As you look at someone's body, you think this is them. It's not. Look more closely. Notice how the body itself is a kind of externalized appearance of solidity, which blinds you. The person is "inside" the body behind the physical appearance. Look at how their spirit or mind is within the body, and the body covers it up. You cannot seemingly SEE the spirit.

Think also about how you yourself, in your own body, have a difference experience on the "inside" of your body than other people seem to "see" in the outside. And when you look in the mirror there is a disconnect between how the body looks and your sense of identity - particularly if you are not heavily identified with your body. Who you are on the inside can be quite different to how you appear physically.

So then recognize this is true of others as well. Who they are is not the body that you see at first glance. It's far too easy to be blinded by sight of form and to fixate on the physical body of a person thinking that IS the person. The physical body of another was MADE TO BLOCK SIGHT. To prevent you from seeing your brother BEHIND the body's form. Bodies are separation devices, designed to imprison souls in order to identify them as locked up inside images of differences and illusions.

If you can particularly regard someone's "inner self" or "the person" distinct from the body, it is quite interesting what happens to your perception. Not identifying THEIR body "as them", but rather looking past it to the person "behind" or "within" it, and see that inner person, you overlook the body. And suddenly it becomes quite funny how everything you thought was true about the person was actually a statement about the state of their BODY.

So if their body seems to be sick or has problems and you have regarded these things as "part of the person", you have been deceived. When you look past the illusory appearances of physicality, and try to look at the inner person, you may transcend the body and suddenly realize that all of the body's states and characteristics are NOT the person.

Therefore the body is NOT a representative of the person directly, but rather a once-removed picture of their inner condition. Seeing the inner condition allows you to recognize this, and then it becomes quite hilarious, especially if you had bought into their physical differences or disabilities previously. It also shows you the body then in its proper perspective, that it isn' the person but merely an outward picture, and therefore its state or condition DOES NOT MATTER ie has no truth to it, therefore you can easily NOT BELIEVE IN IT and work miracles to heal the person, disregarding the body's appearance as meaning anything at all.

This is an important point. When you are being forgiving, you do not continue to LOOK AT the thing that you were forgiving. Sight of it was the result of NOT forgiving.

Forgiveness is NOT ABOUT looking "at" bodies and at the world and regarding them as sinless and holy. This is not how forgiveness functions. Forgiveness does not make something real and then try to look past it, nor does it make something real and then attempt to endow it with qualities of love and perfection.

To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to keep looking AT the world in a loving way. To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to love the world and believe it is God's creation. To forgive does not mean that your SIGHT stops at the outside surface of material objects and still regards them as reality. I'm sorry but that is NOT forgiveness.

To forgive means to OVERLOOK. It means to SEE PAST. It means to NOT FIXATE ON. It means to NOT BE DECEIVED BY. It means to GIVE NO REALITY TO. It means to CANCEL illusions. It means to DIMINISH illusions in your sight so that you can see THROUGH THEM and PAST THEM to the truth (Christ) that was being hidden BY them.

The world stands like a block of sin before the face of Christ. So does all bodies. You have to OVERLOOK THEM if you want to see Christ in your brother. The Christ in him is BEYOND HIS BODY.

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light"

"And place no value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is."

You have to OVERLOOK PHYSICAL OBJECTS. Your sight, your spiritual sight, has to take the place of your body's vision (which lies to you and only looks at bodies). To be forgiving, to forgive your brother, and to forgive the world, does not mean you're still SEEING THE WORLD or seeing bodies. Nor does it mean you still see exactly the same stuff you saw before but with a sense of innocence and loveliness. You are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEING THIS WORLD.

Those of you who believe that God created this planet, are particularly apt to be mistaken about this. It is an error to say that your aim is to "love the world". Your love would dispel the world. "Eternity shines away the world." You cannot love what isn't really there. You can only love the reality and truth which is BEYOND the world. To want to keep the world and the bodies and keep SEEING them, and keep being BLINDED by sight of form, while trying to simultaneously reach a state of love and forgiveness, is IMPOSSIBLE. You have to let the world go. You are NOT being forgiving if you keep fixating on it.

All things in this world are the form of sin and error. You must learn to OVERLOOK these errors and see PAST them with reason. Only this way can you "see God in everything you see". It's not because you keep seeing the world AS God. You see God IN PLACE OF the world. Behind the world. He was hidden BY the world. That was why you made it, to shut him out. To forgive is to recognize that this illusory world IS NOT THERE, HAS NOT HAPPENED, AND DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. Only by looking PAST forms to the Christ BEYOND can you recognize God's Son.

When your mind stops at the outer surface of objects, you are blinded and the extension of your mind has been arrested. If you arrest the extension of the mind you foster separation and induce illness. It is unnatural to see this world and bad for your health. You need to see PAST its illusion in order for your mind to JOIN with the Christ that is hidden BEYOND the world and beyond bodies. It is the only way you can communicate and it is the only way you can love. Love shines PAST illusions and renders them unreal and irrelevant. The world is irrelevant. The body is irrelevant.

It's like in the Matrix movies... you have to learn to see the 'matrix code' instead of being deceived by illusions of a world that doesn't exist. Then you can get out of hell and get back to being in Heaven.

Only love is real and "love was never in the world". Love wants the world to end.

"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins..."

"...brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears"

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ"

"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances."

"By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth"

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

"You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions"

"For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."

"For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable"

"(body)... Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything."

"Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do"

"Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place."

"When you have looked upon each other with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you can not overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it?"

"In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"See him as guiltless as I look on you, and OVERLOOK the sins he THINKS he sees within himself. "

"Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality"

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body?"

"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. "

"To see a brother in ANOTHER body, SEPARATE from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little PART of him, and sacrifice the rest."

"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "

"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."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"

"False perception", ie being heavily in your ego, is a state of imprisonment. It's a very closed way of looking at things, it cuts you off from the light, wraps you in heavy walls, and makes everything look serious. It faces you to focus on how things look physically as if there is nothing else, and even shuts out the mind.It offers no bigger picture and dwells entirely on appearances.

In this view it becomes apparent that there are serious problems, and the problems seem impossible to solve. One thing seems to depend on another to be righted and everything seems locked in. It makes you feel stuck and lost and alone, powerless and helpless. It starts to feel like there's no way out, no solution, no hope. It is a state of psychological darkness and limitation.

False perceptions always feel imprisoning because the mind is actively trying to imprison. It's seeing things in such a way as to focus on what is wrong, what is broken, what can't be solved, what is evil, what has been done to something, how bad it is, how sorry it is, how awful it feels, how much it's painful etc. It emphases and blows everything bad out of proportion making it seem far worse than it is. It also shuts down any openness to positive possibilities.

Such a state of mind is easily driven by old unforgiven hurts, grievances, being triggered, upsets and heavy ego emotions, loss and grief, anger and frustration. It's as though the ego functions always at a very low level of consciousness and with a very dire outlook, and everything it thinks and feels and experiences is gloomy and a nightmare. When you get into that you can't help but see that way and it seems practically impossible to get out of it.

All the problems become real and you become filled with reactions, which are attempts to make it go away. But none of them work because the problem looms heavily and seems completely solid and fixed and stuck, unmovable and unchangeable, irreversible like as sin. This is what ACIM refers to really as "the granite block of sin", something that seems to be happening that seems utterly impossible to undo.

The only way out of this is to move into the light, and miracles are seen in the light. The only way to get into the light is to start to look for the light and seek it out. The light means looking on the brighter side, looking for openings which lead to freedom, looking for goodness, looking for a higher purpose, looking for a sense of calm and peace, looking for positivity and holiness. It requires stepping back and realizing that you're actually being unforgiving, and to look at what you're doing to attack through fear, and choosing to stop doing that. To break out of psychological jail.

Only by becoming more forgiving can you get out of hell. It is literally the only way. To be forgiving entails increasing the light so that you can see more clearly, and letting go of grievances and reactions. Eventually it entails taking away all sense of heaviness and darkness, strength and power, reality and irreversibility from the situation. There has to be a surrendering of control and an opening up to higher help. Seek out the Holy Spirit to help you, to heal you, to correct you, direct you, decide for you. Let yourself receive some love and light to brighten up the situation. Everything always looks better with the lights on.

"Seek and do not find" is the absolute rule of the ego's way of perceiving.

It's very simple logic.

1) You already have everything you need. You are love.

2) Deny everything you are. "It's not in you".

3) Feel deprived and lacking and driven to search for what you lost anywhere, except in you - because as per step 2, it is clearly not in you (notice here that we never mentioned it being anywhere ELSE either though).

4) Now you go on a passionate hunt for what you lost - yourself - God - everywhere OTHER THAN where it is. Everywhere separate from you. In every illusion that prevents you from being as you are.

5) COMPLETELY fail to find it, because it is NOT OUT THERE.

Sometimes you'll find something which you think is your salvation - idols, objects, people, relationships, activities, places, etc. You invest them with 'hope' that they will be 'the one' that will save you from this dilemma of denial of yourself. BUT at the same time, you absolutely DO NOT believe that they will do so, because you're convinced the truth is NOT in you and never will be ever again.

So whatever you find starts to fail and reveal its cracks and show evidence that it is not working - it's not restoring you to happiness or love or who you are. So you become disillusioned, maybe angry that you've been led astray. You feel deceived and abandoned and frustrated. This REINFORCES your feeling that you are not loveable, that you are not good enough for God, that you are not with God, and that you are not yourself. You feel terrible. Even worse than before. And how does the ego suggest you solve this?

Any guesses?

"Why not go looking somewhere else, since it's obviously not here?" - ... in other words, MORE DENIAL, leading to more compulsion to seek outside yourself where you WILL NOT find what you're looking for.

Every effort you make to 'hold on', forces you to 'lose'. Every effort to 'have' or 'get' forces you to lose. Every effort to 'gain' what you lost reinfoces it's loss and loses even more. Every time you try to 'keep' what you 'little left' you fear to lose, you believe in its loss even more and it goes away. Every time you try to control what's happening so that you don't lose any more of what you value, it all gets taken away from you.

This is how the ego functions. It is insane. Only the insane would tell you to go looking for what you don't have because of how you failed to find it the last time you went looking. The last hunt didn't work? Keep on looking, you're sure to find it someday! Not.

What you're really looking for is God. What you're looking for is your True Self. It's not fancy cars and people and sex and bodies and tv shows and weddings and vacations and rainbows and pets and political rallies and movies and whatever else. It's not out there.

What you want is BEHIND the wall of denial that you've constructed, which you USED the ego to accomplish - or rather, you made the ego BY denying who you are and what you already have.

Everything you really want and CAN ever really HAVE and BE and EXPERIENCE, is already given to you by God. It is what you are. It is love Itself. With this there is nothing else that you really want. That is why the course says, "this world holds nothing that you want". Sobering. It holds nothing you want because it's not WHAT you want, what you want was already yours - it's YOU, as God created you. And you already ARE that. It's in you.

And let's be very very clear about something, because this is the ego's entire cover-story that we're about to blow. Ready? .... Denial is NOT removal. Denial does NOT destroy. Denial does not get rid of anything. Denial merely COVERS UP what is already there and PRETENDS that it is not there.

You want to know what the ego's crowning glory of denial is? The total denial that you are love, that you even live? It's DEATH. Death is DENIAL, it does NOT remove anything, it does not destroy anything, it merely PRETENDS that Life (God, You) do not exist.

It's a cover up!

You merely need to look with Holy Spirit at where you are DENYING - God - Your True Self - and uncover that, expose it to the light again, and reclaim your "natural inheritance". God's already given you everything you could possible want to be satisfied. You're just choosing not to want it. And because of that, you WILL NOT find anything better or more satisfying anywhere else.

Undo denial and you awaken to the love that is already your natural birthright. God created you AS love and that will never change, NO matter how much you might DENY it. And it is still the truth about you, because denial has not touched it or changed it. You are love.

Love is the truth, forever.

What if you lived in a world, where everyone was permanently dressed in costume. So much so that you had never actually looked at a person, but had only ever seen their disguise. You hadn't EVER seen a real face, or even real eyes. An entire world filled with make-believe characters, and no-one had ever set eyes on the actors that played them. All of it was hidden behind a thick wall of masks and covers.

That's the world we are living in here. The body is exactly this. It is a disguise and a physical wall surrounding a person's mind, so that you DO NOT SEE the person. When you look at a body you are not looking at a person. You're looking at a costume designed to completely disguise and HIDE from sight the real person within it.

As we learn that we are not our costumes, ie are not our bodies, we have to actually separate out the body from the person. As you look at a person you have to remind yourself you are not really looking at a person. You're looking at a body costume. A kind of vehicle, which is being piloted by an unseen person. By a spirit-mind. And the flesh you see doesn't even look like them.

I am constantly being reminded, corrected, by Jesus, each time I'm looking upon bodies and thinking of them as people, and forgetting that I am just looking at bodies. He tells me, "body", in place of whatever I was thinking about "person". Because I have to learn that flesh and bones are not really people. Bodies with faces and eyeballs are not really people. They are all disguises.

So we live in a VERY strange world, where in fact no-one is really seen by the human senses, and every body you look upon is a costume disgusing and hiding someone from sight. And even as you stare at their face and look them deep in the eye and think someone is peering back at you, even then you are looking at an illusion made to hide the person.

You have in fact likely NEVER looked upon a real person in your whole life here on Earth, because to see real beings requires a radically different kind of spiritual vision. It's VERY strange when you think about it, that the world is populated by costumes and vehicles and not by direct sight of beings. It's all a giant pantomime. An act like on the stage of a play. And you haven't ever feasted your eyes upon any of the actors.

It's so strange simply because this IS a VERY strange world. We have to learn that we ourselves are not bodies AT ALL, and other people are NOT bodies at all. And sight of bodies is not sight of people. And there are no people in the world of bodies, because they are all behind the scenes. Practice recognizing that the bodies you look at are JUST bodies, disguises, HIDING what lies unseen, trapped within.

"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." "The REAL beauty of the Temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"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."What cannot be perceived is hardly the right means for improving perception."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys."

"In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? "

"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, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

A light way to look at things and a dark way. It is similar to how, from above the clouds, the sun shines on everything, and yet beneath the clouds, everything looks dark and threatening.

Looking back toward the light with obstacles in the way, creates the impression of threat and danger and doom and gloom. When the clouds are there, the light seems obscured and it feels like you've got walls keeping you from it. It seems like you're trapped in a prison and that everything is against you.

Looking toward the light from a position of being separated from the light, by the clouds, creates the ego. The ego is an attempt to turn around and look back at God and find him blocked from vision as if he doesn't exist. And when the clouds are heavy, it will feel as if God doesn't exist, as if there is no light.

Shifting back into alignment with the source of light, means getting "above the battlefield", through and beyond the clouds, past the illusion of separateness and self importance, and turning around 180-degrees so that you too are a part of the light that shines outward. You need to become a sunbeam, of sorts, extending love outward.

Looking up to the sun with clouds between you is akin to the ego looking inside at itself. The ego wants to catch a glimpse of itself as if it really exists as a separate identity. What you are 'is', and you can't identify it as something separate from you. Yet when you're "under the weather" and trying to wrestle with upsets and darkness you keep trying to look 'at' yourself, similar to how you keep trying to look back at the sun. You don't really need to look at yourself or to look at the source of light, you need to BE IT.

Changing your vantage point changes your perspective. If your vantage point is rooted in your ego then your ego will do the looking and it will look toward the clouds and tell you the clouds are real and that you're separate from God. This will of course be frightening and horrifying. And it's not true, but it will seem true, and you will feel stuck.

Changing your vantage point to that of Holy Spirit (the sun) changes everything. It changes how everything looks to you and what it means. Your light shines ONTO everything you see illuminating it and revealing its beauty and happiness. It helps you to see clearly and fully. It helps you to not be deceived by the strange shadows that play out on the landscape when you are "in the dark". And it helps you to remember there is ALWAYS another way, ALWAYS a better way than any ego viewpoint.

And you need to be reminded... the light of God is always present and always available and always true and always powerful, and no amount of ego or darkness or horror will EVER obliterate it or shut it out or make it permanently lost. EVER. The light is always stronger than the darkness because the darkness is weakness. The light is always there. It is sanity. It is reason. It is truth. Sooner or later you have to admit to it and allow it and accept it and be it. You can prolong suffering but you cannot make it permanent. The light is calling to you to join it and to laugh at the silliness of the ego's mistakes.

God loves you.

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."

Here is something that many people will reject as totally bullshit. But if you will consider it carefully you may see that it makes sense.

Your mind is not just inside your body. Your mind is bigger than the universe. The world is inside of it! Therefore your psychological ERRORS have taken the form of PHYSICAL OBJECTS!!!

The physical world is in your mind as a THOUGHT FORM. A physicalization or condensing of the thought of SIN BEING REAL.

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

Physical objects are literally ***SIN*** contained by your mind!!!

(e.g. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." "To see a sinless body is impossible.")

Your mind, bigger than the universe, is dreaming of a WORLD, inside of your mind, which is hosted by your mind, and clouds your mind with IMAGINED OBSTRUCTIONS, which manifest as PHYSICAL FORMS, which are thought images WITHIN you.

You made the little body, within your mind, as part of the world that's in your mind, to look AT that world, to look at SIN, as if it's real and not see past it. The body can only see the form of error, and all physical forms represent the idea of sin being "apparently real." You actually perceive the world from the outside in.

You perceive "physical sins" with the body's eyes!!!

When you consider that the world and the body are WITHIN your mind, both of them are ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVICES your mind is using to hide from reality. You've constructed a dream of deception, within your mind, in the shape of a world, to hide reality. "The world was made as an attack on God."

Your mind - a universe-sized CONTAINER, has invented a world, inside of itself, designed to block THE CONTAINER, from **SEEING THE CONTAINER**. And now the container is seemingly UNAWARE OF ITSELF, asleep and lost in its own IMAGINED WORLD. A dream world.

Physical sight through the body, looking at FORMS (physical objects), is your mind's attempt to NOT LOOK PAST SIN, given that physical objects are SINS within your larger mind.

The eyes fixate on sin and make it real. This is what they were MADE TO DO. If the world seems real, you have MADE SIN REAL and are looking at an ILLUSION, which seems outside your body, but the world and the body are SMALLER THAN YOU. If you believe what the body sees is reality, you are blind and insane. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

The body's vision is a device for NOT SEEING THE TRUTH, to blind the mind and keep it from looking PAST ALL PHYSICAL FORMS - which are MIND BLOCKAGES - to reality which lies beyond them.

"The world IS false perception." "The world IS perception." This means you, who are a universe-sized container, are visualizing WITHIN yourself, an entire planet, which is the FORM that "perceiving incorrectly" takes, as a visualization of an UNREAL WORLD, so that you are lost in your own INNER planet-sized dream. The physical world IS your universe-sized mind PERCEIVING!! "Perception is a separated state". You are projecting it!

"Blocks to awareness" include PHYSICAL MATTER. Spacetime itself IS A BELIEF, smaller than your mind, within your mind!

The body has been made as a device IN YOUR MIND to block your VISION. Your mind is HOST to an imaginary world, which it is looking AT, so that it does not look PAST it, to ITSELF.

Your mind, and your correction of perception, is not just taking place within the safe confines of your body-mind, as if trapped in a body and totally confined to "whats inside my body."

Realize instead that your mind is also OUT THERE. Physical matter is a BLOCK. It is an IMAGE in your mind. Not merely an image within your mind in a body. An image in your mind BIGGER THAN THE UNIVERSE. YOU are supposed to LITERALLY see past it in order to be aware of YOURSELF and to look upon CHRIST just as the Holy Spirit does.

When your mind - your universe-sized mind, changes its mind, and starts to use reason to SEE PAST the illusory world, it will stop believing in the dream it's having, and realize it is the dreamer. This will DISAPPEAR THE DREAM, which includes the literally disappearing of ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS, which ARE ALWAYS FORMS OF ERROR AND SIN.

In the atonement therefore, you have the recognition that THERE IS NO WORLD, because "the world you made" was merely a fictional vision you were holding inside your mind temporarily, while you dreamed, and now the dreaming has ended. THERE IS NO WORLD to block your *awareness* of your SELF, and thus you return to looking ONLY UPON your Christ Self, which is formless and timeless, OUTSIDE OF SPACETIME, which has now ended.

YOU, are the Kingdom of Heaven.

Here is how Jesus puts it:

"SIN IS A BLOCK (to awareness), set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who LOOKS ON IT without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 THE BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT AS SOLID (yes, your fricking EYES are LOOKING AT SIN) granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT (sees through physical matter), because IT IS AN ERROR (all physical matter is an ERROR!). 6 The FORM (physical form) it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS (there IS NO PHYSICAL WORLD - IT IS EMPTINESS) from reason's eyes."

"Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception" ... "The body's eyes see ONLY form." .... "These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see." .... " 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 nothing SO BLINDING as PERCEPTION OF FORM (physical matter). For SIGHT OF FORM means ***understanding has been obscured***. Only MISTAKES have different forms (physical objects are mistakes), and so they can deceive (physical objects deceive). You can change form (you can change objects), BECAUSE it is not true (because physical objects are NOT TRUE).

IT COULD NOT BE REALITY (physical matter IS NOT REALITY!), BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is not reality, IT MUST BE AN ILLUSION (physical FORMS ARE ILLUSIONS), and ****IS NOT THERE TO SEE**** - the physical world DOES NOT EXIST - there is no world.). 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? "

In the section below, Jesus writes about how God did not create a meaningless world, God only creates things which are meaningful, and the world we see (earth etc) is not meaningful, and therefore does not exist, because God did not create it. For example he even gives examples of things in this world which God did not create and are therefore not real:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real.

God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real.

God did not create that disaster [specify], and so it is not real."

This means not only are your personal perceptions and interpretations of the world not real, it also means the stuff IN the world, the wars and airplanes and disasters and so on ARE NOT REAL, so they DO NOT EXIST AT ALL, regardless of how you are looking "at" them. Looking at a plane crash in a "happy way" is denial of the fact that there IS NO plane crash, and that isn't to do with your personal private perception, nor is it really to do with your interpretation of way of looking at the plane crash. It's on a much bigger scale, of the fact that there is no plane or crash whatsoever because it doesn't exist, and the plane and the crash are PART OF YOUR MISPERCEPTION.

He goes even further to tell us that the illusions we "see", some of them can be part of our "personal hell", while other illusions are "shared".

I think this is an important point because "perception" is not just about your own personal hell within your own mind. And accepting atonement is not just about you becoming happy with a horrifying world of death and destruction, sitting on a fence smiling at passers by who go about their torture. Some aspects of perception are also taking place on a shared level, outside your body, and in "forms" which are actually parts of your perception as a much larger being/mind, shared with other minds as part of the sonship who is dreaming this whole world.

Many people think the Course is only about fixing your "personal hell" ie the illusions or perception that are "inside your own mind". This is only PART of the truth. A big part of the illusions which need correcting are OUTSIDE your personal mind, in the larger mind which we collectively are contributing to, and which encompasses this whole universe. This is why Jesus says "this world IS perception".

Whenever Jesus talks about "the world you see" many people have interpreted it to mean he's referring to your personal private interpretation of the world, as though an imaginary world that you overlaid on top of the world. This correlates to many passages in the course about false perception and seems to give it credence. But it also misses the point that Jesus is quite plainly referring to THE PHYSICAL WORLD not just your personal interpretation of it. The world you see, this universe, does not exist. The world you see, this universe, which is not "inside" your little mind, but is part of a collective shared mind, needs to be "corrected" because IT is perception.

Objects and clouds and rocks and people and mountains and rivers and trees and dogs and cats are all part of this illusion, and all part of perception, and all part of your mind. Not just the stuff that seemed to be inside your personal space.

"God did not create a meaningless world.

The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist. "

"This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking. These things are part of the world you see. SOME OF THEM ARE SHARED ILLUSIONS, AND OTHERS ARE PART OF YOUR PERSONAL HELL. It does not matter. What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning. In recognition of this fact, conclude the practice periods by repeating today's idea:

God did not create a meaningless world."

"Only the mind sees". "Minds do not need bodies to communicate."

Mind by itself has awareness and SEES in the light. It needs nothing else for this seeing to work. This seeing is not perception at all. But when we went into the separation, we invented a separated state where we do NOT see only with the mind, and instead INTERPRET. "Perception is fundamentally judgemental". This interpretative mechanism is like a filter, which is a layer over the mind. Another term for this mechanism is the belief system.

The mind, in a sense, is now looking UPON or "through" the belief system, through perception. At the same time, the body is now sending signals into the mind from outside to report on an illusory world. The body is set up to only see the world with false perception, permanently, and to "see objects" as if they are real. It shows images of these objects to the perceptual mechanism. These are images of hell, an inability to see reality and a blindness by perception of form, regarding physical matter as "really there".

The belief system then INTERPRETS what the body is showing it. The belief system/perception now categorizes various things into separate boxes and labels them per the meaning it gives things, and assigns meanings to them. The mind, looking at these boxes, then "sees" the meaning that perception gave TO what the body's eyes were looking at.

Additionally when the belief system is not one of wholeness, certain images are spiritualized and others are ignored. Fear is used to shut out from awareness whatever the perceptual system does not want to see or believe in, and "acceptance" into the mind is permitted to the things it does want to see and believe in. Jesus says that whatever you VALUE, you will BELIEVE IN, and whatever you BELIEVE IN, you will WANT TO SEE, and because you want to see it, you will make yourself see it IN whatever the body is showing you. Projection makes perception, and obviously that is a state of hallucination.

So the belief system is now giving meaning to what is seen in the world and is interpreting it and hallucinating that it is something it's not. This means the perceptual SYSTEM is now a system/filter based in false perception, the body's eyes are also based in false perception, and so now the belief system is "lined up with" or in accord with/believing what the body reports without questioning it. That is unconsciousness, in which you take whatever the body shows you as "real".

In order to move away from this, the body's eyes continue to report the same photon-based false perceptions of fake objects as before, an illusory world seen as real, but the perceptual mechanism/belief system now REINTERPRETS the meaning and purpose of what is being sent to it. This leads to "true perception", which is a REINTERPRATION of the world "The Holy Spirit is the great re-interpreter of the world you made."

In true perception the belief system has been purified and equalized and all the meaning you gave to a meaningless world has been ironed out. Instead of a fragmented interpretation, there is now an interpretation/filter based in a reflection of the laws of God, which is wholeness. The belief system is still being bombarded with body-world-is real images but it now categorizes them all as UNREAL. It has to, in order to see with love, because the body can ONLY show you pictures of hell seeming to exist (solid objects) and so the mind has to learn NOT to believe what it is being shown. It has to recognize that this picture of crucifixion is actually not true, not real, not really there, and not happening. It looks PAST those illusory images and OVERLOOKS them, which is forgiveness

The mind's belief system now is a system of forgiveness which doesn't fixate on the surface of objects that the body is trying to report still, but instead overlooks those images entirely and sees the face of Christ BEYOND them, because it is now having mind-to-mind perception, BYPASSING the body's sight and practically ignoring the images the body presents. The body's images become like a "thin veil" before the face of Christ, because their LIES are SEEN THROUGH (REASON sees THROUGH the forms of error) so much that they become transparent. The light of Heaven is seen as being BEYOND what the images report, and the forms of matter are recognized as nothing.

All of these REINTERPRETATIONS of "the world you made" and "the world you see" (with the body) that the body is fixated on, with its false perception, are now "seen truly", with true perception, and recognize the illusion AS an illusion, not as reality. It looks past it to the light of Heaven. But what's happening now is the MIND, which is the only thing which SEES, is now looking AT the "reinterpreted images", while also looking through them TO SEE ITSELF, to see Christ. The belief system becomes transparent. The body images become transparent. The light of God is shining through the whole "system" of mind/perception/body and providing a REFLECTION of Heaven in the world. A symbolic representation of "light within darkness". The mind having true perception is looking a this fake world "in quite another light."

At this point though, the mind still is having perception, albeit true perception, and it is still in two minds. It is still having a separated state, perception, with a belief system. It's just that the belief system now is more or less empty, and God's truth is seen truly as true. Only the truth is true. The mind doesn't NEED the perceptual mechanism in order to SEE with Christ Vision, and the body and its signals have now been overlooked ENTIRELY. The whole "world" that the body was reporting as "there" has been SEEN THROUGH. And Christ has been glimpsed beyond the images.

The images of the world disappear, the body disappears, the mind stops having a belief system, perception comes to an end, the "filter" is removed, the separation is undone, and the mind now returns to a state of PURE MIND, in which there is no body and no world and no perceiving. In this state, sight is KNOWING, and knowledge of the Kingdom of God has been restored. This is the "sight of the Son of God." It is being IN Heaven. Recognizing where you really are and who you really are as Christ. And communing with God in fullness, which wasn't possible while the separated state of perception was lasting. Now perception is gone, the world is gone, the body is gone, and all that remains is your natural state of being. The entire world of bodies has literally become TOTALLY INVISIBLE to you and does not exist.

In summary, the mind sees, and while there is body/perception, the mind sees what the perception/belief system SHOWS it, which is an INTERPRETATION of what the BODY shows the perception/belief system. And as the mind sees BEYOND the body and perception, it sees itself as Christ and sees nothing else. This is all supported in various ACIM statements about seeing, vision, perception, sight, body's eyes etc.

A lesson for me at the moment has two parts to it. One part is realizing that underneath a person there is a completely immortal, invulnerable, innocent being that has absolutely nothing wrong with them and has done nothing wrong. The other part is, connected to this, that therefore I need to learn to 'overlook' the appearance of anything else that they are trying to demonstrate to me as the truth about them and not join with them in it (false empathy).

Being able to overlook the 'obstacle to peace' that other people put in place is a tuff one. But it also means I have to be able to not have obstacles to peace in myself, and that I need to take any kind of 'veil' or 'persona' off of my own mind so that I can see past the personas of other people.

Being able to overlook appearances is forgiveness. When your awareness fixates on looking AT an appearance, AT a body, AT a person's form, this is blinding. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit in you is not allowed to fully extend outward, instead being stopped by the form of another person. But it's not their form that stops your 'vision', it's your belief that it's real - your buying into the illusion of it.

There's sections in the Course that I read not long ago about how the Holy Spirit projects/extends outward PAST your own body and PAST the bodies of other people, to recognize Himself WITHIN the mind of the other person. When your mind is looking past these forms in this way, there is no sickness because the mind isn't getting 'stuck' on form. Fully extending THROUGH and PAST the body is COMMUNICATION, which the Holy Spirit wants to use it for - to join with others beyond their bodies. But if we're fixating on the content of form such as guilt, fear, sin, death, bodies, appearances, etc then this puts a road-block in the way of extension, creating sickness and death. The body then becomes an 'obstacle to peace' - it's in the way we're looking at or past things.

The truth is that the body is never in the way of a truly forgiving mind. The body is not powerful and does not have the ability to prevent the extension of love. The body (mine, or someone else's) also has no ability to snag my mind or get me to pay attention to it. Instead, if my mind is truly forgiving, it will simply see THROUGH and PAST the obstacle recognizing that it is not real and has no ability to prevent extension. Then there will be a recognition of Oneness with your brother.

The issue is that when the mind itself has blocks to awareness, these blocks prevent full extension of Spirit. And that means there's some kind of belief in or attachment to guilt/sin/fear/death/spacetime/bodies etc within the mind. That means, instead of the mind just moving past and extending past everything in form, it instead 'stops' at or becomes fixated on form as though it has some power to block your awareness/sight/vision. You focus on something which is NOT THERE, and you think it is real, and this blocks your awareness. Blocks to awareness manifest as blocks to energy flow and vitality, where ultimately a 'big block' brings about "death".

It's an ongoing challenge to learn not to fixate on form or appearance, especially when you are used to seeing other people as though they ARE the way they appear. So if someone comes along with a sickness or a story about themselves or a really attention-grabbing attitude etc, if I am tempted by that and look AT it and MAKE IT REAL then my mind has become snagged by it, attached to it, and resistant of it, and that will have an affect on my own wellbeing. It will make me sick because I am seeing my brother as sick by failing to overlook sickness. We need to literally see the Christ in ourselves and others in order for our mind to fully extend and to be unhindered and unrestrained. I think in the Course Jesus used a word like "arrested". When the mind is arrested by sight of form we become sick. When the mind is freed from arrest, sickness is loosened up and flow is restored and there is no more death.

It's difficult but I have to learn to look past the ILLUSION that people have something wrong with them, the illusion that people are really sick, the illusion that people are actually able to suffer, the illusion that people really have something to be afraid of etc. And this goes back to the first point.... .underneath all of our shit there is an immortal being that is absolutely unaffected by any illusion and has no faults and is perfectly innocent, invulnerable, powerful and free. If I believe that and know that and experience that and look TO that, then I will overlook all the other illusory bullshit. But if I forget that, or lose sight of that, or fixate on any other DEMONSTRATION as though it is the truth about me or another person, then now I'm into la-la land, hallucinating, suffering, caught up in stories, reacting to appearances and struggling with my own self.

I'm looking forward to absolute certainty. Someday it will appear within and without simultaneously. We are all really free, we just don't recognize it.

(anecdotal. .... People looking down at their iPhones fixated on form, hmm... A great way to make illusions real and to shut out everything else, and they call this a 'communication' device lol it's really an isolation device :-)..depending who you're dialling with ;-)

It's a good day not to try to be anything. How about we spend time acknowledging what is already true.

It is so easy to get into the mindset of the ego which says something is missing or lacking and that you need to go 'do' something in order to fix it. We can spend most of our time 'trying' to find answers and seeking for salvation.

What ACIM is telling us is that all truth is already established by God, it is already present, you are already perfect, and everything else is a lie. So with that information at hand, what we should really be focussing on is removing the blocks that keep us from being aware of WHAT ALREADY IS, rather than looking at it as having to go 'add' stuff that seems to be missing.

The ego trick is to assume that when stuff is missing, it's because it is really not there, and therefore you need to look SOMEWHERE ELSE to find it. It's kind of like a case of hide-and-seek. The ego throws a blanket of illusions over your car keys so that when you go and you look at where you think you left them, instead of seeing the car keys there's this 'cloaking device' in the way which distorts your vision and prevents you from seeing what is there. So you think, hmm, my car keys are not where I left them they must be somewhere else. And off you go hunting for them, looking for them everywhere except where they are. The problem is not that the keys are actually missing, the problem is they they are in plain sight but they are hidden behind some blockages/deceptions.

Its the same with you. Everything that you already are, as created by God, is already perfect and whole and missing nothing, except that it is covered up by a cloaking device which disguises your perception from being able to SEE it. So that gives you the impression that it's not there, and that you are not spiritual enough yet, or not good enough, or not loveable enough, and that all this love isn't true of you, so then you go off looking for it somewhere else. Well guess what happens when you go looking for something somewhere else - everywhere else - except where the thing is, because it's just hidden? YOU DO NOT FIND IT.

So, let's stop looking for shit where it does not exist. Instead, focus on acknowledging the pre-existing presence of what IS here right now. Let's UNCOVER what is hidden and covered up by ego lies, and let's ACKNOWLEDGE and RECOGNIZE what is true already. If you like, think of it as taking an inventory of what is already true and good about you, and the love that you already are.

You are already perfectly whole and loveabe and beautiful and innocent and holy.

You are already safe and invulnerable and immortal and protected.

You have already made huge strides in healing and awakening.

You have already learned a great deal that UN-does the bullshit distractions of the ego, for which you should be commended.

You are ALREADY as God created you and STILL as God created you and have not deviated from that.

All that you are is already present here right now even if it seems to be outside your present awareness. You are already an ascended master, you're just not aware of it.

You already deserve God's unconditional, unwavering love, all the time, and there is absolutely no outstanding debt that you owe or thing you have to do to make up for something you didn't do, to deserve or invoke that love. It's already being given fully.

All things you think you ever did have already been overlooked, forgiven and undone. It's just a matter of YOU now playing catch up. Holy Spirit already sees you with perfect forgiveness and has already forgiven you COMPLETELY.

You already deserve unconditional love and you are already recognized as innocent. All sins and crimes have been absolved and there has been no consequence from any of them that you need to be worried about 'cleaning up' or 'atoning for'.

You are already intimately connected to and joined with God in fullness and totality. There is nothing stopping you from being with God and there is no lack of anything in you that God put in place. You are complete and whole and finished and lacking nothing at all.

God already created you perfect and your perfection is already solidly in place and cannot be changed by you or anyone.

Nothing can happen to you, nothing has happened to you, nothing will happen to you, because God created you immortal and permanent and unchangeable. Everything else you think has happened that you think is not resolved IS already resolved because it HAS NOT HAPPENED.

All of your problems are solved. You do not have any REAL problems. Your imaginary problems are keeping you from being aware that you have no problems. Let them go.

Underneath your belief that you need to go seeking for what's missing outside of you, is everything inside of you which is everything you need and you aren't coming up short or empty handed. You already have 100% abundant supply and God sustains you all all through the day even if you didn't realize it.

You ARE forgiven, already, in light of the fact, and the truth, that you have not ever done anything wrong, in reality, there have been no real consequences, and nobody has been harmed. Your nightmare that you have done something terribly wrong or deserve punishment is complete bullshit and totally untrue. God already loves you and always will.

I feel this is quite an important point. The body and its eyes were made NOT to see reality. They fixate on physical appearances only and CANNOT see anything else. They reports only the physical nature of objects. This is totally blind.

However, there is another part to the perceptual mechanism. Your mind uses perception to INTERPRET what the body’s eyes report. You can interpret the messages as true and real, or as false and illusion.

When you are being unforgiving, you look at the physical messages and believe you are seeing reality. Your mind emphasizes differences, believes appearances, and regards the physical as reality. This is FALSE PERCEPTION. Believing the body’s eyes is an error.

When you are being forgiving, you look at the physical messages and recognize them as ALL UNREAL. Forgiveness looks PAST the physical images and doesn’t believe what they report. Your mind will still SEE the physical images, but OVERLOOK them and barely register them. A forgiving mind looks PAST bodies to the Holy Spirit and Christ in your brother, beyond the body.

In true perception, seeing the "forgiven world", your mind is going to be very loving and happy and holy, and it’s going to perceive in a "whole" way. Whatever signals the body’s eyes send to the mind, it will shine PAST them. Love extends, it does not stop at surfaces. It moves beyond the limited, to the unlimited. So you’ll be loving, BUT simultaneously recognizing this world IS NOT REAL and reality is BEYOND it.

To see the "forgiven world" or to perceive the "real world", must therefore require looking PAST the physical forms that the body STILL is looking at. Here the mind is looking "towards" Heaven with perception, and perceives the light beyond the physical. But perception is stil interpretation. Jesus says those who perceive STILL need healing! To perceive towards reality is STILL a state of separation. There is only one reality, not two. Perception itself must end.

When perception ends, it ends along with the body, which was made to have something to perceive WITH. The mind overlooks the physical ENTIRELY, has absolutely no perception of form, and experiences ONLY formless reality. In this reality there are no forms, bodies, or planets, all of which were designed to BLOCK AWARENESS. In Heaven, there is only light, love, mind and spirit.

God does not, cannot, will not, has not, and never could, create anything that is even capable of death. God is eternal, permanent, unchanging, unflinching, constant, always, perfect in every way and utterly incapable of degradation, decay, destruction, disease, or death.

If something even has the POSSIBILITY of seeming to do any of these things, it cannot possible have come from God. That much should be obvious. A divine being who can only create in his own image and likeness could never even conceive of creating suffering, sickness, pain, misery, torture, war, murder and suicide.

God could not possibly have created seasons in which entire populations of seeming lifeforms are wiped out through temperature changes. God could not possibly have created stunning vistas and sunsets only to later have them destroyed by an atomic bomb. God could never in any way conceive of creating an environment for his beloved children which entails any form of suffering, conflict or terror whatsoever.

For God to create such a place God would have to be cruel. God would have to have a mean streak. Some kind of aspect of his own nature which, when creating in his likeness, produces more of the same. God Himself would have to be diseased, suffering, dead and destructive, in order to create anything that exhibits these tendencies.

It is utter complete total bullshit nonsense to suggest that God created this world. This is a cruel, vicious, unfair, cold, lifeless world, houses in a dream of death, framed by sickness and set off against a background of suffering. It is absolutely not in any way related to God's nature or God's will. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality, truth, love, perfection, happiness or holiness. The world is a total illusion that has no reality, is not possible, and cannot exist. Because if God cannot participate in what exists, it cannot exist, because God is the creator.

Again, this is why there is no world. A world of bullshit cannot come from a God of love. And it doesn't have anything what so fucking ever to do with perception. It does not matter whether you are looking at this world with utter contempt, or whether you are looking at it with love. The world's character, features, makeup, dependency on spacetime, separateness, fluctuations, changing images and so on are all evidence of being NOT LIKE GOD. It doesn't matter if you view it with the most holy pure perception possible, it STILL cannot exist because it is still not like God. Looking at bullshit correctly doesn't turn it into the truth.

This is a simple idea. Since the world is neutral, and since you are having a subjective view of it, your mind is able to see it in different ways. And this means that there is always more than one way to look at something.

Sin is the idea or state of mind in which you see an illusion and combine it with reality, resulting in the perception that it cannot change. That perception is fixed. But this suggests there is only one way to look at something. And here it's meaning seems locked into the form it takes.

In truth there is another way to look at everything, because the Holy Spirit and Christ has given an alternative dream. There is always a "bright side to life" which is different to the "dark side of life." There is always another way to see it, other than how the negative ego sees it.

No matter what it is, how severe it seems, what form it takes, there are always at least two interpretations of it. One of them coming from ego makes the things seem dark and stressful and dangerous and unpleasant. The other provided by Christ Vision through Holy Spirit sees the same thing in a very different light.

The higher way to see, Christ Vision, is what the workbook lessons are geared towards developing. The whole process of forgiveness is of shifting from one thought system to another, or simply making a choice between seeing heaven or hell reflected in what you see.

For everything you see that you do not like, there is a miracle of sight which can look on this exact same thing and see it as beneficial and harmless. For everything which seems to be locked into meaning based on its form, there is another view which frees meaning from its form and uses it for a higher purpose.

So in all things, you can simply say to yourself, that you want another way to look at this. There MUST BE a higher way to look at everything. And when that way of looking is what you do consistently and what you choose to move into regularly, you'll develop Christ Vision.

Since Christ Vision is a gift of Christ that you share with him, your alignment with the Holy Spirit to see how HE sees grants you a viewpoint which is much more charitable and benevolent, which then sees this benevolence reflected back to you.

"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."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"There is another way of looking at this."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way."

"I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

"Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk."

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead?" "Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"Yet reason looks on this in another way."

"How COULD there be another way to solve a problem which is VERY simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were MADE to keep the problem unresolved?"

"Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way."

"No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way."

"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."

You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to completely obscure God and make it seem like he does not exist.

You won't realize this unless you also realize what God's nature is, because then the sheer contrast becomes obvious.

We most often think about God like a physical object, covering some amount of space. As if to say, God is a very large person, with his arms spanning different parts of the world, even different solar systems, and his legs reaching between galaxies.

But we are so used to thinking in terms of the limitations of space, that we would have to say that if his left arm is stretched out over the earth, his left arm can't be anywhere else. His right arm could stretch elsewhere, but he's one got one pair of arms.

That's how people think about God. But God is not like this at all. God is not a physical object, God is not limited by space or time, God is not confined to spatial relationships or sizes or distances or issues of location.

For God, the entirety of God can be fully present in EVERY location simultaneously. This involves absolutely no compromise. It's not that only part of God can pay attention to one part, while a different part of God pays attention to another. It's not like God has to switch back and forth, or can only give his "all" to one thing at a time.

God is capable of being FULLY present, in his entirety, in one location, while also being FULLY present, in his entirety, in another location. At the same time. He stretches across spatial boundaries and transcends limitations. This is his omnipresence. ALL of God can be present in ALL locations simultaneously. Full localisation in all locations, beyond trillions, beyond count, all at once.

If you can feel into that and get a sense of that, you might begin to get an idea of what God is like. God is not just some big cloud or some large expanse or a big container. God is transcendental of ALL known spatial limits, boxes, and rules about having to be in one place and not another. God TOTALLY transcends all known limits of space and time, and all rules about where things can exist and how.

So all of God, is in all parts of God, at all times. No matter where you are, no matter what location you're in, GOD IS THERE IN FULL. And yet he is also in all other places in full as well. He is like a giant kind of "blur" which is simultaneously massively spread out and massively localised. God is in-finite.

When you then look at what spacetime is ... this "universe" ... SPACE itself is completely based on the idea that "what is over here is not over there". A SEPARATION between locations, with walls of distance and time. In which what is in one location IS NOT IN ANY OTHER location. In which what exists here, does not exist there.

In spacetime there is no transcendental omnipresence. There is a strict requirement that every single object is local only, anchored to one fixed spot. And that object IS NOT anywhere else. It's not even really connected to anything else, rendering all objects separate. Not one single speck of spacetime houses the whole.

And this is where you get the massive contrast between God's reality and the illusion of spacetime. God is omnipresent. Spacetime says, there is NOWHERE that THE WHOLE exists. Whatever is in one place, IS NOWHERE else. Whatever exists is not whole, and is only partial, and is not joined to anything.

Effectively, space means GOD DOES NOT EXIST ANYWHERE. It is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to God's nature.

God is of a nature in which all of God is in all locations at all times.

Spacetime's nature is that NONE of God is ANYWHERE EVER!

Considering that we made spacetime in order to ATTACK GOD'S NATURE, you can then see that PHYSICAL MATTER has a nature NOTHING like God. In fact, it disguises, hides, shuts out, blocks, and presents a PICTURE which is so obscure and unlike God that, if you look at this picture and believe it, you are COMPLETELY BLINDED by matter. If there was ever a need for a perfect disguise, the physical world is it.

So now here we have the major issue. When you look at an object, you look at a single independent separate object. You look at its properties, its shape, its forms, its texture, its materials, its color etc. And while you are busy looking at those things, you are seeing the outside surface of an illusion.

All your attention is put onto this narrow, isolated, extremely confined limitation. And while you are busy looking at the object, be it a house or a car or a body or an apple or whatever, you are effectively DISTRACTED from the nature of God.

If you are not seeing ALL OF GOD in each speck of that object, you are not seeing. If you are not experiencing that what you see IN each object, no matter where you look, is the same ONE WHOLENESS, you are blinded by perception of form.

In essence, God's nature is to be fully present everywhere, and matter's essence is to OBSCURE that completely so that it appears that NOTHING is whole, THERE IS NO WHOLE, and what is seen "in" the object is NOT THE SAME as what is "in" the other objects.

So long as you focus on the ways that an object is DIFFERENT to another object, you are focusing on FORM. And that includes using perception to judge, using the mind to narrow and select, looking at bodies and cars and houses, judging anything at all on your own with anything less than wholeness. If you do not look from wholeness you do not SEE the wholeness of God.

What you have to then realize is that you are not going to be transitioning from looking at the same separate objects "one way", and looking at the same separate objects "another way". That's not a change. God is not like this. If you want to see differently, you have to look for the OMNIPRESENT NATURE. This nature TRANSCENDS ALL FORMS, transcends all differences, transcends all object boundaries. And in particular it is a vision which sees ALL OF GOD, in EACH PART, holographically.

So "vision", or "true perception", which is also salvation and forgiveness, is a way of seeing WITH an omnipresent mind, based on wholeness - not just wholeness as in "a big inclusive thing" but wholeness that INTERNALLY also features ALL of it in EACH part. To see a reflection of God - or to see God in everything you see, you are not looking for an OBJECT, or a finite limited thing, or a large blob, you're looking for a transcendental omnipresent holographic space-defying blur of love.

Essentially then, false perception, ego perception, judgement, making things a sin, focusing on form, seeing bodies and all that, is a way of narrowing perception down so that you are particularly CONVINCED that physical separateness IS TRUE, and that the omnipresent wholeness of God is NOWHERE to be seen.

As we rise up out of false perception and awaken, we are not just trying to find a way to forgive specific small things, or finite limited scenarios, or particular people. It's all leading up to a UNIVERSAL FORGIVENESS, which sees with the Holy Spirit's WHOLENESS, which is also omnipresent and transcendent. And we're trying to see that wholeness - ALL OF the Holy Spirit, in EACH thing, everywhere. Because he IS IN everyone just a God is.

To gloss over the differences of forms, to not focus on picking out "oh that's a separate body", to not dwell on appearances, or be DECEIVED BY one object saying "Hey look at me, I'm different to that other object, so we're NOT the same, so sameness is obscured and doesn't exist", is to be forgiving. It's about overlooking space and time itself! Overlooking all limits and all ways that the things in front of you say "we're not one."

The world was made as an attack on God, to shut him out, and to cover him over with a veil of illusions, in order to make it seem that God did not exist. We believed in this illusory world in our egoic perception, and we're learning to transcend and rise above it with the Holy Spirit. Eventually we'll see the REFLECTION of wholeness "in" everything we see materially, but this forgiving sight will also go so far BEYOND separateness that it will eventually lead to a grand exit from spacetime entirely, after a short stop-off in the "real world".

The real world is just another term for you becoming able to see a reflected transcendental omnipresence in spacetime, seen from wholeness with total forgiveness. And this is also why Workbook lesson 1 begins with us looking around us and having the SAME view of each DIFFERENT object. Because we have to now train our minds to stop paying attention to the DECEPTION OF FORM, and focus on finding a way to see the reflection of oneness - a sameness - in all things.

Not as a "big object", but toward ALL OF GOD ... IS EVERYWHERE I LOOK.

"Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything." URW1

"Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied." UrW1

"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."

"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. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone." UrW240W32

"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; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees." UrW158L7

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's GOAL, but not to see? For THIS the body's eyes are perfect means. But NOT for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning." UrT22D6

"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

"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?" UrT22D7

You have everything. God shared it with you.

But then the ego comes along and says, "you don't have that". It tells you, "you're lacking what God gave you. what he supposedly gave you is not HERE. so you'd better go look for it somewhere ELSE."

So then you start to SEEK. And this seeking is like running away from what God gave you. And what God gave you is inside you, so you're running away fromyourself.

As Jesus says, all forms of sickness are produced by seeking externally outside of yourself. What this means is, if you believe and assert that you do not already HAVE what God has given you, that's actually an ATTACK on your invulnerability. And that attack now means that you are attempting to believe that a) you are not as God created you (you are sick), b) you have lack and emptiness in you (death), and c) you will not find God by going within (separation).

Then you go off looking for... basically yourself, for God.... anywhere OTHER than where it is. The ego's made sure you believe its not in you, and you don't have it, and you are not yourself, and God is not in your mind, so now you look everywhere ELSE for it. You therefore are now looking "outside yourself", somewhere beyond your is-ness, to try to find what you think you lack.

And as you do this, you are compounding the belief that you are lacking, that you're empty, that God is not with you for some reason, that you don't have health, that you are less than whole, that you are diminished and void in some way. And all of those attack thoughts produce SICKNESS. They are like evil curses.

Then as you seek, looking everywhere but where you'll find God/Self, out in the world, or even in the body, you WILL NOT FIND IT. You've separated yourself from it, so now you are blind to it, and aware UNAWARE of its presence, so you literally do not see it. You will therefore keep hunting around in the dark, worried, afraid, desperate that you need to get this 'something' back, and yet you will not find it. The 'it' is not out there, beyond your Self. The 'it' as God is not separate from you, lost in some world somewhere.

So you will then "seek and not find". And you'll not find pretty hard. And especially if your believe in being lacking in some way is strong, e.g. unworthy, or imperfect, or flawed, or whatever, you will be compelled even more strongly to SEEK. And yet the harder you seek, where the 'it' is not, i.e. outside of you, the more you will fail to find it. And you'll grow really frustrated that you are coming up empty handed and being led on wild goosechases. But, if you're really steeped in this belief in how much you are lacking, you'll still have yet another attempt at finding it. You'll tell yourself you didn't look hard enough (because you're defective), and that can be a vicious circle.

So then you seek and fail and seek harder and fail harder and it gets really desperate and exasperating. You feel like you just can't find a solution. You go into panic. The ego has really got you in its grips. And the fact is, it's because you are looking for something you DID NOT EVEN REALLY LOSE in the first place, in a location that it does not exist. You need to QUESTION THE NEED TO SEEK, by questioning whether it is TRUE that you actually 'lack' in the way that you believe.

So what that then boils down to is, it's a matter of awareness. You have blocks to your awareness which hide from your awareness the presence of everything God already gave you. And if you had full awareness of everything God gave you, you would KNOW that you do not lack ANYTHING and that you have NO NEEDS. Thus no need to seek. The block to awareness is all the ways that the ego tells you, you are not ALREADY fully equipped, that you are not ALREADY complete and whole, that you are not ALREADY holy and perfect, or that you are not ALREADY WITH GOD.

Yes, you are already with God. You just have a block to awareness covering it up.

So we need to stop seeking. After all, people who find, stop seeking, right? You might think that means you have to seek first in order to find second? Well, what if you just find? What if you just accept that you are already in a state of having found yourself, and found God, and that you are in the presence of what you THOUGHT you were lacking? What if you question all of the 'lacking' belief? What if you undo all of the 'don't deserve it' and all of the 'not perfect enough' and all of the 'I'm not God's beloved child'? What will be REVEALED?

The truth!

The truth will set you free, or rather, you will be set free INTO the truth. The truth is, God already loves you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, you are not lacking at all, you are worthy of unconditional love, you are totally 100% acceptable, you are perfectly innocent and HOLY, and you have absolutely NO REASON to be afraid. All fear stems from a sense of separation from God, i.e. something's gone wrong and now you have to seek. Stop it. No fear is needed, only celebration, that "I was lost and now I'm found". Cus when you're a seeker, you're a loser. When you stop seeking, you win, because then the ego loses.

"Be still and know that I am God." See.

Here is an interesting teaching.

In its natural state, the body is a communication medium. The mind is supposed to flow through it and extend BEYOND it outwards. The body itself is not supposed to be part of the message as such.

But when the mind starts to STOP at the body, or to be blocked by the body, or runs up against the body, it prevents it from extending PAST the body. The communication medium can no longer communicate because the flow is blocked. This is what blocks to love do. They make you fixate on form and be blinded by illusion, which get in the way of seeing Christ.

When there are blocks to love, mind cannot extend through and past and overlook the body, and so fixates ON the body. This causes you to perceive that the body is what is there, in the mind, rather than looking PAST it. The body becomes what you are looking AT, rather than that you are looking at Christ PAST the body.

Making perception stop AT the body and blocking the flow of love, basically cuts that flow off and stops it from moving outward. That means it has become stifled, and now there is a kind of "separation" which has been introduced between the body and the outside. Or a gap, where extension of love was supposed to fill it externally, but is now left empty due to the blocked expression.

This blocking of extension makes the body SICK, because it focuses the mind ON the body and AT the body, instead of PAST the body. The body then becomes attacked by the mind as though "colliding with it" instead of flowing naturally through it and past it and onward in communication. Kind of like a dirty camera lens, or a blocked toilet, or a bunch of boarded up windows made to block the light. Another example would be a "blocked artery", making the blood flow impeded, and resulting in death.

So the blocks to love have to be removed so that the "surface" of the communication medium doesn't turn into the "message" and so that love can flow and extend, which means love is radiated and increased, which means HEALING comes through the body and the body is MADE WHOLE because it is COMMUNICATING WHOLENESS. When the mind is sane and flowing fully and freely THROUGH the body, the body is HEALED as the love passes through it making it essentially immortal, incapable of sickness or death.

Here is how Jesus says it:

"The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working through the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else.

To use a medium of communication as a medium of ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE PURPOSE. This releases the mind from the temptation to see it in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One Light in which it can be really understood at all."

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these."

As Jesus states here, the real and the unreal are all that you can choose between. Each of these is a "world", or a system of thought or order or thought. Reality is the higher order reality, an unreality is the lower order "reality" - the illusion of spacetime. These are the only two states that you can choose between. Two worlds, not three.

The "real world" described in A Course in Miracles, sometimes speaks in a manner which makes it sounds as if it is some kind of "in-between world", between heaven and earth. Not earth, not heaven, but something else. There are also references to it being a borderland of thought between the two. Kind of like the threshold of a doorway which is not really a place but a transition or meeting place, like a bridge.

But there are also other references to the real world which are framed more as if references to heaven itself. Such as "nothing there but shines and shines forever." And "This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all." And "Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT." These references are to me clearly references to heaven, yet use the term "real world".

I think in ACIM circles the attempt to grasp "what is the real world" has led to a lot of confusion especially due to the use of the term "real", and has led people to think it is a third world interposed between heaven and earth. I don't think this is really the case. I've been shown and told that the real world is the kingdom of God.

In terms of what Jesus has said about there being only TWO options, the "real world" becomes a far more appropriate term for HEAVEN. Because after all, Jesus is very careful and accurate in his choice of words, and heaven IS very appropriately "a real world". Not a pseudo-reality or an inbetween-almost-reality but actual reality. What else would you very appropriately call heaven but "a real world" - because it is actually completely real.

I see also references to christ vision looking beyond the physical unreal world to the light of heaven. I see references to us seeing christ - and christ is in heaven. I see references even to seeing God or having visions of God, who is not in this world. There are references to seeing your creations as well, which are in heaven. These all seem to further point to "the real world" being heaven.

Now, that said, it IS clear that there is a CONTEXT, and it also is the most frequent context, in which "the real world" term is referring to something seemingly "outside" of heaven. Particularly in terms of "For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight." And "The real world still is but a dream." Plus "And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."

Now here's how I'm interpreting this. Let's simply and logically clearly say that heaven is the only real world. It is appropriately titled the real world. Let's also recognize that in spacetime we are using perception. Perception is once removed from knowledge. It is judgemental and interpretative rather than direct cognition or knowing. Perception is image-making. This "layer" of images overlays reality.

So now let's say that there is heaven AS a real world, and then there is a PERCEPTION OF heaven from "outside of it". This is a perception experienced by those who still have perception, who are looking in the direction of heaven, toward the light of God. They are literally peering INTO heaven from the outside. I think of this as "window shopping". They're outside heaven, in a body, having a perception or "vision" (true perception), but they're looking towards and upon reality.

"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?"

This PERCEPTION OF reality is a dream still. It's like an image or a surface crust or layer of how heaven would appear TO perception. And let's not forget that "Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light." This to me implies that perception can reach to heaven and can see heaven.

So now what I'm saying is, the context where "the real world" is described as a borderland, a bridge, an image, a symbol, the face of christ, still a dream which can disappear, this is all talking about the PERCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION OF HEAVEN. It's not a direct experience of heaven or christ but it's how heaven and christ look when you use perception to look at them instead of direct knowing. It's still a little removed from heaven but it forms a kind of "image" or symbolic experience of it. This image is still a dream and that's why it comes to an end.

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love"

"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. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate."

So here Jesus seems to be confirming that "the real world" as used in its more common context, being removed from heaven, is SYMBOLIC - a symbolic version of the ACTUAL REAL HEAVEN. And symbols aren't something in themselves, they POINT TO the thing. They represent it, like a photograph. By using PERCEPTION to look upon the reality of the kingdom, you see it symbolically and no longer see the physical world. The "face of christ" then literally is like a surface appearance of christ, an outside "facade" ie a symbolic representation of the christ that is WITHIN heaven.

This to me is currently the only way to support the idea that there are ONLY two worlds. Not that there is a "real world" sandwiched in between them, or that this borderland has stuff in it. Because we're also told ""The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

To me, the only way "the real world" can have contents that shine FOREVER, in contradiction to the fact that "even the real world will vanish from your sight", is that it's a reference to HEAVEN. Heaven's contents will shine forever. Heaven IS the real world. But the PERCEPTUAL VISION of heaven is what he refers to in the context of "the real world" that is a symbolic dream, which ends. First you see the kingdom as accurately as perception CAN, within its limits, and then you go INTO it.

"Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light. But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

"Nothing that you remember, that made your heart seem to sing with joy, has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. FOR YOU WILL SEE THE SON OF GOD. You will behold the beauty that the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and that He thanks the Father for."

Note here that he's telling us that in the holy spirit's PERCEPTION, we will see the son of God. Where is the Son of God? He's in heaven. He IS heaven. He is the sonship. The Holy Spirit loves to look upon christ who is in heaven. His perception is a vision of christ, which later gives way to the direct cognitive knowledge of christ.

"And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon."

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God."

This is why I've concluded that essentially the forgiven world is the ILLUSORY world of space and time and matter, which is looking AWAY from heaven towards form. It is earth, the world, which has been forgiven. And forgiveness forgives it BY OVERLOOKING IT, looking beyond it towards heaven. The real world is heaven, and it is the light which christ vision sees, which is initially seen using perception. When this perception is full and complete, as in seeing the face of christ or "christ as if seen from the outside", perception ends and you now enter into heaven.

ie "the real world" really is the kingdom of God. The perceptual interpretation of that real world is what is commonly thought to be "the real world". The real world is NOT a reinterpreted earth. That's the forgiven world. Because reality cannot be forgiven, only illusions can be overlooked. Christ vision which is true perception forgives the world by looking past it to the light of reality.

There are only two worlds. Reality and unreality. Perception is always within the realm of unreality, but can be adjusted to be more accurate and thus to perceive reality from the "outside". To interpret the kingdom. This is its view of the real world of heaven from within the perceptual landscape. When this perception is whole, the illusory forgiven world disappears entirely and is forgotten, and perception comes to an end.

So the commonly referenced "real world" (outside of heaven) is actually a perceptual interpretation OF the ACTUALLY REAL world of heaven. It's you looking at heaven through perceptual interpretation, with vision (true perception). It looks just like heaven because it is looking AT heaven. It is not a third world but is actually an experience of heaven's reality and contents through the heaven-aligned filter of true perception. Perception no longer distorts it and perceives it directly. This perceptual layer thus becomes irrelevant because it is not needed, and you then move into the direct experience without perception in the way, to SEE the SAME REAL WORLD of the kingdom, forever.

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream."

"Beyond this world there is a world I want."

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

"Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." 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."

"No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him."

"The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true, and wholly YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was GIVEN you, and BY it God created you as one with Him."

"As mediator between the two worlds, He (Holy Spirit) knows what you have need of, and WHICH WILL NOT HURT YOU."

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains." "Heaven remains your only alternative to the strange world you made."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture. As you look on THIS, you realize that IT IS NOT A PICTURE, but a reality. This is no figured REPRESENTATION of a thought-system, but the Thought Itself. What IT represents is THERE. The frame fades gently, and God rises to your remembrance, offering you the whole of creation,"

"The (physical unreal) world stands like a block before Christ's face (perception's view of christ in heaven). But true perception (vision) looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil (of illusions), so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is (an illusion, nothing). And now it cannot fail to disappear (so it is recognized and vanishes), for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears (a vision of heaven), and in that instant is the world forgot (the forgiven unreal world) , with time (spacetime) forever ended as the world (forgiven) spins into nothingness from where it came."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

I've come up with a new model of ACIM which promises to resolve numerous contradictions and potentially unite the two major camps: those who believe they can experience heaven while in the dream, and those who believe heaven is elsewhere.

In this model, think of "the world you made" as a room with no windows, like a prison cell. You are currently in the room, perceiving the inside walls of the room. This is "false perception". Everything inside that room is false. "The world is false perception." You are blinded by perception of form and cannot see past the walls.

As you develop true perception, the walls start to become TRANSPARENT, and you start to see BEYOND them. You are IN the world, SEEING THROUGH IT, to something OUTSIDE it. This is what it means to OVERLOOK ie forgive the world. By forgiving the FALSE world, you become able to SEE the TRUE world. The true world is Heaven. Heaven is outside of the room. But you can SEE IT, from inside the room, using perception. True perception/christ vision is CAPABLE OF SEEING REALITY.

This is backed up by statements such as "God is in everything I see", that you can "see the son of God", having a "vision of God", "see the face of Christ", etc. To be able to SEE these things, you MUST be seeing reality directly with perception. Which means you are inside the dream, peering OUTSIDE OF IT from the inside out.

This also entails a major adjustment to older models. "The real world" is a synonym for HEAVEN. It is correctly labelled as REAL because it is real. When you PERCEIVE "the real world" you are literally perceiving heaven. This is also backed up by statements saying it is only possible to SEE what REALLY EXISTS, which MUST mean it is reality you are seeing.

Perception CAN SEE REALITY. But you have to also remember that "perception is a separated state". Therefore perception is happening FROM INSIDE the dream of separation, LOOKING AT WHAT'S OUTSIDE OF IT. When you are NOT blinded by the WALLS of the dream world, you have true perception. When you cannot see PAST the illusions of form, you have false perception.

We also have to remember a couple of key facts.

1. Perception of the truth is not the same as knowledge. That means you can perceive heaven, but this perception is kind of an "image" of heaven. A vision. This perception is not the same thing as being IN heaven. It is not cognition or knowledge or certainty or communion. But, it's kind of like window shopping. You are on the street (in the false physical world of false perception), looking through the window of the Kingdom of God (overlooking the world, forgiving the world, seeing beyond the veil), and are looking INTO or AT the contents of the Kingdom (seeing the face of Christ).

2. It is necessary to still accept that the FALSE world IS AN ILLUSION. The physical world. "The world of bodies is the world of sin" "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came" "There is no world" etc are all STILL TRUE of this world of forms, bodies, planets. "The world is false perception" means that if you LOOK AT THIS WORLD, you are having false perception. And that means you have to LOOK AWAY FROM this world, and look AT HEAVEN.

This is also totally backed up by statements about not being able to see two worlds. There ARE two worlds. Heaven/reality, and the illusory world. Sight of one costs you sight of the other because they deny each other. This does not mean TWO VIEWS OF THIS WORLD. It means if you see this world in ANY way you are having false perception, and sight of THIS world is costing you sight OF HEAVEN. Heaven is ANOTHER WORLD. And in order for this world to disappear from your sight, heaven must BECOME VISIBLE.

This is also totally backed up by the fact that The Holy Spirit loves to LOOK UPON CHRIST. He is using PERCEPTION, to look AT CHRIST. Christ in IN HEAVEN! The Holy Spirit is having true perception OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN. That proves that true perception MUST be capable of breaking out of the physical world, looking beyond the veil of forms (wall of sin), and must be cable of looking direct AT REALITY. At Christ. Who is in heaven.

There are a number of statements in the course which previously alluded to being able to perceive holiness, reality, christ, god etc from INSIDE the dream. And some people latched on this since it correlated to their experience and much of what happens in the workbook, and it SEEMED to imply that God must somehow be able to be SEEN from within this world. There is validity in those statements (e.g. God is in everything I see etc), BUT the conclusion drawn from that is a polarized ego conclusion based on thinking of THE ROOM (the world you made) as being REAL. AS if to say, perception ABOUT the inside of the room can change from false to true, in order to try to make sense of the seeming references to SEEING real stuff. But that was a false conclusion based on exclusive boxes.

Also in the old models people often thought of "the real world" as a reference to some kind of in-between state, still illusory (thus inappropriately named) and NOT the same thing as reality itself. I suggest that is wrong, and that HEAVEN is a the actual "real world". When we have perceptions OF "the real world", we are seeing HEAVEN ITSELF. We are looking OUTSIDE OF the dream, from the inside. This is also backed up by the fact there is a quote about the real world which speaks of there being no bodies, no streets and stores, no day and night (no sun) etc... which is accurate of HEAVEN. The IMAGE of the real world that perception SEES, is SEEING heaven, and the IMAGE is an illusion, but the world it is looking AT is reality!

This is also then helps us to see that not only can you LOOK OUTSIDE OF THE DREAM from the inside, but also the LIGHT OF HEAVEN can shine INTO or upon the dream from the outside in. And that TOO is backed up by various quotes. Heaven is spread across the world but you do not see it etc. The world seems to become holy. You shine your light upon the world by "reflecting it here" within yourself, etc. Because the CEILING on top of the room, is only SOLID when you have false perception. The ceiling becomes TRANSPARENT when you have true perception, allowing you to SEE OUT (like a window onto reality), AND allowing the light to PENETRATE the world. This is part of how "eternity will shine away the world." When we think of the separation between heaven and earth as SOLID we arrive at a false conclusion that you cannot experience God AT ALL in the world, which is incorrect.

A forgiven world, similarly, must be correctly understood. "To forgive is to overlook" Overlooking THE FALSE WORLD, "the world is false perception", means overlooking the PHYSICAL WORLD, overlooking bodies ("you're brother's reality is beyond his body"), "forgiveness does not look upon bodies" etc... and therefore to FORGIVE the world, does not mean keep LOOKING AT IT in a more loving way. It means to OVERLOOK it, see PAST it, and LOOK AT HEAVEN. The reality of heaven is what true perception (spiritual sight) sees. It is a perception of SPIRIT. And this means the physical veil of illusions, wall of sin, wall of flesh etc all has to VANISH from your sight. This happens when you SEE CHRIST (face of christ). The world is FORGOTTEN.

That's what it means to forgive the world. It means to RECOGNIZE the WORLD IS FALSE. And to put ALL of your attention ON REALITY. To look AT reality, bypassing this world and seeing the truth which is BEYOND IT. And that means what you are "falling in love with" as you wake up, isn't the FALSE world, it's HEAVEN! You are starting to become able to SEE REALITY, and it is WHERE the beauty, light, and love are. Your ability to SEE IT, "in" the world, overlaid on the world, is what makes the world seem lovely. But it is HEAVEN that you are in love with, not an illusory world of forms. Proven here:

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while (the false world/physical world)...The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?...Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are ***not deceived by what they see*** (not tempted, not believing in the world)....Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream***, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Unity, is reality. Unity, is heaven. Unity is the ACTUALLY REAL WORLD of Heaven. The Kingdom of God. Which is BEHIND the dream world. The dream world is FALSE, as in there is no world. EVERYTHING in the physical world is false. It is all illusion. You are not supposed to try to make it real and keep it and dress it up and turn it into heaven. It is a veil of illusions. It is NOTHING. You are meant to learn to STOP BEING DISTRACTED BY IT, and LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE. Look at ANOTHER WORLD entirely. You are in THIS world, and have to learn to SEE ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND IT.

So the model is quite simple. You're in a seemingly solid room with no windows. You gradually learn to LOOK THROUGH THE WALLS, and start to see ANOTHER WORLD outside of the room. When the walls become totally transparent you will SEE CHRIST and will SEE GOD "in" everything you see (beyond it, not hidden by it), and then ..... when you are ready, you will GET OUT OF THE ROOM. Leaving the room is what takes you BEYOND THE WALLS, and immerses you directly in the REAL WORLD OF HEAVEN that you were SEEING WITH PERCEPTION prior to awakening. You first window shop and SEE reality, then you go BE IN IT. "Gone is perception". And of course there is no real "going" because you simply realize YOU ARE EVERYWHERE and have always BEEN in heaven, and THE ROOM DOES NOT EXIST. The world is gone, reality is your home.

I believe this far more accurately encapsulates what ACIM is saying. I believe there is not one single quote which speaks against this from any perspective. Especially, this BRINGS HEAVEN CLOSER to those who are IN the dream (room), because it means even while you are dreaming, you can to some degree EXPERIENCE heaven through perception. You can SEE HEAVEN while in a body. BUT.... if you want to be totally immersed in it, you have to leave the body, leave the false world, leave the room, and become expanded everywhere. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the son of God." "There is no world."

It still accounts for the two levels which are Reality and Unreality, true and false, light and dark, heaven and hell, God's world and the world you made. These ARE the two levels, not "two ways to perceive a false world." It still incorporates all aspects of perceiving in recognizing that false perception is an inability to see past walls, while true perception overlooks walls and sees what is beyond them. It supports everything said about the ability to SEE REAL STUFF. "Perception can reach everywhere under the guidance of the holy spirit" (even to reality).

It also supports the EXPERIENCES people have had (me included) IN this world such as having visions of God, seeing Christ in others, SEEING love everywhere, etc. AND it still supports the larger model that we are to WAKE UP FROM some kind of dream world to a reality that were were becoming gradually aware of prior to awakening. You can essentially PERCEIVE or "perceptually experience" reality while in a body in this world. BUT if you want the TOTAL communion with God, knowledge, absolute wakening, total reality, WITHOUT perception (because "those who perceive still need healing"), you have to TRANSCEND THE ROOM, and wake up in infinite reality. "Nothing seen, only know." Because then, you no longer have perception, nor do you need it.

Have a think about it. Open your mind. Put aside "traditional" ACIM models. Consider this. I think it unites the two camps quite a lot and it also is wholly inclusive of ALL ACIM STATEMENTS, something which could not be said for the older models. It has to be possible to SEE reality (God/Christ). It HAS to be possible to see what is ACTUALLY the REAL world (heaven). And it HAS to be possible that the world of false perception disappear when ANOTHER world becomes visible. And it has to be possible that there IS another world entirely BEYOND the one that false perception sees. And that means the world you see with true perception is BEYOND this world. It is heaven. It is the Kingdom of God. And "you cannot remain in this world (false world), with this knowledge."

I know this shakes up a LOT of what people have become accustomed to thinking. And I've had to let go of many of my own conclusions in order to get to this. I had made adjustments, justifications, and false conclusions in order to try to make things "fit" before and I see now where that was flawed because it omitted too many quotes and ways of perceiving love and reality while still in a body. I encourage everyone to think about this and see if you feel that it fits and works for you. If not, that's fine. But for me I feel this is the most accurate model of the course I've ever seen. It is so clear-cut and makes so much sense and supports everything.

A major way the ego tempts us to seek outside of ourselves and to not find what we are seeking, is to suggest that the truth really is out there somewhere. The belief that you can actually find it outside of yourself, is simultaneously the belief that it does not exist inside of you.

Establishing that the truth is not IN you already, fully and completely, or that you do not have it, is the entire foundation of the ego‘s thought system. Once this is believed, you will cease looking within for it, and start on a quest, which you might even call a "spiritual journey", attempting to "seek" for the truth.

This seeking can show up as very earnest and well-intentioned and an attempt to find the ultimate spiritual answer. BUT, because you are fundamentally looking in the wrong place, you are guaranteed never to find it.

The ego is very sneaky about this. It will tempt you to believe that reality, and truth, are outside of yourself. This means the entire world is real. It also means the world contains the truth. And this then justifies your seeking IN the world to try to find it. The ego has promised you can succeed at this, but it is utterly impossible. The truth is already inside you, where you are not looking, and where the ego will NEVER have you look.

Looking outside yourself CAN also include finding the truth within a book such as A Course in Miracles. Especially if the FORM of the book seems to be more of a truth than other forms. If the words seem to show symbols which don’t even look like symbols, but look like concrete pieces of the truth itself, which is the ego’s way of turning illusions into reality, you can become quite fixated on picking apart the tiniest nuances of what specific words say, become extremely specific, and pull apart even the tiniest of statements, which completely loses all sense of context and increases your insanity. The truth is NOT THERE!

You will go deeply into the Course words and the form of the words. You will not recognize them as mere symbols twice removed from the truth, and will not acknowledge the Course’s holographic nature. You will instead attempt to turn the Course into a linear, finite, concrete piece of "evidence", an attempt to PROVE that the truth is outside of you.

The result of this is an OBSESSION in trying to find the truth. You will feel compelled by the lack of truth in you. And yet, here‘s the problem. The more you seek for it, the more you dwell on what the Coure says, the more you become obsessed with the exact specific words of a given version, the more you dissect it and analyze it and try to figure out what it means based on its form, the more it will slip through your fingers! And the more you do this, the more desperate you will become, because you continue to fail to truly FIND what it is the ego promised you would find there.

The form of the Course IS NOT THE TRUTH. The truth is an inner experience of direct reality with God. It is not intellectual. It has nothing to do with study. It absolutely has nothing whatsoever to do with quote fests or throwing quotes at people to correct them. It definitely has nothing to do with pitting different FORMS of the course against each other. It’s completely nothing whatsoever to do with what exact words were said, who can find the best citations, or who can use the Course as a weapon.

THE TRUTH IS NOT OUTSIDE OF YOU.

There is nothing so blinding as sight of FORM!

The Course is ONLY there to help point you AWAY from the form of the Course and towards an experience of God, which is already in you, just covered up. The more you obsess over the Course’s words the more you are going to get lost in the intellect. And the more you do that, the more you will believe you are "finding" the truth, and are delusional.

The words are just symbols, *representing* a truth that is quite removed from those symbols. When we fight about which exact words are used where, or what they mean, or what they "say", we’re completely forgetting they are symbols and are trying to break the Course out into some kind of direct truth in its own right. This was never how it was intended. This is an ego trap.

Blocks to awareness of the fact that you are ALREADY WITH GOD need to be removed. That’s all. Period. This is nothing more than the undoing of denial and stopping searching outside yourslf, even within the course, for something which is not there. The Course if understood is telling you to do this. You are supposed to leave the Course behind at some point and go within to God with empty hands! You can’t do this, and you cannot experience the truth, while trying to make yourself RIGHT about what exactly the FORM says or seems to prove. There is NO PROOF in the Course. It’s an illusion.

Go within.

When your body's eyes are looking at forms, which includes ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS, you are blind. Yet the body's eyes CAN ONLY EVER see physical forms.

REASON, sees past ALL FORMS, because it recognizes that all forms are FORMS OF ERROR, and reason recognizes they are an ERROR.

Reason, takes you toward understanding, which is BEYOND PHYSICAL MATTER.

Reason overlookes, forgives, physical matter, and gives you a vision of what matter was trying to OBSCURE, through its forms of error.

Reason does not BELIEVE physical matter. It does not believe what the body's eyes show you.

Since everything the body's eyes see is ALWAYS AN ILLUSION, the idea that NOTHING is something real (there is no world), overlooking what the body's eyes see allows you to SEE SENSE and awaken to the truth.

Unless you see past form - the physical planet - to the truth, you do not understand reality. Because in reality, there is no world.

As Jesus states CLEARLY:

"You can SEE reason. 5 This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. 6 Vision is sense (stuff that 'makes sense'), quite LITERALLY. 7 If it is not the body's sight, it must be understood." (understanding is only found by looking past the body).

"For reason SEES THROUGH ERRORS (errors are forms, physical matter), telling you WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS REAL IS NOT. 4 Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. 5 Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an ERROR." (physical matter is a 'correctable error).

"Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you. 2 SIN IS A BLOCK (to awareness), set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who LOOKS ON IT without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 THE BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT AS SOLID (yes, your fricking EYES are LOOKING AT SIN) granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT (sees through physical matter), because it is an error. 6 The FORM (physical form) it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS from reason's eyes."

"If what the FORM CONCEALS is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. 3 THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND what they were made to see. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT." ... "THESE EYES, MADE NOT TO SEE, WILL NEVER SEE." .... "Only mistakes have different FORMS (physical forms), and so THEY (physical forms) CAN DECEIVE."

"Reason will tell you that IF FORM IS NOT REALITY IT MUST BE AN ILLUSION (physical forms are illusions), and IS NOT THERE TO SEE (there is no world). 5 And if you see IF YOU SEE IT YOU MUST BE MISTAKEN, for YOU ARE SEEING **WHAT CANNOT BE REAL** AS IF IT WERE. 6 What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must PERCEIVE ILLUSIONS (physical matter) as truth. 7 Could it, then, recognize the truth?"

"Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see" (his holiness is beyond physical matter).

While doing a fervent forgiveness process, I started to think of my relationship with God. This is where things get juicy. We might not think of whether we are really loving God because we typically are not aware of God, he's not exactly popping up in front of our faces or coming along to trigger us. But there is certainly a hefty body of emotional and psychological disturbance in between us and Him.

So I started to forgive God, along the lines of looking at what I believed I had done to God, and what I believed God had done to me. This included looking into whether I believed I'd sinned against him, hurt him, offended him, upset him, made him angry, changed him, etc.. and vice versa whether God had ever attacked me, sinned against me, hurt me, rejected or abandoned me, judged me, etc.... all ending up with the firm resolution that no, none of this had occurred. And then once that was out of the way, it's possible to more directly accept atonement and see that God still loves you and finds you innocent and so on... the relationship with God heals.

Jesus told me this was "good", to look into this and forgive God for what I thought He'd done to me, and to forgive myself for what I thought I'd done to him. None of it had really happened or had any truth to it. This was all beautiful and lovely. But you can bet this led to a MAJOR catharsis afterwards. I've found this before as well. If I receive a shit-ton of love from God, it can trigger extremely deep catharsis. We all probably have some deep unhealed shite surrounding our direct relationship with Him, and this stuff has to be brought to light and healed.

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely ***the sense of loneliness and abandonment 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."

All of this stuff has to be healed. Every separated self experiences this automatically. We are all, with egos, experiencing a belief in being abandoned by God, rejected, alone, afraid, unworthy etc. No one is excluded from this. Until atonement is accepted and we are reunited with God we are forced into a state where depression, anxiety, fear, worry, loss, helplessness, misery, suffering, sickness etc are all part of the territory. It's a very deep sense of suffering that keeps God's love at a distance.

Our relationship with God must be healed of all of these horrors and looking directly at these things is not easy. It requires that you "forgive God" and yourself in relation to him, to directly undo the "separation" between you and Him, and thus the separation itself. It's one thing to forgive your brothers, but you MUST also forgive God everything you've ever accused Him of or believed true of Him in error. And make no mistake this can be the biggest emotional hurdle you will encounter because it has been ongoing for many lifetimes, through all worldly experiences, and for the whole time you have been away from home.

Jesus tells us that our perception works like a mirror. Whatever we have inside of us, we project outside, and perceive it reflected back. We are doing this all the time, every second of every day.

We first look within, find our own attitude about ourselves there, and then we project that out and see it. This means in effect that we are really blind to seeing anything out there OTHER THAN ourselves.

If we have guilt in our mind, we will see guilt in others and in the world. If we have innocence in our mind, we will see innocence in others and in the world. This is because the world acts like a mirror and reflects back to us whatever we project onto it, including meaning. This is because it follows the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of the whole.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"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."

If you are not seeing innocence in the world, in which you see there is nothing to forgive because everything is innocent, it is because you yourself are not being innocent. You are looking at the result of what you believe is true about yourself and others.

If you want to see and experience the world in a happier way, in a lighter way, in which the world seems beautiful and kind and lovely, then you have to be beautiful and kind and lovely in your mind.

This is the meaning of:

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."

When you have an awareness of God in your mind, you will project this out and see it reflected back. Then it will seem as though, in the mirror, you are looking at the reflection of God or heaven, because you are putting it there.

This is a fixed rule of how perception works. You do not ever really see something that is true of others or the world that isn't true of you. As in, "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." The guilts and offences and blames and stuff that you see in the world are yours, projected.

You are always looking at yourself!

If the world seems lacklustre, your mind is lacklustre. If the world seems dark and evil, you are being dark and evil. If the world seems sparkling and new, you are being sparkling and new. If others seem sinful and guilty and hated, you are hating yourself and regarding yourself as sinful and guilty.

As we progress with the course we're meant to be getting to a point where we see the world with so much forgivingness - ONLY because we have forgiven OURSELVES - such that we see the forgiven world. The forgiven world is beautiful and lovely and new, seen in the present FROM a state of mind that is lovely and beautiful and new.

"From my holiness does the perception of the real world come."

Similarly the eyes of christ look out upon the world and SEE christ reflected back. This is because Christ is in the mind FIRST, and then is projected and reflected. By being aware of heaven in your mind within, you see the reflection of heaven on earth. This is STRICTLY how it works - this is the functional mechanics of perception.

What you believe you perceive. It's not about "believing your eyes" or "I will have to see it to believe it." It's the other way around - what you BELIEVE you will SEE. We are meant to see this world and the bodies through beautiful forgiving eyes, which see them as beautiful and forgiven.

We are meant to see from holiness and innocence within, so that we will see holiness and innocence without. So if we're not seeing that, we're not being that and we have work to do within ourselves in our mind healing. You can't see what you're not willing to be.

"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."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."

"And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves."

"By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts."

"The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth."

"It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes."

"Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world!"

"The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world."

"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."

"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."

We do not want to LOOK AT the fact that there is a NEED for healing. We actually are in denial that something HAS gone wrong, and that healing is necessary. And instead we have covered it up with a belief that NOTHING is wrong, or little, and healing is NOT needed.

Jesus describes here for example that we are afraid to look at our inner altar to realize that it HAS been defiled, and that we DO need healing, because we're frightened of the idea that something has gone wrong. But by looking at this fact with the Holy Spirit and through atonement, you can see only the need for healing as a call for healing, and thus for the restoration of the altar.

"The reason why the real vision is obscured is because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the altar has BEEN defiled, this fact becomes doubly dangerous unless it IS perceived. This perception is totally non-threatening because of the Atonement. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

He talks elsewhere as well about how we do not want to ADMIT that we have BELIEVED that we are separate from God, and now find ourselves in a state which seems to embody and symbolize that separateness. That we DO believe we are NOT with God. And that we need to be willing to look at this horrifying truth in order to ALSO be willing to correct it.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

This runs contrary to what many people say and teach, that "the separation has not happened". This is false. THE separation is a term for the fall of man and the tiny mad idea, which is an actual thought we DID have and DID choose to believe in and tried to make real to ourselves. THAT happened, even if actual real separation is impossible. And now we find ourselves in a FALSE experience of a world in which we SEEM to be separate and believing it's real. THAT is happening. But it's not ultimate reality, in which real separation is impossible.

But we have to be willing to admit that this HAS occurred, that something HAS seemingly gone wrong, we HAVE mis-created an entire world, we HAVE identified with fake bodes, in order to also acknowledge that there IS a need for healing. People ARE calling out for love. Miracles ARE needed.

This is something that is coming to my awareness strongly at the moment, the great NEED that there is in the world, in EVERYONE, for healing and help. Only by admitting that this IS the situation we're in, can we be willing to BE helped, and to be OF help to others.

There is also a great blindness that many people have of not wanting to ADMIT that they are suffering. A great tolerance for pain. A great denial that anything is even wrong. That they are not happy. That they are sick and dying, or seeming to. This is partly because of the tremendous confusion and thought-system reversal which has interfered with our ability to RECOGNIZE what is actually happening - what situation we ARE in - what we HAVE done to ourselves, and the NEED we have for healing and correction.

In other words, no-one wants to admit that they DO believe they have tried to destroy themselves, others, and God, because looking at this would seem to imply guilt. But looking at it honestly without egoic reactions allows you to also see the call for Atonement, and the REASON why there is a great crusade to eradicate all lack of love - of God - everywhere.

For me, this recognition is starting to take the shape of feeling like I'm on a mission. The amount of atonement I have so far received is revealing a desire NOT to tolerate the "lack of love" (guilt, sickness, fear, death) in myself and others. To side only with God and his laws and truth. It's creating a compassion for the plight that ALL of God's separated children are finding themselves in, not just in ACIM circles but worldwide. The sheer EXTENT of the fall of man and the sheer extent of the world's insanity. ONLY by looking at this can you acknowledge just how much help IS needed, which then COMPELS you to be helpful.

"Only the sick NEED healing. The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."

"Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

"It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT unreal."

"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."

For many years I have thought that there are kind of 3 states. There is false perception, then true perception, then heaven. And this is kind of true, and some aspects of ACIM support this.

However, what there really is are just two states. Heaven and hell, reality and illusions. Life and death. Knowledge and Perception.When we think about true perception it's easy to think of it as a state in and of itself. But we need to remember we're talking about PERCEIVING. And that means it's much more to do with "looking at" something.

If you ask yourself, what does false perception LOOK AT, it really kind of looks AT itself. Because false perception IS an internalized, isolated, exclusive state, where perception feeds upon itself and is blinded by form. It does not really see anything, and it cannot see reality. It is selfish and self-deceptive. It's like an obsession with itself, a closed perception that does not see.

When you then look at what the course says about true perception, it's much more to do with NOT dwelling on itself. NOT dwelling on the body. Looking BEYOND illusion. Overlooking. Seeing past. And there is a great deal of evidence that it entails an ability to literally SEE reality. To see God, Christ, the Sonship, perfection, etc, which are IN heaven.

The more I look into it the more it makes sense. Perception is about "what you look at" or how you look at it. Yes you have states of mind - for example wrong mindendess (or closed mindedness) produces false perception. While open mindedness or miracle/right mindedness produces true perception. But from these seeming "states" or the states from which perception EMITS, perception itself LOOKS and is a form of vision. So it needs something to look AT. So let's say...

False perception LOOKS AT HELL.

True perception LOOKS AT HEAVEN.

While there seem to be two "states of mind" within dreaming, ie wrong-mindedness and right-mindedness, really when it comes to perception there is either "the inability to see reality' (per the body which cannot really see reality), and the vision of christ which can see christ. "Love looks upon love" etc.

If wrong mindedness CAUSES perceptual blindness and an inability to see PAST the illusions of falseness itself, right mindedness CAUSES vision and an ability to see PAST illusions. The only thing that is BEYOND illusions, is GODS KINGDOM.

This seems to in many cases line up with what the course says and in its wording, as to how "the real world" is a PERCEPTION OF THE KINGDOM. That the innocence can see God. That perception can even see "the real world" (heaven) under the holy spirit's guidance. That you can see the face of christ, who is in heaven. etc.

So again I come back to, false perception being like living in a prison cell inside a room with no windows. And true perception is like living in a glass greenhouse where you can see THROUGH the walls and see the outside environment (heaven). The PERCEPTION OF the real world - the perception OF heaven, using perception TO see, is still an illusion. "The real world still is but a dream"... BUT, it IS a perception ABOUT heaven - reality. And it is so close to true sight that it makes crossing over to reality easy. It's like window-shopping then going inside the store.

I don't really see anything that contradicts this model. In fact I see MORE contradictions in the model that true perception is "cut off from heaven" completely. As though, we're hiding inside a completely dark room the whole time with NO ACCESS whatsoever to reality, and only upon leaving the room AFTER true perception do we experience even a hint of God. This seems to fly in the face of so much of what the course says, about you bringing light to the world, a reflection of heaven on earth, how earth can reflect heaven's light, how the light of heaven can shine into the world, how love of God can shine into the world, etc. Heaven clearly LEAKS INTO the dream realm through its radiance. That's how you be the light of the world.

I am finding that this simpler model of "two states", heaven and hell, or reality and illusions, makes things a lot SIMPLER to deal with. We can just look to "what is true in reality" versus "illusions which are false". Or look to God's laws and the nature of the soul, versus the laws of the world and the nature of the ego. It's a much easier comparison, between opposites.

We can also then see that forgiveness really is about overlooking illusions entirely, looking BEYOND them, and there's nothing beyond them but reality. So forgiveness, ie atonement as acceptance of truth, is really about reaching out to heaven from WITHIN the dream. Sitting in the dream with goggles on, looking out beyond the walls of spacetime, to heaven... which is truly "the real world". A reality.

This also then makes more sense in terms of how the course says that God gave the real world to his son.... if the real world is a state in the middle of two other states, it would imply god created the real world to be a permanent creation, which it cannot be.

The quesiton then becomes much easier to think about. Are you aligning with God, or with ego? With life or with death? With light or darkness? With truth or lies? And as you APPRAOCH total alignment with truth you are still within the realm of perception, up until the end, when you cross over into heaven completely. This is akin to walking towards the transparent walls, then passing through the door into the reality of the kingdom beyond.

It's then not so much to do with trying to aim to enter a state of forgiveness or atonement, but that you want to become ABLE TO SEE REALITY, to see past this world to the Kingdom. This also reveals that "it its impossible to see two worlds" and "beyond this world there is a world I want" ties into wanting the Kingdom, or at least a perception of it, NOT some kind of pretend "in-between" state. An inbetween state has no meaning of its own and is logically unsupported. It means nothing other than to say it LOOKS AT one of two opposites. There is either the Kingdom or not the Kingdom, there is nothing else.

Does forgiveness look upon something which is love, and love it? Or does forgiveness look upon something which is NOT love, and love it?

Does it look upon the world in a loving way in the belief that the world IS love, and that you are being forgiving by treating it correctly?

Or does it look upon the world in a loving way, in the belief that the world was NOT made with love, and therefore needs to BE forgiven due to its unloving nature?

We are told that only illusions can be forgiven, and that what you forgive will disappear. This means the TARGET of the forgiveness disappears. The illusion IS the target.

"Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can BE forgiven, and then they disappear."

If our relationship to the world is that we are going to be "forgiving toward it", then we are not really understanding A Course in Miracle's definition of forgiveness. It is not the same as "loving something real."

We think in ego terms that if we are being "more forgiving" toward a person we are being more loving towards them. Because the ego can only think in terms of enemies or allies.

But you don't really forgive the loving nature of the enemy, you forgive the illusions of them sinning. The TARGET of the forgiveness is that which is sin.

You can only forgive sin. You cannot forgive love. If you confuse forgiving something with loving something, you have performed a distorting twist to what forgiveness is FOR.

Forgiveness doesn't mean "love everything." It means UNDO ERROR. Just as it is the same thing as atonement - the undoing of error.

Thus forgiveness is FOR the UNDOING of whatever is not real or true. It is NOT for facing that which is real and created by God and worshipping it.

We are not tasked with "forgiving God" in order to love God, as though being forgiving toward God means loving him. Nor are we tasked with forgiving the world in the sense of having a special-love relationship with the world.

We're meant to use forgiveness by targetting it AT ERRORS, at things which are mistakes or illusions, causing them to disappear. It is not used to target REAL things. We cannot make real things disappear.

In this sense we do not use forgiveness to "forgive the world." And the world becoming forgiven does not mean that we regard it as reality or as God's creation. It means it is recognised as an error or illusion and is undone.

To forgive is to take away distortions from what you are looking at. But this is kind of the anti-thesis of love in a way. The forgiving isn't a DOING of loving a thing, it's an UNDOING of what it is not.

When you undo what it is not, you reveal what it actually is. And this means that forgiveness reveals the truth about something. But this truth COULD BE that the thing is not reality, that in and of itself it is not a creation of God. Forgiveness can show you that the world is not real.

When we start confusing forgiveness with "looking at love itself", rather than "looking lovingly at whatever is there"... we are caught in the ego's distortion. Forgiveness is for the cancellation of the separation and the undoing of the planet, not for its worship.

Forgiveness is recognition. A recognition of what something is and is not. It shows you the truth about something. But it doesn't define the nature of WHAT is looked at. It doesn't MAKE something true. Forgiving perception does not CAUSE truth to happen.

Recognizing that the world is not God's created reality and is nothing, is a vital aspect of forgiving it. Because in recognizing it is nothing, it can disappear. This is why anything you forgive must disappear. You cannot forgive the world AND keep it. Forgiving it IS ITS UNDOING.

"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 is 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?" UrU5A5

Quite often while reading the ACIM text I am blown away by Jesus's crystal-clear clarity on various topics. It's like, there couldn't possibly be any way to explain MORE clearly. Last night as I read about forgiveness it was no exception. Immediately I knew I had been misunderstanding parts of it all this time.

The ego's version of forgiveness has you taking a good, clear look at an 'error' and then attempting to overlook it, but you can't overlook it because you've made it real. Looking AT the error is not looking PAST the error. It is not overlooking, it's just looking. Once the error is firmly in our sights, we are holding onto it and maintaining it, so cannot simultaneously transcend it.

What the Course then says is that once we've made errors real - which is the situation we find ourselves in almost all the time and usually this is the state that compels us to want to forgive - we will be tempted to believe that we have to "UNDO what we have MADE in order to be forgiven". We made the illusion, we invented it, we believed in it, we have faith in it, and if it is real then we have to undo what we made in order to forgive. So then we start to set about trying to UNDO the thing that seems to be upsetting us. But we can't undo it that way because our belief in it holds it firmly in place.

The Course goes onto to describe Holy Spirit's forgiveness. It says simply and clearly, that Holy Spirit is ALWAYS overlooking all errors, and DOES NOT SEE ERRORS, in a pro-active manner - fore-giving, SO THAT errors will not ARISE, and so that they therefore do not need to be later 'undone'. The Holy Spirit does not make errors real in the first place. He does not `make` illusions. And so to Him, there IS no error. This is where it becomes paradoxical. The Holy Spirit forgives constantly in order that there is nothing to forgive. He fore-gives, ahead of the need to address an error, so that no errors arise whatsoever. He therefore has a 'forgiving attitude' which is incapable of registering error whatsoever. This is why HIS forgiveness is "quiet, still, looks and does not judge, and does nothing".

So the Course is describing these two types of forgiveness. Ego forgiveness which tries to undo things it's made real and cannot, vs Holy Spirit's forgiveness which HAS NOT made things real and so is permanently overlooking all errors in the knowledge that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. The Course also says that the ego attempts to take over control of all activities, and this is why the ego thinks IT is the one who has to do forgiveness. But the Course also says, Forgiveness is the HOLY SPIRIT's function. Holy Spirit constantly is forgiving in order not to have anything to forgive. OUR function is different.

The error I have made is in thinking that I am the one that forgives - as the ego - who has made errors real and now attempts to do something to/about them in order to make them go away. Holy Spirit is the light which actually shines so brightly that there is nothing to forgive.

So, then I found myself asking, how then does one transition from being in the ego and `needing to forgive` or `needing to undo` due to seeing something that seems real, to aligning with Holy Spirit's viewpoint which is that ALL IS FORGIVEN already in a pro-active, preventative way. How do I go from maintenance and cleanup after observing a mess, to proactive preventative measures. How do I go from 'attack it with the course' to 'nothing happened'.

Somehow I have to get my mind to ALIGN with Holy Spirit's way of looking at things, so that I can see that all is forgiven. But while I'm believing that something has gone wrong and I need to do something, THOSE beliefs are actually preventing forgiveness. The truth is that nothing has really happened and nothing has gone wrong, and its my believing in the reality of the error that IS the error. Its an error in my forgiveness. I have to get my mind to change its viewpoint away from 'I need to forgive this because it's happened', to, 'I am forgiven because this HAS NOT HAPPENED'.

This is kind of along the same lines as "I recognize we are both forgiven for what we HAVE NOT done", which is the viewpoint of Holy Spirit. The ego's version of forgiveness is very misleading and distracting. I see them now as two wavelengths, the lower wavelength of ego mired in illusions of illusions, and the higher wavelength of Holy Spirit floating above everything knowing there are no real illusions.

The process of 'transitioning' from an ego viewpoint to the Holy Spirit's viewpoint seems to what we call 'applying forgiveness'. We try to 'not do' (undo) the WAY OF SEEING that was producing a view of error, recognizing we must be mistaken if we believe there even IS a real error. Holy Spirit said to me we need to "withdraw" our conviction and belief that the error is real in every way, so that we can move towards the atonement viewpoint, which says nothing happened. Holy Spirit sees WITH the atonement.

One thing I always was mistaken about is when I heard that Holy Spirit perceives, I always thought it meant he perceives illusions, therefore he can see all of our errors etc. But the Course has clarified that Holy Spirit only sees clearly by OVERLOOKING all errors and NOT seeing them. He perceives, but he perceives with total right-mindedness, proactively forgiving and looking pass all errors to The Face of Christ. Sort of, `in` the world but not of it. This was my mistake because I thought he saw the errors as well. The EGO is the one that sees errors, and the ego is IN the world. This separation of roles and perspectives has really clarified things for me as to WHO is doing the forgiving and WHO is holding the appropriate perspective.

The only area now where I have some questions, and I'm sure continued reading of the Text will reveal more... is in.... through what seeming 'process' or 'steps' do we transition our mind away from the ego's version of forgiveness to the Holy Spirit's. When I'm in the ego I do not understand forgiveness and I apply 'something' but it isn't Holy Spirit's version. When illusions are particularly strong I believe heavily that the problem is separate and that IT needs to be changed by throwing Course at it. That's totally ego. But that's the starting point. That's not HOW I need to forgive, it's the KIND of forgiveness that I need to learn NOT to do. If I see a house on fire, my forgiveness should be - there is no house on fire, 'how can I forgive this burning house'.

I'd always thought that the process of 'undoing' and of 'correcting' and of trying to shift toward Holy Spirit WAS forgiveness... even the goodie-two-shoes student approach of APPLYING the Course ... but that apparent 'process' is not forgiveness itself. Forgiveness is the Holy Spirit's view which is always the same. Whether I JOIN Holy Spirit in His view is the question/decision. And if it takes time TO join with Him, it seems like that 'journey' toward Holy Spirit is a forgiveness process, but it's more of a ... 'realization that nothing needs to be forgiven' process. A process of correction. Holy Spirit IS the source of correction because He sees CORRECTLY. My (ego) attempt to `do` the forgiving and to become forgiven and to get to where I see that it IS forgiven, is really my struggle between allegiance to ego and allegiance to truth. That's where the 'work' seems to be needed and surrender needs to happen, SO THAT I can get to where I can SEE clearly that 'all is forgiven' already - ie that all is looked upon WITH forgiving eyes and sees only Christ.

(I'm not sure if I'm explaining clearly what exactly has become clearer for me 'overnight'. .. more to follow)

There is no world - one of the hardest things to accept. There is no error, there is no problem, there is no ego.

Thank you Jesus for your unceasingly clarity and for sharing it with us!

False perception means you are looking at something in such a way that you do not recognize what it is.

If the thing you're looking at is false, your mind will think it's true.

If the thing you're looking at is true, your mind will think it's false.

Although it's called false perception, this can be misleading because it makes it sound like it only focuses on falseness. But being a "false" perception, it's really a state of mind that INVERTS EVERYTHING.

What is true is swapped with what is false. What is false is swapped with what is true. That's all part of "perceiving falsely." Perhaps it would be better to call it inaccurate perception or mistaken perception.

If the world itself were a reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem unreal. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

If the world itself were NOT reality, an inaccurate perception would make it seem real. An inaccurate perception would distort whatever the world is, and show it to you as it is not.

So being in false mistaken perception doesn't inherently tell you whether the world itself is real or not. It only tells you whether you are in a state of mis-perceiving or not. Whether your mind is distorting or not, inaccurate or not, or deceived or not.

However, Jesus does refer to false perception in contrast to true perception. Perception is "true", or correct and accurate, when it is lining up more closely with facts and isn't introducing mistakes. A truer perception becomes somewhat transparent and stops interfering with what's being perceived. It kind of gets out of the way and reveals something "as it is", rather than interpreted incorrectly.

Nevertheless, even a true perception does not tell you whether the thing you're looking at is true or false, real or unreal. In and of itself perception does not determine this. All a true perception does is it stops distorting vision and takes a direct undistorting look. Whatever is there, no matter whether it is real or unreal, will be seen more for "what it actually is."

But what something "actually is" does NOT inherently tells us whether the thing actually is true, or actually is false, in its own right. Seeing a world truly does not mean that you automatically are looking at a true world. You can see a false world truly as well. You can see a word of fiction truly, just as you can see a work of non-fiction truly. You can see a fake world just as accurately as you can see a real world.

So at no time does perception actually tell us in any way, WHETHER or not the world is INHERENTLY real. It does not tell us if the world is genuine. It doesn't tell us if it is God's creation. And it doesn't tell us whether the thing perceived is really there.

Part of this comes from the fact that "projection makes perception". This means that you in fact have to PROJECT something out first, in order to perceive it. And you can only perceive WHAT you project. And you perceive it because you believe in it, and WANT it to be there. You look within at what is inside of you, and you project it out, and perceive its projection, which REFLECTS back to you like a feedback loop and you perceive it. This is why Jesus says:

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Perception does not cause anything, it does not define whether what you perceive is real, it does not give us any facts, and it does not prove whether the world is real or unreal. All it shows us is WHAT WE ARE GIVING, and what we therefore are CHOOSING TO SEE. And we see whatever we WANT or wish to see, projected out, because WE PUT IT THERE to see.

The question then becomes, do you actually ever perceive "an objective world", in its own right, in its own nature, or do you ONLY perceive what you project ONTO it? And how is it that you can project something onto it in the first place?

If the world were, let's say, completely real and God created, it should not be possible to project ANYTHING onto it at all. It should not be possible to modify it, define it, shape it, interpret it, or in any way have anything to do with "what is there." God by his will has put a world there and it would then be our job to accept it as it is and know it and be one with it. It would not be possible to "project perception".

That it IS possible to project perception onto "this world", the world we recognize as Earth etc, tells you that this world cannot have any INHERENT MEANING of its own. It has to be able to reflect what you project, and it can only reflect it because it is neutral. It is neutral only because it is nothing, and being nothing it has no inherent truth of its own. How could you project false things onto it, OR true things onto it, if it had ITS OWN truth? Its own truth would fight with and block anything you tried to give it.

Perception therefore really hints at us to realize that "there is no world apart from what you wish." There is no world apart from what you give to the world. There is no objective world out there. What we're projecting onto is an emptiness and an illusion, not a reality. What we're perceiving things IN is a mirror. We only see what we put there, otherwise there would be nothing TO see.

Note that perception is feedback, and it is a feedback from what was projected out.. True perception is less distorting that false perception, and could potentially become more transparent, to where it could "see past" what is projected to the underlying inherent nature of the world. To see it for what is actually there. But if there isn't something real actually there, true perception should also reveal that the world is unreal.

We need to realize that true perception does not mean that you see "the truth" as if it is the objective truth. It means that you are seeing in a "true way", such that WHATEVER you see won't be distorted. You are projecting an idea of love which makes the least amount of distortion or misinterpretation.

Seeing truly is only accurate vision, which DOES NOT IN ANY WAY indicate whether WHAT you look upon with it is, in and of itself, actually true or false. True perception can just as easily look upon a FALSE WORLD, and recognize "the truth that" it is a false world. True perception is not "blindness" to what is false, and we must not confuse WHAT is seen with HOW it is seen. You can look truthfully upon and lie and recognize it is a lie, just as much as you can look truthfully upon something that is inherently true in and of itself. True perception DOES NOT tell us whether the world is really there or not!

You can see that perception really has absolutely nothing to do with establishing whether or not this world exists, whether God created it, whether what you see is true and real, or what the inherent nature of the world is. Even if you see love in it, even if you see reality in it, even if you see God reflected in it, it STILL does not prove that the world is objectively real. Beyond what you GIVE to the world, or what you MAKE OF it, you have literally NO IDEA whether the world is really there or not.

True perception can potentially show you "what is there", but it doesn't of itself tell you what "it is." True perception is just as capable of showing you that THE WORLD IS FALSE.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in."

"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."

"Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you ARE denying Him."So you can PERCEIVE something God CREATED, which is in heaven?

"ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part. ... The Holy Spirit enables you to PERCEIVE THIS WHOLENESS NOW."

These statements clearly tell you that you are able to PERCEIVE the contents of heaven. To perceive Christ. To perceive Creation.

This doesn't mean that perception is the same as knowledge. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it". But this again implies that you CAN perceive the truth - and God is truth.

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind?" should perhaps read "I can use perception to perceive God."

"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. Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. Yet no perception, however holy, will last forever."

I did a very in-depth study of EVERYTHING that ACIM says about "the real world". It seemed ultimately very clear that the real world is a little removed from heaven itself. e.g "The real world still is but a dream."

It also became clear that there is such a thing as perceiving the "face of Christ". Yet.... Christ is in heaven, so are you not perceiving heaven?

I STILL keep coming back to this idea, that the real world, the reflection of heaven, the face of christ, the perception of truth, perceiving God, seeing the Son of God, etc.... is in some manner... YOU LOOKING AT HEAVEN, but THROUGH the filter of perception.

This would seem to make more sense in terms of the "real world" being used a a term (which is not the same as the forgiven world). The forgiven world is the overlooked ILLUSORY world (earth etc), while the real world is the PERCEPTION or vision of reality. Appropriately named "real" as in, it reflects reality or is "true". True perception can perceive the truth.

We know that the real world is a "borderland of thought" in between the illusory world and heaven. Just outside the gates. But we also know it is so much on the 'border' of the illusory world of dreams that it is practically outside of it and beyond the VEIL of illusions, which was covering the face of Christ. ie it IS the face of Christ.

It makes more sense also to say that the FACE of christ, is the PERCEPTION of Christ (which is not the same as the KNOWLEDGE of Christ). And that the real world isn't just some static state, but is you looking AT heaven through perception.

"You will first dream of peace (heaven) then awaken to it."

I continue to come back to this idea that the "real world" really is a kind of "window shopping" into heaven. Like looking into heaven from the outside, from a vantage point of separation. Because "perception is a separated state." It is like an IMAGE or a photograph of heaven. A reflection in a mirror. Just once removed slightly from the actual thing.

It's appropriate to then say that the REAL real world is heaven, and "the real world" we PERCEIVE through interpretation, is "the real world" ie the light seen through the filter of consciousness. This is also why ACIM says that "nothing there but shines and shines forever" and that everyting in the real world IS ETERNAL.

If eternal means PERMANENT, the real world HAS to be a perception OF that which is permanent (heaven)... even though the real world "state of mind" ITSELF is temporary, because it's happening via perception. So what you see in true perception is heaven, eternity, but through a judgement/interpreration based way of seeing, which is itself removed from the direct experience.

In the first quote above, it is implied that you CAN see things that God created. I also did a very deep study of all terms relating to VISION, and SEEING within heaven, and there is very strong evidence that congition is able to SEE... the mind can SEE... in reality. This seeing isn't PERCEPTION, which is an interpretative function and a substitute for knowledge. "Nothing there is perceived, only known."But knowing, cognizing, is a direct awareness of what is really there. e.g. "The soul never leaves the SIGHT of God." And we're told many times that Christ lends us HIS EYES. There is a whole lot of material about being able to see in reality, without a need for perception. There, seeing is KNOWING what is there.

We should then perhaps think of "the real world", aka the face of christ, or the "interpretative image of heaven", as an actual PERCEPTUAL experience of the Kingdom. It's not quite the same as being IN the Kingdom or KNOWING it, but it is very closely correlated. "Those who perceive still need healing."

And as another quote says, perception can reach ANYWHERE under the Holy Spirit's guidance. That should include being able to perceive the Kingdom. And how would the Holy Spirit look upon CHRIST, given Christ is IN the Kingdom?

There is a curious line, like this, for example, which perhaps is literal, relating to seeing gardens and endless dancing brooks..."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 (knowing heaven), 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."

It also clues you in that when the course talks of "you cannot see both worlds" and "beyond the world there is a world I want" etc... it's ACTUALLY referring to the comparison of Earth vs Heaven, but it saying that you can at first PERCEIVE heaven using vision/true perception, THEN go there. ie the perception of the real world is not like an internal vision inside a closed box where you see the interior walls, like its own 'state'. It's actually like a GLASS ROOM where you can perceive heaven beyond it, so clear that it's almost like being there.

So what if, false perception shows you the unforgiven world, earth. .... true perception renders the false world untrue and forgiven, recognized as an illusion, overlooked, and seen beyond, and true perception/christ vision also allows you to look to the LIGHT of heaven beyond the world, to christ and God, which you first perceive, then know. ie we're being asked to see the IMAGE or REFLECTION of heaven, using perception, before we cross over into it.

If we say that seeing the face of Christ, is really a use of perception from WITHIN the realm of perception, INSIDE the separation, LOOKING OUT BEYOND the separation at heaven OUTSIDE the bubble of spacetime and matter, then the true perception we are cultivating is really an ability to SEE Christ, who is OUTSIDE the dream, FROM the inside. The veil of matter becomes invisible, like a glass room, allowing you to look OUTSIDE its walls.

This renders "the real world" - a perception - not as simply some kind of "inbetween state", where all it sees is its own content, but rather than it is a PERCEPTION of reality, seen from a separated vantage point, but with such clarity and accuracy and openness that it is like peering into heaven itself. There is no perceptual function IN heaven (where you have true sight), but there is a perception OF heaven from the outside looking in.

And so forgiveness brings the ability to SEE truth, reality, love, light, heaven, holiness, christ, God, peace, perfection, etc."The miracle perceives everything (in heaven) as it is. If nothing but the truth (heaven/reality) exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. I have said that only what God creates or what you create with the same Will has any real existence. This, then, is all ***the innocent can see*** (can see perfection, which is in heaven). They do not suffer from distorted perception."

You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"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."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

If you believe in sickness, just in general, you will become sick. But that's not the end of it. You'll believe other people are sick too, even if they aren't. And that means that your belief in sickness attempts to MAKE other people sick.

If you believe in attack, just in general, you will believe you are attacking. But that's not the end of it. You'll believe everyone else is attacking too. And you'll believe they're just as justified in attacking as you believe you are. Your belief in attack attacks other people by portraying them as wanting to attack you.

If you believe in guilt, just in general, you will believe you are guilty. But that's not the end of it. You'll believe that everyone is also guilty. You will perhaps think only they are guilty and not you, but you can't believe that this applies to them without it applying to you also. Your believe in your own guilt is an attempt to make others guilty also.

It happens this way because we all share One mind and One identity. What applies to any part of the "Sonship" applies to every single part of it equally. This is a whole different way of looking at rules than the ego uses. Either we are all guilty, or we are all innocent. Either everyone is to blame, or nobody is to blame. Either everyone is attacking, or nobody is attacking. There is no separating out of different people having different rules or evaluations that apply to them, separate from you.

The ego is different in that it applies SEPARATION, between you and others, creating an illusion that what applies to them does not apply to you because it's different. So now they are attacking, but you're not. Or they're guilty but you're not. Or they're sick but you're not. Or you're sick but its not attacking them. Or that your guilt is in isolation. Or that you're only attacking yourself. This is the ego's thought system of division, keeping you separate from others.

If you're in this kind of thinking - that what applies to you doesn't apply to others and vice versa, then you are definitely in the ego's mindset.

Looking at what's true in the SHARED Holy Spirit mindset will help you to get out of it. If I think someone else is guilty but I'm not, I have to admit, I believe in guilt and I must believe *I* am guilty in order to accuse them of my own sin. So I have to own up to that and take responsibility for believing I am guilty... and get that corrected. It's not true. I'm innocent, AND SO ARE THEY. This is you returning to the sonship as a whole.

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.

We continually look for meaning outside of ourselves. We look for salvation outside of ourselves. We look for ourselves outside of ourselves. We look for love outside of ourselves. We look for happiness outside of ourselves.

And we do not find it.

Because it is not outside of ourselves.

And yet we are very very very used to having these thought processes where we start to hunt around for explanations, to find reasons and meanings, to justify things, to rationalize why something is right or wrong, all trying to lend some kind of credibility to the external world.

We're trying to bring a sense of "reality" or "truth" to what is actually an illusion that doesn't really exist.

We're looking in all the wrong places for meaning, and love, and salvation, and happiness. But we're so used to doing this that over and over again we'll just keep going through these same processes of trying to figure things out, trying to understand the world, trying to explain why stuff happens, trying to identify external causes, etc. None of it is true.

Nothing in the world is true. The world is not truth. Only God's Creation is truth. Everything you see in FORM is not true, no matter whether it looks like totally right or totally wrong, or completely convincing or not. Even things in the physical world which seem like proof or the best more reliable evidence is NOT created by God and it is NOT THE TRUTH.

So you'll keep looking out there, searching and not finding, trying to discover truth where it does not exist. Trying to identify why bad stuff is happening. Trying to justify why its better to do one thing or another. NONE OF THEM ARE THE ANSWER.

No matter how the physical world of form looks, no matter what it contains, no matter whether it appears favorable or unfavorable, regardless of whether it is glaring you in the face with "hard evidence", EVEN THAT is not the truth.

Even if you come up with a medical diagnosis which accurately seems to explain someone's sickness, EVEN THAT is not the truth. It's the ego's truth, and its a partial truth at best. Because nothing in the world is a CAUSE of anything.

God is the only Cause, and you as Son of God are equal Cause. And you are NOT at the effect of this world IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER. Which means, there is absolutely nothing in this world which causes anything, no matter how it looks, and if it looks otherwise, IT IS AN ILLUSION.

"I am not at the effect of the world I see." - ACIM

Means... there are literally zero causes in the world. Zero answers. Zero explanations. Zero objective truths. Zero proof. Zero evidence.

God, and I as One with Him, are the only cause that is real.

Please forgive me if this message isn't well formed because I think I am going to express something that is sort of 'new' to me and I am not well into it yet.

Love has been coming to me... the possibility of love... the possibility of being loving toward other people in general. Its a change in my attitude about others. Part of this seems to involve realizing that I've been doing all this healing and forgiveness work on 'myself' with... lets be honest... a somewhat selfish intention. I mean, even though it's a spiritual path and all that, it's always been about me healing myself, me forgiving for my own benefit, me applying the Course to get myself to feel better, etc. And now... this 'me' part doesn't seem as much the focus, or as important. And instead, I'm starting to let real LOVE come through me, and its starting to become about - sharing that love.

I'll also be honest in telling you that I generally have not really felt loving towards most people for a long time. Whether its a remnant of childhood suffering or a personality thing or whatever I've accepted, or maybe I've just been pretty normal/typical all this time and nobody could really expect more. ... but I'm finding now, there IS more. There is the possibility of not just being another one of many strangers that pass each other and barely acknowledge each other, but rather of actually LOVING PEOPLE.

Now, this is where it gets really fascinating for me at the moment. I've been finding that.. experimenting with. .. the idea that, if I attempt to be loving toward people instead of how I normally would be around them, it is significantly changing my perception. And I'm not talking about some lofty aim like 'see the christ in everyone' and I'm like 'what the fuck is christ?'... it's simply.. .just fricking love them.

Normally around most people, especially strangers, I will become guarded and shy and quiet really quickly. Its a defense mechanism thing, usually triggered by the slightest observation that there is something about the person that is unsafe/unloving. What I did not know, however, all this time, is that the unsafely and unloivingness that I see in people - the triggers - is actually the result of ME not looking at them WITH love. I've always been looking at people with... well, the ego... and seeing the ego reflected back. And now this idea is popping in, why not try instead to extend love and be loving toward them, and see how that feels

Well... when I decide to do this, which is usually after I notice that I just lapsed into zombie mode, something really unexpected happens. I don't feel afraid. It's like, all of the basis for my 'social anxiety' is because I perceive without love and therefore see a lack of love and I see it as an attack. So... if I CHOOSE to see WITH love, then I actually see ONLY love, and I don't even see any reason not to love. It's like, all of the 'reasons' for fear are just not even there. I can't detect them, they don't appear, they don't register. Somehow the love makes me feel safe and prevents me from even perceiving that I can be attacked. If I'm looking WITH love, then it shows me love. If I look with attack, I see attack. And I didn't realize how used I've become to seeing 'with attack' all of the time, such that I thought it was normal, and that people out there 'really are' threatening... when in fact, there is another way to experience it.

I always struggled with this. You have no idea. I mean, really high levels of anxiety around strangers, fear of judgement, unsafely, becoming 'spacey' and losing all focus, becoming avoidant, wanting to get the hell out of there, etc. It has taken a LOOOOOONG time to gradually sift through this all to realize that it is ME and MY attitude which SHOWS ME exactly what is IN ME, and I then think it is in the other people, and then I think that this proves WHY I should feel the way I feel. It JUSTIFIES it. Sure, I should be afraid because that person is judging me, or I should be anxious because that person is threatening me, etc... when instead, it was always that I'd projected MY self-attack onto them and was seeing it there.

And now, along comes love. And I mean... not special love of romantic love or whatever... like, real LOVE... love from GOD. Unconditional love. Spiritual love. And if I allow myself to stand in love and to choose to see other people WITH that love, what do I experience? Well... I feel completely safe. The anxiety has no foundation. And even if I'm feeling afraid or anxious, if I choose love, it instantly disappears. And even if people still are behaving in odd ways or looking at me funny or appearing to be rejective or whatever, if I am in a loving place, then I feel completely invulnerable to that, like, I know it can't do anything to me.

The big lesson here is this... and I'm still exploring this and only just STARTING to experiment with this in real situations.... the big lesson is that... when you extend God's love fully to your brother, and just choose to love them instead of any other attitude, ALL you will see is love and lovability and there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. So... this is the TRUTH! In truth, there is no reason for fear because in truth, in love, there is perfect safety. There simple IS no attack. There IS no cause for alarm. There IS no threat.

So this is my 'opening up'... the next phase... realizing that the theology and the thoughts and the figuring out and the Course processes etc are... themselves... just tools to open up the heart to love, and that it is THE LOVE that is actually what we need to BE and express. To love it. To be it. To extend it. To share it. Experientially. Actively. For real. Taking the love to the people. Taking the love and letting it love through me. Letting healing come through me. Letting life come through me. But not for some silly selfish 'oh this is my special spiritual path, don't mind me I'm just over here forgiving myself dutifully and staying separate from everyone'.

Love erases all fear. And of course.. the opposite of love is fear... without love, fear HAS to show up. Once love shows up, love is the LIGHT, and fear HAS to disappear. And it does. It does every time!

Reason to celebrate. Only love is real! And the truth isn't just facts and information and thinking... the truth is FELT.

And what's really surprising to me about God's love is... that... it is being freely offered to me right now without me having to really do anything to earn it... almost as though, I'm jumping right from being in the middle of a long drawn out spiritual path, to the end goal. Like. God loves me NOW... I can be loved NOW... It's very surprising. And it's got nothing to do with thinking about love. It's ACTUAL love. God is love. Not just an idea. Love love love love love love love.

The body does not really do a whole lot. It is an instrument. It cannot really live without you as a host. It doesn't really have a mind of its own, or a will, or power, or causality. It cannot really create anything or make anything happen. It's a medium, a tool, a device, which is to be used. You can pick it up and put it down. Without you it would do nothing.

"A body cannot stay without illusions"

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK."

"the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms." "the body cannot be healed by itself."

The eyes are neutral. As you look around the room the body just reports what's there. It is like you have a video feed coming into you through your face. The eyes just pick up the light signals and pass them on. The eyes themselves are not aware of what they are looking at. They don't judge or decide anything about what they detect, and they don't even "see" what they are picking up because they have no awareness - making them blind. They just faithfully report on what's outside. They are sensors, like a detector, or a scanner.

As you look at different things, or rather, use the body's sensors to detect what is supposedly out there, there is no judgement, there is no meaning, there is no partitioning, there is no accusation, there is only a completely neutral feed of images being transferred. Your eyes are like a camera. They just bring in the data, they don't have any opinion about it at all. It isn't until the mind looks at the data that we start to enter into deciding what something means, our attitude about it and our relationship to it.

It's the mind that "looks at" what the body "looks at". There are therefore two steps in seeing the world. The body sees it first and passes on what it sees. Then the mind looks at the "printout" of what the body has seen. The mind isn't actually looking directly at the world out there. It's looking at the recorded images which have come in through the video stream, through the pipeline of the optic nerves, and which have travelled to the place in the brain where the mind is "attached". And as though on a kind of internal screen, the mind is now looking at the screen on which these images are reconstructed.

This all happens quite effortlessly so it is very easy to be deceived. The body is so non-interfering with sight, unless perhaps the eyeballs or vision apparatus is damaged, that you easily forget that the eyes are even there. This sets up a kind of deception, in which it's very easy to just think that you are looking directly and personally at the physical world. But you in fact are not. You are looking at images which are sent in to you via external sensors on the body's surface, and you are sitting there in the mind, beyond the brain, reading the transmitted images. But you think hey, I am looking at the actual world. No, you're looking at images once removed.

The same happens with sound. The ears do not discriminate as to what they hear. They just hear everything they can. They are like microphones. They pick up and sense the sound vibrations and translate it into a signal, which is sent to the brain, and then it is reconstructed into "sound". And then, the mind listens to the reconstruction, and thinks that it now hears the world. It's almost like the body is a long distance telephone, and it's picking up audio from a world far away, sending the sound along a wire, and now you're at the other end listening in. You're not really out there, in the environment where the sound is picked up, you are removed from it.

All the other body senses have the same properties. They just detect changes and differences and report them to you. You then get to interpret or give meaning to them. Upon receiving the signals your mind could have decided that all the things experienced are absolutely real. That they really exist. As though, because your body sees a car, that there really is a car there. Or because your hands touch the car, that there really is a car there. Or that because you hear the car, the car really must exist. But it's not the body that decides this, nor the brain. It's your mind, on the receiving end of transmissions. It is the mind that decided what it is FOR, or how it USES it.

It is optional, whether you believe in what the body is telling you. It is just a sensory device. In fact, Jesus says in ACIM that the body is not really there to know anything, it is only there to sense. "To sense is not to know." Which means that sensing the world or using physical perception to look at it, is not an act of knowing. It doesn't mean that you know the thing is really out there. It means that your sensors are detecting something and telling you something. And they might be lying.

The problem is, is that the body can lie. Because here you have a physical instrument for detecting things, which can report back that something exists, within the same realm that the body itself inhabits. Which means that the body can also sense itself, can look at and hear and smell and touch itself, and can report back that the body "is really there". But this cannot in any way be reliable. The body is now justifying its own existence and trying to prove itself.

The body can easily lie to you. To rely on an instrument to tell you what really exists, given that the very same instrument is reporting upon its own existence, completely invalidates everything it tells you. It is no longer impartial or neutral, if it is telling you that its own existence has been detected by its own sensors. It is completely biased, then, because it is ALWAYS telling you that physicality is true and real, even if it is not. It is ALWAYS reporting that things exist even if they don't. And if it is going to tell you to trust it when it tells you that its own existence is real, based on its own senses, this is heavily tainted information.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is."

What it comes down to is that your mind is sensing a world using an instrument, whereby the signals you receive and are aware of are once removed from the thing you are sensing. But if you buy into them and forget you are using an instrument, you will act as if it is YOU who is doing the sensing, and thus confuse yourself with the body. This is body identification. It's the failure to recognize that the body is a device for sensing, and is not your self. Since the senses themselves seem "transparent" and have no opinion, and since they report what's there all the time, it's easy to forget that you are even using sensory equipment, and instead believe that you ARE the senses. That the body is YOU who is picking up on the world, and YOU who sees it and hears it. It seems so effortless that you forget you even are using senses, which is extremely deceptive.

The mind is not required to believe anything that the body tells it. When it receives neutral images of a world, it can decide what to do with that image. It can dissect it, it can give meaning to it, it can believe in it, it can choose to react to it, it can remain detached from it, it can judge and condemn and attack it, it can love it, it can ignore it, whatever. But we have to realize that since the senses themselves are effectively neutral, it is US who is giving everything we sense all the meaning that it has. It is US who decides whether you believe what we see, whether it is real, and what truth it holds.

"You have given everything all the meaning it has for you." "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."

So the mind is receiving signals from the outside world, through the body sensors, and gets to decide what to make of them. What meaning they have. All such images are illusions because the world itself is an illusion, and all sensory inputs are actually false, because the world they are reporting on isn't real. The eyes are in fact unable to really see actual reality. They are strapped into a virtual reality headset and are blinded to see only the inside of a tiny box. The body is in fact an interpreter, a translator, and it is fixated on an illusory world which isn't reality in order NOT to see reality. And so everything that it faithfully and neutrally reports, is a lie. What it sees is not really there to see, what it hears makes no real sound. And the sensations it sends to your mind for evaluation are all false.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

It is up to your mind to decide what to make of the signals it is receiving through the body. It is up to your mind to recognize the body cannot really see or hear reality. It is up to your mind to discern that everything the body tells you is happening, is not really happening. It is up to your mind to withdraw all of its dark and twisted and confused meanings, which it projects onto the body's signals, and to instead categorize all body signals as FALSE. It is up to your mind to overlook and not see what the body is telling you is there. And it is up to your mind to recognize the world is nothing but an unreal dream, something to overlook through forgiveness and NOT see, and that BEYOND it is heaven.

"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. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."

"Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sounds. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and UNDERSTOOD. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not THEY that hear and see, but YOU, who PUT TOGETHER every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and MAKE a witness to the world you want."

"Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues."

"Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word. The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone are thought to hear. Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless."

"Rejoice you HAVE no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that ONLY Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them."

"How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

"He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son."

"You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?"

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is."

"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"You strain your ears to hear ITS soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you."

"This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it TELL you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the NAMES you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its reality."

"You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be."

"Here is an image that you WANT to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It GIVES the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. IT PROVES ITS OWN REALITY TO YOU. Thus is the body made a THEORY of yourself, with NO provisions made for evidence BEYOND itself, and NO escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you APART from it."

"The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear? Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness."

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

Physical objects are forms, taking on one form or another, to produce a range of forms. Some of them we call life forms. Others we might call lifeless forms, forms of materials, forms of objects etc.

The body's eyes look at these forms and takes them to be exactly what they are. It looks at the shape, the position, the color, the nature of it, and claims that this is what the form MEANS. It derives meaning from the form based on how the form looks.

A form will then imply something, suggest something, seemingly tell you a truth about itself and its world, as if the form is a cause which has influence and power. And so we look to forms with the body's eyes and ask the form to tell us what the world means.

We see the form of a broken body and we think that this means the body is damaged. We see the form of a puppy and think this means it was recently born and still innocent. We see a rotting apple and think this means death is taking place.

We constantly are sending the body's eyes out to look upon the world, as if the world can then tell us what everything means just by looking at it. If a body is sick we think it means the person is sick. If the body is dead we think life has ended. And we thus allow the world to dictate every sense of meaning.

This has happened, therefore .... that has happened, therefore. ... constantly analysing situations and scenery and coming up with explanations based on what appears in form to be there.

This way of seeing is what we call false perception or unforgiveness. It holds the form against itself and derives meaning from it, suggesting the form is defining meaning from the outside in, telling us a story of truth through perception.

But all we're doing here is failing to overlook the form, we're fixating on differences, emphasising the way one thing is not like another, finding the ways that nothing is shared between them, and trying to elicit meaningfulness from the uniqueness of the objects.

When something then seems to go horribly wrong, there is a severe damage to the body, a car is crashing, a house is on fire, or any other such drama in which form is screaming at us to believe it, if we only look at it based on its form we will be horrified.

Whatever the form dictates we'll take as truth, and will react accordingly. We'll absorb the hierarchy of illusions and have emotional reactions and disturbance based entirely on what the situation appears to be. We can't seem to rest in peace until all the forms have resume their proper arrangement and the bodies have stopped dying and the threats and dangers and pointed spiky things have become blunted.

If all we do is look at the physical world, believing everything we see, not questioning anything, falling for differences and appearances, buying into every little nuance of change and inequality in order to tell what's going on and what it means, we are lost and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as perceiving forms.

Forgiveness asks for an entirely different way of looking at this. It does not mean that you continue to focus on specific, individual, exclusive, separate things, in exactly the same was as before, with the body's eyes, but trying to find some kind of new angle on it. This is not an improvement whatsoever.

Forgiveness actually requires that all the sense of differences, inequalities, uniqueness, shapes, sizes, colors, behaviours, all physical properties, be completely OVERLOOKED, not dwelled upon, not seen, not thought to mean anything, not thought to dictate what the situation is, and no sense of truth whatsoever is derived from them.

Forgiveness must transcend the form entirely and look past it, past all sense of "many separate things" to look for a singular oneness of truth. And that truth is not inherent to those forms, or a part of them, but lies beyond them, because the forms were made to hide the truth entirely and to obscure all meaning. This is why Christ Vision does not become distracted by bodies or forms or the planet and looks past it to the light, to real meaning which lies beyond all objects and all physicality.

When we are buying into the way the world looks, with separate objects vying for attention, objects at war with each other, objects having differences, and being deceived to believe that these differences are important and meaningful, we are not being forgiving. We are being lost in a dream and falling for an illusion.

The appearance of one object seeming to have properties that another object does not have, if regarded as meaning something, is an illusion. It deceives you just by looking at it and not seeing through the disguise. Believing that a bike is not a house and a car is not an airplane, your vision splits apart and separates out and becomes totally fragmented, turning into a hierarchy of illusions instead of a singular vision.

These appearances of different form are all lies and deceptions designed to steer the body's physical sight down a rabbit hole into a dark corner where the mind cannot escape. This is temptation. This is falsely perceiving. This is believing the world is real and that constantly shifting forms and constantly dying objects are somehow the truth.

To forgive we have to find a way to not simply regard "what happens physically" to be in any way true, in any way a whole story, or in any way meaningful. A dark disturbing physical situation should not be seen as dark and disturbing. The darkness and dustrbingness are just properties of its form, the appearance it's taking, and is NOT meaningful.

A bloodied body should not induce feelings of horror and upset, otherwise the form is now acting like a cause and is dictating the truth based on its shape and appearance. A broken body, a disabled body, a suffering person, a scenario of starvation, a warzone, a battlefield, are all deceptive lies in which objects in certain forms suggest that certain things are true, that bad things have happened and that they are real.

Configuraitons of objects are meaningless. The entire physical world is meaningless. Its forms do NOT mean anything at all. Bodies in one state and not another does not mean anything. Sickness in one form or another does not mean anything. Bodies seeming to be alive or dead does not mean anything. These differences are all lies. A change in form from one state to another is utterly meaningless.

Remember that we have given everything all the meaning that we think it has, but typically we're doing this by looking at the form of objects and asking it to dictate TO us what "that" means. One shape means this, another shape means that. If the shape changes, the meaning changes. And then our response to it changes.

What we need to be striving for is a complete ignoring of all forms, all physicality, all objects, looking past it with forgiveness, taking none of it seriously, believing nothing we see through physical sight, ignoring all differences, having absolutely no change of reaction when external circumstances change, and being completely unmoved by the bullshit lies and temptations of the physical world. Not one single thing the physical seems to suggest is true. And nothing that happens physically is really possible in God's reality.

True meaning comes from God and is a singular whole meaning, a consistent unconditional meaning, which does not change or waver. It is the meaning of love and is so genuine and valuable that it is truly meaningful to us. It is all that means anything at all to us, and it's all that we really want. We can look out through this one meaning onto a world of a trillion meanings and disregard all the world's claims as false. Nothing in the world matters and it means nothing.

A teacher of God, a healer, does not consider for a moment the appearances of form, the forms of sickness, the stories of suffering about how this form came about, the family history, the background of what happens or the chain of events. None of it means anything and none of it is a cause. The miraculous mind considers only administering the love and truth that is missing, extending the power of God to fill and erase the gap, ignoring the form entirely.

The forms may change, the body may heal, the world may resurrect, but these too are illusions that ultimately mean nothing. Temporarily they symbolise changes in the mind and perception but ultimately there is no world to mean anything anyway. How can a world which does not exist mean something, and how can the events that transpire mean anything at all? There is no meaning to be found in a meaningless world. Only God's Kingdom of heaven has any meaning at all.

"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. 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?"

"Therefore, He OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not RECOGNIZE, and does not know if it is there or not. Everything which the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."

"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."

"Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"For form is not enough for meaning"

"The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of MEANING."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain."

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

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"God knows not form. He CANNOT answer you in terms which have no meaning. And YOUR will could not BE satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap which is not there."

"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."

At each stage from separation through sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death, there is always some amount of projection of the cause of the problem.

When we believe in separation, i.e. sin, sin actually makes the separation unconscious, and then we are unaware of what caused sin. That which has no cause is considered to be a cause in its own right and not an effect. We will then go searching for the cause somewhere external, other than accepting that we caused it.

So we'll claim, I am sinful because God says I'm sinful, instead of that its because we chose to believe in separation.

Then at the next stage, feeling guilty, we won't just say I'm guilty because I sinned, we'll project the cause of the guilt outward and find an external cause for it. I'm guilty because someone else says so, or because society finds me guilty. Always someone else deciding that the guilt is true. And once again the guilt renders awareness of sin unconscious, so you go looking for reasons that caused the guilt.

This carries on down to fear, whereby even though guilt causes fear, fear makes guilt unconscious, and then you go looking for a projected cause for the fear. You start to claim that you are afraid "because of" all the external things or future things which are making you afraid. But none of these things are the cause of fear, your guilt is.

Then when punishment is happening, instead of admitting that you are punishing yourself, you'll be claiming that you are punished because someone or something else is punishing you. You'll look to all these reasons and causes why you are punished, other than that fear causes punishment.

And on it goes to death. Death is someone else's fault, happens by someone else's hand, is entirely out of your control, is not chosen by you at all etc. Punishment causes death but here you're claiming that death is caused by everything other than yourself.

Projection happens at all levels, because every level is an attempt to disown the level before it, and thus disown responsibility for choosing it. As soon as there is separation there is a cascade of irresponsibility and projection. It doesn't just happen once you get to guilt. It happens at every stage of separation all the way through to death.

These projections, these stories about who or what caused or justified the guilt or sin or fear etc, are defenses protecting the defenses. Guilt defends against sin, and the story that someone else found you guilty or you're guilty because of what you did to someone, is a defense that protects guilt from being undone. These fictions and stories have to be dismantled in order to look squarely at the problem, and then you can dismantle the problem itself.

The story about what caused the fear or the guilt or the sin is a cover-up story. Underneath it is your own belief that you are sinful guilty and afraid. Then these believes also are a cover-up story. Fear defends guilt, guilt defends sin, sin defends separation. Collapse these one at a time and you'll end up at the Atonement.

Sometimes things go terribly, terribly wrong. And this wrongness compels you to seek and try to find answers as to why it went wrong. And if the thing is really, really wrong, you will not be able to find answers. And you'll keep looking and looking and completely FAIL to come up with a wholly satisfying truth.

And eventually with enough failure, not for want or trying, you will perhaps start to realize that you are not finding truth because THERE IS NO TRUTH in this illusory problem, and this problem is not REAL.

Failure therefore can lead you to awakening, and can be a blessing, because it shows you very very clearly how utterly ridiculous the ego is, how obviously un-God like the world is, how completely opposite to God this experience is, and that therefore this CANNOT be what God wills.

This then gives you a powerful contrast, in which on the one hand you have a sucky life filled with disaster which seems to beg you to die, and on the other hand, there is God, who is pure love, who could not possibly have wanted this for you.

One of them must be true. They cannot both be true. So which is it going to be? Is your world of failure and loss and tragedy and despair and wrongfulness the truth, meaning that love is false? Or is love the truth? And if love is the truth, what does that say about all of this failure and fault? Either bad stuff means there is no God or that God doesn't give a shit, OR, it means it CANNOT BE REAL *because* God is loving.

So when shit happens and things go wrong it can be a very painful experience BUT it can also lead you so much failure and impossibility that it starts to become clear to you that it CAN'T be really happening.

When horrible things happen and people say "I can't believe this is happening"... indeed... it is a dream, and it is not happening. But then people quickly forget just how UNREAL the problem is and start to take it seriously, as though this "reality" of the problem overtakes their initial KNOWING that this cannot be reality. We need to keep in touch with that.

This world is not real and everything that happens here is driven by the ego. It is not made by God. And it is not really happening.

The answer isn't to the question "why is this happening" or "what caused this".... to which there is no satisfying answer (similarly, why did the tiny mad idea happen - no answer).... but simply that the REAL ANSWER is the UNDOING of the question, which is the Holy Spirit, which is God's answer to the ILLUSION that anything has gone wrong at all.

Nothing has gone wrong because God is the truth. And this truth is the source of miracles.

In my ongoing exploration and practice of performing healing miracles, I gradually chisel away at the reasons why it is or isn't working, and gradually refine the process. I guess it's like learning anything, like how to drive a car or how to sing.

At first you do all kinds of things that aren't necessary and produce mistakes and problems. Gradually you UN-learn various things you were doing that were interfering.

Lately I'm moving more towards trusting Holy Spirit Himself to teach me about it, rather than trying to the find answers in other people's teachings about it, especially as I'm gradually seeing more and more inconsistencies in what other people have said.

One of the key aspects of miracle healing is, apparently, an element of belief. I've heard people talk about how you must believe first in order to receive. It is said biblically that he who asks, believing that he will receive, will do so. And this is also reflected in the Course.

I'm discovering that BELIEVING that it is TRUE that healing will occur, or indeed, that it HAS occurred (per God), is a key part of this "procedure".

Previously, I would attempt to do a miracle and say various things and use my hands and so on, with some amount of conviction that it was "possible" for this to work. But at the same time, I still was looking and waiting to see IF it was working. This means focusing on the presence of signs of change, first, instead of focusing on belief first. It means I'm making the error real, instead of overlooking it.

So if the sickness or problem is the error, or the form of error, and if I'm looking AT it trying to undo it, I've kept it real and am believing the ego's illusion. Therefore I am not in a mode of forgiveness.

Here I'm finding there is a really interesting, almost double-interpretation of what the Course says about miracles and forgiveness. On the one hand there is forgiving illusions for the sake of your own sanity and so on, mind correction, BUT, also it's seeming more and true that this APPLIES not only within my little body mind but also "OUT THERE" in the greater mind.

That means, forgiveness can be applied externally from my separate self, just as much as internally. That means, there are illusions of sickness outside of my body, as much as there might be such things inside. When I see errors (sickness) in someone's body, if I think that illusion is real, I am basically failing to forgive. If I am to UNDO that illusion, it isn't going to simply mean that I change my perception about it within my mind and it gets fixed within ME, within the scope of my separate self, but that it is supposed to ALSO get fixed out there in the larger dream.

The illusion of sickness in the other person is supposed to get corrected and undone and disappear, just as it would if it were inside my own form. Therefore, as part of the miracle-working process, which applies WITHIN AND WITHOUT (which are both the same), I need to OVERLOOK the person's sickness by not focusing on it when I am attempting to heal them. This also means that, as Jesus says, the miracle is intended to heal BOTH of us and not just my private inner world.

If when I attempt a miracle with Holy Spirit, I am looking not with a mindset of believing in truth, but with a mindset of believing that the error is in the person's body is real, then I am not going to see a miracle. This was something I was getting wrong, because I felt that IF a miracle were to happen with the person's body, I would actually be SURPRISED. That's not a good sign. That indicates that I don't REALLY believe that it's going to happen, and therefore I don't REALLY believe in God or that it CAN happen, yet alone that it WILL and MUST.

So I've been asking myself this question, do I REALLY believe that this person's given sickness, whatever the target is, do I ACTUALLY believe that it really can and will be healed? And in this, I have to be really HONEST with myself. And honestly, some of the things that I've been trying to heal, I did not really believe could be healed. Even if I was trying fairly earnestly or making a fool of myself. Deep down, I wasn't really totally certain or convinced that it would work, I was relying more on wishful thinking and hope than on faith and knowing.

So what happened was, I found myself ready to do a "remote miracle", on my own with Holy Spirit, away from a person, and what came to me was that I should not try to heal the thing I thought I would tackle, because I'm not ready. I don't believe it enough. The illusion of that particular "error" being real is too strong at the moment, so I don't have enough belief that it can be healed. So I was directed by Holy Spirit to work on a different issue, which he specifically named. And I noticed that I FELT that I believed it WAS possible for this other issue to be healed. I'm not sure if its to do with the order of difficulty issue - hierarchy of illusions, that for some reason I have less baggage and blockage relating to that particular ailment, but it seemed more POSSIBLE for me to believe in its healing. So I did that.

And then Holy Spirit told me to "cancel". So I did a forgiveness process canceling the belief that anything about the sickness was true or real. Gradually Holy Spirit's energies flowed more and more intensely, and I found myself BELIEVING that it was happening. That the healing WAS being received, and that it WAS fully given. And I did not feel like I would be surprised if it worked. Instead, I felt that it was, as Holy Spirit then said, "done." He said it was "fully given."

Believing that the healing can and will be done is very important, because it's the same thing as you believing that the forgiven mind is true and that the person is innocent in this area. Just as much as if it applied to myself. It's not so much I think that the believing in it itself gives it any kind of power, BUT, that I am placing my faith and loyalty SOMEWHERE, so either I am believing in the truth of God's healing, OR I must be believing in the ego's lie of sickness. So which is it going to be? I need to ACTUALLY BELIEVE that God's truth is the truth and that, therefore, there MUST be healing.

I think I'm on to something.

We're presented with an interesting challenge. Before you seems to be a brother who seems to have a body, seems to have a personality, seems to have a history, seems to believe various things and perceive in various ways.

But then, at the same time, your REAL BROTHER, is actually a spirit being, a soul, who is an absolutely perfect light of Heaven, completely invulnerable and immortal, absolutely awake, totally free from sickness and suffering, perfectly sane, happy, free, and full of love.

So now the question is, when you "relate" or interact with a person, are you going to consider that their bodily limited self is REALLY the person, or are you going to consider that their HOLY self is really the person? And if you acknowledge and relate only with the holy self, does this not show you that the bodily self is NOT WHO HE IS? Does it not frame all of his illusions AS illusions and as lies and falseties about him, that you are not supposed to believe, or see, or confirm, or hold against him?

It becomes now a matter of, are you willing to overlook everything about him that seems to be "here", as a body self, a worldly self, an ego self, and completely IGNORE all of it, and connect and relate ONLY to a REAL SELF, that is hidden by the body, obscured by false perceptions, and lurking in and BEYOND the body as your ACTUAL BROTHER?

Are you willing to realize that all of these body persons are actually not real, all of these forms and differences are illusions, no-one is really a body, no-one is different or unique, everyone is equally a brother and equally lovable? And are you willing therefore to LET GO OF, the belief you've had for thousands of years, that these "people" populating the dream that you thought were "real", they are just shadows of real beings who are temporarily invisible to your body's eyes, and who are absolutely perfect?

At some point we have to become willing to disregard these illusions that are being presented to us, these obstacles to peace, and learn to overlook them. This is literally forgiveness, which changes your perception, awakens your mind and shows you with CHRIST VISION the true nature of the brother that stands before you. And that means learning to question, let go of, ignore, not believe in, not take seriously, and basically disregard, anything and everything about a person that seems "traditionally human", and to instead look PAST THAT, to what can ONLY be the truth about them. That they are still perfectly the Christ as God created them, flawless and immaculate, perfect in every way, unconditional and universal, and free from all suffering, sin, guilt, fear and death.

It's a strange thing to do. Because we've been so used to looking with the body's eyes and seeing "people" and thinking this is all there is to them, looking at bodies and taking them as first-hand reality, looking at behaviors and appearances and differences and thinking this is TRUE of the person, and generally interacting with DREAM CHARACTERS. And these dream characters are NOT REALLY the depiction or representation of your actual brothers. Not unless, perhaps in currently rare cases, your brother is using his body to accurately symbolize his immortality. And even then, he is not his body.

Are you willing to overlook EVERYTHING your body's eyes show you? Are you willing to start interacting with the "higher self" or holy true self of your brothers? Are you willing to stop dwelling on bodies and what bodies do, and start peering deeper into people into their minds and souls? Are you willing to disbelieve anything about your brother that is not given by God, is not in accord with God's laws, and does not represent God's perfection? To recognize that all the rest is NOT TRUE of them or you? And to realize that all of your brothers are your perfect equals AS GOD CREATED US?

This is what it means to forgive your brother. To totally overlook ("to forgive is to overlook") the illusions that hide your brother from you, and learn to SEE the TRUTH of Him, which is absolutely as perfect and permanent as He has always been and forever will be.

"Look at your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead you there."

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS."

"Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both."

"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "

"And to ACCEPT the limits of a body is to IMPOSE these limits on each brother that you see."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality."

"When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. ***There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself*** and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him."

It's strange to realize that you don't remember who you really are. Your mind is in a state of confusion. You are lost and seemingly alone in darkness. You've forgotten what is true of you, your true nature, or what you are really like.

Your real identity seems to have become buried underneath the rubble of the ego thought system's destructiveness. You seek in the darkness for yourself, trying to sort through the clues which may point in the direction of yourself. Yet you don't even remember what your self is actually like, so can't quite tell what it is you're looking for.

In the separation from God you denied your soul, and blocked awareness of your real identity as Christ. You forgot who you were. Jesus even goes to the extent to say that because of the authority problem, in which you rejected God as your father, you actually believe that you don't exist at all.

Yet everyone is trying to find the self that they lost. We're all searching for some sense of something we once knew, but can't quite remember. Some self that was, and still is, our true reality, but which has become so obscure that we're not even sure where to look.

Some have a notion of a higher self, as if the soul is some other secondary self. And this is only because the ego that you have become identified with instead is a secondary sense of self. But it is not yourself. It is not who you are, and nor is your body.

Your "higher" self isn't really higher, nor does it really have a separate mind of its own. It isn't a second you, but rather, your first and only you. It's who you are deep down. The you that is true to yourself. The you that is actual and permanent and unconfused, uncluttered with illusions and unblocked by denial. It's your spiritual holy self.

If you reach into your mind, recognizing that the ego you've latched onto is not yourself, and with willingness to go beyond the body which is also not yourself, you can search within (or above) for your soul. Reach out to it, or rather, to you. Dig deeper behind the clouds of denial and the blocks to awareness. Who are you really?

Somewhere in your mind, there is awareness of the real self that you are. The most honest direct self, simple and pure and strong. The self that you forgot. The self that you have trouble remembering. The self you used to be before the confusion of separation set in. Who are you really, behind all these masks and disguises? What are you really like? Where is your soul?

You can either be in a state of total forgiveness, or you are in a state of judgementalism.

In forgiveness, judgement is given to the Holy Spirit who has full access to all knowledge and can judge correctly. His only judgement is that there is no sin anywhere and everyone is innocent. Or to put it another way, he repurposes judgement to judge that nothing is judged.

If you fail to be in a forgiving state, you will enter into ego, into its thought system, and into limitation. You will then attempt to judge separately from the Holy Spirit, and will do so on the basis that separation is true.

This will lead to incorrect judgements, limited judgements, condemnation and accusation of sin, projection of guilt, labelling and categorising, and a general judgey attacky harsh attitude.

This judgment always concludes falsely because it's not based on wholeness so cannot see the whole truth. It is a mistaken form of judgement, in which we think we know - or have an opinion about - everything we see. We then turn into critics who are never satisfied and nothing is acceptable to us.

We then actually use judgement as an attack and a defence. It becomes a wall of interpretation in between you and everything you see, and a way to keep things away from you.

It's then used as a way to not join, and to keep your distance from things. It has a feeling of a withdrawing and avoiding and rejecting and not wanting.

As it becomes stronger you can notice that it is in fact hate and is not loving. So you form a rift, a barrier of hate, around yourself, to keep the world and reality and other people at a distance.

Judgmentalism twists everything it sees in an effort to frame it how you would prefer it be, or how you judge it to be. You form images in your mind overlaid on top of what you see, based on these judgements, and relate to the images instead of the thing itself.

This means that you're not really welcoming reality or truth as it is, and you are not really seeing, or engaging, or joining, or really looking and registering what is there. Instead you are pulling away in disgust and hate and unwillingness, and relating to your judgements as if they are real and true.

We are doing this all the time, if we're not being forgiving, and it actually removes us from direct immediate reality. It takes us out of the present, and puts us in the past psychologically. The ego's judgements are designed to keep God away from you.

The ego in us is very critical and accusatory, bitter and angry, unloving and unkind, labelling things as wrong, judging as guilty, condemning and finding things wrong, tearing things down and separating things out, disagreeing and disapproving and offering an opinion about everything. This is judgementalism.

If you will suspend judgement and decide you are not going to judge in any way, you may notice your awareness opening up, and you look more directly at things without any sense of attacking them or having something to say about them.

As you stop judging, you become more present, and it feels like you have more direct awareness and are paying fuller attention. You see things more for how they are and not for what you were making of them, and they in fact become more interesting and beautiful.

To see without judgement is to see with the eyes of Christ, which looks upon everything while remaining still and not having all this mental activity of evaluation and analysis and labelling and so on.

This forgiving state of mind just looks without hurling something at what it's looking at. The problem we really have is that we do not recognize how much and when we are judging, and it's pretty much all the time.

We also may not recognize that there is an alternative, a way of seeing that isn't riddled with judgements, defensiveness, accusation or attack. Try just looking at something without having anything to say about it at all in your mind. Just see it quietly.

"An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is untrue. 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 needed goal?"

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is."

"The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds, because He does not want you to teach your errors and LEARN THEM YOURSELVES. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to STRENGTHEN what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the THINKER, then, He IS judgmental, but only in order to unify it so IT CAN perceive WITHOUT judgment. This enables the mind to TEACH without judgment and therefore learn to BE without judgment."

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

"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.

Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.

Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.

This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.

It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.

This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.

Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.

So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.

This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.

There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.

You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.

Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.

It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.

It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.

On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.

The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.

This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.

But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.

A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.

The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.

Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.

Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.

Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.

But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.

All is well. It's just a room.

The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.

As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.

The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.

To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.

Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.

If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.

True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".

Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.

To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.

"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."

Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.

Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.

In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

"A world forgiven cannot last."

As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.

To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.

Everyone has free will. Which means that all experiences are chosen. And nothing happens to anyone without their consent or choice. If this weren't true, it would be possible that someone's free will could be taken away from them, violated, broken, or completely have no effect. This isn't possible because the free will was given by GOD, and is irrevocably permanent. Everyone has free will at all times.

"The world (heaven), in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man (souls) by God, AND the proper creation by man (souls) in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man (souls) by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

When a person seems incapable of exercising decision making on their own, such as with a baby or a child, a person who you are having to be guardian for due to their disabilities, some group of people that you're supposed to protect, the elderly who have lost their power of thought and seem unable to look after themselves etc, these all create scenarios where someone else seems to have to take "responsibility" for them.

It's interesting first of all that there even is such a scenario where someone could seem to be in a position to be unable to choose for themselves. This alone is the result of ego interfering with freedom. And just because e.g. newborn babies are heavily dependent on their parents for survival and for decision making, this doesn't mean it's natural. To place oneself in a position of having to depend on anyone else to make decisions, for any reason, is an aspect of self denial. Which is what leads to incarnation in the first place. In effect this makes the bodies of babies, a physical "face of innocence", denying responsibility for attacking God.

Beyond that, once you're in a situation where it seems you have "no choice" but to take responsibility for choosing for someone else, there is now a very slippery slope. If you truly are "held accountable" for someone else's well-being, and if anything whatsoever remotely happens to that person, it is now implied that this is "your fault". Whether it be that you are a parent who "has to" look after a young child, or an adult looking after an elderly parent, or an older sibling looking after a younger sibling, the same is true.

If in any way another person seems to lack the power of decision or free will, and you have to "take over responsibility", this is tantamount to forcing you into a state of guilt. Anything that do, anything that happens to them, now effectively happens "to you", because you have now extended the scope of what you are responsible for. Even to the extent that it makes you feel like they are "part of you", and what happens to them even starts to affect you against your will. When they suffer, you suffer, because of this belief that you are bound to them - that you being responsible for them makes them an extension of your self.

It's very difficult to avoid this "double responsibility" in this world. If parents would just ditch babies, the babies would not survive. If we would just let those with dementia or alzheimers or disabilities fend for themselves, they would not last long. The question then is, is it possible psychologically to still maintain a role of "looking after" another person, or seeming to be responsible for them, WITHOUT believing that you are taking over their free will, and without using their suffering as a way to induce guilt in yourself?

It is very difficult to not feel guilty for the suffering of others. If you feel responsible for them it induces guilt and fear. If you feel compelled to protect them from suffering, and something happens, you can potentially go into self blame. If they go through a difficult time, you can possibly feel like it's your fault even if it isn't. And any way in which they suffer, makes you suffer.

If what's happening in your mind is a lack of letting go, a sense of "owning the person" (very prevalent in parenting), efforts to control and coerce, or any other way in which the person's free will is violated, then this will lay the groundwork for your own suffering. Regardless of whether you are acting physically on the level of form to provide for, support, guide, "keep alive" or otherwise be "responsible for" someone else's life, you have to find a way to keep sight of free will. Otherwise you will lose yourself in it and accuse yourself of "irresponsibility", as a result of being overly responsible.

I was guided recently, that "She is God's responsibility, not yours". This was because I kept being overly responsible for the wellbeing of another person. This compels a need to constantly fix and control things. It results in a kind of fear-driven desperation to want things to be different. To try to get someone to make different choices, to avoid certain outcomes. But as soon as we're getting into territory of encroaching on free will, we're going to lose our own peace of mind.

It boils down to the simple fact that you can't retain a sense of freedom if you take over the freedom of others. You become excessively responsible for things you are not responsible for, when you see yourself as "the cause of" what others are experiencing. You move into states of guilt and fear and worry whenever you believe that someone is "not supposed to" or "supposed to" be in a certain state they are not electing to be in. And you cannot retain any sense of peace while you try to coerce anyone in any way.

It's a difficult thing to deal with. You have to continue possibly being physically and emotionally supportive of a person, but without getting lost in it. Without losing sight of your own free will and that of another. It can even seem frightening to entertain the idea of allowing someone to make poor decisions or to degrade or to head towards death. Mainly because this incites reactions of guilt at not preventing it, due to believing it's your fault, based on believing their free will is something for YOU to control.

Always it's about the confusion of who you are, who they are, who is responsible for what freedom, and who is doing what to whom. You have to let people go in order to truly helpful. Otherwise any help is really a combination of help and manipulation. And that can only lead to a special relationship.

We are addicted to the body. We talk about the body as if it is the same thing as the person. We talk about what they are wearing as if they are the body wearing it. We ask what they are looking at, as if because the body is looking so are they. We talk about what the body did, what the body ate, and how the body slept, as if it was the person doing these things, which we then celebrate the body doing. We cover the body in clothes and remark at how wonderful WE look. We think we are it, and this is a major confusion of identity.

There is a PROFOUND degree of body identification in this world. Take a look at the news. You can be pretty much guarantee that almost every single news report will feature people who are heavily in victim fear roles, heavily bodily identified, not overlooking the situation whatsoever, and quite unconscious, discussing what happened to bodies. And then you have the whole "he did this to me" "she did that to me" "they were doing this and that". Always pointing to bodies, because only bodies can sin. "Only if there were a body is sin possible." "Only the body makes the world seem real." Always mistaking bodies for people.

And then we look to a spouse or a child or a parent or a neighbor or coworker or some other stranger and we say, look, behold, there is a person. But all we point at is the body, using our own body to sense its presence, and seeing little else.

Bodies are not souls, they are not real, and God did not create them. Parts of our mind are using the body temporarily but any confusion about the mind BEING the body is level confusion, magic, sickness, authority problem, body identification, attack thinking, blindness, and evidence of blocks to awareness. But this is how the whole world is operating almost all the time.

It is SO habitual, so ingrained, and so accepted as normal, that you see it very subtly infused into every advertising, every conversation, every interaction of body folk. It's become totally habitual. Always with the "you", in reference to the body self. "They" in reference to groups of bodies. The whole word of the law is written based on what bodies do to bodies and whose body did what to whom. Copyright law doesn't even acknowledge discarnate entities as valid authors, such as in the case of Jesus and ACIM.

It is so heavily assumed that people are bodies in this world, due to massive widespread body identification, that it is literally everywhere. In all walks of life, in all forms of communication, people think they are human beings with arms and legs. This is a problem, because it is not true. And we have to actually deprogram ourselves of this belief. And as we do this, we're going to start becoming VERY aware of the fact that the whole world is going against the truth in this way. That 99%+ of the population relates at a body-to-body level and does not see beyond it.

You can see how the development of christ vision, the opening of the spiritual eye, the clarification of spirit identification, recognizing YOU ARE NOT A BODY, you are spirit, is an entirely different kind of way of relating to people. It totally steps back from the entire association between "you" and "your body". It denies the assumption that your brother is his physical form. "You're looking great today Paul". Well, no, Paul isn't flesh and bones and you are blinded by perception of form. If Paul's like, oh hell yes, I'm looking great today, then now we're into Paul being body identified and having level confusion. And if Paul decides to confuse himself with his body in order to confuse his brother with a body in order to have a body relationship, well now he has a cell mate and they're both in hell.

This is how profound the course is. We have to learn to dis-identify ourselves from the FLESH AND BONES body prison. We have to learn it is NOT OUR SELF. We are not made of bits of flesh and strange organs. It does not look like us. It is not a representation of our true nature. At best it symbolized health and wholeness but your soul absolutely does not have a penis or vagina, nor does it make shits, nor does it sip the cool-aid. "I am not a body I am free" should mean that totally literally. 100% NOT even REMOTELY the body. Not even a tiny bit the body. Such that the body is utterly UNLIKE you in every way. Just a random picture of a form. Because "The body cannot contain you who are life." and "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

When we show the body to our brother, identified with it, we are offering him hell and damnation, having damned ourselves to it. We give him what we have given ourselves. We can only offer him a body if we think we are a body. And this means we are offering him something valueless and meaningless. Which is a way to attack him and strip him of his divinity. Neither you nor your brother are physical. Your mind is non physical. Your soul is formless. UTTERLY FORMLESS. Abstract. Shapeless. Boundaryless. Unlimited by space or time.

When we make the body sick we use the body to accuse our brother of sin. This is an entire teaching to do with how the body symbolizes attack and communicates a message of proof of sin in order to find your brother unworthy. But it goes even further, not just including typical sickness, and even beyond sex. It goes as far as to say that EVERY way that you use the body determines the message it symbolized and if you have ANY KIND OF BODY IDENTIFICATION, this is an attack on your brother AND yourself.

If you show the body to your brother mistaken for yourself, you are communicating that he is not himself, and this is an attack. Just as body identification produces sickness, believing you are a body is denial of yourself and your brother. If you depict it to him with an attitude of "this is my self, look at me", you are trying to cause him to be confined to his body also. You cannot possibly see his true self if you cannot see yours. You cannot possibly appreciate his divine christ nature if you think you're not christ but a body. We need to rediscover our soul, our innate inner truth, God-given, if we are to RELATE in any kind of real, loving way to anyone.

If there is not a movement towards recognizing yourself as spirit, NOT a body, there is no awakening at all. That is the whole direction of the curriculum. Moving away from body identification, confused about who and what you are, towards clarity about the fact that you are not a body at all and never were. When "you" (body) look in a mirror you should not be believing that you're looking at yourself. Vanity is ego. When "you" (body) puts on the latest clothes that you fancy yourself in, you shouldn't be believing that this changes who or what you are at all, nor do these clothes define you. You could wear a sack of shit and be spirit identified knowing your true nature is absolutely golden and that the body has nothing to do with who you are.

Sex is only a small part of the body identification issue. It's a cornerstone and a reason to keep perpetuating the focus on bodies and the belief that people are physical forms. Confusing mind and body and believing the body can create, can cause, has power, can live, and is important. As Jesus says, "the body is hardly worth the least defense." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "God did not create the body."

So isn't it clear, that in order to exist, and to be created by God, you have to become very very clear that you are NOT a body in any way whatsoever, you don't need one, you don't want one, and you don't have one. Because "to be without abody is to be in your natural state.", which is a state of being solely spirit.

It is by identifying ONLY AS spirit (and not a gender or a sexual preference) that you free yourself FROM the body and become able to return home to God. You cannot be believing that ANYTHING "true" of the body is true of you. You are not male or female. You are not gay or straight or bi or anything else. You are spirit. You are immortal. You are made of light. You are divine. The body cannot possibly be anything but a fake artificial picture of a fake artificial self in a fake artificial dream pretending to be a someone. And the body cannot go to heaven with you. "Leave it behind, it cannot enter heaven."

But you, as spirit, can enter the spirit world. Your spirit is the only way through the gates of heaven, to reunite with God, the creator of your spirit, where "the only function of spirit is to extend God's being." There, your spirit has always dwelt with its maker, and has never really left. It is your spirit that is permanently recognized by God as holy and complete. "The soul never leaves the sight of God." "God's children are as equal as learners as they are as souls." Only your spirit self is the reality of you. Everything else is an illusion that you have become tangled up with, confused with, lost in, and believing is you. The body is not you. You are eternal.

"Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body or cover it, or for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see. Think on the many offerings made for its pleasure, and remember all these were made to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your brother to you, and to attract his body's eyes? Learn you but offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight acknowledges the lack of value he places on himself.

Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out or take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and give. And every gift it offers depends on what it WANTS. It will adorn its chosen home most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it wants, by offering them to those who come unto its home, or those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange their gifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them.

Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the GIVER. No-one but sees his chosen home an altar to himself. No-one but seeks to draw to it the worshippers of what he placed upon it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a light upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed upon it, and take it for their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother, and on yourself. Here is your gift to BOTH; your judgment upon the Son of God for what he is. Forget not that it is your Savior to whom the gift is offered. Offer him thorns, and YOU are crucified. Offer him lilies, and it is YOURSELF you free."

When I came to A Course in Miracles, it was largely based on "non-duality" teachings from certain ACIM teachers.

The books spoke of the world as being a shitty place, a hell hole, psycho planet, a world of death and suffering, spinning its wheels and going nowhere. A world which you would not want and should want to leave behind. This seemed to provide a kind of motivation to want to escape it.

The solution that was presented then was a form of forgiveness which largely entailed maintaining the view that the world sucked, but realizing that it was not real. That it was just a dream. This formed a picture where, you're in the world, dreaming of the world, the world STILL sucks, but you recognize it's not real. There was nothing positive about this, it was a very clinical view.

More importantly, in this view there was NEVER a single mention of the "real world". There was no mention of saving the world, the great crusade, being a miracle worker, performing miracles to help others, healing others, healing bodies, or anything else which could be construed as "making the world better".

It was kind of an attitude of, the world is hell, so let's jump straight out of hell into heaven. And that the way we do this is by remembering it's a dream of hell, will always be hell, and once you can just "not believe it" you'll be saved. This basically reinforces a view that the world still is hell, it can only ever be hell, and there is no point or way to actually come to love or forgive the world. It was more like a message of, the world it shit, let's escape it.

In fact part of what made those books popular was the self-proclaimed "brutal honesty" about the world, which acted to judge it harshly and point out its flaws. This was supposedly a refreshing honesty but at the same time portrayed the world as only CAPABLE of being a negative place. And that therefore you had to do what you could, psychologically, to try not to be affected by it, by remembering it's just a dream of death.

The problem as I see it now, is that this model was largely fostered by the non-duality conceptualization of the course, which is deeply flawed. That is, this idea that there's either heaven as the only reality, or earth as the opposite ie hell. And nothing in between. Either duality, or pure non-duality. Either you're in the shit world, or you're in God's arms. But that's a major issue, because it COMPLETELY ignores a vast majority of what ACIM actually teaches.

In particular, there is absolutely no mention made of the real world. There is no presentation of the idea that the Holy Spirit has MADE an alternative dream world which is seen through the eyes of Christ, is a forgiven world, has no sin or guilt in it, and is not seen as hell. It's true also that the real world does not contain bodies, since it transcends forms. And it's also true that we're supposed to be learning to SEE the real world, by learning to LOVE the world.

If you were to try to present the idea of loving the world to the non-duality folks, they would run the other way. It's incompatible with the cold, clinical view of the course's structures, which attempt to maintain that the world is hell at all costs - kind of a form of false forgiveness really in which the world is made real and then you try to forgive it. If we BYPASS the real world, as a VITAL stepping stone on our way to awakening, we're NOT really getting the course's message.

The course isn't asking us to love hell. It's not saying hey, this world has ONE form, one nature, and you need to learn to love it. Rather, it's saying that, the world of form seems like hell because of HOW you are looking at it, and WHO you are looking at it with. Which yes btw means a HUGE emphasis on looking WITH the holy spirit, with christ vision, which was more or less obliterated from these teachings about non-duality (because certain teachers do no like the idea of the Holy Spirit having anything to do with this).

It is telling us that the reason you see bodies, forms, objects, planets, is because this is how the BODY was made to see, and it can ONLY see falsely. Everything it sees is a false INTERPRETATION of the world ladened with sin and guilt. It's not capable of seeing the world as it is. The body can never see the real world. But that does not mean you should not attempt to see the real world. In fact, this is what the ENTIRE course is aimed towards.

You are meant to awaken another form of vision - the spiritual eye, which does not use the body's eyes, and sees BEYOND what the physical sees, so that you are not really looking at or distracted by forms, bodies, appearances of sickness and death, etc. You temporarily use the body to allow you to interact with "the world", but "the world" as you have known it is actually a combination of a neutral world + false perceptions. And without the false perceptions, the neutral world becomes the FORGIVEN world - the real world. And this real world is beautiful, lovely, forgiving, shining and sparkling like new, innocent and free from all sense of sin and guilt. You are meant to be learning to SEE THAT in place of the physical separations of form. An underlying, transcendental unity BEHIND all forms.

And when you do this, instead of seeing "the world is a shit hole", which focuses on the closed box of being blinded by sight of form, you start to see a "world" beyond the physical, a canvas of love, which IS LOVABLE, and which God loves, and which the Holy Spirit sees as the face of Christ. This is a VITAL step in the course. Becoming able to see that happier dream. The happy dream is the forgiven world. A reinterpreted world, reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit, where sin and guilt and fear no longer exist and where you have forgiven yourself and everyone. ie not simply a "hell recognized as a dream" world, but a world which is practically almost the same thing as HEAVEN, because you see PAST its illusory forms and separations.

I was fooled by this omission. I bought into it totally, that yes it's true, the world of bodies is a world of sin and death and suffering and victims and war and murder. As Jesus himself even tells us in the course, THAT world IS a cruel world, a world God did not create, a world opposite in its nature to heaven, basically hell on earth. A nightmare world. That IS what you see when you have NOT forgiven. The UNFORGIVEN world. That's the hell you'll see when your mind has sin and guilt in it. That's NOT the world you'll see when your mind has forgiven itself. Because it will now look within, see love, and extend love TO the world, seeing love IN IT.

This is why we're supposed to learn to see God in the world. Not to see God equated at the same level as forms and physicality, but to see that God is "in" or rather BEHIND or UNDERLYING the illusions of forms and objects. That this "Real world" is there, a world of love, which can be seen INSTEAD of the world of bodies. This is what the whole teaching about "you cannot see both worlds" is about. "Beyond this world there is a world I want" speaks to this also - there is a "real world" that you should WANT TO LOVE (not heaven), which is hidden behind the illusion of form. And developing "vision", the entire function of the workbook, is what allows you to see it.

So if someone had told me years ago, hey, the world you see seems like hell but only because you have sin in your mind, and when you remove the sin in your mind you'll see PAST the world and see a world that you can love and forgive.... that would've painted a very different picture, and would've set things up quite differently to come to different conclusions about the world. It would've changed my attitude, and I would've have become so negative about the world's faults.

We are to learn to forgive and love the world FIRST, to approach the happy dream of the holy spirit's christ vision, which looks upon OUR wold WITH forgiveness to show us an underlying love that we didn't see before, in it... and THEN transition to heaven. We can't get there by making the world's sinfulness real to ourselves and to then attempt to forgive it. This is exactly what we do in false perception - body perception. There is another way of looking at the world, this is a VITAL piece of information. And it means you no longer have to hate the world or think of it as "inherently hell."

Change your mind about what you want to see IN the world, and it's transform into a reflection of heaven. Not physically as such, because the physicality ONLY exists in FALSE perception, but psychologically and perceptually you'll see the truth.

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone."

"The world you see (with false perception) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the (real) world."

"God's Word has promised 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."

"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."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped!"

"It is not the world (as neutral) that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see (in false perception of the neutral world) that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted (false) world redeemed it (neutral world seen with true perception) and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer"

"Knowledge (flipping to a non-duality level 1 viewpoint) is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception (a third state which we should focus on attaining first). It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. 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."

I don't just mean in some abstract way or as a concept. Actual love. Huge love. If you would experience God, it would feel like profound, heartfelt, meaningful, deep, real, relateable love, that feels so true and so genuine that nothing compares to it.

And God is in you and with you. And you are in that love and you are that love.

Here is our ONLY problem.

We've tried to deny that this love is there. We've tried to deny that this love is what you ARE.

Right now, unless you are like super awake to reality, you have no idea the profound immensity of unconditional love that is the experience of God. You've never felt anything like it ever in your entire life and cannot even imagine how powerful it is. It's hidden. It's covered up behind layers and layers of shit in your mind.

The shit in your mind is like a giant toilet filled with backed-up shit that's all swirling around and obstructing the awareness that everything is love. That love is present. You need to FLUSH. The shit is the ego. You've taken a huge shit all over yourself and you need to flush it.

The problem also is, that these so-called 'covers' in your mind, the blocks to awareness, make it SEEM LIKE they actually are capable of shutting out the light. This in itself is completely insane. It's like saying, darkness can make light go away. Like, somehow when darkness is present, it can act as a blanket and shut out the light and stop it from shining. Its completely ridiculous but this is exactly how we experience being on the OTHER SIDE of these blocks to awareness.

It's like being on THIS side of clouds... when its cloudy, it seems to block the sun, on this side of the clouds, even though on the other side of the clouds the sun is completely free to shine. When there is a seeming dark obstacle BETWEEN us and the light, it seems to block the light from the perspective of being IN the darkness looking for the light. If we were to be IN the light, looking at the darkness, we would DISPEL IT. We would recognize it does not exist because light shines away the darkness.

So really we've got all these blocks in our mind that are pretending to make it seem like light has GONE, it's left, God is dead, there's no value in God or any reason to want God. But it's not true, that's the illusion of it. God is NOT dead. The light has NOT been extinguished by the ego. The truth has not stopped. Who you really are has not been affected or changed. You are still as God created you and God still loves you completely.

So when the blocks are there, we think love is gone and all hope of finding it again is lost so we go off on a lonely journey trying to find it but hopelessly knowing that we never will. And we'll look everywhere for this salvation, in everything, and it's not there. And then eventually we'll realize, all the things that say you'll find the light in them, are not true. And that's a step toward going within. And then you'll have to look within and find all these things that are blocking the light. And gradually you'll question their motives also and learn they also are not true.

And then lo and behold the final joyous discovery... underneath all these layers of SHIT that you've gotten rid of and flushed... all the clearing out, all the letting go and surrendering of false hopes and ridiculous beliefs in fake needs, all the sense of lack and loss, underneath it is is STILL the intensely bright shining loving light of God, absolutely unchanged, absolutely unaffected by all your travels, and still loving you 100% unconditionally without requirements or needs.

ITS STILL THERE!

YOU'RE STILL THERE!

You are still the you that God created. You need but UNCOVER this in yourself. You don't need to ADD to yourself, or improve on yourself, or make yourself more of yourself. You're already complete, just in denial and hiding. Stop denying who you are. Stop denying God's presence. Accept the truth and be.

Many ACIM folks appear to struggle between two sort of 'camps', in regards to whether to change the world or not.

There are many passages and quotable concepts in the Course which could be used to back up either viewpoint.

I think though the main reason people struggle with this is because the EGO has tremendous difficulty understanding anything outside of its backwards perspective.

For example, to the ego, control brings you freedom. It says that if you control things more, you'll be able to prevent all the things you don't want to happen, and enforce all the things you do want to happen. You'll 'get your way', and that means life will seem to be doing what you want it to do. And that is its interpretation of what freedom is.

The truth, which the ego cannot grasp or accept, is that control DIMINISHES your freedom, because it separates out some parts (of yourself ultimately) from others, sets them against each other, and elects to support only one of the two parts. Now your choices are diminished. In other words, if you choose A or B, once you've chosen, the other choice goes away, and now you are 'stuck' with the choice you made. This is freedom to the ego, but to your Real Self this is imprisonment.

So when you use the ego mind to try to understand a very basic principle like ACCEPTANCE, this I think is where the community's viewpoint hinges and stimulates controversy. It's because the ego does not understand HOW it could be possible that you can be accepting, or just working on changing how you perceive the world, and not be passive. So this is what it all pivots around.

Really these are the two conflicting attitudes of the EGO:

1) Accept everything as it is, don't try to change anything, be passive, work on your own mind, change your mind ABOUT the world, study in secret, don't tell anyone you're doing the Course, keep miracles to yourself, interpret miracles as shifts in your own perception only, and generally lay down any kind of 'interference' with the world as you go within. This is EGO because the ego has now separated you from the world, has isolated you to your body/mind with the justification of hundreds of Course quotes which SEEM to support its argument. This is EGO because the ego can't ALLOW there to be acceptance without interpreting it as SACRIFICE, i.e. the giving up of control which the ego thinks means like 'I need do nothing' i.e. I will literally stop expressing anything in the world. This is SPIRITUAL CONSTIPATION! You'll be stuck in your head and paralyzed from exerting the will and power of God. You will be disabled. The ego sees acceptance as disempowerment and disability, and this inspires all thoughts of how this kind of 'attitude' is the correct way to do the Course.

2) The second ego interpretation is that you aren't meant to just dwell on fixing your view of the world, but you're meant to change the world. Except that, to the ego, this means, using the ego to change the world. This turns into control. It turns into spiritualization of the world. It becomes the ego's party where all egos are invited to 'act spiritual' or to pursue special causes or use your ACIM learning to 'attack' what is. The EGO can't understand whatsoever how it could be possible to express something in the world and have it be ACCEPTING of the world at the same time. It does not get this. So if you were to express or exert or change the world, this is now considered 'unacceptable' to the Course theology, and therefore rejected by many students. And yet those who accept this idea then go on to shy away from some of the seemingly contradictory statements about acceptance or doing God's will or changing your mind and so on. This again is another ego play to flip your mind around a polarity of DUALITY, so that you stay within the ego thought system, and keep interpreting the course WITH the ego.

Neither of these camps have the truth.

Truth is of the Holy Spirit and his mind functions in a completely different way with rules that apply to all and which has no duality in it. The Holy Spirit has a completely different understanding of ACCEPTANCE. He has a completely different grasp of whether you are 'for or against' doing stuff in the world, knowing that this is a dualistic question. Holy Spirit would not see your 'accepting things as they are' attitude as being SEPARATE from 'being empowered to do God's will and heal the world'. And therefore, Holy Spirit supports BOTH camps combined, which completely defies the ego's logic.

It is possible to be accepting without that having to mean, you cut yourself off from the world or disappear into your intellectual correction of perception. It is possible to be accepting of what 'is' or what appears to be happening, while at the same time having the power and will to CHANGE IT. Because... after all, IT is just an effect of what's going on in the mind. IT is a dream that YOU are dreaming. So this has to mean, you can accept what you have made, but you can also make something different. So this division of separation in the community is really only there because the EGO has gotten ahold of the Course and DOES NOT understand the Holy Spirit's viewpoint or thought system.

As always with ANY polarizing, dualistic, separating set of questions, in which it seems that neither side seems to 'get it', this ALWAYS means that "there has to be a better way" and there always IS a third option. It's that third option that comes from Holy Spirit. Another way not just of looking at the situation, but another way of looking at HOW you look at looking at the situation.

You can accept without being controlling, and yet exercise tremendous freedom to intercede. "I [Jesus] inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness." - principle 32. "35 - Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects." - principle 35, which also means miracles USUALLY have observable effects, meaning they change the world.

There is not a contradiction here. The contradiction is in the ego mind that cannot understand this. It can't get it because the ego can only see WITH separation. It is blind to Oneness or true meaning. Any separation in the community has to be founded in the ego.

Years ago I did a miracle kind of by accident. I didn't even really know how I did this or why, it just kind of happened.

I had this box which had coins in it. I'd used up all the larger-denomination coins and there was only like 1 and 2 pence pieces left (British currency). I knew there was basically nothing in there besides this. I'd sifted through it several times and totally extracted all the good stuff.

But for some reason that day, I needed a couple of `pounds`, and was for some reason in a different state of mind. I kept having this feeling of insisting that there MUST be more money in there somewhere. I turned through the coins with my fingers, looking for it. For probably 30 seconds there was nothing, and I knew from previous checks that I wouldn't find anything. But, something in me was becoming very insistent.

I kept saying to myself, there MUST be some money in here. I built up this kind of ... I don't know if expectation is the word, it wasn't like having a sense of anticipation and then waiting, it was more like, an insistence, or a demand. I demanded that there be money, that this was TRUE, and that it simply must be. For some reason I wasn't paying attention to what my eyes were showing me, I was defying it and insisting there must be something there.

I don't know how I managed to ignore the ego at this point, because normally I would've been like, well, I know there is no higher denominations in there, I would trust my eyes and trust my previous experiences and just stop right there. But this time for some reason I was more miracle minded, and kept on probing the pile of coins insisting that there must be decent money in there.

And then, suddenly, two gold-colored 1-pound coins suddenly appeared out of nowhere. These are in striking contrast to the other coins because the 1 and 2 pence pieces are a dark brown bronze color. The shiny gold-colored coins were suddenly there at my fingertips. They didn't show up because they were hiding, they simply did not exist before. But somehow, they suddenly appeared. They manifested out of thin air.

I think at the time my mindset didn't seem that phased by this, like it seemed kind of natural or something. It didn't shock me. I also did not repeat it, or even attempt to. It didn't seem out of the ordinary, it's just how I was functioning somehow. It seemed to make sense and I just used the money as intended. It hasn't been until looking back on the event that I realized more that this was a miraculous manifestation and that I was doing something with my mind which was not typical.

This really is the tip of the iceberg of what the mind can do. It's going to be fun opening up to more of this.

Some miracle-working basics are embedded in this story....

1) expecting/demanding/insisting/knowing/requiring that the result must happen

2) ignoring all "better judgement" or ego knowledge or even visual evidence

3) being persistent and consistent and not taking no for an answer - you have to kind of resolve to be "done with" tolerating the conditions that are present and resolve to be 100% determined that it MUST change.

Jesus has said in the Course that when the mind is used to focus thought, combined with strong/firm belief, a huge surge of power results which has the power to literally move mountains. Bring it on! This is what miracles really are all about. Ignoring the ego and bringing forth supernatural results.

It's possible to rationalize and justify ANY viewpoint you want to take. If you look, you will find all kinds of reasons in support of your opinion. The thing is, you won't think it's your opinion because you'll justify how your opinion is 'reality' by saying, look, look at the truth, look at the evidence I found.

But what you don't realize is, you can flip-flop your opinion and change your mind about what you're trying to prove is true, and then you'll start to see all kinds of evidence supporting THAT viewpoint as well. And again you'll probably tell yourself, well, look over there, that proves that this viewpoint is true.

And again you've fallen for the same ILLUSION.

The world does not have a meaning of its own. There is no truth in the world. It does not contain facts or proof. It is not objectively real. But we keep looking to it to TELL US what the truth is. And each time we find some evidence we fall into this blindness about how this proves what is real or true. And if that evidence supports our case, which it usually does because beliefs create evidence, we'll keep believing that the world contains some truth.

The trick is to realize we are always CHOOSING the meaning that everything has, we are always GIVING meaning to stuff in the world, we are SELECTING the evidence that we resonate with to support whatever our belief is, and we are always being SUBJECTIVE.

What if I told you there IS NO TRUTH in the world? At all? And that every time you are 'sure' that something is proven in the world, it's actually still just you making it up as you go along, projecting belief into the neutral world and giving it meaning? And each time you say, see, this proves it, these are all the external reasons 'why', regardless of whether it's for or against, you fall into the same ego trap of not realizing it's a blank canvas.

You literally hallucinate the meaning you want to see in the world to justify the viewpoint you are CHOOSING to see SO THAT you will see evidence to prove its truth and to have faith in it. And then you switch to some other belief and do the same. And each time you think, see, I'm seeing the factual real world. You're not. You're only ever seeing your MIND CONTENT. Your fiction. You make up the story as you go along and the world never proves anything on your behalf. You RATIONALIZE why various things you pick out support your case and point to them as proof to support your view, not realizing you view is entirely your choice.

Ever had one of those times where you get all excited about something and you find all these reasons why it's the best thing you can do and why, when you do it, things are going to be better, and all this, and you find all these explanations to support it. Then some time passes and... this delusion starts to occur to you as maybe being flawed, and you start shifting to the opposite viewpoint... maybe this is not the thing you should do, bla bla bla, and then you start to justify why it is NOT the thing you should do, finding evidence to support that as well. But it was never that the world proved in favor or against either viewpoint - you're making it all up as you go along!!

So each time you look OUTSIDE YOURSELF for answers, for truth, for proof, for evidence, to determine some kind of inherent meaning or inherent objective factual truth, you are kidding yourself.

Your mind is NOT able to separately 'observe' what it perceives without interfering with what it perceives, because what you perceive is IN THE MIND that is perceiving it. Even quantum physics points to this. You can't look at something and say, I'm looking at this objectively and I'm only seeing what 'is really there', and then use that to explain why you should or shouldn't do something, or why something is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Each time you observe you MAKE ILLUSIONS and hallucinate. In that hallucination you dream-up rationalizations and justifications, and as you project what you WANT to see, you see it - projection makes perception.

So don't be fooled thinking you have a faculty for neutrally observing the world or neutrally finding evidence outside you that is there all on its own with no involvement from you. That's a victim viewpoint. YOU PUT IT THERE. And you will dream up whatever you want to in support of whatever you happen to be deciding is what you will dream is true today. There are no neutral thoughts - there are no neutral perceptions.

Ok, so today I will dream that it's a great idea to move to live in Hawaii, and I'll screen out everything that tells me its not a good idea and focus in on what tells me its a good idea, and that'll make it seem like its a really good thing to do. And then by convincing myself that its a good thing to do, I'll then say, well, I didn't have anything to do with deciding this - look at the objective evidence, it's clearly what I should do because of this and that and the other.

And then you'll be like, ok I will move to Hawaii because the external evidence shows me its the best thing. ie the situation or the world outside me is 'telling me I should' go there (which is a victim standpoint and disowning of power and responsibility). And then you move and its crap and you don't like it or its too expensive and you want to go home because you're living a DELUSION.

You're not being authentic and honest with yourself about the HUGE part you play in what you are perceiving and choosing, and how you are PRETENDING that you are not choosing so that you can blame it on external circumstances and BE A VICTIM. So long as we keep looking outside of ourselves to the world to 'ask it to tell us' what is out there, we're going to be victims.

So where will you turn for truth and facts? Truth and facts are of God, learned through Holy Spirit. He is the only one who can be 'objective' and not contribute hallucinations to your decision making.

A major mistake I keep making, or at least am starting to notice I'm making, is trying to find answers in the world.

Jesus is often hinting to me that I'm doing something wrong when I do this.

I'll be lost in the middle of trying to figure something out or decide between two things, or determine what the "real reason is", or find a cause, or basically find any sense of truth to do with anything in this world.

It's difficult because my mind is so used to thinking this way - looking outside of myself for truth, for salvation etc. I'm so accustomed to being in this "mode" of "is it this or that?"... when in fact BOTH of those things are not the answer.

It also happens any time I am in any amount of fear, which is often, whereby Jesus will poke me because I'm once again lost in doubt and trying to decide something. It's really a state of indecision and because of the presence of fear, there is literally no way I can see clearly or find a completely convincing truth.

It often takes several winks and nudges before I I might suddenly have enough awareness to even realize that "I'm doing it again". ... I'm basically trying to find some kind of truth or answer in the world.

A reason why someone is sick. A cause for why something happened. A truth that explains which path to take. Some evidence that shows me something is correct. A sense of certainty that cannot be found in uncertainty. A clear and obvious answer which is profoundly elusive in the presence of fear.

I get lost in all these ways, in what basically is a state of split ego mind, where I am just lost and looking in all the wrong places for a truth that isn't really there.

When I finally am nudged enough by Jesus to look at what I'm really doing, and I've run out of attempts to find answers to what it is that I am doing wrong (lol), and I have pretty much no other option left as to what it is that Jesus is trying to get at, THEN I might suddenly realize..... oh... I'm doing it again.... I'm trying to find truth in the world.

And so what has been really coming to me big time lately, totally unexpected, is this idea that... absolutely everything in this world is NOT THE TRUTH. And cannot be. And it is not real. No matter how it looks, no matter how convincing it is, no matter how well explained, no matter whose credentials are behind it, no matter how real it seems, no matter how I can pinpoint physical causes, no matter how explainable or understandable it seems to be, IT IS STILL NOT THE TRUTH.

It is not God's truth. And God's truth is the ONLY truth. There IS no truth in the world, EVER.

This is quite surprising to me given how much I've been used to finding answers (salvation) outside of myself. It's the totally automatic mode of the ego to find truth externally, or to explain situations, or diagnose sicknesses, or find the "real cause" of stuff. All that is doing is the ego is trying to give truth to its illusions, trying to make mistakes real, making sickness real, making the world real, and that is NOT forgiveness.

Forgiveness HAS to recognize that the ENTIRE WORLD and EVERYTHING IN IT is an illusion, is not the truth, has no truth to it, cannot provide an answer, is not the "final answer", an therefore there is ANOTHER TRUTH which goes beyond this world.

There is a truth which is of God. It is a truth which transcends the world. It is a truth of immortality, eternal life, absolute peace, total happiness, invulnerability, christ consciousness, oneness and love. This is THE ONLY TRUTH.

And so as I've been really really used to finding "some" of the truth outside of me, in the world, in explanations and what appears to be cause and effect in the illusion, where one thing appears to cause something else to happen, THAT is not truth. So I am now going into this process of quite literally becoming clearer and stronger in my discernment that EVERY attempt to find truth in the world will fail, and will only tell me something that is - in God's reality - not the REAL truth.

This is the foundation for miracle mindedness, because miracle mindedness completely defies the laws of physics, chemistry, biology. The laws of nature. The laws of what appears to be separate causes and effects. All rules. All results. All effects. All stuff that seems to "happen" in this world, it is all NOT the truth of God. And therefore, God has power OVER all of it!!!

This is why in order to perform MIRACLES (!!), we need to get our mind into a place where we're very clear about the fact that this world is NOT REAL, that there is NO truth to how it appears whatsoever, that sickness is just a fake image which can be easily changed, that the body is just a fake image which can be easily changed, and that, as ACIM says very early on, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."

While I'm looking for truth in this world, in all the things I rely on and think are sources of certainty and reality, I am distracting myself from the truth of God. And that means I am not being miraculous. Miracles, the power of God's love, will flow IN SPITE of this world, and with DOMINION over this world, and with a POWER that this world has absolutely no idea about.

And therefore no matter what state or condition this world is in, and no matter how it appears, and what seems to be the "finality" of it, or bodily states which seem irreversible, or even DEATH as a statement of "you can't do anything about this because its real".. THATS BULLSHIT! God CAN do something about it, because God does not buy the lie that this world is reality. And that means miracles can happen, and people CAN be raised from the dead, temporarily or otherwise if its preferable, and you are NOT at the effect of this world.

A Course in Miracles thus makes no sense whatsoever UNLESS this world is an illusion, and unless this world has absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. Only then can it be possible that everything ACIM claims can be true, and only then is it possible that natural MIRACLES can happen, ALL THE TIME!

Hallelujah!

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.

In a higher happier state of mind, mind radiates more light and power. There is greater communication, as in mind directly expressing from a more loving state. In this state, we are more immediate, and more causal. We choose what we want to happen and we literally express that it is happening. And it happens. It is essentially the same thing as CREATING.

In a lower darker state of mind this does not seem to occur. We are too tied up in using the senses to detect whether or not something has happened seemingly 'on its own', which is the belief that the world is the cause. There is either waiting for something to occur, or there is a mocking dismissal of the possibility that what you will could actually happen.

But the mindset we want to get to is that we are causal, we don't look to externals to determine whether something will occur. We simply choose what we want to occur. And in this higher state of mind there is much more expression, much more radiating outward of light and love. You could say, there is an expression from love, or 'miracles are expressions of love' as the course says.

Not that as such these are transmissions of love, but that we're in a more loving powerful state and express ourselves, in various forms. Instead of looking to see if something might be there, or fake a belief that we can make it be there while believing we can't, we adopt a sincere and empowered attitude of direct power. We express, psychologically, an outward expression of thought and belief, which simply chooses what we want to happen. And this is not an asking or a request, it is direct expression. We put it there.

This can only happen when we bypass space (distance) or time (delay) in our belief system. How we're looking has to be much more immediate and direct. We intend.... what we insist and know ... believe... must happen. And it occurs.

Effectively it just means that we're in such a unified and present and immediate state of mind that we no longer act like recipients of whatever the world says we have to be, or what it does to us, or with any sense that the world is choosing for us. We adopt a position of causation and expression, radiating and deciding what will be there. We insist on it, and it is so.

This can I think only occur after much purification and removal of guilt, there has to be freedom and innocence, light and love, wholeness and power. Then you simply regain the natural ability to just will whatever it is that you will to happen, and it literally happens. In whatever form, according to whatever choice. A loving expression rooted in love, steered by thought and put in place by power. The power of decision, with effects.

I see that this requires quite a high state of mind, a lot of freedom, and a great amount of happiness and love. Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit or doubt and fear, or in guilt. Darkness blocks the expression, just as a breakdown in communication/joining cuts it off.

Belief in separation coming in-between (space time) shuts it down and prevent the expression. In other words, if there is a belief in separation (from God etc) it 'comes in between' cause and effect (cause is father, effect is son). And this sort of disconnects your mind from causing effects - there is a 'communicating' (transmitting) breakdown where your creative effort falls short. When cause and effect are more 'one', you are now in touch with the power of dreaming the dream, and can directly cause the dream to change, and minds to change.

To reconnect to that power is literally the same thing as undoing the split in the mind so that cause and effect are reunited, allowing power to put in place .... what is within is without. Expressions which actually produce results. Simply willing from a state of happy loving mind can move mountains and reshape the world. We would call the miracles but they are simple the natural unhindered functioning of a a healed mind choosing what to create.

"Miracles are thought creations."

"We once said there is no order in miracles because they are all MAXIMAL EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE."

"I KNOW that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love."

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

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"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."

If you know yourself, you are absolutely unmoved by anything. It's like being completely centered. You are unphased, unaffected, undisturbed.

"Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed."

"The stillness of your Self remains unmoved"

If you do not know yourself, if you are uncertain, you are moving into doubt and fear. This means you are questioning who and what you are. By doubting yourself, you become uncertain of your identity.

As soon as you're moving into fear, you're now looking for the world or other people to define who and what you are. To tell you what the truth is. To change you, affect you, control you, cause you. It is this alone that puts you in a position of being at the effect of the world and capable of suffering. If you are caused by an uncertain world of change, you must be afraid.

When you know who you are as God created you, you are accepting ONLY GOD as your source. ONLY God is given the power to cause you and define you. You accept yourself AS He created you, with no attempt to modify his will or change what he has created.

What it all boils down to is this. Who is your father? Are you the effect of God, or are you the effect of the world? Even a slight doubt or denial that you are as God created you places you onto a slippery slope into hell.

"Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven."

The slightest step upon the slope, in doubt of who you are, causes you to lose your footing and slip into fear. And then you will see yourself as under laws which are not of God, laws of vulnerability and attack and mortality.

If God created you, you are the will of God, and nothing can oppose his will. This is your immortality, your innocence, your guaranteed sinlessness, and your eternal life. If God did not create you, you are a product of external forces in the world, at the whim of fate, victim of everything.

Only if you are not permanent can you have moved into sin. Your permanent innocence must have undergone a change. Only through change can sin take place, because changelessness does not permit it. If you have changed you have sinned. If you are unchangeable you cannot sin.

You must therefore simply learn to "know thyself." If you truly are absolutely certain of the absolute self which the absolute created, then you are absolutely immortal. If you are in any way only relatively certain then you are relatively weak and relatively vulnerable and relatively mortal. To know thyself is to live forever.

If you are as God created you, you are under no laws but his, and his laws guarantee your eternal perfection. If you believe you have changed and are no longer perfect, then you have condemned yourself to be governed by the laws of spacetime. Whose laws and whose causality will you be under? God's or the world's?

As God knows you to be, that you are. As God created you to be, so must you be. You cannot be anything else. Give up trying to turn yourself into something else, it will never work. Trying to "be whatever you want" brings you all forms of suffering. Be satisfied that you were already created perfect and divine, and nothing can improve upon God's work.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK"

"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 this view are all your sins forgiven."

"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 minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven"

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

The function of forgiveness, is to look beyond error from the start, as pro-active "fore-giving", a giving of love which recognizes innocence and does not allow the mind to MAKE an error. Forgiveness is the perception in which errors are not seen at all, because the mind is not making or projecting errors itself, and so this "pro-active" attitude sustains a state where there is no error, ie there is no sin, and so long as you stay focused on this you will not produce any.

If you slip up and fail to forgive, you will make an error. You will go into the belief in "sin is real". And by going into it, you will use judgement to try to explain (justify) why you couldn't be forgiving. e.g. that someone "really did this or that", calling for you to "have to" be justified in judging due to what you think happened. But what you think "happened" is an error in judgement, an error in your own perception. An error that your own mind made-up, as a result of leaving the state of forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit therefore does not MAKE errors, or produce perception of sin, and so perceives only that there is no sin. He looks past errors to the truth, using reason. This form of sight literally "overlooks", as in, DOES NOT SEE, errors anywhere, as if the errors (if they were to exist) have become totally transparent and have disappeared. He looks only to the face of Christ and innocence and recognizes that there literally IS no ego, because there IS no error or sin, and the "forms of error" which the body's eyes look at and can't see past (physical objects) are overlooked entirely.

The world, as referred to in "the forgiven world", that being simply Earth and the rest of this universe, IS AN ILLUSION, and it is the form of error. To look at it is to be blinded by perception of form. To look past it is to overlook it and see beyond it. In this way, forgiveness literally overlooks the world entirely, forgets the world, ignores physical objects, and looks past it to the face of Christ. This is "forgiving the world" doesn't entail keeping it and looking AT it in a forgiving way, it entails OVERLOOKING it, recognizing it is NOT THERE, and realizing that it - being made of the idea of sin - DOES NOT EXIST AND HAS NOT HAPPENED. In this way forgiveness overlooks the world itself, not just misperceptions of it, and looks beyond this world to another - Heaven.

As such, "a forgiven world cannot last" because if it IS forgiven, it WAS an illusion, and IS NOT real, and therefore CAN be overlooked, not seen, regarded as nothing, and forgotten entirely. A "forgiven world" is an OVERLOOKED world, a world NOT SEEN, and NOT THERE. A world that never existed in the first place. And so forgiveness recognizes the world is an illusion, not a reality. A forgiven world is an undone world, and it disappears. This is why it cannot last. If you forgive it, you will make it disappear, because there is no sin and the world is the idea of sin. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

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.

I think that for years I have been mistaken about the course. Mainly in terms of the orientation of my mind and the direction in which it was heading.

We start out in false perception, in ego, in body identification. As if we are down in hell at the bottom of a ladder. And then we think of heaven or light or truth or atonement as being higher up the ladder, and so we start the process of climbing out of hell.

Along the way we're told of particularly "high" things which become goals to strive for, like true perception, accepting atonement, the real world, christ vision. And we wonder how to achieve these things. We kind of come at it from a "I don't have it, how do I get it?" point of view.

But the thing is, this is all backwards. We're literally starting out in a backwards thought system, moving in the wrong direction, looking in the wrong direction, and trying to get our heads around what the truth is.

I think as we gradually learn more about the truth, God, soul, reality etc over time, we open up to it more. We do more forgiveness, we heal, we let go of old pain etc. Our identity starts to shift away from the body. We begin questioning the reality of the world etc.

Then at some point, perhaps a kind of tipping point, where for a while we've had our feet in both worlds - heaven and earth - we start to lean more towards reality. We start to side more with the truth than with the false. We develop more truth and find a surer footing that anchors us in reality.

The interesting thing then is that our whole orientation seems to do a 180 degree shift. We start looking from the top down instead of from the bottom up. And we feel more secure in the truth of God and more accepting of what's real as "where we are coming from".

I have found it extremely helpful and clarifying to spend time investigating the nature of God, heaven, creation, souls, sonship, mind, free will, causation, etc. Not the things of this world. This has really fleshed out some solid "facts" that I can depend upon.

I see the simple truth that God, who is truth, has extended himself to create me, and whatever is true of me ONLY comes from God. And that I in turn ONLY have what I inherited from God, and can only be and extend that which I have been given. This has now become a kind of "starting point" for me. A rock solid core of truth within my being. Not even I have any real say in what I am or what I can do.

Now I find myself basing my whole thought process on that truth. Regarding myself as not of this world. Recognizing that only the Kingdom is real. Feeling into and aligning myself with God's will and with my real function. Embedding myself in heaven and looking outward from there. This is orienting me from "the top down" to look at everything the course says from a new vantage point. And it's as if I am seeing things in a way I never saw before.

I'm finding is just an avalanche of clarification and insight about what it's getting at. I find for example that while many "bottom-uppers" believe their whole mission is to escape from hell and return home, really the whole course is aimed towards anchoring yourself in your true nature and expressing that, shining a light into the world to produce healing. As if what's at the top of the ladder reaches down to the bottom of the ladder, to either shine it away or raise it up.

There are in fact many parts of the course related to bringing heaven into the world. Shining God's light as a reflection of his being. The extension of miracles which we are literally told fall DOWN like drops of healing rain FROM heaven ONTO the earth.

The fact that christ works through our bodies, that the holy spirit uses the body for his purposes, and that we extend through the body to form holy relationships. Even forgiveness is a matter of allowing the light of heaven's truth to infuse the mind to correct it's perceptions. Where do we get any kind of truth from if not from outside of perception itself? Truth is of God!

It's not so much a "let's just get out of here" thing. It's more of a, let's remember who we really are anchored in heaven's reality and shine outward from that core truth into the world, to be the light of the world, a healing presence, a teacher/extender of God into the dream, and to help shine away the world. This isn't escape from hell, it's a DISPELLING OF DARKNESS by shining the light of heaven onto it. And this will seem "backwards" to those who believe their only goal is to get out of here asap.

I also think that all the discussions about true perception, christ vision, the face of christ, the real world, atonement etc, are all quite misleading. Mainly because it's very clear to me now that true perception is merely a SIDE EFFECT of a mind which is anchoring itself on the OTHER side of the separation. A mind which is identifying with the spirit being that is BEYOND the realm of perception entirely.

Even the perception of the real world is clearly infused with the light of heaven and is really just a stopping point just prior to entering heaven, on the way to TOTAL immersion in heaven. It just represents a state of being ALMOST entirely spirit identified. And giving yourself over entirely to the atonement merely means becoming FULLY dependent on the truth, having been previously only "mostly" dependent upon it. And truth is not of this world.

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement (but have partly accepted it) and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know."

This really tells us that the acceptance of atonement is at first a GRADUAL TRANSITION out of hell towards heaven, out of false perception towards truth, and it is only FULLY or FINALLY accepted at the end, where you are 100% willing to accept the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Until then, you are PARTLY atoned, just as Jesus says you are "not now wholy insane." Truth has corrected your mind to SOME extent.

Indeed the whole idea of forgiveness is riddled with confusion and misunderstanding. To forgive really means, that you recognize what is true - which IS HEAVEN, and to then "defend" that truth through the proper use of denial, to REJECT that anything not of God is real or has any power. It's a recognition that illusions are false, BECAUSE OF what is true. AND what is true is God - not of this world. Forgiveness thus is rooted in and depends on recognizing God's nature, which is itself BEYOND forgiveness.

The most obvious point is that, here we are in bodies starting out in false perception, blind to God and in denial of reality. The question then is how do we solve that. And obviously the only real way to solve that is in "leaving the desert". That means that in order to become more loving, more light, more truthful, more sane, you have to actually identify with something BEYOND the dream, with a real eternal truth that is entirely OUTSIDE of perception, so that your perception transforms to line up with it. The blueprint for right mindedness is the one mind.

You can't just work on perception in a closed box. True perception in fact has to be BASED UPON knowledge. And knowledge is the real truth. Believing that the real truth is true - a truth which is OUTSIDE of spacetime - causes perception to be transformed to line up with it. It's almost like, you have to reach outside of ALL perception first, get a hold of reality, then infuse that reality into your mind so that your perception becomes lighter. This was not at all evident in years of past study and in the common interpretations of the course.

We're also told about miracle working and the fact that miracles in fact come from God and fall down from heaven like healing rain, onto the earth. This is similar to how forgiveness works, in that the light that is higher and more true, shines into the mind and into the world, and bestows life where there was death.

Because "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" and "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers". That means they're starting out IN HEAVEN and are expressing FROM God through our minds, transforming perception and healing the world. That's a TOP DOWN mechanic, which is why they cannot be received when fear (false perception) is too strong.

I've also found that until you can get a really solid metaphysical, logical grasp of the nature of God and creation, you can't really have anything clear and true enough to compare anything to. You really need a solid idea of the light, in order for it to clearly contradict the darkness. You need to know the truth of heaven and of your being and nature, in order to compare that to other things that happen in the world, to recognize WHY those things are false and unreal. You can't just compare illusions to true perception, you have to compare them to God, then perception will follow.

"Perception (even true perception) is a RESULT, not a cause".And so it sort of comes down to not just the question of what things are, but of the question of WHY they are that way. The understanding or logical reason that they are based on. Illusions are illusions BECAUSE of what the truth is. Sickness is unreal BECAUSE of the immortal nature of God. The world is a dream BEACUSE reality is not like it. Miracles can raise the dead BEACUSE of their expression of eternal life. If you don't have your mind anchored in heaven, you really don't have any solid ground to stand on at all.

For me, my whole orientation with the course is quite strongly transitioning to a totally top-down view at the moment. This reflects the changes in myself which are transitioning to a "going within in order to be able to express outward", or seeking the higher mind in order to shine FROM it into the world. Or aligning myself with a higher light, so that I can shine darkness way. I am finding out WHO I AM, so that I can REJECT what I am not.

"Yet when they find their own Reality is even here, then they step back and let It lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make?"

"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

Ultimately what we're really doing is we are rising up from the pits of hell and ascending into heaven. But the closer you get to heaven the more you feel like you are IN heaven, looking back downward towards hell. It's most like returning to HERE, having been AWAY. Or becoming more PRESENT, having been absent. Or becoming more authentic, having been artificial.

That orientation of "peering out from the truth" or "operating under the laws of God" or "being true to yourself first" or "having innocence in you first which you project out", is what MAKES the real world and true perception be what they are. They are reflections of the light that is IN you, which you have stepped into and are radiating. The love which you give in order to see love. "Love looks upon itself."

So it's really about you deciding to change which ROOM you are located in. Are you in hell, or in heaven. When you seek for a better way than suffering, to any degree at all, you are seeking to be in the room of heaven, where you are happy. And then you start to move between the rooms. You want to get yourself as much immersed in heaven as possible, so that almost all of you is very close to being in heaven just before you leave the world. That means you are practically a REFLECTION OF DIVINITY, while in the dream, allowing you to perform miracles and heal the world. To extend God's love and light and to keep illusions from tempting you.

It's all top-down. All the correction is top-down. All the extension of love and light and power is top-down. All of the being true to yourself is top-down. All of the health of the body is caused from the top-down. All dispelling of illusions and the sanity of the mind is brought about from the top-down. Death is conquered throught the top-down expression of eternal life. True perception and the forgiven world and the real world all come about through the top-down application and expression of your true nature. And eventually the goal is to be SO completely vigilant for the Kingdom, or to seek first the Kingdom of God, so that you put God FIRST in all things, and everything else just follows naturally from there.

If you start with "I'm defective, I need to improve", you will end up with an ego.

If you start with "I'm perfect, I need not change", you will end up with a perfect self.

Most of us start with the approach that we're defective, full of guilt, unhappy, broken, lost, etc.... and then we start seeking on the basis of this premise.

But when you do that, there is huge risk of not questioning the premise itself, which is false. The premise says "there's something wrong with me, I need to improve myself." That's NOT true. But if you believe it, you'll start the "seek and do not find" spiritual journey.

Then you'll be trying to make yourself better, be more loving, have more wakefulness, gain more growth etc. The trouble is, this will cause you to AVOID the real problem. The real problem is your belief that you are defective in the first place.

If you start with "I'm not defective, I only need to accept I am already perfect", then you're starting out on the right foot. And it results in you questioning any belief that says otherwise, without you going off on a tangent based on a false premise.

So it's another sort of paradoxical thing. You have to start out as you mean to finish. You have to start as though you're already at the end, and sort of work backwards to accepting a pre-existing God-created condition of perfection.

If you do it the other way around, starting with lack and guilt and not good enough and all that, thinking this is true, and reacting to it, and feeling compelled to do something based on it, you'll be led astray by the ego. And then you'll become a spiritualised ego.

We've all fallen for this trap. Believing we even NEED to seek for a perfection, or to make it happen, or to construct a better self, when in fact God has already done the hard work.

If we adopt the ego's view that we need to perfect ourselves, then we avoid looking at the fact that we are IN DENIAL. We have DENIED that we are perfect, and this denial is the problem. We have DENIED happiness and peace and love, and the removal of the denial is necessary in order to become AWARE OF it again.

If we are in the business of trying to focus on the positives and the being more loving and more kindness and all these sort of non-denial happy-go-lucky perspectives, then we may inadvertently NOT LOOK at the DENIAL that we have. We may not look at the actual problem - the block to awareness - the barriers that we have built against a PRE-EXISTING perfection.

So in general we have it all backwards. We are looking for something in the wrong place and in the wrong way. The spiritual path is actually back to front. We need to be melting within, going within, finding the truth that God has already put there, finding the solution God has already established, accepting, recognizing, rather than going out of our minds trying to make it, build it, change it, author it, transform into it.

If you can't look at and question the ASSUMPTION of the belief "I'm not perfect", "there's something wrong with me", then you're not really making any headway. The trick is not to answer the question of what you have done wrong, it's to question WHETHER OR NOT you have done anything wrong.

There is nothing wrong with you. You're just pretending, and you don't really need fixing. But your belief that you need fixing needs fixing.

"We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you."

"To repeat an earlier statement, and also to extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction."

"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

When I used to do ACIM, it was always about me being here on Earth trying to forgive stuff. People were across from me in bodies, as bodies. I was a body. The focus was on me being here anchored in a body trying to somehow get closer to reality.

But then there was a big change and turning point, namely that my wife left her body and wend to heaven. But this was by no means the end of our interactions together, and instead she became a kind of anchor in heaven.

Since then my focus has noticeably shifted in how I deal with the course. I see it as telling me that I should be locating myself as IN heaven, and not of this world. Even if my body seems to be here, I should regard myself as with God. Physically on earth, mentally in heaven.

I see this also as relating to the topic of 'who I am really'. I am not a body, I am free. Well, where am I if I'm not a body - I'm in heaven. If I am Christ, where is Christ? Not on Earth. Christ IS heaven. If I am immortal spirit and recognize and identify myself as spirit, where is spirit? It's not on earth, it's in heaven, as heaven.

So for me now the focus has shifted quite a bit in terms of how I am 'oriented'. I am becoming increasingly more 'centered' in heaven, identifying as part of heaven, while my body continues to seem to exist on Earth.

I liken it to what it would be like if I was an angel in heaven, and came to Earth for a visit but was still entirely of the same nature and mindset that I was in heaven. Still believing I am with God, still in the light, still a spirit being, not confused about who or what I am. In the world, but not of it.

I think this is important because we need to realize we are not Earth people, we are not bodies or humans, we are not anchored here. Just because bodies are here it gives a flavour of ... everything I do is from the perspective of being here. But this isn't the proper perspective. To get above the battlefield mind has to see itself as NOT in a body, NOT outside the Kingdom, NOT separate from God.

I focus now much more on affirming and recognising who I really am - immortal spirit, where I really am - in heaven with God, how I really am - perfectly innocent and invulnerable. Lifting up and away from all the sense of the bullshit of the world, all the ideas of "something is going wrong", all the illusions of suffering and of being even someone or something that can suffer. Uncovering my true self.

We need to be above the world, looking down, not looking up from below. Believing we are firmly WITHIN God, not outside of God.

"You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost."

"That is why we made no distinction before between HAVING the Kingdom of God and BEING the Kingdom of God."

"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."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"To be IN the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention ON it."

"The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone."

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"You who ARE the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you ARE reality."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

What that implies is... you have NEVER seen another REAL person with your body’s eyes.

You have to learn then to recognize that a body IS NOT a person. It is a wall of flesh, clothing, a disguise, HIDING what the body’s eyes cannot even see.

Look especially at someone’s face, and see it not as the face of a living being, but instead as just a wall, a disguise BLOCKING your vision, to conceal the true nature of the person. If someone sees your face, they DO NOT see you.

Imagine there is an alien spirit being living inside the body but it cannot be seen at all. It’s buried deep inside. It’s hidden behind the flesh, the bones, the skin, the eyes and mouth, all of it. You can’t see it, because your body’s eyes are not able to see it. But it’s there. And the body is meant to BLOCK you from seeing it.

And thus recognize in that perspective, that a body, every body, your body, is NOT what any REAL person looks like. Your face is not your face. Your shape does not resemble you. Another person’s face is not a first hand experience of their nature. Looking at them is NOT looking at them.

The body was made to DECEIVE YOU. This is a world of deceptive mechanisms. Every single body is not a person but a decoy. There are billions of decoys walking the Earth, and not one of them is a first-hand representation of anyone.

You’re not people watching. You’re body watching. And people are not bodies. This whole world is an illusion, populated by imaginary persons, animated to look as if they are alive, when all they are is illusory images. Pictures in a dream. They are the veil that hides reality from your awareness. They are the cover-up job that is made to tempt you to believe God’s Son is a body.

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."

As far as I grasp it now, our task is to overlook and sort of "gloss over" the various separations of the physical world of form. To be in a state of mind - right mindedness - which is symbolic of the one mind of oneness - which is centred in wholeness and unconditionality, looking out upon the separated world and basically "ignoring" the separations. Not buying into appearances of form or differences or the ways that things seem to be separated off.

The mind in this state doesn't pay much attention to the form that anything takes because it's recognised as not meaning anything different to anything else. The mind here is looking toward Christ, and the physical is only seen sort of indirectly on the side.

Everything about the physical is immediately met with forgiveness, like a deflector shield, which bounces off all illusions and temptations and is dismissed as false and nothing and not important. This is sort of like transcending the illusion while keeping the illusion - still in a dream state (happy dream) but not buying into it. In the world but not of it.

A reflection of heaven is thus seen across the chaos, while the chaos is still there. Sort of like a symbolic state of oneness underlying the forms, but while still keeping the forms. Almost complete transcendence of the world. This is the real world state which doesn't 'contain' physical objects at the transcendental level, but the forgiven world still has them. The seeming formlessness of the real world seems to be lightly covered by the forms of the world, as though a second layer, but the real world isn't the same as the state of heaven.

This would be akin to the old model suggesting that everything in this world is real and yet is unified in a oneness at a deeper level. It's just that the forms are a dream and the underlying oneness is a DREAM of oneness. Then when we go beyond the real world, which is the symbol of forgiveness/face of christ, we enter into heaven proper. This completely takes you out of the world, out of the dream, beyond the real world entirely, and into God's Kingdom.

That's a movement totally out of dreaming and of spacetime and beyond the 'dream of oneness' into what would seem to be practically a whole other dimension - the great and shining circle of God's kingdom.

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

"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"

"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; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what, you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs NO correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge."

"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. 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."

There is a pivotal moment when you let go of the ego's hand and decide to take the hand of Christ.

This can and will happen in many scenarios and many times over. And it's going to happen in your "real life" in relation to people and your beliefs about people.

Cate Grieves gave a good example of this recently in relation to her daughter where she would clash with the "ego" in her daughter, or rather, her own inner fight with her own ego projected there, but after having enough, one day she finally decided to recognize the Christ in her and to relate only to that identity, not to the ego. And everything shifted. That's an example of letting go of the ego's hand and taking the hand of Christ.

Similarly I had spent many many years believing in sickness, thinking it was real, irreversible, truth. Each time I saw it I had reactions and grief. I believed it was real. It was actually horrifying to see disability and very upsetting because I believed it was real, and how tragic it was what had been lost as a result of it. All that suffering was ego bullshit.

I had gone through many many periods of trying to heal it, fix it, rescue the person, trying to learn about what caused it, diagnosing it, figuring out why it happened etc. All of these ways that I was actually continually using the ego to try to find some kind of truth outside of me. Always it would lead me to dead ends and failing to find anything that made sense. It was infuriating. I tried and tried and tried to explain why and how the sickness happened and all that did was justify and keep it.

And this was all because I believed my own ego, my own intellect's ability to diagnose truthfully (which is impossible), and that if I would seek externally for truth I would actually be able to find it, if I looked hard enough. But this was all classic seek-and-do-not-find tactics. It was all based on me believing that the problem was real.

One day, I was getting to where I had really had enough, like, fucking hell I cannot put up with this bullshit any more. And I was starting to recognize with Jesus' help the ways that I kept trying to solve this "real problem", and He was just always trying to get me to surrender and stop doing that. When I was in 'fix it' mode my mind was just lost like in a tunnel vision of thinking that I was going to find the answer, not realizing and not having the awareness that this was fundamentally impossible. The entire basis for my searching was flawed and based in the ego, so I was trapped and failing before I even started.

Somehow enough of these events of futility and failure and gradual tiny steps in becoming aware of this, led to a moment where it started to dawn on me. I started to finally get it. This had all been based on the idea that sickness was REAL. And that also fed into an awareness that was growing in me that there just was no truth out there whatsoever. I had been looking in the wrong place - in the ego - for a truth that doesn't exist there. And that maybe this whole world had no truth in it at all.

Up until that point I'd been believing that the world was real and sickness was real and sin was real. Even if some part of me understood otherwise. And my belief that there is somehow a truth in this world just met with a total loss in finding it. That was GOOD, because it revealed to me that this ego pursuit was totally a distraction, and a pointless one at that. There IS no truth in the world. The truth is NOT out there. This really started a MAJOR shift in my awareness that has been leading to just a tremendous flood of insight and awakening lately.

But the main thing is, I had to question whether sickness was real. And that meant even going against everyone else who said sickness was real. Going against the doctors and the neighbors and the family members and even those closest to me who all believed in real sickness. I had to find enough certainty and be pissed off enough and fed up enough to finally say FUCK THAT. There is no truth there. So I decided, or at least found enough of a sense of conviction, like a ray of light peeking through the window for the first time, to open up to the idea that sickness is not reality, because this world is not reality.

This was a major turn of events because this has now laid a foundation for really huge strides forward, a foundation for hope, a foundation for miracles, and a foundation for healing. That would not have been possible had I remained in the ego belief that sickness is truth. So in this same way, I became able to let go of the ego's hand and take the hand of Christ. And because it took such tremendous frustration and desperation to exhaust the ego's bullshit and to really reveal to myself that this fundamentally major world-wide claim about real sickness was total f'ing bullshit.

So now something is different for me. It's a turning point, suddenly instead of looking at, believing in, and reacting to "real sickness", I am learning how it is an illusion, I am starting to actually overlook it, which means I am finally actually forgiving it. My mind and awareness are shifting and I'm seeing sickness in a whole different way. I'm no longer allowing the ego interpretation of it to be the limit of my belief or awareness, and instead am opening up to the Christ perspective that sickness is not the truth. It's not real, and because it is not real, it can be undone.

These shifts happen in big ways and small ways. Each time you come to question or doubt the ego and see that it's been leading you on a wild goosechase, and its claims are not the truth, you gradually let go of its hand and shift allegiance to Christ. You go from perceiving FORM as though it's real, and looking beyond it. You go from seeing people as real bodies, to no longer regarding them as "just that". Your vision no longer stops at sight of form and it starts to see a truth that transcends it. The person is not their body. The person is not their ego.

This basically means you are gradually de-coupling yourself from form, and are actually letting go of your own body at the same time. Everything in front of your eyes is an attempt to get you to see it as real, and to fail to overlook/forgive, leading to judgement. We need to learn to not believe it! It's not real. It's not truth. Form is just an effect of an idea, not a solid reality. Nor is it fixed, and nor is it identity.

Form is not the truth about a person. Their body is not the truth about them. Their personality/persona/shadow is not the truth about them. They actually are more than that. Even when they are filled with hate and rage, that's still not true about them. Their real self, holy and innocent, is still in there somewhere, just temporarily covered up. It doesn't go away! This justifies unconditional love at all times.

Lately what I've been trying to focus on is what can be *experienced*. The truth can be described in thousands of words but really it is an experience. We're really talking about you getting to the point where you can experience happiness, experience love, experience peace, experience God. God is an experience.

So what this means is looking at what you are experiencing NOW, and looking at what tools you can practically USE to actaully shift your experience to a happier, fuller, more truthful/authentic one.

And this has nothing really to do with what you are thinking about what you're experiencing or what's going on around it or what you should be experiencing, but the actual direct immediate experience - your feelings, your psychological reactions, your perception of reality, your union with God. What is reality to you right now, in honesty and not trying to 'please' Jesus?

This isn't done on a mental level or in terms of theory or discussion. What you really need is practical tools that WORK that bring about a real TRANSFORMATION of what you are experiencing. You are meant to LIVE the truth, not just talk about it. You're meant to actually feel God's love, live in God's love and be God's love.

What I've been seeing also is that when you try to be or attain a goal or theoretical truth that is too far beyond what you can actually EXPERIENCE, all of your energies start to flow into the intellect because they aren't grounded or rooted in what is real to you. You try to grasp at it and affirm it and think about it and make it seem like you understand it but you're not actually *experiencing* it because it's outside your envelope. It's very easy to conceptualize 'oneness' but, are you actually fully omnipresent and experience absolute unlimited psychological access to every part of existence? Nope.

I can testify that I went to great lengths in my mind and intellect in understanding the Course and the metaphysics and the high-level statements of truth and how it all fits together and all that. I was looking for some kind of a way to experience truth by having the biggest or best thought about it, or the widest grasp of where it fits, or the most abstract or subtle aspects of what Jesus has taught about the truth.

But even when I thought I really really really was getting it and understanding it, mentally, it was NOT followed by a result of experiencing love, or experiencing God. It did not bring peace. And it was like getting to the end of a path that you thought would lead you to the truth or to God only to find out that it does NOT lead there.

It doesn't lead there because its a journey in thinking and intellectualizing rather than the much more real, direct EXPERIENCING of truth. So I had to learn this, the hard way, that it can't be all about the talk or all about the theory or all about the metaphysics. It IS okay to seek for understanding (ACIM says understanding is appreciation of the truth), but you can't EXPERIENCE it on a purely theoretical level.

When we're not actually dealing with what we are experiencing - the immediate interaction of you vs what's in front of your face right now and how your mind is having a RELATIONSHIP with it - then it moves away from here-and-now and becomes removed and distant, turning into just a theory or concept.

Your head, your intellect, is quite capable of handling concepts and theories and thoughts about them, but its as though the intellect is an artificial ego device to be separated from reality, from the here and now. I would find myself tending to even intellectualize my feelings, transferring emotional energy into my head and trying to process it there through thought. Instead of feeling. Instead of experiencing.

I've also seen people get caught up in what they 'should' be doing or are supposed to be believing, launching into 'trying' really hard to force yourself to be those things, without ACTUALLY being able to do so. It creates the spiritualized ego. And when asked questions about what they are experiencing now or what they are really feeling, they are disconnected from it.

They will respond about what they think of it or what it means or what they think they're supposed to say or what lofty course idea they're meant to believe, but they don't REALLY believe it. They don't REALLY mean it. And they're out of touch with where they're really at, cut off from FEELING. Feeling is much closer to being than intellectualizing. But people don't want to feel. They don't want the immediate experience of reality, preferring to be buffered against it by all of these intellectual walls of thought and guilt and shame and force and pressure and ... using the wrong tool for the job.

What you may find as I have, as well, is that what I can experience has certain boundaries that prevent me from experiencing anything too far outside my 'comfort zone'. My mind won't stretch that far. If there's a suggestion to be or do something that I'm just not ready for, there's no way I'm going to be ABLE to do it yet alone willing to do it.

You can be willing enough to take small steps from where you actually are to where you want to get to next, but giant leaps are next to impossible. And when you try to make giant leaps before you're really ready, you will BYPASS, which means you're in denial about what you're really believing and experiencing and are pretending to be further along than you want to admit to. It's the ego that tries to throw you into 'advanced spirituality' before you are really ready or willing or able to actually BE it, because it wants the prowess of 'mastery' without ACTUALLY letting go of enough ego to experience it truly.

So you need to stop, go within, and look much closer to home, much closer to where you are realistically at right now. What are you experiencing right now. What are you feeling. And this is where you have to be really honest. Do you REALLY believe what the course is saying? Probably not. What do you believe instead? You have to work through this stuff. You can't pretend not to have blocks to awareness, you have to ACTUALLY look for them and acknowledge that they're there and then work on transforming your beliefs/viewpoints/attitudes so that you can ACTUALLY be free of these blocks.

They don't go away by sweeping them under the carpet, or by using denial, or by shutting them out, or making yourself unconscious, or bypassing to a level of advancement you're not ready for. There is nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you are NOT the advanced spiritual successor to Jesus just yet. If you don't acknowledge what you're actually experiencing then you aren't going to be able to change your experience. And I think that's what this is all about - transforming what you are experiencing so that you can experience something better. And this means dealing with the 'reality' of your situation, not some ACIM-driven fairytale about how spiritual you are or how lofty the concepts are or what you are 'supposed' to be like.

How do you feel? Where are you at? What is honestly true for you right now? Have the courage to look at it, feel it, experience it, be with it. Acknowledge how fucked up you are. Then re-interpret your evaluation of yourself and transform your experience of yourself into a genuinely higher version of yourself.

Authenticity.

I recently seemed to come full circle with the course. And I mean, right back to the very beginning.

I found myself in states of false perception, looking at the world and its hellish ways. There was "tolerance for pain" and ridiculous stupid things happening. It was like I was back at the very start of course, immersed in the world and identified with suffering. It seemed like I hadn't learned a single thing.

The difference was that this time around I seemed to bring a whole lot of learning and light with me, taking a fresh NEW look at the very first starting steps on the road to awakening but without a ton of clutter and confusion. I've been rediscovering "the basics" in a whole new light, seeing a much greater simplicity and clarity in the course material.

I settled into really looking at the world's ridiculousness, its hopelessness, its meaninglessness. Jesus describes this process in a section called "the real alternative." It speaks of how we must at some point look at the fact of the world's nature and not deny it.

I had to look at the fact that time is death and everything in the world leads to death. That it is a closed system of fear in which everything always fails. It wasn't pretty to look at. But this gives rise to a deep inner rejection of the ridiculous nature of the world, an insistence that this just CANNOT BE God's will.

It was an insight that there has to be a better way, there has to be another world, there has to be another way to see and to live and be happy that has nothing to do with the world. This was a real turning point because without the awareness that the world is completely hopeless and impossible, too much value is placed in it and salvation is sought within its offerings.

I found this interesting because for a very long time I have sought to try to understand the LIGHT, the nature of heaven and God, and to try to get a clear picture of what the truth is. To reach above and beyond with theory and thought so that I could more fully understand the proper perspective of the truth.

And here I was instead taking a really good look at the darkness and finding there was a major treasure there to discover - a use of it that would prove to turn me 180 degrees in the right direction. Just as I thought things could not get much worse, I suddenly found a way out.

So for me this then opened me up to not only the willingness to seek for a better way, and another world, but also the willingness to no longer look for hope in and of the world. It was the end of false hopes and idle wishes. But it was also the birth of a fresh NEW hope, a real hope, a real possibility and a clear path to God.

I turned my back on the world more and sought the light. This also involved a major upheaval to what I thought about the world. I had to realize that much that many people had taught on the subject was wrong, and that the world in and of itself was meaningless.

I had to realize that it was POSSIBLE for there to be another way, a better way, a higher way, to rise above the hell and misery. There had to be another truth, a higher truth, not of this world, which could override the world. And this meant no longer associating hell with the world, no longer believing that it was inherently guilty.

This had required, I think, years of undoing of guilt in myself, because previously I just don't think I could conceive of how the world could not be guilty, or not accuse it all the time, because there was too much of a mountain of guilt to look past. I couldn't get my mind to conceive of a "better way" or a way of looking at the world that wasn't riddled with guilty projections. I couldn't "separate out" the world from what I was turning it into.

I hadn't thought it POSSIBLE that the same meaningless world could be seen in such a way as to even love it or find a reflection of innocence in it. I started seeing all this stuff in the course about the real world and true perceptions and the forgiven world, God loving the world and seeking a different way of seeing everything. Christ vision and so on. And this really "awakened" something in me in terms of being able to understand that the world could be forgiven and seen in a totally different light.

I did actually have several days where I felt like there was literally a light inside me that was shining all the time. Like something had been activated. And this light was entertaining the possibility that "the world I made" could be seen in a more loving way, instead of the rejecting way that is taught by many course teachers. I embraced the idea that the world isn't fundamentally hell, and it's really my interpretation of it that MAKES it so.

This has opened the way for the very simple awareness that there are indeed two ways of looking at, interpreting, giving meaning to, giving purpose to, the same world, and they are very opposite. It has also given rise to an awareness that I actually do have a CHOICE. There IS an alternative. There IS another way and another option. I don't HAVE to just go along with what appears to be an inherent meaning or a judgement that seems to come from the world. I actually can choose HOW to use and experience the world.

This has unlocked a freedom and a sense of looseness about being able to actually ELECT what to "make of" anything. I can see now that things only seem to be bad and wrong if I literally chose that they are. I see that my interpretation of everything is entirely optional and unlimited. I make everything up as I go along. I can choose something else. I have to keep asking myself whether something "really is" what I am thinking it is, or if it only seems that because I'm MAKING it be that. It is constantly revealed that I'm the one who made it into hell, and I could be happier if I would stop doing that. "I can escape the world i see by giving up attack thoughts"

I had to realize per the secret of salvation not only that I was doing it all to myself, but that it was ME who was DECIDING that the happenings in the world were evil and wrong. There's a whole layer of interpretation, judgement, evaluation, deciding and projecting that comes in between me and it. And it's not fixed. I can just as easily THINK and feel in a happier way than in an unhappy way. There is an actual alternative option to choose, a better way, a higher outlook, a more loving viewpoint.

Now I see that my experience of the world is literally like a switch. I can flip channels between the lower ego mind and the higher holy spirit mind. This forms two perspectives, the false perceptions that make everything seem like a fearful hell, and a higher perspective which lights everything up and makes it happy and easy.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell" because I am the one who decides to believe what I see in it. It is literally nothing other than what I put there to see and I seem to be finally finding the "controls" to operate the machinery of perception. Because I've opened up to realizing there is ANOTHER world, there is a REAL ALTERNATIVE, there is a REAL HOPE, my mind is now able to not be so stuck on a one-track rollercoaster ride.

I've stepped back somehow and found a deeper footing behind the flip-flopping instabilities of perception - gaining an ability to freely stabilize it. Of course it's still a learning process but there is a definite opening and a raised awareness and an increased versatility. I see that thought is powerful and I see that ego is a false function.

I see that I need now to have only higher happier thoughts. It is not enough to just accept suffering, I will now INSIST on a better way. On ONLY seeing with christ/holy spirit and ONLY having uplifting happy thoughts. I see now that these higher-mind thoughts are the source of miracles. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." I can just as easily MAKE UP that something MEANS something good than to make up that it means something is terrible. I can CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER.

The whole course is taking on new meaning and I keep seeing how the things Jesus has been saying all along suddenly make so much more sense and I see the purpose of them. Without the openness to a better way it was like functioning only on one level. But there ARE two levels, two levels of minds, two ways of seeing, two functions, two mindsets, two perceptions, two qualities of thought, two purposes, two meanings. One is lower, one is higher, and there is nothing stopping me from choosing one or the other.

I just need now to practice focusing on and embracing the higher level truth, the holy spirit's christ vision, and the happier uplifting resurrecting outlook. To have only the thoughts I think with God. To completely turn my back on, deny and reject, the unacceptable lower-level lies. This entails also not listening to the ego, not listening to the world, not listening to the body, and not paying any mind to anything not of God.

There IS a better way. There IS another world. There IS a reality where everything is always happy and everything is perfect. My willingness to trust that and side with it and believe it has really strengthened. It's time to rise!

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.

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."

"The ego equates:

Not agreeing with me = denial.

But correction is not denial.

It’s reinterpretation."

(ChatGPT)

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

I wonder if, as egos, we are not really very accustomed to looking for a different interpretation. The ego's main and really only device is separation. We are very very conditioned to USE separation to make things go away.

The ego operates on a horizontal axis of go towards, or go away from (desire/fear, gain/loss etc). It does not know anything about staying where you are and going upwards, or finding a higher ground, or a broader perspective.

This movement of forgiveness which looks for another way to look at things, is not 'natural' in the egos functioning. Perhaps thats why we all get a bit lost in using spiritual things to bypass, because we tend to "shut things out" as a problem solving method - ie separate from it, deny it, hide it, attack it, to solve it.

We're not being asked to separate from the world and problems as such, we're being asked to reconsider what they mean, to realize that we've added meaning and judgement on top of them, and that this layer of meaning and judgement can be changed independently of the thing they're projected onto.

This really entails breaking out of the idea of sin. Because sin, as false perception, associates guilt with form, with objects, with bodies and places and things. It locks it in. And once it's locked in we are not accustomed to breaking out of that, we just think a given person is guilty or that the sinfulness is inherent to what happened. We don't realize there's two parts to it - the thing and the interpretation of the thing.

"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."

To forgive we do have to recognize there are two parts, the "what seemed to happen" and the "what I made of it". And then to realize we can in fact change the "what I make of it" and see it differently. And this doesn't necessarily have to entail a bypass, a denial, an ignoring or a shutting out, of the thing being reinterpreted.

I think perhaps we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because having attached meaning to form we want to avoid or throw away the form in order to be relieved of its meaning. This is our mistake. This is how we bypass. We want to just get rid of the thing that we think is evil, instead of separating out the judgement of evil from the neutral thing.

The path of forgiving is a bit more subtle than our kneejerk reaction or out typical 'goto' for problem solving. It's a bit of a "twist" psychologically... to in a way 'keep and acknowledge' the feelings, the situation, the happenings, but alter the internal vantage point. We're not used to that "shifting" of perception. We tend to think perception if fixed (this is the idea of sin).

So the formula ends up being more like, keep looking at this but look at it differently ... rather than, don't look at this at all in order to pretend it's not there anymore.

It's not about attacking, denying, hurling quotes at, separating from, one-upping, or any other type of way that you'd treat a 'singular thing' in order to make it go away. Instead it's about changing how you see it, what you make of it, what meaning you give it, how you use it. And that means the thing doesn't necessarily go away, and isn't denied, but your experience of it is changed.

Trying to make the thing go away entirely becomes a murderous attack upon the body and the feeling and the world. This is driven by a perception that "it is one thing", ie a sinful thing. And if this were true, the only way to get rid of a wicked thing is to destroy it. But we're not asked to do this. We're asked to change how we look at it - who we look with, so that we see something different in how it strikes us and how we use it. The purpose that we see it for.

We end up with a re-interpretation, not a blanket of denial or an intellectual escape or a denial of feelings or a sweeping wave of destruction.

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."

The thing it realize about perception is this. The physical body itself has a form of sight. It can only see differences. Its sight is based on the reflection of photons of light, which seem to illuminate the surface of objects. This light enters the biological eyeballs and passes ”images” or sensory impressions on to the mind.

The physical body is actually permanently locked into FALSE perception. ”The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.” It CANNOT SEE reality. Which in turn means EVERYTHING IT CAN SEE IS NOT REAL! What it is looking at is therefore NOT reality. Physical objects, photonic images, differences of form, shapes and sizes, colors and brightnesses, is not reality. These is ALL a part of false perception. “The world is false perception.”

It is not really seeing. It is in fact blindness. “Nothing so blinding as perception of form.” Since the body cannot see through or beyond physical surfaces, its seeing is in fact BLOCKED by objects. Objects blind it from seeing what is beyond. And therefore physical sight pretends to be seeing, but is in fact a lack of seeing.

These messages which the body seems to receive from the outside world, transmit into the mind, and the mind is sitting there EVALUATING THE MEANING of the messages. The mind is flexible in its beliefs, and can choose. It can decide what is true, and therefore what something MEANS.

The mind takes the ”physical images” provided by the body senses, and decides what they MEAN. It has perceptions ”about” the images, or projected ONTO the images. In a sense you could say the mind projects stuff ONTO the world or has perceptions ABOUT the world. But it’s really about the sensory signals being interpreted internally, once the body has received them.

The mind can decide whether these images represent the truth, or whether they are false. It can decide whether to believe in them or deny them. It can choose whether to regard them as real or as illusions. It can project sin and guilt ONTO these images and USE these images to mean attack, just as it can also project innocence and love ONTO these images which re-frames them as harmless. “I have given everything all the meaning it has for me.”

In and of themselves, the images actually have NO MEANING. They come from a world which itself HAS NO MEANING. This is why the course describes it as “a meaningless world”, and one which God DID NOT CREATE. The physical world is not merely meaningless ONLY when viewed in false perception, as if meaningful when perceived truly. It is in fact NEVER inherently meaningful. Meaning can be PROJECTED ONTO it, but in and of itself it is literally nothing. “The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it.”

So what actually happens is, the physical body provides a FIXED state of FALSE perception. And everything it sees is what we typically refer to as “the world” or planet Earth. Bodies, trees, houses, buildings, streets, the sky etc. Differences, changes, transitions, growth, decay, etc. This is all false perception and CAN ONLY been seen IN and WITH false perception.

Then at the same time, the MIND is sitting there INTERPRETING the physical signals. So the mind can ALIGN or IDENTIFY with the body, with physicality, and make the world seem real to it. When it does this, the MIND is now having false perception OF a false world - a false interpretation of a false image, at the same time as the physical body having false perception. They are in seeming agreement.

So what the falsely perceiving mind sees as coming from the body, it regards as TOTALLY REAL, because it is tempted anad DECEIVED BY the illusion. It totally agrees with and accepts it as true. That is what false perception means - not recognizing that an illusion is unreal. Just as true perception recognizes the world IS an illusion and not reality.

The mind can also move into a totally opposite state of TRUE perception, which is accurate perception. In this state, the BODY is actually STILL insisting on sending signals of physical unreality to the mind for interpretation. But the mind is not DECEIVED BY their falseness or their forms and appearances. Instead, the mind puts ALL of these physical signals into ONE category - THEY ARE ALL UNREAL. This is because it RECOGNIZES WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE, and is not deceived into thinking the physical world is reality. It recognizes these images ARE ILLUSIONS.

It regards them as UN real because it does not AGREE with or align or identify with the physical. It has identified with spirit, which is NON-physical and OPPOSITE to the physical world. Being fulled on the side of reality, everything unreal is now clearly and obviously unreal. And that means everything FALSE is ”truly seen” as false. As it is. And since the body can ONLY see falsely, and everything it sees IS FALSE, the sane mind now recognizes that the physical world is NOT REAL. Or even really there at all.

The body is trying to tell the mind that there is a world of differences and forms and attack and death ”out there”, BUT the mind is not BUYING INTO it at all. It does not fall for THE ILLUSION. It is not tempted. It RECOGNIZES what the physical really IS, which is that it is NOT TRUE. “The one you made is false.” It’s a false world which ONLY exists WITHIN false perception.

So now you’ve got FALSE signals of FALSE perception coming in from the body, and you’ve got a mind looking AT and USING these signals for a certain purpose. And its goal is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the physical. So it does not believe in, accept, have faith in, nor is it deceived BY, anything the body is seeing. It’s a strange state, almost a paradox, where something UNREAL is recognized as an illusory physical world, while at the same time the mind is in a state of truth. “The world you see must be denied.”

True perception, christ vision, the spiritual eye, does not depend on, use, or rely upon, the physical sight mechanism. It is actually direct mind seeing. But this mind seeing does not SEE the physical world, because it regards it as FALSE, and what is false is shut out from awareness. This is why “It is impossible to see both worlds.” Either you see the false physical world AS IF it is real and true, or you see beyond it to reality. The mind’s eye also does not utilize physical photons for seeing, which is why in effect it cannot see the physical world. “Forgiveness sees it not.” It‘s sight is not based in space or time or distance or measure.

Truly, “To forgive is to OVERLOOK” and overlooking means ”forgetting to see”, or not seeing. You cannot look AT what you forgive. Looking AT it is unforgiveness. You look PAST it and fail to see it. That is what overlooking means. This is why “A world forgiven cannot last.” You cannot forgive the physical and still see the physical. When the mind is sane and healed, it categorizes ALL physical materials, worlds, energies, SPACE TIME, as entirely UNREAL. And this is the recognition of illusions which causes them to DISAPPEAR. And why “there is no world.”

The physical body is an illusion and sees ONLY illusions, in an agreein-with-illusions manner, which makes them seem real. “Only the body makes the world seem real.” All things physical are illusory and unreal. They are blindness. The blind body can only look upon the blind world, which was made to HIDE REALITY from your sight. “The world is drawn like a vail across the face of christ, but it can last no longer than an instant.” Only by recognizing that ALL body signals are FALSE AND UNREAL, can your spiritual eye rest upon the face of Christ, making you ready to return to God, ending perception forever.

You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM

How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?

One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?

Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.

In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.

This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.

To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.

So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.

You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.

God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.

When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.

So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.

Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.

Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.

if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.

"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.

Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.

True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.

Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.

You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.

There was a definite time when it first occurred to me that I am not a body. I was sitting at a bus-stop waiting for the bus ride to or from college. I was probably 19 or so. I was there alone and was looking across a field at some traffic passing by, pondering perhaps symbolically from a detached perspective what all these people were doing in their lives. That's when it suddenly hit me, like, oh my God, I'm not a body!

It wasn't a complete awakening as such, I didn't suddenly relinquish every single way in which I think of others and myself as bodies, but just the idea of it was given birth, perhaps marking the beginning of a spiritual adventure in self exploration. It was like a first step through a doorway into a whole new way of relating to myself.

Jesus knew fully that he was not a body. He was capable of manifesting and dematerializing his body, and in fact was capable of re-manifesting different bodies depending on who he was with. That's what becomes possible when you are completely free of all confusion about what you are - that you or others are not a body at all. That's what it means to have mastery over it and freedom from it. It no longer limits you or defines your identity.

To perform a miracle, you must attune your belief and awareness to the state of truth that you are bringing about in the future.

With your mind imagining the future, picture the end result of healing in the state of it having actually happened. This is in effect accepting the atonement, that nothing unreal happened and only God's truth has happened already.

To do this goes against the ego because the ego holds onto what it believes is true now and tries to reinforce it, pulling up the past to prove and keep it.

"Overlooking" (forgiving) current appearances is a key part of miracles. You have to overlook how things seem now, recognizing that the current condition is the result of the past and you can change your mind to produce a new future completely unlike how it is now.

So in a way, overlooking the current state is like looking to the future.

Then, trusting that you have conceived of what the result WILL be like, regardless of how the world or body appears now, you remain fixated on that truth and believe it.

You believe it in the sense that it is "already done". So you bring that future state of "after the healing" back into the present. Believe now that you are already at that future moment, after the healing is already accomplished, putting the obstacles to healing behind you.

Having FAITH that the unseen will manifest as truth even if it is not showing up yet, is a key to miracles. "Miracles are taken first on faith."

I had no idea, that I had been spending vast majority of my life attempting to use the ego's persona in order to 'make life better'.

All the times that I people-pleased to try to make bad people go away.

All the times that I tried to fix everything bad that ever seemed to be happening.

All the times that I tried to appear to be innocent and yet was acting like a victim.

All the times that I tried to look pleasing to others so that they would maybe not hurt me.

All the times that I thought I had to give others what they wanted, and that I was not inherently wanted in a loving way - only in terms of what others wanted to take from me.

There was even a time in my life that was especially low where I felt so bad about myself, such low self 'esteem', ie shame and unworthiness, that I believed I did not deserve any love, and that the only people who would 'want me' were those who wanted to use me or take from me or have me be a slave to. It was tremendously disempowering.

Ultimately this was all because I had such a strong belief that my personas (personii?), were actually capable of IMPROVING my life, making things more palatable, protecting me or defending me from what I did not want. I wanted to simply shut out all the bad icky stuff and focus solely on the good stuff.

And I remember actually believing that I was becoming 'very spiritual' by rejecting even the everyday egos of other people, which I relegated and judged and condemned for 'being ego' or 'being selfish' etc. This sort of twisted double-edged idea of spirituality arose out of this in my late teens where I was simultaneously terrified and hounded by scary stuff in my mind, while thinking that I was also having deep spiritual insights. And maybe I was in a way, but it was strongly dualistic, and my mind was very split. There was a 'rift' in my life, a strong sense of separation, and that persona of exalted, lofty specialness, really holier-than thou, simultaneously felt like I was approaching death.

I used the persona to get rid of and attack everything that I was against, believing that what I 'kept' was all good and acceptable and allowed. BUT, the more that I got rid of... and believe me I included a LOT of stuff in the list of what I rejected, way above and beyond normal classifications (ie most of the world), the more what I had LEFT OVER got smaller and smaller. The more I found myself in a hole of isolation and loneliness. And the more I became depressed. I felt like this impending sense of everything coming to an 'end'. My whole reality just felt like it was saturated with a sense of impending doom, with no way out. Because I was hiding in the persona and not being authentic at all, even though I felt justified by my pain.

I was repressing so much and rejecting so much, perhaps in attempt to heal myself of strong wounds, which I had projected onto everyone else, that I was perhaps trying to find a way to get away from it all and at least 'fake' that I was healing, as a starting point. Very much fortunately, things gradually started to turn around at that point, massively fuelled by my meeting my beloved wife who came into the darkness like an angel of light. Then the healing commenced.

Now, looking back, I can see how my entire time was spent choosing the persona, putting on a fake image, trying to give people what they wanted, trying to please, trying not to upset anyone, trying to maintain status quo or 'peace' by never asserting myself or standing out, etc. It was a rough lesson! And all of that resisting, all of that... rejecting of life... merely diminished my own. Now I am learning that using the persona at all is an attack on myself. It is a way to buy into the belief that I need to cover myself up because there's something wrong with me. As self-love increases - genuine honest God-shared love - so too does the need for these masks diminish.

I am seeing clearer and clearer that all of the confidence, all of the fearlessness, all of the certainty, all of the clarity and strength, that I thought I was going to find by using rejection, separation, persona denial, etc... are actually already IN ME... it was being denied BY the use of the persona. I just needed to learn WHERE the truth is, what WHAT the truth is. I was looking in the wrong place for my whole life - outside of me, and was rejecting myself the entire time.

Now I see that if you stand with yourself in your truth and don't reject yourself, you don't even NEED any of the persona masks, because you already HAVE what God has given you, you already ARE powerful and safe and strong. You don't need to hide from people, because you are unconditionally loving yourself. You're saying, I'm going to ALWAYS be real, true and honest, in all situations and with all people. I am ALWAYS going to come from unconditional love no matter what. And in that, you not only drop all of the efforts to 'get rid of bad stuff', you also drop all of the efforts to 'choose only the good stuff'. And along with that goes all sense of depending on, or caring about, what anyone else thinks of you or what you do. It is a freedom. In a sense, an independence - being set free from the energy-sucking vampire that the ego is and being AVAILABLE now to God, to allow Him to live through you.

It wasn't getting rid of bad stuff that made my life better. Trying to do that made it worse. Accepting myself fully is the goal.

It's not where I thought life would go. But this is where it is heading for all of us. Back to our true selves. Back to love.

You always perceive in people what you CHOOSE to see in them.

If you CHOOSE to be upset and angry, it CHANGES how people look. It makes them SEEM like they are attacking you. And because of this change in YOUR perception - your filtering - YOU think that you are justified in this anger or upset "because of" what they so obviously are doing. But they only APPEAR to be doing this stuff because YOU are looking through a dark filter of unlove. It filters OUT the love and prevents you from seeing love IN the person, or something about them that is loveable.

When you CHOOSE to stop being upset with them, to like them and to love them, which your are perfectly free and capable of doing, this "fog of unlove" is lifted from YOUR mind and you see the person WITH love. This radically changes how they APPEAR to you. Or rather, what you see IN them. Whatever you perceive people as "being like", they only appear to "belike" that because YOU are CHOOSING to see them that way. How you see them and how they appear has NOTHING to do with them or what they’re doing.

If someone is upset with you, angry at you, saying they don’t like you, the only reason they don’t like you is because they are CHOOSING not to like you. Here’s the trick... if they would CHOOSE to like you, THEY WOULD LIKE YOU. This sounds so obvious but it’s true, because per the secret of salvation, anything that person doesn’t like about you is a result of THEM CHOOSING NOT TO. Whatever they think is "wrong" with you, they ONLY SEE because THEY choose to put that there. They think they are locked into this perception with no choice. They don’t realize if they would simply CHOOSE differently, they COULD choose to LIKE YOU, and would instantly warm up to you.

It sounds too obvious to be true, but this is how it works. You are NEVER justified in being angry at someone because that simply means, you are CHOOSING not to love them. The ONLY reason you don’t like someone is because you haven’t decided to like them, for whatever scapegoating mileage you’re getting out of that. YOU have the power to love everyone. YOU have the freedom to choose to love everyone. Because there is NO REASON NOT TO. The only time you find a reason not to, is when YOU have slipped into ego, YOU are attacking, YOU are projecting, an d YOU are accusing your brother of your own sins.

You are never upset for the reason you think. It is NEVER "because of" people, the world, the body, the environment, or anything other than YOU. You using your free will to CHOOSE TO BE UPSET. You are not at the effect of anyone. You are CAUSAL. Whatever you choose, you cause. You are a creator. If you do not LIKE what you are causing, that’s on you. But disassociating ownership for that responsibility is ego.

You don’t like xyz person because you decided not to like them. They now look like enemies because you WANT to see them as enemies. Your desire to hate them MAKES THEM appear to be unlovable. The only reason they appear unlovable is not because of THEM, it’s because of YOU. If you would decide to love them, they would stop looking like monsters. Set them free of your tyranny.

You are annoyed about xyz situation because you have not yet CHOSEN to be happy. You like being unhappy. When you decide to be happy you will love it.

You think you can’t love xyz person because of "what they are like", because YOU are choosing to be an asshole. There is NO REASON to be unloving. All the reasons we have, we make up. Just as there is no reason to be afraid and all fear is made up.

If I don’t like something, is the problem the THING I don’t like, OR ME choosing to be "not likey"? And while I’m busy pointing out the flaws and sins of others, which I ONLY SEE because I PUT THEM THERE through unlove, I might want to look closer to home at why *I* am being sinful towards them. MY problem causes THEM To look like THE problem.

Everyone is holy and innocent and deserves to be loved fully. If I’m not doing that, *I* have a problem. I need to choose again. The only way a sworn enemy becomes a beloved friend is by choosing to LOVE them, sooner or later. You are free to choose when to change your mind.

"The holiest of all the spots on Earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."

"The power of decision is my own."

God is omnipresent. What this means is, the entirety of His being is fully present in every part of His being.

If you could conceive of God as taking up "space", then this means that in one particular location, the WHOLE entirety of God is fully present. And yet, simultaneously, in another location, the WHOLE entirety of God is present. This should give you a sense of how God is SHARING or is "stretched out" between these two locations, as though he completely DEFIES all sense of spatial limitations.

And when God is fully and completely present in one location, this does not detract from His presence in another location. He is able to be everywhere simultaneously and fully. This UTTERLY defies the entire ego's way of thinking and its world of separation, in which nothing can share with anything, an object cannot be in two places at once, and everything shows you a picture of there being some things in one place that are not in another.

For God to be able to be fully in multiple locations at once, defies absolutely all ego laws. God simply is UTTERLY UNLIMITED by any concept or law or structural or spatial construct. Jesus says that ALL of Him is in EVERY PART, fully and equally. And this is why every PART has been expressed as a SOUL, which is an entire WHOLE within itself because God expresses His wholeness in every part of Himself and creates WHOLE BEINGS.

The closest I can come to conceiving of God's nature is some kind of absolutely massive network of connections that share every part of Himself everywhere. Every part of God is EVERYWHERE. In God there IS no space or time. He is instantaneous omni-present and fully present in every speck of existence.

Similarly, God utterly transcends absolutely every limitation or difficulty or restriction or space-time concept that you can ever come up with. He quite literally, is INFINITE and UNLIMITED in every way. This is absolutely ego defying. Totally law-breaking and COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to this world.

This world was made as an attempt to shut out God by presenting a picture of what God is NOT LIKE, a world where nothing is shared, nothing is in multiple locations, there is no omnipresence, every location lacks something or has compromised with others, there is severe finite limitation placed on everything etc. This is totally unlike God.

In our development of trust, we ARE to learn to start TRUSTING and putting FAITH IN God's totally unlimited nature, in defiance of this world's totally LIMITING framework. We are to learn to OVERLOOK the limitations of matter and form, to NOT BELIEVE the sight of form, because "nothing is so blinding as sight of form". Form literally was made by the ego to create an artificial, unnatural "nature" that operates and looks NOTHING like God's nature. We have to learn to NOT BELIEVE IT, look past it, and recognize the sheer POSSIBILITY AND FREEDOM present in God.

This freedom breaks absolutely every law of this universe, because this entire universe is in OPPOSITION to God's nature. And so God's nature completely DEFIES every conceivable limitation. That means we have to learn, literally, to put our FAITH and trust in a God who can DO ANYTHING, a God who IGNORES orders of difficulty, a God who is completely FREE of all limitations and problems, and a God for whom NOTHING is impossible.

That means shifting our allegiance away from the ego, not just in our mind and perception but also in terms of what we think we are "stuck with" or what is "assumed" or "cannot be changed" or " is a given" in this world, including the so-called inevitability and irreversability of death, which is nothing more than one more ego statement that "This has the power to prevent God's will, and kill His Son, and He can do nothing about it." That is the ego's motto, and we've fallen for it.

Now it is time for a new thought system. A new way of looking at the world, and a new POWER to place our trust in. This is the foundation of all MIRACLE WORKING, which IS SUPERNATURAL, which defies and breaks all ego laws and proves that NOTHING CAN RESIST GOD'S POWER, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, and therefore show that this world is EASILY changed because it is merely an illusion.

If we are to be miracle workers, we can't be sitting on a fence looking happily upon a dying world. Our task is to demonstrate that to God anything is possible, and therefore that is NOTHING that cannot be healed or reversed, and even death - the consequences of sin, all torment and sickness and disaster and world-wide or even universe-wide problems CAN be reversed. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do", not even the most radically extraordinary things you could ever imagine being possible.

The limitations of this world are a total lie. We are to demonstrate this fact by performing miracles which place total faith in GOD'S COMPLETELY UNLIMITED NATURE. If we trust that HE CAN DO ANYTHING, then we too can do anything in cooperation with His Will.

While you have "false perception", your mind is going to be split. It is not merely separated FROM the truth, it is separated WITHIN itself, divided against itself. The ego is a state of self conflict and contradiction. And that means there is disassociation, or two parts, where one part seems to be "you" and the other part seems to be "not you". When you have false perception you are "in two minds."

It will SEEM as though you are "separate from" this world, as a separate perceiver or some kind of bystander who just observes it. What is outside the body (split) seems to be "not you" and what is inside it seems to be you. Yet BOTH of them are in your mind, which has used the body as a separation device to split you from YOURSELF. In this state, you will think that your "illusions" are ONLY to do with your illusions ABOUT the "world that is separate from you", which seems to be objectively real.

However, the purpose of this split is to disown the fact that the whole PLANET is coming from YOUR MIND, and what is "out there" is literally just another part of YOUR MIND that you've disowned. You are the one who MADE IT, it is PART OF your false perception. "The world is false perception". And you cannot truly get to the recognition/perception that both "inside the body" and "the world out there" are BOTH in you, until you can undo enough of the disassociation. The world "out there" is your unconscious mind. The world "in here" seems to be your conscious mind. The division has to be undone.

The sense that "you are not the world" is the ego, hiding in a dream, associating "self" and "what I want" with "you in the body" and associating "what I don't want" with what's outside. When you dream at night, you create entire environments with buildings and streets and people. And it is your mind making all of it. But at the same time, your mind invents a body for you to inhabit inside of this environment, and puts your awareness into it, and makes you unconscious of the dreaming that is making the environment. And so you then perceive AS IF, you are ONLY that which is in the body, looking out upon a world that you think YOU DID NOT MAKE. Even though your mind is making EVERYTHING in the scene.

It is the same in the waking world. Earth. You SEEM to experience that you did not make the world, that it is too big and complex for you to put there yourself, that you are limited to the inside of your little body, and that everything outside the body is "not of you". You seem to have no control over it, no power to directly manipulate it with your mind, and it seems to do things "on its own". BUT THAT IS PART OF DREAMING. And it is in fact YOU, who is putting ALL of the environment there, and making the houses and streets and people. But you are not aware that your larger mind is DOING that because you've DISASSOCIATED from it and think you are just this tiny little crapper stuck in a body peering out and "perceiving" a world that you didn't make. Which leads you to believe that since you have disowned it (the other half of yourself), GOD must have created it. Which is a lie.

WHEN YOU WAKE UP to the truth, and this disassociation and pretense and "hiding in the dream in a body" is overcome, you will come to recognize that YOU ARE DREAMING THE PLANET. That you are looking at a dream that is coming from your mind in its ENTIRETY, not just your little body or your little fenced off corner of the dream. And so now your mind is responsible for MAKING THE WORLD. And it is a dream world, because you are DREAMING IT. You are inventing it as you go along.

To recognize this is to be "awake in the dream", which really means, to be STILL DREAMING but aware that the dream is coming from your mind. It isn't the end of dreaming, nor does it represent the desire to STOP dreaming and be TRULY awake. It is a state of lucidity, but NOT a state of being TOTALLY AWAKE IN REALITY. And because the body is part of the dream, having it, using it, seeing it, keeping it, is all part of STILL dreaming.

Given you are dreaming of a UNIVERSE, to truly awaken from the dreaming state is to END the universe, to DISAPPEAR the body, to see the world VANISH, and FORGET THIS WORLD ENTIRELY, this whole planet and everything on it and beyond it. And to GO HOME TO HEAVEN. Heaven is the container of your "dreaming self" which is reality and is a PLACE and has not changed since you fell asleep.

And only upon waking up FROM dreaming, do you truly awaken into a state where there IS NO DREAM OF ANY KIND, no bodies, no planets, no animals, no plants, no stars or galaxies. Just pure light, love, immortality and eternal life. Pure spirit. What you REALLY ARE. Your real self in God. The Kingdom of God, which GOD created, and which is your real home.

Experientially, this is very simple. Try this:

Sit calmly.

Stop seeking for God outside of you. Stop trying to find Him. Stop going out of yourself. Stop looking for Him. Stay still.

That's all.

You might notice, if you stop seeking.... God shows up. It is the LOSS of God that makes you compelled to seek. DON'T!

If I stop seeking for God outside of me, and stop trying to see Him in everything, and stop being in a 'searching' mode, and just be still..... I SWEAR, the whole room takes on a greater presence and God reveals Himself to my awareness.

This seems to work instantly.

And it also seems to work better than ANY kind of 'seeking for God'. The ego's behavior of seeking for God, albeit seeming to be very 'spiritual', is really the spiritual ego seeking. And it will not find. Because the seeking pushes God away, pushes awareness away.

STOP THE SEEKING, and you will find, because God is already here and your seeking is shutting awareness out!!

It seems like a trick. It seems counter-intuitive. It seems I'm meant to seek in order to find.... hah.... such a lie.

You mean to say, by NOT seeking for God, you will actually become aware of Him and find Him? YESSSSSS!!!

"Be still and know that I am God".

God who is love created you lovingly, with love, through love, as love. You are permanently made of immortal love. When you are being true to yourself, you know that the love you are is shared with God, who is your love and who loves you and with you.

God is in you, and you are within you. There is only this inner experience of inclusion. In heaven, given God is everywhere, creation can only increase INTERNALLY through sharing. God shares his INNER being with you and HOSTS you inside of himself. Creation increase inwardly by adding hosts who share that which already is.

In heaven there is no such thing as "outside" or "external" or "excluded" or "separate". When you are everywhere, you encompass everything inside yourself. There, your brothers are not really outside of you surrounding you, they are WITHIN you and share your innermost being. This is the only real way to be intimate - to welcome your brother INSIDE of you psychologically.

"God who encompasses all being..."

The separation, or as I like to think of it more accurately as "the opposition or denial of God/reality", was an attempt to deny that you are inside of God, and to deny that you are host to him. It was an attempt to LEAVE God and go BEYOND the Kingdom, as though stepping OUTSIDE OF reality.

This produced the mad belief in spacetime, which is the idea of being EXILED from heaven, outside and external to the Kingdom, in a place where God could not exist or enter, seemingly separate and a kingdom you rule without him. The opposite to inner reality is obviously outer reality, which produced a kind of EXTERNALIZED idea of existence. The idea of this "world".

Basically, "you are at home in God, dreaming of exile", which means you are imagining that you are not WITHIN, and are WITHOUT. That you are outside of heaven in some other weird dimension (spacetime). It's an illusion of a separate realm outside the Kingdom. And everything in it is focused on the EXTERNAL.

"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." "Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

Whereas in heaven, your brother is inside of you, as is God, because everyone shares and hosts the same stuff, "on earth" (in exile) it appears your brothers are OUTSIDE of you. It seems you are the only one allowed to inhabit your little speck of existence inside the body, the body fences you off from the universe, and everyone else is kept at arm's length. "The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you."

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

So now the body experience becomes one of isolation and imprisonment inside a fence, where the fence ("the body is clearly a device for separation") comes BETWEEN you and others. It's designed like a thick wall to keep them out and keep you in, safe from love (joining/sharing).

You then focus entirely OUTWARD towards the external, as if the external world is all of reality. As you'll notice, all the body's senses are directed to the detection and validation of WHAT IS EXTERNAL to you, and not what is inside you. In fact, the inside of you is considered invisible. Yet it is the INNER WORLD that is the only reality. Heaven's reality is IN YOUR MIND, and God is inside your mind.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen." "And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One." "He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today."

"Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there."

"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."

God is really not external to you. Nor is heaven. It's not out there in the world. God only temporarily seems to be "in everything you see" ONLY because God is IN YOUR MIND FIRST, not because he is outside of it in the world. You don't look out there WITHOUT him in order to see him, and looking WITHOUT him you WILL NOT see him. This is also why such a large portion of workbook lessons are devoted to you going INSIDE behind your clouds and blocks and denials to try to find the door to heaven. Inside your mind, not outside you.

But when you have blocked access to God, who is inside your mind, your experience is that your "inner world" is lacking love and that the awareness of love's presence is blocked there. Because you seem not to have God IN you, as though you are denying your hosting of His love, you see yourself as deprived. Then you project this outward.

This projection of the seeming absence of love forms a dark hallucinated world, the unforgiven world, in which externals are the primary focus, body identification is emphasized, you cling to the physical, and you see yourself and others as separate objects. The body, external to you, looks on the external aspects of others ie their bodies, and regards this as total reality.

"Only the body makes the world seem real." What that means is that the body is designed to make the idea of "outside the Kingdom" real, to make EXTERNALS real, and to focus on illusions of exile, separation, exclusion, isolation and the absence of love (sin).

"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."

Failing to invite, welcome, and experience the love and presence of God INSIDE your mind, you reason that cause and love and presence and God must be OUTSIDE. If you are not the cause, then you are effect, and now you are a victim, at the seeming effect of an external world that you are putting there. Thus you are doing it to yourself. And yet you are convinced the world is externally objectively real, when it is nothing more than an illusion of BEING OUTSIDE the Kingdom.

"Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God's Son on his Father's throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself." "What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. "

"The good is seen OUTSIDE; the evil, IN."

"An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real, and seen OUTSIDE the mind."

While you may have ideas of God being way out in the far reaches of the universe beyond the stars, I have news for you. God is SO close to you that he is under your skin, behind your body, deeper inside you than even your own split mind and ego, and so close to your soul as to represent the ultimate INNER intimacy. He calls to you FROM WITHIN, not from without. He's not calling to you from the mountain tops or in some external special body or through toys or favorites or any other idols.

This you see is the problem with external salvation. All forms of external searching result in sickness ie mental illness because they take you AWAY FROM where the answer it. The cause and the answer to your problems is INSIDE YOU not outside.

"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."

You cannot find peace by looking FOR it outside of yourself, in the bodies of others, in the planet, or in space or time. The truth IS NOT out there. The truth is an INNER truth. And the peace of God dwells ONLY INSIDE you in a shared inner experience.

You see, mind can only really experience INSIDE the confines of itself. It cannot go anywhere or be anywhere or experience anything that is truly beyond its own reach. Everything it sees and experiences has to be INTERNAL. And this is also why "ideas leave not their source." And also why you are an idea IN the mind of God, not outside of it.

When you see yourself as lacking love you WILL reason that it was caused to be lacking, as an effect, or an EXTERNAL cause. And now you will project cause, and see causation happening against your will by others doing it to you. And thus you accuse them of sin. And this is not forgiving. But to forgive them has nothing to do with reframing what they're doing, and everything to do with looking INSIDE YOURSELF for the responsibility of causing your own suffering. Just as also inside yourself you'll find freedom from your self-inflicted harm.

Seeking outside you WILL NOT FIND what you are looking for. Because in fact, the more you seek outside, the FURTHER AWAY you become from the thing you are trying to find. This is the ego's entire mantra of "seek and do not find."

It makes sense to you to seek ELSEWHERE when you fail to acknowledge, or be aware of, or accept or be open to, that which IS WITHIN you (God, light, truth, your soul etc). Because if it's not regarded as within, surely it is somewhere ELSE. And so you look somewhere else, and do not find it, because it is not there.

"...everyone who believes that the ego is salvation is intensely engaged in the SEARCH for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find.""

"Such is the ego's plan for your salvation. Surely you can see how it is in strict accord with the ego's basic doctrine, "Seek but do not find?" For what could more surely guarantee that you will not find salvation than to channelize all your efforts in searching for it where it is not?"

""Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise." You will not find God outside of you. You will not find God in the world or in a book or in a body or in a planet. You will not find God in this universe. This is the world of EXILE, of EXCLUSION, and of EXTERNALIZATION. It is an hallucination precisely because you DO "project out" what you wanted to see IN PLACE OF what is within you.

Searching to find love's SOURCE, will turn up empty handed, when you look to the idea of EXILE FROM the source, which has manifested as EXTERNAL "reality". What is outside the body is not there. Even the body itself is outside of you. It's constructed from the idea of the avoidance of your soul. This is why you can either identify with the body or with spirit - which really is a question of whether the EXTERNAL is real to you, or whether the INTERNAL is real to you.

You will not get love from external people. You do not want to. If you were to succeed in doing so you would no longer look within to find God and would be without him. This is the ego's promise and deception. Real love is not out there. You have to FIRST find it within, if you want to be IN it, enough to be able to EXTEND it, so that you can then RESULT in perceiving it. Remember that "perception is a RESULT not a cause". PROJECTION is the cause. And you project from what you have WITHIN. You can only seem to see God in the world IF you FIRST look within and find God, before projecting his love.

"It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the PERCEIVER's mind."

"You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."

Realize then that you first must look INSIDE, and your INNER state of mind is all important. This is also why you have to become miracle minded in order to GIVE miracles. You cannot give what you do not have. "I can only give the miracles I have received." This is also why Jesus says you should look within and find out "there is no sin". You are supposed to find the love INSIDE YOU, which is where love IS. It is not separated off and made external.

When you are IN that INNER love, you are in God. You are IN the light. You are IN the heavenly experience. Then you can EXPRESS that love miraculously. You can SHARE it, but you have to be plugged into it. You cannot go looking for the end result outside of you and then hope this will trigger off the cause.

God is NOT in the world, the world is the idea of existing without him. But if God is IN YOUR MIND, then you will look inside and see God, and project God's love outward, and look upon the LOVE that you have projected, which you put there TO see. It it will reflect God. Not because an illusory world is made of God, but because God REPLACES the illusion of exile with presence.

It is so easy to be deceived by the dangling carrot of spacetime. The great TEMPATATION to draw you AWAY from yourself, to suck you OUT of your mind, to hurl you INTO the world, and to make you FIXATE on bodies. To draw you into hell and away from the heaven of your mind. But what if we simply say, THERE IS NO EXTERNAL WORLD?

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? "

There is no life OUTSIDE of heaven. Outside of heaven life is an ILLUSION of life at best, at worst death. Outside of heaven is a sensless, lawless place, of space and time, governed by laws of death. Because God is not there. The "out there" is NOT OUT THERE. The "in here" IS IN HERE. You must go WITHIN, turn away from the world of distractions, find what you have BURIED deep in your mind, welcome Got back into your awareness, and open up the deep inner doorway to heaven. God is waiting for you INSIDE YOU. He always has been. He did not go anywhere. It's you who wandered off into exile. Turn around and go back to where you came from.

"At last the gate of Heaven (within you) 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."

Can the death of the planet Earth ever be God's will? Science can confirm that in a couple billion years, the sun will become so hot that it will boil all the oceans. All the water will turn to vapor producing a greenhouse effect which will make life on earth absolutely impossible. After several billion years, the sun is going to expand to a red giant so hot and so close to the earth that the atmosphere will evaporate into space and the earth will be roasted. It will be utterly impossible for any lifeforms to survive this.

So now you have to ask yourself, if this can possibly be God's will? Is it possible that Earth is a creation of God, part of his kingdom, made by his will, his absolute treasure, and have something like this happen? And if you think that something like this happening is IS okay, how can you justify that this is okay? Because you're now talking about the total destruction of the planet, every form of life being utterly obliterated, all human bodies being reduced to ash, all the oceans boiled to death, all the forests disintegrated, every single creature exterminated in pain and agony and screaming death and scorching fire, which rips them part from the outside in. Can God be held accountable for such an occurrence?

You see, some people studying ACIM believe that this is natural, it's okay, and that the only reason why this might seem "upsetting" is because you're not looking at it right. And that if you look at it right, you'll see that all this stuff CAN STILL HAPPEN, but you can see some kind of spiritual perfection in it such that you are utterly unphased by it and see it AS God's will and perfect kingdom. A fitting HOME for his son. But the truth is that once this event transpires in spacetime, the entire planet is going to be swallowed up by the sun. There isn't going to BE an earth. You won't be able to be in a human body. You won't have a life. And you won't have a perception to enamor it with.

There isn't going to be a world that you can "look at differently." There isn't going to be a version of the world seen with true perception. There isn't going to be a forgiven world or a real world or a saved world or a physical world of any kind. There isn't going to be a world which "is in truth really made of spirit". It won't be there, AT ALL, in any way, on any level. It will be utterly annihilated and erased from existence forever, scattered across the universe as little lumps of death.

Can you justify that such an occurrence and actual possibility and state is something God himself, a loving God, a protective God, a life-giving God, a God who can never die or produce death, a creative non-destructive God, a God who only ever upholds the complete cessation of all suffering, a God who wills that you be happy forever, a God who does not want any kind of cruelty to ever occur, could conceive of AND produce AND enforce AND CAUSE, such an event to happen? Don't forget to smile and be happy as God smashes you in the face with a star. Open your arms to receive its loving embrace!

Are you okay with that? Is there some way your mind can twist SO far into what you fantasize is a deep spiritual hyper-subtle perception, that reveals to you that such an event is utterly true to the nature of God? That such an event is beautiful and delightful and a shining symbol of God's mercy and innocence and harmlessness? Because you're got to make a really EXTREME stretch to try to pull off such a claim.

This isn't even't the most extreme torturous thing that can happen in this space. Your planet could get swallowed up and ripped apart by a black hole. Your planet could get irradiated by massive doses of life-killing radiation. Your planet could lose its star and go into a total freeze. Your planet could lose its atmosphere and become unbreathable. Your planet could collide with a massive asteroid and be blown apart into billions of pieces of death hurtling through space.

Some will say that all of these "ways" of looking at these "events" is entirely ego. That this is an ego interpretation of what's happening. And that if it were not for this viewpoint, if you were to just "look at it truly", you would see that all of these things are just absolutely divine, beautiful, wonderful. That they are God's holy benevolent will. That God WANTS planets to be blown apart on which the lifeforms are utterly helpless to stop it and experience extreme suffering as a result, not to mention being shafted to smithereens in a moment's notice. But apparently if you LOOK AT IT RIGHT, it's not a problem? If you look at it right, it's not suffering? If you look at it right, GOD IS LIKE THIS?

Can you live with that? Can you live with such a God? A God who makes worlds that reject and destroy and deny life, giving life only to take it away, establishing apparent beauty only to destroy it? Can you live with a God that establishes bodies through the illusion of childbirth only to have them killed off later? Is the only way you can "live with that" and be "at peace with that", to change how you look at it? And if you change how you look at earth being utterly destroyed by a solar cataclysm, are you now going to be looking at a spirit-earth, which God apparently created as the real earth, behind the physical appearance of the layer of earth, even though that ENTIRE earth has been blown up? It won't be there to look at!

If any of the things of spacetime exist at all in any way, God is cruel. Either God is cruel or God did not create them. You can't then say, well, the ego created the physical interpretation of what God created, because that now says that God did create "spiritual supernovas", and "spiritual black holes", and "spiritual explosions", and "spiritual war machines." Did God create a spirit-based machine gun? Did God conceive of and allow to exist in any way, a holy sanctioned divine completely non-destruction-based device which is capable of blowing other such created things apart at will? Is that the kind of God that you think God is like? Because there is no way that I will ever personally accept that kind of a definition of God, or a claim of his heavy-handed capabilities.

Anyone who thinks God is like that and would create such things, in any way, at any level, as physicalities or materials or ideas or thoughts or illusions or dreams of in ANY WAY, good luck to you, because you're insane. There is nooooo way that A Course in Miracles is teaching us that ANY OBJECT has spiritual reality. Its FORM does not change, just because you forgive it. Its shapes and its sizes do not change. Earth hasn't just suddenly doubled in size because of some forgiveness you did. Your ACIM book hasn't suddenly turned into a butterfly. The form and the laws of physics governing the form remain the same, even if you see in them a reflection of the laws of God. The laws of death and destruction will always be operating in order TO make the physical material things function, no matter how spiritual you are.

There is not a spiritual counterpart to a planet whose existence ENTIRELY depends on death. There isn't a better version of it. There isn't a spiritual ideal version of it. It is either planet of death, or not. Heaven does not contain a planet earth. Period. Earth is going to die, and it already is. If you stop calling it death, it doesn't change that fact. If you see it as lovely, it doesn't change that fact. It is still going to go through the motions of terrible destruction. And God would never have produced anything even remotely capable of such motions. Do you really think God would create something, anything, which can even SEEM to decay? That can change form? That can even be attacked and destroyed in any way?

Anything destructible is NOT OF GOD. And seeing it "as" destructible is NOT an option. It is its inherent nature. Destruction is not a misperception of creation.

If someone is being completely loving toward you, responding with unconditional love, then they can see who you really are.

If they fail to respond with love, this means they can't really see who you are. So what they're looking at isn't so much 'you' as it is how you might appear in a certain way, based on what the person is hallucinating.

So then every time someone doesn't treat you with love, they're not really treating YOU with unlove, they're treating a projected sinful guilty idea of a person with unlove.

The catch is that it usually looks like the person is making their unlove about YOU, and that they target it at you, even using your name, referring to you, pointing in your direction, getting in your face with it, but it's still not about you.

When you think it's about you, you have also joined with them in illusions and have taken it personally. You've failed to overlook the illusion that the person is actually attacking themselves, and that they're interacting with their own projected sinful self. It's easy to be mistaken about this and to think that they're doing it to you when they're really not.

So long as you are clear about who you are, that you are love, you will realize their call for love is clearly their own call and need for love, and love is the only response. But if you fail to see your own identity and confuse yourself with ego, then you will take their attack personally and will think it's about you.

You will make it be about you, even though it isn't. And as such you will hurt yourself with it. And then you will feel upset, not because they attacked you or because it was about you, but because you used it to attack yourself.

It is not possible to be angry at another person and see the other person correctly.

If you are in any way experiencing the other person as anything other than PURE LOVE, there must be some kind of negative attitude in your own mind with which you are seeing them. This negative attitude acts as a BLOCK to awareness, a filter, which is skewing perception. It is showing you something that is not really IN the other person, but is in fact in your own mind. Its your judgement. Your hate.

While you are perceiving others through this filter of hate, it is impossible for you to see them correctly. So if you are not seeing them correctly, how are you able to completely objectively evaluate whether they deserve to be hated or not? You can't. Therefore your hate is always unjustified and in error, and for all you know, underneath a world that SEEMS like it is filled with hate, there could be a world filled with LOVE, that you just don't SEE because you are too busy hating it.

Again the ego has lied, to tell us that its possible to objectively perceive the world at the same time as evaluating that people are enemies or are unworthy or are to be hated or are guilty in some way. If we see this in them, we are NOT seeing them clearly, and we are not being shown a clear view of reality, and our evaluation is now in ERROR. We have become blind to what is actually there.

Only when you look with unconditional love can you have TRUE VISION and SEE what is really there. Otherwise, you are looking with the ego and you will not be able to see.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM

"You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made flesh. But mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing this limit ON YOURSELF. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape FROM limitations?" UrT8G16

Bodies don't really matter in a relationship. The soul is androgynous and perfect. It isn't male or female. It has no limits and loves unconditionally.

It uses a body temporarily and then moves on. It might've had lifetimes as men and women, children and the elderly, as parents or alone. It could've had a gay body or a straight body, an overweight body or a skinny body. Whatever. Across its experience of so many different types of bodies, it cannot help but generalise the learning and detach from the specifics of each of them. It learns again to love regardless of form.

There could be a lifetime where two souls meet and they have certain types of bodies. They may or may not even be attracted to each other's bodies, or be compatible physically. Perhaps they are man and woman but one of them is gay. Perhaps they are from different cultures or races. It doesn't matter.

The body really is just a kind of tool that the soul uses. The body has its severe limitations and its limited scope of expression, which means that as the soul uses it, it has to work with what it's got. If it wants to talk, the words are likely to come out sounding the way that the body instrument allows to happen. If it wants to have intercourse, it has to work with whatever appendages or holes are available. If it wants to hug it has to deal with its length of arms and its roundness of belly.

If the soul is not heavily body identified, its view of the body is very detached and transcendental. The body doesn't really matter to it, nor does the bodies of others. When the soul is more identified with and lost in its current body, taking it to define itself and to be itself, this narrow perspective will inhibit relationship and make it more conditional. The bodies of others then matter more, relationships have more criteria, and everything has to be acceptable within limits. There is also more hell to pay when the rules are broken.

Ultimately we're meant to learn to love ourselves and everyone equally and fully, regardless of their bodies. We are to use the body as best we can to relate though and beyond, without placing so much emphasis on the body itself of what appear to be very limited categorisations of types.

Jesus suggests in the course for example that everyone should love everyone regardless of specific bodily appendages. A soul-to-soul communication is more important than cutting off a brother because their body is a certain type or style. This even applies to people having disabilities and sicknesses, learning to love them regardless of what their bodies are doing, and looking past the body to the immortal spirit within.

In my marriage for example, I was a male-gendered body person married to a female-gendered body person. She was 18 years older than me, which didn't matter. I had some attractions towards men as well, which didn't matter to her. She was from a different country thousands of miles away, which didn't matter. She grew up in a different culture, which didn't matter either.

Regardless of the sense of specialness and exclusivity in the relationship, there was also a more transcendental and unconditional element. I had some attractions to men for example, which she knew about, and she found it interesting and a curiosity instead of judging against it. She was willing even to encourage me toward it even if it meant her and I possibly not being together. Just as she at times wanted to be with other men.

We still had intimate relations which entailed a biological compatibility, even if in some way we might not have been entirely on the same page. We used what we had and made it work, because it was really more important that we were together and loving each other. A love that transcended the physical. A love between souls that spanned many lifetimes and many bodies. We could've been even more extremely different on the physical level and I think we would still have had a deep soul connection.

Ultimately what this has taught me is that the physicality of the body is not really that important. It is much more important to love a person and be open and honest and trusting. To share deeply and intimately, emotionally and psychologically. This can happen even if the bodies appear to be what the world would consider thoroughly incompatible. We turned heads with our weirdness and our age gap, for example. This can happen for gay or straight people, for people with any kind of body and any kind of persuasion. Every relationship has the potential to be holy.

What I realise now is that for any future relationship, it doesn't really matter if the person is male or female, or looks a certain way. It doesn't have to be a 'mr right' or a 'mrs right', or some kind of ideal model of perfection. The person is more important, the mind-to-mind is more important. If it comes with a certain type of body, and even if that body has certain limitations, it doesn't really matter.

Having a full whole relationship is more important than just some physical sexual hookup that's empty and cold and full of ego. If the person has certain genetalia, or types thereof, what does it matter, really, if the love transcends it? The two souls potentially relating on a higher and more whole level is what's important. This can even take place without any physical interaction or proximity or anything that the world might think of as a relationship. It can happen with strangers. It can happen anywhere, and beyond any type of body.

Looking past the body to the soul/mind is what's really important. The holy spirit's home is in our relationship to the christ in ourselves and others, which overlooks bodies and regards them as nothing but tools. If you still use them to interact then so be it, within the limits and specifics that the body allows. Sex is a limitation just as gender is but you can still use it while the mind is in a higher state. We're supposed to learn to love people as beings, as children of God, regardless of what their bodies are doing. Because ultimately no-one is really a body anyway.

A person has a real self, and temporarily an unreal self. The real self is the soul, and the unreal self is the ego. The ego is nothing more than the attempt to DENY the real self. Denying the real self produces an appearance that the real self is NOT there, and all that's left is the unreal self. As if a person is ONLY an ego.

If you look upon a person through YOUR ego, which is a very narrow exclusive way of seeing, blinded by form and unable to see past the surface of a person (literally their body), you fail to see their real self. If they are ONLY an ego, then their ego is their whole reality, their whole truth, and they REALLY are being egoic. And now anger seems justified.

Then you'll think the person's unreal self is their real self. As if there is nothing else. Denial does this because it hides or blocks awareness of anything more. The soul is hidden by this denial, so if someone is denying their soul by being egoic, they appear to be ONLY an ego. As if they do not have a "higher self". As if their real self doesn't even exist.

The strange thing is that the higher self and the seemingly lower self both exist simultaneously. In truth, the higher self is the only real self and exists forever. But in time, temporarily, the lower ego self seems to exist as well. While the ego is an attempt to destroy the real self, by opposing and denying its existence, denial doesn't actually remove anything. What is being denied is still there.

"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." "The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not."

"denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."

The ego is the denial of God and your real self, which makes it SEEM as if a person is ONLY their ego. And when someone presents this egotism in your relationships, you can easily fall for believing that's all there is to them. If they're being an asshole, you'll think they simply are being an asshole, and nothing else is true of them. You'll hold against them whatever they're doing and all their sins are real.

But at the same time as this "denial of self", masquerading as a second self, made of unreality and lies, the higher self persists and continues uninterrupted. The soul is permanent and immortal and innocent forever. It never sins and never enters the illusion of hell.

"The soul never leaves the sight of God."

"Christ has never slept."

"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS."

"The ego is part of your belief about yourself."

The situation then is that everyone has temporarily two selves. The lower ego self is false, or "the false self", and is unreal. It seems true, and it seems to blot out the higher self. It HIDES the person FROM the higher self, and when you look upon it you too may be deceived and buy the illusion that the person is ONLY their ego. But this isn't true.

Forgiveness is all about OVERLOOKING the illusion of the ego and looking to and recognizing reality. This means looking to the christ-self in the person BEYOND his ego, and BEYOND his body. The larger self, and the truth of that self. This presents an interesting situation. There seem to be TWO TRUTHS to a person at the same time.

While a person is presenting their insanity to you, and provided you are not blinded by it, there is ALSO some part of them that is sane. While a person is filled with ego and hate and murderous thought, there must still be some part of them that is TRUE. Their ego is ALWAYS wrong, but their real self is ALWAYS right.

"Errors ARE the ego, and CORRECTION of errors of ANY kind lies solely in the RELINQUISHMENT of the ego. When you CORRECT a brother, you are telling him that he is WRONG. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that if he is speaking from the ego, he WILL be making no sense, but your task is still to tell him HE IS RIGHT. You do not tell him this verbally if he is SPEAKING foolishly, because he needs correction AT ANOTHER LEVEL, since his error IS at another level. HE is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is ALWAYS wrong, no matter WHAT it says or does."

So a person is a son of God, which is perfect and "right", but at the same time, in time, temporarily, this perfect being also has an ego in their mind, which is always wrong. If you are in your own ego, your sight narrows to THEIR ego, and this is all you see in them, as real sin. But if your vision WIDENS to incorporate the BIGGER PICTURE, then now you can recognize this person is REALLY a perfect child of God whose egotism is just mistaken (not a sin). What they claim about themselves isn't true, and who they think they are isn't who they really are.

"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.""

We need to learn to look past the ego in ourselves and others, to the truth in ourselves and others. So that in light of what that truth is, everything else is put into its proper perspective and RECOGNIZED as false. This clarity is accurate perception or "true" perception. It is sanity. And seeing WITH this sanity allows you to see the sane truth of the other person, BEYOND their insanity.

Seeing this FOR THEM, has miraculous healing properties to correct their insane egotism. It's how you shine YOUR light into THEIR mind to enlighten them. You look to God's truth ABOUT your brother, and accept only this as true, while denying and rejecting everything that is false. Even if the person themselves believes that which is false. You disbelieve it on their behalf. You hold the light and stay in the truth of God. And this joins your mind to theirs through love. And now you are undoing sickness and raising the dead.

There is one reference to "vertical perception" in ACIM, as part of miracle principle 41. Jesus says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been."

So he introduces this idea that there is a horizontally oriented way of perceiving, and a vertical way. The horizontal way is what you don't want, and the vertical way is what you should be trying to shift towards. But what are these two ways of perceiving?

Let's start by saying the world doesn't exist yet. You are designing a new world inside a computer. You're using some 3D software to model forms and objects and are placing them in a scene. Your intention is to create a 3D holographic movie of various CGI scenes, in which anything goes.

As far as you are concerned, as the director and editor, it's a level playing field. There are no inherent rules or laws as to what is possible or what can happen. There are no laws of physics set up. There are no limitations. Your imagination can run wild.

So you start designing this environment, composed of what seem to be models of objects - cars, buildings, bodies etc. But simply by putting them in the scene, nothing happens. They just sit there. Nothing causes anything. There are no consequences. There are no laws. There are no forces of repulsion or gravity or collisions between things. Objects can exist in the same space overlapping even. There are no chemical reactions. No biological processes.

From this perspective, which we'll call "vertical" or "above the battlefield", you are in a position of vertical causality. The level you are on is ABOVE the level of the world you're making below. Whatever you decide, happens. So if you decide to move one of the models of a car, the car moves. It can't move on its own. But moving it doesn't do anything. There are no effects or limits. You can even move one car to overlap another car, without anything happening. But let's say you want to make it SEEM as if there is a car crash. What do you do?

Well, you're first going to have to CAUSE there to be a scene with two cars in it. You're going to have to cause the two cars to SEEM to move. They will not be moving as a result of having an engine, that's just a pretend engine "for show". Your mind is going to determine where the cars are. You can even pick up the cars and plonk them down somewhere else, or make them float in the air, with no regard for any laws of physics. So you deliberately move both cars in what appears to be a direction towards each other, on a fake road, pretending they are "driving" and making "broom boom" sounds like children at play.

When the cars approach and seem like they should "crash", nothing's going to happen. They'll pass through each other. So you have make up some fictional "laws of physics". You make up some rules which suggest, when this car touches the other car, it will SEEM as if they push into each other, "causing" a crash. One car might be thought of as SEEMING to "cause the crash". But this is entirely illusory. It's on purpose. The car does nothing. The mind that causes EVERYTHING about the car, causes what seems to be the crash.

The director - the true causer - is deciding that car A will crash into car B. And the director also has to deliberately model the way car B will deform to make it LOOK AS IF car A's impact caused bodily damage. So when you now "play the scene", it's going to SEEM as if it's an animation in which the two cars move towards each other on a road - under their seeming own power - not seeing the hidden hand of the director - and collide. Car B seems to become damaged, and it looks like car A was the cause. But it's just an illusion. Everything that happens is orchestrated from above. Did you fall for it?

You know better. You know that NEITHER of the cars has any causal power. You know from this vertical position, looking down on the whole scene from above, as the director, who can pull all the strings and change anything at will, even changing or breaking the laws of physics, that it's NOT TRUE OR REAL that car A crashes into car B. But based on appearances, viewed through a camera (the body's eyes), it SEEMS as if car A causes damage to car B. The camera frames the scene just right to make it seem believable.

This is because when you look at the scene through the camera, which ONLY looks at the **end result** of the director's work, the body's eyes do NOT see that the entire scene is fabricated, they do NOT see that if the director so chooses the car will not be damaged, they do NOT see that there are strings being pulled to create the ILLUSION of laws of physics, and they do NOT see that the movement of both cars is being orchestrated by the ACTUAL CAUSE, the mind. All the laws of physics are EFFECTS, not causes.

Even the damage to car B cannot occur without the higher level mind causing it. It is NOT caused by car A. The illusion that car A has causal power is AN ILLUSION! It's "causality" is ONCE REMOVED from what the REAL cause is. And taken at face value, the body is "blinded by perception of form" and appearances, not looking past them and not seeing the trickery and lies that are producing this illusion. And so it is tempted and deceived by what it sees.

So at the level of the world, which is the scene containing the objects, viewed through the body as the camera, looking at the props and taking them to be not only real but the FIRST ORIGIN OF CAUSALITY, your body assumes there is no other cause that CAME BEFORE, no prior or higher cause, no bigger picture, no author, no orchestration of the world, no secret agenda, no plot to deceive, and just takes it at face value. It thinks then that the car ITSELF had causal power. And now there's reason to blame the car for "causing it".

Seeing the scene this way, is what we call FALSE PERCEPTION. The entire physical world IS FALSE. All the objects are false. ALL the laws of physics are false. ALL of it is a lie. It's a movie set. Every apparent "horizontal causality", where it seems something on this level in the world CAUSES something, or is the true origin or chooser of something, creates the illusion that the world has real consequences, causal power, makes things happen on its own, and isn't being run by a deeper, hidden author.

The DREAMER - the director of all things that happen - goes unnoticed and hidden behind the scenes. He is the cause of the "causes" in the world. He is the one deciding that all objects move. He is the one making up the laws. HE is the one deciding what SEEMS to affect what. HE makes both the causes and the effects that we see as being on the same level. He orchestrates all events and has power OVER everything.

He can also BREAK all the laws and consistencies and illusions of the world through his seemingly "miraculous" freedom and transcending of all illusions. He can rewrite the world. He can make mountains move in an instant. He can reverse death. He can make a pretend body seem to walk on pretend water, as if gravity were total nonsense. He MADE UP gravity, and is not bound by it. He MADE what we call sickness and death, and can ABOLISH both. He is the director. He has the power to dominate all things in the world. There is NOTHING his holiness cannot do. His mind has the power to make WORLDS appear!

To those on the horizontally perceiving level, who are living within the context of ASSUMING the world is real and causal, when the awakened dreamer - a miracle worker - decides to CHANGE the dream in a way that BREAKS the normal order and laws, having shifted into vertical perception, and EXPRESSING a vertical causality, SEEMS to be doing things which are "impossible".

He seems to be breaking the laws of physics. He's walking on water, he's multiplying objects, he's cancelling death, he's curing all sickness, he's moving mountains with his mind, and seems completely unlimited by anything in the world. To those asleep, he appears miraculous. Yet he is just being natural. He is in touch with the power to cause and choose, under NO LAWS but God's. Those fixated on the body's world see him as OUTSIDE what's possible. He breaks their reality. And they do not understand how he can do this.

When you are believing everything the body sees, which is an illusion, the illusory world of form, you are having "horizontal perception". It's the same thing as false perception. And everything in the world, all objects, all laws, are what you see when you are only looking through the camera which was designed on purpose to NOT SEE the secret behind-the-scenes activities. The body fixates only on the story, the appearance, and the illusion. The end result or effect. The dream. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

To horizontal perception, ie false perception, everything in the world seems to be lined up side by side. Like in a crowd of people. All horizontally spaced out. And so if one of the bodies is sick, and dies, the appearance is that not only is the sickness and death "reality", there is also a strong BELIEF IN (being deceived by) these appearances. The divisions between things make the body's appearances seem very tangible and pronounced. Differences are emphasized, so as to blind you to the deeper truth.

Someone operating on the level of false perception believes that sickness is real, death really happens, the world is dangerous, people sin in bodies, stuff is attackable, there are causes to be afraid of, we are victimized by the world, and are at the effect of the world. To them, the FORM of differences are very strongly deceptive, bodies all seem different, problems seem different, and the world is highly fragmented. What the body sees is believed. And then all kinds of coping strategies arise from that perception of horrors.

To move into "vertical perception" ie true perception, you're not merely going upwards above the battlefield and still perceiving in a horozontal way, you're moving OUTSIDE of horizontal causality and seeing from an entirely different perspective. Outside of the laws of space and time and physics. You're lifting up out of the illusory world, the story, the fictional movie. You're taking your perception OUT of the role of "character in a dream", and becoming aware that YOU ARE THE DREAMER. You are that one who MADE the world, made the bodies, made the planets, and invented all the laws. And you recognize you have been "doing it to yourself" - which is the secret of salvation.

You made up bodies, made up a world, made up laws, made up scenarios, forgot who you were, believed YOUR MOVIE was orchestrating YOUR life, that your scene had causal power over you, that you were now a character IN the movie, a body - the hero of the dream, and thought the dream was happening to "you". You lost touch with your vertical causality, the fact you are directing the whole thing from above, and that you are under NO LAWS BUT GOD's!

Your "miraculous" freedom FROM all causality and laws on the horizontal level, allows you to perform "miracles" - or rather, expressions of vertical causality, which BREAK AND DEFY these "second hand" "once removed" causes. Illusions of causes and illusions of laws are nothing to a miracle worker, who recognizes there is no order of difficulty because ALL of the lower orders are at YOUR effect, including what seem to be causes. You are free from all limitations. The hierarchy of illusion is FLAT to you. ALL illusions are the same. Raising the dead is no harder than healing a headache.

From the higher vantage point of vertical perception, looking down on the WHOLE scene from above, the distracting ILLUSION of appearances is SEEN THROUGH. The spiritual eye, Christ vision, looks PAST the movie set. It sees all the props and cameramen and sound crew. It reads between the lines. It sees the glue holding the scene together. It sees the light of the room in which the movie is being edited.

It does not BELIEVE FOR A MOMENT anything that the appearance of the movie would say is true. It doesn't even buy that physical objects are even really there. It pays no attention to appearances of form, shapes, colors, sizes, distances, weights, laws, or supposed differences of any kind. It has the VISION to SEE the WHOLE scene, including all hidden parts and mechanisms and trickery. It recognizes it is all an illusion. It is not DECEIVED by anything at the level of the world. Vertical perception is inclusive, horizontal perception is exclusive.

Mind is cause. World is effect/dream. Mind being causal is vertically positioned above the world. Everything below, in the world, is an illusion of horizontal causality. Nothing about the world is TRUE. Believing it is false perception. When you are in true perception you do not REGISTER the illusions of differences between things. Bodies are not separate. Objects are not real. There is a subtle connectedness that you didn't see before. A light which sparkles between things. A glue which you become aware of. A sparkling unity and sameness that seems to be behind everything.

A vertically perceived world is a forgiven world. Being aware of ALL the information about the scene is awareness of the real world. You cease to project sin and guilt and fear and death onto the scene. These arise only from false perceptions. You don't see it from a horizontal vantage point. You ignore the eyes of the body. You know that nothing in the world is real, so nothing is sick, and nothing is dying, and everything is one thing.

You see death as not an end, at the end of a horizontal linear sequence, but as a dipping DOWN from a higher level to a lower level perception. As an immersion into falseness. And from above, you know death is TOTAL FICTION. Just some arrangement of fake particles that you DECIDED you would call death. Which can easily be rearranged and reanimated if you so choose. It's totally fake. Actors in a movie do not die when their character dies.

Here, above the battlefield, you know you cannot die. You are the author of the world. You are not a body. You are not the story. You make the rules. You can break them. And nothing in the world has any bearing on anything real. Death is now vertically no longer seen as an interruption, but as merely another form of objects on par with all others. Just an effect you have power over. You can choose not to make it happen.

Dead bodies, living bodies, they are all illusions. They have NO inherent meaning. The world has no inherent meaning. You give it all the meaning it has when you design it, projecting made-up stories onto it. The world is nothing but fiction. You are not bound or limited by any of it. You are free. The director of a movie is not bound by ANYTHING that seems to happen. And edits can be made at any time. You have power over the world, because you are its cause.

"W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2 Nothing external to your mind (horizontal) can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no cause (at the horizontal level) beyond yourself (who are above it) that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but yourself affects you. (from above) 5 There is nothing in the world (below) that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see (as director, author, dreamer, law-maker) by merely recognizing what you are (from a position vertically aligned above the world)."

Your main problem is one of identity. You've attempted to change your identity from Christ, to take on a new identity as an ego.

Your sense of your "Self" has become associated with, attached to, and confused with, an alternative model of identity.

The ego is nothing but a device, a contraption you invented like a vehicle. It's something for you to cling to and to try to model yourself on. It does absolutely nothing on its own. It is lifeless.

It's not until you attempt to become joined with the ego, as though becoming one with it, that it becomes a problem.

If you think of it as a costume (like the body), it's not until you actually wear it that it seems to change how you express yourself.

Or, like a pair of goggles, it's not until you put the goggles over your eyes that your perception is changed. You can put them down again at any time and immediately resume normal vision.

You, as a Child of God, bring your sense of Self with you wherever you go. Your Self is your identity. The ego has no real self at all. However, if you bring your sense of Self to the ego and merge with it, you combine your sense of Self with its way of filtering reality. You then see "through" it, and see in the way that it would see if it had its own ability to see.

It is only your own ability to see - awareness - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego perception. It is only your own ability to experience - being - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego the ability to experience. It is only your own power which you share with the ego, which seems to give the ego power. It only shares any of this with you while you are joined with it, and as soon as you take it off, it would just drop to the floor lifelessly. Just like the body.

The problem is, when you've put your ability to experience and your sense of Self into the ego, trying to cling to it tightly as though making you become like it, you will now experience life through its eyes. Whatever it sees or how it looks at things or what it wants or how it values or what it believes, now becomes your experience. And you will see reality as very frightening when you look with the ego!

That's a problem because the ego's way of looking at reality is completely backwards. Seeing life through its eyes you will instantly reject God. God will suddenly seem to be an attacker, an enemy and a threat. The truth will suddenly seem like it is against you. The truth will come across as being the complete opposite of what you are, because it does not contain any separation, and the ego identifies with being made of separation. So the truth will then seem to be an affront, highly offensive, dangerous, hideous, and like some monster come to destroy the ego.

You, as immortal spirit, using and attached to the ego, ... if you attempt to become more spiritual while still wearing the ego identity, ie still joined with the ego mind and still looking through the ego goggles, will have a pretty interesting experience. You will not want to wake up. You will see any efforts to wake up as harmful and hurtful. You will interpret efforts to wake up as suicidal and sacrificial. And you will become afraid that the truth is coming along to destroy you. This can potentially provoke you to put up defenses against the truth, producing sickness and ultimately death.

This is precisely what you will experience each time you try to open up to more truth. Each time you let in some light. Each time you want to become closer to God. You, attached to the ego, inadvertently try to bring the ego into that light with you. It cannot go there and it won't go there. It will see it as you trying to destroy it. And it will put up a fight. Part of you which seems not to be in the ego gets closer to the light, and the part of you which does not want to let go of the ego - believing it is your Self - kicks and screams and resists and hates you for it.

This produces the ego rebound. Essentially, the ego rebound comes from trying to make the ego more spiritual, by attempting to bring it closer to its opponent. While you are identified with it, your attempt to go visit God without leaving the ego behind will create an elastic effect which will snap you back into the body and you will subsequently rage because of how you did such a horrible thing to your "self".

Waking up must entail the letting GO of the ego, recognizing that it is not your identity. Otherwise, each time you pull your "Self" into the light, and thus the ego with you, it's going to hurt. The ego cannot see the truth in any other way. It only sees the opposite of the truth as being true. It will never change. The ONLY way to be free of it is to let it go, to stop being it, stop wearing it, stop looking through it, and stop using it. We have to learn that the ego is NOT our "Self".

So this is purely a matter of identity. Are you made of ego? Is your Self really separate from God? Who are you? Are you Christ? Are you a body? Are you part of the ego thought system? Are you made of sin and guilt and fear? Do you believe in what the ego believes in? It's only because you have become CONFUSED about what really is YOU, and what is the ego, that you are having to go through this struggle of "awakening'. You literally believe, through the ego, that you are trying to destroy yourself by waking up.

Sometimes when you are exposing yourself to "too much truth" or "too much Course", you'll have these ego rebounds. You kind of can't help it. You are still holding on tightly to the very thing which is clouding your judgement, while simultaneously trying to be free of it. This makes you torn. Trying to be in two thought systems at once, or two canoes. There is part of you that sincerely believes you are the ego and you are the body. The suggestion that these things don't exist frightens you.

Letting go, letting go, letting go. Stopping being ego. Surrendering the false identity. Remembering who you really are. Accepting the truth that you are Christ. Relinquishing your belief in, trust in, faith in, confusion with, and reliance on a false self that isn't really a part of your identity. You literally believe the ego is who you are. It's not. Just some clarification needed. Some discernment. Is this really true about who I really am, or is this just a misperception caused by me using the ego goggles? Is this really who I am, or is this just a body I'm wearing temporarily?

Sorting out "who you are" is what this entire process is about. Each effort to "find out" will likely be partly fruitful and partly self destructive. Each time it will potentially offend you. Gradually you will inch towards awakening. Jesus says, "most of you will come in tears".

Each time you have a rebound, try to focus on LETTING GO. Just stop to recognize that you - part of your Self that's still identified with the ego or body, has become deeply hurt and offended by what the truth said about it. IT believes that the truth is vicious and mean and disrespectful. It is scared and freaking out because it doesn't understand what the truth really means or implies.

It, seeing through the ego, sees your efforts as blasphemous and an attack, and so it feels attacked and guilty. And that's what you'll feel like when you get a rebound - attacked and hurt and guilty. Recognize that in you and have compassion for that part of you. Try to get that part of you to let go of being ego.

Try to reassure your "self" that the truth doesn't mean YOU don't exist because YOU are not the ego. Be gentle with that part of you which is just like a confused wounded animal in the corner. Be kind to it. Don't push it too far too fast, that will just hurt more.

Likely you will have to feel the feelings of the hurt that was created by "its" mis-perception of what you did. Your attempt to wake up was like an abandonment of the ego self, like a self sacrifice. It doesn't have the ability to see any other way. So take your time and rest and recover and stop pushing yourself so hard.

Gradually and gently you need to learn to just LET GO of the ego because it is not who you really are. What you'll learn about your real identity is going to be quite a surprise!

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 confused by believing the ego's world, you assign to illusions all the properties of reality. You take the properties of God away from God and from your real self, and give them to the non-existent world.

This is how you give your power away and empower sickness. You assign the permanence of heaven to make sickness seem permanent. You give God's irreversibility to sickness to make it irreversible sin. You try to make it last by trying to give it immortality. You impart truth to it to try to have it be the truth. You make it valid, and believe it is whole, and see it as natural and real.

Then having assigned all the properties of God, heaven and reality to an illusion, you are now faced with the natural relationship to these things. What is real cannot be changed, thus it seems sickness cannot be changed. What is permanent is always there, so sickness becomes irreversible to you. Eternal life is assigned to the sickness meaning it will last forever.

You give all power to the sickness and strip it from God and from yourself, leaving you in a state of powerlessness and weakness. You now see that sickness has become your God. The God of sickness. And it looms over you with strength and resistance and threat. And as you look upon sickness made real, you are looking the God of sickness in the face, and he is insurmountable.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them."

"The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. Depression MEANS that you have foresworn God."

You now actually worship sickness and death because you have assigned all the properties of God to an illusory world. Which means you actually believe the world IS God. If God is its creator, it is reality, and God is the world. And now sickness can never be changed because it is against God's will. And death is his doing. And you have no power over it.

In this perspective, you cannot but help but be AFRAID OF the power of sickness. It looms over you. It seems real. You cannot surmount it. You cannot even dare approach it for the belief that if you try to heal it you will fail. You see yourself as weak and powerless before it. It torments you and you suffer at its whim. And as it turns for the worst you have no freedom and no choice but to suffer more intensely. There seems to be nothing you can do.

In this perspective or way of perceiving, this belief system, you cannot but see yourself as powerless and incapable of miracles. You cannot possibly heal a real illusion. You cannot forgive it because it has reality and permanence and irreversibility. What you need is an entire change of perspective, a totally different way of regarding the world, and this fundamental pivotal change MUST take place in the PREMISE of the entire system.

If you do not uproot the whole system by recognizing that the world DOES NOT have the properties of God or reality, your efforts will continue to be undermined. You have to realize that God IS NOT the world, DID NOT create it, and therefore NOTHING in it has the properties of heaven. This means recognizing that the world IS an illusion, it is nothing, is does not exist, there is no sickness, every single illusion is ONE THING - a fake dream, a fiction, and to not BELIEVE or BUY INTO a single piece of it on any basis.

What you need is to change the premise of the whole thing. The whole world has to be considered to NOT have ANY of the properties of God. It cannot be thought to be really happening, it cannot be believed to be irreversible, it cannot be assigned power, it cannot be given credit, it cannot be seen as true, and it must not be regarded as alive. It is a dream of death.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it."

"Death the central dream from which all illusions stem."

"There is no world."

Changing your mind about the world means recognizing IT IS NOT OF GOD. And you must "deny anything not of God any power to affect you". "This is a powerful protective device."

Simply, by reassigning ALL POWER TO GOD, all life to God, all truth to God, all reality to God, all permanence to God, all irreversibility to God, all healing to God, and all existence to God, taking it AWAY from the world of sickness, you strip the world of what you THOUGHT was a big looming powerful enemy. Sickness stops looking like a threat. Sickness stops having a sense of unmoveability. It stops seeming serious. It stops having reality or truth. It stops being a nightmare. And it stops looking like it even exists. And what does not even exist cannot be DIFFICULT to heal.

When it is recognized as NOTHING, your relationship to sickness is vastly different. Instead of being confronted with an immensely powerful enemy which you cannot influence, you instead see YOURSELF as immensely powerful and FULLY able to influence sickness. And IT is now recognized as weak and frail and powerless to resist you. Because you now have the power of God in you because you have GIVEN all power back to God. And thus you have gained it. And it has been TAKEN AWAY from sickness.

"To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

Give to God what is God's, and everything will be made right. Only God can heal the sickness because only God IS eternal life. And only God HAS power. And God IS real. And only God's laws apply. And only His truth is the truth. And HE has immortality and permanence. And you with Him as His extension. And NOW you are miraculous because you are now in a dominant relationship to the world. You have power OVER the world and over the body rather than the other way around, BECAUSE IT IS NOTHING AND NOT REAL AND DOES NOT EXIST.

Only in this perspective is it possible to escape the hierarchy of illusions or the illusion of difficulty. Sickness only SEEMS difficult to heal or change or affect BECAUSE you inappropriately assign it GOD'S PROPERTIES. And you have no power over God. You are confused about it. You think it IS reality. You think it IS ALIVE. You think it has power. It does not. If it HAS NO power, then it does not present ANY challenge, it can EASILY be influenced, it is EFFORTLESS to change it, and IT DOES NOT RESIST AT ALL. Therefore you who are all powerful WITH God in you can overthrow it, manipulate it, change it and demonstrate healing.

"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."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him (that all of his properties BELONG to him), you will KNOW that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment OF you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

Make sickness be FALSE, UNTRUE, UNREAL, NON-EXISTENT, IMPOSSIBLE, UNNATURAL, FINITE, LIMITED, NOTHINGNESS, ILLUSION, POWERLESS, NOT THERE, CAUSELESS, NOWHERE.

Only in this view is there no grounds for you to believe or perceive that it can resist your will. And now the power of God which you have correctly given back to God, operates through you, to have power OVER sickness and death and the world. You can then overcome the world, raise the dead, and perform miracles. Because there is NO DIFFICULTY, NO hierarchy, and NO effort needed to do so. Because the Holy Spirit heals through you with the Power of God.

There is no difficulty in miracles once all power is given back to God, because the world is recognized as HAVING no power to resist His will. What is nothing cannot be hard to overcome, and as a miracle worker you don't have to do HARD things. In fact, miracle working should be easy and effortless. Even literally that you do practically nothing while the Holy Spirit does everything.

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND WHAT THEY WERE MADE TO SEE. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they CAN SEE ONLY ILLUSIONS, UNABLE TO LOOK beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of NOTHING."

Ok so.... the body's eyes, the physical eyes, your eyeballs, are like little machines or sensing devices. All they do is detect sensory input. They do not see. Even in basic scientific interpretations all the eyes do is "send signals to the brain." The body's eyes do not interpret anything. They don't think, they don't "see", they don't have a mind, they don't do anything other than transmit messages beyond themselves. A physical object will still "look like" the same physical object no matter how your perception interprets things.

The body's eyes were made to fulfill a very specific function, just like a machine. They are "locked into" that function. They cannot clean the dishes, they cannot build a house, all they can do is "perceive falsely" and look at illusions. All they can do, is see illusions, errors, sins, surfaces of forms, as if they are real. This is all they were designed to do.

They will not EVER be able to do anything else. You cannot and will not ever be able to make the body's eyes look AT or SEE anything other than a world of forms, bodies, objects, physicality, sin, error, and illusions. No matter how enlightened you are, no matter what kind of interpretation you have, no matter what state your "perception" is in, your body's eyes can ONLY fixate on forms and appearances of physical objects.

The body's eyes are FIXED in a state of permanently seeing HELL, as if it's real. They have FALSE perception. They send signals to your mind, pictures of hell seeming to be real, pictures of forms which block awareness, pictures of bodies moving around in various states of sickness. This will ALWAYS be what the body's eyes do. No matter how advanced you are.

And this is a problem. Because now you've got to find a way of seeing the world in a different way, to interpret these IMAGES and messages in such a way, that you don't keep fixating on form, illusion, sin, error or illusions.

That means your mind has to learn to SEE PAST these images. You have to learn to OVERLOOK what they seem to show. You have to forgive them. You have to NOT BELIEVE what they are showing you. You have to learn to see BEYOND the surface of physical objects, to the Christ, which the objects were made to obscure.

That means learning to recognize that the ILLUSIONS that the body's eyes are ONLY capable of seeing, are NOT TRUE. You have to learn that everything they see is NOT REAL. They ONLY look at illusions as if they're reality. You have to learn that these pictures of illusion seeming real are FALSE, and stop buying into them!

You have to transition away from the physical eyes, which are permanently fixated on illusions, to using the spiritual eye (Holy Spirit's vision) which overlooks everything the body's eyes claim is real, and sees reality BEYOND them. You need a new way of SEEING.

This is how your mind learns to perceive love and light "in" the world BEYOND the world, in spite of the world, overlooking the world, seeing past bodies, disregarding appearances, looking beyond differences, and basically looking THROUGH and PAST all physical forms, as if they do not exist. Because they don't.

Do not believe your eyes!

Your eyes will not EVER show you heaven. But the images they show you of HELL, can be interpreted in a TRUTHFUL way, a correct way, which is the recognition that these images are FALSE ILLUSIONS, and that reality is something ELSE beyond them. God is IN everything you see because God is IN your mind.... God is BEYOND everything you see. You see God IN SPITE OF and BESIDES seeing forms. This does not make forms reality. It proves that forms are ILLUSIONS. And all the physical world has ever been doing is pulling the wool over your eyes and blinding you to reality.

You will never see these images AS HEAVEN. You will never see them as TRUTH. They will ALWAYS be photographs of hell. But what needs to happen is your awareness must expand beyond the physical, beyond forms, beyond the images, to see some other content that the body's eyes CANNOT SEE. To see the presence of God, love and light. You see that additional material IN SPITE OF the limitations that are shown by the body's sight. You don't suddenly turn those images into images of heaven.

You see heaven PAST those images and recognize that those images are not interfering with your vision. You have to learn that your body was made NOT for seeing, and to see using a whole new apparatus of vision which is NON PHYSICAL and does not look at the physical AT ALL.

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.

Miracles can only properly be understood from the perspective of looking "down" from a higher vantage point, a vantage point of unconditional love.

They cannot so easily be understood when lookup "up" from below, as one who is attempting to awaken. Those awakening do not understand love and cannot grasp or experience how a single thing - an expression of love - could encompass the entire scope of what miracles entail.

They are nothing more than emissions of love, coming from a higher level to a lower level, causing that which is lower to be raised up and brought back into the light. In doing so, "the dead" are raised back up to life.

It's all about the love. Real love, not special love.

Miracles of love are expressed from above to below "like drops of healing rain" which give life back to starved and thirsty creatures, restoring "life" where there appeared to be death.

Love is life-giving. Love has healing power. Love can undo and cancel the entire ego illusion, and everything to do with bodies and worlds.

Miracles are a heart-felt love expressed in softness and gentleness and depth, innocent yet strong, unhidden yet powerful. These expressions of love are like a healing balm for the mind, immediately loosening and dissolving all forms of lack.

Miracles supply a lack of love, with love, so that the life-giving presence of God is restored, producing healing. All forms of sickness come from a lack of love, ie separation from love, so miracles repair the lack and provide "life", producing health where there once was sickness and loss.

Miracles are the light which shine away all darkness with their presence. Nothing can withstand them. They know no order of difficulty because all expressions of love are maximum love - whole love, full love.

Love can be expressed to others and instantly provide the lack of love they've been experiencing, producing instantaneous healing. All suffering is the absence of love. Miracles express love in order to undo the absence of God.

God heals.

Picture yourself in the spiritual realm (non physical world) standing at a console where you are planning your next lifetime.

You look at possible life events in a brochure which precicely and specifically tells you exactly what will happen and what the results of this will be.

You find one you don't like the look of, some tragedy or a sickness or a guilt trip, and you almost want to skip past it. But then you take a look at the list of benefits that arise from the experience.

These include an increased ability to love yourself, an enhanced sense of compassion for others, a greater awareness of who you really are, the opportunity to help others to learn how to care more, and perhaps an increased sense of joy once you finally learn to let go of the experience.

You weigh up your options. You say, well, the experience sounds like it SUCKS, but the payoff is huge. So then you say, well, what's there to lose, since I'm immortal spirit and can't really be hurt.

From that vantage point, you decide that the benefits are worth the hassle, so you say yep, sign me up. I'll go on that trip.

Then you incarnate, and so it unfolds. And you forget you chose it. And then it happens and you think it sucks, which it does. But then you start to learn the benefits of the experience and move past it, and you gain great spiritual rewards from it.

Later, looking back, you acknowledge yes, I got exactly what I wanted, I came away with a gift and I am much richer for it. I'm more aware now and I am closer to God. I am grateful.

Then you pick up the brochure again and go on another trip, and another, and another, until you pretty much run out of benefits that you can gain from it. You pick your last trip, knowing that it's the final one and that you just need to clean up some loose ends.

Off you go. It all happens. You wake up and receive the gift of reunion with God. And it's all been worth it.

In the separation, you confused the true and the false. You assigned God's properties to the false world, BUT YOU ALSO assigned false properties to God. This turned God into an evil enemy to you in your perception of him. This was necessary in order to believe that the world you made was something you would want instead.

This means you actually framed God as opposite to his nature. As if God is evil, destructive, attacking, sinful, deadly, sick, suffering, weak, powerless, unreal, illusory, vengeful and special. While many people focus on how they are going to forgive the false world, which entails lifting truth from it, you ALSO have to forgive God and lift the FALSE from him.

You may not realize that you have assigned false properties to God. But you have in fact framed God as a special false God. You have tried to make out that God is evil and an enemy. The ego believes this. It wants nothing to do with God because IT believes and perceives God as "everything evil", while seeing itself as holy.

"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

"You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome."

"And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible."

This means you do in fact have within you various reasons to avoid God, to fear God, to not want God, and to hate God. Part of you wants God to be dead. You have to therefore actually forgive God of the projections and misperceptions that you have laid upon him, and recognize that he is not those things.

It is your attempt to AVOID looking at your "attack on God" blasphemy that compels you to focus on forgiving the WORLD instead. You do not want to look at this because you actually believe that your attack on God has made you GUILTY. And you do not want to revisit the idea of approaching God because you believe it means admitting to having sinned against him, and you think he's going to kill you for it.

"You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father."

"Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety."

"For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself."

"It is your Father Whom you would defend against."

If you think that God is evil you will not want to go home. If you think the world is NOT evil you will not want to go home. You've turned God into an enemy and do not trust him. That's why there is a whole process of "the development of trust". You have misplaced your trust in the ego world. You have to learn to trust God again.

"You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so."

To trust God you have to be willing to accept the possibility that God is not the scary monster that you think he is. That he is not going to hurt or attack or reject you. That he still loves you because he is still love. You have to take away from God the false accusations you've made that he is evil and vicious and not to be trusted. You have hurled abuse at God and have accused him of sin. This has to be undone.

You will only approach God, tentatively, if you can have a little willingness to be mistaken about him. And this requires that you trust and have faith that he isn't out to destroy you. You have to be wrong about God, because you have become mistaken about him and his nature. You cannot conceive of him without a body, or think of him as anything but selfish like your ego. This has to be reversed.

"And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand."

"Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them." "You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love."

This aspect of forgiveness doesn't seem to be talked about very much in ACIM circles. A lot of time is spent talking about forgiving the world and its contents and the people that piss you off, but very little about looking at the fact that you rejected God, hate God, do not want God, and are trying to destroy him and his son. This picturing of God as an enemy has to be undone in order for you to feel safe to be intimate with God again.

You have to unlearn your rejection of God and learn to love him again. Perhaps the real reason that many people do NOT focus on forgiving God, or looking at how they have framed God as evil, is because it would suggest tremendous guilt and fear, to admit that you have tried to attack and kill off God himself. Fortunately God has not held any of this against you and dispels it entirely, and is his hands are held open in welcome to receive you as his most loved creation once again.

To want to go towards your brothers in Christ, to want to forgive anything, you have to be willing to forgive God. You have accused him and must correct this. The world was made as an attack on God. You can forgive the world but you also have to forgive the idea that you've attacked God. You have made God into a false God and have redefined what you think God is like. This has to be corrected. You have to learn to love God again, and you can start by admitting that you don't.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him."

"The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey."

"You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal."

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father."

"You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father."

"You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him."

"GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"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."

"There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms."

"The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father." "You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over."

Either you own what is happening inside you, or you claim that someone else owns it.

Either your identity is your own, or you believe that it is someone else's.

It's quite bizarre to recognize that we actually put our responsibility, our ownership and even our own sense of self into the hands of other people. All confusionabout who is who and who is responsible for what comes from this blurring of boundaries and it happens through what we call 'projection'.

You are responsible for all of your own reactions and perceptions. But sometimes you come to believe that someone else has caused or created these reactions, that someone else made them, that someone else put them there, and that they really belong to someone else. And then you actually believe that this stuff, which is happening inside of you, is someone else's responsibility and that they are supposed to deal with it or do something about it. And instead of doing something about it yourself you'll just stand there on the sidelines demanding that they correct it for you.

Doesn't that sound kind of crazy? That you're asking someone else to carry the burden of your own inner experiences? You want someone else to be the one to manage aspects of your own self. It's dis-ownership of your identity and a dis-empowerment of yourself.

Whenever we blame someone else or are finding someone else guilty, we start getting into this whole way of looking at the situation as though they actually are meant to clean up YOUR mess. They are meant to deal with your reaction, they are meant to change or fix your upset, and they are meant to be the ones that correct the problem. This is nothing but irresponsible. This is you shoveling your own shit onto someone else's plate and wanting them to take care of it for you so that you don't have to.

It's not anyone else's job to be responsible for your own stuff, or to own your own upsets, or to manage or fix your own dramas, or to tell you what you really are, or to correct you on your own behalf, or to set you straight, or to be you for you. You quite literally are shifting your own identity into someone else's hands when you fail to take responsibility. It's like saying, I'm not going to be myself, you be me for me and I'll just sit back and wait for you to be me for me so that I don't have to deal with myself.

This is also why people are all up in each other's business like they have some kind of a say or input to what other people's responsibilities are. When people come along and give all their opinions and tell you what you should be doing or wearing or looking like or behaving like, etc, it's all to do with violating these basic boundaries and trying to fix you, change you, or be the one who is responsible for you. When you are not being responsible for yourself you will attract this, but also when you are not being responsible for yourself you will enter into this behavior and start launching into fixing other people on their behalf. My own sense of `having to be burdened with being responsible for others` has led only to attempts to fix and change and correct and feel pressured (by myself) to make other people be what they are - all a cover-up for me not claiming full ownership of my own stuff - of myself.

Deal with your own shit and shut the fuck up about everyone else's lives!

This is why everyone that meddles in your life or the life of those who have they no business even commenting on, go to great lengths to control or prevent those people from having the freedom to be themselves (e.g. people against homosexuals or other kinds of bigotry, people who think other people are not allowed to do certain things, etc). It's none of their dam business, and is evidence that they are not being responsible for their own shit and so they actually fear that other people have an influence over them and threaten them with the power to have responsibility for them, which they themselves have granted.

No matter how the situation seems, if you are in any way placing responsibility, burden, ownership, blame, cause or power for what you are experiencing or feeling or reacting, into someone else's hands, then you are stepping across healthy boundaries and are lacking responsibility. You are basically saying that you refuse to be corrected, you refuse to own what you think you did, you refuse to acknowledge who you are and you refuse God's love. So then you want someone else to come along and clean up your mess for you or fix you or change on your behalf. And woe-betide if they refuse to play along.

Your problems aren't anyone else's problems. Your upsets are your own. Your reactions are your reactions. Your beliefs are your beliefs. Your ideas leave not your own mind. Your are choosing all the time and everything you are experiencing you have chosen and everything that's happening you asked for and nothing else is happening. Nobody else is doing anything against your will and you are not a victim. You can't be a victim and you can't be insane if you are really really clear about the fact that all of your responsibility is in your own hands and all of who and what you are is in your own hands, in God's hands.

How can you be yourself if you are someone else's fault?

Know this. It is not possible to objectively and neutrally try to determine what the truth is, using the ego, without avoiding the truth.

There is no 'innocently seeking for the answer'. There is no mode that you can be in where you are not in some way contributing to the situation.

So either you are seeking the ego's truth, which makes the problem worse, or you are accepting God's truth, which undoes the problem. There is no other choice.

There is no time where you can just be neutrally looking at the situation and working on finding an answer, as though that 'activity' isn't actually a part of the problem, or that it is having no effect on the situation. You are choosing for or against God all the time.

This is why in quantum physics the heisenberg principle shows that if you observe something you change it. The ego mind is not capable of neutrality, it is only capable of PROJECTING and then 'perceiving' what it projected (projection makes perception).

There are no neutral thoughts. And that means, there are no neutral BELIEFS. Beliefs are thoughts or collections of thoughts. Attitudes.

Either you believe in the ego's truth, which is a lie, or you believe in God's truth.

Knowing you cannot 'deal' with the problem without making it worse, which truth do you choose? Do you keep trying to solve a problem, by adding to it, or do you step back and detach and surrender?

If someone told you that you couldn't go into the water to save a drowning animal without disturbing the water such that it would seal the animal's fate, what would you do?

Every attempt you make to solve ego problems adds to them.

There has to be a better way.

Sometimes it's very hard to forgive someone. You become fixated on what they did to you, or what they were supposed to do that they didn't do. And sometimes this might've been something that occurred over a very long period of time, such that you can't even imagine life without this grievance. You just can't see how you can forgive this person.

This way of perceiving someone is very hard to get past especially if the person is important or valuable to you. And especially if your involvement with them has been largely a 'special relationship', or a victim/victimizer role. When all your focus is on how they affected you, you become blocked and unconscious as if there is no other way of looking at this.

So there you are, your mind is fixated on this person, on what they did to hurt you, and you just can't seem to get past this experience. One thing you do need to do is allow yourself to FEEL the feelings that have arisen as a result of what seemed to happen. By not feeling it you are in profound denial. Never mind that you had anything to do with how you perceive the situation, but to even deny that you feel hurt at all is a whole other layer of denial on top of it. Pretending it didn't happen when your whole being is screaming that 'it did' is an attempt to protect yourself from it, to hide it in order to pretend it is healed. But it does not go away, and it will eat a hole in you until you acknowledge it.

So as you gather a little willingness to explore 'healing', you can begin to at first allow yourself to acknowledge more of yourself, of what you are, and of what you believe has happened to you. Let yourself feel. The feeling has to come up for release. Up and out. This isn't necessarily forgiveness, but it is a form of catharsis to release old stuck energies which do obscure your perception. It's hard to see someone with innocence or calm when you're really feeling angry and hurt. Acknowledging and feeling the feelings, by FEELING them, not describing them, is a step forward in your healing.

Once some of that is past, you have cleared the way to experience a new way of perceiving. You may already have experienced cognitive shifts as a result of releasing emotion, like clouds clearing away which expose the sun. But you need to go deeper. Because this whole dynamic of "they did this to me" leaves you a victim, and if you stay there, you are stuck. Almost all feelings besides LOVE arise from perceiving yourself unfairly treated, or outright hurt. Fears, doubts, anger, hurt, suffering, pain, embarrassment, abandonment, etc all arise from 'its happening to me'. You need to move past this way of looking at the situation. But this is where it's hard, because it requires some form of detachment or greater perspective.

This is where Holy Spirit comes in because you're now willing to change your mind/perception about what happened and potentially see it differently, even if you can't yet see how that's possible. Until you take that inward journey you won't discover the answers and clarity that you need. You must seek reunion with God by joining with Holy Spirit and asking for His Help to overlook the way you've been seeing.

Now, what you have to get past is the belief and perception that ALL of your upset is the direct result of, and put there by, the other person. That it's their fault. That they are the sole cause. That you did absolutely nothing to ask for it at any time. That's irresponsibility. You MUST take some responsibility, even if a little at first. You can't be free from the victim role if you are not responsible. So let yourself be a little willing, however small, to open up to the possibility that there might be another way to look at this. Maybe you participated somehow. Maybe you made a decision or chose a way of experiencing the situation, which resulted in the evidence of hurt that you're left with.

Maybe you choose to AGREE with what the person was doing. Maybe you choose to BELIEVE that you deserved the treatment they gave. Maybe you chose to change your own sense of who you are, based on what they seemed to demonstrate was true of you. Maybe at some point in between what they 'offered' and what you 'took' from what happened, there was a little interval of choice where you came to your OWN CONCLUSION about what this means. Maybe you therefore did this formation of a false belief to yourself, USING the situation by taking it personally. Your belief in it, your agreement with it, your perception that it is the truth having lost sight of the real truth about you, WAS the 'attack' that you perpetrated against yourself, regardless of what the person modeled for you.

Ultimately you're 100% responsible for choosing. You made up the belief you're left with, on your own. Maybe you didn't know any better. Maybe you were too young. Maybe you forgot you are unconditionally lovable. Maybe nobody told you and you lost track of who you really are. But if you're 100% responsible for AGREEING to this punishment, then you also have the POWER to "choose again". And you can do that at any time that you are willing to admit to choosing this belief, and being willing to SURRENDER it to Holy Spirit, because it is simply false.

But you can't tell a belief is false just by saying it is. You need to know what is true. You need to transfer your allegiance and faith. You need to therefore open up to a greater truth, perhaps reminding yourself of what is true of you, or how God views you, or what God thinks of this false belief, or how Holy Spirit sees you in His Light. Ultimately, to FORGIVE, you need to get `into` the light of the Holy Spirit, at least a little bit, so that it can "shed light" on your belief and SHOW YOU that it is false. False beliefs simply ARE false, and you only need to see them clearly to recognize this. It's not seeing them clearly that makes you trust them. In the light of forgiveness you can witness the obvious fact that what you thought was true of you, is completely untrue, and THEN you will be perfectly willing to let it go. You'll know it was a ridiculous, untrue belief, not in line with the Truth of God. Or in other words, you'll see the VALUE of the real truth about you, and the LACK of value of what is false, and therefore RECOGNIZE that what is false does not even apply to you.

It doesn't apply to you. Because you're innocent and holy and forgiven already. You're loved by God. You're safe. You're at peace. You're with Holy Spirit. You're whole and healed. That's the truth. This event never happened. The person never really did anything to you. You did this to yourself and now you can see that you don't want to keep doing so. So you surrender. You surrender the false sense that is MADE FROM this false belief.. this false identity that isn't a true description of you. It wasn't really who you are anyway.

Then you remember who you are as God's Innocent Child and receive HEALING.

Here's something that may be very difficult to own up to. If you are upset by anything in the world, it is because you have attacked the world. And usually when you are upset, it is because you perceive someone else did the attacking. And then you recoil and despise the attack, and it affects you, and you become upset. And this all covers up the fact that you are attacking. Sin seems outside of you, not in your mind.

You see, you cannot see attack unless you attack. If someone seems to murder someone in front of your face, most people would be horrified. But that's the ego being horrified, about what the ego has done. The reaction has to be fake, because if you knew the truth you'd know nothing has really happened, would laugh at it, and raise the dead. Nothing real can be threatened. There is no death. You're just seeing a dream.

What's very hard to confess to or even be aware of, is that the only reason you are upset by a murder is because there is part of your mind that believes in murder, and is murderous. It reminds you of that, and triggers that in you. You are horrified by your OWN belief about YOURSELF. It reflects what you think is going to happen to you, and what you are doing to yourself. Otherwise you would dismiss it in an instant.

You might say, well, I'm a really loving person and I absolutely would never want to hurt anyone. I advocate for love and can only love. BUT, when someone gets murdered in front of my face, I may freak out. Why? How is that possible? It's only possible because I make it real, I believe it's true, and I value it. I see what I value, and value what I believe in. So I believe in the murder, and its horrors just reflect what I believe I deserve, because of my belief in sin being real, which I am perceiving outside of me.

There HAS TO BE something in my mind that is made of sin, in order for me to react to the "sinful behavior" of others. Otherwise I would be absolutely unmoved by this illusion. So on the one hand I'm claiming to be love/loving, but these events prove my love is conditional, and that means I MUST be in denial. Invulnerability is a characteristic of innocence and holiness, not reacting with ego emotional trauma. A peace that passes all understanding. The immovable rock of sanity.

So we have to be really, REALLY honest with ourselves. Are we REALLY loving, if we are so easily shaken by sin? Are we really awake, if we are still affected by the world we see? Something is incomplete if there is even a slight trace of upset. If we have any reaction other than love, we are in the ego. To the Holy Spirit, all things call for love, not fear.

Yet sometimes we split the world into two things. There are perceived behaviors which are "okay and loving" and other behaviors "which are evil". This is the result of a split mind looking at the world. And when the loving things happen we think, ok, that's love, I'm doing that, so I'm loving. Then when the unholy things happen we think, that's NOT love. But instead of recognizing it as a meaningless illusion we recoil in horror and pass blame and point a finger and make the person wrong. Because we're not really whole in our love. It's not unconditional.

If I derive my sense of happiness from what happens "to me" or what happens "in the world", then I am easily robbed of happiness when anything goes wrong. And there are plenty of things that will go wrong. Invulnerability and love can only come about by becoming CAUSE, not effect. By recognizing that you are NOT at the effect of the world, in ANY of its forms, any events, or when anything happens. If I want to be actively loving in this world, it can't be that I ditch love at a moment's notice when something alarming seems to occur. That's special love, and too much fear. Fear does not enter where it is not welcome, and fear is its denial.

And so it's possible to have special love for the world, which means that you value bodies and the planet and want to keep it and want to have "loving behavior" and so on, but without overlooking these illusions and without being consistent. Some actions are then considered acceptable, others are considered evil and are despised. That is not love. That's judgementalism. That's fake spirituality. That's the ego trying to spiritualize an illusion and make it real. It takes many forms, sometimes things such as "not eating meat", or "hating murderers", or trying to focus solely on "the positive", or wearing "spiritual clothes".

That is denial. It is the two-facedness of the ego. The ego is especially good at taking sides and making out that one "way" is right and one way is wrong. Still continuing to be affected by the world is a certain sign of unforgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks the world which is why it causes you not to take anything seriously in it, recognizing it is not real. This can be difficult to learn because many things in the world SEEM evil or unloving. But you can't have a life where you are "loving sometimes" and call it loving. You have to learn to realize that the unloving, hateful, vengeful things are NOT THAT, and see through them to the truth.

This is a course in Cause, not effect. The world is not a cause. Believing it causes anything produces effects in you and makes you sick. To suffer with upset or horror when bad things happen is sickness. To blame the bad things for causing it is sickness. To not realize what you did to yourself to make yourself experience upset, is sickness. A Course in Miracles isn't about putting on a nice facade of persona all the time and "looking loving", and then taking off the love and going into fear or judgement when the situation changes.

Beware of illusions of love. Real, genuine, deep love is unconditional in its application, sees ALL things in this world as unreal, recognizing NOTHING can change what it is, and has NO effects from worldly events. To love is not to take sides or to judge or to hate sinners. To love is to recognize the Christ in each is the only truth and all the rest is bullshit. "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew YOU were dreaming."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

Victims require victimizers.

Victims ask for victimizers.

Victims create victimizers.

Victimizers victimize victims (victims victimize themselves through third-party victimizers)

Then the victimizer gets all the blame.

Seeing yourself as a victim is actively a choice, an attitude, a viewpoint and a way of looking at and valuing yourself in relation to reality. If you see yourself this way, you will project victimization.

"Being a victim" in this sense, psychologicaly, IS an attack on you, by yourself. And therefore you will project this out and bring about events where other people victimize you, to reflect what you're basically 'asking for'. You ask by your beliefs and if your belief is that you are a victim, and you choose to play the role regardless of whether they are victimizers out there, you'll manifest some.

How will you be a victim when everyone else REFUSES to play along or acknowledge your victimhood?

Even if everyone ceases to play your victim game or to buy into it or to believe in it or support it, you will still play it. Because it was always you playing it all along anyway, with yourself.

Victims ask to be victimized .... extremely controversial yes. Upsetting, possibly, yes. But we must believe we're victims before we are victimized, not the other way around, otherwise this could not happen, and would not happen, because there would be no spiritual lesson needing to be learned.

The sooner we own up to not being a victim the sooner we will stop victimizing OURSELVES and then finding all kinds of people to blame for it.

I [insert name here] hereby testify that I am wholly innocent before God, have not sinned, have no fear and have had nothing done to me against my will. I need not be attacked because I choose not to attack myself or to see myself as attackable. Therefore all is forgiven.

or something like that.

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

Do you notice how it says "SHINES FOREVER"? In order for THE REAL WORLD to SHINE FOREVER, it HAS to be **REALITY**. It cannot be some state prior to awakening. It cannot be a perception. It cannot be a dream. Jesus is explicit here. This whole passage is TALKING ABOUT HEAVEN. Heaven is the place where there are no buildings and streets and stores and no sun to bring day and night. Everything in Heaven SHINES *FOREVER*, and Jesus is directly NAMING that place, "the real world". He has CORRECTLY chosen the term "REAL" because IT DOES REFER TO REALITY. "The real world" is another name for THE KINGDOM OF GOD!

When Jesus speaks in ANOTHER CONTEXT, within the context of pre-awakening, where he refers to the real world, he is talking about a PERCEPTION OF the real world. "The real world still is but a dream" for example refers to how having a perceived IMAGE OF Heaven IS a dream. It is seen from within the dream, peering OUT of the dream, looking AT reality with perception. And that is an IMAGE. And that image is not real, which is why he calls it a dream. But that does NOT mean the real world ITSELF is a dream, only the perception of it. The "real world" is not some strange slice of near-reality in-between the dream world and heaven. It IS Heaven.

When you're first starting to apply A Course in Miracle's idea of forgiveness, it begins with where you're at and what kind of a perception you have.

Most people will be starting out with a mind that is quite strongly convinced that everything external is real, that there are many very distinctly separate problems, that other people are very wrong and are the cause of all their problems.

With that way of perceiving, as you start learning to apply forgiveness it can be quite difficult. The idea that you've even been scapegoating at all is something of a revelation, or that blame is an attempt to project guilt, or that the person who is upset and accusing someone is actually the person who has the problem and not the person they're blaming.

Attempting to forgive when your mind is spending most of its time in that kind of a way of believing/looking at the world, seems like a big challenge and a big mess. It's hard to even remember the basics and harder still sometimes to get your mind out of the basic belief that you've been victimized by someone.

Taking back some sense of the projecting you've been doing at first appears to be the vast majority of what you "do" to forgive, because it at least is taking some steps to recognize that there may be more going on here than meets the eye. Appearances may not necessarily be true, and its possible there is another explanation for why it *seems* like someone else is guilty.

You can potentially spend some years just in that mode alone, learning each time you forgive that what you perceive happening has an explanation that's got something to do with you. That maybe you have some kind of perceptual or distorting problem going on in your mind which is changing how you see things. So then it seems that you go to town on your perception and learning to correct it.

After a while, because learning becomes generalized, and because correction of the mind becomes permanent, you gradually learn to form a clearer picture. You gradually peel away your conviction that problems are about other people. Each time each individual problem is forgiven, even if the forgiveness is not complete in its undoing (and early on it usually isn't), each example of you teaching yourself that there is a different way to look starts to turn into an overall different way of looking. It's like building a new way of perceiving one block at a time.

So eventually it's like, you've seen the same trick presented to you by the ego over and over again, and each time you've applied some kind of forgiveness, even if its a very sloppy inaccurate forgiveness riddled with mistakes, you gradually become clearer about what the truth is. And this gives you a firmer footing in the truth. You become less susceptible to being tricked by the *illusion* that there are many separate problems, or that the problems that show up are unlike each other.

Gradually it sinks in that "this" problem is actually pretty much the same scenario as "that" problem and you start to *transcend* the surface appearances. You at least begin to chisel away at the more obvious distractions and illusions, tending to fall mainly for the subtler ones or those that you didn't really tackle before. But you're still making progress and your mind is gradually learning to see *all* problems differently.

So with time, pretty soon you are not so easy to fool. You've seen the trick one too many times and have learned how it is not the truth. So it's kind of then like, you will notice the trick quicker and catch yourself and not fall into the trap so easily.

Also what happens over time then is you go "deeper" into your truth, which means your mind is waking up and you're examining and sorting out true from false at subtler or more abstract levels. Your refinement of "how" to forgive continues and you just keep collecting more and more insights. As you develop the right minded thought system and open up to Holy Spirit's truth, gradually it builds upon itself and lightbulbs go off more and more often. Things click together more and make more sense, and you get this sense that you are "getting it" with aha moments.

Some years later perhaps you might notice that you're no longer really fooled by the major surface appearances of problems and issues, but instead are operating at a much deeper level of forgiveness. What needs still to be undone are more fundamental beliefs, core values, major perceptual errors, profound beliefs about the basic nature of what is real or not real, etc.

When shit happens, most of it will not stick. The part that continues to stick continues to show you ways that you need to refine your grasp of the truth. But your forgiveness in general, the activity of what you need to do to correct your mind, dwells more often in the realm of what's going on within yourself. Having taken back a lot of your power and responsibility and owned up more to your part in what you experience, it becomes more a matter of just continually owning up to the truth rather than having to deal with lots of projections or blame or being heavily lost in stories and dramas.

It becomes more about what you are doing to yourself, what's happening in your own mind, recognizing that you've been inside your own private world and so have others, and also the growing awareness that intellectualizing the course does not lead to love. And yet, growing within you will also be an ever stronger sense that love, as simple as it sounds, is the key to everything. It is the truth that you want, it is the experience you want to have, it is what you want to share, and it becomes ever clear that simply love is the answer you've been homing in on this whole time.

It's all just a long process of refinement and clarification and chiseling away at beliefs in separation until your mind is returning to an awareness of wholeness and a truly forgiving attitude. Just being love.

"What is not love is murder.

"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."

We are either loving ourselves and others or we are attacking ourselves and others.

It's either love, or a call for love. But it can be difficult to recognize that someone's attack is a call for love. It does not seem to take the form of "please love me" or "I need love". Usually it takes the form of inciting counter-attack, laden with temptation and conflict.

Especially for example if someone is using your name, using attributing words like "you", pointing a physical finger, looking at you in a certain way, or doing something that seems to be affecting you. It all seems to be a way to attempt to say "its about you" or "its your fault" or that they are attacking YOU, not themselves.

Can you recognize that this is them expressing "I need more love because I'm lacking love", when everything they are expressing appears at first to be murderous and unloving? When they seem to present a picture of "I do not love you", which is the same as "I do not want love", how do you see it as a call to be loved?

It's fairly accurate to say that almost everyone on the planet is sick in the mind and body. And that isn't an overestimate.

Anyone who is not being completely loving is not in their right mind. Anyone attacking is not in their right mind. No-one in their right mind would do anything other than love, because they are one with you and to attack you would attack themselves. No sane person would ever treat anyone else in any way other than lovingly. So if someone is not being wholly loving, they are sick.

The problem with this sickness is that the person's mind is in denial, awareness is blocked, and they are unconscious, they don't realize what they are doing otherwise they wouldn't do it.

Only someone who is unaware of the consequences of their attack, an attempt to cause effects in someone else and not themselves, would proceed to do it. It's an attempt to get away with murder, which is the whole ego system of thought - that something is true of another that is different than what applies to you.

So now their mind is denying their own light, they have attacked themselves, they are guilty and sinful and afraid, and now they are acting out. Almost certainly they are projecting onto scapegoats and looking for a target to create an illusion of alleviating their suffering. To try to escape from the responsibility of owning what they are doing to themselves. And by being in denial they do not really seem to want help, though deep down they do.

So what is your role now? Faced with a world full of mentally-ill and physically expressive nut jobs, how do you respond? The Holy Spirit would have you respond with love at all times. He would say, well, these people, they are forgiveable because they literally are not aware of what they are doing. They are insane. No-one sane would act this way and no-one sane would attack a brother. So if they're doing that, they are insane and need help.

The only help that can work is to fix the problem. The problem is the person is blocking love and so seems to be lacking love. What they need therefore is love. Love is the only thing that can be supplied to correct the only thing that's lacking. If someone is not being loving they are believing in a lack or absence of love, and the presence or supply of this love is the only remedy. This is why expressions of love are miraculous and can cure.

So in a way we have to learn, to reframe everything we see happening, and all expressions coming from people. Either they are being christly and loving, in recognition that that is their real self, OR they are being unconscious, lost in the ego, lacking love, are mentally ill and need healing. Being in denial they DO NOT KNOW what they are doing and are mistaken.

If we can remember that people are "not being themselves", that they are "sick" and that they are not aware of what they are doing or why, and if we can remember that they WOULD NOT act this way if they were healed and whole, this makes it easier to not "hold it against them", take it personally, think of it as true or serious, and helps you to stay out of the ego response.

Really this is what forgiveness is about. Faced with an insane attacking ego-driven person, we need to OVERLOOK all of these appearances and remember the person's divinity, which is hidden behind their call for love, which is showing up as a call to be unloved. They seem to WANT to be attacked, they seem to WANT suffering, but this is only because they have rejected the very thing that would give them the sanity to make a wiser choice.

We have to laugh at people's insane behavior because it's not really true of them. This is part of realizing this is just a dream and the nutjobs it's populated with don't even know they are dreaming. No-one in their right mind would deliberately be unloving. Their lack of love is sickness that appears to ask for love to be withheld but is mistaken in that request. What they really want and need is love. And this love has to overlook and shine past all of these obstacles.

Not just for their benefit, but also to keep your own mind sane. Because if you yourself have stopped being loving and have slipped into reactions, counter attacks, taking it personally or seriously, being tempted or distracted to engage their ego, then you now also have joined the ranks of the insane and you yourself now need healing as well.

"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did has not OCCURRED."

"Only Atonement can be said to cure."

"There is no sin."

God created heaven and its reality. It is the only absolute reality. This is all that existed before the separation and ALL THAT WILL EXIST afterwards. Planet Earth and space and time are not a part of this whatsoever.

In the separation, we tried to assert the existence of something completely OPPOSITE to reality. This produced a thought system of ILLUSION, an entire SECOND world or system of thought. We made heaven's opposite, which is hell. This included the making of space and time and matter and planet Earth. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

This threw us all the way into what we call false perception which is aligned with how the body sees the physical world. "The world is false perception." This is blindness by perception of form. It is a way to make sin seem real. It is the unreal and unforgiven world. The body looks upon it all the time and cannot see anything else because it is PART OF it. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." "... see only the forms of error."

This means that we perceive a COMPLETELY ILLUSORY WORLD, through illusory eyes, and are COMPLETELY DECEIVED by it, taking it to be REALITY, when in fact it is reality's opposite. Seeing an illusion THROUGH an illusion cancels its illusory nature and makes it SEEM REAL. It's a state of insanity. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "Sin is insanity."

This insane world we made is drawn like a VEIL of illusions across heaven to disguise and hide it from sight. We look AT the physical world in order NOT to overlook it. This is unforgiving sight. It's a way of being blinded so that you DO NOT see reality. The veil seems thick and solid and heavy and made of materials. It is "the granite block of sin." If your MIND is unforgiving, it will align with this world and this view of this world, and will see sin - bodies - as though it is real. Only the insane believe an ILLUSORY world is real.

In moving out of insanity and back to the ONLY REALITY of heaven, which existed PRIOR to the making of Earth and WITHOUT it, we first move into true perception of the ILLUSORY world that we made. True perception entails two seeming aspects because there are TWO mechanisms for perception - the body's eyes AND the spiritual eye.

1) Looking upon the ILLUSORY WORLD that we made, and RECOGNIZING it as an illusory world. This is "seeing it truly" and is "accurate perception". It shows you that the world IS UNREAL, and IS NOT the reality you thought it was. Illusions are recognized, bodies are recognized as dream figures, awareness that you are DREAMING arises in your mind, and you see this ILLUSORY WORLD that you made as THE FORGIVEN WORLD. This is a perception TOWARD the illusory world you made which sees it in a light, loving, forgiving way. It makes the ILLUSION appear more beautiful and innocent, but it IS STILL AN ILLUSORY WORLD.

2) Looking BEYOND the illusory world, because to forgive is to OVERLOOK. And any world you forgive you NO LONGER SEE. And you cannot see both worlds, ultimately - heaven and hell. True perception looks PAST the world, PAST the veil, THROUGH illusions, BEYOND deception, and looks TOWARD heaven, AWAY from the illusory world you made. This is why christ vision is able to see BEYOND BODIES, BEYOND THE VEIL, and looks to THE LIGHT which is beyond it all. It sees this light without it dimming, BEYOND THE ILLUSORY WORLD, while facilitating the ability to look down toward the illusory world and see its CHAOS from an unchaotic perspective.

"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***; an idea ***beyond what can be touched***, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. ***It sees no separation***. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, ***without the slightest fading of the light it sees***."

"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***" - meaning the chaos is still there but there is an underlying "real world" interwoven with it at the same time, which isn't chaotic.

How to put it. .... let's say there is an ocean. You are above the ocean in christ vision/true perception/forgiveness. You look out ACROSS the ocean surface and see above the horizon. You look to the bright light of the sun shining - symbolizing heaven's light. And at the same time, you notice that the ocean is there, and the ocean hides the light, and there are things lurking in the ocean and moving around. That is the illusory world, the forgiven world. It is the veil of dreaming. So you are seeing the forgiven world BELOW, and the real world AHEAD. Then at some point YOU ONLY SEE the real world, and then it's off to heaven.

Only when THE ILLUSORY WORLD YOU MADE ends, "the world WILL END in laughter" ie you stop believing in it entirely, does the veil part, the illusion vanish, and you see ONLY the face of christ. And then you are taken swiftly OUT OF ILLUSIONS, OUT OF THE WORLD, BACK INTO REALITY.

"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

To know God is to be IN REALITY in heaven with God where THERE IS NO WORLD - no planet earth, no bodies, no space, no time, no illusory world, no real world, no forgiven world, ONLY THE KINGDOM.

The mind and intention behind your words has power.

What you speak is powerful, IF you are speaking words of truth.

Sometimes people will say something like, "I'm worried that..." or "try not to...." or "be careful because you might...." etc. These are all coming from the victim mind and are statements of what the person believes.

They are actually affirmations, which affirm that they believe there is some potential for bad things to happen to you. They are an attempt to diminish power. They are CURSES.

It may seem as though someone is being considerate when they say they are worried about you, or that they are seeking for your preservation when they say they're afraid that something could happen and to be careful etc... but secretly this is laced with attack.

If you are really looking out for someone, SPEAK TRUTH INTO THE SITUATION, don't speak and make more real the ways that bad things are going to happen.

Instead of "be careful you don't hurt your back", what about "your back is strong and safe and cannot be hurt"?

Instead of "don't go to that store because that person might be there", how about, "I see you as empowered and confident and nothing can affect you."?

There's a big difference between fake concern and real support.

Just as guilt is not love, fear is not support. Fear is an attack. It is a further attempt to condemn and curse the situation and keep your brother in a prison.

You can set people free when you use words of powerful truth that are aligned with and extend God's power. They are not just words but carrier signals for His power to flow across. They can move mountains. When your word is the same as God's word, you can perform miracles.

A bible quote along such lines: "Have faith in God," Jesus said to them. "Truly I tell you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and has no doubt in his heart but believes that it will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.…"

Most people in this world are trying to find the Self that they think they lost.

They're trying to find the Love (God) that they think they are separate from.

They are looking everywhere that this Self/Love/God does not exist, outside of themselves and away from presence, also in the past and future.

So everyone in all their seeking is really trying to locate and get back the sense of 'I Am' that they covered up when they started seeking. How will they find 'home' away from home?

So all the gathering and getting and taking and stealing and earning and succeeding and achieving and efforting and hunting and acquiring and buying and so on ... it's all the world's attempt to reclaim what it deeply believes it has LOST.

And what it believes it has lost is God.

It seeks to replenish that loss through all these external avenues, using illusions and forms and objects and falseness and idols and special relationships etc, to try to 'fill up' that sense of emptiness - the lack of God - the lack of True Self. Because God and True Self have been covered up, and that's what has made everyone believe they are in need, and therefore need to seek.

The truth is that God is not missing, and everyone's True Self is eternal and still exists just as God created it.

It's all just a matter of unconsciousness - ego - standing in the way of awareness, deceived by illusions and appearances, attempting to assert that God is lost and therefore finding 'other stuff' will replace Him.

Nothing can replace love because love cannot be removed. But that also means love is not lost. It's just hidden.

Its our job to reveal and open up to and accept and reclaim our inheritance. What is already ours. And what can never be undone.

You still are. God still is.

I feel more relaxed and peaceful, which I think is a result of looking at the world's system of failure, unrelenting attack and constant problems.

There was always an effort to resist the world going wrong, a constant tension of trying to stop bad things happening, an expectation that things should be going well all the time, and a desire for nothing to ever turn sour.

These were all forms of denial and wishful thinking. An ignorance about the system of the world and how it functions. It was rooted in a mixed belief that the world was even capable of sustaining anything. That it should, that the norm of life should be that the world "works well", and that problems are occasional annoying exceptions.

If you look at the fact that the world is utterly bullshit and hell-bent on inevitable destruction, that all its roads lead to death, that it disappoints at every turn, and it is literally incapable of being free of problems and difficulties, you actually get more of a sense of its "true nature". Instead of the fanciful denial that attempts to insulate us from it.

We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make the world more tolerable. We build fancy homes and cities to try to shut out and ignore the weather. We try to farm foods more carefully to avoid contamination. We're told to do healthy things and exercise so as to avoid health concerns. We're told to make money so that we don't starve to death.

And so the drive of "civilized society" is really a REACTION to the fact that the world is raw and wild and cruel and unrelenting in its onslaught of carnage. We've become quite good at making it more "comfortable" and "safe", to a degree, in an effort to make hell more palatable, trying to tame its wicked ways. To form an oasis in the desert where we can be insulated from its "nature" and distanced from its ravages. Even though NONE of this prevents the destruction of all these things.

If we drop all that and just recognize the way the world is, and not just the planet but also the whole fundamental fabric of spacetime, then we can see that it was made to function a certain way. It cannot do what it was not designed to do. Its nature has to remain opposite to heaven otherwise it will cease to exist. It must BE different and separate otherwise it cannot appear to exist at all.

So it has to maintain this system of destruction at all times. If we let go of expecting it to be otherwise, and undo this denial that tries to constantly fight against it, or has an expectation that it's supposed to turn out well at the physical level, then when its nature just "does what it does", we won't be so upset. And we won't have to keep resisting it all the time, or fearing it.

The fear really comes from the "hope" or wishful thinking that it's not going to do what it always does. That it's not going to attack or destroy or make things difficult. And then when it does we're seemingly in shock and upset because our expectation has been destroyed. Without the blindness of believing the world can function like heaven, or that it can operate peacefully, or that it will ever be devoid of its devouring deadly nature, we can actually be more at peace about it.

In sense this a form of acceptance. Not accepting that the world is real and true, since only atonement should be accepted and only heaven should be validated. But an acceptance that the world, as it is, is just the way it is, and it cannot help its nature. A recognition that it's just always going to fuck up and destroy everything, because that's the only way it can function. And then in recognition of this we can actually laugh at it and not be so disturbed or surprised or shocked when everything goes to hell again.

This isn't the same as "expecting the worst", because you can get yourself into a belief that this world is real and it always is just negative and depressing, and therefore there is no hope or alternative. But you can expect the worst in the sense of realizing that the world can't be anything BUT the worst, due to its attacking nature, and can separate your relationship with it into a space of laughing at its hilariously flawed ways. We are, after all meant to learn to laugh at the mad idea that has produced this world.

As I sit here I'm looking out the window - not a perfect window but a dirtied stained window - upon an environment in which the leaves on the trees are all dead. The grass is browned and half-dead as a result of the snow that covered it. The weather is cold and unrelentless. The brickwork on the buildings is uneven. The light of sun is blocked and producing shadows of darkness. Roof tiles are missing. Rocks are weathered and decayed. Electrical power boxes are slightly mis-aligned and a strange ugly color. And the somewhat mutilated fir trees are struggling to stay alive.

But is this unexpected for a world where all things must die because time is change and change is death? No. This is the only way it can be. It is hilariously faulty. Ridiculously tragic, and quite a mess. The world is really kind of like a giant trashcan filled with broken pieces and old rotten shite.

Can it be otherwise? It cannot. It can never be otherwise. The dust of dead civilizations will always be blown by the winds of hate in this world. And recognizing this is its nature can actually set you free. Free from the horrible suffering that results from believing it could be any other way. And free from the constant efforts to put some extra lipstick and bandaids on the corpse, trying in vain to turn a tired old world into a new one. In a sense, let the dead bury the dead, and let death be, that there may be life in the mind.

We are to forgive the world, yes. To do this we have to want another world. We have to tune into another reality. Beyond space and time, a world of light and eternal life. A world where the laws of God do not permit suffering, difficulty, problems or death. And then we bring that wholistic perspective with us as we shine its light upon the broken world and see it from a loving perspective. We don't have to condemn the world in order to see that it is inherently broken. We can forgive it for being the way it is, only because it IS broken. And in forgiveness we can laugh it away.

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone." "The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The 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."

If you see the world through your filter of darkness, you'll see a darkened world. The world will appear to be unlovable because you do not see love in it. You see darkness in it, and no-one can love what is does appear lovable. Indeed you see it as unlovable because you do not see it WITH love. If you remove your filter of darkness, you'll see a lighter world, and without your condemnation upon it it will appear more lovable. You will then find that this world that you see WITH love is lovable, and so you can love it.

The world as you see it through eyes of fear, which is seeing in an unloving way, is not a lovable world. It is devoid of love because you do not love it, and what you're trying to love is a world disguised in lovelessness. No-one love can such an ugly world - the combination of the world plus your projected darkness, but it only appears ugly because of the lack of love with which you look upon it. Strangely enough, if you choose to look upon it WITH love, the world appears to change and reflect something that is loveable. And now you find yourself able to love it BECAUSE you are loving it. But your love has to come FIRST, and not DEPEND on what it seen, nor be conditionally loving BECAUSE of it.

In effect then, you are confronted with a paradox. When you do not love the world the world will appear not to be lovable. And how that world appears, you cannot love, because it is dark and ugly and cruel, and all its flaws and conflicts are emphasized and increased through your dwelling upon them. But although you cannot love a darkened world, when you decide TO love, to see WITH love, proactively, it changes how you see, and changes how the world appears. And now suddenly the world is lit up with the light that you've GIVEN to it, and a world illuminated with love does appear to be lovable. And yet, you could not love the world when you did not come from love.

"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."

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in."

It's as if there are two versions of the world, and each "version" seems to be the whole world to you. Which version or interpretation/translation you see depends on what you GIVE TO the world. When you project hate and attack and guilt and sin onto it, having those within yourself and having accused yourself of them, you will see them overlaid on the world. And then the world will appear evil and wrong and attacking. But if you forgive yourself and cease your self attack, you will also project innocence and harmlessness and holiness ONTO the world. And now you will see the world WITHOUT your attack, and only WITH your innocence, and in this light it will appear to lack the dark heavy chains that you saw in it before. And THAT rendition of the world appears to be loved and forgiven.

"Beyond this world there is a world I want."

As ACIM says, the world you see through darkness and despair is NOT the world that God loves. He CANNOT love such a world. Nor can you. This is a metaphysical fact. You cannot love what you do not love, and you cannot see a lovable world when you are not BEING loving. But we're also told that God CAN love "the world" - not the world that is seen when attacking, but the world that is seen only in light when loving.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world."

The loving has to come first, it changes how the world looks, a reflection of love is seen IN it, and this makes the world appear to be fit for love. God loves the LOVED VERSION of the world, because THROUGH eyes of love the world appears lovable. Such a world is "the real world", seen with forgiveness and with love, which CAUSES what it seen to be a reflection of heaven. Without seeing FROM love, the world will appear to lack love and reflect fear and hate, and no-one can love such a hell as that.

To love hell, therefore, you have to first switch on the light of love within, SO THAT love is projected out, SO THAT you no longer see hell reflected IN the world. You can't expect the world to be loveable "as it appears to be", while YOU are not in a state of love. You can't just force yourself to love something that, simultaneously, you are causing to appear NOT to be loveable because of your inner state of attack. The inner attack must be gone, first, because it completely influences how you see AND what you see in it. Only when there is a lovability within, can you truly SEE with vision and look WITH forgiveness, and when doing so you will ONLY see a forgiven world that reflects heaven.

Given that you cannot love an unloveable world, the ego would tell you that there is no way for you to love the world. Given that it appears dark and old and lackluster and broken, the ego tells you it can never BE forgiven. Its forms appear to prove sin real and the veil of sin upon it appears to confirm you cannot love it. It reasons then that because you do NOT love it, and because it does NOT appear to reflect something loveable, there is no way for you to ever love it.

This is where it becomes necessary to realize that what you see in it is reflecting what you see in yourself. Where you must realize that HOW you are looking has total influence over WHAT is seen. And this means having to become able to love, before looking upon the world. To forgive is really to fore-give, which mean to give ahead of time, which means to come FROM love and to GIVE love before projecting and making perception. Perception is just the result of what you GIVE. But you can't love an unloved world, because it's reflecting an unloved self. You have to unplug from the unloved world, love YOURSELF, and then look out from that love and peace upon a reflection of a loved self - a forgiven self - a forgiven world.

"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 minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven."

"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."

"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death. For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death. For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die. And the world you perceive IS a world of separation."

"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."

"Again we come to the question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. 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."

"How is peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible, and can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God what is reflected here is only peace."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"

If you make sin real to you, you enter into a state of NOT forgiving. While you maintain that the sin is real, you are not being forgiving. In order to be forgiving, you have to shift into the position of recognizing the sin is not real.

It seems that if you make the sin real first, you cannot overlook it. But the fact is, you probably have ALREADY made the sins real to you. This is part of your unconsciousness. You already MADE the world real to you by believing in it. You are already IN a state of believing it is real. If it were not possible to forgive, considering that you are already IN this state, forgiveness would be impossible. Forgiveness is NOT possible SO LONG AS you maintain that the sin is real.

Even IF you make sins real, which causes you to not BE overlooking them, this doesn't mean you CAN'T choose again. It doesn't mean you are stuck in not being able to forgive. It just means you are not forgiving it right now. So long as you maintain the belief that it is real, you are in an unforgiving attitude, in judgement.

But this doesn't mean you cannot adopt a forgiving attitude and TAKE BACK your belief that it is real. If this were not true, you would be stuck forever in the belief that sin is real. You HAVE made many sins real to you, many illusions that you think are reality, and now you are in a position where you DO need to change your mind about them.

You ARE in a state of "false perception". You're already starting from the bottom up to try to return to true perception. It HAS to be possible to transition from making sins real, to not making them real. Forgiveness isn't impossible, it's just that you have to let go of the "making real" in order to RETURN to a forgiving state.

You cannot forgive "real sins" WHILE believing or maintaining that they are real to you. But forgiveness would show you they are NOT real. And you CAN change your mind and believe they are not real. You can take back your beliefs. You can change your perceptions. You can shift into a more truthful way of perceiving, in which the sin is RECOGNIZED as being just an illusion of a sin, not a REAL sin, and in fact it is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear."

Ideally, you would not have entered into the belief that sin is real in the first place. If you were squarely in the Holy Spirit all the time you would not do this. True forgiveness is "fore-giving". It entails giving love AHEAD of time, in order NOT TO MAKE ERRORS (sins), so that there IS nothing to fix. It is only when you enter into judgement that you become UNFORGIVING, this unforgiveness MAKES errors, and then makes it seem that illusions are real to you.

"He would not forgive MUST judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

THEN you will believe "there is really something I have to DO TO this to make it go away." It's a perspective where you believe the problem really does exist and is happening, is threatening, and now you need a way to handle it, fix it, correct it. It means now you think you have MADE an error. And having believed that you have made an error you will now believe you MUST UNDO or "do something about" this "real" error BEFORE you can be forgiven.

But then you will seek to fight with, tackle, adjust, condemn, attack the error, that you think is real, trying to make it go away. Which means you are still judging, because it is YOUR UNFORGIVENESS that is KEEPING the error happening. And it won't go away because you are still assuming IT IS REAL to begin with. You see the error as if its outside of you, but it's YOUR UNFORGIVENESS looking back at you. This is a failure to overlook it. It means you see a "real threat" that is "doing something against my will" (sinning). Why? Because YOU are attacking.

And this real sin will remain IN PLACE, so long as you believe it REALLY IS there. It's seeming presence as "real sin" also implies, you are sinful, suggesting you are not forgiven. To even see it at all is an accusation against you. ("Sick bodies are accusers.") To try to asuage your guilt you will try to "heal it", but it won't go away so long as you believe it is even really there to begin with.

Having MADE sin real, you now need a remedy. The remedy is therefore obviously to STOP making it real. And you can do this. It requires that you withdraw all belief in its reality, because what you believe in is real to you. By cancelling all belief in its reality, in your mind, you are unlearning the lie you taught yourself, and returning to the state of forgiveness.

Once you no longer believe in the sin, which really was an attempt to "make it happen", your mind can remain in that primary state of FORE-giving, in which you do not MAKE errors. You overlook what is not there, because you have not PUT IT THERE. You do not see errors or ego or think them real, because you are not MAKING these errors (failures to forgive).

To be forgiving is to recognize, THERE IS NO SIN. What seems to be there, is not there. It is nothing. It is ALREADY GONE. And all that remains is innocence. To be forgiving therefore means to NOT SEE sin, to not MAKE errors real, to not BELIEVE IN sickness, and to not JUDGE. Recognition that there is no sin, and accepting of this universal fact, is acceptance of the Atonement, and the Atonement and Forgiveness are the same thing.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you think your bother DID, .... HAS NOT OCCURRED."

"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? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it."

"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 this view are all your sins forgiven. "

"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 minds at all, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

Before the separation, let's say you were wholly Christ, you were everywhere, and you looked upon yourself and saw yourself everywhere.

Then the separation came along and put a "rift" down the middle of you, separating you from the other half of yourself, like a deep wound.

The other half of you remained in Heaven, but this half of you seemed to believe in the split and saw a wall keeping you from yourself. You couldn't see through this gap that formed, because it looked like a solid wall of sin.

That wall is this universe. Physical matter is that wall of sin. This world is the content of the wound. It is the world of attack and pain and misery and death attempting to convince you that you are separate from yourself and God.

As you awaken, you gradually learn that this wall of sin is not really there, the universe doesn't really exist, and you start to look past its illusory forms and obstacles. To heal the world, is really to heal the world away, so that it is Christ who is healed, and the world-shaped wound is undone. Your vision begins to see through it, like it becomes transparent, as if the mists are clearing and you see beyond the veil.

Eventually, you start to catch a glimpse of Christ, which seems to reflect back to you from across the gap, and the gap diminishes in this sight. You are starting to see the reflection of yourself, or rather, the other half of you. You see this by not seeing the wound any more, and forgetting the world that arose in your madness.

As the gap closes, swallowing up the entire universe in its going, and disappearing into nothingness, Christ's Vision is finally healed, the wound is fully undone, and there is a wholeness again. In this wholeness there is no gap, no separation, no rift, no world, no bodies, no images, no forms.

There is only Christ looking upon himself once again, just as the Holy Spirit loves to do, sharing His vision. The wall of sin is gone, invisible. The planet has faded into nothing. And all that remains is the Heaven God created. The Son of God in all His glory.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all." UrW188L1

Enlightenment is merely you recognizing "the facts" and recognizing that they are true. And accepting them, because they are so obvious. No more confusion or deception or lies, just reality. How are things really, what exists, what are you really?

"no-one can be angry at a fact" UrM18A4

Just the facts. What is true. What is real. What is actual.

Where are you, what are you, what exists, what doesn't. Just you recognizing it, seeing it, realising it.

There's no attack upon the ego or the world in this because they are recognised as not existing, nothing you really have to do to deal with them, and it's very simple. When they're seen for the nothingness they are they are just nothing to you.

You just acknowledge how things really are. That's all.

Everything is in its proper perspective and place. You see clearly that there is no world. That you are squarely in God, only the kingdom exists, and you are immortal.

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world." UrW132L7

It's like, you finally get a look at what you actually are without any clothes or disguises or denial. Just a good hard look at the truth of you. You know yourself as you really are.

The truth is that only God and his creation exists, of which you are a part, and nothing unreal exists. If you could just purely recognize that fact you'd be enlightened.

It's like just sort of seeing "what is". No more deception, confusion, delusion, wishful thinking, denial, trying to convince yourself of lies, trying to turn yourself into something you're not etc.

If you could go to reality right now and take a look in the light as to what is true - what's really there, you'd just see that there's God and his kingdom - your brothers, you and your creations, angels etc. ... this all exists, its what you are ... and .. .there is no spacetime. The world is recognised as totally false, unreal, untrue, nothing.

So you're done. Just looking at the simple facts. Acceptance of reality, recognition of the truth. Not some conceptual truth - factual experienced truth. What is. What is not.

Not much different than when you go somewhere to visit some people and you arrive and they're there and you're there and the place is there and that's all there is to it.

Enlightenment is just you coming home to live in God in total honesty and willingness and acceptance.

"Exclude ANY part of the Kingdom FROM yourself, and you are NOT whole." Bodies suggest that you are exclusively isolated and separate from other bodies. That you are "only you", and "not them". This is the complete opposite of what is true and real.

In reality, your mind is supposed to include everyone as a part of yourself, you are supposed to be the entire whole of the Kingdom, and even host all of God within yourself.

This means that as you look at one person, you are literally looking at the entire kingdom of heaven and all beings within that one being. Each of us contains each other, and contains the whole.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

We need therefore to expand our sense of identity away from "I am only me", separated off and alone, to "I include everyone as part of myself." That WE are US. A shared union in which we each literally are one with everyone all at once.

Everyone is me. Everyone is you. The whole of God's creation exists in you, and also in me. All of the whole is in every part of the whole, and every part is the whole. This is the holographic structure of God's mind.

"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."

Mind naturally is designed to include everything and share everything. It is designed to be everywhere always. When mind identifies with a body is profoundly narrows itself and imprisons itself to a tiny speck in spacetime. This is incredible unnatural. It makes you think that you are separated off and alone in a body, walled in and kept away from others.

But in truth your mind is supposed to expand to include all others and to regard the interests of others as your own. They are part of you. What is good for them is good for you. Your healing heals them. Your awakening awakens them. We are all in this together.

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

As we shift from body identity to spirit identity, we are shifting from isolation to inclusion, from loneliness to togetherness, from believing that a person does not contain other people to recognizing that everyone is in each person. The whole of God is in every part of God. "The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

You are not just you. You are you and me and everyone. What is mine is everyone's. Everything is shared including our selves.

Jesus is literally asking us to become spirit-identified rather than body-identified, to recognize that our body is merely an image being projected by our mind (which we can stop projecting at any time), and to learn to stop seeing ourselves AND others as bodies.

That's no small request either. We are so used to being bodies and seeing bodies, we think it is normal and natural.

One thing to realize is that a body is not a first-hand experience and it is not the origin or source of a person. It is a secondary layer placed OVER the inner spirit to try to hide it.

So when you are looking at a body and you see fish and bones and eyes and a face and you think that as you look at THAT, you are SEEING the person, you are not. You are seeing a wall of denial and separation. A disguise. It's designed to BLOCK you from seeing the person that is "trapped" inside, locked up in the body and unseen by anyone.

The body is a device for separation. And the golden rule always applies. What we see in others we see in ourselves. In order to become aware that we are not a body ourselves we have to overcome all forms of separation and all attack. And only when we can not see ourselves as a body will we be able to see past the bodies of others.

This is also the meaning of "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind".... ie, if you can get to where you have awareness of God in your mind, you will STOP seeing bodies entirely because God is not a body. If you are seeing God, you are not seeing form. You cannot see two worlds. So this does NOT mean that you see God "in the world", it means that God is ALL THERE IS and THERE IS NO WORLD.

It's a huge challenge to actually get to an experiential state where a) you do not believe you are a body at all (genuinely), b) you do not see your body as your self, c) your sense of identity is not attached to the body whatsoever, d) you do not see others as their bodies, e) you recognize that all bodies are fictional puppets that people dangle in front of them to pretend to interact, and f) that you do not need a body at all in order to exist as divine spirit.

Overcoming the body is the same thing as overcoming death. If you can become free of the body consciously and deliberately without using death to do so, you no longer need a body and can make it disappear. It will become transparent and will vanish.

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't want to let go of attachments because I don't trust that everything will be okay unless I am in control.

Holy Spirit is asking us to be set free (!) of the need to have outcomes be controlled, or follow what we think is in our best interests. We want to be in the drivers seat with our ego, directing things and enforcing things, trying to resist what IS and instead enforce what we THINK things should be.

This is all about ego control and manipulation. I want to control so that I can seem to 'make happen' a particular situation. I don't trust that things will be okay unless I don't do this. I do this because I've become convinced that I NEED the situation to be this way. I think I have this need because I've got some kind of funky ego belief telling me that if things AREN'T this way then I will not be happy, or getting what I want or need. ie I'm going to lose or have lack or have something taken away if I don't make things be a certain way.

So this really boils down to fear, not feeling safe, and the belief that we need to put up defenses against what's happening in order to protect ourselves from attack. The trouble is that these very mechanisms, which are mechanisms of control and resistance, are the very things which CREATE a belief in attack because they ARE an attack.

Each time you create an expectation, or invest into attaining a particular outcome, you are setting yourself up for failure. There's a good chance events are not going to go the way you expect them to, and when that happens you will react unhappily. There is also a chance things will go the way you want, which is the ego's carrot on a stick, and then you think you have somehow 'won' the prize of getting away with murder. But its a gamble that you will likely at some point lose.

These investments into NEEDING things to be a certain way, to fulfill some kind of strange belief that 'then I will be happy' or 'I can't be happy when things aren't the way I want them to be', 'attach' us to these outcomes. We're pinning our hopes on them. We're depending on them. We're relying on things going the way we want and build up all this fear and anticipation about it turning out.

This 'attaches' our mind to these outcomes because if we DEPEND on these outcomes/events/people for happiness then we're HOLDING ONTO the ego's false promise or fantasy that GETTING this outcome will bring you salvation. Salvation will free you from whatever supposed 'need' you think you have and deliver you from the 'suffering' that you think you will experience, or maybe even do experience, when outcomes aren't the way you want them to be.

So really this is all about looking for salvation in the wrong place. Putting our faith into being CAUSED to be happy when certain things happen or certain events line up in a certain way. We're depending on EXTERNAL stuff to change what our experience is, and are relying on someone or something else to happen TO us to indirectly CHANGE us into the desirable state we're trying to achieve. This indirectness is passive and is also the role of the victim, in which you are sometimes at risk of attack and sometimes at risk of reward, and are gambling that if you steer things toward reward then you can avoid attack. But both are depending on the ego and both depend on external, separate things, to come along and affect you in a preferable way.

You can only be affected by things if you are not being responsible for yourself. You can only be changed by external things if you are not being who you really are. You can only have your happiness affected positively or negatively by outside influences if you are not aware that Joy is within you and comes from God and can never be removed. And you will only seek and not find salvation in these external outcomes if you are not finding contentment and needlessness within yourself. You will keep seeking (attaching to/depending upon) and not finding (losing/suffering) while you believe that you have a real need that is unfulfilled and that needs to or can be fulfilled (finding salvation) by some external, separate source beyond your control. And so then your attempt to control is an attempt to control what is beyond your control, to try to coerce it into becoming what you want (your savior).

So it really all comes back to whether you believe that you don't have God. Or that you are not as God created you. Or that you're lacking or failing in some way or have an absence of sustenance from God. If you're `in need` then you will seek and you will project and you will seek for false idols and you will attach yourself and become DEPENDENT UPON external stuff. This dependency is a form of slavery and is a form of losing yourself or 'transferring' yourself into the external thing. And this BINDS you to the ego's `level 1` world of duality and suffering. It binds you to the physical form and it binds you to a separate existence. All of your external dependencies and false needs keep you weighed down in the quagmire of darkness in the ego's world, and prevent you from staying squarely in the Holy Spirit.

So we need to let go of mentally and emotionally depending on anything other than God, essentially. Depending on God means looking to God for fulfillment and happiness and meeting all needs and TRUSTING that you will be taken care of if you let go of trying to care of everything yourself. But it does involve a surrender. You have to let go of your tight grip of fear that says... I won't fully let go because if I do, shit is going to happen that I don't want... which really means, shit will happen that does not align with your ego's plans for what IT thinks will bring you salvation, which is GROSSLY MISTAKEN and actually leading you into suffering. Holy Spirit's plan is better ;-)

So it's really about learning to trust Holy Spirit, to develop a trust that you CAN and should let go and allow and accept in order to RECEIVE LOVE and SUPPORT and HOLY HELP, and that it is SAFE to do so, and that it does not mean horrible suffering will follow. Going from fearfully holding on to surrendering and letting go takes a bit of a leap of faith. But once you've taken it, you'll let God be on your side. And you have mighty companions.

You first believe you are lacking love and that love is not inside you. So now you are in need.

So you accept this is true and the sense of lack compels you to seek for what's missing.

You look everywhere except where you already decided you didn't find it... within.

Off you go, looking for love elsewhere, outside you, in others.

You believe others have what you lack so you want to get it from them.

You try to get it from them, and even steal it from them, because you're jealous that they have it and not you.

So you rip it from them and claim it. Except, something bugs you.

You can't shake the feeling that even though you have it, you don't have it, or enough of it.

This is because underneath, you still have in place the believe that love is not in you. It's still asserting this truth.

So now you can't even fully receive what you've taken from others because you yourself reject the idea that love is in you - you won't allow it to enter you.

This all leads up to the final confrontation which is quite interesting.

If you were to let down your guard and stop defending the belief that love is not in you, so that you can actually finally receive the love that you got from elsewhere, what would happen?

Would you finally fully 'get' what you stole? OR, would you suddenly realize that you already have what you thought you didn't have, and that you didn't even need to get it from elsewhere anyway?

Just as you think you got the grand prize, oh. .. wait.... I already had it all along, I don't need that.

You got the goods.

This is why getting stuff from the world is never deeply satisfying. It doesn't undo the block to the awareness of love's presence that is already in you. And if you were to remove that block, you wouldn't need what you got from the world. So it always falls short, and you're always left wanting, and so you keep seeking more and more and more.

Perfectionism. Addiction. Compulsion. Idol worship. Hero worship. False Gods. Special relationships.

Seek and do not find.

No need to seek any more when you've got God.

The only reason you blame or judge or project or scapegoat or see yourself as a victim or experience effects from others, is because you do not see how you did this to yourself.

If you could see how you ONLY do things to yourself, it would be so obvious you are the cause that you would have absolutely no NEED to even begin to go looking for its source. You wouldn't even need to find out who else is responsible for this. And so you wouldn't even start to step onto the slippery slope of blaming other people for it.

It's solely because you do not SEE, that you did this to yourself, or you chose it, and therefore your vision is obscured, and so you quite literally are now INCAPABLE of seeing who really is responsible.

But you will try TRY to find out who is responsible, you'll search around the room angrily trying to point fingers of accusation and judgement. "Was it you? or You?!"... And beyond even asking if it was someone, which you strongly believe it MUST be because you didn't see yourself do it, you pretty much have found others guilty automatically.

Then you think that if you FIND or have found someone guilty, and can blame them, that you're simply being justified. You're simply pointing out what the cause is. You're just honestly and innocently identifying who is responsible. You think you're just doing the normal honest sane rational thing of finding out who caused you to be upset, and that you're just pointing it out. You don't realize you're totally barking up the wrong tree because the cause isn't out there.

So projection, blame, anger, judgement, scapegoating, it's all simply an effort to continue to recognize who is responsible, but at the same time as being irresponsible yourself. By not being responsible for who you are, you entered into darkness, could not see what you were doing, and now are attempting to find another person to pin it on. And you will be wrong.

You will ALWAYS be mistaken if you EVER decide that it's someone else's fault. Because it is ALWAYS YOU that is doing it to yourself. You don't need to find someone to pin it on. You need to wake the fuck up and SEE CLEARLY, so you can recognize that you only do stuff to yourself.

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.

I'm learning at the moment that healing of the body is impossible. Healing of the mind is possible, but the body cannot be directly healed.

The mind creates the body.

The mind is constantly projecting the body and basically 'overriding' anything you do `to` the body.

So it's like this... there's a blender in the kitchen and the lid is off and its spinning and there's juices and ooze flying all over the kitchen making a mess. So what do you do. You fetch a mop to clean up the floor. But you don't switch the blender off. So now you are FIGHTING against the cause of the problem by trying to address the symptoms/effects directly. And doing this is basically a way to IGNORE the cause and NOT FIX IT.

You better turn the tap off before you mop up a flood.

You better put the lid on the beehive before you start to address the bee stings.

You better get out of the burning building before you start trying to put the fire out.

The mind needs to be corrected. There's something in the mind that is mistaken.

Now, this is where the ego cackles because it's done a very good job of making it seem like you do not have a mind. The mind seems invisible. Where is it? What does it look like? How does it function? What does it contain? How does it store stuff? How does it get changed? Do you even know any of this? I have no clue.

Yet the mind is where the problem is. In our mind there is something that needs to be corrected because it is mistaken. It believes wrongly. It sees wrongly. It has conditioning that's running against itself. That's where the problem is. And that's what needs to be healed.

So then we go looking for the switch, in the mind, that needs to be flipped, in order to fix the body problem indirectly. But its not the body problem that's an issue. It's the mind-content that projecting onto it. Belief in the body being real. Belief in sickness. Use of disease as a defense. Use of lack and rejection as a defense. What's going on in the mind that needs to change in order to be healed?

I was thinking about why we seem to have a body at all.

It occurred to me that all ego illusions are put in place as a form of level confusion. When the dream (effect) seems to have a causal ability, it does something "to you". This produces illusions of effects in you, and in your body. Believing that cause is outside of you instead of inside of you, makes the world basically tell you what you are. And you comply.

The body showing up, then, shows us not so much that it's being projected from inside the body itself, but is showing up as an image which is being "caused by" the world. By all of the ego's laws, the body is only there because the world put it there. It's only there because there is level confusion. It's only there because you believe in magic. And it's only there because you see yourself as an effect of your dream.

Effects within dreams show up as "forms". All thoughts produce form at some level and all ego thoughts produce illusions of forms. Belief in ego therefore means you believe the world is the cause of you, and this belief ALONE places an IMAGE of a body over your mind. It is a picture of what is seen from OUTSIDE of you looking inwards (reversed cause-effect), which is why everyone ELSE sees it.

But really the body is nothing but a state of a belief in external causes, a projection of ego sin. "The body is the belief in sin projected outward and made flesh." - ACIM

So we believe in sin, which sets up a reversal of cause and effect, which creates level confusion, which makes it seem like our dream is dreaming us, which feeds back towards us as a body which is perceived, from the outside in. Projection makes perception.

This is also why when level confusion is completely corrected, what is true is recognized as true, and what is false is false, THERE CANNOT BE A BODY. The body cannot SEPARATE YOU from what is or from yourself. You are no longer being "caused" by the world. There is no longer proof that you were made by matter. You now have mind over matter and your inverted perception from the outside-in will now turn inside out and be in its correct order. The body cannot show up at all when there is no belief in separation or illusions. This is why Jesus's body disappeared.

"The real world still is but a dream." - section 7 of Chapter 29, section 4 of ACIM.

The real world is what it means to still be IN the world, perceiving with Holy Spirit, recognizing the presence of the *reflection* of truth/God/love, still SEEING earth and the body, but seeing it completely accurately for what it IS.

In this state we are still perceiving, and yet our mind has entered a state of peace where we see peace "in" everything regardless of what happens here. And nasty bad things still happen here, but we see with such forgiveness that we know they are not true, nothing real can be hurt, and nothing is really happening.

It is in a way, a transcendence of a layer of illusions that was covering the Earth, causing you to "not see" the light of truth. Now you see both the Earth and also even more subtly a "container" of peacefulness and certainty. It is like standing on the outer edges of a scene, and looking in on it from a perspective of safety, even while the scene contains wars still raging, people being born into limiting bodies, suffering and dying.

In this "true perception", you are sort of seeing the background fabric of the physical universe. As though there is but at thin veil in between this universe and God, such that God’s light is starting to shine through from the other side.

In perception of the real world, there is an underlying awareness of unity and harmony and peace and gratitude behind everything. When the course speaks of "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", this is the "level" of perceiving the "real world". We see God seemingly "in" everything, surrounding everything, but it is ONLY a reflection of God.

The mind is still *perceiving* and you’ve reached the absolute upper limit of what perception is capable of showing. It’s like getting a glimpse of heaven from across a bridge. You are still not in heaven, but it seems so close you can almost touch it. You will at this point still be able to walk around the earth and see people and do stuff, but you will also be seeing an interconnecting unity underlying all things, which will indeed seem beautiful.

You looking AT this underlying unity which cradles everything else (all forms etc) "within it", is the "real world" that you will be looking at. You will be fixated on the UNITY, not on the forms.

What this unity will show you, as a *reflection* of truth, is the way in which all of the physical forms within this perception are ILLUSIONS. It will be a perfectly clear RECOGNITION, an ability to see correctly, that everything in this "real world" is only what it IS, not what you would try to make of it as an additional layer of interpretation.

You will RECOGNIZE that bodies are illusions, that mountains and oceans are illusions, that death is an illusion, that birth is an illusion, that nothing is really happening here, and that all of the FORMS - the physical matter of planet earth - are NOT REAL. The "Reality" you’re seeing in the real world itself, the underlying fabric of the physical content, the "container" of all this, will contrast so strongly and clearly in showing you that all of the "phenomena" that is showing up, IS A DREAM and isn’t really happening.

So that means, the underlying truth that you’re seeing BEHIND matter, is a reflection of reality, and it is showing you that the matter ITSELF, seen in its proper context, is NOT reality.

This means the physical planet earth is part of the phenomena that’s showing up as an ILLUSION. It means the physical planet earth is essentially ON TOP OF or INSIDE OF the real world, but it is NOT the part of the real world that is showing you reality. It is a projected image, a dream, a layer, and that layer is NOT what is going to be "translated into heaven".

The layer of physical forms, bodies, earth itself, this physical universe, is NOT what is going to be translated into heaven. And you will know this, because you will be RECOGNIZING clearly that the earth is just an illusion, the "real world" is a SYMBOL of or reflection of truth that TRANSCENDS the illusion of physical matter, and ONLY the reflection of truth is the actual "real world".

And yet, it is not real, because as Jesus confirms, "the real world is still but a dream." And dreams do not exist. And they are not happening. And they are nowhere. And they have no real content. And they do not last. They are ILLUSIONS. And when illusions are recognized, they *disappear* because to overlook an illusion (forgiveness) brings about the recognition that what you thought was there (an illusion) IS NOT THERE.

When God then takes the last step by scooping you up and taking you HOME - meaning that you were NOT experiencing being at home while in the "Real world", the "reflection of heaven" that you saw in the real world (correct perception) is TRANSLATED into heaven, NOT the physical forms and objects and ILLUSIONS which includes planet earth. IT will not get translated into heaven. It will have ALREADY BEEN RECOGNIZED AS NOT BEING REAL, not existing, and having nothing to do with truth. Earth will have been recognized as a DREAM that does not exist. It will NOT be coming along forthe ride.

All the universe along with planets and stars will DISAPPEAR in light. Or lets put that more simply. It will all DISAPPEAR, full. Stop. Not because it has "become light" but because it was NEVER THERE to begin with. This is the meaning of "there is NO WORLD". None. Zip. There IS no earth TO translate. But the "real world" (true perception) IS translated into heaven, ie the mind is taken from a state of "perceiving correctly and recognizing there is no world", to TOTAL AWARENESS OF HEAVEN.

Quotes:

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found. W-pII.8.1:1-4"

Comment: If the real world cannot be perceived except through forgiving eyes, then when you see the form of planet earth, you are NOT seeing the real world. Therefore, logically, the form of planet earth is NOT part of the real world. It is an illusion HIDING the real world.

Quote:

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is there. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing there remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself. W-pII.8.2:1-6"

Comment: Just because the real world lets you SEE in a happy way, it does not stop you seeing "battles". It simply lets you see that nothing is really being hurt, because nothing is really happening. Literally you won’t be able to see sickness AS sickness, or death AS death. You will see a kind of unity which spans all of these things and reframed them in a different light. It will show you the "movie reel" of the movie that is playing out, so that you know it isn’t true or real. Objects and bodie will not seem separate. There will be a sense of oneness. But you will STILL not be 100% one with God because you are still perceiving. Perception is a state of consciousness, not a state of awareness.

Quote:

"What need has such a mind for thoughts of death, attack and murder? What can it perceive surrounding it but safety, love and joy? What is there it would choose to be condemned, and what is there that it would judge against? The world it sees arises from a mind at peace within itself. No danger lurks in anything it sees, for it is kind, and only kindness does it look upon. W-pII.8.3:1-5"

Comment: Notice that it says that SURROUNDING murder and death you will see a sense of safety, love and joy. The death is still going to be seeming to play out, but it will be framed in such a way that you will not be upset by it. It will seem like nothing. Bodies will grow and die and you will keep smiling, knowing that it is NOT PROOF that the Son of God can be killed. Seeing this is seeing "the real world", but it is NOT seeing heaven directly.

Quote:

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless. W-pII.8.4:1-3"

Comment: At the real world, you will be effectively "fully awake INSIDE the dream". Seeing a reflection of love is a sign of the promise of what lies ahead, it IS only a reflection. Full-on God Oness/permanent eternity CANNOT be experienced inside of perception. You are simply getting ready to go to heaven, and the sights you see now are a very small step away, as small as they can be, from Heaven’s true state.

Quote:

"The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes, and leaving but the truth to be itself. That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God. And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and comes to take us home, reminding us of our Identity which our forgiveness has restored to us. W-pII.8.5:1-4"

Comment: Once you see the "real world", aka, "the world as it actually is without denial or attack", which is still not reality, where "real world" simply means "an undistorted perception of an illusion" - real in comparison to false perception - you will have NO FURTHER USE for it. You have learned everything thre is to learn. You have seen that this world is an illusion, that God did not create. You will recognize that forms are not real.

God now takes the final step to take you OUT of perception and into awareness. OUT of this universe and into HEAVEN. True Reality!

Time has disappeared, space has disappeared, all of the planets and stars have disappeared in light. The "fusing together" of all parts of the illusory universe, as "one content", gives way to such a presence of God, that it shines away absolutely all forms and images. All bodies. Planet earth. All disappears completely. Like being dissolved in water. No trace left.

The final step "takes perception with it as it goes, leaving but the truth to be itself". Ie, everything perceived disappears, including earth, only what is LEFT is the truth. Everything that was covering up the truth does not exist any more. Earth is not turned into heaven or kept in form or made into reality. It has been SWEPT AWAY. It was a BLOCK to awareness, a world made by those mad with guilt, a delusion, and it is now UNDONE.

What is left, after that, is simply, the same thing, that was there, BEFORE separation took place.

What is left, MUST be the same, as what was there BEFORE we dreamed of worlds like the earth.

What is left, can only be, the EXACT SAME heavenly state, that was present and created eternally, which has not been affected in any way, which contains no planet earth, which has no illusions in it, and no forms.

It does not scoop up the earth and merge it into itself. THERE IS NO WORLD. There was no world in heaven before you separated, and there will be no world in heaven when the separation is collapsed. Heaven is a CONSTANT STATE. It will not be blended with earth.

Where there seemed to be "two" states, as in "the two become one", LOVE HAS NO OPPOSITE, and therefore the two become one BY GETTING RID OF THE SECOND STATE which NEVER EXISTED. In other words, separation is undone, and the CONTENT of separation was a one-sided viewpoint which made the earth. Separation is not two sided, heaven is not on one side of it and earth on another. The side of earth is the ONLY side which believes there are two sides! Love has no opposite, so heaven has no opposite, so there IS NO WORLD *TO* translate into heaven.

The entire physical universe is going to disappear in light. Light is going to SHINE IT AWAY. There will not BE a physical universe. And this is simply because, THERE IS NO PHYSICAL UNIVERSE OR PLANET EARTH RIGHT NOW! It’s all an illusion!!!!!! There is nothing TO merge with heaven, because the world (earth) is not real.

"There is no life outside of heaven." (EARTH IS NOT LIFE)

"Heaven is an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within" (NO EARTH, NO WORLD)

"The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. (NOT IN THE EARTH) Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! (EARTH IS NOTHING) The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you."

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.

Ok so, various people have expressed doubt that there are "levels" in ACIM or that this is in any way important or useful. So I thought I'd ramble on a bit about this from my point of view. I can see this being somewhat controversial.

The first thing is this.

Jesus wrote ACIM and he is not in a body, and throughout the Course we're taught we are not a body. That's even today's workbook lesson - I am not a body I am free. That doesn't mean, oh, you're still IN a body but it's not you. Also the course says at no time does the body exist. Ok. So.... WHERE do you exist? Where is there no physical matter? Not this universe.

Clearly this means there is some other seeming 'place', if you will, in which mind - spirit - is able to exist, which does not require a physical form and has nothing to do with the physical world, which, by the way, is not real.

So here we at the very least have 2 `levels`. The level of the physical world of form, and some other spiritual level. Sort of like a 'dimension' if you will. It's non-physical. It's where you end up when your body dies. And its the stopping off point between lifetimes.

Now, each 'level' has to be like a 'place' of sorts.. which the Course refers to as a 'universe'. And if you read the text carefully, when it mentions universe it uses that exact same word even though it's sometimes referring to the universe of form, and sometimes referring to the universe that God created. ie reference to at least some other non-physical level or experiential existence.

So if you don't believe there are levels, and you read the course talking about 'universe' in this way, and you don't discern exactly what that relates to given the context, then you're going to assume it's always talking about the physical universe. And then when it makes statements about 'universe' it's going to throw you into a whole bunch of confusing misunderstandings and ego interpretations. You'll attribute all kinds of 'truth' to the ego universe because you think the course is telling you this is the case.

The course is often quite subtle about this, and it also shifts around quite a lot between which 'level' of experience it's referring to, without necessarily giving you a nice obvious disclaimer that it's doing so.

Now, this other universe, the spiritual universe, also has to be broken down into sub-levels because there are parts of the course which speak of certain truths which cannot possibly apply to a separate place like that. For example whenever the Course speaks of 'heaven', and of 'souls', and of 'Gods Creation', and of 'knowing', and 'oneness' and all these interesting things, they often refer to the very highest 'level' of the metaphysics - heaven if you will.

But then at other times the course speaks of things like the sonship, alluding to you having multiple brothers, a brotherhood, not in terms of all brothers being ONE SON, but in terms of a multitude of sons. Also the urtext speaks of multiple souls. Now, in terms of the metaphysics, it does not make logical consistent sence to group together references to these 'sub-level' ways of looking at things with the highest-level way of looking at things. If you do that, then when the course refers to something like heaven or knowing or whatever, or the son of God, you will lump it all together under a general umbrella of 'heavenly spiritual stuff' and make the only distinction that this apparently is 'not the ego' level. This will result in all manner of confusions, misunderstandings of meaning, wrong implications, false conclusions and just a big mess. The metaphysics will break, the course will become inconsistent and you won't be able to understand it.

So now at the very least, there is a level of heaven, a level where the sonship exists as multiple sons, a level of christ where there is only one son, and a level of the physical universe where the ego plays out in duality. This is all quite clearly in the course text throughout and referred to in multiple ways and in multiple contexts. And if you read it and if you understand what it means, then when you read about christ you know that its referring to the unified one son and when its referring to sonship or brotherhood you know its referring to the level of multiple sons.

So there is a level of the metaphysics, which has its own 'universe' and its own 'state of mind', like a 'place' of experience if you will, for each of these aspects of the course. This is the structure of the dream that the ego made. Different levels of 'splits' in the one mind. And these are on a colossal scale. Astronomical. The ego dream comprises separation from God, resulting in a separate son 'level', and then a split into a sonship/brotherhood which is a whole other universe/level, and then there's the level just above the physical (level 2) where the holy spirit resides, and then the physical level. All of these levels are explicitly referred to in the course and if you really can grasp the logical and subtle implications of every thing Jesus says in each section, you can tell that these levels 'exist' in the metaphysical structure.

So now, if you don't believe in these levels, then as mentioned, you will draw all kinds of false conclusions. It results in all kinds of behaviors where you try to attain states of mind/being/experience which are extremely far beyond the 'level' of the dream that you find yourself on. You generally can only transition to the next highest level, one level at a time, you can't easily jump to the top - to heaven. Holy Spirit is on level '2', in a different 'dimension' if you will, which is where we all are being asked to get to as our main next step. When we try to move beyond that to things like awareness of the sonship, total equality, oneness, christ-mind, etc... we basically CANNOT do it and it leads us into all kinds of ego deceptions - a spiritualized ego.

The spiritualized ego is what happens when the ego, or shall we say the mindset, of a given 'level 'of the ego's total dream, attempts to transfer itself to a higher-order level of existence. It tries to KEEP its mindset (e.g. level 1 ego duality) but at the same time take itself to the next level where there is really a totally different mind (Holy Spirit's mind). But this is impossible, of course, but this doesn't stop it trying. And this creates a great amount of specialness and fake spirituality and fake progress and ego images and behavioral fuckups which call for sacrifice and illusions and all kinds of madness. It's not possible. We have to let the 'mindset' of level 1 - the ego - we have to let it GO, detach from it, so that who WE are can travel up to level 2 and proceed from there.

So anyway... if there's only one level, or even only 2 levels, you will develop a spiritual ego from it because it will lead you to so many false conclusions and so many attempts to greatly spiritualize lower-order levels of existence that cannot contain those truths. The lower mind cannot grasp and experience the higher states.

If you read the Course with these levels in mind, it is much more clear where and when Jesus is referring to certain specific levels of the dream - different dimensions, different universes, different mindsets and different aspects of the metaphysics. Also if you look at your own 'course attitude' based on these levels, you will see that you've been attempting to become an achiever of very high-level metaphysics but still while being a level-1 identity/mind. This produces bliss-ninny spiritualization of the ego, and it is rife in the course community. And in myself as well. I'm just starting to realize how far this has gone.

So anyway. The levels are just a way to map actual levels of experiential existence in the hierarchy of the total dream, which comprises several 'dimensions' of which the physical universe is only one, and therefore it's really just a clear and truthful acknowledgement of this fact, allowing you to navigate realistically and to understand what the heck the course really means when it says something. Very high-level truths are of NO USE TO YOU when you are on level 1. You cannot be christ when you are a level-1 ego. You have to become level 2, then 3, then 4, then 5. It is also a relief to let go of the pressure of trying to attain such impossibly high spiritual states which are out of reach of the level-1 mind. You can attain them but your ego cannot, and until you let go of 'level 1' thinking you cannot get to level 2 yet alone up to heaven.

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.

Miracle principle 15: "Each day should be devoted to miracles."

Miracles are supposed to happening all the time. That's because God is giving love all the time.

That miracles are not happening, means we're doing something wrong. We're making mistakes, we're blocking God's love, and we're actually rejecting miracles constantly.

When we are in victimhood, we are are rejecting miracles. When we are believing in sin/guilt/fear, we are rejecting miracles.

All activities of the ego are actually attempts to STOP GOD, and therefore to stop miracles. They are attempts to block the flow of love and life.

So just because you're in the ego, in the ego world, stuck in a body, suffering, being a victim etc, you think maybe that this is not having any "effect", or you're just coasting along passively, etc... but maybe you don't realize..... every way that you are aligning with the ego is STOPPING GOD.

Even if you're just wallowing in a state of weakness, or fear, or guilt, or you'r all caught up projecting shit onto other people, or you think someone's sickness is real, or you're lounging semi-unconsciously watching a tv show, or whatever.... if it's BLOCKING GOD in some way, you're causing miracles to stop flowing.

So if you look at just how much ego is present in the world, in people's lives, those are all BLOCKS to awareness, and therefore are BLOCKS TO GOD. Blocks to love. Blocks to miracles.

The world is greatly lacking an expression of love. It's constipated and resistant to miracles. Death is the ultimate claim that God isn't giving life anymore, and it happens a lot.

When miracles aren't happening CONSTANTLY, something has gone wrong. If miracles are HARDLY EVER happening, something really has gone wrong. And this is very widespread.

But partly it is because you do not REALIZE, or are not willing to admit, that even something as disempowering as fear or dying is actually an attempt to STOP GOD.

The things in which we seem to be the most a victim, where we seem to have the least power, the least choice, where stuff happens to us against our will significantly, and where we don't seem to be wanting it at all... THOSE are the ways that we most severely are blocking God. Fear blocks God even more than guilt, and even more than sin. And death, the ultimate passive aggression, is the ultimate attempt to end the miracle while looking like you're not doing anything at all.

Death is an attempt to bring an end to Life - to stop God from being Life, and regardless of how victimy and unwanted and terrible it seems to be "happening to us", it IS actually a choice to PREVENT the expression and receipt of God's UNLIMITED LOVE.

Let the love flow. Shine!

Jesus asks us to be willing to demonstrate that what our brother attempted to do to us has had NO EFFECTS.

This means that if someone is against you or argues or attacks you, if you are experiencing effects, two things are happening:

1) The situation is neutral but you are choosing to CREATE effects yourself but are blaming the cause of those effects on the other person.

2) You are maintaining those effects in order to prove that the other person is wrong.

So if I feel hurt and upset about something someone said or did, I'm trying to prove that they have done something real to me... that its had real consequences... and therefore that person is a sinner. I'm not just feeling hurt because they hurt me, I'm feeling hurt because I have a secret agenda of PROVING that that person is wrong by SHOWING that it has done something to me. I'm actually creating symptoms within my own mind in order to have evidence that 'they did it' and therefore they can be skapegoated.

So I find myself wondering... what if I chose to completely IGNORE what the person did and to choose to remain in innocence and to see them as innocent, and completely DENY the situation any 'power' over me to cause me or impel me to create effects within myself? What if I just remain calm and neutral and unaffected? What if I can deliberately CHOOSE invulnerability? After all, I can't put effects of vulnerability into my own self (for the purpose of skapegoating and blame) without it undermining my invulnerability, but if I choose NOT to put effects into myself, surely this ESTABLISHES my invulnerability? :-D AND it establishes the invulnerability of the other person!

It's definitely something to practice and something I am looking to trying to do more often, because I definitely know that my normal mode of function is 'have a reaction'. We need to break that pattern and know that we can choose not to participate in the ego's assertions that something has gone wrong. This is a choice to heal.

Remember (note to self).... "if I defend myself, I am attacked".

In other words, if I put effects into myself and blame the cause of it on someone else, I am trying to defend myself by attacking myself and the other person. What would it be like if we could walk around being completely invulnerable to everything by not choosing to create effects from anything?

Some people say the course is about changing your mind, as though changing the body is a separate thing or not what you are supposed to do.

This is the belief that mind and body are separate.

So if you then have to choose one version of MIRACLES vs another, you'll either decide miracles are supernatural and physically transformative, or that they are only changes in mind.

The important thing is, this idea that mind and body are separate, is a mistake.

Body is not separate from mind. Body is an illusion that the mind is dreaming, WITHIN ITSELF, and is made of mind-stuff. It is idea and thought. That's all. Just an image in the imagination.

So this is where the two camps JOIN, because now if the body is an aspect of what the mind is thinking, perceiving, doing, then as the mind changes that means the body MUST change.

The two camps of "separate mind" and "separate body" are now joined by this one piece of information - that the body and mind are NOT two things. There is ONLY mind, and it encompasses the body and the world and the universe.

That now means that not only is it true that the Course is about changing your mind/perception, it ALSO means that the Course is about changing the world through supernatural means. ie, mind over matter, or the power of the mind, to demonstrate and reflect the mind's state.

So we are not living in a physical world as such, we're living inside a giant MIND. And all the objects you see are IMAGES in the mind - just ideas, imagination. And nothing else. There is no such thing as physical matter or a "separate body".

And so as the mind changes, so too do the images in the mind change, thus the world changes. This is why the supernatural aspect of miracles is actually perfectly in harmony with the Course's ideas of changes in perception.

As you look at someone's body you are looking at content within their MIND.

"The world IS perception"

This also leads us to realize that when the course talks about "the world you see" in relation to perception, we most likely have grossly misunderstood its meaning, given that we interpreted it to mean the perceptual content of our inner mind, rather than recognizing that it was describing the world AS part of our perception. This has led to all manner of misunderstandings about what the course means by correction of perception.

Innocence is goodness. If guilt is equated with evil, then innocence is equated with good. In order to forgive someone or something requires looking for the good in them - looking for their innocence. Seeing their harmlessness, their gentleness, their holiness and their perfection.

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

"The good" is also combined with love, and light, and power, and strength. It is the realm of miracles. In effect, evil is a breakdown, malfunction, failure, weakness and a loss. So its opposite, good, is all that can actually work, solves all problems, repairs all sickness and resurrects.

"The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all."

The Holy Spirit also represents the state of forgiveness and the miracle, as the power of God which performs miracles, as the healer as the resurrector. Therefore seeing the good in your brother for example also equates with seeing the Holy Spirit in him.

"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further."

Jesus encourages us to find the good in things. To "look on the bright side". To make of the world a forgiven world where all is seen as innocent and harmless and guiltless and sinless.

"Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated the GOOD efforts, and OVERLOOKED mistakes?" Indeed forgiveness puts you in touch with your true nature, brings you closer to God, aligns you with your soul, and reawakens the power of God in you. It is your natural divine function to create the good and to do only good.

Ultimately "the good" is God, and anything of God is good. The world, as an illusion, is not good, and can at best only reflect God's goodness. Moving away from evil takes you toward the good of God. And in God, everyone and everything is good.

"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."

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

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

"You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God."

"And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him MORE than just a body, for the "good" is NEVER what the body seems to be."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good.""

"And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him." "ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions except in the ego's judgment."

"Man will ultimately look upon his own creations, and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself once looked upon what he had created, and knew that it WAS good."

"For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me."

"God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was."

"Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship."

"And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use."

"We look on everyone as brothers, and perceive all things as kindly and as good."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist."

"What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it?"

"But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites, and CANNOT meaningfully join in ANY way."

"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good." "Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected."

"There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same."

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

"It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good."

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."

"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer.""

"He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain."

"The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it. Coming from God, He uses EVERYTHING for good, but does not BELIEVE in what is not true."

"Out of Love he was created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father."

"You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do."

"It is your function to ***recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth***. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple." "***When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him ONLY by perceiving the SANITY in him***. If you perceive his errors and ACCEPT them, you are accepting YOURS."

This means NOT BELIEVING the lies that your brother believes about himself. And to do that, you have to believe something TRUE of your brother, which frames his lies as false.

If your brother is insane, the only way to heal him ISN'T to look at his insanity and say, "oh, you seem to be really insane." The truth cannot be that you believe HE IS insane. This merely compounds and reinforces his insanity. This is false empathy. But you also at the same time can't PRETEND that his ego isn't insane. It is totally nuts. His ego is nuts, HIS SOUL IS NOT.

Even if he is seeming to be insane, or acting insane, or expressing insane things, your job ISN'T to meet "the insanity" at its own level within its own context of unreality. It's not to be deceive BY it, OR to by into it, OR to believe it. If you do, if you fall for it, if you are deceived and tempted and fall into "oh my God you are so insane right now", you are not healing anything.

"This isn't true of you" is a much better angle.

"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."***

If someone's insanity seems true or real to you, then you have made yourself insane and have joined them in insanity. And now you cannot heal them because you are also insane. You cannot enter into sympathy or false empathy or feeling sorry for them. This just means you have not recognized that their expression is a lie. No one is every REALLY insane or sick or dead.

I can't heal anyone or anything by starting out with "you're sick". Even if the person IS sick at the EGO level, their higher mind IS NOT. And indeed they are sick if they believe something that isn't true. Even when they are having an illusion of sickness, which seems like reality, you can't let it become your reality. You can't take it as fact or react to it with fear or think of it as irreversibly true or unhealable. ALL SICKNESS IS FALSE. ALL SICKNESS IS A LIE.

Basically you can't lift anyone up if you meet them solely at their level of "reality". If you agree with their complaints and nod your head along with their self condemnations, then you aren't doing them any favors whatsoever. You have to have a higher vision. You have to be forgiving, which means "overlooking" the things they are trying to put in the way of you seeing their innocence.

In fact it really boils down to you bypassing their entire insanity and locking onto and SEEING the actual SANITY behind it. This may sound paradoxical or impossible. If someone is insane, how can they be sane at the same time? The ego is only PART of the person and the ego IS insane, but the REST of the person is not. If you regard a person's ego as THE WHOLE of them, you are blinded to the fact their soul is still perfect.

The light is behind the illusion of darkness. The christ in them is alway christ. "Christ has never slept" "The soul never leaves the sight of God." Their true self, which their mind is working overtime to try to deny is who and what they are. Sickness is a form of hiding, driven by denial and unwillingness to accept the truth (atonement).

"You're not sick". "You're not insane". "There is nothing wrong with you." This has to be your attitude if you are REPRESENTING a thought system and a reality and a truth that is of God. Because in light of what is true in God, people CANOT BE insane. Nothing can go wrong in God. And this is the trick of it. When everything appears to have gone wrong, IT CANNOT BE. It must be false, and you must assert the truth. Asserting truth is asserting life. The assertion of life produces miracles of resurrection!

"I am determined to see things differently."

"What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death. This cannot be what God created for His beloved Son. The very fact that I see such things is proof that I do not understand God. Therefore I also do not understand His Son. What I see tells me that I do not know who I am. I am determined to see the witnesses to the truth in me, rather than those which show me an illusion of myself."

Recognize then that anyone who appears to be in any condition or state other than immortal and perfect, "as God created me", is in fact LYING to you and to themselves. They are trying to express what is NOT true as though it is. Your job is to not be deceived by it. To do that you need to get your own mind straight as to what IS true and what is not. Then you can hold the truth (or light) FOR them. Seeing the light of truth IN them is the beginning of the miracle working process.

"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."

This means you have to get your own mind to perceive correctly, ie driven by love and sanity, so that you properly frame everything. In this light, your brother's inner truth is recognized as true, and everything else he is lying about is false.

"When you CORRECT a brother (try to heal him of really being insane), you are telling him that he is WRONG. He may be making no sense at the time (he is insane), and it is certain that if he is speaking from the ego, he WILL be making no sense, but your task is still to tell him HE IS RIGHT (at the soul/light/truth level). You do not tell him this verbally if he is SPEAKING foolishly, because he needs correction AT ANOTHER LEVEL, since his error IS at another level. HE is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is ALWAYS wrong, no matter WHAT it says or does."

So when someone's "ego is wrong", ie they have an ego, and it is claiming something false, which may be showing up as physical symptoms even, your miracle-working approach is to ignore it and look past it to the truth of him. The truth of him can't be seen by looking AT THE EGO FOR IT. You have to realize the person is not JUST an ego, they are also a soul who HAS an ego temporarily. And beyon their ego the truth in them is STILL as God created it. See the light in them. Start by looking at their soul, and doing this alone weakens your entire belief that anything else can be true of them.

In essence, you heal (forgive) by seeing your brother AS SANE, even when he isn't. ie to see the part of him that IS sane, beyond HIS BLOCKS to the AWARENESS of it. To see him AS HEALED, even when he isn't. To see him AS WHOLE, even when he isn't. And this lifts him up and aligns him WITH that truth, resulting in a miracle.

Your mind has the ability to be either constructive (creative) or destructive. Using the mind for destructive purposes is what the entire ego thought system is about. The whole world was made in an attempt to destroy God and Heaven.

The mind, in its healing and accepting of atonement, has to be restored to being PURELY CONSTRUCTIVE. That means that any destructive tendencies or attitudes have to be healed and corrected.

A destructive tendency is anything that emphasizes the SEPARATION that has seemed to come in between you and others, or you and God, in any kind of relationship. An attempt to DESTROY relationship has produced a WORLD, the inner contents of a seeming "gap", like the pits of hell. And it is into this world that you seem to go when your mind becomes destructive.

If you desire to create, you desire to extend God's love and life and power. This extending goes out without limit and is shared with everyone fully. It is a full embracing of all your brothers in love and light. It is a complete joining and union with them.

This extension of creation and the shining of light are miraculous. It represents health and union and harmony and peace and perfection. To extend God is to be in support of The Kingdom and thus to fully support your brothers with love and His life-giving force.

This isn't merely a state of equality, it's a state of GIVING in which you are constantly maintaining the perfection, innocence and immortality of your brother, as your brother's keeper. It is a way of INCREASING what He has, therefore denying lack or weakness. Being constructive is to GIVE power, to GIVE life, to GIVE love, and to thus MAINTAIN eternal life through constant supply.

"Miracles supply a lack. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."

Becoming destructive, on the other hand, is an effort to do the opposite. It is a desire NOT to share, not to extend, not to create, not to love. It is a rejection of eternal life and thus entry into what seems like a world of mortality and death - a dream of death. Attempting TO DESTROY, is to insert some kind of separate illusion in between you and others, to focus on it, to give it reality and truth, and to believe in its existence.

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

This focusing on destruction is what makes the world of bodies and forms and objects. A world of sin. It is how the planet is held together. It's what makes sickness and death seem possible and real. It materializes as seeming vulnerability and attack and all forms of illness. It falls short of joining with your brother in love, and instead dwells upon what we call "his body", emphasizing its reality and its faults, to try to believe that your brother is NOT an immortal being but a mortal object of attackable flesh and bones.

While our focus is deceived by, tempted by, attacked by, joining with, focusing on, making real, giving truth to, agreeing with, the world of bodies, which comes IN BETWEEN you and your brother's real selves, we are being destructive. This destruction could be mixed in with some FORM of support or help, such as feelings of sympathy and sorrow, compassion, caring, concern, worry, trying to fix their bodies directly, grief when the bodies are harmed or lost etc. All of which are really DESTRUCTIVE attitudes aimed at emphasizing the REALITY of suffering rather than being truly helpful.

To be truly helpful, we have to look at the ways we buy into the dream, the illusion of spacetime, the world, and the bodies of ourselves and others, believing they are total reality, and instead learn to LOOK PAST them to the light of truth. The real truth about others is that THEY ARE PERMANENTLY IMMORTAL, and they cannot EVER have a fault or a weakness or a sickness or any kind of suffering. That is what must be given reality, truth and strength.

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

And to overlook means to NOT look at, or to not see, what is being overlooked. In effect to be blind to it, through the proper use of denial. To reject that it is EVEN THERE, putting our WHOLE focus on the extension of love and the recognition of the total truth about another.

"The world you see (the world of bodies) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision (the ability to SEE your brother as he really is)."

Vision does not focus on the body or the world or the things seeming to happen on the canvas of spacetime, in efforts to be support and truly helpful. To HEAL requires looking PAST these things to the ACTUAL truth, and not being hung up on what the gap in between seems to claim. To look out FROM love, TOWARD love, completely skipping over everything IN the gap of the world, so that THERE IS NO GAP. There is no gap, because there is no world.

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies and mistake them for the Son of God. It looks beyond bodies. That is its holiness. That is how it heals."

We have to examine, where is it that I am buying the bullshit lies of this world, the bodies of others, the appearance of things. And why am I thus AGREEING that these things are true and real, instead of rejecting their falsehood? We have to learn to look PAST these things to the reality of the immortality of our brothers IF we are to OFFER THEM immortality. And only by looking WITH love can you look AT love, which is BEYOND the body.

"Never was love in the world of dreams."

Love erases the dream. It heals the dream away. It shines it away. It closes wounds. It undoes tears. It repairs malfunctions and interference and terror and pain. Because unity has no separations, sins or guilts within it, and is perfectly smooth and harmonious and loving and strong.

To STRENGTHEN your brother is to constructively support him. To GIVE LIFE to your brother is to constructively support him. To offer him HIMSELF, equal with the love in you, is to remind him of who he really is. To EMPOWER him is to put him in touch with the innate power that GOD GAVE him already. And to deny HIS denial of the truth about him, weakens HIS belief in his own separateness, and thus HEALS the rift between you.

"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."

To be truly helpful is to resurrect. It is to literally SUPPORT the true nature of your brother. To uphold it. To sustain it. To reinforce it. To brighten it. To enliven it. And to ensure it.

"Do not allow your brother to be sick."

Your brother CANNOT BE sick because he is immortal. Believe only this and he wil be healed completely. Buy into his sickness and you merely become sick along with him, and now you both are weak because you suffer together, and there is no hope because you are not giving any. You must not buy into the sob story ego bullshit of your brother or loved one. It is NOT TRUE of them. It's entirely false. And the only story you should be believing is the story of his IMMORTAL CREATION and PERMANENCE, AUTHORED by God.

We are learning to be truly supportive and truly helpful. Putting aside our DESTRUCTIVE uses of mind, our ego, and embracing ONLY constructive, creative powers, which are miraculous.

"Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies which lead separate lives and go their separate ways."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real."

On the one hand, it seems that people are not the same. That is, if you look at their bodies, their seemingly different personalities, they're all quite different. That's what we think makes everyone unique. But there is really no equality on this level. This is the level of differences, of disagreement, of conflict. Just the mere fact that two bodies are not alike is war.

We then look to higher morals and try to treat everyone the same, with some kind of unconditional love or equality of rights. That someone who is a certain race or sexual persuasion or gender etc might be treated in the same way as any other person. But the fact is that in order to lift up out of the realm of differences into the realm of equality, you HAVE to transcend the body.

We can't be saying that, on the one hand, we are bodies that are for sure all different, while on the other hand trying to find some kind of moral equality, or equal rights, democracy, or whatever. These higher ideals MUST transcend the very fact of the body's variation. It must in fact overlook and defy the very things that make the bodies stand out as unlike each other.

This is why for example if we are to be kind to people who have bodies that seem overweight, then we have to really be looking past the overweightness. And we can't honestly do that if we're looking at the body still, trying to make the body special or sacred or holy or more important or equally important or anything else is really a kind of denial.

You cannot find equality at the physical level. Physical things are NOT equal and never will be. So when we start talking about treating a person of a certain "type" in a fair and equal way to other bodies of other types, we're really trying to have our cake and eat it.

To keep the bodies and identify people as separate objects, while simultaneously deciding that they all deserve the same rights. But this is impossible. The separate and the same cannot be reconciled, nor can the different and the equal. But isn't variety and difference and uniqueness a wonderful celebration of individuality? No it's not.

So then we set about this confused mixture of trying to make all the special separate bodies special in their own ways, exalting them, having marches to support them, rallying to get certain kinds of bodies the same rights as other kinds, but all still entirely focused on bodies and identifying people with physically different objects. And there is simply a total inherent tug of war in that, you cannot be maintaining belief in separate things while claiming to be a proponent of equalism.

The ONLY way that makes any sense and which can produce TRUE unconditionality, is to entirely transcend ALL conditions, all differences, all forms, all shapes and sizes and colors, and every definition of a person as a physical object. You can't keep being a man or a woman and claim to be interested in equal rights. The ONLY way there is equality between the two genders is for them to NOT be two genders. For gender to not matter at all, you can't KEEP gender on the table. You have to look past it.

This means the only way to find any sense of unconditoinality towards anyone, you MUST not regard them as a physical body in any way, to any degree. You cannot make their body extra special, or put the bodies alongside each other and say they are all the same - which is a lie, and you cannot make out that certain bodies are deserving of what other bodies have. That's total insanity.

Only if we are NOT bodies is there equality. Only if we are all identical in every way, created by the same one creator, in the same design, with the same will, sharing the same mind, sharing the same everything together, united singularly under one purpose and one function, can there be equality. This is why there is only true equality in heaven, where the differences of separation and form and conflict and war do not exist.

You CAN "embody" that reality here, to an extent, which is what forgiveness is about. It's about living like you are in heaven while you're on earth, seeing with loving eyes instead of the physical eyes, and using the mind as primal cause instead of the body. And to do that you cannot put any emphasis on the body whatsoever.

You cannot be confused that people are their bodies because this fundamentally denies their soul. You cannot say that somoene is a certain shape or form because now you're separating them out which is in fact an attack. To say that anyone is a body is an attempt to bring them down, to isolate, to condemn, and to accuse of sin. You can't be doing that if you are interested in equality and unconditionality.

Bodies are utterly incompatible with love. They are utterly incompatible with treating everyone the same. The only way to treat everyone the same is to NOT treat them like they are a body, or have a body, or that their body means anything whatsoever. The body is NOTHING. It has no real value or meaning and isn't even real.

To regard a person as a body is to believe a fantasy about them and to NOT see them. Bodies are disguises, a form of camouflage, which people who want to hide from God wear to pretend they are physical objects. You won't find any true sense of trust or meaning or purpose or function or value or reality by regarding people as human bodies, or by trying to reconcile their utter incompatibilities by pretending they're all the same.

Bodies will never be the same, every single one of them is unlike the rest. And if you believe people are their bodies, you are literally denying them equality. Gay bodies, straight bodies, male bodies, female bodies, trans bodies, autistic bodies, tall bodies, skinny bodies, large bodies, short bodies, they are NOT the same, and they are NOT TRUE OF ANYONE.

"While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious."

"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"Communication MUST have been restored to those that join, for this they COULD not do through bodies."

"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."

While you are believing that your ego is your real self, and as you attempt to do something about this to wake up spiritually, you're going to be pulling that ego self along for the ride.

It does not want to come along for the ride and can't. Its way of perceiving, which you have made your own, must see the approach towards truth and God as dangerous. Your attempt to expose your "self" to the truth will be seen as an attack, and is highly offensive.

This is why every time you (ie your ego-aligned self) tries to allow some light in or tries to become more spiritual, you inevitably find this strong voice emerges in you which retaliates. You have this big ego rebound where you feel all hurt and afraid and abused, as though someone just told you that you don't exist and aren't worth anything.

Your alignment with the ego while simultaneously trying to wake up from it, makes you try to wake up WITH it, and thus to wake IT up. But it cannot awaken. It is purely a device for separation and is illusory. It doesn't have a life of its own without your support.

When you try to pull it towards the truth or transform it, which produces the "spiritualized ego", you might well create an illusion or persona of looking and acting "like" someone who would be spiritual. But deep down you will have this part of you that deeply mistrusts and is threatened by what you are trying to do. Like a hurt child, that part of you will attack the part of you that's trying to pull it into the light.

Over time I've seen how personally I attempted to become more spiritual, for example by writing things which seemed as spiritual as possible. And it produced a lot of backlash for the "rest" of me that was still identified with the ego and didn't want to wake up.

When I was writing my first book, I really believed that I was opening up to light and truth and it was powerful and healing, BUT at the same time it was very painful. I felt like I was flogging myself to death, or sacrificing, or attempting to push myself to the brink of tolerance. I had a lot of ego rebounds.

Partly I felt that I was approaching truth more but there was a big chunk of me that was still holding on tightly to the false idea that I was the ego, and was trying to change "it" into something more spiritual. It could not change and did not want to and saw my attempts as deeply hurtful. And so because I was aligned with that, I experienced deep hurt along with it. I kept trying to be more spiritual in my persona.

While you're "seeking" for spiritual truth this is pretty much a given that this is going to be your experience. So long as you believe you are the ego self, that part of you is not going to like or want or believe in or see sense in the truth. It is going to be threatened by it, offended by it, hurt by it, it's going to take it to mean things it doesn't really mean, and because the truth proves that the ego does not exist, your alignment with ego is going to imply you do not exist. And that's just going to scare the shit out of you.

Gradually over time, making all of these mistakes, yearning to be closer to God, willing to push my "self" (idea of self) towards the truth, and going through endless rebounds, I think I've gradually lessened the belief I have in the ego.

Letting the ego GO is really the only way to become "more spiritual". It's not through changing it at all. It's not through making it more spiritual. The only way to be free is to be free of IT, which means your sense of who you are, your identity, your definition of self, MUST shift from ego to your Higher Self, or Holy Spirit (right mind etc).

The ego can't shift there with you. If you try to take your ego self there and pretend that you're doing it, you will just enact the ego's bungie cord. Like an elastic band it will just pull "you" right back to its territory, and the more you are trying to pull it away from its territory the stronger the rebound is going to be.

This is exactly what produces reincarnation - the attempt to get out of the world without really letting it go, elasticly brings you right back into it because you still belive you are made of it. Exposing ego to too much light will burn it, and with you believing it is yourself YOU will experience that suffering, and you will flee from the light right back into the body.

Gradually, we have to let the ego identity go and awaken FROM it to realize that it is not who or what we are. Everything it perceives is not our real perception. Everything it believes about itself cannot be what we believe about ourselves. Everything it trusts in cannot be what we trust. We have placed our faith in it and are attached to it. We have to let go and "surrender" its position to make room for God.

Waking up is painful. If we could see the areas where we believe in the ego and could simply gently relax and let go of them without adding threat to them or making them confused that we're trying to imply things which are not true or real to it, then perhaps we can awaken more gently. But that kind of ability probably only comes from a more awakened self that is able to discern lovingly. In the midst of the ego we rarely have such clarity and compassion and tend to step on our own toes all the time.

Often when I become more aware of truth and want to really "get it quickly", which can also be spurred by the ego because it knows that if you "do a lot of course" you will have such a reaction to it that maybe you'll stop doing it, using it to attack you, I'll just do too much too quickly. I will have deep emotional releases and become overwhelmed. It will also become frightening.

When I started to see that sin was not real and that it could only be my belief that I sinned that is keeping me from God, I went looking for the sin in me to try to undo it all, and that was simply too much at once. I spazzed-out for a few days and it was not at all pleasant. I had to stop and take it slower. Baby steps.

There are also times where I write about the Course a lot and maybe go into overdrive and am writing several times a day, and it all seems so wonderful and truthful and inspiring but then comes the parts of me that are still holding onto lies and they fly up into my awareness like a slap in the face. How DARE you claim that that's true! How COULD you believe that! Stop it!

By all means take a big leap if you are genuinely ready and can do so without the huge ego backlash, but otherwise, take your time and be gentle on yourself. Take a break.

One time, I was exploring my relationship to the holy spirit and it occurred to me that perhaps I was misunderstanding by presuming he was "separate from me", since I always heard him as a separate voice. And this idea came to me that maybe he was not separate and that this separation between us wasn't there. This seemed harmless enough but this opened me up to the idea that I was now "exposed" to the holy spirit without any defenses or blocks or separations or walls, and my ego did not like that one bit.

The ego in me, which was playing with this idea but not really dropping the deeper walls, interpreted this to mean that the holy spirit had "access" to me (to my ego-identified self) and that this meant he could do anything to me and I would have no defense or way to stop it. I wasn't ready to accept this level of openness without the trust that's needed. I felt that if there was nothing to stop him, the fact he proves there is no ego would dissolve me and was therefore *perceived as* an attack or threat. Of course the holy spirit wasn't doing anything of the sort but that's how I interpreted it.

Instantly, within a split second, and without thinking of it at all, my mind attempted to push him away, or rather, to recoil. To distance myself from him by trying to increase the "gap" between us, trying to hide deeper in the body, and to try to go into denial/resistance/blockage to shut him out. The only defense really was the attempt to block my AWARENESS of him. This happened really quickly and I could really feel this recoil in fear. It's not something I "figured out" it's just something I did automatically. I saw the need for a defense to keep me (my ego self) "safe" from this threat of unity. I actually felt scared of what the holy spirit was going to do to me.

Within an hour, my head became congested, my ears started ringing, they became quite blocked, I was starting to get sinus drainage etc. This came on really quickly. Of course, I did not recognize that I had induced this myself, or chosen it. I was doing what is described here in "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

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."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

So by the time the hour was up, my BODY was sick. I was not aware I'd caused it or the cause-effect relationship of the event with holy spirit versus what the body was doing. I just thought I was getting sick out of the blue. I started looking ELSEWHERE for causes, wondering if it was something I ate, something I contracted, some emotions coming up, whatever. I then proceeded to suffer with blocked ears, trouble hearing, ringing in the ears, headaches, sinus congestion, for the next couple of days. And you can bet not one single idea of what caused it was related to that event. In effect, the defense is put in place to shut OUT awareness and this blockage causes you to not be AWARE that you CHOSE the defense for this exact purpose to try to make the threat go away.

After a couple days of suffering - and my hearing issues were basically a symbolic representation of "I don't want to hear this truth", I started trying to figure out when it started. I realized that it started right around when I was having that interaction with the holy spirit. And then fortunately I remembered that it had frightened me. And so then I was able to put two and two together and realized that, or at least was open to the possibility, that maybe I had chosen this as a reaction to him. I also was not on "speaking terms" with the holy spirit at this point because I was feeling afraid and did not feel safe or trusting of him, so he hadn't been saying anything.

I started to tentatively realize that I needed to get past this fear. I needed somehow to find a way to re-approach the holy spirit again, without being afraid, having some kind of TRUST, and to find a way to relate to him in terms of that openness to him without it MEANING that I was threatened or under attack. I needed a different way of looking at it so that I wouldn't misperceive our "unity" as a dangerous thing. So I became willing, and I started to try to deliberately trust and to take baby steps towards communicating with him again. And as I did, I was willing to put aside the fear that had been induced.

When I did this, I saw clearly that I had created this defense as a way to try to protect myself and out of fear. And since I could now be willing to more carefully trust the holy spirit and not fear him, it became obvious that I had NO MORE NEED for this protection. Like, it was okay to let down my guard.

Within an hour, all the symptoms vanished completely.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. "

"There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. "

"No-one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

Basically, you simply just need to remember who you are, as God created you. To "know" your SELF again.

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

"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"

Not knowing your self, or who and what you are, you believe you are something else. And this belief that something is true of you which isn't, is the ego. It's a false self that you invented to disguise your real self. And so the ONLY problem really is one of. .. what is your identity? Or rather, what do you identify with or as.

Are you spirit, or are you an ego/body? Becoming identified with your spirit is the goal. And this requires recognizing that you are not the "sense of self" that identifying with the ego brings, which is really based on belief and denial of knowledge, not knowledge. Just as "to sense is not to know."

The question is simply, who or what are you? What is true of you? Or more to the point, will you identify WITH and AS a fiction of specialness and exclusion, or will you identify WITH and AS the Christ-soul that God created you as... .which is an identity shared with all the other Christ-souls that are God's equal children.

Ego is merely a belief in being an isolated separated self which does not share with and is different to other selves. While the soul is the knowledge that you were created equal to all beings and that you share everything with them.

The way Jesus describes your self, in fact, is that you cannot know your self alone, or in isolation, because your self's "nature" is that it is SHARED WITH OTHER SELVES who exist as individuals simultaneously. And only by accepting your oneness with them as brothers can you fully embrace "your self".

Ego is the idea of rejecting oneness with your brothers. "Miracles unite you with your brother." So your self, as A son of God, cannot be a SINGLE son of God, it has to be an EQUAL son of God with other sons of God. And KNOWING that is knowing the fullness of your real identity.

"Ego is the idea of selfishness. Soul is the idea of self-fullness."

Jesus clarifies:

"***The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is Know thyself.*** There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. **The ego tries to find them in yourself**, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that ***if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself*** because that is NOT what you are.

Whenever you are ***with a brother you are learning what you are***, because you are teaching what you are. He will respond either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher you are following. He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him, because it is your responsibility to yourself. ***Give him his place in the Kingdom, and you will have yours.*** ***The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourselves alone.***

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.

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

I think this is a fairly clear statement about how things are set up in terms of "worlds."

1) There is a reference at first to "a world" which "you can perceive". Not necessarily assuming this perceivable world is Earth or heaven or anything. But some kind of a world.

2) We're told that you have a way of perceiving said world "as you perceive it", in one of two ways. The way YOU are perceiving "it" is not the way that "it is."

3) You cannot assume here that the world being referred to is Earth. It is very much more likely to be heaven or the real world.

4) We're then instructed that "God created ONLY the eternal", and that "everything you see is perishable." Notice how he is tying in everything you see, with the previous statement that you're looking at some kind of a world in the wrong way.

5) If God creates the eternal, and everything you see which is "the world as you see it, not as it is" is perishable, then we need to examine what is perishable. Look around you. Look at the physical objects. Are they perishable?

6) The simple result of that inquiry SHOULD be (unless you are in heavy denial), that everything in the physical world that "you see" is perishable. The trees have lost their leaves which are rotten. The bodies die. The food rots. Nothing seems to last forever. In other words, "it is not eternal."

7) From that alone, you should draw the simple conclusion that everything physical is perishable. And therefore, if "the world" (nonspecific) that "you see" which is NOT created by God and is NOT eternal, is planet Earth etc, then the "perishable world you see" is a direct reference to the physical world, space time and this so-called universe.

8 ) Jesus goes on to say that there must be ANOTHER WORLD, besides and beyond this PERISHABLE world, that you do not see. But notice also that earlier in the statement he said that there was a generic "world" that you have two ways of seeing, and that when you do NOT see it "as it is", you see a perishable world. In comparison to seeing the perishable world, when you see right you should see "the generic world" as it is, which will appear to be "another world" by comparison. A world which IS NOT PERISHABLE.

9) So essentially the whole statement is saying, God created an eternal kingdom, another term for which is a "world" or environment, which has eternal non-perishable properties, which means it's a world in which there is no perishing, no rotting and decay, no dying. And when you do NOT see that world as it is, you INSTEAD see a PERISHABLE world. When you do not see God's creation, you literally see another world - ie planet Earth, rising up in your sight, showing you things perish.

10) The simple conclusion you should draw from this is that planet Earth and all things physical are "what you see" when you DO NOT see God's creation of heaven. And seeing planet Earth is therefore a symptom of NOT seeing God's creation. And when you see God's creation you will NOT see a perishable world.

Some people would suggest that the whole thing is saying that if you see planet Earth correctly, "as it is", you will recognize that IT IS heaven. ie, that heaven contains physical objects, food which rots, bodies which die. But somehow that seeing them correctly "as they are" allows you to see some kind of thread of oneness running through them, such that it renders the whole scene some kind of "perfection", and "eternal."

The problem with that is that, without being in denial, even if you see a perishable world in such a way that it seems to reflect heaven, the physical objects STILL PERISH. There is still physical death. There are still seasons. The food still has a shelf life. Because that is part of being perishable. That is NOT a sign of somethinge eternal. Eternal things do not change, they do not transition, or go through phases, or shift. They cannot be modified or attacked or damaged or hurt, or be made sick, and they cannot die. Those are the qualities of heaven.

So you can see that it is impossible that Earth, in ANY form, in ANY perception, can be the "world God created". An eternal world, free from perishing. Jesus's statement to me clearly says that God created a kingdom which is eternal and in which nothing dies in any way shape or form, and when you do not see it "as it is", you superimpose on it an entire "second kingdom" (spacetime), world, which includes all physical planets and bodies, which is like a layer of denial placed OVER God's kingdom so that you DO NOT see it.

"The world (physical, earth) stands like a block before Christ's face (heaven). 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"

Notice in this statement for example that Jesus says that there is an entire world standing like a block, in front of (overlaid upon, superimposed) heaven (Christ is heaven). Then that TRUE perception looks upon that world and sees it as a vail (covering up heaven) which can be dispelled and disappears. It does not say that FALSE perception looks upon that world. True corrected perception looks upon that world and sees it as a veil covering up reality. So it is not a faulty view "about the earth" that causes you to see "earth wrongly", it is a faulty view "about heaven" that causes you to see "a veil" - which is the physical world.

"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; an idea beyond what can be touched"

And here again we're told that there is a light BEYOND the body, beyond the physical. Christ vision looks to that light, that world, looking PAST the body. This is why ACIM says that "to forgive is to overlook". To forgive means to OVERLOOK (not see) the physical planet earth.

Earth is simply part of a "veil of illusions" which was overlaid as a second world, as spacetime, ON TOP OF heaven, in an attempt to BLOCK AWARENESS of heaven. It is a gap of separation, and is filled with illusory things and impossible things, such as things which can perish and die. Bodies and planets. Entire galaxies. All made to COVER UP heaven. And if you believe in sin or guilt or fear, or make separation real, you will SEE the physical world, and sight of heaven will be blocked. But if you look to the light beyond the physical, you will see THROUGH and past the physical to a world of light.

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."

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".

"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing."

"Healing does not come DIRECTLY from God, who knows His Creations as perfectly whole."

"But healing is nevertheless OF God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws."

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and THE ONLY ONE HE KNOWS."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works."

"HEALING can be counted on BECAUSE it is inspired by His voice, and is in accord with His laws."

"He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."

"LET yourself be healed completely, that you may JOIN with Him in healing."

"Step gently aside, and let the healing be done FOR you."

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

"He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were."

"Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service."

"Perhaps the psychotherapist does not understand that healing comes from God."

"They can be sure that healing is a process He directs, because it is according to His Will."

"For healing tells him, in the Voice of God, that all his sins have been forgiven him."

"No-one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing."

"Nothing else can heal as God established healing."

"Without Him there is no healing, for there is no love."

"To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by SHARING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITH HIM."

"The Holy Spirit ALWAYS seeks to unify and HEAL."

"Bringers of peace - the Holy Spirit's voice, through whom He speaks for God, Whose Voice He is - such are God's healers."

"The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it, to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have BEEN healed."

"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist. HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

The funny thing with fear is, that while you are feeling it, it actually changes how reality looks to you .... so the world goes from appearing to be a place of safety and beauty, to a place of darkness and danger. And that's only because there is fear happening in your mind. You think you MUST be afraid if xyz is happening. That's not true.

So it's not as though you're actually having an objective, detached viewpoint. Every perspective of the ego always claims that it is being completely objective and capable of discerning what is true and false, when in fact it is always CONTRIBUTING to what it sees and experiences. As such ego thoughts are never neutral. "There are no neutral thoughts" - ACIM

You think that the amount of fear that you experience correlates exactly to how much of an 'actual' danger is out there. But fear distorts reality, and causes you to be incapable of seeing reality. So how do you know that there really is as much danger as you perceive?

And what if I were to tell you that "projection makes perception"? i.e. you are projecting fear onto the situation, which MAKES it look like there is a danger, so now you believe you are unsafe even if you are safe. You think there is such a thing as reliable fear, or discerning fear, or very carefully considered fear. There is no such thing. As in quantum physics, if you look with the ego you will change what you are looking at. You cannot be anything but subjective.

Outside of your fear, it is possible that there is a world that is not a threat to you, and is not a cause of fear. It is possible that the PRESENCE OF FEAR in you is actually the ONLY problem that needs to be dealt with. It's the mustard seed in your own eye the blocks you from perceiving truthfully, and as such you see blockages in the eyes of others, i.e. intentions to attack you. Your attack on them shows you this. Your fearing about them shows you a reason to be afraid.

This is the secret then to fear. Fear is its own problem. It tries to justify itself, and it changes how reality looks to you, and then shows you that altered reality as though claiming it is real. Therefore, the only things you are ever are afraid of are how reality looks when you are IN the fear, which paints a picture that's horrifying and threatening. You are not SEEING reality. You're seeing the mirror-reflection of fear itself. But when you are IN the fear, you really really believe that the threat is real. If you USE fear, which is a choice, you will find reasons to justify why you are afraid. And none of them are true. Fear is always false - a lie.

Outside of fear there is no reason or need to be afraid. Everything is safe. There is no danger or threat. Nothing can harm you. You are invulnerable. You are immortal spirit.

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?

It is a scene in the mind. It is an imagined scene. A dream.

It is inside of a mind. It is made of thought. It presents images but these images are only there because of imagination.

Physical matter is not fixed and is not separate from the mind that dreams it into being. Bodies, made of this matter, are similarly just images in the mind - the mind that is dreaming the world.

You could liken it, symbolically, to as if we are living inside someone's brain. Inside someone's imagination. The universe is a giant idea. A thought. Even physical matter itself is not really physical or fixed matter, it is just an imagined idea.

It is all mind. And it is all within the mind. There is no such thing as outside the mind, and ideas leave not their source.

Objects, bodies, people, cars, houses, planets, they are all just ideas in the mind. They are being held in suspension and made to seem as though they have their own personal history and a "state" of their own, but this is entirely an illusion.

All forms are being regenerated and reprojected by the mind, within the mind, every quantum of time. Each object is completely forgotten and regenerated.

The only reason that objects appears to maintain their "state" or have a "history" over time, is because the mind that is dreaming them maintains a certain belief over time, and therefore keeps re-generating an almost identical image of form.

You think objects such as your body have a history, but they do not. They are being recreated now by the mind. What they appeared to be a year ago only seems to correlate to how they appear now because the mind that is making them keeps making them in the same way, based on the same beliefs.

Your body does not have a will of its own, or a story of its own, or a history of its own, or a state of its own. It is nothing but an image coming out of a projector. The projector is running a movie and keeps projecting a similar-looking object with similar properties, to create an illusion of consistency over time. Your body now has nothing in common with your body a moment ago, at the bodily level.

This is all happening in the mind. Inside a giant mind. This entire planet and everything happening on it is just a bunch of images in a mind. Imagination. A dream of the Son of God.

When this mind changes its mind, you can bet that the dream it is imagining is going to change as well. When this mind chooses forgiveness, you can bet that the images in the mind are going to out-picture a forgiven state of being as well.

This is why miracles - as expressions of love which CURE - and as expressions of love which DEMONSTRATE that the body has not been harmed, to symbolize the fact that the mind is unharmed, MUST be expressed on the level of "form".

This world is not just some place. It is not just a physical location. It is a place in the MIND. All of the objects in it are THOUGHTS. All of the forms and all of the so-called matter is nothing but a fluidic, liquid state of mind which can change at any moment.

It is not fixed, it is not permanent, and all of its illusions of continuity are just that - an illusion, maintained by a mind which keeps on projecting the same or similar images. That does not mean the mind cannot project different images if it wants to.

Miracles then, as demonstrations that you are healed, will manifest as the so-called "body" being healed, which means that the MIND is healed. And since the body is IN the mind, the undoing of the ILLUSION of a body will make the body change. It has to.

The body is not separate from mind or outside of mind. It is made OF mind. And if the mind chooses to stop dreaming a particular part of the dream, or to dream something different, that dream - physicality - will change.

You are living in a thought-world. It is a thought-form in the mind of the Son of God. Where else could you be but in the mind that you exist in, shared with God? There is nowhere else. There is no separate place to go.

Therefore, miracles, in A Course in Miracles, must be expressed as changes to FORM - which really are changes of MIND - whereby the "personal mind" that hides in the body and the body itself as an extension of that mind, must show up in the same way.

This is why Jesus, when he ascended, saw that his body - an image of a body - was just an illusion, and that it had no real meaning, it disappeared. It disappeared WITHIN the larger mind. The mind that is dreaming the dream. He erased part of the dream, because it was nothing more than illusory images - imagination. Clearly, if a dreaming mind decides to stop dreaming, whatever it was dreaming will cease to exist. And as such the "physical body" will disappear, IN the mind, because it was always in the mind all along.

Realize this. The physical universe is made of MIND! It is made of thoughts and thinking. It is constructed by consciousness. It is entirely within the bounds of the imagination. All of the forms and objects are just images in the mind. That is why when you change your mind, when you forgive, FORM WILL CHANGE. Because mind will change.

World events, tragedies, disasters, wars, attacks, celebrations, weddings, carnivals, shows, sporting events, whatever... all of it is happening in the mind. Its all a MIND-show. Mind events. Mind choosing to create dreams. Absolutely anything is possible. The mind could even create a fantastically perfect-looking world filled with abundance and incredible creatures, if it chooses to.

And people are collectively, worldwide, constantly choosing and creating futures which comprise of all kinds of stuff happening, because they chose to believe in it. We are changing "reality" because we are changing the dream as we go along.

And this is also why certain parties attempt to manipulate global consciousness to bring about a mental manifestation of certain outcomes. (Conspiracy theory alert! lol) - they know that mind creates this world and that mind can be coerced to create preferably futures. It's all part of manipulating the dreamer.

To believe that form will not change is purely the belief that mind is limited to the body and that the body is not inside or made of the mind. And that is a very common misperception, because that's precisely what the ILLUSION shows, if you believe it.

Your car is in your mind. Your house is in your mind. Your body is in your mind. Your job is in your mind. Your family is in your mind. Your entire life is in your mind. Even the physical stuff. It's all mental. Thus, changes of MIND, changes FORM, and that is why supernatural miracles happen.

They are demonstrations of truth, that the mind that is BEHIND the form has chosen something different, defying all of the illusory laws that the IMAGES in the mind appear to follow.

And this is also why the Course's REAL definition of "miracles" is that they are SUPERNATURAL. They defy the natural laws implied by illusions and come from a mind which is dreaming the world, easily capable of changing them and producing "healed" images of bodies.

Ultimately, a completely healed mind will acknowledge that the body does not really exist at all, and that it was just a dream coming from the mind. The mind was just projecting it and making it up. And it showed up in the "world" because the world is in the mind. And then, it will cease to dream the body, and the body will disappear.

A disappeared body is the ultimate body in perfect health, because perfect divine health means freedom from illusions and forms. Thus the perfect body is disappeared into perfection and by perfection, as the ultimate HEALING of the mind that dreamed it.

The body was made to come between the mind and God, and to make it seem like the Son of God was not Himself. It must go. And its ultimate healing is its removal. Its total undoing. This is the final demonstration that you are not a body. And if you want, you could re-manifest one later to demonstrate this, just like Jesus did after the cruxifixction.

The world is just a dream in your mind. Anything goes.

"There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well."

The physical planet, Earth, was made by us as a place of "hell", in an attempt to make a world which is totally opposite to Heaven in EVERY way. The problem now is that we don't recognize HOW it is opposite to Heaven, or why it is not like Heaven at all. So let's take a look at the "laws" that run this world.

This world was based on the separation idea. This idea includes death, sacrifice, loss, scarcity, attack, competition, murder, suffering, lack, darkness, etc. This idea has created LAWS, the ego's laws, which has produced space-time, and has invented the "laws of physics". The physical planet is founded ON and BY these laws, and without these laws it could not maintain its form or function or exist at all. "Fear has made everything you think you see".

Look closely at what happens with physical matter. When two objects come close to each other, they never touch. Contradictory forces of attraction AND repulsion pull objects near and then push them away. If two objects were to touch, they would cause an atomic explosion and annihilation. That means when anything tries to join, or share, or "be one", it results in DEATH. How more opposite to Heaven can this be, that joining is death, and being separate is to "be alive".

Then consider what happens when you try to share an object. Let's say you have an apple and you want to "have" the apple, but you also want to share it. You could give it to someone, but now you have LOSS. And loss induces grief, and represents LACK and SCARCITY. To give, is to SACRIFICE. This is ego law, and totally unlike the laws of Heaven in which to give is to increase and allows you BOTH to SHARE everything.

Try to give the apple without losing it, it is impossible. Another's gain is your loss, and so you are now in COMPETITION. And the apple represents the idea of finite, LIMITATION of amounts, rather than unlimited supply. "God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

There is no INCREASE when you give, as there would be in heaven, and it is impossible for you to BOTH have the whole apple. You can try to COMPROMISE, which is a law of SACRIFICE and SUFFERING, by having half an apple each, meaning neither person get's the whole and you both are EMPTY. And so there is no real sharing. These are the ego laws that run this world.

Also, because all objects are separate, nothing can ever share the same space with anything else. Objects cannot overlap, or they would DESTROY each other. To join or be "one", to unite in any way, results in death and destruction. This is the complete opposite to Heaven's laws, whereby when two things join there is oneness, harmony, peace and life. And so anything physical, any form, including human bodies and the planet, can never join or be one. Every single particle of matter is kept apart, separated off and different to the rest.

There is also no consistency of properties among particles of matter. While some things seem to act similarly, nothing is identical. While in God's world everything God creates is created in His perfect likeness and image, and all sons of God are perfectly EQUAL and identical in their nature, in the ego's world its "nature" is utterly UNNATURAL, CHAOTIC and NOT LIKE the rest. An apple is not an orange, or a banana. A house is not a car. A human is not a fish. Water does not behave like rocks. It is all made to be different, meaning there is NO EQUALITY.

Differences also mean that no two things can AGREE on anything, producing a state of PERPETUAL WAR, conflict, tension, disagreement and imbalance. Nothing is WHOLE within itself, everything LACKS what other things have, everything is only PARTIAL and finite and limited, and nothing has everything. This also means that no PART of this world FULLY exists.

Chemicals which are present in an apple, are NOT present in a screwdriver. The screwdriver LACKS what the apple has, sees the apple as having stolen part of wholeness from itself, and wants to destroy it to complete itself. This is all outlined in the ego's "laws of chaos" whereby we perceive that special love has been stolen by other people (ie you lost your SELF and they have what you LACK), locked up in their bodies, and we are willing to kill them to get it. Every object in the world is fundamentally in a state of LACK, LOSS, EMPTINESS and DESPERATION, producing compulsions to "seek and do not find."

And this isn't even half of what the purpose of the world is.

"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."

You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to oppose God, to shut out his NATURE, and to make it seem like he DOES NOT EXIST. Physical matter, is MURDEROUS. (what is not love is murder). The world didn't simply take on the form of a planet "just because". It was INTENTIONAL, to make a place governed by laws NOT OF GOD, which opposes and is UNLIKE Heaven in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE.

God's nature is that he is omnipresent. This means that God is fully present everywhere. This doesn't just mean God is really big and stretched out to cover the universe, but it also means ALL of God's being, is in EVERY location. The fullness of God is here, and there, and over there. This is utterly impossible according to ego laws, because if God were to be "fully over here", there is no God "left" to be "fully over there" simultaneously. Yet this is God's nature.

The ego, and its WORLD, including the Earth, was designed to create a PICTURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF GOD'S SON, in which God has been obliterated from existence. It does this by the physical ego laws. If you look at an object, you'll notice that this object is not the same as another object. If it's an apple, it is not the same as a television. This means, there is some of the possibility over here in the apple, and some of the possibility over there in the television set. Neither of them contains "everything". They are separate, distinct, and kept apart.

What this does, is it presents a physical "picture" which is trying to STATE, to affirm and assert, that "nothing contains everything" "no part of the world contains all of it" "there is no everything in any single object". THEREFORE... because "everything" is nowhere, and NOTHING IS WHOLE, THERE IS NO WHOLENESS ANYWHERE, SO GOD, WHO NATURE IS TO BE FULLY PRESENT EVERYWHERE, DOES NOT EXIST *ANYWHERE*! This picture then forms what you think is "nature", which is the UNNATURAL laws of the ego world. It was made to COMPLETELY OBSCURE sight of God, to make it seem like God's NATURE does not apply here AT ALL, and therefore that God is dead.

THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE WORLD AS THE EGO MADE IT. "The world was made as an attack on God." If you BEHOLD IT, ie see it, with your eyes or mind, you CANNOT KNOW GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God." Because simply, if you are looking at this picture of "God cannot exist", it is distracted you and blocking you from seeing that "God does exist." "You cannot see two worlds". Either you are in Heaven with God, or you're dreaming of planet Earth and trying to be dead.

This is why Jesus says "there is nothing so BLINDING as sight of form." To SEE FORM, to see the Earth, is to be BLIND and to NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL. The body's eyes were made to look on SIN and DEATH and believe they are reality. You think you are here observing a real world, when in fact your head is buried in the sand and you do NOT HAVE VISION. The body's eyes were designed by the ego, ON PURPOSE, to make it seem like you are sensing and looking at something that exists, but in fact is a hallucination, stuck in a box, in the dark, looking at nothingness. It's designed so that you WILL NOT SEE GOD.

In every way, the underlying FUNCTION of this planet, is MADE OF, based on, run by, and dictated by, the idea of separation and DEATH. It is a state OF death, because life which is eternal and of Heaven does not change. "Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals".

The world also is a state of DENIAL - it is the physical embodiment of the denial of God and reality. It is a state of UNCONSCIOUSNESS and death. And Jesus says "a world that denies its own existence does not exist." "There is no world."

"From knowledge and perception respectively, two distinct thought systems arise which are opposite in every respect. In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. The world of perception, however, is made by the belief in opposites and separate wills, in perpetual conflict with each other and with God. What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real."

"When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."

This world, Earth, is the ego's world, nothing but a dream, a fiction of OPPOSITION TO HEAVEN, designed to attack God and separate the Son and kill the Son of God. Or at least to create the illusion that this is possible.

Now. You can, with the Holy Spirit, change how you look AT and INTERPRET this world. "Holy Spirit is the great reinterpreter of the world". You can join His way of looking, and learn to SEE and RECOGNIZE, that this world that you think is so special and lovely in all its ways of death and murder, even at the subatomic level, IS NOT REAL. That it is showing you a picture which is FALSE, or not true. That its very FORMS, its separations, its objects, are a FANTASY about murdering God.

This leads you to True Perception and the "forgiven world", aka "real world", which entails the ability to look at THE WORLD *YOU* MADE, hell, this Earth, WITH the truth, to look at and admit to the ways that IT IS NOT LIKE HEAVEN AT ALL. The truth will show you the ways that it is in fact SO unlike Heaven that it could not possibly be created by God, it could not possibly be real, it cannot exist, and it is MADE OF LIES.

Correcting perception and approaching True Perception is STILL going to show you apples, different from oranges. Humans, different from fish. Objects colliding with each other. Plants growing and producing flowers only to die and rot. Bodies in various states of sickness. BECAUSE ITS BUILT INTO THE LAWS THAT THIS WORLD COMES FROM. You can perceive it in a loving WAY, or in a better light, but you're still going to be seeing all the shit you made up, FUNCTIONING according to the same physical laws of death, and still DOING what it always did. The fact that the "Earth" remains a "planet" at all means it is STILL built on sacrifice, loss, lack, attack, rejection, separation and death.

You can look at this death hole in a heavenly way and see a reflection of Heaven BEYOND it, or IN SPITE OF it. But forgiveness OVERLOOKS the world and the body. To say that you are forgiving when you are MAKING THE WORLD REAL, is NOT FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness looks and recognizes that this world is OPPOSITE TO REALITY. It is not real, and it doesn't really exist. THAT is what forgiveness shows you. You don't look AT bodies and AT the world - you OVERLOOK them, rendering them non-existent!

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"It is the world you see (with body's eyes, Planet Earth) THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE."

A glimpse of reality, which shows you that everything about this world right down to the smallest particles, is operating on FALSE LAWS, and that those laws are fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, and NOT OF HEAVEN, and therefore must NOT BE REAL. And this will merely prepare you to realize, that "this world is not my home".

And this is why you go *SOMEWHERE ELSE*, to another realm, another world, the world that GOD CREATED as your home and inheritance. You leave behind what Jesus calls "the bleak little world", in which "everything in the world is little because it is made of LITTLENESS" (rejection of the grandeur of heaven), and go to Heaven. Heaven's laws are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the laws which the Earth runs on. In Heaven there is TRUE sharing, oneness and overlap is possible, you can truly merge and join with others, you can share space, you can be TRULY intimate in communion, and you can be ACTUALLY ALIVE. "There is no life outside of Heaven."

If you can recognize the way that this world is SO unlike Heaven in every way, and realize that Heaven's laws are NOTHING like the laws this world is based on, even when reinterpreted with Holy Spirit, you MIGHT be wiling to see that this world - Earth - that we MADE, in a state of insanity ("the world is the DELUSIONAL SYSTEM of those driven MAD by guilt"), is not only NOT HEAVEN, it also CANNOT BE heaven, or turn into Heaven, because it is fundamentally the idea of OPPOSING Heaven and reality. It will NEVER be Heaven. To be Heaven requires laws which simply do not support FORMS of any kind, and that includes bodies and planets. All forms are forms of error, and Heaven contains no mistakes.

So we can keep trying to glorify and spiritualize this world, to try to make it special, to pretend God would've created it, even though its cruelty and meaninglessness are utterly opposite to His nature. We can learn to forgive the hell we made, and "love it", and be at peace about it. But this does not MAKE IT heaven. It does not turn it INTO your home. It doesn't make it an appropriate SYSTEM, or state of functioning, in which the Son of God is best suited. You are a fish out of water here. "This world is not my home." "You are a stranger here."

The world now, seen through the Holy Spirit, is ONLY there as a teaching device to bring you Home, which is beyond this world. The body, is only a teaching device, to show you that the body is utterly unnecessary. Perception, which is a state of fundamental judgementalism and instability and uncertainty, was made only as a result of a rejection of reality. It will never contain awareness or reality or God and once its lesson is learned perception has NO USE. All of these things we MADE, will end, because they were never really begun. They are illusions. A fantasy of an attack on God and an attempt to destroy ourselves. "You do not want the world." "This world holds nothing that I want."

"You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost". Heaven is my home, not hell. And "heaven on Earth" is still a dream, and a poor substitute for the direct experience of Heaven itself. Earth cannot BE heaven. Its laws are totally opposed to peace and life. It was made to kill. You don't want it. You can view it in a heavenly way but you can never turn it into heaven just because you see it lovingly. Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS. Earth is NOTHING. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach." You will give up nothing, this world, and gain everything, Heaven. And that is God's will.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

How do you know that you have a body?

Do you see it with your body's eyes?

Do you hear it with your body's ears?

Do you taste it with the body's tongue, touch it with the body's flesh, and smell it with the body's nose?

Is this not a completely circular logic within a closed system?

You are using the very device that you are trying to detect, to detect that same device.

It cannot see outside of its own self. It cannot objectively report whether its own form exists or not.

Its own eyes show you a picture of a body, but the picture is seen with the body that the body is looking at. And so using the thing itself to detect itself, is completely invalid.

You would need proof outside of your own body, that your body exists. And you have none. A scientist could come along and tell you that, per their study, your body does in fact exist. But this would also be a lie. Because they used bodies to look at bodies. They uses eyes to look at eyes. It's entirely invalid within a closed loop.

The body therefore cannot be relied upon to tell you of its own existence. And therefore, there is no proof whatsoever that the body really exists.

You think you see your body in a mirror. But your body is using itself to look at itself. It is completely biased. It cannot tell you if it exists or not, it is designed ONLY to report a false positive that it "has been sensed". It's not capable of telling you of its own non-existence, and is totally one-sided.

The body does not really exist. All it can do is sense what it was designed to sense and NOT see reality.

"To sense is not to know." - ACIM

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." - ACIM

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself." - ACIM

"At no time does the body really exist." - ACIM

"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." - ACIM

"Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing IS; what listening is FOR. It is as little able to perceive as it can judge, or understand, or know. Its eyes are blind, its ears are deaf. It can NOT think, and so it cannot HAVE effects." - ACIM

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

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation." - ACIM

"Minds need not bodies to communicate." - ACIM

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state." - ACIM

To experience peace, there must be no conflict. It's just not just some state where you can still be ego and expect to have peace happen to you. Peace is the absence of war and attack. Just as love is a lack of sin. You have to be done waging war if you want to be peaceful.

If attack and war are the battleground, then to be above the battleground is to be outside of the war, in a state of peace, in which you are not warring or attacking in any way.

Beyond the war, above the battle, away from the conflict, the peaceful self that is you is not within the fight. It is not the fighter or the soldier or the defender. It is out of reach of attack because it does not attack.

And so peace is your safety because it removes you from the realm of war. And now you are far away from the war zone, untouchable and undisturbed. Peace transcends war, and is your only escape.

"Yet when peace is found, the war is meaningless. And it is conflict now that is perceived as non-existent and unreal." UrM21A3

"A tranquil mind is not a little gift. Would you not rather live than choose to die?" UrM21A4

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace." UrT8A3

"The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It CANNOT come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not Eternal Gentleness. The means of war are NOT the means of peace. And what the warlike would remember is NOT love." UrT23B1

"Peace looking on itself EXTENDS itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites; where one abides, the other CANNOT be; where either goes, the other disappears." UrT23B12

"In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing." UrT12C12

"The holy instant is the miracle's abiding-place. From there, each one is born into this world, as witness to a state of mind which has TRANSCENDED conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battleground, and DEMONSTRATES that war has no effects." UrT27F3

"How strange indeed becomes this war against Yourself! You will believe that EVERYTHING you use for sin can hurt you, AND BECOME YOUR ENEMY. And you will fight AGAINST it, and try to weaken it, BECAUSE of this." UrT23A2

"Yet peace is stronger than war, because it heals. War is DIVISION, not increase. No-one gains from strife." UrT5D6

"What COULD you choose between, but life or death, waking or sleeping, war or peace, your dream or your reality?" UrT27H10

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings." UrW136L16

The big secret behind the ego's illusions, is that the ego is entirely a mode of SELF-attack. And this exactly ties into the revelation that "the secret to salvation is that you are but doing this to yourself."

The ego mind and its entire thought system is not just a separate chunk of regular mind that is split off from God. The ego's only weapon is separation. The purpose of the ego mind is to attempt to destroy the Son of God.

To the ego it is not enough to simply separate from God and be some kind of "self-contained identity", like a whole individual.

The ego mind is a state of mind of constant self-attack. It is a mind of division, separation, fragmentation and splits. Within itself it attempts to break down the Son of God by constantly dividing and separating the mind into as many disjointed pieces as possible.

That means, this ego mind is in a constant state of self-attack. Within itself, there is a war waging, between various aspects of the ego mind. It is not just at war with God, it is at war with itself.

The ego mind doesn't just set out to attack you or be your enemy. It is actually attacking only itself.

When there is a war in the world, whereby some group of people seem to be the evil attackers and some group of people seem to be the helpless victims, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an argument happening in a special relationship, where both people believe they are right and that the other person is wrong, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an apparent victimizer doing something terribly abusive to someone and the victim seems to be innocent, even then, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

Simply by virtue of the fact that the ego split mind is riddled with multiple separations, these separations produce the ILLUSION that there is opposition. Based on appearances, it then seems that one part of the ego mind is one identity and the other part is another identity, usually identified by some kind of "difference" between them, or a difference in form.

These differences make it SEEM like there are two separate individuals, at least, and these individuals will inherently be against each other. This is why people identified with separate and different bodies are INHERENTLY racist and sexist. To not be so would threaten their identity as a separate individual.

So take a look at the world and you'll see various examples of parts of it which seem like its "good" and parts that seem "bad", and you might only think the ego is the bad parts. The ego is all parts of this world.

The ego takes both sides of every argument. It takes both sides in every war. It is rooting for both people to be destroyed in every conflict and delights in the fight. It wants both victims and victimizers to hate each other. It believes in all its parts and identities that it is right and all others are wrong, even though those others are part of itself.

The ego has this very "sick" twisted mixture of self-attack and violence against itself. It actually tries to hurt and destroy itself, while at the same time enjoying doing so. It takes "pleasure" in producing "pain" within itself, which is why both pleasure and pain are a part of the same self-attacking mind. It is both the sick person who seems to prey on the innocent, and also is the "innocent victim" of such attacks.

It does not care whether one particular side of any situation is better or worse than another. Its only aim is to get all split parts of the fragmented ego mind to be separate from each other, different from each other, at war with each other, and wanting to destroy each other. Its plan of attack is that by destroying "Self". .. which really does mean "itself", it will destroy the Son of God.

This is simply because the ego IS the Son of God's attempt to destroy His Self. This is self attack. This is how the Son of God is doing everything to Himself, and why underneath ALL of his claims to be an innocent victim He is always secretly wanting it.

It is why behind all fear there is a choice and a desire to be punished. It is why behind all sickness there is a decision to be sick and to use it as both a defense and an attack. It is why victims are also victimizers, why the weak would seek to destroy, why death is both feared and welcomed, and why people are perverted and sadistic.

You are not looking at a world where some parts are pure and some parts are impure. You are not looking at a world where the "good guys" are trying to genuinely be free of the "bad guys". You are only looking at an ego world, which is INSIDE the shared collective ego group mind, the entire ego dream of death, which is RIDDLED with self attack all over the place in every way imaginable.

It always LOOKS like there are many separate individuals operating independently, when in fact it is ONE ego mind operating against ITSELF.

The ego loves to hate Self. The ego loves to destroy Self. The ego loves to pit self against self and be against itself. It should be fairly obvious how this is INSANITY, to be both for and against oneself and to be actively trying to destroy yourself. This is why the ego is suicidal and this is also why all death is a choice to die, in which your "ego self" will both avoid it and cause it, and both want it and be terrified of it.

It is ONLY your own self-attack and desire to destroy yourself that makes you afraid of anything. You are not afraid because of what others might do to you, but because of what YOU plan to do to you through your belief in your deserving of punishment. You are your own attacker and you plot your own death, even if you are kicking and screaming to escape it at the same time.

A split mind is having a battle of wills, because there are multiple conflicting wills operating against each other within it. It wants one thing but also wants another. It always wants everything that it does not want, and does not want everything that it wants. It cannot make up its mind or be decisive or make a genuine decision at all, being an attempt to STOP being decisive and certain or committed to wholeness in any way.

Taking sides is falling for the ego's lie. Participating in an "argument" is separating yourself off from your brother. Your brother is simply another part of your Self as Christ. Christ is the non-split, non-fragmented, non-self-destructive Real Mind of which we are all really a part, and not "apart".

So be careful not to fall for the ego's LIE, the ILLUSION, that one side of a story is right and another wrong, or one part of the world is spiritual and good and another is evil. The ego does not care whether you support the good guys or the bad guys. You are not winning against it by siding with only the good and positive. You are also not winning against it by siding only with the dark and negative.

The ego has no preference for whether you choose to believe that a "cause" is righteous or that your hated political party is "wrong" or that your opinion matters. Your opinion does not matter whatsoever because opinions are a symptom of ego insanity, in rejection of the One Shared Truth. The ego couldn't give a shit who wins an argument or what side of a war is victorious, because those things are NOT what drives the ego.

The ego is driven by SEPARATION. Its ONLY tool is separation. It seems only to separate, within itself. It seems only to split the Son of God up and make him be multiple selves - multiple personalities, and multiple personalities within personalities.

Think not that a regular human being has a "single mind". ... a regular human being has a large COLLECTION of pieces of mind, of sub-personalities, often which are actually in CONFLICT with each other. The ego mind is very complicated and self-contradictory. Even within one person there are countless separated aspects of identity which are not even consistent from second to second. People are different in different scenarios, experiencing constant shifts in persona based on the situation.

Only a whole mind is a sane mind, and a whole mind means Christ mind, which is not a mind that has won or a mind that defeated an opponent, but is a mind in which OPPOSITION does not exist. It is a mind free for a war with itself. It is a mind that has recognized that, this whole time, it has ONLY ever been at war within itself.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself. Your own mind, as ego mind, is attacking itself. It is in conflict within itself. It has been split up into parts and different parts of it are opposed to each other and are not even communicating well. Many parts of your mind are in the dark, many are experienced by other parts of you as an "enemy", and you actively fight with your own hallucinated demons and opponents within your own sense of fragmented self.

It is this state of self-attack and self-conflict and self-war and self-denial that we are healing from, so that we can return the mind to a state of PEACE. Peace is only possible when you are not playing ANY of the ego's games, you are not falling for the illusions or appearance of differences, you are not taking sides, you are not buying into good/bad or right/wrong, and you do not believe any longer in a SEPARATION between victims and victimizers.

You are doing this all to yourself. The whole world is doing this to itself. All wars are self attack, by the one "human race". This is the condition of the ego. The world is destroying itself and always has been and always will be until it disappears, having been recognized as unreal. This is why peace on earth is not possible, because peace would reveal that the earth is not a "real separate thing". Even the idea of separate planets is an ego idea of self conflict.

Beware the ego's intention to get you to fight with someone else, which is really the temptation to fight with yourself. This is all about what you're doing to yourself, and has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing to you. Wake up and see the ego for what it is. It is nothing more than a mind at war with itself, and in that war it is playing every side, because it is a mind of self-destruction.

In the ego's war, nobody wins. There are no survivors. There are no victors. It is always the "Self" that dies. It is always sanity and wholeness that is sacrificed. It is always the ego mind that wins and loses. It is always both parties who suffer. Anyone who plays the game of opposition or righteousness or judgement or rebellion or justification or revenge or any other ego modality, has already FAILED to recognize the ego's diabolical plan. It couldn't care less for winning or losing because in its perception, EVERY part of itself loses. In a war with yourself, YOU MUST LOSE YOUR SELF!

The only way to escape this is to return the mind to wholeness, overlook the ego's illusion of self-attack, own up to the fact that your mind IS attacking itself and that there has not BEEN any other form of attack, and that therefore you have another CHOICE. A better way. A way to be free from your own self destructive dream. A way to be permanently free of the ego, and of all symptoms of suffering and sickness and death, which are merely expressions of self attack.

If you cease attacking yourself, you cannot die. There are no other causes of death but this.

Be free.

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

If all moments of time were expressed all at once before time existed, then it seems to make sense that "the future" has already been determined because it has already been expressed.

If the "script" of all moments in time was "written" ie put into place, all at once, then within linear time the future is essentially pre-written.

Also if you time travel, whenever you go into a moment in the past, you will find that you experience it as though it is the present - as if "now" is 1952. Similarly in the future, no matter what the date, it will seem that "now" it is that time.

This seems to suggest a sense of "fate" or destiny, whereby whatever will happen or is happening or has happened was all written at once, not on a moment-by-moment basis.

The Holy Spirit nevertheless is able to collapse dimensions or segments or time, based on your learning of lessons.

There are references to "all the dimensions of time" in the Course, suggesting that there are perhaps multiple timelines - all pre-written, and you might shift between them.

It is also said that when we separated and made the world, Holy Spirit came with us and had a hand in organizing it. "There are two makers of the world". So now all the stuff we made, that we pre-wrote, has been restructured in some way to lead to heaven.

This all seems to suggest that we're just strapped into some kind of rollercoaster ride with no choices, as though we are just the movie itself playing. If this were the case, there is absolutely no "choice" or freedom in this scenario.

Yet think of Jesus performing miracles, undoing and reversing sickness, overcoming death, becoming free of the script entirely, able to manipulate objects and defy all of the laws that were made by the ego. It would seem that he attained freedom and the flexibility to not be bound by the script. We would say now that He is completely free of it, able to do anything.

So, the script is only in play if you are in the ego and remaining unconscious? Based in the perception that stuff (script) happens to you against your will? How can there be any victimhood script when you are choosing not to be a victim, not to play along?

It's not as though you are forced to be a victim to the same degree and intensity right up till the moment of awakening. And let's remember that events are designed by the one who has your best interests, Holy Spirit.

It is also said there are two scripts. Since Holy Spirit had a hand in reorganizing and repurposing what we made, not just as a 'way of looking at it' but to actually rearrange time and the sequence of events, there was the ego's attempted purpose for what it made, and then there is Holy Spirit's use of it. A use which we need to learn to trust.

If all events here are lessons and we're not supposed to be hanging out in a make-believe world anyway, it seems to suggest we are to simply follow Holy Spirit's plan and trust Him and eventually this will lead to the gates of Heaven.

If we are simply "wearing" a lifetime, like a piece of clothing, for purposes of waking up, to use it as a choice to experience a certain set of events as a certain person, then it doesn't seem quite so restrictive.

Has everything been made already, or can you change anything at all? It would seem you can change things. Miracles, right? Miracles reverse what we made. Miracles undo the script.

The body's eyes do not forgive. They do not overlook any illusions. All they see is the forms of error, and everything they look upon is an illusion. They literally are incapable of seeing past illusions at all. Which means they cannot forgive, at all.

The body's eyes are completely unforgiving. They are blinded by perception of form. They are not designed to see beyond physical objects, and rely entirely on photons of light for vision. Without photons they see only darkness and they are literally incapable of ever seeing even the slightest glimmer of the light of reality.

The body's eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. They are devices designed for fixating on the images of physical form, which is made of sin, and do not see anything else. They are literally blinded by sight of forms and we call this "seeing" - where vision is blocked by objects rather than seeing through or past them.

The eyeballs are permanently hardwired into the physical level of perception. As sensory devices, they can only sense illusions. Since they cannot see past illusions, they cannot forgive, because to forgive is to overlook illusions. And so physically sight is really permanent false perception. And the body will constantly send false perceptions to the mind for interpretation, where the mind gives them either the meaning of reality or unreality.

This is why you need another kind of vision, entirely free from dependency on the eyeballs, in order to see reality. To be forgiving, at the mind level, must entail you somehow looking past what your body's eyes see. The body sees only the outside surface of nothingness, pretending to be somethingness. To see REAL somethingness, you cannot use the body.

Forgiveness is of the mind, in the mind, for the mind, moving beyond the body, overlooking all of the forms of physical chaos, and seeing a light beyond them. What lies beyond all physical forms is the real world. This cannot be seen with the eyeballs, but it can be seen with True Vision. True Vision is direct mind seeing, based not on photons or artificial light.

In order to shift into true perception, you have to shift away from dependency on physical sight. Which also means learning to categorize everything the physical eyes sees as an illusion - false, unreal, and not happening. While fixating on the physical world, and believing what the eyes see, you are blinded from seeing the real world.

Forgiveness, ie true perception (atonement, salvation, the miracle, etc), occurs when the mind recognizes that all of the images of physical forms coming in through the physical eyeball sensors are illusions, not to be believed. The mind overlooks the sensory input and looks past it. In effect it bypasses the world and every signal coming from the world. It looks past it all to the light of the face of Christ.

Christ looks upon christ, love looks upon itself. Forgiveness does not look upon bodies, mistaking them for the son of God. It looks past bodies to the light. In effect, everything the body sees must be overlooked. In other words, you need to see past what you see. Look beyond the flesh and bones to reality.

"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."

"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; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

I’ve been studying passages about perception lately. There’s a lot of them. The body’s eyes are only capable of fixating on forms and appearances of physicality. They were made NOT to see. They only register "physical signals" of light coming from the outer surface of objects. They eye’s "perception" is equivalent to false perception, because they are blinded by form. The eyes do not see at all.

They pass signals to the mind. The mind is the only thing that sees. The mind then interprets the signals based on the belief system and values. Whatever you value, you believe in, and want. This turns into what you "want to see". Similarly fear is used to shut out perception of things you do not want to see. When you have ego values, you see what you want to see as special, and what you don’t want to see is regarded as unreal or evil. This is a dualistic view.

Your perceptual mechanism is a layer on top of the mind which filters the body signals and interprets their meaning. This is where the "world you see", in your mind, is based on the meaning you give it. The body’s eyes are never capable of showing you reality. They can only send pictures to the mind which are illusions. The world they depict is fundamentally an illusion regardless of HOW the picture is interpreted. It is not possible to use the body’s eyes to see Heaven.

When you move towards true perception, which is still interpretative, you start to put all things into one category in your belief system and value system, rather than categorizing the world in dualistic terms of special love/special hate. All of the pictures being sent by the body are categorized as UNREAL. They are recognized as being fundamentally illusions, which, when viewed WITHOUT distortion (accurate perception) are easily discerned to be NOT reality. A mind "without illusions" in its perception does NOT "see reality", it interprets body signals as the LIES they were made to be.

To see with true perception lines up perception with the laws of God and allows the mind to see "through" the perceptual filter without distortion or bias. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." The mind then uses perception to see the "physical signals" "as-is", with no additional meaning being given them, nothing denied, nothing hidden. When seen "as is", they are simply registered as FALSE. They are OVERLOOKED with forgiveness.

Perception of form becomes very "thin", like a thin transparent veil. The body’s eyes here are still registering signals of a physical world, where bodies are in various states of sickness, people are still at war, and so on, but the mind interprets it all as unreal. The mind is in touch with the fact that it is the one DREAMING, and that it is the one who has sent the world out there to report back what’s out there. "Miracles remind you of who the dreamer is."

So then the mind knows that ITS DREAM is what is brewing shown to it by the body signals, the dream is fundamentally FALSE, and does not really exist. It is a very small step from there, "illusions recognized must disappear", for God to now take action to END YOUR DREAMING, remove perception from your mind entirely, and thus collapse the entire dream including the body and the physical world which were nothing BUT an illusion. In false perception you ADDED illusions ON TOP OF the illusion. There are TWO LAYERS of illusion. In true perception you came to look at the illusion WITHOUT illusion being added, and recognizing it only for what it is. Then when the world illusion has been recognized, it disappears.

I’ve been hearing people use the term illusion in an incorrect way. As if it means, "illusions about" something. You guys need to brush up on your grasp of what an illusion IS. People have too easily equate an illusion with "a false perception of something", and then equated the "disappearance of the illusion" with true perception. As if true perception does not SEE illusions, but sees reality. Let’s be a bit more precice in defining what is an illusion and what is reality.

I was driving one day and saw what I thought was a two headed bird. It was a large bird like a crane. I stopped the car and had a good look. Sure enough it dam well looked like a two headed bird. It seemed REAL. I drove forwards a little and took another look. Driving forwards introduced additional information which was HIDDEN from my perception before. Suddenly I was able to see additional legs, and then it became clear that there were in fact two birds, standing right next to each other. The illusion that there was a two-headed bird in reality, was blown. I was now SEEING the TRUTH (true perception) "about" what was ACTUALLY THERE. Seeing the truth, however, merely revealed the information that was hidden, and the parts of "whats there" that I could not see. My perception became more full and whole and inclusive. I was now looking at what was there "as is", instead of with a deluded interpretation.

This is also how it works in the course. You perceive with the body falsely. If you believe that what the body shows you is truth, you are deluded and in false perception. You believe the ILLUSION or the parts which function together to make it seem like soemthing, is real. You don’t see all the information. They are key facts hidden by denial. You are unconscious. When you open your awareness by removing "blocks to awareness", you gain access to information and facts which you did not know existed. You start to see more FULLY, all of what is there, as it is, a complete picture, without distortions or hidden information. This merely shows you the "apparatus" that was being used to make something look like somethig else. It’s like being privy to a "behind the scenes" look at the making of a movie. You see the cameramen and the fake stage and all the actors "out of character" and it blows the whole illusion.

True perception shows you these hidden details. But the fact is that SEEING CORRECTLY (corrected perception) only shows you the TRUTH ABOUT what is out there. It only reveals it "as it is "without your interpretations and strange meanings and lack of context. It only shows you an undistorted view of what is there. This undistorted view is, you could say, "free of illusions", but more accurately, it is free of BELIEVING that what is out there is REAL. It does not buy into the illusion any more. It’s like when you solve a puzzle and now you can never be deceived by it. Or you hear the punchline to a joke and it’s never as funny after that because you recognize that the setup is a lie. True perception shows you, without distortion, accurately, correctly, that the physical world the body looks at makes no sense, is deceptive, does not match up with God’s nature, is fundamentally flawed, IS ITSELF AN ILLUSION, and IS NOT REAL. Jesus is very clear on this in stating that true perception recognizes that what you see in this state is categorically UNREAL.

Bodies, forms, objects, animals, weather, forests, oceans, the planet, galaxies, all of it is a movie set. And when you are aware of ALL of the parts of it, see it clearly, and stop buying into its appearance, you will no longer be willing or desiring to believe that it is anything other than FALSE. A big lie. A trick. Just a great big scam. That’s why you WAKE UP after seeing that "forgiven world", because you see that what is here - this world - is NOTHING REAL, it has NO VALUE, it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors that you USED to think was true, and now you RECOGNIZE it as FALSE. Then it disappears.

You then find yourself in Heaven, where there is no world, no bodies, no spacetime, no planet, no critters, no forests and oceans, and "nothing there but shines and shines forever." Now you are in KNOWING of what is REAL. And it sure as fuck was not planet Earth. You’ve now left the MOVIE SET behind, have given up your little toys and fake play things, have become COMPLETELY DISILLUSIONED with the world, and have now decided to GO HOME TO HEAVEN, leaving this world behind. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "The body is a dream." "The body is the central figure in dreaming and without the dream it does not exist." (paraphrase)

So all you folks saying "illusions about", are not RECOGNIZING that the world ITSELF is a mechanism of illusion. FORM is an illusion, no matter HOW you look at it. If you look at it and think it IS REALITY, now you are blind and decdived. ONLY by looking at it with true perception can you be NOT DECEIVED by it, not blinded by it and realize it is 100% fundamentally a device for deception and untruth, which can ONLY deceive you if you don’t realize what it is doing. In this truth, you SEE form - body signals - as something that you USED TO think was real, and now you realize it was just a TRICK. If you don’t recognize how this world is LYING TO YOU ("nothing so blinding as sight of form"), and if you think illusions are ONLY your "interpretations" of what’s out there, you’re going to be staying sleeping for a long time to come.

I think the big gross error that some people are making, is that they have decided:

1) When I’m in ego, I’m not seeing correctly, so I’m making a shit hole out of something that isn’t shitty.

2) When I’m in true perception, I will see the beautiful lovely world with the credit it deserves.

That’s totally fucked. I’m sorry. It’s 100% backwards.

1) When you are having false perception you are BUYING INTO the illusion and not recognizing it. You think it’s reality, even though you’re having a nightmare. It’s a state of hallucination and distorted interpretation.

2) When you are having true perception you STOP BUYING INTO the illusion, you recognize it is NOT TRUE. You realize it’s NOT REALITY. You are no longer having a nightmare, but you ALSO ARE SEEING THAT THIS WORLD IS NOT REAL. You stop hallucinating ABOUT IT, but that doesn’t suddenly mean "its reality." You are now seeing the TRUTH ABOUT it. The truth about an illusion is that IT IS AN ILLUSION!!!

This ties in exactly perfectly with what forgiveness is. Forgiveness OVERLOOKS FORMS and does not make them real. The idea of "looking at" the physical world "with love" and "seeing it correctly" and it being fundamentally "a lovely thing" is bullshit to the 10th degree. That’s a total failur to understand what an illusion is. You are supposed to stop believing it’s real, not believe it’s MORE REAL than before.

This is the *incorrect* view of the metaphysics:

1) False perception shows you a false world or false view OF the world

2) True perception shows you are true world, or a true view OF a true world - as if what’s out there is true and real

THAT IS WRONG!

This is the CORRECT view of the metaphysics:

1. False perception shows you a *FALSE WORLD*, AS IF IT IS TRUE, making it SEEM REAL. It is backwards perception. It renders reality an illusion, and illusions reality. You do not realize what you’re seeing "as real" IS NOT REAL. False perception sees this world AS REALITY.

2. True perception shows you a FALSE WORLD, which is NOT REAL, and recognizing that IT IS NOT TRUE. That the "truth about" it is that IT IS NOT TRUE. It renders reality as reality and illusion as illusion. Truth = true, false = false. Here you RECOGNIZE that what you’re seeing IS NOT REAL. True perception sees this world AS ILLUSION. **A LIE**

In true perception you will then be so certain that you aree merely PERCEIVING A DREAM, not a reality, that you will be ready to WAKE UP FROM DREAMING.

When you wake up from dreaming, the UNREAL WORLD - Earth - does not suddenly become real! IT DISAPPEARS beacuse it was never real to begin with!

What REMAINS is Heaven, which has nothing to do with this unreal illusory world whatsoever.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made." You MADE this world with illusions. Making makes illusions. It is not creation.

Over time with ACIM you may come to realize that you're making everything up as you go along. What things mean when stuff happens isn't actually a part of what happens. There is a judgement happening which comes in between you and the events.

You could also call it a projection or a decision, an intention or an attitude. An expression or a wish. There is this entire layer or filtering and choosing and deciding what to MAKE OF things which happens in between you and all external happenings.

In the past you might have thought that all these interpretations and experiences and the meaning of things was locked into what happens. As if the form of the situation dictates what you feel, the people involved decide your experience, and the consequences dictate what is true.

But there actually isn't any inherent meaning in the world, or the body, or in anything that happens here. Everyone has totally and utterly made up the entire thing as they've gone along. At some point in time someone has decided to give certain things certain meanings and labels. Totally arbitrary and out of the blue.

We've all inherited a lot of these labels from society etc. But what you have to realize is you're actually deciding what to MAKE OF things all the time. You have to ask yourself, is this thing really what you think it is, or are YOU determining that it is that? Are you the one GIVING it this meaning? Does it only seem to be "this bad thing" because YOU have said that it is? And what if it isn't?

As you start to explore the fact that you give everything all the meaning it has for you, that you project your decisions about what you want to see, that you decide often wrongly what to make of situations, and you are the one who judges that you should be in fear, you may realize that you're doing all this to yourself. Your "attacking thoughts" make the world seem attacking, but it isn't.

"I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) all the meaning that it has for me."

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

Now the secret of salvation says you're doing it to yourself which makes you think of an inward direction, as if you are attacking yourself from the outside in. But what you actually do is you, from the inside out, reach inside and decide what you want, what you believe, what you want to see and experience, what meanings you think are true, and THEN you project them out onto or as the world. And then you perceive it. And as you perceive it you take it as total fact.

What that means is that it is your judging, labeling, deciding, projecting, expressing, intending, your attitude, your viewpoint, your desires, your completely arbitrary choice of what you want to MAKE OF the world, that you then put ONTO it and decide is real. As such you do everything "to" the world, so to speak, and the side-effect is that you then experience exactly what you decided it was going to cause you to experience. You experience what you make of it. So then indirectly you are doing it to yourself.

As you realize that all your engagement with the world has been forced through a filter which is in you, in which you direct what to make of the world before you see things in it, you might also then realize that you can choose something else. You could conceivably choose to believe or make of the world something other than what you had been making of it. And why not? Why not just arbitrarily decide to see good in it?

Certainly if you are not at peace, you have made a wrong decision. But what this means is that you have chosen to PROJECT a decision ie a judgement about the world ONTO the world, choosing WHAT you want to make of it, and this has resulted in a loss of peace through the feedback loop of perception. Therefore, you are not at peace because you made a wrong decision ... about what you wanted to see in it.

You may not have realized yet that you actually have the freedom and control and power TO decide what you want to see in the world, and you don't HAVE to just adopt the automatic unconscious inherited interpretations of things that everyone buys into. You need to realize that the world really is totally meaningless and has no inherent meaning. Nothing that happens really means what people have decided it means. Even death is not really death.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

We've taken certain physical states and have given them labels. We've decided that a body laying motionless is death and bodies moving around are life. This is NOT the truth. They are both just different forms of the same images with NO meaning. The whole world is mistaken in even thinking that a motionless body MEANS death. It is no more alive OR dead because bodies are equally illusions in all states. So YOU in your mind decide that one of the states is bad and awful and tragic and the other is not.

We might think there's a whole host of meanings and definitions for things in the world as if they are just accepted by everyone, but ALL of these have to be questioned. They have in fact all been GIVEN TO the world by you.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

So now as you refine and heal your mind, and practice forgiveness and responsibility, it becomes more clear that you're making up all the meanings that things seem to have, and you are reacting to the very meanings you give to them. You MAKE OF situations what you would have them be. You COULD potentially make of a situation something far more light, than the dooming tragedy that you're making it out TO be. In other words, there IS another way of looking at this.

"In dreams, YOU arrange everything. People BECOME what you would have them be, and what they do YOU order."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

So this is where we have to recognize that we have the power of decision to choose, we always choose what meaning we give to everything, we're not in a position to choose or judge accurately because we don't have all the facts, we should open up to the Holy Spirit's judgement or interpretation and stop hurting ourselves with faulty evaluations.

We can potentially just as easily DECIDE, that someone is going to do well, as we can decide that they are going to do poorly. We might think ok if the situation looks like it's bad, then I will decide to agree that it's bad, and will suffer. But does it have to be seen as bad or wrong or going south? You COULD just as easily decide to believe that it's going to go well. You COULD adopt a brighter outlook. There is nothing stopping you.

It may seem at first that this is like playing with insanity or just throwing out all morality or values or sense of what things are, like some kind of LIE that you're telling yourself, some kind of thing that you're "making up". As if you're being totally fictional or in "in denial" about what's "really happening", pretending things are not bad. And indeed forgiveness IS "a happy fiction". You are MAKING a different interpretation of the world, one where you decide to see it right instead of wrong and not use it for attack.

This reveals that probably you have been floating around in a completely untethered free-roaming state, washed around by the crashing waves, believing that the world has decided for you what situations mean while all along just flitting back and forth between made-up meanings. You have been undecided and fickle and unstable and changing your mind and just all over the place with inconsistency.

Most likely you have adopted a general "attitude" or "mood" about life, maybe it's filled with bitterness, maybe it's very judgmental, maybe you attack a lot, maybe you have become pessimistic, maybe you hate people, maybe you just have "learned" that everything sucks. Or maybe you have TAUGHT YOURSELF that it does. Maybe you haven't realized that you decided every single thing you perceived in it, and COULD have changed your mind to seek a better way.

"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

Jesus simply is saying that the world doesn't mean anything at all, we are constantly making up meanings and PRETENDING that they are inherent to the situation or the forms you see, and we can EASILY just elect to believe something else. There are brighter happier outlooks that are possible, there are miraculous loving viewpoints that you could just as easily adopt. There is a higher happier healthier outlook you could have.

And again this goes back to your thoughts, because everything you think is praying for, asking for, and producing, the very thing you want to experience. It's GIVING the meanings that you have decided things have. The key is realizing YOU are in the driver's seat making all these decisions, usually deciding on your own, and it's you that's made up all the dire meanings that you see in things. You can instead adopt the holy spirit's meanings and see with his vision instead. By letting him decide FOR ME what everything is and means, from a very lofty perspective, I can experience the world in a much happier way.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

At all times you perceive ONLY what you believe is true. This can be a trap when you're not ACTUALLY believing the Real Truth.

What it does, is it makes you think that you are seeing everything there is to see, when in fact you are only seeing a 'version' of reality that has your idea of truth/reality projected onto it.

So then you get stuck, because you think, well, today I feel afraid because the world is scary. Or, today I am happy and everyone seems happy too. Or, today I am terrorized and the world is full of terrorists, etc.

What I've noticed is, that the kind of world I see totally depends on what is going on inside of me. And I'll be convinced that I'm seeing OBJECTIVELY, as though I'm not having anything to do with why the world appears to me the way it does. And so then I don't see any way out of it - my only choice is to try to 'cope' with it.

So if you think of the world as being like a mirror, in which you see reflected your own mind's content, you'll be basically looking at yourself everywhere you go. And by yourself I mean, your belief in whatever you think is true. Because whatever is 'true' for you, you take that as your identity and as your reality, regardless of whether it is actually true.

So your perception of the world is usually SUBJECTIVE, and limited, BUT you do not realize that you are being subjective and limiting in the way you're looking at what's there. You don't realize you're filtering OUT stuff because of the way that your idea of truth filters IN stuff. You select some attitudes or beliefs as 'correct' and others as 'incorrect' and all of that incorrect stuff ends up outside of your awareness - you make it unconscious through rejection and denial.

For example, if I choose to be loving, it is extraordinary that, all of a sudden, it seems like there aren't any reasons to be afraid. People seem less threatening. Life seems more fun. But if I don't be loving, I feel more afraid, and more threatened, and it really seems like other people are the cause of the threat - like they 'really are' being threatening. But them seeming to be that way and me experiencing fear go hand in hand... they go together.

What you experience in your perception is ALWAYS matched up to/aligned with what kind of a world you will see. If you are in fear, you can ONLY see a fear-inducing world. If you are in love, you can ONLY see a love-inducing world. And so if the world seems to suck, it's because you believe that you suck. Or rather, you believe in some things which suck but you think they don't suck.

And that's part of the trap. You can get lost in your narrow filtered perception, thinking you're really seeing everything there is to see, and that you're seeing correctly and clearly, when in fact you are majorly distorting and blocking out many parts of 'what is out there', because you're blocking it in your mind. When there are no blocks, you'll see 'the forgiven world', because you will have forgiven yourself. But when you haven't forgiven yourself, you will see a condemned world, because you have condemned yourself.

You'll notice then that whatever experience you're having of the world 'out there', it seems to 'call for' or directly map to certain 'reactions' of a given amount of severity. And when the world 'out there' seems to be intense and serious, you seem compelled to also have an intense serious reaction, because you always connect what you perceive out there with what's going on inside of you.

If the world out there seems to 'make a move' and do something to 'make' situations worse, your ego self is pulled right along with the story and down into the story, where YOU become the mirror of what's happened. And you have a severe reaction. Whereas when YOU decide to make a move, realizing that you are NOT seeing everything there is to see, that you are only seeing the past, and that everything that's happening right now is because of PAST decisions and the future DOES NOT have to be the same, now you are starting to step outside of your own 'reality bubble'. You can deliberately choose to accept more love into yourself, within, and therefore REVEAL to yourself more love without - which, by the way, was always there, just hidden.

The way that the out-there maps to the in-here is what sets up the "hierarchy of illusions". ie, varying kinds of inner and outer statements of truth cause reactions of equivalent amounts. It's almost like in the law of physics where each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Each external-seeming event produces an equal response in the ego within - because secretly, that's where it CAME FROM.

So be careful not to get stuck in thinking that you are being objective. The only objectivity is PURE LOVE. If you are not in pure total love, you are filtering reality and have blocked yourself from being aware that LOVE IS PRESENT. You do not see God because you think he is not there, and you think this is an objective fact, but the only reason you don't see God is because you do not believe God is in your mind. Your mental blocks to love cause the world outside of you to seem like a blocked, insane place.

It is extremely easy to get stuck in this, for example if you are afraid, you will perceive that the whole world 'really is' a fearful place, and that fear is JUSTIFIED because of the kind of world you see. But you don't realize that the fearful world you see is fearful BECAUSE you are being afraid. It did not cause the fear, it is a PROJECTION of the fear. A mirror. A reflection. So while you're having your insane nightmare, and really believe that bad stuff is happening outside you, it's because bad stuff is happening inside you. They go together hand in hand.

So you have to be willing to make a kind of leap of faith. The leap of faith says, maybe there is a greater reality, a greater truth, outside of what I currently believe, outside of my self-imposed prison, and outside of the condition of the world as I currently see it. Maybe there is are hidden parts to what's out there, that I don't currently see, because I am blocking it. And maybe, maybe God is out there, and maybe God is love, and maybe I am just not seeing and experiencing God's presence because I'm blocking it. Maybe BEHIND and BEYOND my blocks, love is still there, with me.

This is what faith is about... hurdling over the obstacles to peace and trusting that God is still love and you are still love regardless of how your perception CURRENTLY looks. It isn't about staying IN your current subjective perception and believing that it is objective reality or that you have to stay there, because in order to BECOME aware of God's love you must actually GO past those blocks and OPEN UP to the awareness that God really is present. And for that, you have to remove those blocks and filters from your mind, otherwise you simply cannot see Him right in front of your face.

God is right with you right now, smiling and happy. If you're not experiencing that, you've got some healing to do. The forgiven world is right in front of your face right now, filled with love and light, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some forgiving to do. Ultimately, you are still with God right now and the separation hasn't happened, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some undoing to do.

Be willing to be mistaken about how the world looks to you. You're not seeing it clearly unless you're seeing love.

So ultimately, when you are afraid, or you're struggling with the world in the way that the world 'is' (seems to be). .pause a moment and ask yourself, is it possible I am not seeing all of reality? Is it possible that my justification for being afraid or upset is actually CAUSING myself to see the world incorrectly and PRODUCING the justification? What if ... what if I choose instead to be more loving or truthful or authentic, and maybe keep my mind open to the possibility that WHEN I CHOOSE LOVE, I WILL SEE LOVE.

And when you do choose love, that love in you will shine away all of the fear and all of the seeming 'reasons' to be afraid. And all problems will melt. And you'll have no way to justify the ego, because all of its justifications only seem true from WITHIN it. Once you step outside of your private reality bubble, the ego is gone and there is NO REASON to be afraid or upset, because all that's left is God's love. When there is only love, and that is true for you, there is no reason to be afraid. Literally. There only seems to be reasons to be afraid when you are afraid. If you CHOOSE not to be afraid and to be love instead, all of the 'reasons' for fear will completely disappear from your awareness. They were just illusions.

So it takes a willingness to go beyond yourself, beyond your blocks and self-made limits, and to realize YOU ARE NOT STUCK because you have a CHOICE and if you exercise that choice and stop believing your own HALLUCINATIONS, and your own filtered version of reality, and realize that all your reactions TO it are PART OF you MAKING IT seem to be the way it is, you can make a LEAP into a more truthful, loving experience, in which you are absolutely safe because there is only love there.

There is no fear or danger or death in reality. There is no cause for alarm. There is only safety and love and peace. How else can God be constantly at peace if there were ever reasons to threaten that? God is the peace that God experiences. Herein lies the peace of God.

Illusions + reality = sin.

Reality - illusions = innocence.

This world we're in is a place of limitations. Everything is an illusion. Nothing is whole. Everything is partial. And all the forms that things take seem to depict and symbolise, in one way or another, ideas of separation and attack.

But even so, the world is neutral and is just a dream, it doesn't mean anything. Its forms are just mistakes - errors, various symbolic images which seem to depict impossible things, unnatural things, things not of God. Like sickness and death and murder.

None of this is a sin. But it could tempt you to believe it is a sin, IF you follow the sin formula.

The sin formula is a combination of illusions and reality. It's what you get when you take something that is an illusion and you try to GIVE IT the properties of God. If you give it reality, permanence, irreversibility, unchangeability, truth ..... then you now combine various flawed-looking limited things with truth. And that is how you convert a mistake into a sin.

Sin is then a way of looking at a mistake, in a mistaken way. It's a mistake about a mistake. It's' where you don't recognize that an illusion is just an illusion, or that a mistake is just a mistake. Instead it is regarded AS TRUE, as real, as happening, as permanent.

As such a sinful false-perception way of seeing things looks at bodies and physical happenings - which are all illusions - AS IF THEY ARE REAL.

So IF it were true that we are bodies, and IF bodies were real, and IF bodies were "doing something" to each other, it WOULD be a sin. Because now something real is attacking something real. And that WOULD be a horrendous attack upon reality. And it WOULD have real effects which can be observed and proven.

Such a sin WOULD call for punishment, it would be such a logical statement of truth and fact, such as that "you really have killed God" or "you really have killed God's son" ... that it would absolutely totally JUSTIFY all anger and all revenge and all punishment. This is why "the wages of sin is death." Logically it says you DID do this, I did not ask for it, you owe me, I am justified in revenge in order to atone and equalise, and therefore you deserve to die.

But sin - the perception that something IS a sin - is just a mistake ABOUT mistakes. A mistaken view OF illusions. A mistaken combination of things which in and of themselves are NOT true or real, taken to be true and real. An illusion believed, turns it into a sin.

Sin kind of "locks things in", makes them seem unchangeable - this is the idea that sin is irreversible. It would indeed seem that sins are irreversible if you give them God's properties - because God himself is irreversible. His permanence, confused with space and time and its contents, produces a perception of a world of sin.

"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 is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away." UrT5A5

What this is really saying is that the world of bodies is the world where you could be tempted to believe sins are happening, and typically you need bodies in order to make sins possible. But sin is just a way of INTERPRETING bodies, and once you interpret them as REAL, you introduce a demand for guilt and death.

This is why forgiveness takes away guilt, because it still looks at the same bodies but WITHOUT confusing them for something real or true. It lifts away God's properties and power and permanence, and sees that the bodies are just neutral harmless illusions. And as such they ARE ERRORS, but they are NOT SINS.

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth." UrT20H4

The body is not "sin-ful" as in FULL of sin, because this is an ego attribute - a false perception OF a body - to suggest its erroneous nature is REAL, and therefore that it is inherently a sin. The body is not really a sin. But at the same time, the body is also not said to be sin-less. .. because sinlessness is a state of such purity and innocence that it cannot have illusions in it. The body IS an illusion, so the body is actually NOTHING, so cannot accurately be said to be "a sin" OR "an innocence."

The thing is that we in our egos, in our false perception insanity, tend to COMBINE physical things with the properties of God. The worst of all these beliefs is the belief that the physical world is God's creation, IS God, and is thus real forever. This is the most sin-laden view of the world possible.

By believing the world is reality, is true, is eternal, is of God, all physical things - which are errors, are converted into sins. And now all acts, all behaviours, all events, are regarded as sins. As we believe that bodies are real, we believe that bodies ARE PEOPLE, and now we are believing that the mind is physical and souls can be destroyed.

Believing that the body is real and is the person, IS a belief in sin, and is thus an attack upon the body and the person. It's an egoic way of framing the person as not innocent. And once you believe they ARE a body, you will enter into all manner of nightmares.

There will be the nightmare of fear that their body could be in danger, the nightmare of guilt that you cannot save their body from death, the nightmare of anger that other people or things are doing stuff to their body, the nightmare of hopelessness that you cannot stop their body sickness, it goes on and on.

While we continue to be confused and lost in combining illusions with reality, giving God's properties to things which are not of God, we will continue to suffer and have a bad dream experience. But once we separate out God from the world, reality from illusions, souls/Christ from bodies, we can enter into the happier dream.

The happy dream comprises still the dream of illusions, but without sin projected onto it. Without that sense of - this is actually really a horrible bad thing. Without that attacking judgement of "this world REALLY IS a shit place." Yes it can seem to be a shit place, indeed it cannot be anything other than shit, but thankfully it is not a REAL one.

The happy forgiving dreams of RECOGNITION that an illusion is an illusion, that bodies are dreams, that the world's events are fiction, and that the world IS NOT ACTUALLY doing anything to anything real, liberates the mind and allows us to be in a state closer to sinlessness, closer to innocence. And we can project this onto the world, temporarily, and see it reflected back as the reflection of heaven. A distorted strange dream-world seen with forgiving eyes, a kind of "happy fiction."

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They" UrT4A2

"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 this view are all your sins forgiven." UrW220W11

Sins are forgiven by recognizing they are NOT sins, they are just mistakes. And mistakes simply call for correction, not punishment. When you recognize that someone just made a mistake, you do not hold it against them like it is some kind of permanent reality and truth about them. You let your view of them be CHANGED, so that you see their mistakenness calls only for a gentle loving correction, and not a horrendous accusation.

"And what else should therapy be? Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other." UrP4B4

Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing correctly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberation from ego requires only that we RECOGNIZE what is true and what is false. In that recognition, nothing needs to be added to the ego to explain why it is false. You don't need any special beliefs to organize it in a particular way. You don't need labels for it or anything. You only need to see clearly what it IS.

It's kind of like this... you're looking at an orange sitting on the table and you see it clearly. You can tell clearly its an orange. It's not an apple. It's not a banana. It's just an orange. But then if you enter into ego, you start taking things out of context, and you switch around your idea of what is true and what is false. So then you start thinking, well, maybe it's an orange-colored apple, or, maybe it's a squished-together banana.. and before you know it you don't even see it AS it is anymore. And you're insane.

So then all you need to do is become clear. Get your awareness back to clear seeing - vision of Christ - which is able to simply see without any distortions. And when it sees the ego for what it simply is - that is is an illusion, it is not real, it has no truth to it, it's a mistake, it isn't doing anything, it's imaginary and doesn't even really exist. That's the truth of it. That's seeing it WITH truth.

And then you don't need to really DO anything about the ego. You don't need to defend against it or control it or fix it or change it because you simply RECOGNIZE it isn't even really there. You recognize it is a completely ridiculous, unbelievable, wholly false idea with absolutely no value or meaning or purpose whatsoever. And then it is absolutely effortless to dismiss it.and let it go. It IS nothing and it never was.

The only struggle we have is when we believe that things which are false are true, or things which are true are false, and we're just not seeing clearly. We're mistaken. We become severely mistaken about all the ways we are stuck or sick or unhappy or lacking or deprived or abused or whatever... all these reasons which says... the truth is not true, the truth is false.. and this suffering and the need for it is true instead. That can only be perceived with a distorted, unclear perception. You must be seeing wrongly and it produces a vision of something which IS NOT TRUE.

So everything that you think is keeping you from love and happiness, is not TRUE at all. Anything anyone seemed to do to you, they didn't. Every piece of ego that you believe has the power to keep you from God, NO, it doesn't have any power.

This is all we're doing to wake up to the truth... sorting out what is true and what is false. Becoming clear. Becoming able to SEE clearly. And that's all we need to do in order to recognize the ego does not even exist. There IS NO SEPARATION. There is no sin. There is no death. This is TRUTH. But if you can't see it, you will believe otherwise (or you'll believe otherwise SO THAT you cannot see it).

"True healing is the realization you were never sick" - ACIM

The implication of this is that in order to heal or be healed, you do NOT need to find the 'cause of the sickness'. You need to go BEYOND the cause of the sickness to where sickness HAS NO CAUSE. The sickness was produced by a denial or a blockage or an unwillingness to accept that there IS NO SICKNESS AT ALL.

So then if you go looking for the cause, this not only infers that you believe that you are sick and the sickness exists because of a 'real cause', but also that the sickness stems from some kind of 'causal mistake' somewhere in the mind. Like a root or a decision that was wrong. A starting point.

It seems there is something that you 'did' which then produced a bunch of symptoms after it. But even without symptoms coming after it, that initial 'sin' isn't causing sickness to show up somewhere else separate from it - the belief in the sin IS the sickness. It is sickness because THERE IS NO SIN and to believe otherwise IS to be sick/mistaken.

It may appear that these things are the 'cause' of sickness, but really their presence at all is the 'cause' because they are blocking an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of divine health. They are blocking the atonement, which is that sickness has NOT occurred.

So in order to BE healed, you need to get past all notions of symptoms being real, and past all notions of a cause being real, and REMEMBER that there is no 'real' cause because sickness is not real. You need to remember that YOU ARE NOT SICK. And in that light, in that awareness, the sickness is not believed in, is not seen, and does not exist. Thus any 'manifestation' of it must disappear.

So if you're addressing the sickness, fighting with the sickness, trying to find the cause of the sickness, trying to uproot the sickness, trying to figure out where the sickness came from, or how to fix the sickness, you are barking up the wrong tree and the ego knows it. This only reinforces your belief in it.

The ONLY healing is in surrendering the ego, letting go of the need for the sickness - which ultimately is to block the awareness of NATURAL HEALTH. The only purpose of sickness is as an obstacle to peace and a resistance/defense against the truth. Its only purpose is to choose not to acknowledge that YOU CANNOT BE SICK because you are immortal spirit - Christ!

So let's stop. And let's move into ACCEPTING that we are 100% healthy. Let's move into allowing God's presence to heal. Let's move into recognizing that sickness can never be real, and the belief that it is real IS the sickness. And then let's drop this ego pretense that sickness is happening and admit the truth: As Christ, as God's creation, you are immortal and immune and invulnerable and immaculate. Nothing has happened and nothing can happen to make you sick. You can never be sick because God has created you innocent forever.

So all of this other 'sickness' is just the belief that you are not that, that you are not Christ, innocent, immortal and invulnerable. Your thoughts about the sickness are attack thoughts - "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability". But your invulnerability cannot BE attacked. Believing that it can IS an error, and error is sickness. Sickness is not the TRUTH, sickness is a LIE. And ultimately, death is a lie.

Own up to your immortality today.

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."

When you blame another person or think that something outside of you has 'caused you' to change in some unwanted way, you THINK that you are being powerful by finding them guilty.

Jesus says in ACIM that anger is an attempt to make someone guilty.

Every time you are angry at someone you are trying to claim and prove that they are wrong.

You think that this makes you more powerful, because you feel JUSTIFIED, and you see yourself as having been unfairly treated.

You did not see what you did to yourself, so you think they did it to you. SOMEONE must be responsible! When you don't see that it was you, you start looking for another cause to pin it on. SOMEONE must be guilty.

It seems to feel empowering and justifying to find out who did this to you. It seems to make you more right and more innocent and more righteous, to point out how someone else was wrong - that it wasn't you.

You couple innocence with attack and justify it by explaining what it was someone ELSE caused.

But when you do this, although it seems like an experience of power and intensity, it is in fact a state of weakness. It is a state of disempowerment. Your attempt to find another person wrong means that you are finding them guilty and weak. But since they are YOU, you are indirectly finding this about yourself.

So as you project your blame, you will also feel guilty, because what you are accusing someone of, your mind (which is one with theirs) knows that you're talking about YOU as well. What applies to them applies to you even if you are in denial of that.

So having this angry reaction doesn't make you powerful, but it makes the ego seem powerful, and you will feel extra justified and innocent when you are like this. You will think this lets you off the hook. It's a way to conveniently shift attention away from YOUR guilt, to point out the guilt of others, so that people won't notice what YOU have been doing. It's a cover-up.

Thinking you have this angry power makes you disempowered, because you're giving away your certainty, peace, and are replacing your REAL innocence with a fake innocence. You're trading the strength and integrity of responsibility, for the weakness and loss induced by believing you are NOT responsible - that it's someone else who is.

If you are not responsible, you are not yourself. If you are not responsible, you are a victim. If you are not responsible, you are vulnerable to attack. If you are not responsible, you will go into unconscious insanity.

This is why as ACIM says, "anger is never justified". It literally is always a lie and always mistaken. You simply did not see what you did to yourself, what you chose, what you asked for, and what you created. If you are blind to your OWN responsibility, you will find everyone else to be responsible instead, because it's just you trying to make sense of WHY something happened.

When stuff goes wrong, it is not anyone's fault. Responsibility isn't fault. Responsibility is faultless.

Ego is a device for separation. It is like a stained glass window made of many fragments and different types of filters. Each colored panel obscures and distorts the light behind it and changes it, filtering out what it does not want to see.

When the ego attempts to hold itself up to the light of God, to heaven, to creation, and attempts to look at it, it looks through this stained glass window. It CAN ONLY see separations. It is INCAPABLE of seeing unity. It thinks it is objective and impartial and unbiased but it is absolutely incapable of ever seeing and recognizing the nature of Oneness correctly.

All it sees are separations, partial truths, information which is left out and distortions that have been added. It is literally impossible for it see oneness, wholeness, truth, or consistency.

When the truth of Heaven is that God creates and has many sons and they each have individual free will, the ego looks at this through its stained glass window. All it sees is, oh look, there seems to be a correlation between the different pieces of glass and the idea of "many sons".

You can be sure that, if the ego ever looks at Oneness and sees something CORRELATING to its way of looking, that it is seeing separations, you know that something is UNTRUE. The ego cannot see God and understand it. If it is seeing something "in" God and saying, that it matches up to how the ego sees in fragments, IT IS NOT SEEING the truth.

All we can say for sure is, the ego can never see God correctly, cannot understand Oneness correctly, cannot comprehend how God has many sons without it being a separation, and therefore we need to TRUST and have FAITH that God's many sons is a truth the ego will never accept.

We are to accept the truth as it is presented. The course is telling us God has many Sons. Jesus is not a liar. Therefore, it's telling the truth. And somehow, all of those sons are "one", yet still distinct with individual free will. We have to simply accept this is true even if our egos don't understand how.

"To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails."

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

The physical universe is a grand illusion. It was designed on purpose to make it seem like God does not exist. You might think it exists for some other reason or as a natural phenomenon or as creation or whatever, but it's even more extraordinary to realize it was made as a cover-up to block the light, and how it accomplishes this is very remarkable and very much with a purpose.

God has an unusual characteristic which you will not see expressed in any form. All of God can be everywhere at once. Omnipresence. But this is even more interesting than just that God is like - really big.

It's not just that, let's say, the top part of God is in the Arctic and the torso of God is in the atlantic ocean and the arms of God are in Europe and the USA etc. That would mean some parts of God are not the same as the other parts. It would mean God is not the same everywhere. The truth is that ALL of God, and I mean literally ALL of his properties and characteristics and identity, are FULLY PRESENT in every single speck of existence, equally.

It is difficult to imagine this simply because it defies absolutely all ego-thought-system logic. The only way to really know this is to EXPERIENCE it because it transcends the ego. But it IS possible for ALL of God to be in me, while ALL of God is also in you, and ALL of God is in your neighbors. That makes absolutely no sense to the ego which cannot fathom how there would be any God left to be shared, if ALL of Him is in me, or in you. But yes, ALL of God is in all parts of existence. This is WHY the dream/illusion is holographic - the all is in every part, which defies all physics and ego-based rationale.

Now, physical matter itself was made on purpose to make God's omnipresence seem very obscure. When you look at an object, you see differences. You see properties that one object has that another object does not. And so based on physical matter, you conclude that what is in one location, is not in another. No two objects can share the same space without annihilating each other (ie they cancel out and exit this illusory existence). Nothing can overlap. Everything is separated out.

In the atomic world you will also find that particles pretty much never actually touch each other. It's not contact between particles that creates the impression of collision or a solid surface, it's force fields that radiate around the particles that push each other away. In other words, separation. Separation between different particles, which cannot share in any real way, creates the illusion of solidity. Or to put it another way, REJECTION OF ONENESS/GOD makes matter seem solid.

So what you'll find, and you're very familiar with this, is that when you look at objects and forms you notice the ways that they do not really share anything. They are all separated out, they are all different, they all have different identities, properties, characteristics, behaviors, etc. What this tells you is this simple counter-God idea, that what is in one place is NOT in another place, and there is not ANYTHING that is the same everywhere, and there is not ANYTHING that shares anything, and what is in one thing CANNOT be fully, or even partially, within something else.

This idea is the complete opposite of God's nature. When you look at physical matter in this way, you see a picture of the opposite of omnipresence. It is a picture of NO-presence (presence must be shared - God must be extended!). You see separation. You seem forms, which are blinding to your awareness. You do not generally see God, UNLESS you can learn to truly overlook the entire illusion and expand your mind to the point where you can see God IN SPITE of the illusion of form trying to tell you otherwise. This comes from true forgiveness, and with awareness. Without awareness, the illusion of form is very much a solid-seeming wall which shuts out the awareness of God's presence.

It's not really so much the physical matter itself that has any POWER to shut out the awareness of God. It is an attempt to do so. It's sort of like a 'potential trap' which you may or may not fall for depending on whether you are awake or not. But it depends on whether or not in your mind, you believe that it is reality and truth. If you are not aware enough, you WILL perceive physical matter as very strongly withholding an awareness of God from your mind. You will believe objects are all separate. You will believe God doesn't exist because you can't experience his presence.

But let me tell you this, from experience. IF and when you can expand your awareness to a significant enough point, you will begin to overlook the ILLUSION of NO-PRESENCE, which is what physical matter is, and you will start to become aware of God. In this awareness of God you will start to notice that God is not just in one object and not others, but that there is something the SAME in all objects. Beyond the appearance of the object. And you'll start to notice something consistent and the same in all people. And you'll start to experience God's OMNIPRESENCE.

The illusion of matter is there, it's being offered, but you do not HAVE to believe in it, and you CAN awake your awareness so that you can actually OVERLOOK it and see clearly, to the point where you can SEE GOD. You are then seeing God beyond the matter and in spite of the matter. This does NOT mean that the matter is God. The matter is an illusion, designed to try to STOP you from seeing God.

You see God in everything you see because God is also in your mind and therefore you are experiencing Oneness and therefore your mind will overlook form. This can make form and objects and bodies and people SEEM like they are very lovable, acceptable, unconditionally worthy, etc. Even inanimate objects will take on a considerably non-judged experience as though they are absolutely lovable.

You will also experience that because ALL of love is in everything, you do not need to GO ANYWHERE to get to where the love is. It is all where you are, whether you move or not. It's in what you look at, whether you change what you look at or not. But ultimately, it is not the objects and forms and matter and physicality that are God, it's that God is BEYOND these things and they are an illusion. The world can appear to be very lovable at this point because you are looking WITH love, AT love, IN SPITE OF the veil of illusion of the physical world - your OVERLOOKING of the physical is what is allowing you to experience love, while there are traces of this illusion left in your awareness.

Overlooking means overlooking the illusion that physical matter is the truth or that objects really are separations or that there is nothing the same or shared anywhere, which MUST mean looking PAST the form of matter itself, its physical existence, in order to experience or see love as God. This is why the matter ITSELF is not God.

Eventually sight of this "forgiven world", which Jesus describes as being very beautiful-seeming - the 'real world', will give way to a brilliant light of Oneness which completely TRANSCENDS PHYSICAL MATTER. Because if you're really going all the way far to an awareness of God's omnipresence, there are going to be no holds barred - TOTAL IMMERSION IN ONENESS, which is beyond all forms and materials. The true reality of God is not physical, and is not this universe. (When I asked Holy Spirit about this recently, He said God makes the physical universe POSSIBLE (ie via freedom), but it is YOU that makes it appear to exist by mis-creating illusions).

As such, this world, this physical universe, which is entirely composed of the IDEA of separation, based on the notion of 'SPACE-TIME', which is really the suggestion that God does not exist at all times (meaning He doesn't exist ever), and is the suggestion that God does not exist anywhere (meaning He does not exist at all)..... this world is entirely an ILLUSION. Right down to the atoms, right down to the fabric of spacetime itself, right down past the quantum level, beyond the background MIND that even holds it in suspension. This world is nothing but a make-believe attempt to block your awareness from God.

What's going to happen when you become fully aware of God and everyone becomes fully aware of God? What's going to happen when nobody believes in physical matter any more? What's going to happen when nobody is DECEIVED by physical matter any more? We're going to see past physicality entirely, see God entirely, experience God entirely, and GO HOME! And the physical universe.... bleh.... it simply will be recognized as having never existed. "This world holds NOTHING that I want" - ACIM. .. because I want God.

And with that ... poof... it's gone. And all that will be left is the true existence of Heaven - God's real creation, which is not physically oriented at all. Why would Heaven obscure God's omnipresence with ideas of separation and form and materials that differ and keep apart?

Pure Oneness. Peace at last. Home.

The only problem we have is that we are not recognizing what is true and what is false correctly.

There are things that the ego says are true, which are actually false. But we believe they are true.

There are things which God says are true, which we believe are false, but are actually true.

It has a lot to do with willingness. The willingness to ACCEPT that God's truth is true, and the ego's truth is not true.

But see... if we think the ego's truth actually IS true, we're going to automatically think God's truth is false.

For example.

If we believe we sinned and are guilty, we will believe we deserve punishment and not love.

This belief will distort our perception.

We will see the worthiness of being punished as TRUTH, and we will agree with it.

We will then see the punishment NOT as punishment, but as welcome. Something we want.

We will even welcome death, seeing it as salvation.

As soon as we start being convinced that what the ego says is the truth, our perception just gets all flipped upside down and the things which would HURT us start to look like they're going to be HELPFUL.

Things which are NOT true, start to look true. Things which HURT us, start to seem appealing. Things which make things WORSE for us, start to look like solutions. Things which make us SUFFER, start to look like they are helping us.

And then, things which REALLY are true, start to look false. Things which would HEAL us, start to seem like a threat. Things which would make things BETTER, start to seem like something that would make things worse. Things which would UNDO suffering, start to seem like things which would ADD suffering.

This is how mixed up we become. We do not ****RECOGNIZE**** what is true and what is false.

We MISTAKE false things for true things, and true things for false things.

This makes us very CONFUSED, and yet we will still believe in the midst of that insanity, that we are TOTALLY sane, things TOTALLY make sense, we are TOTALLY right, we HAVE the whole truth, and we're seeing everything PERFECTLY. We will not even REALIZE that we are in a state of suffering or denial or unhappiness. We will not ACKNOWLEDGE it, or see it, or recognize it for what it is.

By believing the ego's lies are truth, those lies STOP LOOKING LIKE LIES, and start looking like truth. It doesn't matter how sane or insane someone is, or how confused, EVERYONE will always believe they are seeing fully, clearly, perfectly, correctly, rightly, accurately, and that their discernment is 100% correct. Even if the are believing the death is the only way to live, they will believe they are TOTALLY CORRECT in that perception. They simply have become BLIND to the ability to DISCERN that their own perception is very distorted.

We would, in the ego, happily jump into a vat of acid, or destroy ourselves in any number of horrific ways, BELIEVING SINCERELY, that it is going to SAVE US FROM GOD's WRATH. Death actually start to look APPEALING to those who are insane and whose thought system is so backwards that they think SUICIDE is actually SALVATION.

The ego has flipped everything around. It sees lies in the truth and truth in lies. It sees life in death and death in life. it sees gains in losses and losses in gains. It sees hurt in love and love in hurt. It sees sin in innocence and innocence as sinful. It sees death as the doorway to eternal peace. It sees sacrifice as a way to gain everything. It becomes ATTRACTED TO GUILT AND DEATH, simply because it does not RECOGNIZE them as guilt and death, it instead thinks they are sacred and HOLY and PURE and WELCOMING!!!

This is how insane it gets. And all death is suicide, CHOSEN, by people whose perception is so back to front that they think that moving AWAY from life will bring them closer to it. That death is a way OUT of the suffering that seems real. That death is a "real option" that will "solve all problems". Only the blind would choose such a solution.

"Forgive them father for they know not what they do."

Literally, anyone in the ego DOES NOT KNOW that they are in the ego. They don't RECOGNIZE it for what it is. They think they are in heaven when they are in hell. They think they are in hell when they are in heaven. They think their successes are failures and their failures are successes. It's all back to front, and it's not even RECOGNIZED.

Being in the ego means being UNCONSCIOUS, and in unconsciousness, what is true and what is false loses ALL CONTEXT. That means REAL TRUTH has been shut out of awareness, and now there is nothing to COMPARE anything to. No yard stick or hard and fast reliable consistent truth to compare things to to say, is THIS true, or is THIS false? There is a loss of perspective. A loss of sight. A loss of contrast. A loss of sanity. And all that remains is to thrash about in the dark MAKING UP truth and being totally confused about whether it is actually true or not.

To correct this we need to do only really ONE THING. That is, to become willing to consider we might be MISTAKEN about what we believe is true.... to consider, maybe we were mistaken about God's truth, and maybe what we BELIEVE IS TRUE, is actually FALSE. Every belief of the ego SEEMS true, but is false. Yet we currently believe it. Whether it be a belief that we sinned, a belief that we're guilty, a believe that we're unworthy of love, a belief that we're not good enough, or don't deserve forgiveness, or are lacking, or whatever.

These "false beliefs", these untruths masquerading as truth, NEED to be CORRECTED. The course says that perception needs to be corrected but its really your BELIEFS, because belief is your conviction about what is true. What you BELIEVE you WILL PERCEIVE. And you will perceive it BECAUSE you believed it. And then, upon perceiving it, it will seem to CONFIRM that what you believe is true, not realizing you're stuck inside a closed box of your own making.

You have to be willing to dig out and challenge your ego beliefs. Then you need to be willing to RECOGNIZE THEM AS FALSE, by "deprogramming" yourself. Whatever way works for you. To DISBELIEVE these lies, to strip them of all belief, to collapse your trust in them, to REVERSE them, to stop believing they are TRUE, and to start believing, simply, THEY ARE NOT TRUE. They are false. It's NOT TRUE that you are a sinner. It's NOT TRUE that you are guilty. It's NOT TRUE that you don't deserve love. It's NOT TRUE that you can't be forgiven. etc.

I have found personally that any act of affirming or clarifying or emphasizing that some false ego belief IS NOT TRUE, is an act of moving towards God and towards healing. It is an act of transitioning from a mistaken truth to a real truth. It seems to be ONLY this changing of hands, this willingness to CHANGE BELIEF, so that what you thought had truth to it, is BELIEVED LESS, and what you thought was false, is BELIEVED MORE. ***THAT*** right there is the way to change your perception, and THE ONLY WAY.

This sorting out of what is true and what is false will take you ALL THE WAY to the atonement. It's the ONLY process to get there. Somehow, you have to shift allegiance from listening to and trusting the ego's voice, to listening to and trusting the Holy Spirit's voice. To stop BELIEVING that the ego's beliefs are true, and to RECOGNIZE them as FALSE. That's all you need to do! Just keep systematically reversing these beliefs, undoing them, stopping believing them, withdrawing faith from them, learning to MISTRUST the ego and to TRUST God, and to CLEARLY DISTINGUISH.. what is true, from what is false.

This clarification is what will make your perception CORRECT. Correct perception, or true perception, means you are perceiving WITHOUT DISTORTION. It means you can SEE, but what you see ... you recognize which parts of it are actually true, and which parts are actually false, in terms of the REAL TRUTH. Rather than, MIS-IDENTIFYING some parts as false which are true, or some parts as true which are false.

For example do you believe people have real sickness? All those people in hospitals? THEY DO NOT HAVE "real sickness". They only have FAKE SICKNESS. There IS no such thing as real sickness. So this is a major belief which has to be CORRECTED. How about your belief that something "bad happened"? That's a belief that sin is real. Is it true? You have to question that. It did not REALLY HAPPEN. It was an illusion in a dream. There have NOT been any real consequences in reality. You did NOT lose your innocence.

Discernment. What is true. What is false. Being completely clear about which is which in reality, and not what you've made them to be. This will liberate you from all suffering and make you CONVINCED that God's truth is the ONLY TRUTH, and the ego's truth is THE ONLY LIE. Then you are ready to accept the atonement.

I used to attack myself pretty severely through the fear of being judged by others. I was painfully shy and perceived a need to withdraw in an effort to protect myself, but all this did was hurt myself deeply.

My shyness was a coping mechanism for protecting my sensitivity. I had failed to learn how to express myself fully, and it didn't help that I was an introvert. I had trouble learning social skills and asserting myself. Every social interaction was literally painful.

I did not realize what I was doing to myself. My perception was that other people were perceiving me in a certain way, which I was simply trying to get away from.

After a social encounter, particularly one with strangers or where I had to go into someone else's home or be surrounded by a crowd, I would feel deeply, deeply hurt. I would become strongly embarrassed in the midst of the situation, would tense up, become very quiet (paralyzed) and experience things as though everyone was judging me.

I would return home with a very very deep inner emotional pain, a feeling of "hurt", that was so strong I had no choice but to have a deep cry in order to deal with it. Every social encounter seemed like a total failure and something I did not want to be a part of, making me avoid them even more. It was deeper and stronger than any other emotional upset about any other situation in life. It felt absolutely horrible.

When strangers would even walk past I would immediately cringe and feel attacked. I suspected they were a threat, and saw them as enemies or someone I did not want to be around. They seemed to have power over me and I hid away and withdrew in an effort to avoid people.

I had no idea what was happening in my perception or what I was doing to myself. I only thought that other people were hurting me and causing me to feel like shit. It seemed to all be their fault, and they were the ones who we being judgmental.

But over time I have gradually, slowly learned, that this is not the case. It was difficult to come to realize this.

I saw that I was in fact judging everyone else. I saw them as judged in some way, although this seemed to be subtler and concealed behind my reaction to this perception. Seeing them as judgers automatically meant I was judged by them and therefore at their effect. The effects this produced in my own self was the deep hurt.

I had to realize that in order to see them as judgers, I had to believe they were the ones being judgmental, which was in fact my own belief. I was making them out to be judgers. And that meant, I was simultaneously judging my own self by seeing myself in the role of "judged" by them.

It never really had anything to do with other people judging me either. In fact, probably in 99% of cases they were not being judgmental at all. They were not even interested. They weren't saying anything about me or pointing a finger or anything. But I had this "mental illness" of strongly believing that I couldn't go anywhere without being under attack. And it wouldn't matter if someone pointed out that no-one really cared to judge me because they were too busy with their own selfish interests, I couldn't see it.

What I was really doing was seeing myself as judge-worthy, disassociating a part of my mind and projecting it onto others, seeing them as the judger rather than myself, and then creating the effects within myself that correspond to how I perceived others to be perceiving me. I literally was hurting myself. The hurt I did to myself was far worse than anything anyone else ever did, and it was all because of how I was mis-perceiving.

Underneath this fear of judgement there was a belief that I deserved to be judged, because I believed I had sinned and was guilty. I didn't see myself as worthy of love and therefore perceived that others agreed with me. My direct self-attack turned into indirect self-attack that appeared to be coming at me from other people, but was really coming at me from within a part of my mind that I did not recognize as myself.

I was being both the judger of myself, and the one who was judged. Or in other words, a victimizer and a victim. I played both roles but only saw myself as playing the victim role, and unfairly so. The mere act of perceiving oneself in a victim role automatically creates effects in yourself, typically emotional reactions which try to correspond to the causes that you see as outside of yourself. Because I saw others as judging me severely, I felt severely hurt. Truth is, both the perception that others were judging and the hurtful effects of the judgement were both put in place simultaneously by myself.

I needed to forgive myself. And this has taken a very long time and it's been a very gradual slow process. Over the years, a sense of being separate from others has diminished. A sense of being trapped in myself has diminished. A sense of frustration at not being able to fully express has diminished. A sense of it not being okay to simply be the way I am has diminished. In fact, recently there has been a growing, wonderful freedom, of finally not giving a fuck.

This funnily enough manifested in recent hairstyles. It suddenly became fun to play with looking ugly, rather than trying to look pleasing. And I don't mean this ugliness is another judgement, just that, I've found myself being really "ok" with looking whatever way I look without it meaning anything or causing a judgement.

This is so freeing. It now becomes more of a "playful" experience, where it doesn't matter one way or another, and where I'm growing stronger in my willingness to present myself in whatever way I like without caring (worrying) about what people will think of it.

You may have noticed over time that in my writing I now swear a lot more often. I used to be so repressed that I would never swear, and thought I was more special or holier than others by not doing so. It's now more of a pleasure to swear. To some this may seem like I'm turning 'evil' but that's not the case. I'm becoming more authentic and more myself, censoring myself less and recognizing that I am free.

Taking responsibility for everything I am experiencing shows me that I can only be upset if I hurt myself, no-one else is the cause of what I feel, and therefore I am set free of concern for massive people pleasing or not showing up fully as myself. I was trying to be everyone but myself, to be something I am not, and to disown myself. There is nothing but pain and suffering there when we do that.

There are some people out there especially those who are painfully shy, who appear on the surface to be sweet and nice but have a strong persona, a facade of everything being alright all the time when underneath there is a searing self hatred and repression and sense of unworthiness and of not being "allowed" to do anything. It's a state of self imprisonment. I still at times struggle with limiting myself and Holy Spirit having to remind me "you are allowed". I often thought I was imprisoned by someone else in life, but really it was my own doing.

Some of these people who are suffering from self-inflicted unworthiness and quiet suffering, turn to suicide as an escape. My own life became one of depression and despearation and a growing feeling that I was approaching some kind of "end". If I had not met my wife at about that time I probably wouldn't be here.

A sense of an "end" was a sense of intense separation, isolation and being cut off from everyone. I was ostracized "by society" for an earlier "accident", but really it was a way for me to do this to myself, to give me a good reason why I should suffer in silence and be unhappy. I have had to crawl out of my own self-inflicted hell-hole. Some people are not able to do this. There was a guy at my workplace who was similarly shy who no one would suspect was suffering painfully every day through false perceptions, and he shot himself.

I am thankful for the Holy Spirit and Jesus who have helped me immensely to come out of my nightmares and into a happier place. I still have work to do but everything keeps heading in the direction of heaven. A Course in Miracles has been a God-send in terms of correcting my perceptual distortions and helping me to undo the grossly self-inflicted false beliefs that torture and condemn from the inside out. I am so different to how I used to be now that I don't recognize myself in photos.

Freedom and relief from suffering comes from the recognition of what we are doing to ourselves. We are the ones who need to forgive ourselves and undo our own self attack. There is a way out of hell, because we are the only ones keeping us in hell. No-one is keeping us here but ourselves. Fear of judgement is secretly the fear of being judged by God, which is an attempt not to go Home by justifying self attack. But there is a better way. And that means, if we will become willing, we can go Home to God and be happy. Thank God for that!

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

What one thing has, another thing does not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are an immortal permanent being, changeless and the same forever. The goal of awakening is to KNOW THYSELF as this fixed, unchangeable, eternal spirit. A being that is utterly unaffected by anything no matter where it goes or what it does, certain of who and what it is forever.

The question then is, why do you have fear if you are such an unchangeable being? Nothing can attack you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can stop you from existing, nothing can make you dead. So why are you afraid all the time?

The main cause of fear is the idea of death, that you might stop existing and not live forever. It's something that has to undermine your sense of permanence and immortality, to make you mortal, in order for you to be threatenable. If you might not live forever, you might die, and now you are afraid.

But the real issue here isn't that you might die - because you can't. You are an immortal being that is always the same forever. The issue is that you BELIEVE you are something else. You don't recognize yourself as permanent. You think you've become something that can be attacked or threatened or in danger.

So really most of our fears stem from body-identification, false ideas about who and what you are, a failure to recognize your permanence, forgetting your invulnerability, having artificial values and specialness, separating yourself off from the whole of eternity and trying to be limited.

If you are in states of confusion about what you are, you are mistaken. And that mistakenness inspires fear in you. You make false conclusions and then you suffer, and you're doing it to yourself. If you could know yourself as you really are you could never have any reason to be afraid, knowing that you are eternal and live forever.

When your body is having problems, when the world is threatening, when stuff is going wrong, when the fires are raging, when you've lost things, when you're angry at someone etc, you're believing that you are not an immortal being. And that makes you start believing that these other things have power over you, causing you to be suffering and sick and unhappy. But this is a mistake. Every source of fear is a mistaken belief in a power outside of you that isn't really doing anything.

It wouldn't even matter to you if you were being in a body or not, or coming or going, seeming to exit the world or not, because you'd know it has no bearing whatsoever on who and what you are. It doesn't change you or affect you or make you dead. You just carry on being you, forever, guaranteed and protected by God.

So really all our suffering stems from the belief in death, which is a belief in mortality, which is a denial of being immortal. We need to remember our immortal nature in order to assert that we cannot be hurt, have never been hurt, and therefore all is forgiven.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost." UrT8D6

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead." UrW139L3

"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU." UrT16D4

"It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick." URT9K3

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today." UrW84L2

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be." W166L11

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

I was being controlling. I did not want things to be the way they are. i wanted to stop them being the way they are and be different. I could not accept that this was okay or that it should be this way.

But I did not realize the effect that this control has on the world.

When I resist what's happening, I resist by attempting to control and reject what's going on. I try to shut it out, at the same time as trying to put into place some kind of 'alternative' that I think is better or more correct. So there I am in a state of strong rejection, and strong enforcement, simultaneously - which obviously is conflicting and therefore upsetting.

I did not realize that my attempt to resist and control was actually CAUSING the situation I was looking at, to appear to me in the way it was appearing.

The more I did not like what was happening, the more I tried to stop it and control it. But the more I did that, the more the situation seemed to get further from how I wanted it.

The more we control, the more we resist. So now that I am in resistance, that resistance only becomes stronger as I become more passionate about forcing things to be how I think they should be. In fact, it's really impossible for me to HAVE things the way I want them, because to make them be that way takes a tremendous amount of control and manipulation, which means I am in tremendous resistance, which means I am not in a state of acceptance.

There never will be a time when I can both be controlling and enforcing situations while also experiencing acceptance. So in effect, i will never be able to experience that the outcome I wanted has actually occurred and that I am at peace with it. Unless that is I became SO incredibly controlling that I violated boundaries and rights attempting to get others to change. Which would of course be completely inappropriate on many levels.

I did not know that trying to control a situation makes it worse, and takes it further from acceptability. How can anyone ever find the peace of acceptance through being controlling? Good luck.

The more I saw the situation is needing to be controlled because it was 'out of control' and unacceptable, the more the people involved seemed to become even more out of control and unacceptable. Funny that. They reacted to my controlling efforts with their own resistance against my attacks, so no wonder the scenario I was trying to get away from simply became more stuck and rigid. What you resist persists.

My strategy is now shifting. I need to learn to be accepting, not controlling. Allowing, not enforcing. Permitting, not resisting. And that means, or at least seems to mean to my ego, that I cannot have things the way I want them. Which to the ego, seems to suck, right?

My ego wants to have a world where I get to 'control' certain things, even if it's only in the scope of my 'own life' or my 'own body'. I still want to have that control over 'my' life. And so that really means, I am wanting to control MYSELF. How strange is that?

Control isn't the same as free will. And having no control does not mean you don't have freedom. In fact you have more freedom when you are not controlling. How's that for a paradox? Control takes away your freedom instead of giving it to you! Yet another way in which the ego says one thing and does the exact opposite.

So then, to my intellect, it doesn't understand how I can be accepting and uncontrolling and still be in any way 'happy' about what's going on, or how I can have any 'say' in what's going on. It doesn't understand how it's possible to accept what is, and yet have the freedom and power to do something to change something. It sees acceptance as the doorway to powerlessness, to no choice, to passivity and victimhood. Interesting how the ego sees it this way in order to avoid acceptance, because if you become really accepting you become empowered.

Acceptance without powerlessness or passivity. A novel concept.

The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.

Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.

While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.

Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.

Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:

"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."

(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)

"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."

(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)

"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."

(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)

"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)

"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."

(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)

"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."

(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)

"The world IS perception." "The world you made."

Some people believe that they are just a little mind inside a little body. And based on this premise, they think they peer out onto an outside world, and "perceive it" or interpret it. They think perception is entirely this act of looking out upon the world that's there. As if false perception is a misinterpretation of what's there and true perception regards it as "God intended", all seen from "within" a body.

But this position is entirely fictional, because in truth your mind contains the world ("heaven and earth are both in you rmind") and you are therefore "bigger than" the universe. Even the "physical planet" Earth, the solar system,and the galaxy, are inside your mind.

Therefore the self that seems to be solely "inside a body and not outside it" is an illusion of playing small. And therefore perception is not merely your peering out through the body, perception is a universe-sized mind dreaming of a PLANET, including the making of countless bodies. You are dreaming of an entire world. ALL of it is your perceiving from that unlimited vantage point. You thinking of yourself as just "little and in a body" is a decoy, a piece of a dream inside a larger dream. You are making the entire environment from the outside in.

This is why the world, Earth, the planet, is itself your mechanism of perceiving, a visualization and hallucination of a world. "The world is false perception." Earth is your misperceiving, from a universe-sized mind. It is a dream you are having, as a universe-sized dreamer. Correcting perception and shifting from false perception to true, does not entail seeing the world's truth, but recognizing the world is always false perception and that you must OVERLOOK IT in order to see the truth BEYOND it, beyond this universe, shining from God's world - Heaven - which is another universe entirely.

"Your mind has the power to create worlds."

When you dream at night, you invent not only a body, but an entire environment. You make building and streets and trees and people and various happenings. Sometimes entire landscapes. And within this dream, which you are making ALL of in fine detail, you make a body which you place a portion of your awareness into, and peer out through, upon this dream world that YOU ARE MAKING, pretending to see it AS IF it is just "there on its own" and has nothing to do with your dreaming it. That you don't believe you are putting it there AT ALL. And so you think "I am only this body, in this objective world." This is entirely an illusion, because your mind is literally MAKING THE WHOLE WORLD that you are roaming around in, and that makes you are PRETENDING not to be its maker by hiding in a body.

The same is true of this world, Earth, this universe, this realm. It is an entire landscape you are MAKING WITH YOUR MIND. It is a dream, that your mind is actually literally putting there, on a MASSIVE SCALE. Your mind is MAKING PLANETS. This is "the world you made." And in this world, like in your night dreams, you are putting yourself inside a tiny body and pretending to be so small and insignificant and powerless and mindless that you couldn't possibly be making the planet, or even making your own body. You then think someone else more powerful must make it and it's not you, ie it's God. Not true. YOUR MIND IS MAKING THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT. And is then hiding in a body to pretend to disown the entire making of it, so that you can pretend you did not make the world, and rather that IT MAKES YOU, and thus you suffer by its hand.

This is all self deception. The ENTIRE WORLD IS YOUR PERCEPTION. Your mind is larger than the universe. Its PERCEPTION makes PLANETS. And so the correction of illusions in your mind, and the end of false perception (the world is false perception), literally means, the end of the world. The disappearance of the universe. You have to think really, really, really big to get this.

CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION?

While it may seem in many ways that ACIM is telling you to change your perceptions, you can't actually do this by changing your perception.

"Projection makes perception" tells you that perception is caused by projection. This statement confirms it.

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Which means that perception is an EFFECT. And you cannot change effects without changing their causes. The cause of perception is projection. Which tells you that you need to change WHAT you project, in order to change what you perceive.

"The world IS perception" and "The world is effect" tells you the same thing. You project a world as an EFFECT, not as something causal, and changing your perception does not cause anything.

However, in the question of what you project, projection ITSELF is merely a "medium" through which the "what" is projected. Jesus in fact tells us that your mind cannot exist without projecting, and it either projects ego or projects the Holy Spirit/truth.

So it's not really a question of whether you project or not, but more to do with "who with" or "what" you project. And that means that your perception isn't a matter of whether or not you are projecting, but what is coming out. And where does that something come from?

Well in fact he also tells us that the mechanisms for seeing begins by looking WITHIN first, at the content of your BELIEF, which you then project outward. So this tells you that in order to end up changing your perceptions you have to change your beliefs, so that you project a different belief, resulting in a changed perception.

But this too is not the end of the story. Because he in fact says that you believe IN what you VALUE, and so belief is something applied to what you value to try to give it value. And belief is also tied to what you WANT, because it then becomes what you want to SEE, resulting in you projecting it in order to end up perceiving it.

So in fact what you value or "hold true" or "make real" is what begins the whole process. What you value or hold true is what you want, which is what you then believe in, which is what you project, which is what you end up perceiving. This is the mechanism.

So while ACIM is seeming to tell you to shift your perceptions, or seems to be all about changing perceptions of things, it really isn't. That's an end result. It's main focus is that you find the cause in the mind, the root, the starting point of what ends up being projected and perceived. And that involves changing what you value and believe. And to do that you have to have a little willingness. Mainly because it all hinges around what you WANT, which is to do with your free will.

Ultimately then it's really an act of WILL, as to whether or not you will change your mind about what it values and believes is true. Which is why without a little willingness nothing can change at all. Will, or the attempted resistance of will, to become unwilling, is what made perception and the world in the first place, and it is through willingness that you return to freedom from it.

Perception just happens to be changed along the way as a side effect. It's not even something you can directly do anything about. Similarly to how you cannot directly "heal the body". You have to change the mind first. Just as Jesus says, the only meaningful change of mind is when you choose a totally different thought system, which really means choosing heaven over hell.

The only freedom you have left is the power of your decision, your choosing. "Mind is the mechanism of decision" and it is where the free will is. And you exercising your free will IS the only choice you have left in this world. So it all starts with your willingness and then your perception will automatically take care of itself as you adjust what you want and what you value.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

God gave us our perfect self, with eternal life and immortality. There is nothing wrong with us.

But we denied who we were, hid from ourselves, blocked our awareness of being perfect, and tried to destroy our selves.

Having blocked our perfection we thought we were lacking and in need, as though empty of self, and began to feel compelled to find ourselves. But without questioning the belief that we were not already love within.

So we started to look outside ourselves, separate from ourselves, for ourselves. We thought we had to invent ourselves, add ourselves, redefine ourselves, make ourselves. Because we lacked ourselves.

And so we made up a false identity, an ego self, a fake self, of our own making, in an effort to have a self. In an effort to compensate for the lack of self, resulting from self denial.

By following the "seek and do not find" paradigm we thought that we could replace the self God created with another one of our own choosing. But this can never work because we keep trying to create it separate FROM ourselves.

And this self we keep trying to make needs bolstering, needs validation, needs attention, needs reinforcement, needs effort and energy and work, needs to be constantly patched up, constantly fixed, constantly modified and perfected, made to be "right" and superior and to be proud of this self. It is always becoming a self and never really being one.

But all this effort to make a false self is arising from the denial of BEING a self already. It's coming from not accepting who you really are as created by God. It's a substitute for the self you think you LOST and believe you do not have.

So if you were to simply accept yourself as God created you, if you were to uncover your real Christ self, if you were to just let yourself exist already as a creation of God, you'd have no lack of self, and no need to make a self, and would stop manufacturing the ego.

The making of a separate self is the end goal of attempting to have a "spiritual path". Attempting to become something, to gain something, to transform into something, to produce something. You keep wanting to form a spiritualised ego, a self that is spiritual, of your own making. But this is an ego pursuit - a pursuit of ego by ego. Trying to turn yourself into something more spiritual, while your real self is already 100% spirit.

It's all to do with you trying to seek to have a self that you think you lack. Why would you need to invent a new self and have an ego self or be a body if you already had a self that God gave you?

Thus accepting atonement is simply about you owning up to being what you already are, uncovering the self God created, re-identifying with your true nature, and simply knowing yourself. Know thyself as you were created by God, as you have always been, and as you will always be.

You cannot be someone you're not, you are not lacking, and you cannot be the creator of yourself.

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.

Most of your perceptual errors and projections come about because you simply lack some information. You are unaware of some truth. Some pieces of the picture are missing for you.

You try to make sense of what you see, ie what you are aware of, and you look around and you do not see yourself as being the cause of what's happening. So it MUST be someone else.

It becomes totally reasonable to come to these false conclusions, based on the evidence you are aware of. They make sense. You're just trying to make sense out of what you are experiencing.

So if you seem to be upset and suffering and you do not SEE that you have done this directly to yourself, you will quite naturally and understandably start looking for causes elsewhere. Maybe it was someone else that did this to you?

And then it becomes very plausible and acceptable that its "true" that someone else must've done this, so you blame them. You're not really trying to be an asshole, you're just trying to make sense of your experience of your little slice of reality, and are confused because you don't really know everything there is to know.

So it is really forgivable, that you make these mistakes. They are very understandable mistakes, given how little information you are aware of. There are all kinds of things going on in your UN-concious mind which you are not even aware of, and there are ways you're doing things to yourself that you do not even see.

And there are beliefs that you have suppressed that you may not even be aware that you believe. And as these things play out, they seem to come out of nowhere and you can't explain how or why, they seem unjustified, and therefore you are justified in being angry and see yourself as victimized.

It's ok. You just don't have the full awareness of all the facts that you would need, to come to any other conclusions. Based on what you ARE aware of, your conclusions make a lot of sense, IF these limited facts were all the facts. But that's a big IF, and they are not all the facts at all.

All you need to do then is become more AWARE of more of the truth, to make what was unconscious conscious, to re-awaken your whole mind, and become able to SEE the whole of the truth. This will clear EVERYTHING up for you. You will see it all in a new light, and you'll be like, OHHHHH, now it makes more sense!

Then what you thought was a truthful explanation for why you were a victim, now becomes more obviously seen as a choice you made on your own, or something you did to yourself. And now you can very EASILY let other people off the hook because you can SEE that they really did not do this to you - you did it.

All you need is just more information. More awareness of the truth. That will shed so much light on what you are experiencing and will explain everything. And it will help you to see that there is really no need to be upset, because separation hasn't even really happened and nothing in this world is real at all. And then you'll remember to laugh, and be justified in laughing, because the truth will set you free from your mistaken perceptions.

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!!

If you remove a part of the body, take away an arm and a leg? Do you still exist? Yes you do.

If you take away the other arm and leg, do you still exist? Yes you do.

If you take away the torso, do you still exist? Yes you do.

If you take away the head, so that there is literally nothing left of the physical body, do you still exist? Yes you do.

What does that tell you? It means that EITHER

1) You are purely physical and when the last trace of the physical body is gone YOU are gone forever. Total death. OR

2) What you are CANNOT BE SEEN by the body's eyes, you are effectively INVISIBLE, and this means that there is an ENTIRE WORLD which is invisible to your body, which it cannot see. The spirit world. A whole dimension or environment which the body CANNOT EVEN SEE!

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

Consider that for a minute. The body cannot actually see the spiritual world. The spiritual world, and God, are INVISIBLE to the body's eyes. The body's eyes were in fact made in order NOT TO SEE it, and to focus on illusory solid surfaces instead, to block your vision. Nor can the body's eyes EVER be used to see it. Only the spiritual eye or mind's eye can see with vision, and it does not depend on the body or on photons of light.

"Do not seek vision through YOUR eyes. For you MADE your way of seeing, that you might see in darkness, and in this you ARE deceived. BEYOND this darkness, and yet still WITHIN you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light."

"The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for YOU."

"You do not SEE your brothers, and, in the darkness, you cannot look upon the light you GAVE to them."

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only answer."

"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."

"You CANNOT see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you NEED to see."

"But the memory of God cannot shine in a mind which has MADE it invisible, and WANTS TO KEEP IT SO."

"When you made what is NOT true visible, what is true became INVISIBLE. Yet it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It IS invisible to you, because you are looking at SOMETHING ELSE."

"And Christ is invisible to you BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAVE MADE VISIBLE TO YOURSELVES. Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and Truth. God's Son CAN be seen, because His Vision is shared."

Just because you forget the light from time to time doesn't mean it goes away. It is permanent. It waits for you to return to it. And even after your next round of madness it is still there waiting for your return. It's never possible to remove it and it doesn't go away.

The ego's voice will come up with countless ways to persuade you that there is no light left anymore. All doom and gloom and darkness and death. It'll tell you there is no light and you might as well give up. This is not actually true. The light is always there, inviting you to join it.

To join the light you have to step out of the darkness, which means no longer dwelling in the ego's viewpoint and shifting your perspective to the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the light of truth.

Taking things lightly or lightening up doesn't have to mean you've got to fake being happy or not care about anything. It means you get to genuinely be happy and carefree because the light sets you free. The "light side" is a way of looking, a way of perceiving, and a way of experiencing. It arises from sanity and truth and certainty.

The Holy Spirit's offering is one of peace and calm and illumination and clarity. He is available to show you a view of the world which can't be taken seriously, which shows you how trivial everything is here, and recognizes that all this ego stuff really is literally nothing.

What were you so worried about? It was nothing. What was so alarming and shocking? It's nothing. The Holy Spirit looks upon the illusion of "the dark side" and recognizes it is false. It has no truth to it. It has no credibility. It isn't to be listened to and has no argument that can convince the Holy Spirit it has a solid foundation. The Holy Spirit merely looks upon it, recognizes it is completely false, and that therefore there really IS no ego. It IS nothing.

If you are caught up in the story of life or the suffering agenda of the ego or the seeming bleakness of the ego's lies, then you need some light. You can't just `lighten up` by denying, however. Sometimes you have to work through your clouds and process your feelings and coming to a point where you're ready to look at things in a different way.

But at some point you DO need to open up to the Holy Spirit. You can't get to the light by ignoring him or not including Him. Similarly Jesus is with you in the light and you can't be in the light without Him being with you.

There is hope, because darkness is never permanent or true and the light is forever and always truthful. There is hope because the Holy Spirit is with you now and always will be and WILL NOT FAIL to lead you home to the light. We but need to be willing to stop listening to our own ego voice and turn within to listen to His voice of sanity and calm and reassurance.

Everything IS alright. Nothing has gone wrong. We are already saved.

Let's also remember that God Himself has appointed the Holy Spirit as his ANSWER to all of our suffering and darkness. God has GIVEN His support. He is in us, eager to help us in any way possible if we would allow it. His Help has no limits other than our resistance to accept it. It isn't bits of truth or quotes or thoughts or certain feelings or justifications or explanations that will save you, it is the LIGHT OF GOD - as the Holy Spirit - in your mind. This is what you need to connect with. He is your APPOINTED TEACHER, comforter, and friend. He is there for a reason. Use him.

When you're upset, you're having an experience. It seems very real to you. It's frightening. It seems that something has happened or something is true, and because it seems true it's scaring you.

But what you need to realize is that "you are not upset for the reason you think."

You think you're upset because of what a person did, or didn't do, or what happened, or what you saw. You think something other than yourself caused it, or that something's happening beyond your control. But this isn't really why you are upset.

You're having an experience right now of upset and fear and guilt and anger and shame, and that is inside of you. Its yours. But the main problem is you've placed the cause of this experience into something separate from you. You think it's that person who put these feelings there. You think it was that thing happening that caused this upset. And you see yourself as having been unfairly victimized by them. And now you're suffering and you can't get out of it.

Well all of this experiencing is inside you because it's yours, and it was already inside you BEFORE this person or event came along. You had it stored away in the back of your mind, unhealed. You are already full of all the upset and fear that you could possibly need to account for all of your upsetting experiences in every lifetime. You don't even need to find extra causes for adding "new stuff".

This upset that's in you wasn't put there by anyone else. It wasn't just created in you by some event that just happened. Nobody made you feel this way. Nobody is doing anything to you.

This is old stuff. It's always old stuff. Its the sense of sin and guilt from separating from God that you buried in your mind long ago, coming up inside of you to remind you of how you feel. And yes, it was maybe "triggered by" someone or something happening, or what they did, and because it was triggered by them you mistook this to mean it was caused by them. But all they did was mirror to you how you already felt, deep down, and so it popped into your awareness. And you asked them to do this for you.

Its not their fault.

This is about you. Its your stuff. Your feelings. Your experience. Your attitude. Your beliefs. Your way of looking at yourself. This is about your sense of separation from yourself and God and how you haven't forgiven yourself for what you think you did. That's what needs to be forgiven. You CAN'T forgive anyone else because nobody else is capable of doing anything to you!

You need self forgiveness. And that entails admitting that all of this stuff is self-inflicted and self-chosen and it's all your own stuff. It's not anyone else's fault. Nobody has made you feel this way. You agree that you should feel this way.

And so then, why do you feel this way? What is it you believe about yourself, in relationship to God, that has brought about this nightmarish experience? This fear, and guilt, and sin? Is it really true of you? Is God really against you or upset with you? Is he really abandoning you? Do you really need to be afraid of his revenge? Are you really a sinner?

Will you forgive yourself and recognize that you have NOT done what you thought you did, that it has had no effect on God whatsoever, that you are still innocent and loved? How about some relief, in knowing that nothing's gone wrong and you're still worthwhile? Or that God still unconditionally loves you right now and always will? That you haven't made Him go away and He isn't bearing any grudge or anger toward you? All you really want is to love and go Home.

Pretty simple huh.

The ego persona wants to seek because seeking means, you do not already have. Seeking takes you away from what you have.

So let's say, you have a home to live in. You know that you HAVE it. It's yours. You don't need to find a home. You've got one.

You go out the front door and leave the home, exclaiming, "I don't have anywhere to live!".

You've rejected the home that you already have, and so now you seem to be homeless.

So now you have to go off SOMEWHERE ELSE, seeking, to try to find the very same home that's right behind you, which you are sure is not there.

But you can see, plainly, that this is nuts. You do not need to go and find a home, you already have one. But you've shut it out of your awareness and turned your back on it.

You could quite easily lift this 'block to awareness' from your mind and remember, oh wait, I actually do have a home to live in already! And this would cause you to STOP SEEKING.

Instead of seeking, you would ACCEPT what is already yours. Then you'd embrace your home again and be at peace, knowing you already have everything you need.

So really, the whole problem is a) the block to the AWARENESS of the pre-existing PRESENCE of everything you need (God/True Self), and b) you then go off on those 'seeking' activity trying to find it ELSEWHERE. And the problem is, it does not exist elsewhere. It's not outside of you, separate from you, or separate from the place where it already is - where God put it, where God is, within.

So because your pre-existing home, which is already yours, only exists where it is, and if you turn your back on it and go off seeking for a home anywhere but where it is, you WILL NOT FIND IT.

"Seek and do not find" - the ego's motto.

You literally are looking for what you already have, believing that you do not already have it, in every place that is SEPARATE from where it already is, hoping to find it there. And that means, it absolutely IS NOT THERE, and that you absolutely will FAIL to find it.

So the ego is very much into seeking. But seeking only comes about after you've put a block on your awareness. Some kind of sense of separation or shutting out or rejection of, what already is in you - God - your True Self - love etc.

That means, if you lift the block to awareness from your mind, you will become AWARE that the car keys are already in your pocket, i.e. you already have everything you need. You have NO needs. Because God has ALREADY given you everything you could possibly need.

So this has to mean, becoming open to ACCEPT that God has already a) given you absolutely all of Himself, b) you do not need anything other than total dependence on God, c) you have no lack and no needs, d) you share God's power and can manifest anything you could possible want or need instantly, e) you will live forever in perfect peace and satisfaction.

You already have a natural inheritance of unconditional love, absolute abundance, total safety and complete peace. It's already been shared with you by God. You just are in the business of not accepting, allowing, admitting, or seemingly wanting it. You've shut it out. So all you need to do, is open up to receiving, allowing, accepting and knowing it again. Reclaim your inheritance!

God is already here with you now!

I've been looking at this closely because I want to find out how this course is supposed to be applied, without a bypass and without denial.

At first I recognised that there was a whole lot of spiritual bypassing going on. That is, trying to adopt thoughts, theories, concept etc far beyond where my 'actual experience' is, such that I am out of touch with actual experience and am living in a kind of mental fantasy. This becomes the spiritualised ego, getting lost in the intellect, 'bypassing' the experience and the feelings and pretending to be more advanced etc.

So then I thought ok, I am not supposed to deny what's happening, I'm supposed to accept it. So then I went kind of the other way, went more into feeling the feelings, having the experience, and it seemed like if I would attempt to avoid or invalidate that in any way it would be a bypass. But this led to just being swamped in the ego, continued suffering, false perceptions, and essentially no room for forgiveness.

Now I am asking myself, where does forgiveness come into this? If forgiveness is going to try to offer some kind of interpretation or way of seeing something that is different to "what it is" or "what's happening", surely forgiveness is a bypass? There has to be a way to move from "I am a body" to "I am not a body" without it being some kind of faulty application or an attempt to deny the body. One thing to recognize is that there are always two parts to experience - what stuff is physically, PLUS an interpretation of it, and the interpretation can be wrong while still allowing the physical/biological/emotional part to be there.

The overall approach seems to be that we should first acknowledge what we ARE experiencing, what we feel, the situation we seem to be in, without denying that we're feeling and experiencing it. We HAVE to admit first that we're suffering, that something seems to have gone wrong - which we tend not to want to do because it induces FEAR that something is "really wrong".

This is part of the "fear of healing", because we don't want to acknowledge that something very convincingly "bad" seems to have happened - and if it is real, it would be frightening, and we DO believe it's real. Admitting it is frightening and so we deny and avoid this step. But THEN, having removed the DENIAL of the situation, seek for a better way to look at it and to reinterpret the experience, or to question the foundation or cause of it.

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

We need to make sure we don't shoot for "it's not happening" BEFORE we've admitted "this seems to be happening" ie "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace". That is acknowledgement, not a bypass. And it means willingness to admit that things have gone wrong, you don't feel happy, you are suffering and THEN that there must be a better way.

The course does speak to this in a few places. e.g. admitting first that the separation HAS occurred - which we don't want to admit to because it implies its real and is horrible, but we DO believe it has occurred - but looking at this WITH the Holy Spirit makes it less frightening, and then having admitted "something's gone wrong" we can be in a position to then immediately seek atonement. But if we seek atonement WITHOUT admitting to the denied dark belief or feeling or ego scenario, we are bypassing.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

Notice how it says we 1) stop denying that we've separated and made a wrong decision and are suffering 2) accept the error, the suffering, the feeling, on a temporary basis 3) having acknowledged the suffering, now seek for atonement ie a more right-minded interpretation with the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that it broadens the perception, admits to bigger truths, allows in God's light and laws, and re-frames the ILLUSION of what you seemed to be experiencing before as "bad".

As per the secret of salvation, you can then SEE and admit that you've been doing this to yourself, and seek to choose again and let the Holy Spirit undo the consequences through healing. This is the proper "application of forgiveness". If we skip the acknowledgement of "what's gone wrong" we are in a spiritual bypass. If we skip admitting to being in denial about how awful we've made ourselves feel, we're in a bypass. If we don't want to look at the GUILT, having first asked the Holy Spirit to help us to LOOK AT IT, and we skip ahead to "I'm innocent", then we're in a bypass.

You have to not pretend that everything's okay. Admit you're suffering, admit you're not happy, admit to your feelings, feel the feelings if you need to, AND THEN work with the Holy Spirit on a reinterpretation. When you then see it from a higher place, or remember its a dream, or affirm you're not a body, or recognize you're not a victim etc, that is indeed "contradictory" to what you were seeing and experiencing before but its NOT a bypass because it's changing the interpretation OF it, not trying to dismiss it. We should end up with a higher christ-vision view of what we were seeing from an ego perspective., but having acknowledged the state we were in fully first.

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I asked ChatGPT about this a bit, here's some AI commentary:

In ACIM terms, the process looks like this: Notice the upset Acknowledge the feeling Recognize it comes from a belief Offer the belief for correction Receive a different perception Step 1 and 2 are not bypassing. They are required. The ego says: “If you don’t validate the feeling as true, you’re bypassing.” But the Course says: “You can acknowledge a feeling without agreeing with its interpretation.” That’s the pivot. There is a difference between: Allowing a feeling Agreeing with the ego’s interpretation of the feeling For example: “I feel hurt.” → acknowledgment “They betrayed me and I was wronged.” → interpretation The first is honest. The second is the ego’s narrative. The Course invites you to question the second — not suppress the first. ACIM is not about: Emotional catharsis Endless processing Validating the ego’s storyline It is about changing the teacher in the mind. Bypassing says: “This pain isn’t here.” The Course says: “This pain is here because I chose wrongly — and I can choose again.” That is not bypassing. That is reclaiming authorship of perception. When you shift perspective, the ego feels invalidated. It reacts with: “You’re suppressing.” “You’re not being authentic.” “You’re spiritually bypassing.” But what’s really happening is: You’re declining to make the ego’s interpretation real. The ego equates: Not agreeing with me = denial. But correction is not denial. It’s reinterpretation. ACIM doesn’t say: “Sit with your ego forever.” It says: “Notice it, forgive it, and choose again.” If you never shift perspective because you fear bypassing, you’re actually preserving the ego. Ironically, that becomes a different kind of bypass: bypassing the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation. When you shift perspective, ask: Am I suppressing the feeling? Or am I gently allowing it while becoming willing to see it differently? In A Course in Miracles, there’s an important distinction that clears this up: Denial of error is not denial of experience. Statements like: “I am not a body. I am free.” “My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.” are not meant as psychological affirmations. They are metaphysical corrections aimed at the level of cause, not effect. If you use them at the level of emotion — to override fear, sadness, anger — they will feel like bypassing. Because they’re not designed to suppress feelings. They’re designed to loosen identification. When the Course says: “I am not a body,” it is not asking you to deny that a body appears to exist in perception. It’s asking you to question whether the body is what you are. That’s a completely different move. A metaphysical statement becomes bypassing when: It is used to escape emotion. It is used to spiritually inflate. It is used to deny the felt experience. It becomes healing when: It softens identification. It introduces curiosity. It reduces personal attack. It increases humility.

"T-23.II.19. There is no life outside of Heaven. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. 4 At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are but forms. 9 Their content is never true."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, yet perfectly capable of waking to reality."

Let's make this simple and clear.

You are permanently within heaven, within God's being, within reality. You cannot leave. There is nowhere to go. You cannot really be outside of it.

However, you who are in heaven always, fall asleep and dream of NOT being in heaven always. You dream of being EXILED from heaven, in ANOTHER WORLD, which is totally opposite to and unlike Heaven in every way. You dream of space and time. You dream of planets. You dream of suffering and death.

Everything about that dream of exile, seems to place you OUTSIDE the Kingdom of God. It's an ILLUSION that it is possible to be NOT AT HOME. To be not in the eternal presence of the "here and now" of reality. The dream of exile is a dream of NOT BEING HERE NOW, and is a dream of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom. This is also backed up in the bible where it talks of you seeming to be "kicked out" of heaven.

You cannot really be outside of Heaven. You are INSIDE heaven, DREAMING of being outside Heaven. But the dream you have IS a dream of being separated from heaven, rejected by God, seeming to exist in an entirely alien world, and having experiences and hallucinations that aren't real or true.

While you seem to be IN the dream world, which is "the world you made", you seem to be in THIS world, and you seem NOT to be in heaven. Everything in this dream world is an ILLUSION. "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it." Everything in spacetime is an illusion. All objects, all bodies, all planets and galaxies. It's all part of the dream of exile and the SECOND WORLD that you made in your dreaming of NOT being inside the FIRST WORLD of heaven.

Now, in terms of perspective, sometimes Jesus talks about how Heaven is BEYOND this world. How reality is not OF this world. How what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is not OF this world. How your brother's reality is BEYOND his body. And how reality is beyond the illusion. The physical world IS the "wall of sin" and the "veil" that "covers the face of christ", because it is the dream of denial/death that blocks out or paints an illusion that "you are not in heaven." And this is also why as you forgive the world you should be OVERLOOKING the world and looking BEYOND IT, PAST IT, to the larger truth that you are actually "in heaven", NOT in a dream.

The thing is, just because you are always in heaven, doesn't mean that you are aware of it. When you are IN the dream, you are NOT being aware of being in heaven. You cannot be both awake and asleep. Either you sleep and dream of exile, or you wake and the dream is gone. Either you see the world of death, or you see the real world. While heaven is "here now" and always present, THIS WORLD, the dream of exile, is NOT REALLY HERE NOW.

This also leads to the fact that in order to be fully aware and awake IN heaven, which is awareness of eternity, you must EXPAND your awareness to the size of the CONTAINER within which this dream is housed. The bubble of spacetime. You must transcend space AND time! You have to get OUTSIDE of the little dream of exile, taking place in heaven, so that you can wake up in the larger "room" of Heaven. Spacetime is much much smaller than heaven's eternal scope. "Everything in the world is little because it is made of littleness."

So in a sense we can say, from being in the dream, that in order to wake up you must LEAVE THIS WORLD. In other words, you must expand beyond the limits of the body, beyond the confinement of a location in space and time, and BE EVERYWHERE AT ONCE FOREVER. That is awakening from the dream. That is the end of the dream of exile. You wake up to being fully present everywhere. And that everywhere DOES include the "location" in which Earth seemed to exist, except it shines away the world and REPLACES it with reality.

To onlookers etc, when you wake up to heaven, you DO LEAVE THIS DREAM WORLD. You must. "A dream of death is not left by death, but by truth" tells us that in both cases you LEAVE! You leave the dream. You vanish from the dream. Your body disappears and ceases to exist. It is undone. You become invisible to the dream world. You are then "more here" than ever, as Jesus says he will never leave you, but you are no longer "inside" the dream isolated from reality. You are pervasive. Which is why Jesus says "you cannot remain in the world, with this knowledge" and "the body cannot stay without illusions".

You do leave this world, because it is the "outside the kingdom" world. Which really is inside the kingdom, but a rejection of the kingdom. ie a denial that the kingdom is everywhere. "Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all". It's a recognition of where you ARE and what what you are, that you are HERE NOW and have always been. But this world... this planet.... this universe, IT IS NOT HERE NOW. It is removed from eternity. It is slightly delayed from immediacy. "At no time does the body exist". It is always past and future but never eternal presence. Even the "now" of time is nothing but a symbol in a dream.

Waking up, you become omnipresent. But this dream world, it's days are numbered. When no-one remains believing in it or needing it to learn to awaken, it WILL vanish. And in its place there will only be heaven. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." The dream bubble of spacetime exile, will disappear. Light will envelop it and infuse it and shine it away. Only heaven will remain.

So yes, heaven in a sense IS elsewhere, it certainly is not this dream world, it is not exile, and it is not outside the kingdom. But in another sense heaven is everywhere and here, moreso here than anything else. You seem to ascend to and be in heaven, but you really just wake up to realize you are where you've always been, and you journeyed without distance from your home that you can never leave. You just thought you were outside the kingdom for a while. And the people who still think they are outside the kingdom will not be aware of your immediate presence.

Jesus is not in the world. But then again, the world doesn't exist. So Jesus is everywhere.

Since there is no life outside of heaven, and everything outside of heaven is an illusion, the dream of death is NOT LIFE. This WORLD, is not life. It is "at best it seems like life, at worst, death". Life is ONLY "inside" the kingdom, which is an exterior kind of way of looking at it. From within the kingdom life is everywhere because there is really no outside. "Life forms" in the dream of exile are NOT LIFE FORMS. They are illusions of life. Only eternal life in the kingdom is real life. "To be without a body (in heaven) is to be in your natural environment."

You disperse, to everywhere. Here, there, everywhere. Not localized. Not in space or time. Eternal. Endless. Ever-present. Transcendent of location or limitation. The all in everything. But the dream of exile, though it is in heaven, is not really anywhere. It is the idea of not existing. It is the idea that you are not here or there or anywhere. It is the idea of death. And there is no death, thus no world. This tiny speck of what seems like a world is absolutely nothing. That is the message of the course. There is no world - central lesson. The dream does not really exist, you are not really exiled, and you are already home.

Dreams disappear when you wake up.

In order to uncover a blocked awareness, we need to be willing to admit to the truth. And that means being willing to admit that we are NOT doing what we are claiming to be doing, we DO want the suffering we are experiencing, and we ARE actively forcing ourselves to be victims.

There is a very simple law at work. And it is this: You are completely free. Which means that whatever you are experiencing, YOU MUST WANT IT. There are no exceptions to this. And this is very difficult to fully and deeply look at, yet alone to accept. Yet it is the secret of salvation.

Half the time we might be saying things like, I really want to be with God, I want to love everyone, I love my kids, I believe in healing and health, I don't believe I'm guilty, etc... BUT, at the same time, EXPERIENCING the exact opposite.

This is the ego talking. The ego is VERY good at lies. It's very good at disguises. It's very good at talking out of both sides of its mouth and being two faced. Generally speaking, the ego is the idea of dishonesty. And in dishonest states, you are quite capable of saying or even believing things that you do not REALLY believe deep down, and do not believe fully.

When you take a look at the evidence, either you ARE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING what you say you believe is real, or you are lying to yourself. You can wrap up all kinds of lovely statements in what seem to be well-meaning fervent desires for something, but this doesn't mean you are CHOOSING TO DO these things.

For example, someone who sees themselves as being unfairly treated or victimized, will complain a lot. They will make a whole lot of noise about how much they DO NOT WANT what is happening. But all of this noise is utter bullshit. What's happening is the person HAS chosen to suffer, WANTS to keep suffering, does NOT want to actually take the steps of healing that would UNDO it, and so is literally STUCK in a state that they CLAIM to want to get out of, but which they are not ACTUALLY getting out of.

Instead, the ego victim tries to point fingers at all the reasons and powers other than themselves, that are keeping them bound to hell and upset. Waiting for someone else to bail them out. Waiting for someone to save them. Waiting for someone to change on their behalf. Or even waiting for someone to do something to them to make a difference. This is all an UNWILLINGNESS to ACTUALLY look within and undo the ACTUAL belief in sin that is lurking in the background, causing the suffering.

You have it in your power to undo all forms of suffering if you so choose, because you have free will. Your free will means you can NEVER get away with finding ANY excuse for why you are in the situation you are in. NOR that you can find any excuse for why you cannot get out of it, or why getting out of it depends on ANYTHING. Not on another person, not on the body, not on forces of nature, not on money or circumstances, nothing.

There is NOTHING STOPPING YOU FROM CHOOSING HEAVEN. No-one is holding you in hell but yourself. This is the secret of salvation. If you would simply ACTUALLY go ahead and CLEARLY, CONCISELY, CONFIDENTLY COMMIT to a more healed state of mind, your mind would be healed instantly. Nothing can stop you but yourself. All the beliefs we have about WHY we can't, are made up lies.

"If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus states clearly in the course that your completely clear single-minded decision to heal causes you to heal. Because in this unwavering commitment to ONE OUTCOME, your will is completely unopposed BY ITSELF, and therefore does not thwart its own efforts to CHOOSE. The power of decision is your own, enabling you to DISTINCTLY CHOOSE what you WILL. Whatever happens you have asked for, and whatever you do not want does not happen. This is why you are ruler of the universe.

So if we're in a state where we're complaining about the state we're in, or we feel stuck in it, or can't get out of it, or are claiming to have the best intentions, or would do something "IF" a dependency on something else is fulfilled, we are really not being completely honest. We are not admitting to how we ourselves are holding ourselves in hell by NOT undoing the ACTUAL problem.

If the real problem is a belief in sin, we need to stop believing in sin. This will take care of ALL problems. But if we do not WANT to undo the sin, we will remain in guilt and suffering, complaining about why the suffering is unfair and making tremendous steam about just how much we "really want" to get out of it. Or to be rescued. But we have to stop and get really honest. If we are STILL suffering, we MUST NOT WANT TO STOP IT. Even if we are screaming at the top of our lungs "I want this to stop". Saying so is not taking constructive action steps to DO IT.

This deeper desire is the choice to continue suffering, and this choice is the deeper problem. It's what's blocking awareness. We have to be willing to ADMIT that we HAVE CHOSEN to suffer, and become willing to CHOOSE AGAIN, a better way, which means being willing to actually address and undo the "real cause" of the problem in our mind.

All of our positive-sounded well-meaning wishful-thinking pleasantries about how much we want the truth and love and light and God, do not actually take us closer to God. They take us away from God because they are forms of denial covering up desires NOT to be with God. Either we will choose to be with God or not to be. But when we're choosing not to be, and claiming that we want to be, we must be lying. We can't have it both ways.

Looking within to the honest facts of what we are ACTUALLY DOING, and admitting that if we are not with God it MUST be because we want some kind of sinful suffering, this opens up the doorways, lifts away the denial, removes the illusions of peace, and allows us to shed real light of truth on the situation. Then we can SEE, that in fact we have a grievance, or an unhealed wound, or a secret sin or hidden hate. And this hidden stuff's REMOVAL is what will actually brings us closer WITHIN to awareness of God's presence.

Going through the dark shit is unfortunately a lot harder and requires a lot more radical honesty than the fluffy externalized "happy seeker" route of rainbows and nice-sounding fluff. We DID choose to reject God. We did actually push away our inheritance. As Jesus states in ACIM, "the separation HAS occurred." We have to admit that we're STILL choosing it, if we are not GETTING the result of reunion with God.

We did seem to WANT to suffer. We DID make a mistaken decision by choosing that, and we need to choose again if we want peace. That means looking at what we ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE, and not at what we THINK we believe. And these dark beliefs can then be brought into the light and released.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. (meaning, I literally CHOSE TO SUFFER, and I have to admit I have chosen that, in order to recognize that I need to choose again)

I made the decision myself (no one else made me suffer, I did), but I can also decide otherwise. (meaning I have the power to CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER, and to force this to happen).

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. (I want to stop suffering and by WILLING NOT TO SUFFER, the suffering stops - if I'm doing so honestly and fully)

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. (I am not GUILTY for making a wrong decision, I am just mistaken and need correction of the ACTUAL problem, which is a belief in the desire to suffer)

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me." (I receive healing help from the Holy Spirit and open up to His Light of Truth to shine into my mind and illuminate it, so that I can ACTUALLY experience what I've been saying I want.)

Every time I see a body, I am tempted to believe I'm seeing a person. The person seems separate from me, they are not me at all, their body belongs exclusively to them, it's not my body, we are not in any way connected to each other. What applies to them does not apply to me at all.

That is the horrendous lie that bodies present to us. The temptation that your brother, who in truth is literally one with and a part of your self, is somehow cut off from you. On the basis of assuming that people are "not me", we then proceed with an entire culture and way of relating that revolves around "I am separate from you."

Ultimately this boils down to a question of, are you living by God's law of the Golden Rule, or are you denying it and trying to break God's law? First let's be clear that the Golden Rule is not some optional thing, it's fundamental to the nature of reality and all creations. We are all one with each other, part of each other, joined together and sharing, like a collective consciousness hive mind. In that arrangement we are still individual beings but we also share everything.

Within that thought system of sharing, overlap and oneness, the natural way to relate to someone is to regard them as YOURSELF. They are thus your brother, an equal, as perfect and whole as you, and literally part of yourself. This produces shared interests and an automatic motivation to ONLY treat them with love so that you are directly treating yourself - the part of you that's in them - with love. Everything belongs to everyone, everyone has everything, and everything is mutual.

In the ego's rendition, the body is a separation device. And make no mistake that the body literally symbolically CUTS YOU OFF from the hive mind. It represents the idea of being separate, disconnected, not sharing, not joined, not a part of anyone else, and completely alone. It is absolutely the opposite of the true nature of our collective sonship and brotherhood, and is totally unnatural.

This means that if you are in a body being identified with a body, believing bodies are separate people, you are literally LOOKING AT the denial of the laws of God. You are looking at the opposite of the golden rule, manifested as images of forms walking around, testifying that separation is real. The body ITSELF is nothing less than a demonstration of the idea of being completely separate.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind"

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

Therefore just the mere sight of a body is enough to tempt you into the belief that God's law has been broken, the Golden Rule does not apply to anyone, and you are NOT in any way sharing anything with your brothers. You don't even have to act or relate to people or treat people a certain way for God's law to be broken by the mere appearance of the body.

Therefore, as the course is teaching, if you see a body, you are seeing WITH specialness, with selfishness, and thus with the ego. And the result is false perception, which fixates on physical form and makes bodies real to you. Upon seeing this, you have already believed in separation, and now the body is lit up and appears to you as a separation device, anchoring and fixing your brother into a prison within space and time, and cutting you off from them.

As soon as you are relating on a basis of "I am not you", ie your body is separate from my body, and I see you AS a body, and regard myself as my body, and we are NOT each other, we are in a state of special relationship. And that literally means we are at war. We have withdrawn the shared part of ourselves from each other and have gone to our separate corners, ready to fight.

We are at war merely by the very fact that we are identifying who and what we are with a device for separation, and have therefore believed that we ARE separate, and therefore are different, and thus not equals, and thus competitors.

Any time that I associate anything at all exclusively with a body, whether it be my own or that of another, I am in the ego and at war. I am having a special relationship, taking sides, judging, projecting guilt, attacking, accusing, and trying to destroy. Just by seeing a body and regarding it as the anchor and prison wall which is surrounding and sectioning off you or another, you are taking sides.

Once you've taken sides, you will not be able to help but relate to the other person AS a body, ie as a separated off, exclusive, isolated, distinctly separate being. One with whom you are NOT sharing, are not one, and they are NOT seen OR recognized as being a part of yourself. The entire vision of recognition and enlightenment which would show you that your brother IS part of you, is obscured by the body.

"the BODY of the other, ALREADY a severely limited perception of him"

"For sin is the IDEA you are alone, and separated OFF from what is whole."

Then you will proceed to go to war. You will find it effortless to accuse someone of being, doing, having, making, causing something, which ONLY they are doing, and you are not. You will now be into the realm of "getting away with murder", because it now seems that what applies to the other does NOT apply to you. What applies to what their body is doing, is not what your body is doing. Their separated-off will is now disconnected from your own, and you are not sharing or cooperating or willing in accord. Therefore you are against each other.

The loss of the awareness that you are one with your brother has devastating consequences. As soon as you have slipped away from unity ie holy relationship even slightly, you've pulled away from being joined to the other and have identified yourself as exclusive. That exclusivity is selfish and special, and will manifest as a body, which will show up in the mind to testify HOW you are separated off from the other. The body literally symbolizes your separateness.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

By believing that you are not your brother, you are not a part of him and he is not a part of you, you cannot help but see yourself and your brother as separated off by a body. This identifies both of you with your bodies, and holds you apart from each other like inmates in separate prison cells. This is a breakdown in communication and an attack on love. It is a lack of relationship and a disconnect from each other.

It doesn't matter if the other person is someone you are allegedly married to, a spouse or partner, a lover, a sibling or child or parent, some stranger or neighbor, a boss or remote stranger, any time that we are unaware of our oneness with each other we have moved inside an entirely separate thought system of separation, in which the ONLY culture is "me not you".

Nor will you be able to sufficiently repair the relationship and bring it to a state of holiness WITHOUT questioning whether or not you and your brother are a body. The belief that they ARE their body, automatically cuts them off from you, and your believing this is HOW you imprison them.

"The special relationship is a device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

"For the ego would limit everyone TO a body for ITS purposes, and, while you think it HAS a purpose, you will choose to utilize the means by which IT tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

No matter what you think your relationship is, regardless of how close or intimate you seem to be with another body-person, you are NOT intimate if you are not one. You are also not happily married if you are married to a body. Nor are you head over heels in love if what you're in love with is a body. To love a body is to separate yourself from the other person, to NOT SEE them, and to keep them at arm's length, pun intended.

If you want to overcome the conflict, the war, the fighting, the disagreements, the arguments, the special hate, the special love, the lack of communication and connection, your only choice is to transcend bodies. You have to get your mind out of the separation-oriented culture and resume an entirely opposite culture based on the Golden Rule. You have to learn that you ARE part of the other person, neither of you is separated off BY a body, and the bodies are not even there. You have to see yourself INCLUDED in them as you look upon them, and NOT look to their bodies to identify them.

If you are heavily into the association that the person IS their body, and you've bound their identity to it, and every time you see the body you think that's them, you have a lot of work to do. And it could take some considerable time to undo all the ways that you've taught yourself to separate people off, bind them to physical objects, identify them by those objects, and therefore stay separate from them.

The ego culture of exclusivity and separateness is completely opposite to God's natural culture of sharing and unity. Bodies cannot and will not ever depict or accomplish God's culture. They have to be bypassed and transcended and overlooked. Your whole sense of who and what you are has to expand to INCLUDE others. And then how you relate to them, WHO you are defending, WHAT you are relating with and to, radically changes.

"Minds need not bodies to communicate."

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

If you have relationship issues which, guaranteed, every body-to-body relationship HAS, the real problem is THE BODY. Allowing, supporting, and facilitating the use of the body as a separation device, anchoring people TO bodies, is the whole foundation of your relationship woes. Nor can you overcome those woes and KEEP the body. You have to be willing to stop identifying people with bodies, including yourself, and including your "loved ones."

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

Any time that you fall for the trap of believing "that person is not me", because you've seen their body and have witnessed to the belief that their body IS SEPARATE FROM YOU, you have gone into the ego culture of separation and war. Any time that you do not recognize your brother as yourself, you will fall into a special relationship. Any time that you can see PAST the bodies, and identify the person with a SHARED IDENTITY in Christ, which is part of your own identity as Christ, you have moved into holiness and union.

"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."

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

If you want to perform miracles, you have to transcend the entire mindset, thought system and culture of "separate me versus them". You have to join minds with the other so that your mind can share its light with the other mind and heal it. You cannot save or be saved without doing this, and bodies will always interfere with this.

If you pay any attention to the body AT ALL, you are looking at and emphasizing the separation. The body is separation's symbol. It is the wall around the mind that keeps it separated off from other minds. As long as you are having relationships WITH BODIES, you are not having real relationships with your brothers as God created them.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. ***The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship***. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line."

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, ***keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time***, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their FIXED POSITION here."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY. And, if you VALUE it, you must also VALUE THE BODY."

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"And BOTH of you stand there before Him now, to let HIM draw aside the veil that SEEMS to keep you separate and apart."

"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."

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."

I see now that giving love is giving life. It uplifts and heals, restores and purifies. It's almost like putting someone up on a pedestal, not to worship them but to acknowledge their perfection and lovability as one of God's children. A child of God that God loves.

If someone is an enemy, your task is to heal them. It is to love them, to express toward them the perfection and beauty and holiness that they are, and which they deserve. Even if they themselves do not believe it.

Giving this love to them and reinforcing God's truth about them, is the same thing as forgiving them, and as performing a miracle. It's like they are damaged and your job is to repair the damage. To patch it up. To cure it and heal it and restore the wholeness.

I used to think of forgiveness more in terms of what I am doing within, how I am seeing, what I believe, what I'm projecting, trying to take it all back within. But now I'm seeing that forgiveness is also an outward expression of love. As the light within is uncovered, it radiates outward. You shine a light which dispels the darkness.

If you have an enemy and you are at war with them, you may not want to love them. You may want to keep them imprisoned in a box or kept separate. You may want to exclude them from love and only let the good people receive the love. But clearly as you learn to love and resurrect even one person, it becomes apparent that you really should be doing this for everyone, all the time.

I think a lot of ACIM focus in on the processes we individually perform for ourselves, the attempt to find peace, to be healed, to lighten up, to receive love etc. But a huge part of it is also in the giving, because giving and receiving are one.

You in fact HAVE to extend (give) love in order to receive it. It's the only way it can work. If you don't give the love, you will lose out on the love. Which means if you don't love your enemy, you are depriving yourself of love.

To give light and life to everyone is very simple. I can well imagine the likes of Jesus walking around just being very loving, very uplifting, very encouraging and healing, shining into people, lifting them up, raising their spirits, strengthening them and reinforcing their health and wholeness. Just being a loving person and loving people. Resurrecting them with love.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life."

"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."

"I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone."

"Believe in the resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and it has been accomplished IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time and no exceptions."

"Hold him not back with thorns and nails, when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to Resurrection."

"Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death."

"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."

"The resurrection of the world awaits YOUR healing and YOUR happiness, that you may DEMONSTRATE the healing of the world."

"And you will see within today's idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and of death to thoughts of liberation and of life."

"My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain."

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

"This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the LIFE."

When I'm projecting my own stuff onto someone else, I can't possibly see them as innocent. I'm putting my guilt onto them and I'm seeing it in them.

While the guilt is 'out there', there is simply no way my perception can show me their innocence. I have a screen in the way, a filter, a layer of dirt and noise.

I used to try to see other people as innocent, like, you know, they say to 'see everyone as Christ'. Well you can't do that if you're projecting. You can't just immediately launch into seeing them as Christ because you see them as guilty.

It is not until you take back your guilt, which you tried to make them responsible for, on your behalf, that you can possibly see them as innocent. Until you withdraw your projection from them, you can't see them for who they really are.

So you take back your stuff, and you own up to being the one who believes YOU are guilty. And you take the guilt back from their hands, recognizing it was NOT their guilt you were seeing, but your own. Having taken it back you CAN now see that they are innocent.

Also at this point, seeing that the other person is innocent isn't really a process, and it's also not some kind of label you put onto them, and it's not that you 'make' them innocent. In fact, all you've done is reveal the truth that is already there. Underneath your projected guilt, they already ARE innocent.

So you don't really have to be in the business of trying to talk yourself into 'believing' that the person is innocent. You don't have to try to convince yourself that someone else is Christ or holy. It's not something you need to make happen or do to the person or bestow upon them. Remember you are in the business of removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which means when you remove the block to your awareness, by taking back YOUR guilt that you gave to another, having accused them of your own sin, you naturally REVEAL what was there all along - their in-built, inherent, God-given innocence. Their innocence is there all by itself.

This is similar to how you need to go up into Holy Spirit's thought system, above the battlefield, stepping out of the projection of guilt, and entering closer to your own innocence, before you can look down IN forgiveness to see that everything below/outside is forgiven. Looking back on others WITH Holy Spirit/forgiveness allows you to recognize and see their innocence. You didn't give their innocent back to them because it was never taken away. You just had covered it up with your own stuff.

Note that when you look WITH Holy Spirit's forgiveness you will see innocence, and this is what it means to BE forgiving, rather than to 'do' forgiving. If there is a 'doing' of forgiveness (commonly thought of as 'applying'), that refers to you taking back your guilt and going to Holy Spirit with it so that you can come to be able to SEE the innocence in you and your brother. That process itself does not make innocent, it only uncovers it, and forgiveness then is the light in which you SEE.

So now you can also go to Holy Spirit and ask, hey, I think this guilt is mine, which I was putting onto them, and I now take it back and recognize it's not theirs, so they are innocent, but I still feel this guilt about myself. I think I'm guilty. Is it true Holy Spirit? I want you to decide. Tell me your verdict. "You are innocent", Holy Spirit will say, in one way or another. And then you will accept this with relief, let go of the guilt, allow Holy Spirit to HEAL IT FOR YOU, and release you from your own delusion that you are guilty. Now you can see your own innocence as well.

They say that by seeing the innocence in someone else you will see the innocence in yourself because your minds are One, and there is some truth to that. But this never really worked for me. I couldn't simultaneously lift guilt off their mind and my own, on my own, just based on the concept that this works. I can see now that I have to at least take back my guilty projection first in order to see my brother's innocence, and THEN I can take it to Holy Spirit and get it fully corrected. Then I will see my own innocence AND the unified innocence of my brother.

I'm trying to clarify what the real world is or it not. I'm just going to waffle on about it here as I look at each quote.

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made.

This suggests the real world is something perceptual because dreams contain symbols, and since perception does not exist in heaven (only knowledge), this suggests the real world is not heaven. Yet it appears to be a "reflection of reality". (As I typed this, Jesus said "true").

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"

Suggesting it is also a reflection, or at least opposite to all illusions and lies. As real as perception can get?

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is there. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

It sounds quite advanced that in this state of mind, there is no apparent registering of pain and sorrow coming from other people. These things are perhaps seen in a different light, as calls for love, and therefore there is a recognition that there is no "real sorrow". "The sights are gentle" seems to suggest you wouldn't even see war and death happening? But perhaps it is the WAY you look at them which shows them to you in a way which isn't upsetting any more. OR, possibly, the real world is seen AT THE SAME TIME as perception sees the physical world, since it is like "looking at heaven" vs looking at the world of form. This would be similar to the Holy Spirit being "fixated on God" while also perceiving.

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God’s Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father’s Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

Again the real world is referred to as a SYMBOL, meaning it is part of the dream. And also it is referred to as a REFLECTION (not the actual thing, but a reflection of it, once removed). This suggests the term "real world" refers not to that state of mind being "real" in the truest sense, but "real-er" than other ways of perceiving.

"Its perception"... tells us it's something perceived, so we are still in the realm of the world and are not in heaven yet.

"Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but NOT exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the VALUE of the body is so diminished in YOUR sight, that you will see no need at all to MAGNIFY it. For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER there."

This lingo sort of seems confusing because it seems you cross a bridge and are on the other side (as if in heaven?) and yet you are still in a body, and yet the ability to remain in the body is very limited due to the magnitude of the mind. So this suggests a state of being still in a body and perceiving but being as pure of mind as is possible while in a body. Again a reflection of heaven rather than pure heaven.

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." 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."

In this sense, it seems that Jesus talks about the real world as if talking about heaven. If he is being very literal (which he usually is) then a state of mind where there are no buildings and people and stuff, ... does not really sound like the world or forms. Above he spoke of only seeing gentle sights and so on, as a "way" of seeing the world. Here he talks of a "place" where there IS no buildings or streets or other forms. This suggests to me that when He speaks of the real world he is a bit "loose" in terms of what it means. ie, the "real world" literally is Heaven, but when we are in a body and still perceiving we see a GLIMPSE of it and a REFLECTION of it, and so it now sounds "as if" the real world is within perception still, but more like... it is just touching on perception lightly and is actually mostly beyond perception and beyond bodies and beyond this world. Like peeking its head in the door. This also reminds me of "the kingdom of heaven is laid out upon the world but you do not see it" and "god is in everything I see because God is in my mind"... referring to states of perception still (seeing the world) but starting to glimpse a heavenly "reality" or "real world" beyond it.

The one word that confused me here at first was "shines forever". If the real world shines forever, that makes it permanent. If the real world were permanent it must be the same thing as heaven. And so since Jesus uses the term to refer sometimes to the reflection of heaven and sometimes to what is fully heaven, since the "real world" in perception reflects reality, it can seem to imply a real perceived world is permanent, but it is not. Because the UNREAL world is let go and disappears, the real world builds a bridge to heaven, and then the true real world is fully experienced as heaven, forever.

"Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here because you love it. 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 but do not want. The only effort you need make to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn the one you made is false."

Like here, Jesus says the real world "touches you even here", suggesting that it is NOT here, but is heaven, and yet it is so close that it "touches you" like when two worlds bump up against each other, but you are not yet IN IT. Which again suggests the real world is actually heaven (not this universe whatsoever), but can be "touched upon" while here.

"You will first dream of peace and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all perception is. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this, they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore, the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son."

The "dream of peace" also sounds like another way to say that "perceiving" the real world while here in a body is still a dream of reality - that's why its a reflection or symbol, and not the actual thing. The real world seems like a bridge that bridges the gaps between heaven and earth, or at least is a joining place or state of mind which is sort of experiencing both temporarily.

"The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your PERSPECTIVE of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted, and COMPLETELY out of perspective. What IS little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful, cut down to littleness."

Jesus does refer to a bridge, which suggests that the perception of the reality (truth, heaven) while still in a body is a glimpse of the real world that is on the other side of the bridge, and you can sort of position yourself on the other side and be very close to having heaven in your awareness, but still remaining temporarily in the world. This also correlates to what Jesus says about the body being able to be supernaturally protected, and a sign of immortality, while it is useful, and when used to bring the word of God to those who have it not.

Also I want to make a note about perspective. When there are clouds, the sun is above the clouds and always shining. When you are up there above the clouds, from that perspective, clouds are not blocking the light (awareness). When you move below the clouds however, from "this side", looking back towards the light having been separated from it, it SEEMS as if the clouds block the light. The bottom of the clouds become dark symbolizing their ability to block light and having resulted in the illusion of darkness.

When you are in a state of perception which is level confused, backwards and upside down, ie in the ego more, you see this way and regard darkness as a real block and as if light is hidden. But when you get past the clouds and are aligned with the light and ORIENTED in the direction the light is shining, then you no longer are limited by the clouds and see only light everywhere. From this vantage point or perspective, this is similar to seeing "from" the real world. So you could say that the bridge Jesus refers to, is really the "transition" from being in the dark to being in the light, shifting from false to true perception, and another word for true perception is perception of the "real world". Being on the "other side" of the bridge thus could be referring to being in true perception, since the bridge is somewhere between true and false perception, rather than between the perceptual world and heaven.

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear."

Here Jesus refers to both the real world and the fictional world as "not true". So again he's saying, the real world is kind of a term for the "slice" of reality which is partly seen while still in the fictional physical world. The glimpse of reality will become real to you and then act like a bridge TO heaven. The real world is what's perceived when perception is true and accurate, showing you that this world is false and unreal, and opening up to see Christ "beyond" it or "in" it. And eventually the world itself disappears and what was "beyond" and "in it" now becomes a fully present (and only) experience.

"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father’s Love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him."

Here he said "the WAY that LEAD YOU TO remembrance"... like a bridge, or as the meeting point of two worlds or sort of the preparation for going to heaven.

"Love waits on welcome, NOT on time. And the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have NOT lost. "

Welcoming what always was is sort of an invitation or openness to it, but not necessarily being in it yet.

"Is it a loss to find a world instead where losing is impossible, where love endures forever, hate cannot exist, and vengeance has no meaning? Is it loss to find all things you really want and know they have no ending, and they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time?

The world mentioned here I think is heaven. But it could apply apply to "Real world".

Yet even they will be exchanged at last for what we cannot speak of, for you go from there to where words fail entirely, into a silence where the language is unspoken and yet surely understood. Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. And God Himself speaks to His Son as His Son speaks to Him. Their language has no words, for what they say cannot be symbolized. Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one."

Here then Jesus speaks of what happens when you make the transition FULLY to heaven, which is a world that you cannot see while seeing the physical world (you cannot see two worlds, you cannot behold the world and see heaven). In heaven, fully and completely, BEYOND perception, and BEYOND the slice of the real world that you saw as a reflection (also referred to as the face of christ - his FACE, not his WHOLE SELF), is the world God created which is Heaven, where all is one, and the "real world's" lack of buildings and streets and people is fully experienced.

"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."

Bye bye planet Earth and the physical universe.

"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 is the function of God’s teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is reflected. And now sit down in true humility, and realize that all God would have you do you can do. Do not be arrogant and say you cannot learn His Own curriculum. His Word says otherwise. His Will be done. It cannot be otherwise. And be you thankful it is so."

Okay so, you hear people saying the Earth is flat - the "flat Earthers"... and obviously it's not. But... technically it is.You see, there is this thing called the "hierarchy of illusions". The hierarchy is an ILLUSION that there are differences. All differences are illusions.

So you've got things like different importance, different value, different size and weight, different difficulty, different materials, different appearances, different behaviors, different forms, all of that.

However, the world isn't real, and these differences aren't real.Imagine a canvas on which an artist is going to paint a picture. The canvas itself is just one thing, neutral, empty. There is nothing inherently pictured on it. This is the background of the illusory world.

The artist takes the paint and starts to paint pictures of humans. There's a large body over here, and a small one over there. There's one with two arms, and there's one with only one arm. There's one that's jumping in the air, and one that's laying seemingly dead on the ground.

But the truth always is, that these are all just images, made of the same paint. There is really no difference between the body jumping in the air and the one that appears dead. They're both equal in the sense that any of their difference are an illusion. There aren't really ANY bodies on the canvas, it's just images of bodies.

And so what the illusion of the picture of a world of bodies is, is really a picture of what those things might LOOK LIKE. A body which looks LIKE a dead body, a body which is similar to how a living body might look. And this makes the images on the canvas once removed from the actual thing, from "reality" or "real bodies". They are pictures OF bodies, not actual bodies.

The thing is, the physical world is usually considered to be real, where the "real bodies" are, but in fact the physical world is the realm of the what LOOKS LIKE a world. It's a picturing of a world, an image, like a photograph of some place that you visited. The photograph is not the place itself, just an idea of what it might be like there. That's what the world is. The world is the paint on the canvas, pretending to look like things. A picture OF some OTHER place that doesn't exist.

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. ***It cannot make a body***, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. ***It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.***"

ie The physical world is not REALLY a REAL physical world, it's a picture of one, an imagined idea of what a physical world might be like. It is like a dream about a far off land that you never really visited.

You have never actually REALLY seen a real body, you have only seem what bodies MIGHT look like if they existed. Because really the world is a dream of, an idea of, what it MIGHT be like IF you were able to separate from God. It remains true that you cannot separate from God because God is everywhere. Nor can you REALLY create bodies. So we've just pictured a world which looks LIKE some OTHER place that we've never been to, trying to form it in its likeness to represent it. To symbolize it. The world is a SYMBOL OF a world OUTSIDE of God, which does not exist.

Now, because the physical world of form is the layer of paint on the canvas, and let's say the canvas is what ACIM calls "the real world" which has no inherent forms or bodies or places or things, when you look at it and recognize it as "all made of the same stuff", or "its all just paint" or "its all an equal image", this FLATTENS the hierarchy of illusions. It's stops it appearing as though one thing is bigger or heavier or more important or different to another. Or that any of it is real.

This recognition that the world has NO hierarchy, and that it is all just one thing appearing to be many things, is what it's like to recognize that the picture is just the layer of paint, and it's all just paint. Which means that really a picture of a living body is just as much equal and just paint, as a picture of a dead body. Neither of them are truly different. They're both illusions.

The form of the living body may appear different to the dead one, but that is the illusion of it. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." When you focus on the forms and their differences you're being deceived by the painted picture, and are failing to recognize it for the trick that it is. You're not realizing it's only a painting, and are mistaking it for BEING the thing it visualizes. You think the PICTURE OF a body really IS a body. That pictures of death really ARE death.

When you overlook ie forgive the ILLUSION of things being different, and you don't fall for there really being a live body or a dead body, and you see the paint instead of the picture, that is true perception. That is accurate perception. It isn't a perception that looks at paint on a canvas and believes there are real people living there with real bodies. It isn't the way the "brain" sees a photo of a body and believes it's looking at the actual person. It's a recognition that it's JUST a photograph, looking at the grain on the paper and the blots of ink.

This is a "flattening" of the hierarchy. A PICTURE of a dead body is now equal to a picture of a living one. A PICTURE of a body with disease is no different in truth than a picture of a body that seems healthy. Because really they are both just images on a blank canvas. And neither of them is more dead or alive, in truth.

"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."

There is no more MEANING in a dead body. There is no more "seriousness" in a dead body. There is no more "lack of life" in a dead body than in a supposedly "living" body. Which tells you also that the living bodies are NOT REALLY ALIVE either. The bodies aren't alive, and they aren't dead, they are just pictures of bodies. They are symbols, not ends in themselves. All made of the same illusory stuff.

"The body neither lives nor dies, for it cannot contain you who are life."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"At best an illusion of life, at worst death."

"The body is not an end in itself."

So what that calls for, in order to see with forgiveness, is to recognize that there is no truth, life, will, mind, power, causality, strength, force, capability, or existence, to either the living bodies or the dead bodies. They are nothing but pictures. They don't have a "life" to be defended against death, and "death" cannot happen to them any more than life can. e.g.

"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."

The body is just a picture, in a painting in your mind, which has NO DEPTH. It is not really three dimensional. And its differences are ALL illusions of the way (form) that it's painted in. See the paint for what it is and you no longer see bodies there, or imagine that pictures of houses are real houses, or that pictures of cars are really cars, or that pictures of death are really death.

This ultimately flattens the hierarchy and means there IS NO DIFFERENCE between illusions. There is only one separation, one illusion, one picture, and it's all equally false. Even the suggestion that something would be more DIFFICULT to change than another thing, is part of the illusion of the hierarchy. It is not true. And this ultimately means that there really is no "orders of difficulty."

"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."

From the vantage point of recognizing it all as ONE THING, one dream, one illusion of a world, and ignoring its FORMS, overlooking its differences, and not being deceived or tempted to believe there really ARE any differences at all, there is no "orders" in the world. There are no divisions and levels and parts and pieces. It's all just one illusion, one separation idea. Which means live bodies and dead bodies are the same thing, pretending to be two different things. They are both the dream of death. An illusion.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."So ultimately THE WORLD IS FLAT, because the hierarchy is flat. When you take away all the illusions of difference, which is false perception - not recognizing it's all just paint - all you end up with is a FLAT world. A world where there is ONE WAY of looking at everything, and it is recognized as ONE THING. And so there is no bigger or smaller or harder or easier.

From that perspective, which is the state of miracle mindedness and true perception, in which everything is given NO extra meaning other than the universal ONE meaning of love, and there is no falling for the deception that a sick body is "a really serious bad thing", and there is no difference in meaning given to "that body seems really healthy" versus "that body seems disease-ridden and ugly", you are now coming from ONE perspective. One vantage point. One loving outlook. One all-inclusive perspective. No longer tempted by form.

From that one perspective, with Vision, for you there is no longer a rough terrain, or a 3D world, or a world where some things are dealt with differently to others. There is one problem and one solution, not many. And there is no hierarchy of orders of difficulty. So now it is ONE ACT, to change the painting, to any given form. It is ONE ACT to perform a miracle which modifies a PICTURE of a dead body into a PICTURE of a living one. One act which can in turn convert a living body into a dead one, and back again. Because all bodies are fake.

To that mind, there is "no order of difficulty in miracles." "They are all the same". Each one is an expression of a spark of life which repaints the picture. A modification to the mind projecting so that the paint on the page changes to SYMBOLIZE something else. Because remember the paint is what something looks LIKE, not what something is. It is all symbolic and once removed. So the body now SYMBOLIZES eternal life, instead of symbolizing death.

It now becomes useful to heal the mind to heal the body, ie to convert the PICTURE of the body into a body free of pain and suffering and damage and death, because this picture in the dream world demonstrates and SYMBOLICALLY communicates an IMAGE of, a representation of, innocence and immortality and harmlessness and holiness. And this TEACHES those who look upon it that they must be innocent, because it does not play by the rules of the laws of a world of difficulty. It does not prove their sinfulness. And proof of sin is not there, breaking the laws of physics.

"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."

"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 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.""

"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."

So you see, the world IS flat, because it is only an ILLUSION that it has any FORM at all. And all its differences are illusions. Bodies and planets and galaxies are not alive, or dead, or anything. They are once-removed PICTURES on a canvas, the underlying canvas of "the real world", and the pictures shift just like the shadows on the wall of the cave. And they are not reality. They are just imagined ideas of what it might be like to go be where God is not. it's not the same place as actually going there. And so the world is just a brochure for hell, not real hell itself.

There is no death, and dead bodies are no more dead than live ones. And live ones are no more alive than dead ones. And all levels of sickness are meaningless. And all degrees of suffering are a lie. And miracles express from a higher vantage point in which the Earth is flat and the hierarchy is flat and every artistic act of "healing bodies" is merely a way of reconfiguring the paint, so that it can symbolize eternal life and point in the direction of heaven rather than hell. As a physicalized symbol of forgiveness.

In this view the body is nothing but an IMAGE in the mind. It has no sickness or health. It cannot be well or dead or suffer at all. I this no will, it has no mind of its own, or instincts, or natural ways. It does not really obey ANY laws of the world, unless your mind believes in the hierarchy of illusions. When you lift away from this PICTURE of a body, the rules and laws and restraints that your mind GAVE to it, trying to make it something OTHER THAN just a neutral image in a dream, it no longer serves the laws of the world.

And now the body is not under the effect of the world. And it cannot become sick on its own, nor can it die against your will. It is now simply suspended in the mind as a figment of imagination, and mind has complete power and control over it, to override any external influences. It cannot age, it cannot get sick, it does not need the world to exist, it does not depend on anything, it just moves around like a puppet for the mind. An avatar in a dream. A figure pretending to be you. A symbol of your immortal self.

Of course, when you throw the painting in the trashcan there is no world, and "heaven is all that remains."

Looking for God outside? He's inside you. In fact, you have to look inside first, find God there, then look out with God, in order to see God.

When I had an experience of God this wasn't clear to me. I saw God seemingly in everything external, in addition to my tremendous inner awareness of him, but then it faded. And then I sought to reconnect externally because that's where I'd seen him. But God wasn't first found outside and taken in, he was inside my mind and awareness and extended out. I found him inside because I went within and above, not because I sought outward. In fact all sickness is a form of external searching. Seeking out there for God will take you away from where he is.

God is in everything you see when awareness of love's presence is in your mind. Not because God is out there, but because you are shining his light from inside of you. You look first within and project out what is in you, then you see it. You can't find God "out there" in the world. There is no world out there. Everything external is artificial and unreal.

God being in everything you see does not mean the world is God. This is completely backwards. It means you're looking out from God. And thus you are giving God and extending God and therefore projecting God. He is in everything you see because he is in your mind, and not without that key ingredient. If God were not in your mind first, you would not see him in everything you see, at all.

During the time that I was close to God I felt a great radiance of joy and light shining out of me, particularly out of my face and eyes. It was so strong it was like beaming light at people. It was also so strong that I felt nothing could come into me from the outside, which felt very secure. As though everything was given from within.

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions." I felt I had no needs because I didn't lack anything within. Getting anything into me from the outside seemed completely alien and utterly pointless, including eating food for a while. It was like shoving lumps of nothing into a hole for no reason. I had to force myself to swallow. It seemed completely ridiculous to suggest that I lacked anything at all such that I needed to get anything from the world to make up for it.

When you're not seeing God outside you will start seeking externally to find him. This is because he seems externally absent. This is temptation and is a trick of the lack of love in you. It makes the world seem dark and lacking. And then you seek externally and do not find him. Because you try to find God first externally, and seek to get him, and take him into you from the outside in. This never works and makes you more deprived. It is idol worship, and special relationships. You cannot absorb God from any physical object, or get him on sale, or shove him down your throat, or make him give everything the ego wants to get.

To counteract the seeming absence of God in your sight you cannot try to look for God as if he's sitting out there on a rock. You have to look within, inside your mind, where you are connected at the inner altar, with your soul. That's where the unity with God is. You have to go there first. You have to plug into the light socket deep within. This is why Jesus repeatedly says in the course there is a place WITHIN you that is deeply at peace and filled with light.

Light bulbs don't shine by reaching out and grabbing ahold of light and taking it into themselves. They shine by plugging themselves into the power source and being in the light and then radiating it outwards. Only what you extend outward from within do you see or are aware of. So if you want to see love you have to find love within you first. If you want to see God in everything you see, in spite of everything you see, you have to find him in your mind, in your inner world.

If God appears to be outside, it is because he is inside, and there is no outside. If God does not appear to be outside, it's because you're lacking God on the inside. The lack of God outside has no bearing on causing God to go away or to make him appear. But whether you are in touch God on the inside makes all the difference. It is the only way to find God "outside" at all. Cause is INSIDE of you. God is cause. Effect is its extension or projection. Trying to find God (cause) by trying to love effects is backwards.

The course isn't really trying to get you to be one with the world, or to love it. It's trying to reunite you with God, within you, so that you can extend and create with him from the inside out. So that YOU are the love you keep trying to find in the world. What seems to be "external", including the body and planet, are not where God is. They were made from the idea of being outside of God's Kingdom in exile. They are the illusion of "not within you".

The world is just a picture of the lack of God ("a picture of the crucifixion of God's son"), a hallucination, a projected image of something being outside of or beyond your self, not contained within or included in what you are. And even though the course speaks of how the light of Christ is BEYOND the body and the world, as though on the OTHER side of its walls, as if you need to see THROUGH matter to see reality, it's really right here INSIDE you. It's here, and there. It's within you.

I used to think God was "out there" in the far distant reaches of the universe. Then I experienced him, and he was so intimately close he was literally under my skin and behind all my defenses against the world. God is here now, in your mind, in your soul. Inside of you. Underneath your defenses. Behind your walls. In the back of all your thoughts. Underneath your blocks. Beyond your denial. Deeper even than your own avoidance of inner self. Look for him without and you will be without him. But look for him within and the without will be filled with him.

What the course does do is push you to go deeper within. To get behind your clouds. To dig behind the darkness. To examine with deep honesty your innermost issues. To move beyond them into a complete alignment with your true self. To get under the blanket and snuggle up with God. To know that God goes with you, beside you, within you. To rest within. And to settle into his tranquil love. And all of this requires no movement away from his immediate presence, no seeking, and no loss.

I looked up at the night sky this evening and reached out to God a little, and Jesus corrected me, "he's not out there, he's inside." The path forward moves inward, which in truth seems to be backwards or the reversal of the world, that there may be an outward extension of what you find.

The body was made to put all your attention on what is external, its eyes looking always outward to seek for what is not there. This is why the inner vision of Christ is directed inward mentally, not outward. And only by going within can you see God again.

Here are Jesus's clear affirmations of this message... "Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the whole world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to these beliefs."

"As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me."

"Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. Your Father wills you hear His Word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today." "Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. He will be there. And you can reach Him now."

"And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One." "The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

"Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God"

"The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose, from YOUR relationship to others, to bring them gently IN, has already begun. This is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."

"The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain."

"For perfect effectiveness, the chalice of the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the Separation, and restores the wholeness of the Spirit."

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete."

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

"And what enables Him to SEE His purpose shine forth from every altar, now is yours as well as His."

"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."

"If you will recognize that ALL attack which you perceive, is in your own mind, and NOWHERE ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and where it began it must end. For in this place also lies salvation. The altar of God, where Christ abideth, is there."

"But Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. "

"We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him."

"Forgiveness sweeps away distortions, and opens the hidden altar to the truth. Its lilies shine into the mind, and call it to return and look within, to find what it has vainly sought without. For here, and only here, is peace of mind restored, for this the dwelling-place of God Himself."

"At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father, and becomes one with it."

"But the next step is to realize that a Temple is not a building at all. Its REAL holiness lies in the INNER altar, around which the building is built."

"It is not easy in the world to know what giving means, and how to give a gift that God and all creation will accept as shining outward from a thankful heart and inward to the altar of its God."

"God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it IS Holiness."

"Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard, when you place no other gods before Him."

"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father. Do not be afraid to look within."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God."

"Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."

"This is the true communion of the Spirit Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to YOUR appreciation calls upon you to love God and His Creation."

"This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, NOT in the Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY reality. It is PERFECTLY clear in its thought, because it is a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It SEES only brothers because it sees ONLY in its own Light."

"But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine."

"The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their altars are truly radiant."

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"

"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."

"As this peace expands, from deep inside yourselves, to embrace ALL the Sonship"

"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."

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

If judgement and forgiveness are opposites ("he who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive"), then judgement is the condition of being unforgiving.

Being unforgiving really means that you are looking at the appearance of illusions and are believing what you see. This means that we don't recognize that we're being faced with an illusion, and instead think that it is somehow the truth. We've fallen for the trickery, for how it 'appears', but are not overlooking appearances to see the truth.

This is the same thing as not seeing Christ in others, because you can only see Christ in others when you are overlooking the illusion. i.e. you have to see past appearances, and that means also seeing past the body, seeing past how things seem, and being very clear about the fact that people are actually Christ.

If they are Christ, they are immortal, powerful, have freedom of choice, cannot be victims, and cannot die. They are also the ones dreaming their dream. If we lose sight of that we fall for the illusion they're creating and take it to be real. Doing so is 'judgement'. We are 'judging' what we see, evaluating it, engaging with it, instead of overlooking it.

It doesn't just mean we are judging harshly, labelling people, pointing out flaws or condemning. Even if we believe for a moment that someone dying of cancer is 'real' and that the person isn't choosing it, that is judgement.

So what is a failure to forgive? How does judgement justify that failure? What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you are so forgiving that you see only innocence, truth, Christ, and do not for a second fall for any illusions. You know the truth, you know who is behind all this, and you can no longer believe the trickery - appearances.

When you fail to do that, you are attempting to explain to yourself why you stopped being forgiving. So you have to point out that it was 'because of' things that you are not responsible for. It was because of other people. I mean look at them?! And so we become tangled in appearances, forgetting to overlook appearances, because we are trying to make out that we were right to not forgive, and that the person actually 'is' or 'deserves' what you're seeing in them.

What we need to realize is that this entire world is an illusion, which means, someone somewhere is deliberately creating something for the sole purpose of pretending to be something else, for portraying that author as 'not the author', to try to convince him/herself that it's actually true, and to make-believe that this story is really occurring. It's nothing more than like when a child plays make-believe and pretends that stuff is happening.

This story is what is being shown to us all around us all the time, including our body. And it's our challenge to see through the make-believe, not take it seriously, know that it is not true or real, and be aware of who it is that is making all this seem to happen. It's only because we do not recognize the author of it (and therefore do not recognize ourselves) that we think it is real. And not recognizing Christ as Christ (as the dreamer of all this) means to fail to overlook the illusion and instead fall for it, which means we are judging it to be the truth - that it is truly awful, truly deadly, truly upsetting.

It's not true. The dream is just a dream. We need to wake up to realize who is dreaming all this.

Light is truth. You can see what really is, when there is light. You cannot see in the dark. Darkness appears to hide the light, as though blocking it, removing it, or affecting it. But light cannot be affected by darkness. Darkness is always affected by light, because light dispels it. Even in the dream world, light dispels the darkness.

In awareness, in your mind, the light of truth reveals to you what the truth is. In awareness of the truth, everything is revealed. Whatever the illusions were, they are seen clearly and understood to be only what they are and nothing that they appeared to be. They are nothing.

The light itself is enough to clarify the matter of whether the ego exists or not. The light shows you that there is no real ego. The light clearly reveals to your awareness, that all of the things which you thought really happened because of separation, actually have not happened.

The light also shows you something very important. And it's simply that, in the light of truth, nothing has really gone wrong, so there is nothing that you need to do "extra" to deal with the wrong stuff. You don't need defenses against it, you don't need special skills to deal with it, you don't need a special technique or a meditation or a set or rules. Your behavior doesn't matter, you don't have to effort to interpret things differently.

There simply has not been anything that has gone wrong. There is no ego, no world, no death. They were just illusions and tricks all along, pretending to be real but being nothing but fantasy. This is all *recognized* in the light. The light shows you that this is true. So it's not like, you suddenly realize that there's all this shit going on and now you have to deal with it. Its a recognition that there is not really any shit at all! None. Zero.

And then instead of having to constantly be at war, to defend yourself against the ego, you instead have cause for celebration, because you suddenly see that every single form of suffering was pretend, make-believe, illusory and fake. There was not a real separation. There was not sickness or suffering or death. It was all made up. And all you needed to do was to RECOGNIZE it for what it is - literally nothing.

The light is not concerned about the ego. The light is not upset about separation. The light does not fear the consequences that separation seems to cause. The light is just full of joy and celebration, in the recognition and knowledge, that God's Kingdom is completely intact, safe, unharmed, filled with eternal life, and absolutely nothing has ever gone wrong.

The light shows you this. It's a perspective. It's a correct way of looking. Its True Perception. Vision. The ability to see "what is" and, in that light alone, see that everything of the ego is simply false, untrue and not real at all.

Isn't it great news to know that absolutely nothing has ever really gone wrong, and all the stuff that seemed to have gone wrong was just a bad dream? That in reality, there is only the light and the joy and the peace? And that's all that there is? :-)

Its the big secret that all illusions attempt to hide. That there really has not been a separation at all, God is unchanged, You are still your True Self, you are still absolutely worthy of and welcome by God's love, and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be upset or afraid? This is the truth. This is the atonement of God. Reality is a HAPPY reality. All else is just a nightmarish illusion that isn't even real at all.

There is no true or valid reason to be upset or unhappy, ever. There is only justification for eternal life in joy and peace.

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.

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.

What our minds really need is a paradigm shift. That means a really radical sweeping upgrade in terms of premise, context and outlook. Some kind of system-wide "shift" out of an entire field of form into some radically greater perspective.

It's not enough to be dwelling in the realm of problems and trying to solve them. We have to get our minds out of the entire belief in problems. That's a paradigm shift, a refusal to engage with the level of suffering and a desire to completely transcend it.

This is why Jesus tells us for example to not to try to find freedom in the body, or in the world. It doesn't exist there. Or to not seek for love outside yourself, but within.

We've been looking to solve problems and suffering at the level of the problems and the suffering, which at best makes illusions of solutions but doesn't stop it happening. If you want it to all stop completely you have to stop the entire system, to not play the game.

The same applies with death and sickness. Questioning whether such things even exist at all, instead of dwelling on how to solve them. It's the withdrawal of power from illusions that undoes them, just as forgiveness is an entire perspective above the battlefield that renders the whole system obsolete.

The ego for example counsels that a war is real, and that you should play the game of war, and that if you take a side you will win, or alternatively you will lose. What it doesn't tell you is that both sides of the war is a loss, because to exterminate anyone is to lose yourself, because you are one. It is not interested in oneness only in separation. If you play the game, you lose, regardless of the outcome. The only way to shift the entire paradigm is not to play at all.

All reactions to a suffering world that you've made real, which compel you to change it so that you don't seem to suffer, are faulty. They might seem to produce some changes and make the illusion more palatable, but it doesn't really wake you up. What wakes you up is questioning the entire premise of the thing and whether or not it's even possible.

Shifting from a premise that this world is real, to a premise that it is just an unreal dream with no real consequences, is a total paradigm shift. It's always about adopting a much broader and higher context which completely reframes everything. A whole new paradigm, a new thought system, a new perception, a new truth, which is so far reaching and deep that it completely redefines the meaning of everything, and puts everything in its proper perspective.

"Freud was more clear-sighted about this, because he knew a BAD thing when he perceived it, but he failed to recognize that a bad thing cannot exist. It is therefore wholly unnecessary to try to get out of it. As you very rightly observed yourself, the thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."

"Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning. And so the mind is DEDICATED to serve illusions."

"Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. And, in the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon ALL illusion."

"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic"

Interesting huh. Jesus isn't saying that some illnesses are caused by a belief in the body having the power to create sickness. He is saying that ALL sicknesses of all kinds are produced by believing that the physical level of 'existence' has CAUSAL POWER over your mind.

Essentially, MAGIC, is the belief that something separate from the mind has power to cause the mind. This is the same as being a victim. It's the same as believing things outside of you do things to you. It's the same as the belief that your brother does something to hurt you and that you then demonstrate this is true by showing harm in your body. That is magical. It's a fantasy about how a 'special power' has come along and produced an 'effect' WITHOUT the mind being involved and WITHOUT YOU CAUSING IT.

The reversal of cause and effect is a gross "confusion of the levels". Confusing mind with body. But moreso, confusing the fact that mind is the creator/dreamer with the body which is the created/dream. Such confusion produces 'magical' explanations for why things happen - they don't seem to happen just because YOU had anything to do with it, they seem to happen through some kind of magical mysterious unexplainable 'something' that happens entirely outside your awareness.

Let's reiterate - ALL SICKNESS is caused by a belief in magic. A BELIEF IN magic. That means, every single time we see ourselves as a victim, every time we are irresponsible for our causal power, every time we are disempowered by ourselves, every time we are 'confused' about WHERE THE CAUSE IS (in our mind - GOD is the ultimate cause), that's when sickness is generated.

Sickness then is an attempt to mis-create by using creation against God. It's where we turn around and instead of extending God, we go AGAINST God. We attempt to block God, stop God, attack God, attack the mind, and prevent Him from being the Cause. That produces every physical, emotional or mental illness. ALL of them. Every sickness on the entire planet in the history of mankind AND all animals and creatures AND even that of the earth and air and water and whatever else... *every* form of sickness in the universe, is caused by this 'level confusion'.

We are looking at a 'creation' - the body - the world - and we are attempting to believe that IT has the power to create, to make things happen, that it has its own alien will, and that it can do things to you ON ITS OWN. That is magic. That will result in sickness.

But even moreso, what we're doing here is, we're trying to deny that God is the cause of all creation. It's not just about 'the cause is in my mind'. God is in your mind, or rather, your mind is IN GOD. When we try to deny that God is the Father, that God is the CAUSE or source of everything real, that produces sickness. We are sick because we're blocking the extension of eternal life (creation). We are sick because we don't want love. We are sick because we believe we are separate from God. We are sick because we don't want to love other people unconditionally. When God is not the cause, we're actually saying, the body/world/ego/separation IS GOD. And we worship it. And all its forms. We replace God with the world, and that means we will be sick.

Put God first!

Forgiveness is a constant state of knowing there is nothing to forgive. God is "forgiving" but only in the sense that He knows there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is more of a sustaining of the truth, an extension of love and a clarity about what is true.

If you have a forgiving attitude it means you overlook errors because you do not make them and recognize they do not exist. You are forgiving because by looking with forgiveness you shine a kind and gentle light on all that you see, acknowledging its innocence and yours.

It's when you fail to be forgiving that you enter into making illusions, perceiving guilt, and are calling for punishment.

God's attitude is that you are always innocent. Holy Spirit's attitude is the same. Holy Spirit is always forgiving. If there is anything you think you've done wrong, it is forgivable. Forgiveness extends from unconditional love and recognizes you have not really done anything at all. That is why forgiveness is a key part of the atonement principle - there is nothing to forgive because nothing has happened.

When we do fail to be forgiving, we enter into a state of judgement in an attempt to explain why we are not forgiving. If I can judge another and condemn them, this is my attempt to explain that I did not forgive because clearly the other person is in error and this calls for me to righteously judge them.

"He who would not forgive must judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM

What I need to then do is stop and recognize that I am not being forgiving, and that I need to get back to a forgiving, overlooking attitude, which recognizes innocence and acknowledges the atonement. This doesn't necessarily refer to the `process` that we seem to go through to get TO a forgiving state of mind. When we're in the forgiving state of mind - Holy Spirit - all is forgiven already. But if I'm in a state of condemnation, I need help to get my mind to stop this and to resume forgiveness.

We call it forgiveness when we undo these illusions and when we work on correction of thought and adjustment of perception. But such corrections are only there for the sake of getting mind back to a state of constant pure permanent forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't therefore something you 'do' its a way of being in love. The curriculum of returning to a forgiving attitude is just that, an illusory path of corrections of the mistakes that we're making in our forgiveness.

Some call it practice - to practice forgiveness, in order to learn what forgiveness really is. Or moreso, to unlearn what forgiveness is not. But it isn't practice that produces forgiveness - the light of truth is already established by God and it is His unconditional love that is constantly forgiving through us. We share in that. Our so called 'application' of ACIM principles is more to do with undoing the ways in which we have failed at forgiveness, removing blocks to the awareness that all is forgiven already, so that we can be restored to a constant state of pure forgiving.

Once we reach that complete awareness of forgiveness, and join with Holy Spirit fully, we will cease to make errors such as judgements and will recognize there is nothing left 'to forgive' because forgiveness is complete. And this forgiveness is a protection because it pro-actively fore-gives in order not to enter into error of judgement. So long as you stick with Holy Spirit and see as He sees, you're good to go.

All is forgiven because nothing has happened to assail the Kingdom of God and nothing ever will. This is good news.

It is to clearly recognize when something is an illusion and when it is reality.

It is only because we have become convinced that illusions are real, that they have truth to them, and give them credit, that we are experiencing sleep.

Unconsciousness is denial, which is an attempt to not be aware of the factual truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Instead we have attempted to block the truth, so that we might have an opportunity to believe that something else is the truth, without the real truth distracting us or reminding us of what the truth is.

We had to hide from God, which seems like hiding God, in order to be as close as possible to forgetting the truth. Otherwise we could not possibly give even a moment's attention to illusions which are unreal.

We wouldn't be able to even potentially believe illusions are truth while the real truth was glaringly obvious, but with the real truth out of sight, illusions appear to be plausible.

Unawareness of the real truth makes it "easier" to believe in an illusion of truth. The purpose of the illusion then is to hide the real truth and substitute for it, replacing it with some other form of meaning.

Even though spiritual lessons may show up in a variety of forms and feature different people and problems, they are all still basically the same one lesson. They are all exercises in learning what is true and what is false. Learning to recognize an illusion for what it is, rather than make it real and react to it.

When we believe an illusion has truth to it, we will have a whole cascade of reactions and counter-perceptions which arise out of that fundamental sense of reality. We might think our lesson is to deal with those reactions or overcome them, but ultimately the lesson is only learning to "see through" the illusion.

To overlook the claim of an illusion and not see it as the truth, to not believe in it, and to not fall for its tricks, is simply an act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is therefore the answer to all lessons. To put it even more clearly, forgiveness is the ONLY answer to ALL problems. It is not one of many options, it is the only option.

To remain deluded is unforgiveness, judgement, and attack. To forgive is to learn to see clearly what the truth is, which will put everything into its proper perspective and show the illusion for what it is. When the truth is present, there is so much obvious evidence that the illusion is false, you can't help but recognize it as false. It's obvious, without any particular effort or skill needed to see it as such.

Forgiveness isn't an interpretation of illusions. It's not an attempt to twist your way of looking or to strain or make effort to see in a certain way. Forgiveness is completely effortless and natural. It looks upon illusions in stillness, doing nothing, and simply recognizing them for what they are. They are false. They are untrue. They are not reality.

This is how simple it all comes down to. Every lesson is a lesson in forgiveness. Every lesson presents illusions which you initially believe are true, are dangerous, are able to affect you, or prove that God is dead. Learning to sort out the evidence and become aware of a greater truth is the only way out of the lesson. Learning to discern true from false.

All lessons are learned the same way. Once forgiveness has come to establish a clear perception - true perception - of what the truth really is and what is false, the lesson is over, and the need for the lesson is over. Forgiveness is a permanent correction of sight.

To forgive or not to forgive, that is the question. Forgiveness is the answer.

This world is populated by egos. People who want to broadcast themselves but without listening. This results in a state of competition, conflict and war, where everyone is trying to overpower everyone else. Your brother attacks you by rejecting you. He transmits his illusions about himself and tries to accuse you of sins. He puts up walls against you. He hates and attacks you. And he tries to prevent you from loving him. You do the same and you "meet in the middle", but neither of you moves any closer than a standoff.

Most of the time, the ego in ourselves reacts to the ego in others by regarding them as enemies. If we fall for their illusions, if we believe their attack, if we hold it against them, if we regard it as who they are, the extension of our own mind stops at the obstacles we’re seeing. We fail to overlook these obstacles. In other words, we are being unforgiving. If when he portrays hilmsef as an enemy, attacks you in any way, or convinces you of your or his sinfulness, you fail to love him unconditionally, you too have an ego problem.

The challenge, and this seems difficult at first, is to "love past" their hate. And this means, learning to love absolutely everyone no matter who they are, how they act, what they look like, how evil they seem to be, or what they’ve tried to do to you. Even the really bad extreme cases. Yes EVERYONE. That is unconditional love. Always loving no matter what. That is the atonement, and atonement is forgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks errors and looks past illusions to the truth.

So what I’m finding is, per the Golden Rule, if I actually "have my brother’s back" or "look out for" them, for their HIGHEST SELF, for the truth about them, acknowledging that in truth they are a lovable, holy, innocent equal, sinless and guiltless, who deserve the utmost love, this will put us in a position of being above the battlefield. It means you are transcending all illusions, overlooking their unloving attitude, and upholding the truth about them FOR them. Which means advocating for the true nature of all your enemies. Turning every enemy into a beloved brother, regardless of what they believe or how they behave.

YOU ARE YOUR BROTHER’S KEEPER.

This is the same way that the holy spirit holds a vision of your perfection FOR you until you can recognize it yourself. It means looking way past your brother’s "protest", standing up for his true self on his behalf, extending your mind past his illusions, seeing him as truly an equal who has temporarily lost sight of himself, and taking nothing personally. Because all of his attack, is against himself only, when seen correctly.

It feels unusual at first. There’s your brother being an asshole. Or seeming to. Before you would’ve taken it personally, reacted, held it against him, made it real, and seen nothing else. But the challenge now is to shine your love so strongly that it dispels and moves past all that bullshit to the REAL brother. To the brother who is in pain, who is calling our for love, and who is attacking himself. Loving past the enemy, not becoming what he tries to make of you, and rising far above his delusions.

That means you no longer get to USE him as a scapegoat for your own self attacks.

This means loving the people who attack you, even if they continue to try to do so. Not loving the "attacker self", but loving the person who is behind the projection of pain. Moving past their obstacles to peace. Supporting, defending, standing up for, wanting to heal, loving, caring about, recognizing and remembering, the TRUE nature of that person’s divine innocence. FOR THEM. Because they have temporarily forgotten who they are and have lost their minds. Your remembering is his. Remember the truth about him for him, and help him to remember himself.

"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."

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."

It can be very difficult to forgive abuse. Typically in abusive situations, both persons are identified with their bodies. One person does something to the other person's body, which is taken very personally and hurtfully.

It seems that one person has power to affect the other, to do something to them against their will. And the whole scenario seems to paint a very closed picture of unfair treatment, unwilling participation, obvious fault on the part of the abuser, and total helplessness on the part of the victim.

If you look solely at what is happening at the physical level, and if this is believed to be reality, then all of this makes sense. The abuser physically does do something. The victim physically or emotionally or mentally does seem to receive the fallout of the abuse. The separation between the bodies and wills seems to portray the victim as "not wanting it" etc. At a purely surface-appearance level, this is all very real and threatening and traumatic. As if the is the whole story.

But viewing the situation purely in terms of surface appearance, is actually an unforgiving perception. It means the form of what happened was blinding. It means you were identified with your body, such that anything happening from the outside in seemed to affect your actual self. There is no recognition that "its just a dream." And there certainly doesn't appear to be any hope of escape from the hellish nightmare.

The difficult part comes when you start to explore how to heal this, forgive it, undo the consequences, or to become free from the aftereffects, some of which can be debilitating and even life threatening. But at some point, there has to be a willingness to entertain the possibility that there was "more happening" than met the eye, and that there might be a different way of looking at it. It is this unwillingness to remain in pain, that inspires the beginning of opening up to spirit.

"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."

Even if you are left with pain and scars, emotional hurt, physical damage, psychological wounds or forms of insanity, carrying this baggage around forever becomes intolerable. Pain is not pleasant. Constant fear is a nightmare. The sheer weight of suffering can potentially inspire a person to try to find a way out of hell, unless they become so distraught that it leads to suicide.

For those who do find at least "a little willingness", there becomes a glimmer of openness to at least the possibility that, just maybe, there is some way to heal and be free of this. That maybe if you look at it from a different vantage point you might find out some hidden facts, previously unrecognized influences, or even some ways that you might have caused it. Of course, for abused people, leaping to "I did this to myself" is a pretty huge leap, when everything the physical reports testifies to "they did everything to me and I did nothing."

It can even seem horrendously offensive to a person who is very heavily believing in "what appeared to happen" as the only reality. When pain backs it up, when suffering seemed to come from it, and when the person didn't seem to want any of it, there is tremendous resistance to healing and forgiveness. It is in fact, part of the pyschological blindness that placed their mind in an unforgiving experience to begin with, and this denial may even have been increased through the abusive experiences.

This is why it can take time, a lot of willingness and gradual transformation, to work through the ins-and-outs of everything that happened, all the pain it entailed, to be able to purge and purify the suffering, to even get to a point where you might be open to another way of looking at it. But if there is to be another way of looking at it, it can't be at the physical level. It can't be just another attempt to frame the situation in terms of "it was real, but the person had their reasons."

True forgiveness has to entail moving away from the sheer physcality of the abusive situation, away from appearances and forms, and away from the illusion of causality. It has to rise above the "he did this to me" and the "she did that to me". And it has to go into the "Maybe I had something to do with this." Given how intense and horrifying abuse can be, and the seeming unhealable wounds it leaves behind, even being open to that suggestion can be a seemingly insurmountable stretch.

The key factor which lifts a person out of perception of abuse, is becoming identified with spirit instead of the body. And that all by itself is a journey. And it also requires that you recognize that you can be free from suffering, even if people seem to be vicious and hurtful. As the Course says:

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true.

Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

To allow there to be a maximum amount of viciousness and attack by others, yet to be in such a state of mind in which this has NO effect on you, seems like a very tall order. But it is not impossible. It entails the recognition that this world is a dream, and not a reality. Yes it will seem like the abuse was VERY real, with disturbing memories and wounds to show for it, but in the really big picture it nevertheless was still part of a dream.

Jesus suggests that if we can approach the awareness and recognition that this IS a dream world, and not a reality, we will become more identified as spirit, or as the dreamer of the dream. We are the mind/soul that is beyond the dream which houses it within ourselves.

With willingness, it's going to become apparent that the events in dreams are something WE are contributing to. This produces a profound shift in how we look at what the other person "did to us", because now we're starting to question not only whether it really happened in reality at all, but also who was really causing what.

It can seem to be a bitter pill to swallow, that we would be hurtful to ourselves, that we ourselves might've agreed to or arranged or produced suffering, that in effect we wanted to be abused for some other purpose of scapegoating. It's especially heinous to many people to suggest that someone in a victim role is not entirely faultless, that they in fact are using the opportunity to position themselves as victim in order to be ABLE to find the abuser guilty. And as the course says, this has a tremendous payoff in allowing us to position ourselves as innocent, as a way to asuage our OWN guilt for our own sense of sin.

Could it be then, quite a shocking but deep truth, that we may well not only consent to abuse but even encourage it and bring it upon ourselves, because of the benefit to us psychologically - that we can convince ourselves that if the other person is especially evil, it portrays us as especially good. And given that we are loaded with uhealed guilt over the separation from God, it provides a wonderful opportunity to exonerate ourselves by finding someone else to be especially sinful. We may in fact be using the abuser as a fall-guy for our own sin.

This then completely turns the tables on the situation, and is the secret hidden truth that the abusive situation seems to reject. While the situation said, "they did this to me, I did nothing", in truth the fact is "I did this to me and used them to make myself look better." That is not something that is easy to admit to, but it has to be admitted to if you want freedom.

Here is Jesus saying that we are even willing to BE KILLED, if it means the payoff that we can find someone ELSE to be the sinner and to exonerate ourselves. And that we may even welcome being highly severly abused, attacked, afflicted, murdered and destroyed, as a tremendously opportunistic bargain, if it means we can be found guiltless. Even that what WE get out of it is even MORE than they get out of it - a great deal!

"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."

This isn't simply a teaching about sickness and how we use the body to try to show proof that our brother caused us to be sick, so that we'll be exonerated of sin. It's a general teaching that in many ways, abuse included, we try to position ourselves as victims in order to get a great payoff. That we're even willing to enter into highly abusive, detrimental, suffering situations, with terrible power loss and mistreatment, if it means that secretly this causes the OTHER person to seem like the sinner. What did abuse turn you into, if not someone justified in anger and blame?

Jesus doesn't hold back, in that he is even saying that we are WILLING TO DIE, if it will provide us with an opportunity to point a finger at the CAUSE of death, other than ourselves, and say "look there, that's where the sin is". And thus to say, "Look at me, I didn't do anything at all." We even lay down in death in a kind of passive way, totally hands-off, making ourselves appear to be COMPLETELY at the effect of something outside our control, so that it paints a very vivid picture of unfair destruction, un-asked for killing, and unwanted torment. In which we appear innocent.

The driving force behind all of this is the guilt that WE feel in OUR mind, over a situation which doesn't even have anything to do with these abusers. It's the fact that we are bringing some very heavy shit, TO the situation, from our past. And we're causing and involving ourselves in relationships and situations which afford us opportunities to PROJECT, dissociate from, and disown this hidden secret suffering, in order to try to deal with it.

What could be so big and deep and hidden and painful that we would want to go so far as to ALLOW ourselves to seem to be destroyed by another, if it would mean escaping it? What possible severity of sin could we have possibly either committed tor accused ourselves of, that we would ENCOURAGE sickness in an attempt to be seen with pity and favor? What kind of hideous act did we commit which could possibly require death as the only "solution", in which by accusing anyone OTHER than ourselves of TERRIBLE mistreatment, we can try to make a dent in it and be seen as the innocent one?

Don't doubt for a second that the ego's entire drive is to use denial to its full extent. It denies who you are, it denies God through sin, it denies sin through guilt, it denies guilt through the face of innocence, and it denies the face of innocence by destroying the body through "a will of punishment not my own." Denial upon denial upon denial are used to gradually remove you from existence and to disown everything. Even in abuse we are disowning the way in which we are abusing ourselves.

All of this is really based on our secret sins and hidden hates, the self accusation, the condenation upon yourself BY yourself, the belief in the reality of sin, the authority problem and desire to overthrow God, and indeed the belief that you HAVE attacked God against His will. It is really the original sin, the belief that you opposed the entire Kingdom of God through evil, that you are running and hiding from. And it is the unforgiven guilt for that perceived sin that you try to push onto others when you form abusive relationships.

Those who feel particularly guilty are apt to not only cause physical sickness, they are also apt to be vicious and very accusatory. They project heavily because trying to dissociate that unconscious guilt from their minds seems like the only way to hide from it. By putting it onto someone else and framing them as an abuser or attacker, it SEEMS to make it look like they are more evil than you, thus you are partly exonerated for your belief in sin against God. And those who are especially OPEN to being a victim, unfairly treated, abused, in fact are the most deceptive and blameful. He who has "been destroyed against his will" has gotten away with the crime of the century.

So now as the tables turn, we find out that a person who on the surface seemed to be the innocent party in the abuse, who was purely victimized, who asked for nothing and who made no contribution to it at all, actually turns out to be the ONLY one who was really doing anything at all, who did it all to themselves, and EVEN went so far as to USE the "abuser" for their own aims. What more benefit could a guilty person find than to position themselves as helplesly suffering, if it would create the illusion that SOMEONE ELSE is guilty? And how sick is it that we would actively WANT to do this, even if it meant we had to suffer to pull it off?

You can see why the truth of these situations is so hard to accept. It litearlly suggests that "the abused" are abusers, that victims are in fact victimizers, that those who are afraid are vicious, and that this is all a secret plot to GAIN from suffering. Even that we would happily die if it meant someone else would pay for what we've done to God.

"We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. " On the surface, the world being so back to front, it always seems at first glance that those who are suffering are NOT the ones doing the attacking. And that those who are seeming to be the cause of the suffering, are NOT the victims. But this is literally what Jesus is telling us. And it is this complete "180" that our minds have to go through in order to heal this psychological conditioning. And that's not easy.

If I was abused, even if the abuse and the emotional pain tells me that it happened, it was unfair, I did not ask for it, the abusers were evil monsters, and they ought to receive a death sentence, my act to MAINTAIN this position is in fact driven by a motive of wanting to keep BENEFITING from it. And that is not an easy thing to admit to. Yet alone to look at the fact that I was the one doing the abuse to myself and to the abusers. That I was USING them as a scapegoat, and WANTED to be abused in order to get away with FRAMING THEM for my own murder.

It's even harder to admit to any of this if the victim is a helpless innocent young child who appears, at the face of it, to be utterly devoid of sin and guilt, and who has no power or ability to stop anything happening. This all sets up the perfect scenario for the ego to manipulate the situation and USE it to its advantage. Not o much to cause the child to suffer cruelly, but to cause the child to WANT to suffer in order to develop a wonderful collection of scapegoats. Of course, saying something like this is NOT going to be popular with most of society.

Admitting to all this is, nevertheless, the eventual place our mind has to get to if we truly want to be free from pain and suffering. We have to approach the secret of salvation. We have to be willing to admit to what we are doing and the part we play. And we certainly have to completely let the abusers off the hook, otherwise we cannot experience psycholgoical repair. So long as we are looking to project and get rid of our own inner guilt onto these people, we keep ourselves in a prison of denial and suffering. And we can't feel happy while we're AVOIDING the original guilt that we were using the abuser to try to get rid of.

It begs the question, far more importantly, not "why did they do that to me"... but "why did I do this to me?". That's the really deeper issue. Why did you accuse yourself of sin FIRST, before you arranged for someone to sin against you? Why did you believe in sin, at all, before inviting others to seem to sin against you? Why did you fall into the authority problem, prior to ever needing an external authority to pretend to have power over you? Why did you attack yourself first? Why were you overtly vicious against yourself and God, before portraying yourself as a helpless victim? That's the bigger deal to heal.

"I but accuse my brother of my own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"You are doing this to yourself."

"There is no sin."

Self destruction and self attack and self victimization and self punishment, are far more the problem and death-inducing than the two-times removed scapegoats that we find externally. The abuser isn't even the beginning of the process, they're a device that we use later down the line to try to deal with what we've done to oursevles. And the ultimate freedom can only come when you find YOURSELF to be innocent, having never sinned in reality, forming the basis for the total lack of NEED to have an "abuser" take on the burden for you.

These external influencers are not even the cause of anything. They're scapegoats that we use to project sin and disown responsibility. And until this power is taken back and reclaimed, a "victim" cannot feel empowered or free of victimization. It's kind of a two-way street. You can't be secretly victimizing, which all victims do, if you want to be free of being victimized. If you believe in victimization you become a victimizer and pretend you are the opposite. Obviously that's not a sane position to take.

There is hope for healing and true release from all suffering, all abuse, all symptoms and effects, all baggage and all pain. But it does require that you take full responsibility for your choices and your participation on making happen what you thought happened against your will. You cannot see yourself as being an unwilling participant if you want to find the power of the wil. And the only way to be truly free is to accept the atonement truth that you never sinned in the first place, such that you don't need anyone to exonerate you through suffering.

Who is the abuser who really needs your forgiveness? It's you.

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed. He was "called down upon the earth" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

----

"He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's MANIFESTATION, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them unto YOU. For He loves what He sees within you, and He would EXTEND it. And He will not return unto the Father, until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has RETURNED you to the Father WITH Him. "

----

"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."

----

"Whose manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you will believe in what you MANIFEST, and as you look out so will you see in. "

----

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him. For He will send you His witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what you seek you WILL find. "

----

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind. Perception IS projection, and you look in BEFORE you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing, and THEN look out, and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek. What you want in YOURSELF you will make manifest by projection, and you will accept it FROM the world, because you put it there BY wanting it."

----

"When you want ONLY love, you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your minds, and accepted opposition there, having SOUGHT it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the message you GAVE them. Love is recognized by its messengers. If you make it manifest, its messengers will come to you, because you INVITED them."

----

"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."

----

"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."

----

"When you learn to make ME manifest, YOU will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless in YOURSELF, and you will see only the eternal, as you look out upon a world that cannot die."

----

"Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF. "

----

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them. "

----

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."

Each of us has an identity. God gave us an identity in and as part of Christ or the Sonship, which we share. But in the separation from God, we denied who we were and sought an identity that wasn't shared. That meant denying our mutual identity, placing us in a state of not being certain of who we are. Another way of saying that is that we became afraid of who we are.

Then we started trying to make an identity that would replace the identity we lost. We were out of touch with reality. So we started trying to assemble an identity from various illusions, and from things which are not really who or what we are. In particular we tried to identify with something isolated and alone, that you could call "only yours", rather than sharing an identity with others.

This included identifying with our bodies, believing that our body is our self. To do this our mind has to literally "attach" itself to "mix itself with" the body, trying to become "one" with it. As if to blur the lines between what is the body and what is our self. So that there is only one seeming self, not two. By trying to identify with a body, we're trying to hide our real identity and forget it, so that all that remains is the body self.

If I bind my definition of who and what I am, or what is true of me, to the body, then I am saying I AM a body. And then everything about the body I take personally as if it speaks of and defines me. Maybe I'll feel positive about my body for various reasons, due to how it looks or what it is capable of. Or maybe I'll feel negative about it based on it being ugly or defective. But both are still identifications with the body.

We can also shift to identifying with the mind, or with thoughts. When we have thoughts we can get a sense of an artificial sense of self, mixed in with the thinking. The mind can chatter away with its noise and the more it talks the more you mistake the talking for the person doing the talking. As if the sound of thought is the presence of someone. As if the thoughts are a self. And now you've identified with thinking, perhaps with intelligence or intellect, with memory or accumulation of knowledge.

You can also identify with social standing, your social background, class, race, gender, how much money you have, where your family seems to rank in terms of some social hierarchy, whether you are upper-class or lower, living in wealth or in poverty etc. You can also identify with failing to have much of a worthwhile identity in any of these areas, perhaps with a poor body and poor finances and poor living conditions, seeing yourself as identified as a helpless victim.

I think we can also identify with objects, with animals and pets, with places, with homes and cars etc. We can identify with our children, and literally feel as though what happens to them happens to us. As though they are a part of us, to such an extent that when they suffer we suffer, or we take everything that happens to them as a personal attack. This can lead to the identity of being a father or mother, someone who wants to keep that identity and not let it go, and who cannot deal with the empty nest.

These are all confused senses of who and what you are. And we're all looking for ourselves because think we lost ourselves. We sense that we are uncertain, thus afraid, of who and what we really are - or don't want to know. We don't remember our identity. It's like we have an amnesia. Whether it be an amnesia imposed by birth through crossing the barrier of dimensions and entering a body prison, or the illusion that every time you're born you start from scratch to build an identity.

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

So the big question really is, who are you? What are you? Are you the son of God as He created you? Or have you become something else? Do you want to be something else? Are you a body? Are you a relationship, or a child that you possess, or an object you own? Are you a social status or a financial position? Are you your job, or your role as a parent? Are you made of the guilt and fear and sin that you feel? Are you your thoughts and your thinking? Are you the intellect? Are you awareness? Do you have a soul?

Finding out who you really are, knowing yourself, is what Jesus says is the entire point of this course. It's about remembering and waking up to the recognition that you are still exactly the same identity that God created you to be forever. You are still Christ, you are still a soul, still part of the sonship, still perfect. Still a spiritual being. And your real identity is shared with all the other Sons of God.

So our whole process here is just sorting out, what are we experiencing as being our identity, who or what have we identified with or latched onto, what is it that we think is our self, and where have we put that? What have we tried to become "one with", other than God? What have we wrapped ourselves around in trying to portray ourselves as something God did not create?

If I think I am my body or my thoughts and have actually bound myself to them such that I seem to experience them "as me", then I am in need of correction. I am out of touch with who I really am and am believing I am something I am not. This means I lack awareness or awakening, or am unconscious. These mis-identifiations with things we are not, are blocks to awareness.

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

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. 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 ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness HAS no limits, because its being is in Infinity."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"They are reflections both of your own proper identification WITH your brothers, and of your own awareness that YOUR identification IS maintained by extension."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One."

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be."

"As long as your identification vacillates, (and B's is weak) you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you."

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. "

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. "

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm."

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

"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."

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

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

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

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

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

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."

When you are in the ego, you will experience various symptoms. You will:

* Feel afraid, confused, indecisive, uncertain, doubtful.

* Be in a state of questioning, trying to find answers.

* Believing there are multiple possible truths, explanations, diagnoses and possibilities outside of you in the world.

* Trying to find "the correct" possibility from all the possibilities, as if to do so will bring salvation and an answer.

* Feel like something in the world might actually be true, and therefore you are afraid, and can't quite trust the truth.

I often find myself in this state. Once I'm in this state, hallmarked by fear and questioning, I will BELIEVE that I am trying really hard to find an answer. BUT, I will be looking in all the wrong places, looking with the ego, using my separate "abilities" such as the intellect or past experiences, and I will just be going around and around frantic to find "the answer".

I will think that if I look hard enough I will find out what the truth is. But it's going to be one of many possible truths, which is confusing in its own right. So then I think that if I can just "figure out" on my own, know on my own, which one of them is the "real answer", then I will find it and can then get salvation. It never works, because the ego's rule is "seek and do not find", which means to seek passionately, to question everything, to reject all real answers, and to just stay in a state of fear.

When I get like this, there IS no truth out there. There IS no answer that I will find, from an "objective world", which will be "the" truth. But I will be perceiving not only that there IS an objective world, which is real, but that it therefore MUST contain the truth. If the world is real, it automatically has truth in it, so I just need to figure out where it is. Trouble is that NEVER works, because the world is NOT really real, it does NOT really contain any truth, and nothing I figure out about it will undo the FEAR.

Fear is produced BECAUSE I've made the world real. "I am upset because I see something which is not there", i.e. I've made an illusion real, am deluded, and MUST now experience fear because it seems like something UNTRUE has taken on a life of its own. Who wouldn't be afraid if imaginary monsters suddenly seemed real?

In this state of egotism, victimhood, fear, confusion and questioning, I am NOT really making any headway towards salvation. I'm not really getting closer to the answer. I'm actually doing the opposite. It is because I have moved AWAY from the answer, that I am even feeling this experience of "questioning" at all. The experience of questioning is really a state of being answerless, lacking in all certainty, knowing nothing, failing to be at peace, a complete loss of clarity, total victimhood, and is terrifying.

When I get like this, Jesus often now prompts me with a single wise word: "decide".

At first, I do not know what what this means or why the heck it is even relevant in the situation. If I'm stuck in the middle of trying to understand HOW or WHY "something has happened", or how or why "something really is this way", it seems to make no sense as to why deciding something would help, or what the decision even is.

But what I gradually come around to is this. The state that I'm in, as a state of victimhood and ego, is only happening BECAUSE I'm believing that stuff can happen to me against my will, that I have no choice, that I have to put up with whatever this external truth is, and that I need to find out what that "external law" is so that I can do something about it. It's not a decisive state at all. It's a loss of decisiveness. A loss of confidence. A loss of clarity and certainty. In other words, it is FEAR.

To get out of fear, and to get out of the entire game of "what if its this" "what if its that"..... which is all entirely terrifying, you have to SHIFT your perspective to something entirely different. A whole different model for what things are and how stuff happens. You've got to get out of victimhood into EMPOWERMENT. That means:

1) Owning up to you being totally responsible for everything

2) Reclaiming your power, in that whatever you choose will happen, nothing will happen unless you choose it, and therefore whatever you choose WILL BE your experience

3) Realize then that you do not need to defend yourself against illusory threats, because NOTHING IS HAPPENING TO YOU against your will

4) You are decisive, confident, powerful, certain and creative. You can CHOOSE AGAIN. And that means

5) You can choose to align yourself with God's truth, and to make a statement of what the truth IS, instead of attempting to "find out" what the truth is. Thus

6) If you choose NOT to create enemies, fears, disasters, problems, sickness, death, monsters, etc... THEY WILL NOT EXIST and will not be able to do anything to you.

*YOU* HAVE THAT POWER! You get what you ask for! There is no such thing as stuff happening that you did not ask for and do not want!!!!

BE THE TRUTH!

If you think that you will become free of a belief if you can figure out why stuff "really happens", or why someone "really does something", or "why evil is evil" or "why people are sick" etc.... you will not only fail to find a peaceful answer, you will also CREATE THOSE THINGS. This is why in your MASTERY of yourself, you have to come to realize that nothing can happen to you against your will, and that the only thing you've really been doing wrong is believing that something can be true WITHOUT YOU CHOOSING IT.

So when Jesus says decide, he means, flip into a state of confidence and DECIDE whether you believe the ego's truth or God's truth. Which one of these realities will you ALIGN yourself with. Which one of these two truths is going to be TRUE for you and are you going to believe in?

See, you think you have a choice beyond the ego and God. You think there is a third choice. You think that somehow there is 1) God, 2) Ego, 3) Your selective ability to pick and choose what the truth is. You do not have that ability really. You ONLY have the ability to decide which thought system you will BE a part of. If you choose to be part of the ego's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about the ego is REAL for you. If you choose to be part of God's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about GOD is REAL for you. And believing one, you will disbelieve in the other. And that IS your protection!

So recognize this. Fear that the ego is true, MUST disappear, IF you choose to believe in God's truth, BECAUSE they are opposite and mutually exclusive. They cannot coexist. If you want to be safe from evil, CHOOSE GOD, SO THAT *YOU* do not create your own evil. YOU are the one who empowers it. YOU are the one who give reality to it. YOU are the one who makes yourself vulnerable by trying to become at peace or saved from a "real threat".

If the ego's world of threats and dangers is real for you, there is NO WAY that you will ever find peace. You simply cannot find salvation, truth, a peaceful answer, a resolution, a cure, a magical description, a satisfactory diagnosis, or any kind of convincing TRUTH if you are CHOOSING to believe the ego is real. Because even if you think that you are in a state of questioning and NOT having a choice, you actually ARE choosing the ego. You are never not choosing.

Choose the ego and you'll believe you have no choice and that you don't want to choose what the ego is offering.

Choose God and you will believe you are free to choose but you only want to choose God after all.

So get out of your ego's attempt to intellectually discover the truth in the world, or explain sickness, or figure out why evil happens, or why someone did something. There is NO TRUTH there. Choose instead to reclaim your POWER OF DECISION, get out of the victimy complete lack of confidence, become decisive, be determined you will MAKE A DECISION about what you believe, and MAKE IT!

I CHOOSE THAT GOD'S TRUTH IS TRUE AND NOTHING ELSE IS TRUE!

THAT is your immortal protection against all illusions, all evil, all suffering, and all death. Going back into fear to "check" if evil is gone simply will make more evil. Going back into fear to "prove" that something is true, will just invalidate the truth again. This is why you must TRUST in God's truth, SURRENDER your belief that the ego's world is real, and become fully committed to the REALITY that God has already decided FOR you.

Choosing for yourself, versus accepting God's decision. That's all.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are."

"You have forgotten Who you really are."

"But you might remember that the reason FOR the course is that you do NOT know who you are."

The separation from God was also the separation from yourself. You blocked your awareness of who you really are. Your real self became obscure to you, forgotten and buried beneath layers of denial, distortion, lies and darkness.

What remains now, which you might think of as who you are conscious of being, is a very narrow and limited view of yourself. This narrowness confines you and seems to define you as small and imprsioned in a body. As if you are body-sized instead of universe-sized.

You think that the scope of your conscious awareness is the total scope of your whole self. Whatever of yourself you are aware of, that seems to be all of you. But it isn't. There is more to you.

It's kind of like you've got a bad case of amnesia, you are not consciously in touch with your actual real nature, and are no longer centered in the wholeness of your real self. You think you've turned yourself into someone else. So now you have a false and confused sense of identity. Especially if you think you are a physical body, or the ego.

In the back of your mind, underneath layers of denial, behind clouds of guilt, beyond various forms of deception and illusion, there is the core of your being. Your soul. Your real identity in God. It's still there, waiting to be uncovered.

It is a perfect self. The original self that God created you to be. And it hasn't really changed at all. But it's been concreted over by various beliefs and lies and stories you've tried to teach to yourself.

Your challenge, or really all that you need to do, is uncover and get back in touch with your real self. To sort through the garbage pile and clear away the blockages so that you can have a fuller sense of seeing, able to be aware of who you really are. Of who you have really always been, but you just forgot for a while.

The whole of ACIM is geared towards you remembering WHO YOU ARE. It's goal is to know yourself again. To uncover your real identity as Christ. And to restore your awareness of your place in God. It is a path of "self-realization". Who are you? God knows who you are. And the Holy Spirit can remind you.

"Your goal is to find out who you are, having denied your identity by attacking creation and its Creator"

"To hold a grievance is to forget who you are."

"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE."

"Your Father's Name reminds you who you are, even within a world which does not know; even though you have not remembered it."

"And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you MUST be confused about yourself and who you are."

"You will lose all your fear of teaching and relating in any form once you know who you are."

"But what you really are must be revealed to you."

"And no one CAN know his function unless he knows who he IS."

"No course whose purpose is to teach you what you really are could fail to emphasize there is no difference in what you are and what love is."

"Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are."

"Your real worth IS your divine authorship, and your Soul is its acknowledgement."

"And if your reality is God's, when YOU attack, you are not remembering HIM."

"By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him."

"what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured"

"This IS your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple, and your real self."

The thought system of the ego has directly produced this physical universe.

The thought system of God has directly produced heaven.

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

It's not just that Heaven is "another place" that you can think about in the same way you think about Earth or this universe. Heaven THINKS DIFFERENTLY from how this world thinks, it reasons differently, it draws conclusions differently, and its logic does not operate like the ego's logic.

This world represents and is part of or inside of, the ego mind. Anything this side of the separation from God IS the ego thought system, including this universe. The ego mind's THINKING has produced this universe and all forms of matter reflect the idea of EXCLUSION.

Heaven represents and is part of or inside of, God's mind. Anything THAT side of the separation from God is the Holy Spirit's thought system, including Heaven. Heaven proceeds according to entirely different THINKING and its nature, it structure, is nothing like the ego predicts.

The two thought systems are so extremely opposite to each other, as to be nothing alike. The two "worlds" are unalike in EVERY way, and Earth being totally unlike God's nature cannot possibly have been created BY him because it is not LIKE Him at all.

The problem arises when, unfortunately, we USE the ego's thought system to attempt to look at or understand the nature of God's thought system. Extraordinary misunderstandings arise from this, because the ego's way of thinking and reasoning fundamentally *requires* seeing things in a certain way. When looking at something unlike itself, it literally cannot see it correctly without major distortions.

This is why we have to be extremely careful about the conclusions we come to about Heaven, God, Sonship, Creation etc, because in just about every case, we are USING the ego to think about it. And this has unfortunately led to a huge list of false conclusions about the nature of Heaven.

We may not realize it, but we actually THINK WITH the ego, and all of our thought processes follow ego laws and proceed according to ego rules. The way that we reason things out, the way that we "make sense" of anything, it all stays INSIDE OF the ego's thought system. When we try to use the ego to make sense of heaven, therefore, we don't actually LEAVE the ego's thought system to go TO heaven to THINK LIKE GOD, instead we look upon it from afar and make false judgements about it.

Jesus says that we need to learn to THINK LIKE GOD, and that means learning a whole different way of reasoning and thinking and concluding. A whole different way of "making sense", if we are to have any hope of comprehending WHY God acts a certain way or WHY it's possible for Him to have created individuals with free will. Or WHY He could not possibly have created this physical universe. Or HOW the nature of this world is fundamentally IMPRISONING right down to the atom.

We literally are living INSIDE the tiny mad idea, which is an idea of "separation thought" and all of our thinking follows exclusive, separating rules. These rules split things apart and make them different and pit them against each other, because it is a murderous thought system. The result of using the ego's thinking processes to evaluate God's creation is that it results in MURDER of God's creation. And yet the ego will evaluate that it has merely "made sense". When the ego makes sense of something, it makes NONSENSE.

While the Course largely focuses on USING the ego's thought system and its way of thinking, to lead you OUT of its way of thinking, this is only because it's how you DO think for the most part and so He is trying to speak our "language" and to use how WE think and reason to help us to make conclusions AGAINST the ego. But the truth remains that the way the ego thinks is fundamentally false and excluding and separating, so at some point we have to move past this to learn to think like God.

When you think like God, which is holographic INCLUSIVE logic, it becomes clear that the conclusions the ego came to about God's Creation are simply false.

ALL of your ego's functioning stems from a very very simple premise. Once you start to realize what this foundation is, it frames everything the ego does as just another example of this one thing.

The foundation of the ego is simply the suggestion that you are not love - the love is not in you or what you are - so you are deprived of it - so now you need to go restore the sense of lack by finding it somewhere ELSE other than in you. You go off hunting for a way to fill the emptiness, which reinforces your belief in the emptiness. And even if you find something, it won't heal the sense of LACK, and you won't accept it, because it's not really what you want. You want yourself back. You want God's love.

The separation of your identity from God's Son leads to:

Seeking outside yourself

Creating sickness

All idol worship

Creating fear

All attack

All victimhood

All loss and grief and loneliness

All sense of abandonment and rejection

Seeing yourself as separate from God and others

Having nothing to depend on ("independence")

Insanity

Not being true to yourself

Seeking for what you lost where it does not exist and not finding it

Losing even more of what you are by being compelled to replace it

A belief that you can die

All vulnerability and sense of threat

Mistrust (in yourself)

All paths efforting to 'find yourself' but remain separate

The spiritualized ego

The inability to share or join

Condemnation and judgement and blame (of yourself)

Shame and guilt for who you are

Unworthiness and unloveability

Suffering and suicide and war (with yourself)

All anger and upset and disasters and terrible events

...And on and on.

Just this one thing. This one idea of - I'm not myself - where am I - who am I - I am separate from what I am - I am not as God created me - leads to all of these other dynamics and activities and perceptions.

You can't have any of them without this one foundation - this sense of separation from yourself. And since you and God are one, it is simultaneously a sense of separation from God.

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct." - ACIM

And here's the clincher. Every single one of those things on that list above that you currently believe are caused by all kinds of things OTHER than the ego's foundation, are NOT caused by anything other than the ego's foundation. And so it is the sheer 'fact' of 'being' an ego - separate from the love you are - that causes every single problem you face. All hell comes from it. Being separate from God and your True Self is the ONLY problem that needs correction. All other problems are illusory problems masking the one problem so that you will not correct it.

So each time I am in the ego, in some way I must be believing that I am separate from God and myself. I must be going down some path which tells me it's going to help me RESTORE who I am and what I lost, BUT which will NOT restore it, because the entire NEED for that path comes from believing I LACK what I'm looking to restore, and until I stop beleiving that I won't ever be able to ACCEPT that I HAVE WHAT I REALLY HAVE ALREADY.

You ARE as God Created you. You ARE love already. This you need to accept, and let go of all these other ego pursuits that trick you and lead you away from it. Everyone is being deceived by the ego's suggestions of everything you need to do to 'fix' the separation, which seem to lead you to resolution but in fact lead you to an EVEN WORSE situation. Seek and do not find. Fix and do not correct. Pursue and fail. Search and lose. Try to have and do not have at all. Hold on and lose everything. This is all the ego's deceit.

One error, one correction. Holy Spirit's is the Answer from God because He Knows the solution to this problem - that the problem really IS NOT REAL. You are NOT separate from God or Your Self and the separation NEVER HAPPENED. So you are love. And that is why you need do nothing.

Practiced a little bit of `miracle working` this morning ... the 'change the dream' and 'reverse cause and effect' kind. I am reporting this just because I'm still experimenting/learning/discovering what is possible and maybe it is useful.

I had back pain from a couple days ago, was annoying. Could not sleep on my side last night. Woke up with a sore shoulder bla bla bla. Uncomfortable, predicting that the day would be awkward and painful again. But then, decided to ask Jesus for help. It goes something like this:

1) Place your hand on the affected area

2) Join with Jesus, acknowledging that you BELIEVE/have faith that HE knows how to heal anything (healing comes from the Christ mind and you yourself (your ego self) are not capable of it) - your Christ self is.

3) Get yourself out of the way, your attitude of being forceful, your attitude of having power, your attitude of making something happen yourself, being the fixer, being a healer. NO. It's NOT YOU that is going to do the healing (this is profoundly difficult if you are accustomed to being `a healer` or fixer or savior).

4) Join with Jesus and feel his presence and stand with him in your mind, and stay there. Don't be separate. Stand alongside him and in his power and strength.

5) Now you can say words directly specifically at the problem, COMMANDING them to leave and never return, in Jesus's name (or words to this effect, ie within/using/extending Jesus's power)

6) e.g. "In Jesus's name (in my belief that Jesus can heal this FOR me), I command you pain to leave this body right now and do not return. (Notice if you start doubting and try looking for results or checking for changes or claiming credit for what's happening - this is all ego interference). (Notice also if you start believing YOU have to summon amazing amounts of magical power yourself in order to force the thing to leave... no force necessary whatsoever, you have to LET JESUS DO IT).

7) Notice if you are trying to force it or are trying to use `your own` power or strength or aggression to make the thing go away... that doesn't work. It's interference by the ego. You don't even need to ask in a forceful way. IF I can get myself out of the way then when I say the words it seems like I am barely saying anything, like reciting something without any intensity - because I'm letting Jesus have the power

8) If this does not work... and often it does nothing to begin with... do it again. Do it a few times. For me, after about 3 or 4 times, I felt my hand begin to vibrate and 'energize' and for there to be a presence in my back area and a sensation of buzzing or something happening.

9) Keep doing it because each time you are clear and pure about Jesus doing the healing it opens up your mind more and strengthens the connection - sometimes you have lots of clouds of ego to get past and it can take some determination/repetition to make your point clear enough and to extend enough 'authority' and certainty to command the 'dream' to change.

10) Hopefully if you did this well you will see some results. It takes practice.

For me, I was surprised that after 4 or 5 rounds (patiently applied) .. the pain in my back and shoulder had SIGNIFICANTLY subsided, probably like 60-70% improved. It left me smiling. It left me surprised and a bit amazed that it actually felt a lot better. Thank you Jesus! Hallelujah, or something.

I don't see that this is hard to do, but getting your ego out of the way can seem difficult. Jesus/Holy Spirit are the healers (God is). Its a matter of getting out of the way, trusting, believing in their power, putting aside fear, joining in their authority and extending their truth.

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

ACIM quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

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

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

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

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

It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.

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

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

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."

(...and why a sick body means the mind has NOT been healed)

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if 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." - ACIM

Think of the body as a blank canvas, onto which you can paint a picture representing who and what you are.

If you are in the business of believing in sin, you will deny it and attempt to project blame onto someone else. Perceptually you will see them as causing you in some way, and simultaneously your mind MUST implement the "effects" of that causality onto yourself.

You therefore put in place, or paint a picture of, an identity which has been affected by something external. You show yourself as suffering, you position yourself as looking like you are sick, you damage yourself, and you take out this attack upon yourself. You do so in an attempt to show everyone that THEY did this to you.

It's really the insight that we implement the EFFECTS upon ourselves BEFORE we blame the cause of those effects onto something outside of ourselves. This also would tie into the fact that in this case, cause and effect have been reversed. We express effects of sickness, suffering, damage, etc in order to attempt to accuse others of doing this to us. We actually sort of wear the costume of looking like someone who has been hurt, and then walk around trying to find someone to blame for causing it.

Projection makes perception, and denial makes for projection. But how about.... we first believe we are attacked and implement the effects that the attack would produce, and then project the cause outward?

So what we do is, we make ourselves sick, we show ourselves as a picture of suffering, and we do this with the body. The body is our canvas, our "picture" of our Self, our identity. We make the body sick in order to accuse our brother of making us sick. We say, "hah, look at me, you did this to me you fucker. It's your fault."

The fact is, it's not possible to accuse another of doing something to you without YOU experiencing the effects. The ego says, no, if you do something to someone else you can escape the effects. But in truth, the mind does not work that way. Whatever applies to you applies equally everywhere. So in order to accuse someone of attack and sin, YOU must picture yourself as attacked and sinful.

YOUR body is like a picture which YOU hold up in order to show to OTHERS what you believe THEY are! It is not just a picture of yourself, it is a picture of BOTH OF YOU. This is because the body is a device for separation and that is two-sided, the selves on both sides are kept apart and affected equally - as within so without. The body then as a separation device is a picture of YOU AND YOUR BROTHER in a state of attack!

You can't hold up a picture of THEM and say, you're sinful and I'm not. Instead you hold up a picture of your "self" (the body) in an attacked state as if to say to someone else, "this is what you are". You're talking to yourself, accusing yourself, and picturing yourself as suffering.

So you can't accuse without attacking your body, meaning you're trying to USE the body to attack someone and the result is that your body MUST become a picture of attack, showing symptoms of a belief in attack. If it applies to your brother, it applies to you. You try to take them down, and take yourself down in the process. This is why all death is suicide. As Jesus says, use the body for attack like this and it will appear weak and it will die.

The opposite of this is that if you do not attack "through" the body, you do not project sin, you do not accuse yourself of sin, and you see the equal innocence of yourself and another, you will not "picture yourself" as attacked, and thus the body WILL SHOW a picture of you in a non-attacked condition. Your mind will project a body which is "healthy". It must.

When the body is not used for attack, and is used only to express/extend love, the body will appear "lovely", or a symbolic picture of a self which has no attack in it. Thus all signs of sickness and disease must vanish from it, and it will demonstrate what you believe is true. You can't project an image of a body which is sick while being truly in the truth, any more than you can project an image of a healthy body while your mind is attacking.

Essentially, this also leads to the realization that when someone dies, they literally have committed suicide, but they also have attempted to "attack with death". Their attempt to die is an attempt to accuse everyone of being dead, to affect everyone, to make everyone suffer as well, and is an attack on everyone. The body becomes a picture of death to show that the mind is using it for attack. It is like a suicide bomber or a kamikaze attacker who is attempting to throw their own body at their enemy in an attempt to eradicate them.

Death is the ultimate attempt to destroy EVERYONE as well as yourself, except that it is only yourself that ends up suffering. It's like saying, I so hate everyone and so believe in separation, that I am going to completely cut myself off from all Life and therefore shrivel up and be weak and die, because this is what I think of myself and you, and I believe that both of us should not exist. What applies to me applies to you, and if I am dead so you will be as well! But the result is that the person's body itself dies, and other people's do not.

Whatever you attempt to do to God, you do to yourself. If you believe that God should be dead, you will destroy yourself. If you try to kill God, you will kill yourself. If you try to make out that God is sinful, you will become sinful. If you try to assert that God does not exist and you have escaped from God's Life, you will die. God won't, you will. Just as other people will not die when you attempt to kill them with your death, but you will. You will do it to yourself. YOU CANNOT ATTACK WITHOUT HURTING YOURSELF FIRST. All attack is self attack, and all attack will destroy YOU and not your so-called enemy.

This is why this is so ridiculously obvious, that it is in YOUR BEST INTEREST not to find anyone sinful or guilty, because it MUST mean that you are sinful and guilty, and YOU will suffer terribly. What you do to another you do to yourself. What you accuse your brother of you have accused yourself of. And what you would have them experience, you will experience. You cannot escape from the law that what you do unto others you literally are directly doing to yourself. You cannot get away with murder without you dying as well. You should recognize it is in your best SHARED INTEREST to not hurt or accuse anyone else, because doing so directly hurts and accuses you.

If you attempt to hurt someone else without hurting yourself, you are buying into the ego's thought system, which is a lie, and you will still receive the effects of your own attack. It is the ego's grand illusion that something can apply to you without applying to others and vice versa. The truth will always be true, and the law will always be in place, that the only way to attack another is to attack yourself and show your attacked self to them, and they may not even be attacked at all. All attack separates you from the other, which protects them in a way. This is why attack on God did not affect God, but affected you greatly.

Death is a weapon that doesn't work. It is always an attempt to prove that someone other than yourself made you be dead, accusing them of sin. Sin is punishable by death alone, in the ego's thought system. To die is to make a statement that everyone is a sinner, all are evil, and they have caused you to die. No-one dies without being a victim, and no-one dies without accusing the world of doing it to them. This is also why death is futile, because it is self-destruction which has no real effect on anyone else and only makes yourself worse off. To choose it is insanity.

It's fortunate that in the metaphysics of truth, there is a kind of protection against death. The illusion of death cannot assail the kingdom of God. God cannot be affected by what is unreal. Attempted attack or death is actually a movement away from Life and a movement away from existence. It is withdrawal, not attack. All forms of attack or illusions of attack seem to be outward expressions but this is an illusion. All forms of attack are withdrawals away from everything. Death is a collapse away from Life, and therefore confines all of the effects of death to the one who dies, not to who they were attempting to make dead.

God has been completely unaffected by our attempts at using death to hurt him. God cannot be changed whatsoever. This is also why death is merely a state of denial. It is powerlessness, weakness, is completely ineffective, and literally does nothing. It is a state of a lack of all will to live, and therefore all will is absent from it, and as such it is a state of total unwillingness and can produce no real effects at all. It is not a cause at all, being purely a state of being at the effect of everything. How WEAK it is then, this weapon of death which is supposed to be the ego's most extreme form of attack possible... the stronger the attack, the weaker the attack. Death is the most pathetic attack of all, causing nothing real to happen.

We do not need to die. We do not need to be under attack. We do not need to be sick. We do not need to suffer. But if we want to be free of these things, we cannot be accusing ourselves and/or others of sin. We USE OURSELVES to show our brother what we are accusing them of, which turns us into shriveled up sickly prunes with no ability to do anything. We cannot escape our own wrath. Accuse others of causing sickness and you will be sick. Blame them and you will suffer in guilt. Try to get rid of God and you will get rid of yourself. Your body is your picture of your state of mind. All of its sicknesses MUST GO if you are to show that you fully believe in your innocence and invulnerability. To be invulnerable is to not be at the effect of anything in the world, and therefore not to PUT EFFECTS into your body.

You need not attack yourself today.

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek." - ACIM

When you decide to use your persona, you are actually striking a deal with the ego. The ego has an all-or-nothing clause, where if you want to use the persona, you have to also use the shadow right along with it. Usually you don't realize you're making this deal, because you focus on the parts of the deal you want and like - which is what the persona is all about. The shadow part is just a... technicality, we need not mention.

The ego offers you what seems like a lovely glowing possible answer to all your problems, and forgets to remind you about the steaming pile of shit that will be coming right along with it.

So as you enter into the persona, you're entering into a deal, where you are saying to the ego, okay, I'll take the risk of possibly getting what I want through your persona mechanism, knowing that I might not get it and I might have to deal with some pain instead. It's sort of a 50-50 chance. But you take the odds because you're desperate.

What then ends up happening is that in order to wear the persona mask, you have to now 'serve' the ego. You have to serve the persona itself which is part of the ego, by worshipping everything it values. You make it your idol, your goal, your cherished beloved artificial self.

This means you're now in a vulnerable position of being exposed to what seems to be coming at you from other people, who seem now to be able to affect you. You attempt to screen out their BS with your persona by relegating it to your shadow. But now you're also concerned that you may or may not 'get' what you were trying to get out of the deal.

Part of being in the persona means you will be very 'self conscious' about what other people think of you, because part of the use of this persona was to get other people to think 'good things' about you, which you seem to think are valuable opinions.... ego strokes. You want people to feed your ego, not detract from it. But this also means you have to put on a bit of a 'show' - a people pleasing performance - in order to 'get' that attention, that narcissistic adoration or that special love.

So now you're basically an 'entertainer' for other people, like some kind of ego puppet, dangling from the ego's strings, singing and dancing and trying to win people over in order to suck their energy. So while you're using the persona, it HAS to mean that you have accepted the ego's rules, you're playing the ego's agenda, you're doing what the ego wants, you're serving the ego's ultimate goals, and you're basically all caught up doing what you think everyone else wants you to do. You're not being yourself.

When you realize that the 'game' of playing with the ego persona, which seems to promise tremendous rewards but often brings suffering and sickness, always produces pain in some form eventually, you might eventually realize it is not worth playing it. And especially if you come to realize, that what the ego was offering you, you did not even NEED to begin with. You only thought you needed it because you bought into your own ego lie that you were somehow defective or lacking or separate from infinite supply.

So if you take off the ego mask, drop the persona and the shadow, and stop trying to 'get' the benefits of the persona's promises, you're going to find that you are much more empowered. You'll realize that you no longer 'serve' the ego, i.e. you're no longer tied to having to give 'other people' what they seem to want to 'get' from you. You no longer have to entertain people or put on a show that you don't want to provide. You no longer have to suffer underneath a fantasy life image that covers up all of the pain that this very same persona generated in the shadows. And you also no longer have to suck up and people-please anyone for any reason whatsoever. So now you find yourself somewhat empty-handed as to who exactly you are now going to serve.

Well... if you're not serving the ego... and the only other mind you can be part of is Holy Spirit//God mind, who are you going to be working with now? You're not going to be looking to the ego for 'what to do' or 'what to say' or 'how to present yourself' or 'what facade to put on' or 'what to write/publish' or whatever else. Instead, you now stand apart from the ego masses, essentially 'free', independent of the entire ego game, ready and willing to come empty handed to God. And then it's merely a matter of you saying, well, here I am God, I'm here 'alone', I don't want to work with the ego any more, what do you want me to do?

P.S why did every episode of Scooby Doo have to have someone in a costume? lol

It is easy to downplay the role of the Holy Spirit and to think that we can just manage our own lives and figure out our own solutions and get ourselves out of this mess.

But God has appointed the Holy Spirit as THE ANSWER to every problem and THE SOLUTION to all suffering. Like, HELLO!!! This news definitely will not be announced on TV! Does someone have an authority problem with not wanting to accept the only answer possible?

As we go off on our own trying to justify and explain and intellectualize and defend ourselves and struggle with ego dramas and upset and confusion and fear, all the while the Holy Spirit is ready and available to us.

Could it be as simple as us turning to Him to find the very light, truth, and love that will set us free from all problems? Yes.

Why do we not go to Him? Why do we keep trying to do ACIM all by ourselves? Why do we think He is just some symbolic figure or has no part to play in the atonement, that we can just do this all by ourselves?

God has appointed Him to provide EVERYTHING we need, to solve all problems permanently, to heal all sickness, to undo all ego and to BE the truth. Why are we looking everywhere else other than in Him for salvation? Why are we listening to our own ego to try to get us to be free from the very problems our ego is creating for itself?

There is one place that we have a problem and its in our own mind. There is one place that we have a solution and it is in our own mind. God put the solution there - the answer to our problem, as the Holy Spirit. This is THE ANSWER that has been given. It is THE ONLY ANSWER. THERE IS NO OTHER ANSWER.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God (via Holy Spirit) and your way will be made straight. Or, "seek ye first your own bullshit ego and your way will be made crooked, guaranteed".

It is our non-acceptance of Real Help from Him that prevents His help from being available. We resist Him. We don't want to approach Him. We may not even believe he exists or is "a thing", or a mind, or a person, or whatever He is. But I will tell you this. HE IS NOT A CONCEPT. He is a state of mind, a memory of God, the presence of God and an extension of God. He IS real. And if He weren't you'd be totally screwed.

Go to the Holy Spirit. Trust Him. Ask Him to help you. Ask Him to shine a light on your situation. Ask Him to help you to forgive. Ask Him to free you and heal you. Ask Him to guide you and to show you how to look at things from a lighter perspective. He IS the answer that you need and there is NOT another answer. And He is not just the One who gives you answers in the form of statements or information, He Himself IS the answer - the healed mind - that you must directly EXPERIENCE. Just as Jesus says nobody will come to the Father but by Him (because He is Christ and you must be Christ also in order to do as He has done)... so too will nobody return to sanity and truth but by the Holy Spirit.

You better get used to the idea. Holy Spirit is the doorway to freedom, sanity, peace, joy and happiness. You cannot enter trust and truth and totality without Him. The ego DOES NOT have another option for bringing you salvation. The ego DOES NOT know an alternative that "will work". It DOES NOT have real answers or solutions or ways out of this mess. Do not listen to its bullshit. It cannot bring you back to God and has no intention of ever doing so.

It may seem that ACIM holds a lot of truth and that you need to learn it. But is this really WHERE your salvation is? It may seem that learning it and speaking of it and discussing it and applying it may help you, but where really is your liberation? It is in your mind, in the Holy Spirit, in your acceptance of the Holy Spirit's truth and reality. That is what the Course is trying to get you to experience.

You simply need to turn to the Holy Spirit NOW and remember to keep coming back to Him and make Him your best friend and guide and mentor and teacher. Do you really need anything else? Do you really think there is something else that will save you other than what WILL save you, which is the ONLY salvation, which is awakening into the Holy Spirit's thought system and SHARING HIS MIND? It is the way out of hell.

Thank you Holy Spirit for being here to support and save us and help us and guide us. I surrender the ego that I keep using to keep me from your healing answers. I let go of the dark twisted self that keeps trying to find its own solutions, and I surrender to the one and only truth that you embody. Correct me and show me the way home.

When your attempt at healing asks "what is wrong with me?" .... you know you're on the wrong track, because you're actually trying to find something wrong with you.

The truth can NEVER be that there is something wrong with you. The truth is that you are always perfect. How can anything be really wrong with you?

Yet this mode of diagnosis is extremely prevalent, where the ego is trying to come up with an explanation for "why" you are sick. To explain why you are sick is to completely assume that you ARE sick. This alone cements the sickness in place regardless of what diagnosis you come up with. By the time you THINK you know what the cause is (which will not be the real cause), the sickness will have been amplified even more.

You can't find health by asking in what ways you are unhealthy. It just makes the sickness real. Once you've made sickness real, that means you've lent it a sense of truth and reality, and having done so, you cannot heal it. What is true is permanent and your belief that the sickness is real KEEPS IT.

God does not need diagnosis. Diagnosis is an ego device for prolonging the story and the drama surrounding the sickness, while PRETENDING to be doing something to deal with it.

What if the sickness were to just disappear, right now, never to return? Would you want it? Would you be willing to drop all of the drama and story and side-benefits that arise from having the sickness? Perhaps in your sickness you actually want to be sick because it's serving a purpose?

Most people who are sick... and this is not an attack... just observing.... most people who are sick, well let's just say ALL people who are sick, WANT to be sick on some level. They must. Jesus tells us so - nothing can happen without your own consent and you only get what you ask for. There are no accidents and no victims. So if you're sick, you chose it somehow, for some purpose.

This is what I'm finding to be a bit of a problem in terms of healing the sick.... on the surface they may very much want to be healed, but somewhere deep down there was a decision to be sick and a they wanted it. So there is always some kind of denial of healing, some kind of resistance to truth, and some kind of unwillingness to be healed.

Yet, if a person could leap from their state of denial and desperation and resistance, to a state of healing where the problem no longer exists... I think most people would simply celebrate and be grateful. The shift in awareness would remove all of the foundation for fighting against health. People think they want to be sick, but *REALLY* they want to be with God. This leap from not wanting healing to being healed, is a DIVINE INTERVENTION, which is why Jesus says in the miracle principles: "miracles intercede for your holiness."

So remember, as you try to perform miracles, or heal anyone, you have to be wary of yourself entering into a diagnosis mode, dwelling on the story of how the person was a victim, or of what ALLEGEDLY caused the problem. The truth is that nothing in the world causes anything because the world is nothing more than an illusory effect. So looking for answers in the world will always turn up empty handed. It's the ego's mechanism for distraction and for seeking but not finding, so that healing will not take place. Trying to diagnose problems simply makes them real, keeps them, and fails to cure them.

So we need to get into this mode of... instant healing, and it being not a spectacle, and simply being done with it and then moving on with enjoying Life. Like it's no big deal. But for most people it's going to seem like a huge deal because the limitations imposed by sickness probably has imprisoned the person for a long time. But sickness is nothing.

God doesn't need to diagnose in order to heal something. God is always in a state of health and radiates healing. God's health is instantaneous. He does not dwell on figuring out the cause, or why something happened, as though that would imply DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS depending on the problem. That would be a CONDITIONAL healing. He heals unconditionally, so doesn't care what the problem is or how difficult it seems. There is no order of difficulty in UNCONDITIONAL MIRACLES. He simply heals. Now.

Problem corrected. Done. Move along. Nothing to see.

Sometimes when we're trying to help others, we are taking away their power.

It is more important to help the person become self-empowered, to learn that they can do what they seemed to need help with, even if its a struggle.

It can seem very caring and supportive to be helpful. It can seem like your heart is in the right place and that you're being loving. It can seem like you'd want to bend over backwards to do whatever you can for someone.

But when you do this, you take away their power, strip them of their independence, and don't give them breathing room to learn to harness their own strength.

By trying to help, you end up making the person helpless. By trying to save, you end up condemning the person to a state of neediness and weakness. By trying to be the hero, you end up squashing the very person you were supposedly rescuing. And by trying to fix them, you break them more.

It's okay to help sometimes when it clearly is needed. And I don't mean it to sound like you have to be cold-hearted and ruthless and completely refuse to do anything for anyone. It's just that, it's very easy to erode someone's sense of self empowerment.

The side effect of this also is that, by supposedly helping them, which is in fact a form of disabling them, you take away their power and make them dependent on you. You will resent this dependence even though part of you keeps fostering it.

You will become responsible for their life, and see them as being irresponsible, which will make you angry. But you'll use this to justify being even more helpful. And now that the person is totally dependent on you, you'll find yourself having to do everything for them, leaving no time for yourself.

It's like the old adage that you don't take water to Africa, you give them tools to harvest the water themselves.

When you come swooping in to save people, you are being a hero and you have a "savior complex". It can seem very nice to your ego, to your persona, to be a savior to others. But this is not really salvation. It seems like you are being selfless, but in fact you are being selfish, because underneath the exterior of helpfulness is the ego's ambition to help so much that the other person ends up unable to do anything themselves. And it is therefore an attack.

Salvation would recognize the person has no real needs, that they merely need to become aware of their dependence on God, and that focusing on their weaknesses and helplessness fails to overlook it to the true strength within. And that means not only that you are failing to forgive, you are also in judgement. And not only are you in judgement against them, you are in judgement against yourself.

If you are being the heroic helpful savior fixer, the unlimited giver, the people-pleasing guilt-ridden solution to everyone's problems, you're really interacting with yourself and trying to save yourself, by not saving yourself. It's a cover-up job for real salvation. It's your way of looking like you're coming from love when in fact you're coming from "special love" - a dependency and a state of ego reinforcement.

You'll just find yourself making people depend on you more, allowing them to use you, causing them to get comfortable with not being responsible for their own choices, which ultimately makes you guilty. And before you know it, the person you were trying to bend over backwards to help turns into a leech that expects you to cater to their every whim. This is because you're not learning the lesson.

You need to learn to let go, stop fixing, stop focusing on neediness, and instead focus on providing a true extension of love, an empowering sense of love, which produces corrective miracles that actually are truly helpful. It is helpful to reinforce the truth about a person, that they are Christ, that they are powerful, that they are not victims, that they are responsible for their existence, and that really they have no real needs.

"I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,

because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal." - ACIM

The world is set up such that certain foods seem to cause certain things to happen in the body. And so we all go on this diet obsession trying to find the foods that will 'kill us the least'. Foods which seem to claim some kind of property of 'healing', or 'good for you', or 'purity'. And there are people who are quite celebrated as being very very much informed and aware of the seeming 'truth' of how certain foods do certain things to you, and how there are 'special' foods that you should only eat otherwise you're committing some kind of sin.

Well, that's all well and good. And you can pursue a perfect diet and get to the point where you are only eating lettuce. And you better make sure it's the right kind of lettuce, grown in exactly the right soil in the right conditions and harvested with its roots on and it better have been exposed to real sunlight, or else.

Although this can seem completely sane, and rational, and sensible, at some point you have to realize, this is absolutely nuts.

The more you try to feed yourself only the most perfect, "harmless", "supportive" foods, and the more you focus on this perfection of picking only what the ego says will not hurt you, the weaker you become, the more vulnerable you become, the more you become sensitive to everything, the more you become affected by everything.

If you keep focusing on trying to be "positively affected" by the world, as some kind of idolized goal, where you only allow into yourself the very best the world has to offer, that's persona bullshit. That's the ego pretending that doing so will make you strong or healthy or protect you. It does the exact opposite. It undermines you inner power. It disempowers you and portrays you as so completely fragile and weak and powerless that you NEED the very very more purest foods as input, otherwise you're going to keel over and die.

You don't want this.

What you want is to get your power back so that you are invulnerable, so that you do not have to care about what you eat, so that you do not have to constantly obsess over trying to find this MYTH of a "perfect diet". All foods are deadly. All foods are toxic. And all foods kill, just so you know. All foods, external foods, supply from outside of yourself, WILL create sickness, if you believe in their power to affect you positively or negatively. It doesn't make any difference that you regard certain foods as profoundly positive versus others there are allegedly negative, both perceptions are ego perceptions that weaken and attack your invulnerability.

As an invulnerable, immortal creator, you do not need food at all. You are sustained by the love of God! You should have no regard for the MYTH that certain foods are better than others, which is a completely unmiraculous state of mind. You should pay no attention to the bullshit stories that make certain things out to be better for you than other things. That's ego bullshit. You should be focusing on how you are absolutely invulnerable, how you do not depend on anything outside of you, how you are not negatively affected by food and how food does not have power over you, positive or negative. You should be focusing on undoing this dependency on it and this belief that different hierarchies of the illusion of food do different things to you. Food does not do anything to you! Stop being a victim.

God is the one source of Life, and food is not life-giving. Food will eventually kill you. And just so you know, people who fast and avoid eating as much food live longer. Do you know why? Because all foods are forms of the illusion of separation and have some aspect of attack in them. They are all special, all of them are limited, all of them have side effects, and none of them can make you holy. Even the most 'pure' of foods which other claim are the 'best' for you, will destroy and attack your body eventually. There is no perfection out there. You even have to go to the lengths of becoming a breatharian, feeding off of environmental chi or whatever, in order to try to avoid the toxic effects of this world. And even then you will die.

It's just stuff. It's just materials. It's just external illusions designed to make you dependent on what is separate from you, so that you will stop looking for the source of Life inside yourself. God it your supply, not the world.

"All your time is spent in dreaming."

Do you ever get the feeling everyone is just making stuff up as they go along? Or do you experience yourself doing this?

From time to time I *think* that I know what I want to do, and sort of talk myself into it, and do it, and it seems right, then later I am disillusioned and don't know what I saw in it. I add justifications and reasons why, in order to "convince myself", and later these turn out to be empty and hold no weight.

This world is insane. And we try to "give it all the meaning it has". We use scapegoats to justify doing or not doing things. We make things into enemies in order to deflect our decision making in a certain direction. And no-one knows what the fuck they're doing.

Half the time it seems all the medical people are just making shit up and don't know what the heck they're doing, cus every solution they come up with has awful side effects. The ads on TV for medications are utterly ridiculous.

People tell you what you eat and why eating this or that is better for you. Turns out none of them have the truth and none of them can agree to anything. Everyone and their cat has an opinion.

I get convinced for a while that doing something is "what I want to do" and get all lost in it and then something interrupts me, and then some time passes, and I come back to it and have no idea why I would want to be doing that thing. What I thought was "salvation" turns out to be another completely meaningless wild goose chase.

In a way, it's like trying to find "real meaning" in a meaningless world. ACIM says the world is meaningless, and we put all the meaning onto it. So when we start weaving a story about "why" something is or is not a good choice, it's all made up. It's all ego bullshit. There is no truth here.

In a way that leads to realizing, there is nothing meaningful in the world. And meaning must be deeper within somewhere. And that also reveals that the world is entirely a senseless, insane illusion that has no truth and doesn't mean shit.

If I choose to make something happen, let's say I decide and go make it happen. Well, now I made it happen cus I force it it to happen. Totally meaningless.

I'm looking around for a sense of "that's really what I love to do" sort of thing, only to find that even the things I thought I loved to do are just empty containers onto which I project various fake motivations and ideas, to try to "dress them up" and explain why they're so great. There's nothing there.

The world seems like a blank canvas. It has nothing inherent to it. It's a effect. So it can't really "do" anything "for" you. It can't save you, or make you happy or sad. It does what you make it do. And that means it has no real opinion, or value. If you don't make it valuable, it's not valuable. If you don't read into it, there's nothing to it.

It's like we're living in some kind of giant snow globe pretending it's an amazing real place with built-in value and importance but it's really all just a pile of tosh, lol.

"I do not know the thing I am."

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

Hah!

"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself."

Yet in learning this is salvation born. And what you are will tell you of Itself.

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

God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

Projection makes perception and makes the world you see. You put it there. You give it its meaning. It has no real meaning at all. This is all just a big lie we keep telling ourselves. THERE IS NO WORLD!

Your body is just a piece of software running in the God Computer.

The brain is a central processing unity (CPU) and is one of many processors in the body. Or you could think of it as a sub-set of the software which performs a particular task.

The brain and all other processors do not do anything other than execute commands. The brain does not create commands.

The body executes all commands exactly and correctly. It does not invent commands itself, has no will of its own, and does not think.

The mind is not a by-product of the brain. That would be as though to say that the CPU of the body computer comes up with it own software programs, or that the software has the power to change itself.

The software programs MUST come from outside of the computer itself., from an actual source of WILL, capable of writing programs in the first place. And that intelligence must be able to function WITHOUT a body and without a brain!

That intelligence must be able to think without needing a body in order to think. It must be creative.

That mind, that intelligence, must also have designed the body computer itself, the CPU (brain) and all other parts. It must have devised all of the software that operates it.

Therefore the body computer is INSIDE of the mind, just as the programs which run on a computer come from OUTSIDE of the computer, created by an operator who tells the computer what to do.

Just because software runs inside the computer does not mean the computer is the source of the software. Similarly just because it SEEMS as though the mind operates inside the body, that the mind is created by the body.

The mind - the programmer - WROTE the body software, WROTE the brain, and WROTE all of the programs which the body/brain executes.

This is why looking for mind or thought within the brain, as though the brain is a "cause", or that the brain has a "will", or that the body has a "mind of its own", is completely a mistake.

The body does not have a mind of its own. It is just a functional machine, a device. YOU as mind put instructions into the device to tell it what to do. And it does that, and only that, exactly and correctly.

No matter what you tell the body computer to do, it will do it. If you tell it to depict health, it will. If you tell it to depict sickness and death, it will. It always produces a correct result because it does not pick and choose what instructions to follow.

YOU are therefore in COMMAND of the body, the world, and all illusions. YOU are the one who is writing the scripts (programs). YOU are the author.

Except that, it goes even further than this. God is really the only author of reality and truth. He is the only author of bug-free programs. He is the only one who can create the perfect program (Christ) which can in turn extend God's design to produce further perfect programs (Christ's creations).

But when you tried to become a SEPARATE PROGRAMMER, you tried to override God's program, shut it out, and replace it with a program of your own. Thus your ego wants to be fully in charge of the dream, to have power of it, and to even perform miracles, PROVIDED it gets to stay separate from God.

Fortunately miracles require sharing with God, so the ego will never be able to access God's power. Therefor the ego will never be able to rewrite the true program of Christ, and will never be able to actually corrupt anything.

Just as all bugs and errors and viruses and rogue programs are WIPED UNCONDITIONALLY from memory when you reboot your computer, when you awaken to enlightenment, God will REBOOT YOU, and after the reboot, all that will be left is the perfect program of Christ. A totally new, fresh system, untainted and undefiled. And you will express love and love will be your only output.

False perception is not merely a state in which you have illusions ABOUT the world. It’s a state in which TWO things are happening:

1) Things which are illusions, false, unreal, are MISTAKEN for things that are real and true.

2) Things which are actually real and true, are MISTAKEN for things which are illusions.

BOTH of these are happening in false perception. Which means it’s a state where you do not RECOGNIZE what is actually real, OR what is actually unreal. You are confused about BOTH illusions and reality. You have them both mixed up and swapped around. This is why the course entails a prolonged period of SORTING OUT, the difference between what is REALLY true, and what is ACTUALLY false, which develops true perception. True perception means RECOGNITION of BOTH, the true and the false.

What you then have to realize about true perception, is it ALSO is a state in which TWO things are happening:

1) Things which are illusions are RECOGNIZED as illusions, they clearly and obviously are unreal, and there is no confusion about them being true. They are recognized as false. Ie Only the false is false.

2) Things which are ACTUALLY true, are RECOGNIZED as true, clearly ACCEPTED as true, and regarded as real. For example accepting the Atonement. ie Only the truth is true.

That state of true perception arises when you have become ACCURATE and CORRECT in your evaluation of what is REALLY true, and what is actually false. This state entails BOTH the clarity about the truth, AND the clarity about the false.

Now, it’s not possible to have absolutely false perception. You would have to be dead. You can only be relatively confused. It is also not possible to have absolutely true perception. You would have to be having NO perception because perception is ALWAYS fundamentally a little removed from the absolute. (There is no perception in Heaven, etc). "Perception is a separated state" "Those who perceive still need healing" "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

So here’s what’s going to happen, as you transition from false perception to true perception.

You will bring into question things which you thought were true and real, things which in the biggest picture are actually illusions, and you will learn to discern the FACT that they actually ARE NOT true or real. You will discover that what you thought was true, IS NOT, and that what you thought was untrue/unreal is in fact trustworthy. Of course, this transition requires a little WILLINGNESS to admit to the real truth, to RECOGNIZE lies as false, and a willingness to LET THEM GO in favor of ACCEPTING the real truth.

Gradually, as you sort out and clarify what is really true and what is really false, you develop true perception ie christ vision. Here you can still SEE what is true AND what is false, but you can tell them apart.

Now, as this is happening, as you are "in between" and partly sane or saner than you were, you will start to SEE more truth clearly distinguished from the things which are false. However, in this period you will STILL SEE ALSO things which are false. It’s just that now they are starting to be RECOGNIZED as false, but still seen. You don’t see truth IN them, because the truth has been clearly discerned and kept apart from what’s false, which is correct.

Actually Jesus talks about the difference between using the body’s eyes and using christ vision or the spiritual eye. The body’s eyes are PHYSICALLY fixed in how they function. They can ONLY see falsely, and they acually CANNOT see truly. "These eyes, made not to see, will NEVER see." And Christ Vision does not even USE the body’s eyes at all. IT is a direct mind-to-mind vision. Just as the body cannot see the real world, christ vision, once complete, CANNOT see the world of bodies or forms or planets.

Jesus also talks about this in terms of "you cannot see two worlds" and "sight of one is costing you sight of the other" because each WAY of seeing DENIES the other. Christ vision DENIES the world. Body sight DENIES heaven. Body sight (via photons) is locked into false perception. And the body keeps showing images of falsety to the mind. And the body ONLY looks upon illusions, meaning THE WORLD is an illusion BECAUSE the body can see it.

But what happens as you’re sorting out the true from the false, is you‘re gradually "fading in" true perception, and gradually "fading out" false perception. This transition is happening in your mind, in your belief system, but it IS NOT happening physically. The body cannot help but always look at illusions as if they are real. And so as you develop true perception, the ILLUSIONS (the world, Earth), which the body is showing to your mind, starts to be RECOGNIZED as FALSE. As unreal. As untrue. The illusions are still SHOWN to you by the eyeballs, but the MIND (which sees) is learning to categorize ALL of those image as UNREAL. As Jesus states here:

"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"

Note three important points:

1) The body still reports ILLUSIONS to the mind even when christ vision has developed because you now have TWO types of seeing occuring simultaneously - body physical sight and spiritual sight.

2) ALL images the body sees will be categorized as unreal, because true perception RECOGNIZES that ALL illusions are unreal and EVERYTHING the body sees is ILLUSION - the world is an illusion recognized as UNREAL.

3) There are TWO categorizes into which the mind sorts all messages - messages from body vision AND messages from christ vision, either they are REAL or unreal. Everything the body sees, which is THIS PLANET, and all bodies, and all objects and physical things, all matter, is RECOGNIZED AS UNREAL. And everything Christ Vision sees which is BEYOND MATTER and beyond what the BODY can see, is recognized as REAL. ONLY the face of christ is real. ONLY perception of the real world, BEYOND the world of form, is real.

What’s happening here is that true perception , which is FORGIVENESS, and atonement, is OVERLOOKING everything the body’s vision presents to the mind and LOOKS PAST IT, THROUGH IT, to a truth, a light, a reality, WHICH IS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL. Beyond the world of bodies. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "Forgiveness DOES NOT LOOK UPON BODIES." The world of bodies is the world of sin which is drawn as a thin veil over the face of Christ, and true perception SEES IT NOT.

"The forgiven world", therefore, IS NOT merely you looking AT the REAL world and recognizing its innocence, it is also looking PAST, OVERLOOKING, everything physical and all of spacetime. It does not look AT spacetime in a forgiving way, it IGNORES IT and looks BEYOND it to the reality of Heaven that spacetime was made to HIDE. The physical world is THE VEIL that was made to BLOCK THE TRUTH. The world is a block to awareness (made as an attack on God).

A forgiven world is not only a world that you look at in a friendly way, it is a world that you no longer look at at all! If you shine enough light onto a world made of darkness, the world disappears. This is why "a forgiven world cannot last", why eternity will shine away the world", and why "the world will spin into the nothingness from whih which it came." You don’t forgive a REAL world! You only forgive ILLUSORY worlds, and arriving at a forgiven world is going to be very brief before it disappears in light completely!

You don’t forgive a world and keep it. That would only be true if the world was fundamentally real. IT IS NOT. "The world you see is an ILLUSION OF A WORLD." You turn it into a forgiven world BECAUSE IT IS OVERLOOKED. Which means, forgotten! The forgiven world is not a reference to reality or seeing reality truly, it’s an reference to the ILLUSORY WORLD which you RECOGNIZE AS FALSE and realize is NOTHING, because you need to recognize illusory things ARE illusions. True perception RECOGNIZES this illusory world IS NOT REAL. Reality is beyond this world. Heaven is another world entirely. A world which spacetime was made to OBSCURE.

Only when true perception is perfected and the face of christ is seen, and the veil of physical matter completely disappears, only then do you see ONLY the truth. Because the FALSE WORLD has been completely vanished from your mind. And now perception ends, because perception cannot exist without its TWO categories of what is true and what is false. The false vanishes, the wrong mind vanishes, and the right mind transfers into the ONE mind of Heaven. In the kingdom, there IS only truth, nothing unreal exists, and there is no illusory forgiven world at all. The forgiven world vanishes. Truth has no opposite. There is no world!

Yes, while you are "forgiving the world", which really means learning NOT TO SEE IT, NOT TO BELIEVE IT, NOT TO MISTAKE IT FOR REALITY, you may experience increased truth and thus increase love. And it may seem you love the world more. But you love more IN SPITE OF the world. Not because the world is love but because it is nothing and it is GETTING OUT OF YOUR WAY and allowing you to see that which IS LOVABLE BEYOND IT. The real world is lovable. At first perceived, then entered. And who cares about the imaginary planet you made when it’s recognized as NOTHING and has been replaced with EVERYTHING REAL?

"Only the creations of light are real." "There is no life outside of heaven."

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

Your mind in its natural healthy state, extends outwards and joins with other minds, connecting to them intimately. Your mind extends past your body, past the body of others, and joins with the holiness in them. It shares itself with them and thus unites with the Holy Spirit in them.

But if your mind is not allowed to fully extend all the way to the other mind, past all physical obstacles, your mind "falls short". It seems to focus on something "in between" you and another. Whether it be that you are focusing on the body of another, or your own body.

This focusing on the obstacle between you, usually bodies, means you actually have dipped down into false perception. And now your mind is blinded by perception of form. And that means you are failing to OVERLOOK or extend or fully move past the obstacles. Your mind basically "stops at" the outside surface of apparent forms and bodies.

This lack of full extension, sort of stopping off along the way to pay attention to form, is a state of mental sickness. It really only occurs due to some kind of "withdrawal" from others, an unwillingness to share, a lack of openness, a lack of joining. Which means that you have pulled back from the relationship and are only going part way towards union with them.

That's a problem, because that means part of your mind is in your brother, and part of it is now "separated off" within yourself, and the two parts are not connecting fully. And this "gap" forms, the separation gap, in which the body exists. And now you perceive obstacles and appearances and bodies "in between" you and the REST of you.

Having done this, you are now sick, and your mind is now starting to TARGET the body. It's becoming blocked by form and "blinded" by sight of form. Your perception is dropping into false perception and you're dipping down into ego. And by doing so, you are now making illusions seem real to you.

Sight of the body now becomes an obstacle, and a target, and a weapon, and something used to SEPARATE you and your brother, or you and the rest of you. And this is the use of body for attack. And by doing this you are kind of holding the body up in-between you and your brother and are pretending it is a picture of your self. And it now becomes a picture of crucifixion.

Since your mind is no longer extending fully all the way to the light in another mind, instead of going OUT, it is not aimed DOWN. And it starts heading into the darkness rather than the light above.

This is going to push the body into states of darkness and distortion, and the body now literally becomes sick. And the mind is now USING the body for attack, by making it real, and focusing on it. And by so doing the body will now turn into the absence of health and healing.

You then enter a state which is familiar to most of us, where you now seem to "have a problem", and the problem seems real. Your body is sick and having issues. And your attention is on it. And it seems real. And you can't seem to get past it. And seeing it frightens you. And now you begin looking for solutions.

The ego solution at this point is to try to ATTACK the BLOCKAGE that you're seeing, ie target the body or the apparent sickness, with weapons of truth, trying to make it go away. You can hurl courseisms at it in the hope that you will undo it. Like you can say ok, this sickness is not real, it's an illusion, it's not really there etc. But this all still depends on believing that it IS THERE. And having failed to overlook it is really the problem in the first place.

So what is the trick to it? This will sound a bit counter intuitive but essentially, in order to heal the body you have to not make it real. You have to stop focusing on it. Stop making it an obstacle coming between you and others. And stop using it as proof that your mind is not REACHING your brother. If it is seen as an obstacle, and in fact if it is seen AT ALL, your mind is not fully extending.

It's really only the mind's choice of whether to fully extend, or partly extend, which produces health or sickness in the body. When it fails to extend fully (to give unconditional love), it falls short and "invents" separation devices in-between itself and others. And this shows up AS A BODY, and proceeds to turn from a healthy body to a sick body. The more you make this obstacle real the worse it gets, until it dies from attacking it.

So in fact when the mind RETURNS TO EXTENDING, which essentially IGNORES the body entirely, overlooking it, looking PAST it to the light, that is what "indirectly" heals the body. It lifts away from the body all of its attack and its use of the body for separation. So by practically forgetting about the body completely and SEEING PAST it to the light in another mind, joining with them, the body moves into INVISIBILITY. And it is this that is miraculous and heals the body.

So the trick is to actually just LOOK PAST the problem, push beyond the obstacle, see THROUGH the physical matter, seek out THE LIGHT beyond, and focus ONLY on that (seeking the Kingdom first), and this automatically heals the body. It heals because the mind is not not an attacking mind, it's a whole mind, a sane mind, and a whole mind has a HEALING EFFECT on the body as it "passes through it."

So there's a knack to it because there's great temptation to make the body REAL and THEN try to heal it, which locks in the sickness. And now you're at war with it which is a double denial. You have to stop being blocked by it, stop focusing on it, expand your mind, focus on the light, and therefore OVERLOOK the body. That is FORGIVENESS. And this UNDOES all of the strange distortions of sickness in the body because now a non-attacking, HEALTHY mind is moving through it.

The Holy Spirit in fact, when using the body solely for communication, communicates ONLY HEALING, and recognizes essentially that the body is NOT important AT ALL. This isn't a spiritualization of the body, it's more like IGNORING IT completely. It is recognized as having NO FUNCTION. And the only thing happening is the mind basically ignoring it and moving PAST it to do its business. This then heals the body because it is not given any reality.

"17. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal."

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is not an end."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds need not the body to communicate. The sight that sees the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have not been brought in line."

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. "

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

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and hurt yourself. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because mind's purpose is one."

"Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. THERE IS NOT ATTACK, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is EXTENSION. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to Creation in God."

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"You have done miracles, but it is QUITE apparent that you have NOT done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind, and joined with it. When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."

"Christ's vision has one law. 2It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.

The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

In the two opposing views of ACIM - one that God created this world, and one that he didn't, there are some parallels.

Both views recognize that the ego is a problem and seeks to undo it. Both views recognize that the Holy Spirit provides a higher vision which is more truth-oriented.

Both views also seek to see THIS world in a more loving and forgiving way.

But where they diverge, is in terms of the overall goal of the relationship with this world.

In the view that God created the Earth, forgiveness is seen as a way to love what God created, as though you were attacking a real creation through your projections of guilt, and have to learn how to forgive it and reunite with it.

In the view that God did NOT create the Earth, forgiveness is seen as a way to love what WE created, in order to see the REFLECTION of God in it, as though you were attacking a FALSE world through your projections of guilt, and have to learn how to OVERLOOK it and unite with what is BEYOND it.

Both views have us changing our relationship with the world to a more loving one. To being more forgiving towards whatever it is and whatever is in it.

The view that God created this world uses forgiveness to form a better relationship with what is thought to be God's kingdom, to not merely reflect heaven in it but to see it AS heaven literally. This view rejects the idea that heaven is another kingdom distinct from the world.

The view that God did NOT create this world essentially uses forgiveness to UNDO the world we made, where atonement is seen as bringing about the END of the world. Not ended in attack, but ended after the "benediction of holiness upon it". First forgiven, then disappeared. The ending of the world then gives way to REVEAL the underlying Kingdom of God that it was hiding.

Since A Course in Miracles has plenty of material pertaining to forgiving "a world", to being loving towards "the outside world", to no longer projecting sin and guilt onto "the world" and so on, in both models, it is easy to see that the idea of God creating the world SEEMS to have a lot of material to back it up.

But where that model falls short is revealed in the difference in its final goal. It seeks to keep the world and not have it disappear. It seeks to make the world REAL, instead of recognizing its unreality. It seeks to combine heaven with earth such that Earth is fully literally heaven. And it seeks to write-off anything suggesting that Earth is not of God, by binding it to the ego's faulty perceptions.

There is an entire step BEYOND the forgiving of this world, a step where God takes us out of this world, where the world disappears, where the stars disappear in light, where the world "merely ceases to seem to be", where it "spins into the nothingness from which it came", where space and time and all their contents disappear, and where the world indeed does come to an end. We leave bodies, we leave the world, and we go to our true home in the Kingdom of God - not of this world.

So you can see that both models have a lot of parallels, both have features that have a similar approach. A person believing that God created the Earth can still adopt a loving attitude toward the world, some FORM of forgiveness toward it, and can even approach the reflection of God - albeit interpreted as literally God itself. The reflection of heaven is "read into" as being merely a way of looking AT heaven, rather than its reflection. And so a person studying under this umbrella could still potentially reach an advanced state of some FORM of love and forgiveness. But it does not take it all the way.

Only when we can recognize that God did not create the Earth can we truly have a) a place to assign statements about Earth being not of God, b) a proper recognition of what a reflection is, c) a correct understanding of what forgiveness means and implies, d) an openness to realizing there is no Earth/world, and e) a willingness to recognize God's Kingdom as beyond this world and our true home in God.

So both approaches can take you quite far, but the belief that God created the Earth will cause you to reach an impasse. You won't be able to go INTO heaven proper, because Earth will act as a doorstop. If you think you reached your destination before you actually did, you're obviously missing out on the final goal. The road doesn't end at planet Earth, it ends in another world entirely. And so the two paths DIVERGE greatly the closer you get to the real world. One aims to settle into life on Earth forever, while the other has its sights set on a world beyond the stars.

When you are in denial, the denial itself paints a picture that whatever it is you're denying is WORTH denying, because it's not good, even though WHAT you are denying is outside of your awareness. Like, as though there really is something there being denied - something you shouldn't STOP denying because then you'll be in big trouble.

It's the same with fear. Fear tells you there's something real to be afraid of, that the fear is justified. The fear says its worth being afraid, because if you aren't, you'll have to confront what it is you area afraid of. Think about that - if you're NOT afraid, you will have to FACE something fearful. Makes no sense.

The ego's basic mind-trick is avoidance of God, avoidance of the truth, avoidance of reality. But the thing is, it doesn't just avoid God. God is love. It isn't really telling you that you are avoiding love. If you knew you were avoiding love, and you remembered what love is, you wouldn't be willing to avoid it. So instead, it tells you you are avoiding something else.

The ego says, you're avoiding an evil God, and you wouldn't want to go anywhere near it. It tells you, you're avoiding real sin and guilt in the mind, and you shouldn't go anywhere near it. It tells you, you have a really big reason to be afraid because God is coming after you, so that you'll be justified in being afraid. All of this is designed to make you believe that you're actually doing the right thing by being in denial, or being afraid, or avoiding God, or going out of your mind.

The lie here is that fear itself INVENTS its own idea of what you are afraid of. And denial itself INVENTS its own idea of what you are denying. Once you enter into denial or fear, you're in a place of hallucinating and projecting ideas based in denial in fear, which out pictures God, or your mind's content, as also being fearful.

Here's the key. It's not that your mind HAS real guilt in it. It's not that you HAVE a real reason to be afraid of God. It's not that you HAVE sinned or that, if you looked within, you'd be confronted with the horrors of what you've really done. The key is.... ITS ALL A LIE!

There IS no reason to be afraid of God. There IS no real guilt in your mind. There IS no sin that you have accomplished. There is no dark icky content lurking for you to discover, to be ashamed or, or to feel bad about. THERE ISN'T ANYTHING THERE. You haven't really done anything. You haven't sinned. You're not guilty. THIS is what the ego does not want you to really FIND OUT when you look within. And this is what it DEFENDS against by telling you it is very justified in making you use denial and fear to protect yourself.

You're innocent. "What if you looked within and saw there was no sin?" - ACIM

So you have to realize this, the ego's devices of avoidance of God/Self/Mind all CLAIM that you should be afraid to look within, they all CLAIM that you've got tonnes of guilt to heal, they all CLAIM you sinned and that you would die if you faced God, but it's all a self-perpetuating myth. They're all lies. They're all defenses against the truth.

Ego defenses never defend you against the TRUTH, because they are designed to OBSCURE the truth, so that you believe you are defending yourself against something ELSE. You could never believe that defense against LOVE is ever justified - you can't hold an awareness of real love in your mind and at the same time believe you would ever not want it. So instead the ego tells you that there IS no love, its been replaced with something dark and sinister, and you need to defend against THAT - the God of hate that the ego made up (as itself).

So all the while you are fixated in your 'issues' about what you did, the sin, the guilt, the fear, all of that is designed to block and distract you from looking at what is BEYOND these things. Before sin there was separation, yes, but before separation there was LOVE. The ego doesn't want to you keep investigating what's real because eventually you'd unearth the love that you buried and realize it still exists AS love. And then it's game over for the ego.

The truth is, you are completely innocent and free. The truth is, when you look into your mind, you might AT FIRST seem to encounter guilt and fear and sin and shame and attack, but only because you still believe these things are real. They're just clouds of illusions. Temporary distractions. They're lies, all of them. Fear is never truthful. Denial is never called for. You don't need any defense from God because God is love.

All of these avoidances are really designed to cover up the ATTRACTION TO GOD which is so intensely powerful and undeniable that if you were to become aware of it, you would rush into God's arms and into eternal life immediately. It is this POWER that you attempt to cover up. It is this LOVE that you attempt to deny exists. It is this VALUE and MEANING that you try to stay away from by making up stories about what it's frightening. God isn't frightening, the ego is.

God is love.

What A Course in Miracles calls "the separation", was a rejection of reality. We denied what was real and blocked our awareness of it. We lost touch with reality and forgot what it was like.

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL."

"For separation IS the source of guilt, and to APPEAL to it for salvation IS TO BELIEVE YOU ARE ALONE."

This event - the fall of man, the detour into fear - marked our entry into a "separated state" of mind, which we are still in. The separated state is an entire system of thought in which separation is constantly being perpetuated and chosen.

"Separateness" is a mindset in which we believe in being cut off, we separate ourselves off from each other, we stop sharing and become selfish, we try to be special and different, we withdraw from reality, and we exclude ourselves in isolation and imprisonment. We're still doing this right now and every day.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."

"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."

"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it."

Denying reality means we cannot tell what is true and what is false. We cannot tell what is real and what is unreal. This produces tremendous confusion. This confusion is insanity. It means we are now distracted with things which are not true, deceived by things which are impossible, believe in things which cannot be of God, and become lost.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

Being lost in an illusory world and not being able to find the way out is the common symptom of all of us "separated ones". We're like little children who have been told a bunch of lies, we've been deceived, led astray, convinced we're evil when we're not, and have been sent off into the wilderness in exile not knowing where we are, who we are, how we got here, why we're here, what home is, where home is, or how to get there.

The real issue as ACIM says is that there is only one problem, and it is this sense of separation from reality (God). In our denial and self-deception we keep believing things which are not true. We keep being heavily mistaken. We keep pretending to know what we're talking about when we don't, we think all our beliefs are valid, we don't want to admit to being wrong, and we stay committed to lies.

What much of this boils down to is an inability to RECOGNIZE what something is. Whether it is one thing or another. To recognize that we are even really suffering, or that there is fear, or that we are in denial. To recognize that we believe something false, or to even have the humility to recognize we are probably way more mistaken than we realize. We don't even know what we don't know, and we don't even know the ways we are mistaken and confused.

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

Not recognizing anything is insanity. This is why the opposite - enlightenment - is a recognition. It is a state in which you recognize clearly what everything is, what is true, what is false, what is real and what is unreal. If you could just get everything straightened out in your mind, and ACT like someone who accepts only God's truth (atonement), you would stop participating in "being separate". You would drop all the defenses and illusions and lies, all the false beliefs and attitudes, all attacking and rejecting and excluding and separating.

As far as heaven is concerned, they look upon us as simply lost lonely little children who are very confused and don't know what they're doing. We're like in a kind of daze, disoriented, wandering around in the dark trying to find something we think we lost without really knowing what it is. We are believing in things which don't exist, and are taking things out of context, and this leads to tremendous distortions of reality. These distortions show up as hallucinations and nightmares and being freaked out by monsters.

We literally see things which are not there, hear things which are not really sounds, touch things which don't exist, and believe everything our bodies tell us. But "only the body makes the world seem real", and without it the world would not seem real. Without it the world would be clearly apparent in its unreality, because it is so opposite to reality. We don't recognize reality because we buy into everything the body says is true. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." It is literally incapable of detecting reality. "You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself." And so the body is a deceiver and everything it tells you is a lie, and the whole world is set up to tempt you to believe things which are not true. To distort your mind and take you away from SANITY, and towards insanity. To bind you to confusion and to the loss of self. Separate from God, hopeless and alone.

What we then experience when our mind is insane, while in this world, is what we call false perception. It's a distorting twisting perception in which we USE the world, which is meaningless in itself, and interpret it as though it is a nightmarish hell. We read into it, attack it, use it for separation, reject it, blame it, condemn it, hate it, all in order to split our minds further and go more insane. What we then experience is an "unreal world."

"The Separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a thought."

Jesus asks us in ACIM to "make the world real unto yourself." This means to see it only for what it really is. This doesn't mean it is ultimate reality, but it means having accurate perception which just looks straight at it and recognizes what is true and false. Recognizing its actual nature, which is an illusion and is nothing. And what you thought was a nightmare turns into a happier dream because you no longer are having a psychological nightmare in relationship to it. This is true perception and shows you a forgiven world.

The "real world" therefore is a view of the world which is closer to "reality". A view in which you are not insane, are not deceived, are not twisted and distorted, are not lost and alone, are not separated off, are not isolated or excluded, or selfish or special. It's a view which stems from being more integrated and whole and healed, without a split mind and without attack or condemnation or dissociation or guilt. Looking upon the world from this view can only show you "the real world", ie what the world "actually is", rather than a filtered and mangled view of it.

Either way, our task then is the return to reality. This entails recognizing that we are not in a state of reality because we do not recognize what is real. It also entails a willingness to admit to being insane, an openness to asking for the Holy Spirit's help, and a desire to move towards sanity. To become sane you have to become very deeply honest in looking at what you are believing and doing that is out of accord with God's will. Out of accord with reality itself. And accepting the atonement is nothing more than accepting reality.

"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?"

This is also why Jesus refers to "reality contact", in that we are to move out of a state of being very heavily mistaken, lost, confused, distorting, deceiving, admit to our efforts to attack reality, and move our minds back into a more natural, peaceful, happy and whole state. To heal the split in the mind. As Jesus says all you can do is either separate or join. That means you can either split your mind or undo the split and return to wholeness.

So the whole path of ACIM or any spiritual "awakening" is really nothing more than a movement out of insanity back to sanity, our of unreality back to reality. Just waking up to what is real. To just being real and getting in touch with real existence. Real existence is The Kingdom of God. In order to become sane we're going to have to heal our insanity. And our insanity is driven by a "belief in separation."

Note though that believing in separation isn't about believing that there was a separation event a long time ago, although there was. THE separation DID happen, as a belief in a false thought. But it's now about realizing you are STILL believing in separation, you are still actively separating, you are continually using your mind TO separate, and you keep re-enacting separation over and over again.

Every time that you attack, condemn, accuse, blame, hate, judge, reject, withdraw, fear, become angry at, project guilt, make sinful, try to destroy, push away from, or any other mental act which seems to create a "distance" or gap between you and ANYTHING, you are separating from reality. You are splitting your mind. This is the belief in separation, an actual psychological act in which you are trying to keep the separation going, to deepen the wound, to emphasize the guilt and to split yourself off from being one.

Any attack you make which you think is an attack upon something "not yourself", is a result of dissociation. Dissociation is the same thing as separation, and as exclusion. It means you HAVE separated and have split, and now you think something is not a part of you. It is excluded from you, and you attack it in what seems to be "externally" in order to push it away from you. To distance yourself from you. This distancing is SPACETIME. It means you are MAKING time and space in your mind by rejecting stuff. The gap of separation, the pit of hell, is in your mind. And stuff only appears to be outside your mind because you HAVE separated it off. Ideas leave not their source.

Any time you attack anyone thinking they are not you, and that they are receiving the attack and not you, you are deluded. Your mind is attacking itself and projecting the split and seeing the "other part" outside of what's left "within". It has dissociated the guilty part of mind and hates it. And the more it hates it and wants it dead, the more it is wanting to increase the split and thus increase the insanity. We are doing this every minute of every day.

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."

To see "the real world" is literally to simply be in touch with reality and look out from reality and look upon the world we made (the illusion/dream/physical) and see what's there. It is a state of recognition, in which the illusory nature of the world is recognized clearly. In which there is no DECEPTION. In which you are no longer deceived by what you see.

"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."

Awareness of dreaming is sanity. It is as close to ultimate reality as we can be while still slightly separated from it. Because "perception still is a separated state." So the entire course is really just telling us that we've gone nuts and we need help to get back to reality. We've become lost in a fantasy-land and we need to get back to the Kingdom of God. And along the way we need to see the world we made as "the real world", ie the truth about it in reality, and then leave it behind as we move on to actual existence. To our real life in heaven with God.

"There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY. Perceive ANY part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have CORRECTLY EVALUATED ALL OF IT."

"You are no longer wholly insane, NOR NO LONGER ALONE."

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says that this world - Earth - is upside down, back to front, and inside out. Perhaps we should look at how this is the case, to realize just how OPPOSITE Earth is to heaven in its nature.

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven"

In this world, there is saying that "change is life, stagnation is death". You can find plenty of examples of this in what we call "nature".

For example when water stops moving and becomes still, it stagnates. Oxygen stops exchanging at the surface and the water becomes toxic. It can then become host to numerous bacterias and other nasty things. It begins to smell awful and would be dangerous to drink.

It seems then that movement of the water is life, because when it moves the oxygen can exchange and the water becomes infused with it. The oxygen in the water can then seem to support life, such as fish and aquatic plants. So long as the water keeps flowing, impurities are flushed away and the water remains relatively healthy. So it seems that in this world, the idea of "stillness" is equated physically with DEATH, and "movement" is equated with LIFE.

However, in heaven's reality, this is TOTALLY OPPOSITE. In truth, stillness is in fact life, because it means that there is no change, and therefore there is no end to the life, and life becomes immortal. Real life is eternal life. Life which never depletes or runs out or becomes toxic. Its stillness is its peace, and its peace is guarantee of its health. In fact life and health are now equated with what the world would call "stagnation".

From that view, what we would think of as "change" is in fact evidence of DEATH. Time is death, because it attempts to bring an END to everything. Anything that changes can suffer and die, and cannot be immortal. And so anything which seems to be born, to grow, to age and to die, is really NOT eternal life, and is NOT peace, and is NOT reality. This is the truthful perspective on this world, which recognizes that only CHANGELESSNESS is life, and therefore stillness is life, and change is 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."

"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."

So if you look at it, the physical world is set up to be completely backwards in its functioning. The laws of physics are totally upside down and the REVERSE of God's laws. The laws of "nature", or what we think of as "natural" in the world, is ACTUALLY completely unnatural. And it could not be MORE unnatural.

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

If you think about it, in the physical world, when you move towards stillness, it seems that you will move towards death. If you stop breathing, your body may die. Indeed, it seems to prove out that if you exercise more and are more physically active, moving and changing, this seems to be "good for your health". So now health is equated with CHANGE, instead of with stillness. And if you were to become sedentary and not move much, it is proven to indicate that your health will be worse. And indeed we seem to refer to "dead bodies" or "lifelessness" as a complete lack of motion.

But a complete lack of motion is GOD. Total stillness is the nature of reality. NOT change. NOT movement. NOT constant activities. So if the world has kind of "sign posts" pointing in a direction that the ego thinks you should be going, its signposts POINT AWAY from stillness. It suggests to you even biologically that you should move towards activity and away from motionlessness. And that if you were to move towards PHYSICAL PEACE, you are in fact moving towards DEATH. This is why some people think that dead bodies are "resting peacefully", which is utterly nonsense.

"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."

So here for example Jesus clarifies that REAL rest, real peacefulness, actually results from spiritual awakening in which you are awake and alert, NOT from sleeping or being unconscious. But the physical world would suggest that you "get some rest" when you are physically inactive, when you are LOSING consciousness, and when you are NOT awake. This is completely backwards from God's truth.

The more you look at this the more examples you will find, indicating that the PHYSICAL NATURE of planet earth, not even considering any kind of perception or interpretation of it - just its physical functioning and behaviors and ways, is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth of reality and to the nature of the Kingdom of God. This is because Earth is in fact TOTALLY OPPOSITE in its NATURE to God's creation. And because it is totally opposite, it cannot BE God's creation.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

This statement literally states that Earth is opposite to heaven in EVERY way. And I could really go on at considerable length describing the WAYS that earth is nothing like heaven. This is not to reject the part of ACIM that says earth can potentially REFLECT heaven, in some kind of neutral way, but its fundamental functioning, the way the system is set up, the kinds of things which happen when you are active or inactive, etc, all point to the "laws of nature" of the physical planet being BACKWARDS.

There are similar things you can notice about guilt. You see the ego suggests that you should not look within because it says that if you do, you will approach the very thing you do not want. That if you look within you will find guilt and sin. And so as you begin to look within, guilt and sin seem to come into your awareness and the ego uses this to steer you AWAY from that direction. It instead points all its arrows outward away from yourself, away from God, and away from ever connecting with the Holy Spirit in your mind. All of its DIRECTIONS run CONTRARY to what is actually true.

"Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you NOT TO LOOK. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, AND SEE THE GUILT IN THEM."

It's similar in PHYSICAL terms in that as you approach things in the world which might symbolize becoming closer to reality, to peace, to freedom and so on, the more the physical world itself screams at you "go the other way". Or even, to suggest that if you keep going in this direction, you are going in completely the WRONG direction, and WILL NOT FIND what you're looking for. This is a DECOY. It is how spacetime is set up to give you constant messages that say "you're going the wrong way" when you are in fact going the right way, and vice versa. So that you are always moving AWAY from the truth.

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success." BACKWARDNESS IS BUILT INTO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS! THE WORLD'S NATURE IS INSIDE OUT!

The physical world therefore is in fact, so to speak, "inside out". It is a nothing pretending to be something. It is an unreality pretending to be real. It has a nature that could not be MORE unlike heaven. It makes it look like peace is associated with DYING and not with living. It steers you AWAY from stillness. And at every turn it deceives you and points you towards the very opposite of what you're looking for. It's all part of "seek and do not find."

Another example is outer space for example. In heaven, everything is light. Light is everywhere. In spacetime, however, the light has been reduced down, limited, withdrawn, condensed, SO MUCH, that all that's left are tiny little pin-pricks of light in the night sky. As though to suggest that MOST of the universe IS COMPLETELY EMPTY. That "space" itself is a LACK OF light and a lack of substance. And that all that remains of the presence of anything are tiny little specks we call atoms, in tiny little clusters, separated by billions of light years.

And then we look to the little bits of material that remain and we call it the presence of a very big planet, when in fact it is practically nothing in the big picture. It's the REMAINS of what is LEFT OVER when ALMOST EVERYTHING Has been removed. And now the presence of something is no longer recognized as the LACK OF something. The world is the ABSENCE OF a world. It is a LACK OF everywhereness. It is the opposite to heaven.

We can of course repurpose the world and the body and the weird backwards laws of physics, to use them to point in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION from which they naturally point. This is what is required in order TO use them for a higher purpose. Something which was made to KILL has to be used to support life. Something which points AWAY from God has to be used to point towards him.

"As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected." "Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"Let not the world deceive you. It was made to be deception."

It is only possible for the Holy Spirit to repurpose everything in the world, PRECISELY BECAUSE everything in the world moving in the WRONG DIRECTION. And so it HAS to be used in an alternative and totally OPPOSITE way to what it was originally intended. For example the body was made to KILL the son of God. It is a device for SEPARATION, to reinforce impriosnment and keep minds from joining. But the Holy Spirit puts its to use by using it for a purpose TOTALLY OPPOSITE TO ITS NATURE.

When we do this, it does not CHANGE the nature of the things we made. It does not stop the world spinning, or does not make the clouds go away, it does not change the fact that dead bodies are motionless and living bodies are moving. It does not change the fact that water stagnates when it doesn't flow. But it looks at it from a different vantage point which INTERPRETS these things as not MEANING what they originally were meant to mean. Or to USE them in an OPPOSITE WAY to their own inherent nature.

Using something for an alternative purpose than it was DESIGNED TO FUNCTION, does not CHANGE its function. It just works within its limits and uses it as best as possible towards a different GOAL. Such as if you were to grow flowers in a machine gun. Or use what the ego made as an attack on God's children (bodies) to help them to LEAVE bodies permanently. That's the whole point. Everything we made as an attack on God is now being used for a higher purpose, which runs AGAINST its inherent nature, and uses it to undo itself. This is only possible BECAUSE the world IS back to front.

As heaven becomes reflected in the world, it does not change the fact that the world is still running IN REVERSE. And even the illusion of time is actually secretly an attempt to move INTO THE PAST, not the future. The world can reflect heaven when looked at in a heavenly way but NOT in terms of ITS FUNCTIONING. It will still always operate in the same way, with the same physics. Decomposed decayed rotten bodies will still appear to symbolize peace and stillness while objects in motion will seem to have energy, vitality and life. And all of this is STILL going to be backwards if you look upon it with love.

It needs to be more clear and more widely understood the sheer EXTENT of the ways in which this world - space and time - planet earth - all galaxies - all physicality - is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to heaven's nature. They are not AT ALL alike. And only by recognizing this can you realize that the world was made to BE opposite to God. And that is why it is NOT GOD'S CREATION, AND WILL END. We can forgive the world BECAUSE it is a picture of crucifixion, but this will not stop it BEING a system of death. Hell becomes interpreted in a heavenly way, IN ORDER TO end it.

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve."

What you use the world FOR, what PURPOSE you give it, what it MEANS to you, and the GOAL that you ascribe to it, determines everything about WHY it is there and HOW you see it.

If you give the world a purpose of death, you steer towards false perception and murder and hell. If you give the world a purpose of resurrection, you steer towards true perception and heaven. And which purpose you choose determines how you interpret what you see.

The world isn't just sitting there as a WHAT. It's sitting there as a WHY. The world was made FOR A REASON. It was chosen specifically and deliberately. Its making was intentional and on purpose. It was made to serve a GOAL and to accomplish that goal. It's not just a "thing", it's a DEVICE.

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

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home."

It's not enough to ask "what the world is". Science can study the WHAT as long as it likes, but it's not asking the right question. You can't just look at the nature of the world through analysis of WHAT, to discover the REASON WHY it exists at all. For that, you have to ask WHY it's there at all, what it means, and what purpose it is serving. Then it becomes obvious WHY it is the way it is.

We're also taught in ACIM that everything is deliberate, because there is free will. Anything that happens MUST have your consent. Nothing happens WITHOUT your choosing it. You choose everything ON PURPOSE. You are completely deliberate, intentional, and responsible. Nothing happens at all unless it serves a purpose. And everything must have a purpose.

"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."

"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."

The world did not exist before the separation from God. It was made ON PURPOSE, to serve a goal. The goal was to deny God, to make separation real, to murder God's son, to make possible what is impossible, to bring about death, and to rule a kingdom in which God was absent. That is the original PURPOSE of this world. That is WHY it seems to be here. That is why the "what it is" is the way it is, and why it functions the way it does, and HOW it accomplishes this goal.

Make no mistake here. The world isn't just sitting there happily churning over all innocent and sweet. While the world is actually nothing, we give it belief and try to MAKE it serve the purpose of hell. We made it by rebelling against God, throwing away our inheritance, not WANTING to communicate with God, and by wanting to re-create ourselves in our own images. That's how spacetime came to be made as an opposite to omnipresence and eternity. That's that's why "the world was made as an attack on God."

So if we're just examining what the world is, we're not really looking at the rather extraordinary fact that it is in fact "the hell you made" for the purpose of fighting against heaven and trying to overthrow God's reality. That's WHY it's here. That's WHAT it is FOR. Or at least, that was what it WAS for, in the past, when we made it with our egos. The world functions the way it does simply because that's how its function SERVES the PURPOSE of destruction.

What ACIM is then telling us is that, since the world itself is nothing, and acts like a TOOL, to serve a certain purpose, with a certain USE, we can choose instead to RE-PURPOSE it. To give it a NEW GOAL. A new purpose which can serve a higher goal. We can take what we made, which was originally a weapon for destruction, and turn it into a way to UNDO the weapon. We can take hell, and convert it into a reflection of heaven, so that it will disappear in light. And we can USE it to bring ourselves and others back to God through holy relationship.

"For here, the GOAL of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was."

"For, once the unholy relationship has ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was."

This means giving the world a different PURPOSE from the one we originally gave it. And that means it has to have a different GOAL than the one of murder and death that we originally gave it. So now, whatever state of mind you're in, whatever attitude you have, you have to ask yourself what you are USING IT FOR, or what purpose or goal you are trying to accomplish. Are you using it for attack to bring about the goal of death, or are you USING it for resurrection and healing and the goal of atonement, to restore the sonship and bring us back to God?

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor USE it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE (goal) to peace, but let You USE it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming (of the higher goal)."

Let's be clear, that the power of the mind and the law of cause and effect determines that nothing can happen without your will, and anything that happens MUST be something you want. And by wanting it you WANT it to SERVE a purpose for you. To fullfill a FUNCTION. And a function is a way of operating that leads to the accomplishment of a goal. Our true function is to create life, and our false function is to destroy. Even YOU have a function that serves the creator of that function, because your function is to serve God for HIS purpose of sharing creation.

""Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

"I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function." "Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give to me."

Even all forms of sickness are there to SERVE a function, for a PURPOSE. This is why "sickness is a defense against the truth". It serves the PURPOSE of protecting you from the truth and hiding from it in darkness, by blocking the light/life, which implements forms of death. So long as a person has a USE FOR the sickness, serving a purpose, BENEFITING from it, wanting it, NEEDING it, choosing it, the sickness remains. And sickness is always ONLY there because of the PURPOSE it is serviing for the person. All sickness is intentional and deliberate and providing a function to achieve a GOAL.

"The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no USE for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once."

"No one can heal unless he understands what PURPOSE sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic."

"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when, for an instant, truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth?"

So as ACIM rightly states, we should always ask, WHAT IS IT FOR? What am I using this FOR? What is the goal I am trying to achieve? What is the purpose of this? Am I using this for an ego purpose, and if so, how can I switch to a higher purpose? What was my original purpose in CHOOSING this, for what NEED, to achieve what GOAL? Why do I still believe I need it? Maybe I'm mistaken about my REASON FOR THIS and can choose otherwise?

How can I use this to FACILITATE the coming of peace, or the fulfillment of a higher function? How can I USE the world which I made in hate, to demonstrate the truth and awaken my brothers? What renewed spiritual PURPOSE can I give TO the world, to USE it in such a way, that it brings about the undoing of the world and the restoration of holy relationship and health and happiness? How can I USE the world for the GOAL OF GOD, in which everything in the world is seen with forgiveness so that it only serves the purpose of awakening and atonement?

When the Holy Spirit's PURPOSE for the world is accomplished, when the atonement is complete, the world no longer needs to SERVE this new purpose. And WITHOUT A PURPOSE, it simply now disappears into nothing.

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary"

"And, like all the things you made, it can be used to serve ANOTHER purpose, and to be means for something ELSE. It can be used to heal, and NOT to hurt, if you so wish."

"Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?""

"What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR?"

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it."

"Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it."

"For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

"If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world."

"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."

"The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one."

"Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one."

"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."

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.

When we talk about miracles I often hear a lot of examples being given of what seemed miraculous to some people. But we need to be clearer about whether something is a miracle or not.

In general language, most people think of a miracle as something that happens that's very unlikely, highly improbably, extraordinary in its seeming marvel at bringing about a solution or resolving some problem.

Like if some person is drowning in a river and someone pulls them out and it seemed highly likely they were going to die, but they live, some might call it a miracle.

Or someone goes through a particular car crash where a wooden post rams through the window and just barely misses killing the person and then they think of it as miraculous because the seeming "odds" of it happening are so extreme.

This all touches on the idea that miracles are generally things that are "highly improbable", and if we take it a step further, impossible. If "the impossible happens" it's so astonishing that we will call it miraculous.

But very highly unlikely things can happen in the world, without it in any way being a miracle. If someone has a brush with death and somehow manages to get past it "against all the odds", we might start calling it a miracle.

And then there's things that people say like, they are performing miracles every day. No, that's not happening. Or that certain things that people like or love are miracles, your children are miracles, every flower is a miracle, etc. These aren't really miraculous in the true sense that's just things that people spiritualize and try to make out to be extra special.

These kind of "miracles" are a combination of wishful thinking, idol worship, specialness, denial, a belief in magic, and a sense of surprise at something that seems unlikely to happen. These kinds of deifnitions of miracles totally water down and suppress what miracles really are, and what they are capable of.

Moses parted an ocean. Jesus raised the dead and healed the sick. He's told us there is NOTHING we cannot do. He's told us miracles can heal the body. He's told us our mind is extremely powerful and that even physically moving a literal mountain is A TINY FEAT for such a power. That even our minds have the power to create entire worlds.

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

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

When the laws of physics are broken, then you're looking at a miracle. When the laws of another world are seeming to operate here, such the the laws of this world are VIOLATED, when the seemingly totally impossible happens, not WITHIN the laws of what's possible in the world, but in spite of them, then that's a miracle.

We're talking here about the reversal of everything the world says can never BE undone. Things which CANNOT happen, but are made possible anyway by a divine, supernatural, mind-driven power. Miracles wield the power of God through the Holy Spirit and Jesus. They CAN DO the very things which the entire world says CAN NEVER be done.

You can't put all the various "its on the news and they're calling it a miracle" episodes of "that wasn't very likely to happen" in the same bucket. We're talking here about a mind power that can manipulate the laws of physics, defy gravity (such as walking on water), alter objects (such as multiplying/materializing food out of nowhere), healing bodies (such as giving someone new eyeballs), you know... stuff that we consider utterly impossible. Stuff that requires a power NOT OF THIS WORLD to perform.

"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."

"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."

A person's body is held up as a picture. It covers up who they are. It says, "this is true of me." Or "this is what I am."

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

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

If a person's body seems to have a problem, the body is now a witness for the ego and is proving that something has gone wrong.

But here's the thing.

If God created you, then you have to be as God created you. You have no say in this. You cannot change what you are because you are HIS will.

That means, whatever you are, HE is responsible for.

If you therefore, as a body, seem to be sick, then it can only mean one of two things.

1) He did create the body and therefore sickness is real and God is responsible for creating you sick, which means God must be totally cruel and sadistic. Or...

2) God did not create the body and therefore the sickness is not real, and you cannot be sick. This means God is loving because he only creates perfection, not sickness.

If #2 is correct, then in the most literal sense, you CANNOT be sick. Nor can anyone. If the body is appearing to be sick, appearing to claim "this is the truth", it CANNOT BE the truth.

Sickness has to always be a lie, a fiction, a disguise, something false. It isn't actually a true or real sickness, either. It's always a fake sickness. Because how can any sickness have truth, reality or validity if God has not had a hand in it?

The fact then is the body is a lie, and it's sicknesses are a lie. They are not really sicknesses and they aren't even possible. They cannot be there. You cannot BE sick. No-one can be sick, if they are to be as God created them.

So now this means the body is there to tempt you to believe something is true which isn't, to tempt you to associate the Son of God with a physical object, and to lie to you about what is true of someone.

Either God is sick and the person has sickness, or God is not sick and the person CANNOT EVER be sick. You have to choose to believe one or the other. Even if a person is telling you they are sick, even if they show the proof, even if they're looking half dead, it is not POSSIBLE in reality.

To go along with it, to buy into it, is to be deceived by temptation. The body showing up at all tempts you to believe something that isn't true. Even if someone holds up a "picture of crucifixion" to say, "you did this to me" and "I am a victim", you have to not side with that. Otherwise you are reinforcing the sickness.

By NOT believing they are "really sick", and recognizing their sickness as UNREAL, only then can you withdraw your support for the sickness and thus weaken the person's belief in it. When no-one goes along with the lie, it loses its strength and disappears. A lie that no-one believes is not worth telling.

"The ACCEPTANCE of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, merely by denying them completely in himself."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. "

"What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? It does not SEEM to be the wish that NO reality be so. But it IS an assertion that some FORMS of idols have a powerful appeal which makes them HARDER to resist than those you would not WANT to have reality. Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; - a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but KEEP their unreality obscure, and GIVE to them reality instead."

"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."

"At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present." - ACIM

Although it can seem like you can look at your body "right now" and see it "now", you might not realize that this is not actually "now" that you are seeing it. Rather, you are seeing how it was just a moment ago.

Even in terms of the body's sensory organs itself, it takes "time" for signals of sight to travel through space into the eyes, through the optic nerve, into the brain, into the mind, to perceive what is out there. You do not actually see the body as it is immediately now, you see how it just was a moment ago. The body is always in the past for you.

It is never possible to experience or see the body as it would be immediately in the exact present. Presence requires absolutely no space and no time. It is immediate and direct, with no gap and no delay. In such a present, it is not even possible to perceive. Perception happens in time and space and relies on separation. Only awareness can be present - an awareness of the presence of God.

While you can do a good job of approaching the present, you'll find that you have a lot of trouble actually being squarely in it. For example you can watch your breathing and try to always keep up with exactly how the breathing is acting right now, in the present. But you'll find that instead of always flowing along in the present moment precisely, your awareness will lag behind. You'll attempt to attach to or grab hold of what you're perceiving, and will stutter along from one grasp to another, as the mind tries to get a grip of what's coming. It's anticipating the future, or it's holding onto the past, and slightly missing the immediate present.

To put it another way, the present happens slightly sooner than your ability to perceive it. It is always quicker than the ego. It is always more immediate and transcends time and space. You will not be able to latch onto it or keep up with it without complete surrender to the Holy Instant.

The body does not exist in the present. It exists as a manifestation of delay and avoidance. It is always slightly in the past, or being anticipated in the future. Even though there is what seems to be an illusion of it existing "now" it is not really now. You never see it now. This is also why Jesus says that it is impossible to see a sinless body, because sinlessness is so immediate that it transcends time and space and the body itself.

The body IS the idea of sin, and it is always separate from the presence, because sin is always separate from the presence of God. The body will always be sin and made of sin. It cannot be truly holy. It can be used for a holier purpose but of itself, it is not made by love and cannot be inherently holy, because it is not wholeness. This is why, being sin, it MUST disappear, in order to enter the eternal presence of God. It is an illusion which must be given up and let go. Otherwise if the body were capable of perfection, it would truly substitute for God and we would never wake up.

The ego is very clever at creating illusions. It very cleverly makes it seem as though there IS no present. There's an entire section in the course about how the ego uses the past to "gloss over" the present and extend the past into the future so that there appears to be no present. Even if you are looking at this text right "now" and seeing it "now" it is NOT happening now. You're experiencing the past. This is why the workbook says "I see only the past" or "I see nothing as it is now". It's not possible TO see anything as it is now, other than God. The entire world is therefore in the past and so is already over.

We are never present in this world. This world and presence are incompatible.

Have you done this? I know I have done it many times: "Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real?"

Something happens, typically something related to a body - something physical which the body reports as happening. Then I observe it and judge - THIS IS REAL - something's happening, something's going wrong.

Then there is a whole cascade of reactions, starting with immediate fear. There are defenses, attempts to escape, attempts to find cures, attempts to explain the causes. All attempts are me trying to defend against the "reality" of the problem, which, because it IS real to me, cannot BE escaped.

And always no matter what I do, what I think, how I approach it, there is still the fear response to something that seems unchangeable, fixed, stuck, irreversible, and deadly.

This is always because at the "core", I've given REALITY to something that the body showed me. I've decided this is real, and have interpreted it as totally real. By making it real, I locked it in place, turned it into an inescapable sin, gave it permanence, and set it up as the truth.

Now it cannot be questioned, undone, changed, healed, or corrected. Knowing this produces inevitable unresolvable fear. If it is real, there is nothing I can do about it. And this always leads to a feeling of powerlessness, hopelessness, weakness, incapability, inadequacy and shame. As if the thing is just dangling there in front of my face taunting me and haunting me with its threats of inevitable suffering.

"NOT because it has the power to hurt, but just because YOU have denied it is but an illusion, AND MADE IT REAL."

"Its plan is to have you SEE ERROR CLEARLY FIRST, and THEN overlook it. But how CAN you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you HAVE made it real, and CANNOT overlook it."

All of this begins the moment that I look at something and decide for myself, "this is real". This one act of reading reality into it, taking it seriously, forgetting to laugh, focusing on it like it's literally right there in front of my face as proof that it exists, is enough to cement it into my mind. As soon as it is locked in, nothing whatsoever can dislodge it and it looms over me like a constant threat.

The ego has counseled that I need to look clearly and closely at what is an error - an illusion of something going wrong - as if it is real, and examine it, and figure out what it is, and analyze it, and describe it, and find the cause of it. And that only by looking intensely at it as a real problem can I possibly find a solution to it. But this does not work because all it does it holds the problem in place.

The ONLY thing which can truly uproot and solve the problem, is the recognition that I am the one who decided it was real in the first place. I bought into the illusion. I fell for the temptation. I forgot to laugh at it. I thought it was serious. I gave it meaning. I decided what it was and why it meant. And only by this decision, based on inputs from the body senses, did I convince myself "this is really happening, holy shit, there is no escaping it."

I must then reverse this belief, this core key moment, realizing that since I gave it this reality, I can withdraw this power from it also. And I must do this is if I want to experience atonement and freedom.

"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."

It means I have given my power away to an illusory world, have set it up to have power over me, and now I see it as causing me. And now I am starting to experience the consequences and effects that it implies. And only by taking its power away can I free myself from my self-made imprisonment.

This problem has no power, it is not real, it is not happening, it is not true, it does not exist, it is not there, it is already gone, it never happened, it is an illusion and is nothing.

And then I can laugh and be free from the clutches of this tiny anchoring black-hole of despair and deception. It is truly nothing and I has no power over me.

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.

"For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

This was an eye-opener for me, that you have to be IN THE PRESENT in order to be forgiving. Not only that, but the state of mind that you're in when you're in the present, truly, without a past, is the forgiving state of mind.

There present is where you have no grievances, because all grievances are to do with the past. What someone did or didn't do in the past, past hurts, old arguments, unforgiven conflicts, things which "happened" - past tense. Without a past you cannot have grievances. This is why "the miracle" and the vision of christ ONLY exist in the present.

This also means that when you move into the present, you have to have let go of the past, and brushed it off, and dropped it. So if you had grievances toward a person, you would have to be willing to completely let that go and "forgive" them ie no longer hold it against them as a sin. Because sin is always in the past, along with guilt, and the ego. Only if THERE IS NO PAST is your brother forgiven.

Without a past you see people as they are now, without any history of faults and failures and offences. Being fully and squarely in the present moment of time, with no concern for the future or the past, that's where you find the light. It's where you find the real world, because it means you're taking a look at "reality as it is now", rather than disappearing off into a dream of memory. True accurate perception requires total present attention.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying or teaching that forgiveness has to take place in the present moment. And this doesn't mean that when you "do your forgivenesses" you are doing them now in the present. We are not in the present, typically, most of the time, or when we're reciting lessons or quotes or trying to apply the course. Most of the time we're lost in he past and giving lip service to the STATE of forgiveness.

To really forgive, just as Jesus says that miracles are seen in light and the light is in the present and miracles heal only in the present, your mind has to let go of the whole of the past. In fact it has to let go of time, past and future, to experience a holy instant. Being in the "now" is the only way to be actually freed from all forms of suffering, which are always rooted in the past.

You can't really be forgiving toward someone if you still believe they did something, which doesn't just mean writing off what they did and keeping the idea of time. It means actually getting out of time, out of the past, realising the past doesn't even exist, and being in the present. In the present you are taking a fresh new look at a person, immediately and without a history.

"The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors ARE all past, and by perceiving him WITHOUT them, you are RELEASING him. And since his past is yours, you SHARE in this release. Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present, and you WILL find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is NOT, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it IS, and it WILL dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are BEHIND you, and unless you bring them WITH you, you WILL see that you are free of them." UrT12F5

To be in the present is to be forgiving. You can't have any sense of a record of sins people committed, unless you are focused on the past. When you focus on the past you're not really seeing anything at all because you're looking at something that is not there anymore. And so you lose vision. You regain vision, sight, Christ vision, in the light of the present, when you are here now, aligned with the always-now of eternity.

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."

I'm having a really hard time trying to put a simple truth into words. So... for now, an analogy...

If it's dark and there seems to be a scary shape behind the door, you might think there is a monster lurking.

You turn on the light and realize it's just some clothes hanging there.

This is the same as the transition from believing that the ego is real, to recognizing it was just a harmless illusion.

It simply was not true that it was a real monster.

You did not need to do anything to the clothing in order to make it not be a monster.

All you needed to do, was switch on the light.

Because it never WAS a real monster to begin with!

Light is ALL that you need in order to be awake to the truth and free of the ego. That's all. Absolutely nothing else.

When there is light, you can see correctly. You can see everything as it is, without having to modify the scene at all.

You did not need to defend yourself against the monster. And you did not need to fight it off once the light was turned on, even though you might've been afraid that turning on the light would prove that the monster is real ;-)

All you had to do was turn on the light so that you could see correctly. So that you could have True Perception. Vision.

The light itself shows you, by comparison to the light, that what you thought was a real monster, was just an illusion. There wasn't anything real there at all.

It is this way with the ego and the entire world. It is an illusion that isn't real. You think there are real monsters and real tragedies and real death. That's because you are not seeing clearly. You are in darkness. You just need more light.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM

"You are only afraid of darkness because you believe it has the ability to hide the truth." - ACIM

So you actually don't need to defend yourself against the ego, or against illusions, or against attack, or against death. You ONLY need to be in the light, and all of those things will be very obviously shown to be NOT what you thought they were.

You will see that death was just a weird illusion. Attack was not really happening. Sin wasn't true of anyone. There wasn't any real suffering. And even what you thought was a "real ego" was nothing more than an illusion of an ego existing. There WASN'T a real ego at all, it was just smoke and mirrors looking like one!

It was all just a trick that your mind played on you because you were in the DARK and could not see the whole scene properly.

Taking vision out of context and focusing on only parts of the scene, unable to see the whole (the whole is God), produces insane fears that objects are really monsters, that inanimate objects are out to get you, and that you are not safe.

Turn the light on!

Light is all you need. God is all you need. Be in God and everything else will become clear and obvious as day. There is no ego, there is no death. They existed as hallucinations in the dark while you didn't have enough light to see what was REALLY going on.

"Now the light has come." - ACIM

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and your way will be made straight" - ie, be in the light, and you will KNOW that there IS nothing that can ever be against you. There IS no real enemy, no real attacker, no real war, no real sin, no real sickness, and no real death.

SURPRISE! It was all a wierd dream trip you had while you could not see the big picture, conclusions you came to that were false, and made-up explanations for things you only had partial evidence for.

This is awakening. Waking up to the awareness (light) which allows you to SEE (vision) the truth (God - the whole picture), which shows you that you're just hanging around in an illusory room that isn't really anything at all. You thought it was a scary place, it's NOTHING!

You will just laugh when you realize all that fear and pretend suffering didn't happen at all, and all that's left is you hanging out with God in love forever! Perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly safe :-)

"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."

In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."

If you are going to pray for someone, you’ll need to first discern what the problem really is.

The problem is NOT what is happening to the person, what they perceive as happening to them, or what your own ego says is the problem.

This means you need to forgive first, come to your senses, and *recognize* what the illusions are.

It’s actually always an ILLUSION that anyone is under attack by anyone other than themselves!

So in this sense, it is then pointless to pray e.g. that someone receives money, or that someone stop being hurt by someone, or someone gets along with their boss, or whatever.

The only meaningful prayer, perhaps, is one which aligns itself with God’s Will. That means, the prayer ACKNOWLEDGES the TRUTH about the person, not what is FALSE about them!

Just as forgiveness does not "make errors real" and THEN attempts to undo them, which cannot work, our prayers should also be forgiving. They should not fall for the ego’s tricks or make us believe the victim’s own interpretation of what is happening.

If someone asks you to pray for them, and then gives the reasons "why", which will entail all the perceived justifications for why they are in danger or under attack or suffering "against their will", take their prayer request and by all means pray, but do not pray for what the person believes is the problem.

Just as when you forgive, you need to learn to UNDO the belief that problems are real at all, withdraw belief that sin is real, and NOT believe that sickness and suffering are real, so too this needs to be incorporated into praying.

If you pray "with forgiveness", then you are praying with the power of God, and this CAN produce results because you’re now speaking God’s language of TRUTH. But if you fall for the ego traps and dramas and then use that as the reason to pray, praying for those "real" dramas to stop, it will not work.

Your prayers must ASCEND above the battlefield, above the ego’s lies, above even the illusion that someone is being attacked by a will OTHER than their own.

All attack is SELF ATTACK. The person needing praying for needs to stop attacking themselves! The prayer then should be in support of what is TRUE about the person, acknowledging and being thankful for that, as a way to diffuse the ego’s bullshit about the situation, and then to pray that the person themselves are lifted up into TRUTH, to join in truth, so that THEY stop attacking themselves.

It is therefore helpful to pray that a person stop believing they are vulnerable, to help them to recognize how loved they are, to ask that their mind be clarified, to ask for healing and to remind the person how loved and safe they are. It is helpful to ask for the person to be uplifted and awakened and made conscious and come back to their senses - to truth. It is helpful to send them love. And it is helpful to ask that they be helped by God to RECOGNIZE their own invulnerability, strength, power, certainty and fearlessness.

It is really self-attack that people need prayers about. Their failure to recognize the truth about themselves IS causing them to make theirown life a mess. Their unconsciousness is producing projected attacks. Their resistance against truth is causing problems and dramas.

No-one especially needs to be "saved" from apparently completely separate unfair attackers who come out of the blue for no reason. No one dies without their own consent! The problem is that a person has CONSENTED TO SUFFERING. THEY need help with learning to STOP ATTACKING THEMSELVES. TO stop believing things are true of them which are not true. To remember who they really are.

WE as "prayers" must learn not to be deceived by the ego’s illusions first, including those presented by "those in need". The reason for the prayer must not be an ego reason OR a reaction to an ego way of looking at a situation. If we’re making the problem real, but are saying "prayer words", WE now have a "split mind" and a "split will" and a "split allegiance", and that means we are not going to actually WILL anything with God.

I’ve been trying to remember this myself and to practice it by praying only for the person’s awakening to truth, the recognition of their perfection as Christ, and for them to be healed of the NEED to be prayed for for illusory reasons.

Instead, our prayer is not so much a request about something which needs changing, but moreso an EXTENSION OF GOD, an affirmation of recognition of what is already true, a denial of what is false, and to simply ask that God’s Will (the way that things should be if people weren’t interfering) be expressed. That’s not so much a "new request" as it is a CONTINUATION OF THE TRUTH.

Think about how the person’s HIGHER SELF is. What is true of their higher self, in the highest possible reality of God, THAT is the truth about the person and NOT how they appear. Their body symtoms, their life dramas, etc, are NOT true of them. Affirming what IS true of them, "speaking truth into the situation", is powerful and miraculous. Spoken prayers only posess POWER if they are speaking of what is TRUE IN GOD.

Speak about how God sees the person. Speak about what is only true of them in the most loving way - total innocence, perfect awareness, fearlessness, trust, confidence, happiness, joy, love, worthiness, etc... expressing that is an extension of love, and love heals. You don’t even really need to address the ego junk that is currently showing up. God’s Will is all that needs to be done, ie, you only need affirm and recognize and express what God has already created as TRUTH about the person.

Prayer and forgiveness go hand in hand. To pray with love must be to pray forgivingly. To pray WITH GOD, instead of "to God", is far more powerful than reacting pleadingly to illusions of suffering. Seeing and acknowledging the highest reality of a person is very uplifting.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus in ACIM talks quite a lot about saving the world. This obviously can lead to some confusion. Does it mean the world is to be kept? Does it mean we need to save the animals? Is it a temporary step? Why would we save it only to have it disappear? And how do you save it, and from what?

On the matter of what the world is to be saved FROM, he says this:

"True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist."

"save the world from all ideas of sin."

"The world is saved from what you thought it was. And what it is, is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure."

"What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs?"

Essentially he is saying that "ideas of sin" can somehow be lifted away from the world. Apparently this means the idea of the world being sinful is optional. And since you can change your idea of what you THOUGHT the world "was", you can think of it either as sinful or as not sinful.

And what does it then mean that the world is SAVED? "And what it is, is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure." So the world is effectively saved FROM your condemnations, your accusations of sin, your projections of guilt, your judgements, your hate, your anger, your attempts to destroy. When you stop doing these things to yourself and stop projecting them UPON the world, the real world is revealed.

Jesus asks us to save the world from our projection of sin, of guilty meaning, of fear and attack. To lift the veil of illusions away from the world, so that we can see it for what it is. To have accurate, true perception of it. Then we will see it as a forgiven world, a world onto which we have not PUT condemnation, sin, attack or ideas of danger. Our forgiveness will be upon it and we will see reflected IN it an image of God, a reflection of heaven, and the face of Christ.

Once this is accomplished, the world, and the real world, both simply dreams, will disappear, as we are lifted into heaven and unto God once again.

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."

"Damnation is your judgment on YOURSELF. And this you WILL project upon the world. See IT as damned, and all you see is what YOU did to hurt the Son of God."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"And with this vision I will look upon the world and upon myself with charity and love."

"Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose." "For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there IS another world. You live in that world just as much as this, for BOTH are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged, but never jointly held."

"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."

"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."

“Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world.”

"Brother, come and join with me today. We save the world when we are joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the Light in us."

"Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world. For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die can be restored to Everlasting Life."

"Are you ready yet to help Me save the world?"

"If you are to save the world, you first accept salvation for yourself. But you will not believe that this is done until you see the miracles it brings to everyone you look upon."

"It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his "offenses" but to save the world from all ideas of sin."

"What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self?"

"We will not play such childish games today, for our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us."

""My part is essential to God's plan for salvation. I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world. For He gave me His plan that I might save the world."

"Father, forgiveness is the light You chose to shine away all conflict and all doubt, and light the way for our return to You. No light but this can end our evil dreams. No light but this can save the world."

"Now my mind is healed, and all I need to save the world is given me." "I am as God created me. ... This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world."

""Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world."

"Christ asks that He may use my eyes today, and thus redeem the world. He asks this gift that He may offer peace of mind to me, and take away all terror and all pain. And as they are removed from me, the dreams that seemed to settle on the world are gone. Redemption must be one. As I am saved, the world is saved with me."

"For true perception is a remedy with many names. 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."

"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."

""Are you ready yet to help Me save the world?" Ask this instead of what the ego is, and you will see a sudden brightness cover up the world the ego made. No miracle is now withheld from anyone. The world is saved from what you thought it was. And what it is, is wholly uncondemned and wholly pure."

"And now in all your doings be you blessed.

God turns to you for help to save the world.

Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,

And all the world stands silent in the grace

You bring from Him. You are the Son He loves,

And it is given you to be the means

Through which His Voice is heard around the world

To close all things of time, to end the sight

Of all things visible; and to undo

All things that change. Through you is ushered in

A world unseen, unheard, yet truly there.

Holy are you, and in your light the world

Reflects your holiness, for you are not

Alone and friendless. I give thanks for you,

And join your efforts on behalf of God,

Knowing they are on my behalf as well

And for all those who walk to God with me."

"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. 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."

"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."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

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."

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

If there is fear in you, and if you are projecting it outward, you will project it onto specific things. This is because fear is divisive and not whole, so it attaches to PARTS OF the environment. And in particular it can project onto a specific body.

When fear is projected, another's body is seen in a very isolating way. Fear distorts perception heavily and anchors you into the physical. It then seems that only the physical exists, only the physical rules apply, only physical causation is real, and there is no escape from anything.

By making your brother's body his "reality", focusing on its condition or form or appearance, projecting fear onto it, you turn it into an enemy. You give it power over you. Your whole awareness sinks into the ego and you can find no way out.

As the body is given reality, which is very easy to do when you are afraid, your whole focus shuts out the mind and awareness of any higher truth. And now you feel like you are completely imprisoned and held captive by this "sinful body" you see. Like you are locked in and completely at its effect. Anything it does, or doesn't do, now seems to completely affect you against your will, as if you have no ability to stop it or do anything about it. If the person has a sickness or problem and cannot fix it, or isn't trying to, you will now feel like they are imposing limits on you and forcing you to suffer.

Seeing yourself as a victim of this dynamic, already deep in fear with nowhere to turn, everything now seems like a closed system. Having bound your brother to his body, imprisoning him, you see yourself as imprisoned. And now your brother's body seems to be attacking you. This incites reactions of even more fear, which turns into anger and rage, justified due to what he seems to be doing to you.

It will now feel like there is nothing you can do to be free, as if your mind is somehow locked onto their body state, as if you have merged with it and are kind of one with their body. You will feel exposed to it and completely vulnerable to it, as if you have opened up a conduit or bridge, a cord that has bound you to it. Its every move seems to dictate your suffering, and you cannot seem to be free unless the other person changes. And now you will demand they change, rather than look at the fact you are projecting fear.

This really is the ego's version of "forgiveness to destroy" taken to the extreme. The projection of fear blinds you to stepping back or looking into your mind, seeing yourself as doing anything to yourself. It warps your perception and turns it inside out. Cause and effect are backwards and you see yourself as completely victimized. The more you go into it the more you lose sight of the fact that you have any power or are choosing any of this.

Your whole sense of peace then seems to completely "depend" on the other person. If their body has any issue at all, you'll blow it out of proportion and see it as a threat and a danger. And how dare they not resolve it for your benefit. The only way out of this is to stop projecting fear, look at the fear within you, heal it and return to love.

True forgiveness is needed, and you must be clear that fear really is an attempt to attack. "The fearful are apt to be vicious." Viciousness comes out when you are afraid. And by attacking, you will see another as attacking you. And having attacked them by seeing them as only a body, you will see their body as attacking you. Just even by sitting there in its condition, it is experienced as a threat, because you have threatened it, having threatened yourself.

Fear is really part of your self-attack, resulting from guilt, resulting from a belief in sin. Your own sinlessness is the key to salvation and to removing the basis for fear. There is nothing to fear because only love is real.

"It seems to be the body we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear."

"But fear attaches to specifics, being false."

"Bodies attack, but minds do not." "This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols."

"The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind."

"When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold; seeing itself in everything; compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

Are you ready to join the Great Crusade that Jesus speaks of in A Course in Miracles? I know that I feel I am gearing up to this.

Jesus has said to me, "help". He has said, "help others to wake up." When I've been distracted with other worldly pursuits that I think are 'why I am here', Jesus corrects me, "that's not why you came here." I also know... Jesus has a plan for the atonement, and he is in charge. Also the atonement means the complete and total correction of the entire Sonship, not just for you.

We are also meant to being in alignment with and extending of God, of service to everyone else. We can't be of service when we are occupied with our own agenda, which means... what are you going to do when all your other ego agendas and distractions are undone?

If there is a vocation, a 'career', that is possibly meaningful and truly helpful, it would be to extend miracles to our brothers and to help them to awaken. Isn't this the natural result of becoming healed yourself? It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. It is the privilege of the awakened to awaken.

Here are some pertinent ACIM quotes:

"Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it. The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded." (OrEd.Tx.1.106)

"As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must ..." must "... join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is Listen, learn and do: Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it." (OrEd.Tx.1.31)

"[The spiritual eye] pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." (OrEd.Tx.2.49)

"Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world." (OrEd.WkBk.SpTp241.7)

"[The world] 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, not a cause." (OrEd.Tx.21.1)

"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. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly." (OrEd.Tx.18.70)

"To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill a part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function and fulfills the part assigned to him to make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules." (OrEd.Tx.25.46)

"Teaching is done in many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by example." (OrEd.Tx.5.53)

--- Now I know there is a lot of controversy on this, saving the world and all that (which means saving everyone FROM the world). You CAN interpret all these quotes in quite a.... metaphorical way... that they all mean something else, or apply only in the mind or whatever. Go ahead with that if you want to.

For me, I'm realizing more and more that Jesus IS calling us to participate in an OUTWARD EXPRESSION of love, which extends to our brother not just in the form of us looking on from afar, but of ACTIVELY helping others to return to God.

After all, if we are to be LOVING, then our love should encourage others to awaken, it should liberate others from suffering, it should show the way, it should enlighten, it should bring truth, and it should help us to find our way back to God.

This is what the crusade is all about. We are all part of the Sonship and we are all in need of this love. Isn't it time to demonstrate love and truth?

In the Authority problem, there is a great reversal of roles, and a confusing of levels.

Jesus refers to this as being the source of sickness ("all sickness comes from confusing the levels").

He also says that miracles realign the 'levels of perception' into their proper order. Miracle principle 30:

"By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment." - ACIM

What this means is, awareness is supposed to begin in God and extend outward, and any 'perception' you have is supposed to flow outward from God. Like, there is a level of perception higher than the physical level, and then there is a lower level of perception to which you are most accustomed. They are supposed to flow in the order/sequence of higher-flowing-to-lower. The light within illuminating perception.

When you have an authority problem, it means that down here in lala land you have turned around 180 degrees and now instead of facing outward extending God's love from within, you are effectively 'out of your mind', looking back toward God with the suggestion that there is nothing 'backing you up'. Your perception then seems to run against God's extension and collides with it head on. Mis-creation! You start to see yourself as the source of everything, with God as your opponent opposite you, to which you are now opposed, and as such you develop a sense of being an authority opposed to God.

It also means that when I have an authority problem, an ego problem, I will not be willing to lay down my ego and allow myself to be owned by God, I will not allow myself to extend God, I will not allow myself to love, I will not allow myself to let God be the authority, I will not allow myself to receive from God, I will not allow myself to follow God's guidance, I will not allow myself to listen to God, and I will not allow myself to surrender. Instead I stand against God in everything I do and try to go off and control everything all by myself.

This is the fundamental action of the ego, being opposed to God. This is why we think we have an authority that we do NOT have. And it is this false sense of authority that builds up as what you're familiar with - that sense of an 'inflated ego', or a sense of self that is righteous, or a sense of you being important in ego ways, or a sense of entitlement, or a sense of having power that you do not really possess, etc... all false idol worship and forms of ego trying to be in charge, in control, in power, ruler of the universe.

WE HAVE TO LEARN TO DROP AND REVERSE THIS ATTITUDE.

This is what I am learning now. The orders of perception are working against each other, and I have level confusion, and I am in sickness, precisely because I am functioning WITHOUT GOD. I am opposed to God and I need to surrender my 'trying to be God' position, turn back around 180 degrees so that I am flowing WITH God and extending WITH God, and I need to therefore ADMIT TO AND RECOGNIZE !!!!!!. .. that GOD is the one who is the authority here.

This is quite a powerful turning point. It means letting down all of those opposing ego attitudes in myself, learning to put them aside and to recognize that they interfere with God, learning that all love and POWER flows FROM God, that God is the one who is in charge, and becoming WILLING to ALLOW this to be true. It's really part of accepting the truth of the atonement - the truth that God is the primary authority. We can join him in it and SHARE in it, but we can't take it over and use it against Him or ourselves or others.

This is a complete flip, really, to the ego. My little ego is all hell-bent on being God, being a savior, fixing everyone, being a hero, being responsible for and carrying the weight of the world, and trying to be some kind of spiritualized exalted ego. This is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the 'natural' "divine order". The divine order has me properly positioned as God's SON, extending His love, sharing in His creation, flowing His love, sharing His miracles. And that means, JOINING God in His kingdom, in awareness of His spirit, and facing the same direction as Him, flowing WITH His will, recognizing that His will and my will are One (that's an ACIM theme too), and that I can now share in God's truth and power and healing.

I cannot be a powerful healer, super spiritual hero, mega savior, ultra do-it-yourselfer conqueror. I T D O E S N O T W O R K ! :-) Try fixing something which absolutely cannot be fixed by you and you'll soon encounter just how flawed your fix-it power-over-everything attitude is.

The only way that works is turning around and getting aligned to, open to, accepting of, flowing with, and being with God's will and God's love. That's where miracles flow from. But it means you have to stop trying to do this all by yourself. You have to admit you cannot do ANYTHING by yourself. And it's true. And that means a) surrendering, b) admitting God is in charge not you, c) this opens the doorway to the RELIEF of FINALLY connecting with God and being willing to LET GOD WORK THROUGH YOU. Yay.

Here come the miracles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is a huge amount of focus on "correcting perception". But perception is the SECOND step in our process.

It is PROJECTION that comes first. What about correcting projection?

Jesus describes our perception as a selective mechanism, in which we choose what we want to perceive IN what has been projected, to focus on some parts and ignore others. That means that within our mind, we are being "selective" in what we perceive, or the value we give to certain ASPECTS of what has been projected. We highlight certain things making them special while demoting other things by attacking them.

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It literally picks it out, as mind directs. The laws of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are NOT equal. For what you look for you are far more likely to discover, REGARDLESS of its color, shape, or size, than what you would prefer to overlook. ... Perception is a choice, and not a fact."

Now, in order to correct perception, you need to be looking at "what you make of" what has been projected, as though "changing your mind ABOUT the world", assuming the world is out there as a kind of canvas of possibilities from which to select. When perception is highly warped with differences and divisions, it is very excluding and isolating in terms of what it will accept and reject. When there is an intense contrast between what you choose to accept and what you reject, such as in special relationships or idol worship etc, you live in an perceptual experience of right and wrong, good and bad, etc.

When perception becomes "accurate", ie true perception, meaning that all the selectivity and conditionality and preference and exclusivity has been removed, leaving unconditionality and inclusiveness, you "perceive wholly" or perceive the whole, as is, without separating out one thing from another. This can lead to perception of the "real world" ie a reflection of heaven on earth, or seeing God or some kind of unity "in" the world. Also "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles".

However, we are still here dealing with the second-hand mechanism of perceiving what seems to be already out there. Perception is selective in which parts of what has been projected are looked at. But behind perception there is something else happening. Projection. And this doesn't refer to the kind of projection where you project guilt onto the world or blame people etc. Projection in its natural sense is more to do with extension, creation, the making of worlds, the manifesting of matter, ie "dreaming".

So you can get to this place where your perception is accurate and able to see a reflection of wholeness, which is an awakening that a number of people have reached. But what this has done is purify PERCEPTION and therefore you now "see" in a "whole way". However, what you look upon, the stuff that is out there, the seemingly physical world, where does that fit into the equation? How is it that this world is showing up at all? Because you are PROJECTING it from your mind.

The mind projects the body. The mind projects the world. THEN you perceive it.

So the mind has this additional underlying function, which is the realm of mind over matter, the working of miracles, the ability to change forms, and the defying of ego laws which are all formed at the perceptual level. Perception is once removed from causality. It takes into the mind what has been projected.

The thing we need to get in touch with, is our power to project, our choice to dream, our MAKING of the world and our bodies, and becoming masterful over THAT, in additional to having a clarified perception OF whatever it is that we choose to make.

So it's not all about correcting perception. That's part of it, but it takes you only so far. When you stop there, perceiving a peaceful seemingly forgiven world, what next? Well, there's the matter of your mind's projection, its creative function, its ability and power to demonstrate that the mind is stronger than the body, and to perform miracles. That's all in the realm of recognizing you are the dreamer and the PROJECTOR of forms and materials, and therefore your mind is capable of changing those forms and materials at will.

It means you have the ability, which you have to learn to master and harness, to be supernaturally powerful over all forms and to undo sickness and death and whatever was "manifest" in others. This is what is required in order to OVERCOME DEATH. Otherwise, if all attention is only given to having a correct perception OF what is projected, there is no real causal ownership over having been the one who put it out there in the first place. To overcome death requires you to NOT CHOOSE IT, which means to not MAKE IT, which means to not PROJECT it onto the body or AS the body.

Projection MAKES ...... perception selects from what is made. We're becoming good at correcting perception, but not so good at changing what we PROJECT. People correct their perception, then die. It's not enough. Death has to be overcome completely by ceasing to "project death" onto the body or onto the world, and ceasing to believe there are laws in the world which control your mind or have power over you. That includes even the physical, chemical, biological laws, which are all illusions.

We talk a lot about forgiveness and undoing grievances and not projecting guilt etc, but a HUGE elephant in the room is how everyone believes they are their body!

We are quite literally NOT a physical body. We are spirit beings, made of God-stuff. The body is NOT a part of our self.

"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."

"The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you."

But take a look at the world, look at how everyone is always focused on bodies, regards bodies as people, refers to bodies by name, and how we all seem to be very IDENTIFIED WITH the body.

Even from birth and through childhood, we're told that we are a boy or a girl, or a human being, and that our body is our self. It's drummed into us by a society that HEAVILY believes that we are bodies.

This isn't made any easier by the fact that the body ITSELF makes the world seem very real, and thus makes ITSELF seem very real. It reports on itself using its OWN senses, and reports that the body it senses as existing really exist. Pain and sensations confirm it.

Everyone's looking in mirrors at "how they look". Everyone's talking about what other "people" look like. Everyone's talking about what their body did today. Everyone's taking their body appearance personally, either to their benefit or detriment.

We have a BIG PROBLEM of believing that we are flesh and bones objects walking around on a fake planet.

We are not even 1% body. We are 0% body. Purely spirit. Purely life. Purely made of God-stuff. And yet the world is at like a 99% belief that bodies are true, bodies are life, bodies are our reality.

It is this identification WITH and AS the body that produces EGO, and is a problem of identification. That we literally start experiencing the body as if it is US, and anything it experiences is happening to our SELF. This is mental illness and it is widespread and extremely common.

In fact it is so common that it's taken to be absolutely normal, absolutely natural, the stuff families are made of, the stuff countries are made of. Human since birth, born to be flesh and bones, born to have a brain and a heart, born to bleed and die.

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

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever it is accepted it is accomplished already."

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary."

"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?"

"All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you."

"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 IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

Why is no-one talking about the POWER OF GOD?!

There are some people who have been known as miracle workers. They typically work the same way. They are in close communication with God and the Holy Spirit. They are humble and have humility before God. They recognize that God has all power, and nothing else has power not even themselves. They depend on God for everything and trust the Holy Spirit with strong faith.

They are willing to do God's will, to go where they are sent, and receive a lot of specific guidance. They follow instructions, and do simple things like holding someone's hand, but then the Holy Spirit moves with great power.

There is always POWER involved, the power of God, which by the way is unlimited and immensely strong and capable. I've felt this power ONE time so far and it is totally off the charts absolute and intense. These people recognize that they barely do anything but be open channels for His healing power, and he moves through them and sickness and death are reversed.

This is also what Jesus is teaching us in A Course in Miracles. Not watered down miracles that are just shifts in perception. Not nice safe-sounding joining in love. But an actual application of a real POWER. This power can literally do anything, it is totally thousands of times beyond any notion of power you have ever experienced in this world.

A power which is so strong it is actually capable of building body parts, changing events, altering matter, reversing sickness and death, moving mountains etc. Not some act of forgiveness or some being nice to people. A real power, a very very strong power. A power which we are being trained to allow to operate through us.

You who have tried to keep power for yourselves, have lost it. You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you.

We are so out of touch with this power that most people don't even conceive of it as existing. But God's power is totally unlimited and so is your holiness - for which there is nothing you cannot do. We're talking totally unlimited miraculous power here. This recognition of the power of God is MISSING from so many people's teachings and the way we talk about miracles as if they're just nicer ways of looking at things.

Jesus is telling us how to be like him, how to break the laws of physics, how to reverse all the laws of the world, and how to utilize the power of God for good. Moses for example parted an entire ocean, which is in fact a SMALL feat for such a power.

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

I felt this power one time when I was attempting a healing for my wife. She said she had this pain in her hand. It was probably nerve pain due to paralysis from her stroke years ago. I was trying to heal it with my hands on hers, sending energy etc. At some point and for a reason I have absolutely no idea about, there was suddenly a feeling of IMMENSE POWER present next to me.

This power felt so strong and so absolute it felt like it could've moved the whole planet without effort. I have never felt anything remotely as strong in any way in physical form. This power was still and deliberate and loving yet super-capable of anything. The mere presence of this power seems to cause a miracle, because all of a sudden not only was the pain gone from her hand, but also her mind was healed, and she was oblivious as to anything having happened, and even had forgotten that there was ever a pain there, as if it had never existed.

I have not felt that power before or since, but I hope to connect with it more. It is the power of God, and when you realize that this power exists, you know that miracles are far more than some "change of mind", or even something that you do at all. Quite honestly this power is SO strong that you might be frightened by it, and yet at the same time is not threatening in and of itself. And in a way, its strength is reassuring. This is why the course says that the Holy Spirit does SO MUCH in comparison to your tiny little contribution.

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

Here's an example of how I gave myself a sickness.

I was thinking about Holy Spirit one day and about the fact that I thought of Him as separate from me. In my mind I had this sudden idea, what if He is not separate from me? And in that idea I saw there being no wall separating us, nothing coming between us, which immediately suggested I was "exposed" to Him and that He had direct access to me.

This is when my EGO reacted. My ego still believed in being a separate individual, which is a delusion, and so quickly saw in this Oneness an "attack". Holy Spirit definitely was not attacking, but to the ego, the idea of having no separation to block the truth was seen as a major threat to its existence. If I am One with Holy Spirit, there can be no ego!

Seeing this therefore quite shocked me, and I was a bit horrified. Almost immediately, in order to "defend myself" against what I saw as a threat, I attempted to shut out the Holy Spirit. I did this almost automatically like I already knew how to and just created a kind of "blocking force" within myself, emphasizing separation from Him, like trying to get away from Him or push Him away.

I did this using my mind by putting up a strong resistance, literally trying to push Him away, and to simultaneously withdraw into the body. I felt like I was cowering and shrinking. And I felt afraid because of the idea of no separation. I was making myself "little" to create a sensation of distance between us.

Within hours, I started to lose my hearing.

My ears very rapidly started to block up, they started to ring with a high-pitched ringing, my head became congested and they ached.

Basically, I did not want to LISTEN to the idea of there being no separation. I wanted to shut it out. And that meant shutting down my mind, shutting down awareness, which manifests itself in/as the body in the "form" of a reduction in sensory perception.

At first I didn't know where this sudden sickness came from or why it was happening, and started to react to it and to even seem to seek out remedies/magic. I acted as if I hadn't chosen it and didn't want it, as if it was happening to me against my will and I didn't like it. But I HAD chosen it. I had put it in place myself. And I had done so very quickly and quite automatically.

It took a day or two of "suffering" for me to become willing to look at why this had happened. At first I didn't want to admit that I'd created it. I couldn't see that. But I did start to realize that I was at least AFRAID. And as I looked into that, I became honest and admitted this fear to Holy Spirit, which took courage. I had to admit and realize I'd become afraid of the "truth" that I'd seen a couple of days before.... not so much afraid of it because of what it means, but because of how my ego mis-interpreted its meaning.

My ego thought that if Holy Spirit and I were One, that would have to mean that I - ego separate self - must not exist. In other words, that Holy Spirit had come to destroy me and that I was under threat of death. I therefore believed in death, and so manifested sickness - which is a step toward death.

As I began to "admit the truth", which is, to start to trust and allow this truth to sink in, and started to do some "forgiveness process" about it, the symptoms started to lift. In fact within about 24 hours the whole thing had almost completely cleared up. All symptoms disappeared without a trace.

By looking and admitting to how I'd defended myself against the truth, and that this was the PURPOSE of the sickness, and owning up to the decision I made to do this, and seeing that I'd done it to myself, set me free. Holy Spirit also helped to remove some of the "consequences of my wrong decision", as I became willing to let Him and to move past the self-made fear delusion.

Sometimes the truth frightens us because we mis-perceive it and don't understand what it really means. Our identification with the ego seems to threaten our "self" when the ego mis-perceives truth as a threat. Dis-identifying with the ego/body and recognizing what we've done to ourselves is the key to salvation.

It turns out this episode was actually a lesson in which I learned a good example of how sickness is created, and its undoing. All sickness is psychosomatic, chosen, and on purpose.

"Sickness is a defense against the truth". - ACIM

It is based on two simple ideas:

1) God knows everything about you and sees everything you do (there is nowhere to hide so you might as well admit it)

2) God is always unconditionally loving you in spite of what you have done in secret/darkness (thank God)

The exercise is simple.

Step 1: Admit to God everything that you've been keeping a secret, everything you've been doing 'in the dark', realizing he already knows about EVERYTHING anyway. Confess! (And here I mean Holy Spirit knows)

Step 2: Surrender to His unconditional love and receive acceptance and healing.

...

So, simply admit to the first step and acknowledge that God is aware of EVERYTHING going on in your life, whether it is things you do in public or around people or in private or ways in which you hide things or keep secrets. He knows all of your skeletons, all of your dark secrets, all of your thoughts, all of your sins, all of the things you feel guilty and ashamed about, and every single motivation and manipulation that you have ever engaged in. And yes it includes you pooping and having sex. ie. You cannot hide from God.

So what you do, is you just review various things in your life that you think God is not aware of (because you TRIED to do them in isolation/guilt/fear/shame/darkness/ego), and you admit that God knows about it. This can be somewhat humbling, and perhaps even a little scary. God does know what you get up to in bed at night ;-) God does know the foods that you sneak when nobody's looking. God does know how you really feel about various people even when you don't tell them straight. Go over all the things you do in life that you keep secret and conceal and hide and pretend and cover up, and recognize that GOD SEES IT. Expose it to Him.

If you really allow the first idea (God knows about everything I do) to be a kind of 'tuning fork' that you keep focusing on, you may find yourself suddenly becoming aware of various things you feel GUILTY about, things you do in what you think are the most secret of ways, of which you perhaps feel ashamed. It's okay, acknowledge God knows about these things as well, and remember that He loves you anyway.

Then after you've done this for a while you'll start to get a feeling that it is pointless to hide anything. IF God knows everything about everyone you do, even all the things you've hidden, then what's the point in trying to hide them? What's the point in trying to kid yourself that God doesn't know about it? And why are you bothering to hide it at all when it doesn't work? Then you start to come to this conclusion.... I might as well NOT EVEN BOTHER trying to hide any of this from God. I might as well just ADMIT TO IT ALL. And that might feel a little bit scary too because you wonder if admitting it will condemn or judge you, but it won't.

Because now you remember the second part... God loves you unconditionally IN SPITE OF any of the things that you have just CONFESSED to, and forgives you of all of them, none of them are more important than that he loves you, and you are absolutely unconditionally loved ANYWAY even if you KEEP doing all these things.

So this is where you start to admit to love what is IN you, and expose all aspects of your inner life TO love, and then ACCEPT that love still loves you anyway. You can ask God then to heal your guilt and shame and fear and hate and other dark secrets. You can ask God to heal the need to hide these things, or even to do these things if you like. You can offer up these 'sins' to Him in an amnesty that has no repercussions, and finally SURRENDER your life to Him. Allow Him to come in and heal you of all this guilt and shame that has made you turn away from Him. ALLOW HIM TO LOVE YOU. RECEIVE THE LOVE!!

This is simply you exposing yourself to God, to the light, allowing light to shine on everything that keeps you separate from this exposure, and then allowing yourself to be LOVED more than you ever thought possible.

Confession is not the focus here, you are not admitting to actually BEING sinful/guilty/shameful, you are exposing these things to the light so that you can realize you are FORGIVEN and that nothing is being held against you, because you are NOT sinful.

Give it a try. :-) You'll feel happy and free afterwards.