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Overview

Miracles and Immortality is a direct, uncompromising spiritual journey from suffering, conflict and death back to God, eternal life and the truth of what we are.

Written by Paul West, a student and practitioner of the teachings of A Course in Miracles for over 25 years, this book offers a clear and independent presentation of deep spiritual ideas in simpler, more linear language. It is designed as an easier-to-understand bridge for beginner and intermediate readers who want to grasp the larger patterns behind forgiveness, miracles, the ego, the world, the body, sickness, death, resurrection, awakening and the return to God.

At around 260,000 words, with over 60 unique diagrams, spanning 823 pages, this is a substantial spiritual work for serious readers who want more than a watered-down version of the truth. It is thorough, deep, honest and uncompromising, covering a wide range of topics. It carefully builds one idea upon another, helping the reader follow the whole journey from the condition of the world, through the nature of God and Heaven, into the undoing of fear, guilt, sickness and death, and the return to immortality through forgiveness, miracles, holy relationships and resurrection.

The book is divided into three major parts:

Part 1 — Life
This section lays the foundation. It explores absolute truth, the nature of God, Heaven, oneness, the sons of God, eternal life, innocence, holiness, free will and the Kingdom of God. It presents the reality of an immortal life as God created it: changeless, perfect, whole, loving and eternal, and acts as the light of truth as we explore the nature of life in the world and how to rise above it.

Part 2 — Death
This section looks honestly at the world of separation: spacetime, ego, sin guilt and fear, suffering, special relationships, bodies, sickness, murder and death. It examines why the world does not work, why suffering seems so convincing, and why death cannot be the truth of what we are.

Part 3 — Resurrection
This section turns toward the way out. It becomes more practical, focusing on the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, Atonement, guidance, healing, miracles, holy relationships, identity, the forgiven world and awakening to reality. It offers tools, ideas and ways of seeing that help the mind move out of hell and back toward God.

The diagrams throughout the book help clarify difficult metaphysical ideas visually, including absolute reality, the nature of God and creation, the separation, ego, projection and perception, relationships, the Holy Spirit, miracles, forgiveness and the forgiven world, healing, and reunion with God as we reclaim our immortality.

This is not a light or casual book. It is a deep and sincere spiritual rescue manual for those who have experienced the world's suffering and death and felt: there must be a better way.

Its central message is simple but profound:

Death is not the truth.
Hell is not your home.
You are not a body.
The world isn't reality.
God created you immortal.
And the way home to God is always open.

Availability

The book is available in paperback printed format, digital kindle ebook format, and also in downloadable audiobook format.

The paperback and ebook are distributed through all Amazon websites. The audiobook is only available specifically from amazon.com or audible.com - it is not available in other country-specific versions of the sites at this time. The ebook can be viewed on an Amazon kindle device or with the desktop Kindle app which is available for Mac and Windows and possibly other devices also.

For the audiobook, Amazon may be working to expand their production capabilities eventually. Currently you can create an account at amazon.com and order the audiobook from anywhere in the world (it's digital, so no shipping), and it will then show up in your account at audible.com - which can be logged into with your amazon.com account.

You can find the book on the Amazon.com site here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7L2SKN6

You can look inside the book and read about 20% of the front of the book on the amazon page.

You can also find it on any Amazon.com site by searching for the book title. You can find the audiobook also by a direct search at audible.com

Pricing

Currently the pricing (in US dollars) is $24.95 for the paperback, 7.95 for the ebook, and $11.95 for the audiobook. 

Each of the books has an overhead or printing fee which I have to pay out of my profit margin. For example the paperback costs about $11 to print. Amazon also takes a hefty cut from the remaining profit The pricing is set so that I receive about $5 from each sale.

Contents

Here is the table of contents from the book.

Contents 3
Dedication 13
Introduction 15

Part 1 - Life 19


Chapter 1 - The way out of hell 21


What’s wrong with this picture? 21
A broken system 23
The world will never work 27
A cruel world 30
A disappointing world 33
Breakdown, or breakthrough 35
There must be a better way 36

Chapter 2 - Absolute truth 41


We don’t know anything 41
The real alternative 42
The lie of relativity 44
Absolute reality 45
The whole truth 48
What makes sense? 50
Making nonsense 51

Chapter 3 - The mind of God 55


Basic logic 55
Changeless reality 58
Cause and effect 60
Holographic reality 62
Omnipresence 65

Chapter 4 - God logic 69


The God Paradox 69
Giving and receiving are one 73
The golden rule 78
Both/And 82
Including everything 85
Not both 86
Either/Or 87

Chapter 5 - Oneness 91


Denying the golden rule 91
An exclusive world 92
The Son of God 94
Duality 97
Non-duality 100
Oneness 103
All your eggs in one basket 104

Chapter 6 - Life in Heaven 111


The lineage of God 111
Miraculousness 112
Eternal life 117
Knowledge and light 121
The Christ 123
Holiness and innocence 124
The Holy Trinity 126
Beauty, perfection, meaning 129
Ideas leave not their source 131
Judgement 134
Free will 137

Part 2 - Death 143


Chapter 7 - The separation 145


The misuse of will 145
Mis-creation 150
An opposite to God 152
The belief in separation 155
The bad news 158
The authority problem 160
Death wish 164

Chapter 8 - Truth and lies 169


True is false, false is true 169
Broken navigation 171
Tolerating suffering 174
Specialness 176
The split mind 178
Constant craving 181
Murderousness 183
The laws of chaos 186

Chapter 9 - Insanity 191


Consciousness and perception 191
Persona and shadow 197
Victim consciousness 199
Complaining 205
Grievances 207
Triggers 209
Attack and defence 212
Attack thoughts 214
Being right 216
Self-interest 219
Sin, guilt and fear 222
Shadows and darkness 228
Evil 230

Chapter 10 - The ego self 233


Identity crisis 233
The denial of self 235
Separation from others 237
Seek and do not find 240
The search for love 242
Love me, for me 243
Validation 247
Who am I? 248
Identification with form 250
Self-conscious 252
The war with yourself 254
False perception 255
Ego wants you dead 258

Chapter 11 - Spacetime 261


In the beginning 261
An opposite to God 262
The possibility of attack 265
The anti-hologram 267
Space 271
Time 274
Relative unreality 276
A meaningless illusion 278
The void 280
An impossible world 284
The world of sin 286
A world of problems 287
The detour into fear 290
The dream of death 292

Chapter 12 - The world 295


Let there be life 295
No life outside Heaven 297
The denial of life 300
The appearance of form 302
Ecosystems of murder 305
Littleness of value 307
The gender agenda 310
Growing pains 313
Seasonal lies 314
Upside down, inside out, back to front 316
Disappointment and death 319

Chapter 13 - The body 325


Every body is different 325
Separation devices 326
Worthless bodies 328
The body is a limit 330
The body is nothing 333
The world of sin 334
Born to die 335
Body identity 337
Miscommunication 339
The ego’s home 341
Me me me 342
Sensing 344
Blinded by form 347
The hero 349
Pleasure is pain 351
Fear of death 355

Chapter 14 - Special relationships 359


Real relationship 359
Unreal relationship 360
Worlds collide 362
An impossible choice 365
Exclusively special 367
Finding gold 371
The chosen one 372
Attachment 376
You owe me 380
Self-interest 384
I’m better than you 385
Taking it personally 386
Codependency 388
False empathy 390
The unhealed healer 392
Selflessness 394
Sex 395
Parents and children 401

Chapter 15 - Murder 409


Murderousness 409
Forms of murder 411
Victims and victimisers 417
Blame 419
Punishment 424
War 426
Tyranny 431
Destruction 433

Chapter 16 - Sickness 437


Imperfection 437
The denial of health 439
Sickness as a defence 441
Choosing sickness 442
Hurting yourself 446
Body identification 448
Forms of guilt 452
External seeking 455
Arrested extension 457
The benefit of sickness 459
Fear of awakening 465
The broken body 468

Chapter 17 - Death 473


The dream of death 473
The denial of life 477
The game of death 481
Choosing to die 486
Loss and grief 490
Death is not the end 493
Part 3 - Resurrection 497

Chapter 18 - A new hope 499


The way out 499
A real alternative 501
God is the answer 504
Make room for God 507
God’s Helper 508
Real spirituality 512
A little willingness 514
Total surrender 518
Ego rebounds 521
A new premise 523
Retracing our steps 526
Repurposing 528
The meaning of life 530
Finding a choice 533
Questioning temptation 535
The spiritual eye 537
One problem, one solution 538
Not a victim 541
The secret of salvation 543
Forgiveness 544
Recognition 546
The denial of denial 548
No laws but God’s 552
The golden rule 554
The Christ Self 556
Living in the present 557
The forgiven world 560

Chapter 19 - The Holy Spirit 567


God’s answer 567
The function of healing 571
Holy perception 574
The happy dream 576
Heaven’s help 578
True prayer 580
Guidance 584
The power of God 588
Angels 592

Chapter 20 - Atonement 595


The Atonement Principle 595
The Atonement Plan 598
Trials and lessons 601
The secret of salvation 607
Who is the cause? 614
Teachers of God 622

Chapter 21 - Forgiveness 627


Ask for help 627
False forgiveness 629
True forgiveness 631
Unforgiving sight 635
The world is a mirror 638
Illusions disappear 644
Suspending judgement 646
Take it back 649
Visual forgiveness 654
Golden rule forgiveness 658
Perfect honesty 660
Forgiving evil 663
A blessing or a curse 670
Forgiving yourself 675

Chapter 22 - Identity 681


The loss of self 681
Body identification 683
Spirit identification 689
Identifying with form 691
Losing identity 693
Possession 695
Who is suffering? 697
Christ 701

Chapter 23 - Holy relationships 705


Special love 705
Unconditional love 709
Holy relationship 713
Relating by the golden rule 718
Loving yourself 722
Holy attributes 726
The relationship plan 733
Repurposing sex 736
A holy society 739

Chapter 24 - Miracles 743


The miraculous mind 743
The unmiraculous mind 747
Breaking the ego’s laws 752
No order of difficulty 756
Mind healing 758
Holographic miracles 761
Being of service 766
Miracles are relationship 771
Mind over matter 774
The final miracle 777

Chapter 25 - Awakening 781


Always dreaming 781
Unpopular truth 785
Level confusion 790
The forgiven world 797
Resurrection 802
The last judgement 806
The real world 810
There is no world 813
Immortality 818

The world's idea of the most ideal relationship is where you find the chosen one and give them all your love. But you don't give that same love to anyone else. The chosen one gets exclusive access, special rights, permissions and trust. But this exclusivity means that the love is conditional, and is switched off around other people. The two of you will likely side with each other against everyone else.

While the ego and the body and the world might suggest that this is the only natural way to relate, as if everyone is supposed to be paired up with one person, it is actually highly unnatural. If you follow this kind of relationship dynamic to its extreme conclusion, it would mean that the person you love is the person you most imprison, and you live in a prison with them in order to keep everyone else away from you. They become a safe haven in the storm, and everyone else is left outside.

Unconditional love is a kind of love that doesn't change based on who you are with or where you are or what you're doing. It gives all of the love to all of the people all of the time. It doesn't pick favourites, nor does it hold back the love only to give it to those who have met your standards, or you like them, or they have something in common, or they aren't seemingly against you. Love just loves always in one single response to everything. This is total holy relationship, which is inclusive not exclusive.

Trying to love only one person or only a small group of people is quite a confined and ego-driven form of love. It's an attempt to narrow love down and only hand it out to the most special winners of the human contest. And if you can only trust that one person you will have mistrust of just about everyone. What would Jesus do? Would Jesus hold off on loving someone because they aren't apparently his closet companion?

Special love is imprisoned love, conditional love, and limited love. Special love is actually an attempt to cover up all the special hate you have for everyone by selecting the most ideal and agreeable person that you seem have the least hate for.

"The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive EFFECTS of hate, by finding a haven in the storm of guilt."

"The special love relationship is NOT perceived as of value IN ITSELF, but as a place of safety, from which hatred is split off, and KEPT APART. The special love partner is acceptable ONLY as long as he serves this purpose."

"the special love relationship is an attempt TO BRING LOVE INTO SEPARATION."

"The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven."

"To believe that SPECIAL relationships, with SPECIAL love, can offer you salvation, IS the belief that separation is salvation."

"Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and ALWAYS obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no OTHER love that can satisfy you, because there IS no other love. This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED. Being complete, it asks nothing. 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. The ego establishes relationships ONLY to GET something. And it would keep the giver BOUND TO ITSELF, through guilt."

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.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
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