want to intentionally harm themselves, consciously and deliberately, and to simultaneously enjoy and suffer doing so.
Anyone in their right mind would recognize that they are one with all brothers, and share a mind of oneness, and therefore what applies to you applies to everyone equally. In this mind of oneness it is impossible to cause or do anything without receiving the effects. It is therefore in your vested interest to share only love, that you will receive only love. But when you enter into the ego and attempt to give without receiving (which is attack), you can be sure you will experience attack.
The ego is clever at making cause and effect unconscious. It makes it SEEM as if attacking another will not attack yourself. But the ego is fundamentally insane. It IS the idea of self attack, and so attacks itself on purpose. It would sacrifice itself in the name of saving itself. It is constantly two-faced. You think that normal people have "one face" or one personality or one side to them.
The insane ego is never one-sided, it is always contradictory, hipocritical, self denying, a liar, a cheat, manipulative, and it is even capable of showing up as "good cop" and "bad cop" simultaneously.
I had a dream once where some creepy man was trying to get to me, and so I ran to escape and I did escape, and met another man on a hill who appeared at first to be helpful and welcoming. It seemed like he would help me to be safe. But what quickly became apparent, was that in fact this man was the same "person" as the other man - as if he was the same man in disguise. He was both of them. And so the ego's two-faced secret was revealed, that it is perfectly capable of playing the part of victim and victimizer, attacker and savior, enemy and hero, or any other polarities which makes it SEEM as if they are two completely unrelated separate things.
The ego's illusions are ALWAYS geared towards getting you to believe that one kind of illusion is better than another. That one way of behaving or less evil than another. That something will actually help you without hurting you. That a solution will work without any side effects. It's always bullshit. The ego is fundamentally insane and so always has in its back pocket some kind of "clause" or excuse or secret that disguises the fact that it has NO intention of making its solutions work, and it has NO interest in being truly helpful, because ALL of its sides and solutions take you away from wholeness.
We have to be careful to discern and listen and recognize, that both positive and negative are part of the ego thought system. Both good and bad, right and wrong, all opposites. The ego plays both sides of every argument and does not care who sins. It will happily fund every war and conflict on both sides just for the sake of increasing the conflict. It is fundamentally existing in a state of self conflict and being divided against itself, thwarting its own moves, willing against its own will etc.
This is why we have to learn that "this world holds nothing that I want"... because everything it offers, the "good" and the "bad", are both ego deceptions designed to get you to take a side and fall for one of two of its traps. It does not care one shit about which side you take or whether you go light or dark or right or wrong, so long as you fall for the trap of believing that one of two choices is better than the other and will save you. There is no salvation in the ego. All of its roads lead to hell.
There are a few parts to this. And it is highly paradoxical.
1) God is the first cause creator of us and we are SECONDARY creations, as his effects. We are co-creators with him as sons of God/souls. This does imply a kind of separation between us and God. In this respect you are NOT GOD. God is greater than you.
2) You are still one with God because you share the whole of everything and are part of God. God is not just in you, he is you. So in this sense, you ARE GOD. You are made of God, sustained by God, extending God.
3) If you play at being God you are being ego, which is an attempt to replace and reject God. In this sense you are not being God, and are supposed to be God. This is where you claim you are all of God and God who was God has stopped existing.
4) If you claim to be God in an attempt to get out of ego, this claim is so exclusive that it rejects the fact that you are also a creation of God's. Then you are still being ego and playing at being God. This "oneness" must recognize that you are secondary in creation also. Just being the oneness or non-dual isn't the whole story.
So yes. You are God, and you aren't, at the same time. It's paradoxical. You are both separate and one. It is arrogant to claim you are God alone, as if you are all of God and no-one else is and there is nothing else. But it is also arrogant to claim you are not God, because you are one with and part of himself. You are nothing without him and everything with him. He is everything you are yet you are yourself also. You are an individual being who shares God's being entirely.
It's important thus to realize YOU ARE GOD, in order to overcome the sense of separation and fear that keeps you from being ONE with Him. But at the same time, you also have to realize that you are simultaneously NOT GOD in order to acknowledge God as your father and undo the authority problem. Yet jus because God is the CAUSE of you doesn't mean you aren't one with him.
"I choose the second place to gain the first."
"I am forever an effect of God."
"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together."
"God is not in you; YOU are part of HIM."
"The insane, thinking they are God, are not afraid to offer weakness to the Son of God."
"Let me remember I am one with God."
"There is one life, and that I share with God."
"I welcome them into the home I share with God, because I am a part of Him."
"Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us."
"Communication with God is Life."
"God is the Mind with which I think. I have no thoughts which I do not share with God."
"In Timelessness, we coexist with God."
"The Soul never loses its communion with God."
"It is as like your real relationship with God, as equal things are like themselves."
"And can one who is one with God be unlike Him?"
"The therapist in no way confuses himself with God."
"But in the holy instant, you unite DIRECTLY with God, and ALL your brothers join in Christ."
"Your mind IS one with God's."
"Meditation is a collaborative venture with GOD."
"For what is yours IS everything, and you share it WITH God."
"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."
"In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God."
"I and my Father are one with YOU, for you are part of us."
"Your fatherhood and your Father are One."
"Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them."
"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."
"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is."
"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."
"I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me."