ACIM says "anger is never justified". This is big news for anyone who is used to feeling justified in being angry about anything.

There is a culture in this world is believing it is 'normal' and 'healthy' to be angry. When various 'bad things' happen, it seems very commonplace to react with anger. You might even be outraged. It may appear to you that you're completely right to feel that way.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Anger may acknowledge what you perceive has happened unfairly, but it betrays the fact your perception is faulty and in need of correction.

It is so widely accepted (by everyone's egos) that anger is a normal, justified reaction, that to say it is anything but justified seems like complete nonsense.

What if we were to say, anger is a state of insanity? What if anger is a mindless attempt to blame someone else for your own self condemnation? What if anger is deception? What if anger has a secret agenda of shoveling your own giult onto other people whenever anything conveniently goes wrong or looks like it could be used to justify being angry at yourself?

When anger is justified, the world is at war. There is no side you can take in anger to be at peace. And then your life will be filled with things which you get angry about. Every angry reaction is another instance of you believing that whatever happened is justified in happening, in spite of the fact that you're attempting to use it to explain why it shouldn't have happened.

It is extremely common to react in anger. It seems so commonplace and so 'normal' that most people accept it as some kind of 'normal psychology' or a 'healthy anger' or a healthy way to process what is wrong with the world. This is far from truth. It's a myth perpetuated by a very deeply ingrained ego thought system which runs through every society on the planet.

The only way anger is justified is IF .... IF.... this world is real. IF what happens is real. IF someone is really hurt. IF someone has actually proved that we are separate from God. IF we actually are not responsible for what happens to us. IF everyone else is guilty except ourselves. Only then would anger be justified. But that doesn't mean it is sane.

We have to lift all of humanity out of the bogmire of unconscious reactions based in the ego, reactions of anger which really are reactions of agreement and victimhood. We need to be more honest with ourselves and own up to and heal the real reason for our anger - that we are angry at ourselves for leaving God. Until this is faced, it will seem like 'normal culture' to get angry and upset about everything in the world.

"Anger is never justified" - ACIM - Anger is never justified because there is never any REASON to be angry because there IS ONLY LOVE.

"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.

Ok so, some people think it's not that big of a deal whether you think ACIM is non-duality or not. But it can have significant mental health effects which are no joke.

Let's remember that ACIM is a course in mind training, it is affecting and uprooting your whole belief system and bringing into question all your values. It's making you think about who and what you are, your identity, you relationship to others and the world. If you're going to undertake this course it's going to seriously threaten your sense of self and your worldview and everything you believe. This is THERAPY, and you're messing with your MIND here.

If you believe for example the non-dual lie that "there is no one out there", you become sociopathic. You stop caring about people, you start treating people like they don't matter or don't exist, and you stop respecting people's free will. You become apathetic and depressed and lonely. That is not good.

If you believe that no-one really has a self and your self does not exist, you will enter self denial and self destruction. You'll reason that it's the ego false self that doesn't want to be undone, but this far too often gets lumped in with not having any kind of a self at all. The son of God gets thrown under the bus. This produces self repression and depression.

When you also believe that there are no others or no real brothers or no permanent individuals, it radically affects how you relate to "people". You stop respecting people's free will because apparently they don't have any. Your sense of relationships breaks down. The people in your family that you love are all suddenly regarded as mindless illusory robots. None of this is good for your mental health.

Believing that you are one with everyone and there is only one of you here, that you are everyone, also can lead to massive guilt. You will start taking on responsible for everything that's happening in the world as though you are the one who is choosing it and making it happen. And now you have to carry the burden of everyone else's suffering, which can produce massive guilt.

There is merit to opening up to oneness but not at the expense of the self. Jesus refers to a massive expansion of the self (e.g. in the holy instant) - an expansion, not an annihilation. When oneness is taken too far to mean "you don't exist at all" or "you were never created', we're now into the authority problem. We're denying God's fatherhood, we're rejecting being his creation, we're denying that anyone else was ever created, and we're basically attacking the sonship. None of that is healthy for the mind.

People will claim it's not a big deal what you believe, but if you believe something that is so against the truth and start following that and living like it and behaving based on it, your entire relationship to the world and other people is going to change. And not for the better. If you're believing that ACIM is telling you you don't exist, other people don't exist, you were never created, there is no holy spirit, jesus is a metaphor, and other such nonsense, and you're believing it, you're going to be far WORSE off.

Can you imagine how distorted your mind will become when you start trying to regard all of the other people in the world as 100% fake? That they don't even have real minds or spirit or anything beyond the body? It's as bad as the belief that God made the world of illusions. It's going to send your mind down a totally wrong path towards even more ego, under the guise of trying to reduce the ego. It's going to split the mind further and make your mental health even worse.

I've had more than one person come to me in a state of feeling like near suicide because of gross misunderstandings about the course. One person was using our oneness as justification for why everyone's suffering was all her fault and felt horrendously guilty and paralysed. Another saw that the death of their partner was somehow a part of the non-duality teaching and was having horrible grief that they couldn't reconcile and so began to blame God for making the partner go away, harming their relationship with God and their own self.

Many quite serious and quite harmful things can come about if you get your facts misaligned and start following a belief system that is fundamentally flawed. There are people doing this course who for example develop physical sicknesses as defences against the truth. Just as it describes in the book. We're not just playing with ideas here. This isn't about discussing and debating on facebook. People's actual lives and minds are being distorted and damaged and made to be more insane by incorrect beliefs about what it's teaching. Some people are quite seriously lost and distraught and feeling awful because of the non-duality lie.

I know I was. I bought into it and believed it. I believed, just as some prominent ACIM teachers taught, that I didn't really have a self and other people didn't really exist. All in the name of being more 'oneness'. And I felt depressed by this. And I was told that this was just the ego not wanting to be found to be non-existent. An attempt to justify it. But when I finally realised this is NOT what ACIM is teaching, I felt such incredible relief that I cried with joy at realising that I actually AM a child of God, permanently. And I never looked back.

We need to stop perpetuating bullshit lies about A Course in Miracles. It is not just a matter of being right or debating or having heated discussions or following what people think it means. It's having significant affects on people that believe and follow these models of reality. It's not helping anyone to tell them that they don't exist and that everyone they love doesn't exist and no-one is out there and there's no basis for miracles and no reason to help anyone and all you gotta do is selfishly accept atonement and get out of here.

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." W181

"In the holy instant, God is remembered, and the language of communication with ALL your brothers, is remembered WITH Him. " UrT15G8

"YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE." UrT7E2

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." UrT10B3

Let’s take a closer look at this.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"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. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."

Now. THINK about this for a moment. Jesus is describing a world in which children are born. These children are born in pain. They grow. They have bodies. They have brains. Their minds are trapped in their brains. They wither and suffer. And they go through bodily death.

Now, WHICH world is that talking about? What world is it WHERE THIS HAPPENS? It should be PLAIN AND SIMPLE. It is obvious! This is talking about planet Earth. In common parlance, "THE WORLD." Earth, the physical planet. "The world" that pretty much anyone would refer to as the world. The world where children are born, have brains, grow old, and die. It is THAT WORLD that is being referenced. The world where YOU WERE BORN, into the body of a child, with your mind trapped in your brain. THAT WORLD. **THIS WORLD**. Earth. Not an interpretation OF it. THIS WORLD. ITSELF. The planet.

And THAT WORLD..... THIS WORLD....is very very clearlly being described by Jesus, as a CRUEL WORLD. He is also clearly talking about that world, where children are born, as being the kind of world that God COULD NOT HAVE CREATED. Otherwise, if He would have created such a world, HE WOULD BE CRUEL. Creating a world where children are born as bodies with brains who grow old and die, IS A CRUEL WORLD, the likes of which a LOVING FATHER would NEVER EVER EVER CREATE. Never. God would NEVER create a world where ANYTHING is born, where ANYTHING has its mind trapped in a brain, and where ANYTHING grows or dies. God does not create such cruelty!

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

"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel."

THIS WORLD, EARTH, IS NOT REAL!!!!!!

This is not in any way talking about a world of ego perception. It is not talking about dream interpretations of Earth. It is not talking about your projections onto the world. It is not talking about any kind of perception. It is not talking about an internal private world that you project onto the "Real world of earth". Earth is NOT THE REAL WORLD. It is NOT created by God.

If you assign Earth to God’s creation, you are claiming literally that God is CRUEL because a world where CHILDREN ARE BORN, GROW OLD, AND DIE, IS A FUCKING CRUEL WORLD!!!! If you then attempt to NOT claim he is cruel while assigning the world to him, you are in DOUBLE DENIAL, wearing rose tinted glasses and glossing over the sheer cruelty and suffering that is INHERENT to this entire universe. When was the last time you saw a living dinosaur? Never. Why? Massive cruelty. Massive death. It’s not cruel merely because "ego interprets it as cruel". It is fundamentally cruel. To say it is not cruel and "love it" is UTTERLY INSANE. You cannot love death and it is insane to do so.

God did not, would not, can never, will not, has not and does not desire to, create a world where CHILDREN ARE BORN AND DIE. At all. In any way. God does not create babies! God does not create ANY KIND OF BODY. Not humans, not animals, not insects, not planets. "God did not create the body." God did not create ANY children’s bodies. Not one. Not even yours. God does not create a WORLD where children are born and die, where creatures have brains, or where there are bodies of ANY KIND. God does not create cruel planets with mass extinctions and being snuffed out in a supernova!!

Some people really seem to defend against this. But if you think the world IS NOT CRUEL, in an attempt to make it OKAY WITH GOD, and to justify that God MUST have created it because YOU think it is heaven on earth, there is a really profound level of denial happening. The world is *exremely* cruel. And I do not say this as a judgement or an unforgiveness. It simply is not heaven. Or heaven like. Not even remotely. The world is made of the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." Even true perception will ONLY reveal the TRUTH ABOUT this world, which is that it is FALSE, UNREAL, DOES NOT EXIST, IS NOT GOD’S NATURE, AND IS NOT LIFE.

God’s world is Heaven. It is not Earth. It is another realm unlike this universe. Nothing there but shines and shines forever. If you think God made the Earth, you have NO IDEA what God is like. A loving father could never create such mayhem and conflict and mindless destruction.

"Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

It cannot be that the physical world was merely 'made' ahead of time, and that we then entered into it as passive spectators. This would have to mean that everything about it was set up beforehand, meaning the entire thing is destined and has a fixed outcome. It would be then impossible to change it because it would be proverbially "set in stone".

The fact that it's been proven many times over that mind can influence the body, that psychokinesis exists, that the mind can change physical matter, that mind can produce and heal sickness etc, clearly shows that this so-called "world" is in an elastic state of flux and redefinement. That we are in effect projecting it NOW, that mind can influence it at any time, and that its state and conditions are not fixed.

It may be true that mind originally did dream of this universe in general and set things in motion, but the fact still remains that the same mind which dreamed it to begin with is continuing to operate in and upon it. Meaning that mind can still alter its dream, even if it's an ancient dream.

In a sense this indicates that the two opposing views - that we just perceive an existing world in different ways, or that we're literally making the world right now, are actually both true. The same mind that made bodies, is continuing to make bodies, and to alter them. The mind that made the sun and the stars is continuing to influence them. And that same mind can end the world in the blink of an eye.

Since we are the dreamer of the dream, even if we established an initial dream, we are still dreaming it, and thus changing it. As Jesus says in the course, in seemingly contradictory terms, you should change your mind ABOUT the world because your perception OF it can vary, BUT at the same time, by doing so, the whole world must change. Because the world is an effect of the mind.

Long story short, we made the world, seemingly in an ancient past, but we're still working on making it and re-making it. We can change how we perceive it, as though it is objective, but it is also still subjective, and mind can still change it.

You could say that the idea of the world being fixed and predestined arises from a sleeping mind that is seeming to dream of arriving in a pre-existing world, which it is at the effect of. You could also say that a more awakened mind comes to the awareness that it is presently dreaming it, can more lucidly change its dream, and can wake up from sleep entirely.

Thus the idea that our job is only to re-perceive an objective world is a closed-minded false-perception based view in which we see ourselves as victims and not causal. And in this view it seems (unforgivingly) that the world is "already there" and the best we can do is change what we "make of" it.

But as we awaken to the power of God in us, we also re-access the original ability which, temporarily unconsciously, was projecting the world to begin with, and then was can master that power and modify the projection, literally changing the world of matter. This then isn't merely a case of changing what we make of it, but of what we make it literally be.

A deeply sleeping mind believes the world is real and objective and that its only salvation is to change its interpretation of the world. Which leads to keeping the world and regarding it as God's creation. In this view we are merely passive powerless observers who have no influence on anything, living out a mindless "script" and having no freedom of thought or effect to change anything.

But a more awakened mind recognises the world is a dream, not God's handiwork, and instead becomes masterful over the dreaming process, to dream in ways the less awakened would consider "miraculous." Gaining access to the mind's ability to orchestrate the dream, to modify bodies, to move mountains, and to radically break with all the laws of physics and limitation. Demonstrating that "mind over matter" is the fundamental fact of what puts the world there to begin with.

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny." UrT21F3

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source." UrT21D11

"For time YOU made, and time you CAN command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made." UrT22C8

"This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; - that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And YOU are ITS effect, and CANNOT be its cause. Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives." UrT27I3

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother." UrT28C7

There was a situation in which something went wrong, but there wasn't any evidence whatsoever that the person involved caused it to happen. It seemed like there was no way they could've caused it. I noticed that as a result, I did not and could not project guilt onto that person. If I could find no grounds for believing that they were guilty somehow, I couldn't turn them into a scapegoat. I did not get angry at them at all.

I found that interesting, because it's not just that we automatically scapegoat someone when we perceive that they are the cause of a problem, we also DON'T scapegoat them when the "proof of sin" is missing.

Our ego reactions to stuff and whether or not we USE it for projection of guilt, seems to depend very much on what we perceive as happening and the fact that we BELIEVE what we see.

If there is evidence, externally, in terms of form, or bodies, or objects, or anything tangible that we can put our finger on, the ego can and will jump in and USE it for projection. It's almost like a trigger. The presence of this "sinful thing" in the environment is picked up on by the senses and the ego and it automatically reacts to it with an attack. BUT, if the stimuli is not there, it DOESN'T tend to do this.

This reveals just how much we can be so totally dependent upon what we're perceiving as "existing" or "happening" in the world. How much we're allowing the world and its states to DICTATE whether or not we are AFFECTED. That we can only seem to HAVE certain reactions when the world PRODUCES certain scenarios. And when it doesn't we don't seem to have these reactions.

Isn't it weird then that we not only get triggered and pushed into ego reactions when the external world SAYS WE SHOULD, we also fail to have any reaction at all when the world SAYS WE SHOULDN'T.

Solely because I could find no evidence "in the world" as to a certain person being the cause of sin, and was DEPENDING ON the world and LISTENING TO IT, therefore, I could not seem to get myself to be angry at them. There was nothing to latch onto. There was nothing to use. This doesn't mean, however, that I don't have an ego, or that my ego wouldn't scapegoat at the next opportunity. It's just that we seem to WAIT FOR the world to fuck up before we have a reaction to it, instead of being proactive.

This reveals how much we're at the EFFECT of the world, allowing it to tell us WHEN we should be upset, and WHEN we should be happy. It presents lulls in the storm and breaks in the conflict, during which we seem to NOT have reactions. Why don't we have reactions all the time? Why don't we constantly launch into massive fear responses? Because the hierarchy of illusions tells us it's NOT A BAD SITUATION. Just as much as the same hierarchy then goes on to tell us that such-and-such a situation IS worth being upset about and is very serious.

If for example a situation arises where something in the world seems terrible wrong, I WILL much more likely have a reaction. It may even induce a panic. And this reaction will be in proportion to the sense of severity or seriousness or importance or value of the problem. Bigger problems elicit a LOT more fear. Smaller problems elicit a lot LESS. The seeming LACK of problems produces an illusion of peace, in which I seem to think everything is going well. Until the next calamity, which the world certainly has in store in endless supply.

How do we get off this rollercoaster ride of always having reactions to the ups and downs of the world? Why CAN'T I scapegoat when there is no reason to, just as much as when there's a juicy opportunity to pounce on? Why when someone has clearly done nothing at all is it so hard to project guilt? And why when they seem to have done something awful is it so easy? Why do we RELY ON the world to INFORM US of what is true?

Recently quite a "serious thing" happened and I had a strong visceral reaction. In fact I pretty much went into an anxiety attack. This came out of nowhere, but it was in relation to "how serious" I thought the situation was. I bought into the hierarchy of illusions and had the appropriate amount of drama about it. Right on cue, just as the world says I should, and entirely reflective of what I believed to be the importance of the situation. It seemed unavoidable. It seemed AUTOMATIC and mindless. And there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop it once I'd bought into it.

But somehow there has to be a way to live that isn't DRIVEN by the world and its images, BASED ON its illusions and its forms, its happenings and its dangers. It has to be possible somehow to NOT BUY INTO the heirarchy and to not USE the world as a FORM OF TRUSTED PROOF about anything. Just because the world or the ego or the body says "this is really serious you should be very concerned", we have to find a way to NOT be "appropriately concerned". To not GET our truth FROM the world.

How about laughing at it instead? How about laughing in the face of death, or laughing when someone is hurt, or laughing when people are crying their eyes out? Like... how can we disconnect from the automatic chain-reaction of "world says you should feel this now"? Or rather, that my belief about what it MEANS and my judgement of what it IS, BASED ON ITS FORM, dictates what I believe is true and the consequences that will come from it.

It's me who has apparently decided what everything means, including good stuff, and including bad stuff. And all of these meanings should apparently be WRONG, ie a mistake. Because if there is really NO order of difficulty in miracles and the hierarchy of illusions is actually FLAT AND EQUAL, then it should make NO difference whatsoever what happens, it should not have ANY effect to change who I am or what I experience. Unless I am TRUSTING MY SENSES and basing my TRUTH on the world's current STATE.

That's where the real challenge comes in. Because now we're talking about practically IGNORING how situations look, IGNORING appearances, IGNORING meanings that I make up, IGNORING what the world would say is a very good or bad situation, IGNORING the body, IGNORING sickness, IGNORING terrible difficult tragic threatening dangers, and somehow transcending them so that peace and happiness become a CONSTANT. And getting my truth from ANOTHER WORLD.

How to get off the rollercoaster of death, that's the big question. How to not be affected by the world. How to not USE OR ALLOW the world or any events or happenings to influence me in ANY WAY, and to operate solely in a proactively DELIBERATE manner. How to be free of suffering forever, and how to never forget to laugh at the illusion of hell ever again. Nor GIVE MY POWER AWAY TO IT or allow it to have the power to TELL ME what I should be feeling.

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

The idea of death was made as the opposite of the idea of God. The separation from God was total opposition to God's nature. It's an assertion that God does not exist, blotted out and dead.

Whatever attributes God has, death is the idea of the total absence of all of those attributes. A total lack of life, of love, of happiness, of peace, of sharing. Anything that God is, death opposes.

"The thought of death is ... the opposite to thoughts of life." UrW167L8

God is creation, and so death is destruction. God is permanent, and so death is change. God is love, and so death is murder. God is reality, and so death is an illusion.

In order to oppose God, the truth must also be opposed. That which is false is asserted as true. True and false become swapped. The truth of God becomes a lie, and the lie of death becomes a reality.

As a result, all of the attributes of God are assigned to death, while all the attributes of nothingness are assigned to God.

Death is now seen as inevitable, real, permanent, eternal, irreversible, powerful, known, true, dependable, trustworthy, welcoming, wanted, attractive, loved, salvation, peace and happiness. God is now seen as uncertain, changing, vulnerable, hateful, vengeful, nothing, meaningless, lifeless, mindless, unloving, destructive, dark, murderous, unwanted, rejecting, an enemy, selfish, unsharing and unreal.

The result is that we have a belief in death, which takes on every possible form. It takes on physical form, as well as in the form of changes of mind, states of feeling, types of thoughts and senses of identity. Every illusion, all of space and time, every perception arises in the idea of God's opposite.

"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come." UrW163L2

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?" UrM28A1

Anything less than the true nature of God is a form of death. This includes any sense of unhappiness, any notion of attack, any kind of sickness, any temptation, any desire for bodies, any false perceptions, any fear or guilt, any idol worship and any way that you see yourself and others as less than having eternal life.

There can't even be atoms and molecules and bodies and planets without the idea of death. Death is change and change is time and time is death. To be separated from life, from God, is to enter into an illusion of dying. Spacetime is the idea of the death of God, in which God appears to not exist.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him." UrW230W32

"And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born." UrM28A6

Every aspect of ego, every form of separation, every unloving relationship, every body worship is all a form of death. If you believe in anything but God's reality you believe in death and are trying to die. We came into this world precisely because we wanted to play with death and to pretend that we can die. We are immortal beings, making a world that is always dying in which we can pretend to die.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9

Undoing death is resurrection. To resurrect is to side with eternal life and reject every form of death. Sickness, which is "a little death", must be forgiven and reversed. Death of a body must be reversible. And an entire world rooted in death must be undone. Without the idea of death, spacetime cannot exist. And without death, there is no world and no separation from God.

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world." UrT12G3

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real." UrM28A3

"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it." UrW163L7

"There is no death. The Son of God is free." UrW163

"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8

"There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever." UrW163L9

To put it simply, the nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body. Mind is of God, bodies are illusions. Mind functions naturally in a state of sharing, union, extension and oneness, driven by God's laws. Bodies function according to unnatural ego laws of separation, as separation devices, designed to imprison mind and completely oppose the mind's natural functioning. This is also why the notion that the mind is "part of the brain" is preposterous.

"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."

"The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of ***one mind is meaningful***, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

"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."

"The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it."

"For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay."

To attempt to APPLY a body TO a mind, imprisons the mind. Confusing mind and body, to suggest the body is the mind, or that you have no mind at all, leads to the mind identifying with the body. This makes the mind run completely opposite to its nature, and induces all suffering and sickness.

To again put it simply, if the mind in any way associates itself with the body, or allows or uses the body to define itself, the mind becomes sick and attacks the body. Bodies are prisons, and minds are freedom. Bodies are exclusive, and minds are inclusive. Bodies separate, minds join. They function totally differently, so trying to make the mind function LIKE the body, arrests the mind's natural function and induces illness.

"Thus is the JOINING of mind and body an INESCAPABLE belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice INVARIABLY a means for limitation."

"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 (tying it to the body's nature) 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."

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate."

"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 body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

Extension, sharing, union, oneness, equality, transcendence, miraculousness, is the mind's natural function. Mind needs to function according to mind's laws in order to be healthy. But bodies are fundamentally opposite, as separation devices.

If the mind identifies with "being a body", or functioning by physical laws, or obeying physical limitations, the mind becomes sick. It's like something that's supposed to be completely free and open, being shoved inside a completely closed box. Mind and body are not compatible.

"Spirit makes use of mind as means to find Its Self-expression. And the mind that serves the Spirit is at peace and filled with joy. Its power comes from Spirit, and it is fulfilling happily its function here. Yet mind can also see itself divorced from Spirit, and perceive itself within a body it confuses with itself. Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"Yet mind apart from Spirit cannot think. It has denied its Source of strength, and sees itself as helpless, limited and weak. Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself, and hiding in the body's frail support."

"You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt."

"the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain"

The situation we find ourselves in is therefore very strange. We seem to be isolated and alone inside a body, trapped, as if separated off from other minds, physically unable to truly share or join. Even in intercourse we can't actually get inside of another person's mind, or experience them as ourselves, or really share anything with them.

Everything seems to happen to us alone, and not another. Everything seems to apply to me and not you. Even the form of our bodies suggest we are different, separate, special, and exclusive. That we are separated off by time and space. As if I can have little private thoughts inside a little private world that has no effect on anyone or anything outside of me.

This is not how mind needs to function to be healthy. This is totally opposite to its natural functioning. Mind needs to SHARE, to join, to be one-with, to unify, which is true communication and extension. Mind needs to be open and transcendental beyond limitations and walls and boundaries. Mind spreads out and can have the vision to see beyond physical limits and distances. Mind can be everywhere at once.

So somehow we have to find a way to transcend the body's anchoring, imprisoning, limiting factors, and restore the mind to functioning how it functions in heaven.

"Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart?"

"What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means."

"A PERSON conceives of himself as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body. ONLY if he perceives as a MIND can he overcome this."

"While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere."

"Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. 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."

"The belief you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake."

"Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith."

"If you are sin you ARE a body, for the mind acts not."

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

"And so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness."

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed."

"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."

"He Who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees Himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore He is limitless. And being limitless, His Thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever."

When we come to the course, typically we come with a pretty big bag of beliefs.

One major belief, accrued over a lifetime, is that we are separate from the world. The world is this huge thing outside us. We learned "by experience" that it does things on its own, against our will, and we do not SEEM to have any direct mental power OVER it at all.

Only a rare few have even a slight hint of what we might call "telekinesis".. mind over matter. Some bend spoons thinking it's amazing but it's barely anything.

This is what the ego set up... to be in bodies shut off from the power of the mind and *disabled* so much that we can't even use the mind DIRECTLY to make anything happen. And then we just... got used to it.

We do have SOME power over the body, even regular non ACIM folk do... like you can cause the body to change in various ways based on your experiences and moods and so on. You can choose to go into anger and make your blood pressure go up. You can manifest headaches when you don't want to go somewhere. You can develop sore throats when you didn't speak your mind. All kinds of stuff happens to the body just in normal ways as a result of the mind's power - just a little bit of power, demonstrating itself.

But beyond the body, we generally see ourselves as "cut off", disconnected, powerless, completely unable to affect anything outside of it.

Then we come to the course.

And then we hear the course saying stuff about how we need to change our perception and that what exists in the world is an outward picture of an inward condition. We REFERENCE our EXISTING BELIEF SYSTEM of "I am not connected to the world", and then try to make sense of it.

So this lead us to think, ok... My mind is not outside my body and has no power over what's out there, so this MUST MEAN, that within my own body, inside my mind inside my body, there are some false perceptions which I need to change, and this will change how I SEE the world out there... BUT, it will not actually CHANGE the world out there whatsoever.

This is because the old belief system of powerlessness, littleness, being stuck in a body, having no mental power, is still circulating as a "foundation" for what you are learning. And so you learn WITHIN that context without questioning it or thinking that it even CAN be questioned. What you learned prior to the course closed your mind, and you proved it to yourself over and over again by how many times you couldn't stop the ice-cream from falling on the sidewalk, had to suffer from the weather, or couldn't prevent an accident.

So then you learn the entire course and try to make it "fit" inside this framework, building UPON what you think you already know. This leads to GROSS DISTORTIONS of the meaning of what Jesus says. It leads to the belief that he is talking about "you in a body" when he refers to "the world you see" as being something you made up... therefore, since you believe you can only change what's INSIDE your body, which you think is all of your mind, you do not even begin to think that changing your mind would change your BODY, yet alone anything OUTSIDE OF IT. And so when Jesus says things like "the world you see", you will dilute and mangle it to fit into what it would mean INSIDE your body, therefore.. referring to your private personal misperceptions OF the world, rather than literally or directly the world.

The disconnection or rather, separation between cause and effect, between your mind and what it believes, and the out picturing of that AS body and AS THE WORLD - the physical planet - forms - bodies - people - objects - the spearation between you and that stuff seems insurmountable and too far-fetched to believe you might be able to have power over it, or that it MUST change, or that you CAN change it with your mental changes. You simply do not see, or believe, that your mind is the cause of what is literally out there.

This leads people to believe also that if they change their internal perception, housed inside the limits of their body, they will be able to become PEACEFUL and happy, IN SPITE OF, the conditions which are in the body or outside of it. They see both of them as outside of their "self" and so outside of their own mind's power or reach or control. This leads people to believe that they can a) be at peace without healing sickness, b) can be at peace with the body dying, c) can be at peace even though people continue to be able to attack their body, d) are happy to just put up with sickness because somehow, there is a way to be peaceful in spite of it.

This of course is the distortion that entirely arises because of the FOUNDATION of the thought system, which has been built up over many years, teaching us that we are CUT OFF from the world, that there is huge SEPARATION between cause (us) and effect (the world). We don't seem to have ANY mental powers at all to make objects move, to heal sick people, to stop death, to reverse suffering, or any of the rest of it. This is because our mind is BLOCKED, and we are not aware of the whole truth.

Jesus is in fact teaching us in the course that we DO HAVE THIS POWER, which is a power to LITERALLY MOVE A PHYSICAL MOUNTAIN, or even to create a planet, because this is the natural result of having CAUSAL POWER over the EFFECT which is out there. The inner picture MUST be reflected outward. So when the mind decides, hey, I am going to rearrange this entire forest but uprooting all the trees and putting them in a different assortment, that's what will happen. But we do not believe we have even REMOTELY anything near that power, because of just how radically LIMITED our mental power seems to be.

We are GROSSLY out of touch with the power of the mind. Just even being in a body seems to shut us off form being able to do this. And yet these things are miraculous. These miracles demonstrate the power the mind has OVER MATTER, because the mind that KNOWS it is CAUSE, simply knows that everything else MUST be at its effect, and so its power over it is UNLIMITED.

It is only because we believe STRONGLY that we are limited by this body, limited by the isolation of being a separate self, totally out of touch with the MIND, believing we have a mind when in fact we just have a TINY LITTLE BIT OF MIND operating as a conscious self, shut off from what we really are capable of, that we won't consider it even POSSIBLE that the Course is telling us we literally made the world, or that we can change it with our mind alone.

This is the level of resistance to miracles. This is the resistance to all ways that mind may exert its power "over matter". "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind is proof that the mind must be stronger than the body." ... the mind is supposed to be ABLE to COMPLETELY do whatever it wants to do with the body. No limits. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

But so long as we believe we are these little piddly WEAK little body-identified selves, MINDLESS, cut off from everything external, seeing no oneness or ability to join, and having no power over any forms whatsoever, we are going to just CONTINUE TO BE VICTIMS AND DIE. And that's simply because we do not recognize that we are choosing that, because we have yet to wake up to the power of the mind. We are accidentally choosing death, until we realize that we are the Son of God for whom nothing is impossible.

So there is a LOT of this resistance in the ACIM community, and even those who are on the cutting edge of opening up to the power of the mind are still like little babies in terms of the development of this power. I would sort of put myself in that category and there still seems to be so little I can actually do, definitely nothing of my own will, and even with God acting with me I am still very limited. But I am willing to be open to the possiblity that my mind, shared with God, has far more power over this world than it appears, and WAY more than I have been led to believe by the ILLUSION the ego created to make it seem I have no power at all.

We have to realize that just by being in a body, we made ourselves TOTALLY POWERLESS, victims at the effect of the world. No power whatsoever to stop things from happening. That's extremely the OPPOSITE to our natural state of miracle mindedness. We need to UNLEARN what this illusion has taught us, and reclaim the power of the mind over matter to be able to perform magnificent miracles and be free of these limitations. This is why Jesus says time and again that there is nothing you cannot do, and ALL THE POWER IN HEAVEN AND EARTH HAS BEEN GIVEN YOU. But we do not see it, or believe it, because we're so used to being blinded by this illusion of separation between what is inside me and what is outside. That must be undone.

When considering "what are you?", the body could be said to be responsible for a vast majority of what you think you are, including most of your personality and aspects of your mind.

All bodies are different, even if there are similarities. All brains are different. The body gives rise to a superficial personality as well. Within this personality there are different parts and some of these parts even conflict with each other, are activated in different scenarios, and have sub-personalities within them.

Consider what happens in the eyes of your soul, as it passes through different lifetimes with different bodies. Sometimes you are a man, sometimes a woman. So right away your seeming gender is not a consistent and permanent part of your real self. Sometimes you are gay, sometimes straight, sometimes asexual. Your sexuality is not a permanent part of what you are.

Sometimes you are black, sometimes white, asian, mexican, chinese, english, who knows. None of these qualities or ethic backgrounds or body types or genetic materials defines what you really are. Sometimes you have brown eyes, sometimes blue or green. Sometimes you have dark hair, sometimes blond, or red, or whatever. None of this is part of your permanent identity.

The body also gives rise to personality. Personality springs from the various qualities and focuses and 'talents' and attributes and wirings of the brain and the rest of the system. People are born with certain qualities, which give rise to preferences and interests.

Some are born with a strong intellect, while others may lack the precision and brightness of thought. Some are born highly emotional, while others may be shallow. Some are born flamboyant and dramatic, while others may be more subdued and withdrawn. Some are extroverted, some introverted. These are largely all based on the nervous system and the brain wiring.

You'll notice also that you generally keep roughly the same personality throughout the lifetime. Even if you're working on spiritual things, your voice is much the same, your mannerisms, your way of walking, your intonations, your subtle ways and nuances, all much the same still.

In the course for example in the manual for teachers, Jesus remarks about how teachers of God retain these attributes:

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct." UrM5A1

So here he's saying that the physical appearance of the body is going to be much the same, to the body's eyes their bodies are all different still, they have different backgrounds and experiences, they have superficial personalities still which we quite distinct etc. None of that changes just because your mind is waking up. And notice how it says the personality is superficial - ie appears to be an entire character, but isn't really you.

You'll notice also for example that people who go through awakenings don't suddenly really change their physical or personality nature or style. They still have the same body, the same general personality, the same way of talking, the same sense of humour, the same general way of expressing etc. Their personalities are much the same. They might be more serene and calm, more peaceful, happier, lighter, healthier, etc... but in general the body and personality stay much the same.

So that being the case, we have to ask ourselves, WHAT exactly is your real self, if all of these many varied bodies and personalities are NOT what you are? And how do we transcend or rise above or dis-identify from this superficial personality, if it is not our real self?

You might've been thinking all this time, doing the course, waking up, that "you" or "your mind" is somehow "your real self". That you are applying things "separate from" some kind of lower ego self or body. But perhaps that isn't true. Perhaps the personality that you've been using and thinking is "you", is actually part of the body's personality. Maybe this whole character, this person, that you think you've been all this time, isn't actually you at all. And maybe your real self is actually so far out of sight and out of your awareness that you don't even know it's there.

"You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has INTERFERED with reason. Reason lies in the other self you have CUT OFF from your awareness." UrT21F5

Perhaps you've divided up parts of your fictitious self and called some parts the real you and other parts the fake you. But maybe all of it is the fake you. Maybe quite honestly, the whole of what you think has been you all this time, is not you at all, except for what? What exactly is left over, when you take away the body, the gender, the sexuality, the nervous system, the brain wiring, the personality, the preferences, the things you feel comfortable with, the compatibilities and incompatibilities? What part of any of your experience is actually the real you at all?

We're told that CHOICE is at least a freedom we still have, which is part of the mind. Here is Jesus saying that even our seeming "consciousness" is not really what our real mind is like.

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. CONSCIOUSNESS is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that consciousness cannot reach knowledge." UrU2A6

So it seems that in some regard, "consciousness", in its essence, which is a separation-based psyche, and part of the larger "mind", is the only part of our experience and reality that we would retain if we awaken. And indeed consciousness itself is based on a split mind, and that split will end when we wake up, restoring us to "awareness". But it is mind that has belief and denial and choice, and mind is where we can have perceptual changes and alterations to values and desires.

Yet some parts of what seem to be mind may not really be our real mind. And many of our thoughts are not even what ACIM would consider real thoughts. Ego thoughts, separate thoughts, thoughts about bodies, thoughts of attack, etc, these are illusions of thoughts, in what is really a sort of blank mind not really thinking anything real. But we have to work with thoughts to get our mind to re-align with spirit.

"Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors." UrT1B27E

"You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training." UrW94L4

"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth." UrW1Ln11

So it seems that overall the "course" or curriculum is about training the mind to be put back into its proper role as a medium for the soul to use for creative constructive purposes. This mind is trained by various practices, in the mind, including a shift in a sense of identification. From believing that you are the body, or that you are even the body's "personality", to identifying yourself as Christ/Spirit/Soul/Sonship. And this includes dis-identifying from the body's "personality" character.

"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." UrT1B26

Along the way, we have to sort out and question, what parts of what we think are our "self" are actually part of self, and what are just transient temporary things. All aspects of the body are not permanent and not part of a permanent identity. Even across lifetimes. Whatever body attributes seem locked in for a lifetime, are irrelevant to what you are. But this also extends to major personality traits, the way you handle emotions, the sensitivity level with which you experience the world, the way you speak, how your body moves as an expression of your sense of your "character", all of this stuff is superficial.

I think then at some point we have to realize, even our personality here is not likely to really be true to how we are in spirit. This "person", this character in a dream, that you thought was you, maybe that too is an illusion. Maybe it would change radically if you switched bodies. Maybe none of these personalities are real personalities. Maybe all that is left over in your awareness that is real, is a much more fundamental underlying "pure awareness", coupled with the magnificence of the soul and the attributes of being part of God.

For now, this "you" that you have to work with, is like an interface to the world, a tool... just a figure in a dream, like a puppet, complete with a built-in software character, that has certain characteristics. A sort of persona. And you can work through that and use it, but must find a way to not regard it as your self. If you could see all the seeming selves you've been across lifetimes this would be far more obvious.

The fact that the personality is part of the body, and that we have a superficial egoic mind, is revealed in this paragraph, where we're told that "the body" "seeks for friends and enemies", it has a concern for safety, it looks for comfort, it looks for pleasure, it avoids hurtful things. These could not be attributed to a mindless body, they have to mean that the body and personality-mind are part of one system, this "character" of a dream person, a false self comprising physicality AND personality, which interacts with the world and has motivations and actions and preferences - like a favourite ice cream and favourite music. This is all part of the body, and not part of what you really are.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart." UrT27I1

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU." UrT21F3

I've recently been diving into doing more physical things than usual. Clearing out old junk. Reorganizing rooms. Throwing out old furniture. Buying and assembling and installing new furniture. Changing layouts. Cleaning. Just lots of physical stuff.

And while I do these things, on the one hand I feel more appreciative of some of the appeal of physical objects. Things look nice. The function better. They have flaws. But at the same time, I am seeing them more as all the same. Instead of seeing individual objects, I'm looking at the laws that drive them, and their sameness. The laws of physics which apply to them all.

Just about everything that happens in the world is more or less driven by physics. Snow melting. Ice forming. Objects falling over. Soup boiling over. Things not staying put. Stuff dropped on the floor from a pile of laundry. Bumping into things. Making food. Cleaning the house. It's all just basically physics interactions. Chemistry, forces and energies and forms and states and so on.

It's becoming part of my forgiveness practice to recognize that almost everything that happens physically is simply what was inevitable, given the states of the objects and the physics that's applying to them. The world is mindless and very automatic in its obedience to the laws of physics. Stuff just does what stuff does. It doesn't do it to specifically spite you, it just blindly follows the rules.

Objects falling off shelves, bumping into things, stuff dropping on the floor, pens rolling off desks, garbage cans getting full, water boiling, leaving the keys somewhere, changes in temperature, fingers trapped in a door, knees banging into table legs, hands cold in the winter, all the just normal everyday stuff. It's all just the laws of physics playing out. It's just part of the system.

It's almost like this whole world is just one big machine, sitting there poised to do what it was always set up to do from the beginning. Which makes everything that happens somewhat inevitable. If enough force is given to an object, it falls off its resting place. It has to because the laws say so. If enough wind blows, the branch will break. If enough impact is made, the window breaks.

In a sense then the world's laws are laws of inevitability, based on the idea of original sin demanding death as punishment. Kind of a system of logic, the laws of chaos are simply sitting there poised for action, waiting for something to trigger them. Then pretty much everything that occurs physically cannot be said to be "personal" as such, it's just stupid matter moving around and doing its thing based on its properties.

So if you slam your hand in the car door, you might swear at the door and kick it in a rage, but the stupid door was totally impersonal in its behavior. The amount of force on the hinges, the degree of rust, the tension in the springs, the amount of wind blowing, the position of the door relative to your body, all colludes to produce a corresponding change in state, and lo and behold your hand is impacted. It's just the system playing out.

If you can recognize then that the whole world is on a kind of autopilot, whenever anything physically happens it's really just yet another case of the world doing what it does. The laws are just governing the particles like they always do. Objects obey the laws so much that it's like they're dead, until the laws tell them to move, then they move, and then the laws tell them to stop and they stop. The world is like kind of a giant graveyard of trash that just sits there until something stirs it up. You can't really hold it against itself, it just follows the rules.

If this is all there is, if this is "life", where we plant certain objects in the garden, where we turn the dial to flip the radio station, where we cook foods and shove them in our bodies, where we walk to and fro mechanically and just about everything that occurs is one object doing something to another, that's not much of an existence. It's more like a lifeless prison.

It also means that death becomes inevitable, because it's basically built into the system. Death itself is part of the laws of the world. The laws of physics determine that there is going to be decay and separation and attack and damage and degradation and lack and sacrifice and suffering, eventually breaking things down until they are rotting in the ground. This isn't "personal", it's just the laws playing out. It's just the system. The machinery of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

If this is all there is, then life is meaningless and pointless and fundamentally cruel. It means life is not life, but a system of death pretending to be life for a while, all the while ensuring that death will eventually come. So then you seem to live a while and pretend you won't die, and then you die. Or as my wife likes to put it, "life sucks and then you die." That's all this world really has to offer, in the big picture.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, 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."

There has to be a better way. There has to be something more sane and meaningful and lasting. There has to be a way to be free of all this, to break out of the laws of death. To break the laws of physics. To work miracles which raise you above and beyond the world, beyond the battlefield of attack, and into the celestial order. Only by moving beyond the laws of the world of inevitable death can you be free, and that means you have to surmount death and overcome the world, like Jesus did.

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death."

"A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? "

"We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so. Temptation may recur to others, but never to this One. He has become the risen Son of God. He has overcome death because he has accepted Life."

"To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained."

"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then... I cannot speak of that."

"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."

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID. "

"In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. "

What we think passes for a special love relationship on Earth, is typically the exact opposite of how relationship should be in heaven. This is not something that the people of the world want to look at or hear about.

The special relationship is the ego's way of relating. The ego's thought system is insane and deeply rooted in separation, specialness and exclusion. It rejects wholeness in favor of some special part which is different and unique to all the rest. It uses its worshipping of these little parts as idols to shut out and reject everything else. It is not really a device for relationship, it is a device for shutting relationship down and reducing it to almost nothing.

The physical world, which is a projecting out of the insane thought system of the ego, is founded on the same thinking, on the rejection of wholeness and the emphasis of separations and differences. Special relationships then become ways for the ego to use physicality to serve ego purposes, because now bodies can be used to section off and isolate and exclude, to narrow the field down to the ultra-special chosen one, to the exclusion of all others.

As the ego pursues what it tells you is the most treasured relationship, it promises that this relationship will give you total freedom, liberation, a savior who will fulfill all your needs, will give you everything you want, do things to you that you prefer, and together you will join in triuph over everyone and everything. A power-couple, exclusive in every way, fighting against the whole universe.

Such a special relationship is founded on exclusivity, with special rights and permissions granted, commitment to the other held up with the condition that you be uncommitted to anyone else, loyalty it seen as defending and siding with the other against everyone else, and nothing is allowed to occur outside the boundaries of the relationship. Especially not the intimate sharing of the body, which is really the exclusive target of the sense of special love, in which the other is held up as an idol to be worshipped, so that you'll stay away from God.

The truth however is that by pursuing relationship on the basis of how exclusive it is, also guarantees that the relationship is a prison. Two come together to share a prison, bound by chains, and commiting to fight together against the hoards of the universe who are left outside. There are limits on what you can, where you can, who you can be with, what you can say and to whom. Break the terms and conditions and you are violating the trust and the commitment of this meeting of minds, this joining of bodies, and this attempt to merge into oneness.

In effect such a relationship is not a releationship. It is a way of using a tiny speck of relationship focused around a single exclusive separation-device body, in order to keep everyone else away. The more exclusivity is given to the pair, the less there is for others to share in. In the strictest and most controlling of examples this can turn into highly abusive "love" situations where every little act is controlled and monitored and inspected for violations. And of course this can lead to abuse and violence and all manner of anti-relationship, all masquerading as a relationship. A relationship made in hell, where rotting together in death passes for love. And how cute it is that the corpses die in each other's arms.

The ego thus attempts to merge with one special other, exclusively and only that one other, and not even the whoel of them, in order to in some way commit fully to identifying with your body and with their body. And by doing so the ego uses the body and sex to try to bind the mind to matter, to make the body out to be the mind, and to believe in the allure of the body itself. All designed to place so much focus on the physical that the relationship becomes mindless and love doesn't enter into it. The relationship can then be all about sex and no real love, no real sharing or communication, and simply the using of each other's form.

But the ego clings to this because it's like it's rock in the storm, the stronger it can bind to bodies the more it can stay away from God and define itself in terms of what the body is, separating self off from others and therefore forming a sense of identity and of existing as something unique and special. Thus the more the relationship becomes exclusively special the more the ego increases and sees this temporary ally as joining it in its fight against all others.

This results in a dependency on an external savior, a seeking outside of yourself for love, an attempt to find yourself in the other person by denying yourself, a giving away of power, all manner of sacrifices and compromises and people pleasing, losing yourself, and a high degree of dishonesty. It is a closed-off relationship based on a prison, in which the two are chained to each other in "monogomy" and "marriage" and this is held up as holy any good and God's will. A holy and unquestionale institution, which is really founded on the lie that as the two come together there will be love, when really there is love's prison.

What the ego will never tell you is that each person is never supposed to be in a dedicated exclusive relationship with only one other, in which being with them is a tool to exclude everyone else. To do this is to place someone in a prison and call it freedom, to say you love them all the wihle keeping them captive and making sure they have no life beyond what you allow. Everyone is supposed to love everyone, and equally. It is completely unnatural that a person be kept so isolated and exclusive and separated off that they're not allowed even the slightest relationship with anyone, lest there be jealousy and grounds for revenge.

That means it is completely natural in God that everyone would experience full and total unconditional love towards absolutely everyone simultaneously. That is the total opposite of exclusivity and specialness because it's based on inclusivity and openness and sharing. It is true freedom and it applies to all souls. This is what all souls want and know and trust and enjoy. You are one with everyone, not just one little individual, whose specialness is there to tempt you and keep you away from everyone else.

On Earth therefore bodies are not only separation devices and prisons, they are also used by the ego to bring exclusive bodies together on exclusive terms so that the body can essentially be used to keep both persons away from God. And in their specialness they will think they are being holy and better and rightous and above all others, whom them look down upon together.

This belief that we are all supposed to find one single person and "love them" but in such a way that this relationship excludes others and is not the same as what is shared with others, is an ego device to separate and destroy relationship. It also leads to madness, in the belief that you are completely dependent on this one other person for your salvation, and if they are gone or if they stop giving you what you want, you are desperate like some kind of stalker that just can't let go or grant freedom. The belief that you can only get your needs met by that one person is a recipe for disaster and for endless torment. You don't even really have any needs.

In order to be free from that turmoil, which is largely also the root cause of grief and loss when a person leaves or dies, the sense of exclusivity must be dismantled. The person can only be "let go" by giving them freedom and allowing the exclusive rules to be broken. And indeed when they are broken it will not horrify, but instead bring great relief. Relief from the sense of isolation, from the straight-jacked of special terms, from the obedience and worship and codependency, and from the sense of not being able to live or do anything without their approval. No more burden, no more distorting yourself with sacrifices to please them, and no more putting them on a pedestal in order to cut them down.

If the person were to for example "cheat" or go outside the bounds of the agreement, or in some way withdraw what they were giving, or the grounds of the relationship are attacked and undermined, leading to a breakdown in the specialness and the romance, then perhaps this is a good thing. Because then it can open the doorway to actually transcending the ego's attempt at imprisonment, the glorifying of the body, the desire to merge with the body, and the sense that only this one person in all the world can ever be good enough for you.

"I want you and nobody else", as many-a-song goes, becomes the ego's mantra for exclusive specialness. The special one, the chosen one, the other half of yourself, the perfect one, the ideal one, the one who does only what you want and gives you none of what you don't want, the seeming savior and oasis in the desert to keep you from the madness of others, that special someone who who can side with an gel with and connect with by way of proving how everyone else is wrong, that's the ego's goal. To use separation to masquerade as relationship, to use a reduction in communication with the whole sonship under the guise of increasing communication, and using body contact to substitute for the true intimacy of oneness and to keep it away from heaven. And yet the ego thinks this is heaven on earth.

None of this is easy stuff to look at because everyone's doing it and everyone wants this feeling that you get when you look into the eyes of that special chosen one, and how they seem to offend you the least, justifying your murderous attitude toward everyone outside the special inner circle. Relationship can be far far higher than this, much more unconditional, and far more open and sharing, but not on the egos terms, and not really in terms of bodies - only up to a point.

But let it be known that, as you grant freedom to your partner, you are also giving it to yourself. And the special relationship therefore has to be converted into a holy relationship, where the terms and conditions are no longer the ego's, but the Holy Spirit's. And where the loving becomes equal and unconditional, there isn't a foundation of neediness and dependency, and both parties attain wholeness within themselves as well as with each other. There is a way out of the ego's chains and its little prisons of isolation, but it will require a dismantling of everything you ever thought specialness was good for.

Ultiamately it means giving up the entirely egocentric belief, in the ego itself, that you or another can be everything, exlusively and alone, to the exclusion of all else. That there can be this one sole person that is capable of being so limited, isolated, controlled and imprisoned, that they are somehow made permanent and constant and always the same to you. A person who will obey your every wish, do everything you want, be everything you want them to be, and never leave you. An idol to merge with in oneness, to posses and to own and control. Setting the other free from this punishing demand sets you also free form the LIE, that anyone could ever be, or is ever meant to be, the only one you could ever love.

Allowing their love to overflow to others, begins the dissolving of specialness, and therefore also of the ego itself. It is the beginning of letting go, the giving of freedom, the allowing of the other to be with anyone and everyone they so please. So that you can also be free to be unrestricted and unlimited in your relationship to all whom God has created equal.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."

"The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of BOTH worlds, has merely led to FANTASIES of both, and to the inability to perceive either one AS IT IS. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which UNION IS EXCLUDED, and the BASIS for the ATTEMPT at union RESTS on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek, and do NOT find?"

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone." In the separation from God, we rejected the meaning of divine order and replaced it with meaningless chaos. Through separation and fragmentation, there was no longer a single truth shared by everyone. Instead, everyone believed their own truth, and now everyone was in conflict.

In a state of fundamental disagreement, this gave rise to an entire seeming universe, or system of thought, in which conflict, clashes, wars, disagreement, argument, inequality, domination, submission, tyranny, attack, fighting, selfishness, hoarding, scarcity, and all manner of separation became commonplace.

This also expressed as the world itself, on a physical level, in terms of the seeming laws of physics and of space and time, which are utterly opposed to the divine laws of God. This produced an environment in which every particle of matter is at odds with every other, all things are different, kept apart, and in conflict, and where one thing can seem to destroy another. In a world without divine order, "senseless laws" seem to govern it.

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. "

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist."

In a chaotic world, the most random-seeming things can happen. They appear to happen without the involvement of any kind of will or mind. Seemingly without the participation or attention of anyone. As if the world is simply on some kind of autopilot, allowing for things to happen which make no sense, for no useful purpose, and producing effects which appear completely random and unintended.

As such "accidents" seem to arise and we enter into a realm of "bad luck", where coincidence seems possible and shit can just seemingly happen "by chance." Physical objects and their interactions seem to trigger a cascading chain of effects, as rocks tumble from a mountain, as people slip on banana peels, as decay sets in, as random wind finally blows the roof off, as meteorites happen to strike a person's body, as the weather happens to be worse, as sick bodies seem to take a turn for the worse, and as you just happened to step on a specific piece of dog shit today.

We think this world is normal and natural but it is completely devoid of divine order and meaning. Utter nonsense can transpire for no good reason. Things can seem to happen, unfortunate events, strange twists of fate, odd unlikelihoods transpire, trees fall on cars, rotten wood crumbles, a person steps on a nail which was left behind 50 years ago, there isn't quite enough energy to keep the phone running to capture that UFO in the sky, and someone's wheel falls off because the bolts on the hub were just slightly loose enough today.

When you look at all the stupid stuff that happens in the world, all the dangers and pitfalls and strange occurrences and injuries and houses falling on people's heads and so on, most of it really boils down to a seemingly lifeless environment, run by chaotic laws. Unfair, mean, cruel laws, where animals starve because they get stuck in a hole between some rocks. Laws which seem to be consistent and make sense, but which are founded on the complete absence of love and belonging and harmlessness and wholeness.

In a way, most of what transpires is "forgiveable" in the sense that, most of it is just the laws of physics playing out, as if it's not "personal". We might yell at the door for slamming on us, but it was just the physics in the hinges and the weight of gravity. We might be annoyed at the handle falling off the saucepan but it was just the rust setting in to corrode the metal. We might stub our toe and swear at the little bump in the sidewalk, but it's just an arrangement of matter sitting there. It isn't transpiring against you, as such, it's just ticking over like a mindless dead program, like some kind of debris that's just left behind from centuries of pointless events.

The world really is kind of like a dead world, a graveyard in which "stuff" just sits around doing next to nothing, until it is disturbed slightly, and seeming forces and energies collude into the mix, resulting in seeming new effects. And now the rock falls on your head and the tree crashes into the car and the tornado throws a random cow through your window.

And then the little stone tumbles off the hill, and bounces off the recently grown leaf, and hits you on the head as you just happen to walk past. All seemingly totally at random. In a world where everything seems to be utterly chaotic, pointless, senseless, meaningless, purposeless, without divine design, orderless and lifeless. Where the dust comprised of the dead corpses of skin cells clog your nose and triggers and chemical reaction.

In heaven there are no such accidents, no things which happen in chain reactions of random collisions. There is no chance or bad luck or probability or likelihoods. There is no unintended consequence, or lifeless discarded piles of trash, or little objects that sit around waiting to be victimized by external forces, or giant "natural disasters" that bring totally arbitrary suffering and completely unpredictable chaos to all concerned. Where who survives and who does not depends on whether a particular piece of wood floats past at the right time.

The world is like an old trash heap where all manner of garbage has just been collected together and piled up, and now the pile is unstable and it topples over, and once in a while just enough gravity affects something to cause a sudden shift, and a landslide begins as particular specific items are involved and others left out, falling and plummeting to their new doom, until they settle and are stifled and end up in a new meaningless ugly formation of rotten stench.

This is the world we made. This is the opposition to heaven and to the divine order. This is how we wanted our life to be - dangerous and victimizing and unfair. And now most of our lives we spend trying to navigate through an obstacle course, barricades on a battlefield, with pokey nails sticking out and nasty sharp corners and little annoying things that just keep breaking and stuff that wears out and even your tangled shoelaces transpire against you.

The entire world has taken shape as an unpleasant and seemingly dangerous, unstable, and untrustworthy torture chamber, just to piss you off on a Monday and to reach out of the blue with its sudden breakdowns. Most of us then spend most of our lives trying to just "manage" to "survive" in such a strange and meaningless environment, angered when the laws of physics dictate that something else random and badly timed happens, trying to keep our frail bodies from being affected, and trying to scrape by unscathed in what effectively is a harsh and unnatural environment.

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die."

Battlefields are places for thorns and spikes and bombs and armies. We have to find a way to rise above and out of the chaos if we are to reconnect with order, with peace and with divine order. There is no peace to be found amongst the twisted thorns and sharp corners of a meaningless world. Only the reality of Heaven offers a safe and meaningful home. And no-one can experience a sense of holy protection while standing on a landmine, which may or may not take them with it.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying"

"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies."

""Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them."

""I am upset because I see a meaningless world." Insane thoughts are upsetting, and They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world which represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws. I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning."

"The "laws of chaos" CAN be brought to light, though NEVER understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they APPEAR to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look BEYOND them, understanding what they ARE, NOT what they would maintain. It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond."

"Dreams are chaotic BECAUSE they are governed by your conflicting wishes. And therefore they have NO concern with what is true."

"This is the characteristic of the ego's judgments. SEPARATELY, they seem to hold, but PUT THEM TOGETHER, and the system of thought which arises from JOINING them, is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible."

"To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life, all this is arrogance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"Except he judges this as does a child, who does not KNOW what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made."

"In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos."

In ACIM the term "solid" or "solidity" obviously refers to what we recognize it to mean..... things which seem solid to us. Physical matter, heavy objects, solid materials, walls, bodies, planets, all things which science would tell us are in a solid state of matter. Hard, tangible, measurable, biological, chemical, physical. Planet earth.

The course goes on to tell us that these things which appear to be solid will eventually be seen as transparent, like a shadow, or a smoke-screen, or a veil of illusions. And that these solid things stand in front of the face of Christ, initially blocking its view entirely but later moving aside and fading away to reveal the true light of the real world. That the "world", ie the solid earth, is nothing but a wall of illusions standing in the way of reality.

Christ vision becomes able to "see through" solid matter, kind of like x-ray vision. This is because it is forgiving, and "to forgive is to overlook." To overlook something is to not see it, which is why what you forgive must disappear. By forgiving the physical material solid world, therefore, you become able to see through and past and beyond it to the light of another world. A world which is not earth and is not the physical solid material plane.

In fact, Jesus says that it is the guilt in our minds which makes the veil of illusions - earth and spacetime - appear to have solidity. It is guilt which drags our mind down into false perceptions, blinded by perception of form, looking through and believing the body's eyesight which is completely incapable of forgiving or looking past the solidity of matter.

It is our belief in guilt and sin and fear and death which locks us in to the prison of solid matter and makes it appear opaque to our minds. It is only because we are not forgiving that the world appears to show up at all as "solid". And once we forgive completely, the whole world must disappear, and that does mean the solid physical world will fade into nothingness, leaving behind only the light of heaven, because the world IS nothing but a veil of illusions we made to cover up reality.

The physical material solid world literally was made as a kind of curtain or screen or wall to come "between" you and yourself, between you and God, to hide God and block out heaven. It is like a layer of dirt covering over what should be bright and obvious, a stain upon the creation of God, a shadow of darkness. Belief in it causes the body to be lit up and made to seem real and solid, emphasizing the rift of the gap of separation which contains the entire separation from God in the split mind.

Christ vision looks past this world to the light. It does not mistake the body for the son of God. It does not fixate on physical forms. It does not believe the world of separate objects is real. It doesn't merely look upon and regard it as unified, it looks fully beyond it entirely. It glances at the disappearing thin veil of nothingness as it leave the mind's awareness and opens up fully to perceiving only the light of reality. Then it is game over for the world, which was nothing to begin with.

This is then the end of solidity, the end of matter, the end of the physical, the end of the world of shadows, the end of darkness, the end of separation, and the end of death. The world is at first forgiven, seen past, overlooked, and ignored, and then ultimately returns to nothing at all which it is. There is no world, and only heaven remains.

"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this. For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay."

"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. "

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

"And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. LET it be lifted! Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now."

"Standing BEFORE the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

"The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. And now they go to find what has been given them to seek. Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. Yet everything which they report is but illusion which is kept apart from truth."

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and WITHOUT a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would TRY to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to ATTEMPT to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily BECAUSE it is an error. The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"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."

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality which can be seen and justified and fully understood."

"This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion."

"Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all arise in your imagination, and FROM the clouds, the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all THERE. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's "make believe.""

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds, and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there, transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them. Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see."

"If you are not a body, what are you? You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind. You need to feel something to put your faith in, as you lift it from the body. You need a real experience of something else, something more solid and more sure; more worthy of your faith, and really there."

"The world you see is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall."

"The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself."

"You who believe you walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning CAN be found, consider this: These ARE the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These ARE the principles which makes the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it IS here you look for meaning. These are the laws YOU made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven that you prefer."

"This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God."

"The actions of the body are perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you, and thus of him as well. 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."

"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."

"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."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past EVERYTHING you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes."

"Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far BEYOND the body, SUPPORTING vision, NOT obstructing it."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"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."

Projection doesn't just mean you're trying to blame others. ACIM has a much larger definition, and blame is only a small part of it.

Projection is actually a natural function of ALL minds, including God's. Projection really means extension, whereby something that is IN the mind is extended or pushed outward, or in a forward direction. It really means GIVING, and is also a part of CREATING. Blame is actually a form of mis-creation, or an attempt to create destruction.

"Project (verb): to extend forward or out." - ACIM

"We said before that magic is essentially mindless, or the destructive (miscreated) use of mind."

"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"the miscreations of the mind do not really exist."

The mind HAS to give ie project/extend, in order to exist, because love has to be shared in order to be what it is. To love is to share, and sharing requires giving, which requires extension, ie projection, which creates.

In heaven before the separation, projection was PROPERLY used by God to create the Sonship, and by the Sonship to create their own creations. Proper projection is also used by the Holy Spirit, in the same way that God does.

"The Holy Spirit, as well as the ego, utilizes projection but since their goals are opposed, so is the result. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect. KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both." ... "this arouses love FOR both because IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION." ... "Perceiving equality, it perceives equal needs."

Proper "sane" projection, or the projection/extension of holiness, means that what is in you is seen as extending to and including others. You give love to your brother and recognize that that love is shared by him and is in him, as part of yourself. Thus you see yourself in him and love both of you equally.

Projection is actually a law of the mind which always functions on all levels. God and the Holy Spirit use it share what is true and loved. But the ego has its own distorted USE of projection, which results in trying to get rid of (or project away from itself) what it does not want, rather than giving what is loved.

"Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the Kingdom and keeps it in the mind of God."

"To the ego, the law is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"Projection to the Holy Spirit is the law of extension. To the ego, it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply it."

So there is a natural innate mind function of giving and extending what is inside your mind. This is always there. You give what you have, or are. When the mind is sane, it loves itself, and sees love in itself. It extends this love outward and sees it in others.

But if the mind is not sane, the mind first attacks itself. It regards itself as not loving or lovable. It sees a lack of love, and a darkness. It sees evil and guilt and sin within itself. It is trying to destroy itself. It is in a state of denial. The projective function of the mind then still operates, but now it is trying to "send out" this egoic content as a projected attack.

Since the ego content or insanity is a matter of separation, in a split mind, made of denial and attack, denial and attack are projected by those with egos. Since denial or attack is a way of "not wanting" yourself and God, or not wanting to love, a "not wantedness" is projected ie extended out of the mind, and you "do not want" the stuff you are expressing.

"A second fallacy is the idea that you can GET RID of something you do not want BY giving it away. GIVING it is how you KEEP it. The belief that by giving it OUT you have excluded it from WITHIN is a complete distortion of the power of EXTENSION."

"This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection (in the ego sense), follows automatically."

(note here that miracles are EXPRESSIONS ie PROJECTIONS FROM LOVE, whereas "ego projection" is a projection from fear or ego content - as such the proper use of projection is miracle working, ie the sharing and extension of love/life!)

This means that the mind projects or tries to "get rid of" what it does not want, rather than wanting to SHARE or INCLUDE others in what it does want. Since giving and receiving are usually one, projecting love indicates that you have it and keep it, and now both have it and the love increases.

But when this breaks down, we enter into the ego's rules of "either/or" and separation, where EITHER you have something OR the other does. You therefore believe that by projecting your self attack or "unwillingness", you can cause what you do not want to actually LEAVE your mind entirely, to be given but not received. That you can put your guilt, sin and fear onto someone or something else, and disown it.

This disowning is part of denial and also what we call dissociation. You dis-associate from it, by pretending that you can give it through projection and therefore LOSE it. That it can be placed outside of you, away from you. That you can put the blame for your internal "sin" onto someone else and escape it. So now you seem to be blaming your own self-attack, and your attack on God, onto something "external."

The truth is, however, that "ideas leave not their source". And projection does not actually make anything go outside the mind. It is because of the split in the mind, and its denial and its attempt to "destroy" what it does not want (its self-destruction), that there SEEMS to be a gap of separation between what's "inside" the mind and what's "outside".

"This is because their projections have NOT left their minds"

But at all times, all of this content is STILL within the mind. The mind is split, and has simply sectioned off a region within itself to "project" or dump its self-hate, in pretending to be free of it. It is now deluded into thinking that it has gotten rid of sin and guilt by putting it "outside" itself, but this is only because its sense of self has reduced to a sub-portion of the mind. The "outside" is really just the rest of the mind.

To perception, it then seems as if that which you used to destroy yourself, which has been projected outward, has somehow magically been displaced or given into some kind of "external" world, beyond the mind and body. The body seems to then act as the separation device or barrier dividing internal and external worlds, but really the mind encompasses both.

It's very easy then, in a state of dissociation, to believe that the guilt does not BELONG to your mind, being seen as "not inside it", and so it becomes logically sensible to associate it WITH someone else. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You bind other people to your projected self hate. You try to accuse them of doing what you are doing. And you see your guilt in them as if THEY own it or are even the source of it.

Since you have "not wanted yourself", and thus attacked yourself with unlove, you project what you do not want (really yourself) outward, and continue to attack it. You now seek to destroy it "in" another person, or condemn them for it. This is an indirect attack upon yourself still. But because you are projecting separation or dissociation, you see yourself as "safe from" the junk you have projected, which seems to exonerate you and render you innocent. This then produces the face of innocence.

"Anger ALWAYS involves PROJECTION OF SEPARATION"

"Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

So in its true sense, projection is a permanent part of the mind's nature, whereby it extends itself and gives or shares itself. The ego hijacks or distorts this by attacking YOU and then projecting FROM that distorted view of you. What is first seen within you as darkness is projected outward as darkness, and the attack continues.

In effect the ego projects TO SEPARATE or to keep emphasizing the dissociation or split in the mind, to try to "keep the guilt away" from you. Thus the more the mind believes its ideas HAVE left it, the more it thinks it is safe and innocent, but its insanity is increasing. The more it projects attack the more it splits itself, between the part it attacks (seemingly in others) and the part doing the attacking, both of which are ALWAYS in your own mind. Separating off from others or pushing them away deepens the internal rift between you and yourself.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. "

So there are some passages in the course where Jesus talks in the big-picture context of ALL minds projecting, the main projective or extending function. There are some passages where this is referred to AS extension and is contrasted AGAINST "projection" in the sego sense - where projection means the ego's projection of self-attack or an attempt to "push out of the mind" what you do NOT want. And there are also other passages where Jesus is talking ONLY about the ego's projection of self-attack. So it's important to be aware of the context.

Here's one final big thing to realize. In the separation from God initially, before there was a world here, and before the Earth, we had a split mind. We already had seen guilt and sin in our mind. Thus we entered into the ego's use of projection. The separation was the belief in the "lack of everything", or love's absence, or the lack of heaven and God - and the idea of death. We projected the "lack of everything", as the idea of heaven's total opposite, outward. This was a projection of the idea of emptiness and NOTHINGNESS. The projection of the idea of separation.

This projected THE WORLD, which "arose" as an attempt to DISOWN the separation, something you DID NOT WANT in the mind, in an attempt to get rid of it, because it was fearful to you. This projection of an illusion of nothingness took the form of a "screen", somewhat like a mirror, a meaningless neutral world, because it was a projection of insanity and meaninglessness. And it seemed to take on the form of error, or sin, producing space and time and bodies, as a natural consequence of the total opposite of God's laws. Planet earth and human bodies were the projected result - a mis-creation or a "world of destruction."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"the mad projection by which this world was made."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

We had "created" an ILLUSION of a world of emptiness, opposing all of Heaven's laws. A world made of the idea of death and of alienation and murder. We then ALSO in a SECOND STEP, projected our inner mental garbage ONTO that screen, which is where "projection makes percpetion" comes in. We project stuff ONTO the "neutral world screen", which GIVES it meaning, and the mind determines what to make of what the body tells us about it.

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him."

"If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing."

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

So in the separation we made an error and projected this error, and the world - spacetime - including all planets and galaxies, arose in an ILLUSION of a world, made of nothing appearing as something. This "world" is really nothing, and we then proceeded to PROJECT ONTO IT, the continued negative content of our minds. This secondary step of projection produces perception, a kind of feedback, in which we project either guilt or innocence, sin or holiness, and this changes how "the world" appears to our perception.

What I see in the course now is that "the world" itself was an initial projection of the separation, a world we made to attack God and heaven. And in the making of bodies we placed ourselves within it to "perceive it". And now we project ego shit ONTO it, either falsely perceiving it, or perceiving it truly. True perception shows you that you have GIVEN (projected) holiness and love and peace, and only BY giving (projecting) that do you see a forgiven world. If you project ego onto it you see a world of sin.

Once you cease to project ego ONTO the world, the "nothing world" - really the absence of heaven - is recognized as nothing, with no sin put ONTO it, and it is forgiven. In this view it loses all of the illusion of "real sin" or "existence" or "happening", and eventually disappears completely. We then wake up in God and resume our REAL PROJECTION of creation in the Kingdom. "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."

"All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

At first you will see a reflection of God in the world, a reflection of heaven, because the world ITSELF is just a screen and has no meaning of its own. It was a projection of nothing, acting as a neutral canvas on which TO project what you wanted to see. However, upon doing this, the world itself will ultimately give way to heaven, because its total nothingness is recognized.

"But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done."

"Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."