"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning." UrW132L4

Some people regard this world as something negative, some as something positive. But the course regards it as NOT SOMETHING AT ALL. It acknowledges that the world is NOTHING, and the body is NOTHING.

It also acknowledges that when we think that it is SOMETHING, we will give it attributes and meaning that it does NOT have, and believe that it does have them inherently. This means we are deceived, because we are PROJECTING things onto a nothingness and seeing the projection AS IF it is there.

It's important to understand what NOTHINGNESS means. It does not mean negative, or positive. It does not mean meaningful, or meaningless as in the sense of it being a something that is depressing. It is not good or evil. It is not holy or corrupt. It is not really anything. It has NO ATTRIBUTES, no labels, no categories, no types, nothing. Like a void.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW132L2

The world, the physical world, matter, spacetime, all flesh and bones bodies, the whole system, is NOTHINGNESS, pretending to be something. It's only seeming to be something because we keep projecting stuff onto it.

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something." UrU3A2

It is also true then that a "nothing world" acts like a mirror. A mirror is something which has NO ATTRIBUTES of its own. It has no inherent image, no inherent meaning, no inherent anything. It just REFLECTS, indirectly, seeming images and forms and meanings PROJECTED ONTO it from something once removed from it. In other words, what it seen in the mirror is not first hand reality, it is second-hand.

And then that projecting thing sees the REFLECTION of what was projected in the mirror, as feedback in consciousness, and thinks it is THERE. As if it is "in the mirror", part of the mirror. But confusing what is seen in a mirror for the THING that is reflected there, is a mistake.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego." UrE14E5

"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." UrT18B3

Earth - spacetime, physical matter, bodies etc. ... can REFLECT, because these things are NOTHING IN THEMSELVES. They can reflect whatever you put ONTO them. You can project hellish ideas of sin and guilt onto them, and will then see that IN the mirror, as though part of the mirror. You can project heavenly ideas of love and peace onto them, and you will see that reflected in the mirror also, as though part of the mirror.

But when we confuse what is REFLECTED with the fact that we require a MIRROR in order to have a reflection, and the reflected thing is confused for BEING the mirror, we are lost in the mirror of perception. And now we think that the world IS this, or IS that. That if we project sin onto it is IS sinful. And if we project love onto it it IS love. And if we give it reality it IS real. This is a mistake. This is someone not recognising that they are looking in a mirror, and NOT at an objective reality. Whatever they PUT there to see, they see, and there is nothing else to see. If they walk away, the world is gone.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that." UrT21A1

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in." UrT13C3

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it." UrT11H10

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward." UrW304L1

So what we have to realize is, whether you're seeming to work with an evil hateful dangerous nasty world, or you're seeming to work with what seem like a benevolent lovely forgiven world, you are working with a REFLECTION IN A MIRROR, not an ACTUAL FACT.

The truth is, that there is no world there. There is ONLY your projection. You are seeing what you put there to see. That is hardly objective. In fact it is completely subjective, and the world has NO objective reality or truth of its own.

This means that in order to awaken from it, we have to learn to project "happier things" onto the mirror, so that it seems to reflect a "happier dream" to us, and we can seem to pull out of it aspects which seem to REFLECT heaven's nature. So that we'll be more prepared psychologically to move on to a realm of heaven where what we experience is NOT a reflection but an ACTUAL reality.

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here." UrT14E8

So fundamentally, planet earth, every particle of matter, all energies, all of space and time, the whole galaxy and 'universe', is all part of a MIRROR. It is a mirror because it is NOTHING REAL and is a meaningless world. We PROJECT ONTO this world what we want to see IN it, and see it reflected. This is ONLY possible because the world HAS NOTHING OF ITS OWN, because it is nothing at all and doesn't really exist.

Recognising that the mirror reflects only what you put there to see, leads to the recognition that the world IS a mirror, and IS NOT a thing in its own right. That there is no world there other than your wishes projected outward from within. You are having a dream, making up a subjective "reality", hallucinating what you want to see, and are inventing meanings for a world that isn't there.

The ultimate teaching therefore is that THERE IS NO WORLD. Not that the world is transformed, or kept, or ascended, or turned into heaven, or made to be ANYTHING. IT cannot BE anything because it is a NOTHING. Mirrors don't have identities. Mirrors don't have their own nature. Mirrors have no substance of their own, no attributes, nothing. You thought you saw a world in a mirror for a while, and were deceived. It is not there. Only heaven exists.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth." UrT20H4

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it CAN fail to be what you demanded it to be. And you WILL hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not MORE than it should be, but ONLY in YOUR failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee." UrT29C9

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be." UrM15A2

"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." UrU5A4

You might be trying to deny that God exists because you believe that you can ACTUALLY pull it off. You think you can actually get rid of God.

God is permanent and will always exist. But you attempt to prove that God is impermanent.

This can absolutely never work. God is permanent. God will never be impermanent.

This is what your entire life in the world is about. Your every effort to be separate. Your whole campaign against God. Your attempt to deny Him and everything He created (which includes you). This is all because you think one day, somehow, you will prove once and for all, that death of permanence CAN be accomplished, and that you actually HAVE sinned.

Sorry to tell you this, but, .... what is permanent cannot, by definition, ever be impermanent, and can never, ever, ever, ever die. And what is innocent CANNOT SIN.

The ego might've forgotten to tell you that one little technicality.

So go ahead and keep trying to die, all you like. You won't achieve it.

At best you might experience what looks like death, which will be just a temporary transition.

Since it's not possible to die, the ego HAS to have you whisked away to some other dimension when you die to create the illusion that 'you're gone', which is all smoke and mirrors, because it's not actually capable of killing you. Ever. Because you're permanent.

The game is up.

It is futile.

You cannot win.

You cannot make God be dead.

You cannot destroy yourself.

Maybe it's time to surrender and give up this fight? And... why not just stop denying that God loves you and actually LET HIM love you? Why not RECEIVE what is being offered? You'll be far happier.

Maybe it's time to drop the whole charade of trying to prove you can't be loved. It will never work. Nothing can act against the will of God and it's Gods will that you be lovable forever.

You CAN'T make death real.

You CAN'T be separate from God.

You CAN'T succeed in what you are trying to do, ever.

So maybe its time to give up and let go of all of this effort to destroy yourself, which will never work, and just let God love the heck out of you. I know I know... that would be like, something you have to suffer through and do begrudgingly right? Like being kissed by your grandma? lol

You can be loved. There is NO POINT denying it.

But will you admit it and let it happen or just keep stubbornly refusing - insanely refusing - trying to keep asserting that it's actually possible to be dead?

You are permanent.

Here is a perfect ACIM quote: "Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?"

Nothing real can be threatened. It should not possible to threaten anything, anywhere. Yet here there is seemingly a world, which is filled with things which can seemingly be threatened. Somehow it has been arranged that there are objects which can collide, obstacles to hit, explosions to damage things, and all manner of weapons to attack with.

But how can there be one single ounce of attack if nothing real can be threatened? What can this world be made of that it can seem to be attackable? Surely it must be that the attack is not really attack, and nothing actually is hurt, and it's all just a big illusion made to look like such things are happening? How can any of it be a real attack if attack is not possible?

Jesus says in the course that there is no safety in the world. He also says bodies can clearly attack bodies. He also says problems were made to not be escaped. He also says you are immortal and cannot die but you can confuse yourself with things that do. He also says the world has no safety to offer, everything visible will perish, and everything you built has the mark of death upon it.

So what is this world, where there is no safety, riddled with problems, everything can be attacked, and the seeming impossibility of "attack ability" seems to be rampant?

If you look you'll notice that everything physical in this world seems to be attackable. Nothing is truly protected from anything. Anything can attack anything. The myth of safety on the level of form is everywhere, the desire to avoid physical attack, injury, harm, death, sickness etc. Yet none of these things should even be possible.

If reality cannot be attacked at all, and there is nothing else, if there appears to be something else that is attackable it cannot be real attack ability. It has to be some kind of deception, formed from the very same fabric as the rest of reality, in which strange shapes, appearances, images, concentrations of thoughts, temptations and so on, are made to look "as if" attack is possible.

So one person kicks another person in the leg. Has there been an attack? Not in reality, for sure. So whatever this is, it must be some kind of strange twisting of make-believe images, hallucinations, warped to make it "appear" that not only does something attackable seem to exist, but it has indeed attacked and been attacked. But no matter how it appears, it cannot be true that attack is real, has happened, or that anything is truly harmed.

Any sign of harm MUST be some kind of extraordinary smoke and mirrors deception. Any hint of damage to anything must be an illusion of death pretending to exist. We don't have anything to make the world from other than our thoughts. The same thoughts that we create eternal life with. The same mind. What do we make the world with except our mental processes?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts"

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts"

Therefore you use thought to attack thought, in the form of a giant thought in the shape of a planet. Or a body.

The laws of spacetime, the made-up physics, largely governs the "workings" of this illusory world, what makes it possible for it to seem as if materials can attack materials. It's all set up fundamentally to make it seem as if attack is possible. The world was made to try to prove sin is real. And it was made as an ATTEMPTED (and failed, impossible) attack on God. "It is the world you see that is impossible."

Real attack must be impossible. It simply cannot actually be attack. It must be a lie, a deception, an unreality. It cannot really be there. Nor can it have real consequences. Nor can it be irreversible in its effects. Nothing about it can be permanent. All attack is an illusion in a dream of death. The world is nothing but a disguise over the truth, and nothing about it is true at all.

Here is Jesus talking about how as you enter the real world (not heaven), the physical world is now seen as SHADOWS, which SEEMED SOLID, which now appear TRANSPARENT AND FAINT, at times FORGOT.

"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."

And he goes on elsewhere to speak of how the body is diminisihed in your sight...

"Across the bridge it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, ****the value of the body is so diminished in your sight**** that you will see no need at all to magnify it."

And again, the world is regarded as nothing but a thin veil, an illusion of smoke and mirrors, hanging before the face of christ, which can be easily brushed aside.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ****nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant.**** It is seen at last for only what it is. And ****now it cannot fail to disappear,**** for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ****is the world forgot****, with time forever ended as ****the world spins into nothingness from where it came.****" The body becomes a shadow, circling around the good, no longer obscuring sight of the real world.

"By focusing upon the good in him, ***the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight***, and will at length be seen as ***little more than just a shadow circling round the good.*** And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there is another world."

And the veil is brushed aside...

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted (fear of death) hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, ****peace will lightly brush the veil aside**** and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself like to a leper's, and the bright Rays of His Father's Love that light His face with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone."

nb: "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" Attracted by what is beyond the veil... YOU WILL LEAVE THE WORLD FOREVER!

"It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you but raise your eyes. ****Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.**** This is the re-establishment of your will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming death can stand against your will. For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparated from it and completely one."

I'm having a really hard time trying to put a simple truth into words. So... for now, an analogy...

If it's dark and there seems to be a scary shape behind the door, you might think there is a monster lurking.

You turn on the light and realize it's just some clothes hanging there.

This is the same as the transition from believing that the ego is real, to recognizing it was just a harmless illusion.

It simply was not true that it was a real monster.

You did not need to do anything to the clothing in order to make it not be a monster.

All you needed to do, was switch on the light.

Because it never WAS a real monster to begin with!

Light is ALL that you need in order to be awake to the truth and free of the ego. That's all. Absolutely nothing else.

When there is light, you can see correctly. You can see everything as it is, without having to modify the scene at all.

You did not need to defend yourself against the monster. And you did not need to fight it off once the light was turned on, even though you might've been afraid that turning on the light would prove that the monster is real ;-)

All you had to do was turn on the light so that you could see correctly. So that you could have True Perception. Vision.

The light itself shows you, by comparison to the light, that what you thought was a real monster, was just an illusion. There wasn't anything real there at all.

It is this way with the ego and the entire world. It is an illusion that isn't real. You think there are real monsters and real tragedies and real death. That's because you are not seeing clearly. You are in darkness. You just need more light.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM

"You are only afraid of darkness because you believe it has the ability to hide the truth." - ACIM

So you actually don't need to defend yourself against the ego, or against illusions, or against attack, or against death. You ONLY need to be in the light, and all of those things will be very obviously shown to be NOT what you thought they were.

You will see that death was just a weird illusion. Attack was not really happening. Sin wasn't true of anyone. There wasn't any real suffering. And even what you thought was a "real ego" was nothing more than an illusion of an ego existing. There WASN'T a real ego at all, it was just smoke and mirrors looking like one!

It was all just a trick that your mind played on you because you were in the DARK and could not see the whole scene properly.

Taking vision out of context and focusing on only parts of the scene, unable to see the whole (the whole is God), produces insane fears that objects are really monsters, that inanimate objects are out to get you, and that you are not safe.

Turn the light on!

Light is all you need. God is all you need. Be in God and everything else will become clear and obvious as day. There is no ego, there is no death. They existed as hallucinations in the dark while you didn't have enough light to see what was REALLY going on.

"Now the light has come." - ACIM

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and your way will be made straight" - ie, be in the light, and you will KNOW that there IS nothing that can ever be against you. There IS no real enemy, no real attacker, no real war, no real sin, no real sickness, and no real death.

SURPRISE! It was all a wierd dream trip you had while you could not see the big picture, conclusions you came to that were false, and made-up explanations for things you only had partial evidence for.

This is awakening. Waking up to the awareness (light) which allows you to SEE (vision) the truth (God - the whole picture), which shows you that you're just hanging around in an illusory room that isn't really anything at all. You thought it was a scary place, it's NOTHING!

You will just laugh when you realize all that fear and pretend suffering didn't happen at all, and all that's left is you hanging out with God in love forever! Perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly safe :-)

We talk a lot about forgiveness and undoing grievances and not projecting guilt etc, but a HUGE elephant in the room is how everyone believes they are their body!

We are quite literally NOT a physical body. We are spirit beings, made of God-stuff. The body is NOT a part of our self.

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

"The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you."

But take a look at the world, look at how everyone is always focused on bodies, regards bodies as people, refers to bodies by name, and how we all seem to be very IDENTIFIED WITH the body.

Even from birth and through childhood, we're told that we are a boy or a girl, or a human being, and that our body is our self. It's drummed into us by a society that HEAVILY believes that we are bodies.

This isn't made any easier by the fact that the body ITSELF makes the world seem very real, and thus makes ITSELF seem very real. It reports on itself using its OWN senses, and reports that the body it senses as existing really exist. Pain and sensations confirm it.

Everyone's looking in mirrors at "how they look". Everyone's talking about what other "people" look like. Everyone's talking about what their body did today. Everyone's taking their body appearance personally, either to their benefit or detriment.

We have a BIG PROBLEM of believing that we are flesh and bones objects walking around on a fake planet.

We are not even 1% body. We are 0% body. Purely spirit. Purely life. Purely made of God-stuff. And yet the world is at like a 99% belief that bodies are true, bodies are life, bodies are our reality.

It is this identification WITH and AS the body that produces EGO, and is a problem of identification. That we literally start experiencing the body as if it is US, and anything it experiences is happening to our SELF. This is mental illness and it is widespread and extremely common.

In fact it is so common that it's taken to be absolutely normal, absolutely natural, the stuff families are made of, the stuff countries are made of. Human since birth, born to be flesh and bones, born to have a brain and a heart, born to bleed and die.

"I am not a body, I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this."

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

"To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever it is accepted it is accomplished already."

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary."

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

"All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick." "The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

You may be accustomed to just thinking about "stuff". As if thought is a natural function which you can use however you like. It seems like you can think about anything without any effect. As if every thought is neutral.

But you may also notice that when you think about something unpleasant, you do not feel happy. When you have a fearful thoughts, you do not feel safe. When you have an attacking thought in anger, you do not feel peaceful. And when you have an accusation thoughts, you feel guilty.

The issue then is that just by the mere fact that you are HAVING these thoughts, that is WHY you are not feeling happy and at peace. Just by HAVING the thought, you are producing an upset.

This doesn't mean that, therefore, you should not have thoughts, because thought is life and the mind must think. However, the thoughts of attack and fear and so on are not CONSTRUCTIVE thoughts. They are thoughts of destruction. And when you USE thought to think in such a way, you hurt yourself.

You can play with this idea by simply asking yourself, whenever you are thinking about something and not feeling good, would you have still felt this way if you DID NOT HAVE the thought? If you did not THINK THIS, would you be unhappy? Are you ONLY feeling unhappy because you thought this? And you'll find the answer is yes.

If you had not thought of attack and fear and horrible things, you would NOT be experiencing hell, upset, fear, loss, anger, or any other unpleasant response. Your thoughts are CAUSING your suffering. Your thoughts are CAUSING your emotions. Your thoughts are NOT neutral, and are in fact having an effect on you.

You think you can just use thoughts without any effects, without any responsibility, without causing a change. As if it isn't the fact that you are having an attack thought that's causing you to feel threatened and guilty. As if having the thought is just some neutral observation, passive, that just reflects what's going on.

We might think then that our thoughts are just little mirrors which are interacting with the world and reflecting what's in it, commenting on it and responding to it as if we only have reactionary thoughts. As if thought is all just an EFFECT of the world. But this is not at all true. Thought is CAUSAL.

When thought is causal, HAVING a thought CAUSES things to happen. Thought creates some kind of form. Thought has power. Thought produces effects. Thoughts MAKE YOU sick and unhappy and angry and upset. Thoughts produce death. Thoughts put you in hell. HAVING these negative thoughts is the real problem, and it's in your mind.

However, you need a better thought if you want to be happy. You need to start USING thought constructively, supportively, empoweringly, happily, and with more light and love. Loving thoughts are healing thoughts. Loving thoughts tune to the power of God. Loving thoughts can literally move mountains and raise the dead. Loving thoughts are resurrectors. Thoughts are GIVING.

If you think of LIFE, then you are CAUSING LIFE. If you think of HEALTH, then you are causing health. If you think about how HAPPY someone is, you are helping them to be happy. If you having a true optimism, which is a proper use of denial, then you are rejecting suffering and sickness and death. True thoughts empower you just as much as false thoughts bring your own suffering. And NOTHING other than your thoughts cause you to be happy or unhappy, sick or well.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are."

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

WHAT IS TIME? IS IT ETERNITY? IS TIME REALITY? GOD's CREATION?

There have been a couple of posts here talking about time, and speculating with wishful-thinking that time is eternal or a creation of God. This is not true. The course is very clear on this.

"Time and Eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other." - ACIM

"For place (space) has gone as well, along with time." - ACIM

"It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion." -ACIM

So what is time anyway? And what is eternity? And why does Jesus state that they CONTRADICT each other?

Eternity means, everything always exists forever. There is no beginning, there is no end. There is also no change. There are not temporary one-off events. There is no transition, no adjustment, no becoming, no growth, nothing gradually progressing. There is no decay, no distortion, and no death. Eternity is a PERMANENT state of PERPETUAL SAMENESS.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

"Reality is a constant state."

"And what He knows exists forever, changelessly."

Now, in this state of eternity, prior to the separation, there was NO SUCH THING as time or space. Reason being that both time and space are illusions which COMPLETELY OPPOSE the idea of eternal life. Not just a little. They are diametrically opposite and completely contradictory.

In eternity, everything exists everywhere. Everything is shared by everything. Every son of God shares all of himself with every other son of God. God is one with everyone. You are united with your brothers. But not only this, but in "spatial terms", what exists in one location exists fully in all locations. This is the idea of omnipresence and is the divine nature of everything that exists in God.

In the separation idea, we wanted to DENY eternity, and to DENY that everything is everywhere, and DENY that everything is shared by everyone, and DENY omnipresence. We wanted a TOTAL OPPOSITE to this condition of abstract unity. The result of this was SPACE.

Space is a false belief, based entirely on the notion of an opposite to spacelessness, ie an opposite to omnipresence. It's the idea that God, who is everywhere, does not exist anywhere. By virtue of the fact that in space, no two things share the same space, and by virtue of the fact that in space any particular location contains only PART OF what exists and not the whole, space is literally the idea that "nothing exists everywhere" and "everything exists nowhere." This could not be more of an attack on God's nature.

"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

Time is similarly blasphemous. In eternity, where everything is always the same, everything has eternal immortal life, nothing changes, and everything is permanent. What exists has always existed and always will, without the need for time.

Time is nothing short of the idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to eternity. It's founded on the false belief that everything changes, nothing is EVER the same as it was, what exists now DID NOT exist before, and what exists now WILL CEASE to exist in the near future. It is the idea of IMpermanence, the idea of MORTALITY, and the idea of DEATH. Time, is the symbolic notion that *everything always changes* and therefore *nothing exists forever*. This could BE MORE opposed to the nature of God and the divine continuity of reality.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

So make no mistake, both space and time were EGO FABRICATIONS based in the tiny made idea, made as ATTACKS upon God, designed to SHUT OUT God's nature, to depict a world or state so completely opposite to the omnipresent everlasting nature of God, that if you behold the world you are BLINDED to God.

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

Space was an attack on God's nature. Time was an attack on God's nature. NEITHER of them are holy, spiritual, virtuous, constant, permanent, truthful, or real. Space and time, all of "space time", the entire "space time continuum", is A LIE. It is fiction. Everything within it is AN ILLUSION. The world, the planets, the galaxies, all of it, ANYTHING that RELIES UPON three dimensional spatial relations is an illusion. You cannot have a three dimensional planet earth WITHOUT space, and it cannot "evolve" WITHOUT time. And every moment of "evolution" is a moment of DEVOLUTION, a proof that eternity has ended and something has come to replace it. Change is only possible in hell, not heaven.

Without space or time, the world that we made CANNOT EXIST. Without space, there is no way to have 3D physical objects, yet alone planets. JEsus says this here:

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone ****what more remains to keep a separated world in place?**** ****For place has gone as well, along with time.**** Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

Without place and time, ie spacetime, it is NOT POSSIBLE to have planet earth. In any form. And without guilt, there is no belief in spacetime. So when guilt is gone, the world MUST vanish.

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

The fact is, space and time are ego illusions. They do not really exist. They are NOT God's creations. And they absolutely are not holy or real or spiritual. They are literally nothing, mere illusions, a thin veil of smoke and mirrors, designed to deceive. And as Jesus says in the quote I opened with, time and eternity are CONTRADICTORY. Totally opposites to each other. Time is not a "misinterpretation" of eternity. It's a total fiction. We have not "misunderstood time's reality". Time is NOT reality. Ever. Never. If time has ANY reality, God would have an end.

Do not fall for the wishful level-confused thinking of some ACIM students who want to keep the world and find ways to spiritualize it. They are not ready to accept that this world is not real, or that space and time aren't even real at all. You don't NEED space or time to exist, any more than you need a fictional body.

Time is an illusion. There is no time. Only eternity is real.

As a child of God, God has placed himself in you, as an extension of his mind, will and power. You don't really "have" anything "of your own", or exclusive to you, because everything God gives is given to everyone equally. But you do nevertheless have everything that God has given to you, just as everyone does. Which mean that you have inherited from him his mind, will and power.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

When this power is interpreted as belonging ONLY to you, then you are trying to have it for your own, excluding others, which cuts you off from God, and disables the power. When it is interpreted as belonging to everyone, and being FROM God, FOR you, and FOR everyone, it is regained and you become all powerful.

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

What this means is that in the "arrangement" of how you are "set up" in terms of relationship to God, function, and what you must give, God has placed himself in you, and now you have everything that is OF or from God, as yours, but only so long as you share it. And in order to have it you have to give it, and to share it it must be extended. And so now the love that is given to you from God, is given through you, by YOU participating in its extension, by expressing the love that is yours - which is also his.

So it's kind of like a "pay it forward" kind of thing, where God gives love and power and will and miracles to you, then you in turn pass on and give and share the love and power and miracles to others.

"Miracles are a universal blessing (for all) from God, through me (christ, sonship) to all my brothers."

God loves you. You love your brothers and your creations. Similarly...

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."

This means fairly simply that you need to "express God" ie to express love. Which is why "Miracles are expressions of love." Or as Jesus often says to me, "shine". Shine the light that is in you, give it, share it, express it, pass it on, so that you acknowlege that you have it. And thus by expressing it, it flows into you.

If you think you don't have love to express, because you don't love enough, or feel lacking or deprived, there is a simple fix. Start loving anyway, try to push the love out, feel it coming out of you, send it to someone, even if it's just a little bit.

You'll find that this "unclogs the pipes" and gets the juices flowing. As you do this, you actually start to RECEIVE more love, heaven comes to help you, and you start to get healed as well. As you give healing you are healed.

"I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

So in a sense, we are sort of "channels" for God. But being a channel for God doesn't entail strange trance states or going unconscious or having your body be possessed. You can remain fully aware and participatory, shining a light, joined with God, in which both of you shine together. This is part of the arrangement of you being a co-creator with God. You create in parallel, you love in parallel, you heal in parallel.

What is your function? Your function on earth is healing, and in heaven it's creating, and both are very similar. The healing function lines up and mirrors the creative function. You extend God's love and shine your light, a the light of the world, and your mind extends out and unites with other minds to bring about miracles. You share this function with the Holy Spirit while you're on earth, and you hare it with God when you're in heaven.

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"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."

"Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service."

"Whenever a teacher of God has tried to be a channel for healing he has succeeded."

"About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for creation"

"Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, His Creations naturally communicate WITH Him and communicate LIKE Him."

"The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."

"And so He has kept this Channel open to receive His communication to you, AND YOURS TO HIM."

"Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing, because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His Children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them, because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick."

"I repeat that I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my Atonement decisions, because my will is never out of accord with His."

"I have told you several times that I am in charge of the whole Atonement. This is ONLY because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through other men. My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail, because I will lend them MY strength as long as theirs is wanting."

"Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself.""

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous."

"While he is IN the body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of creativity. He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

The purpose of sickness is to make you and the body seem to be "one".

The ultimate goal of sickness, which is "death", is the attempt to fully unite who you really are with the body, so that when the body is destroyed, it is claimed that "you" are destroyed.

The whole point of this happening is our attempt to destroy the Son of God - Christ, by associating His identity with something which CAN appear to be attacked, like tying a metal ball to His ankle and throwing Him in the ocean.

Sickness therefore is the way that we attempt to destroy ourselves, to try to prove that we are not God's Son. The closer that we can get to achieving this, the more it would seem we have become "the ego" - a fully separate self, which is symbolized by the BODY. If we are the body, and if the body is destroyed, then we would seem to be destroyed along with it. This is the illusion of death.

Forms of sickness vary, but pain in particular is a good example. Pain screams for your attention, day and night. It blasts your awareness with such a loud signal in the body that all of your waking moments are consumed with it. It is a particularly effective way to associate you with the body, because it leaves very little room for ignoring it.

Similarly, other "severe" diseases and so-called accidents can produce such intense long-term suffering such that the body is thoroughly identified with, and believed to be the Self. When the body is challenging you constantly with reminders about how sick you are, how disabled you are, how suffering you are, and how much pain you are in on many levels, it acts as a device for shutting out God. And it can lead to hopelessness, and eventually to death.

In the ego's glorious moment of triumph, it *seems* to achieve the death of the Son of God, through destruction of the body. The body can ONLY be destroyed IF the Son of God has fully granted permission for this to occur, i.e. has done it to Himself, and therefore has chosen to die. (Or at least to seem to, because He is immortal.)

Sickness then is only there as a way to bind you to the body, so that you will seem to be pulled away from God. God is the truth, and sickness puts distance between you and God. Therefore, "sickness is a defense against the truth" because it seems to allow you to escape "into" the body, in effort to find a way to move closer to death, because death is seen as the opposite of Life. Life is God, so death is an escape from God.

If the only purpose of sickness, in defense against truth, is to SEPARATE YOU from God through intimacy with the body, then the HEALING of sickness MUST entail a movement TOWARDS God and away from "body reality". The person must dis-identify from the body, and recognize that they are not physical.

Another way to express this, is that you must realize that the truth of who and what you are is not "form". The only way this can be true, is IF form itself is NOT truth. While the body and its experiences remain true or real to you, you will believe that YOU are those truths. That you are physical and that you can be hurt.

Withdrawal of "reality" from the body, and therefore from all form, is the path to healing sickness and death. In other words, withdrawing a sense of truth from what is actually an ILLUSION, and placing that sense of truth back where it belongs, aligned with the REAL TRUTH which is of God.

If you believe that the body is ever "really sick", or that what you're witnessing is a "real sickness", or that something is "really happening" to you or others, as evidenced by all of the signs and sensations of suffering, then you will be stuck. You must shift your perception to recognize that what you're SEEING is actually an ILLUSION OF SICKNESS. It is not real sickness, because there is no such thing.

What you're seeing, what you're experiencing, as sickness, is actually just an ILLUSORY IMAGE which is PRETENDING to be sickness. It is not really there. It is not really happening. No matter how it appears, no matter the severity or mildness, no matter the form or how long it's been present, it cannot be reality. Otherwise YOU will become the sickness, and the body, and you will die.

Either God's truth is the truth, or the ILLUSION is the truth.

Either God's truth is real, or sickness is real.

Either God's truth is the only truth, or the body has truth to it.

God did not create the body because the body is not real.

Learn then that when you perceive sickness, IF there is a measure of reality to your experience of what you're perceiving, you are MISTAKEN, and you are actually seeing an illusion, but are thinking that it is reality. You have GIVEN truth to it "I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me". Because you GAVE it truth, you can withdraw the truth from it. To do this you have to PLACE the truth somewhere else, and recognize where it really is. Shift the truth to be God's truth, and the truth will be removed from the sickness.

The truth is true and nothing else is true. The body is not the truth. Sickness is not the truth.

Work on this until you can literally look at the sickness and NOT BELIEVE IT. Recognize it is an ILLUSION. It's like a three-dimensional fake hologram being projected by a Spirit that is floating around in space pretending to be physical. It is not a REAL sickness, it is make-believe!

When you can look at sickness as NOT REAL, you will find yourself feeling HAPPY. You will be happy because you are not making errors, you are being forgiving, you are not falling for the illusion (it's a mind trick!), and you're not buying into it. You will find yourself smiling as you affirm and see "this is not real".

Recognizing that illusions are not real, lifts FEAR from you, because fear is a reaction to perceiving a real illusion. You could only be afraid IF what you see is really happening and IF what you see was not designed by God. Only real illusions can frighten! If illusions are NOT real, they cannot frighten. But you must BELIEVE that they are not reality. You're seeing something that isn't really there, it isn't really happening, and it is quite literally.... NOTHING.

Sickness is nothing. Death is nothing.

This "collapsing" of the illusion, this stripping it of its illusory reality, this taking away of belief in it, this withdrawing of the conviction that it is true and therefore suffering with reactions, is all part of forgiveness. Overlooking the error. Overlooking sin. Overlooking an illusion that you always thought was reality, but is in fact smoke and mirrors.

Your body's eyes will show you sickness. But your MIND's EYE will show you the truth - that the sickness is an illusion. The mind then is shining a light of truth - God's truth - and this has POWER to disperse and undo and correct what appears to be the sickness. IT MUST GO! Jesus has said, "illusions that are understood to BE illusions MUST disappear".

When someone is upset, it isn't real.

When someone is sick and suffering terribly, it isn't real.

When war is happening, it isn't real.

When someone is dying, it isn't real.

If this stuff were real, we would HAVE to be very upset! We would have an extremely hard time not being upset by this, because our mind is actually convinced that it's reality and will react to it with fear and suffering.

But imagine that these things are NOT real? This is just a dream, an illusion. You could see these things and NOT BELIEVE THEM, and LAUGH!!!!!!!!!

Too radical? Too ridiculously crazily outside the box of normal thinking? Too wild to be true?

This world is not your home.