The separation from God is otherwise described as dissociation, or as I like to spell it - dis-association.

We were associated with our soul, as God created it, in heaven's reality. We believed it was our self, our identity.

The separation from God was an act of trying to dis-identify from the soul, or to deny reality, ie no longer "associate with" spirit.

This dis-association, trying not to be what we are, produced a counter-attempt to associate WITH ... something that we are not.

As such, when all forms arose from projection, our minds attempted to associate WITH forms, of any kind. To associate with anything not of God, anything outside of heaven, anything which would keep you away from associating with your real self.

So then you attempt to associate with, bind with, identify with, be as, or become one with, anything other than what you really are.

This sort of ... holding on process, of associating with false things - the holding on itself, the identifying, the sense or belief that the thing is your self ... is what we call THE EGO.

It's a mind which had previously identified and associated with spirit, which is temporarily stretching itself to try to reject spirit and bind to something not of God, something other than what is true.

So as mind tries to believe you are something you're not, it forms a "sense of self" as though "you are" things opposite to God. And that sense of self we might call ego.

It's a misplaced artificial false sense of self, a collection of parts and pieces, a disjointed incomplete and unstable attempt to be one with a wide range of unreal stuff.

You can identify with thoughts, emotion, mind, body, the world, objects, relationships, other people, events, roles you play, victimhood, war, etc. Anything at all so long as it's not what you really are.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING."

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son."

"Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. "

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be. "

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because, when you attack, you MUST have forgotten what you are."

"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."

If you believe you are part of a dream, made of dream stuff, you can be attacked. If you recognize yourself as the dreamer of the dream, outside the dream like the container in which the dream is taking place - the mind - then you cannot be attacked.

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

The dream of death, space and time, the world of sin, is all taking place in thought. If you identify WITH this thought, you shift your sense of "who and what I am" away from "that which thinks" to "the thought itself". Away from mind to the dream.

To do this requires that you deny what you are. To deny your soul. Doing this invents perception, and doing it a lot pushes you towards false perception. Here, you believe that since you are a dream, or part of a dream, or made of dream-stuff, the dream ITSELF must be your creator.

This now begins the process of believing that you are at the effect of the world. If you are identified with or as something IN the dream, then you are now vulnerable to anything that seems to take place in the dream. And anything that happens to dream stuff, you will believe is happening to you.

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

By confusing your SELF, with dream figures, ie by believing you are a body, and by extension actually believing that you ARE THIS WORLD ("The world is perception"), you position yourself at the EFFECT of the dream, and introduce all manner of suffering into your experience.

If your identity is something OUTSIDE OF space and time, something BEYOND the body, something more encompassing than the dream world itself... if you are the MIND that is dreaming it, or even better, the soul that is using the mind to dream it, then you are FAR BEYOND the reaches of the dream itself.

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile"

"The Kingdom of God is perfectly protected. Nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against a son of God who commends his spirit into the hands of God."

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream."

Believing that you ARE a part of the dream, lands you directly onto the battlefield. The dream is the battlefield. If you are a body, and "the body is a dream", then you will believe that you are fundamentally unsafe, because the body is exposed and susceptible and attackable and limited, in the midst of a harsh and hostile world full of danger.

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering and intense fear of loss. The separated ones have invented many "cures" for what they believe to be "the ills of the world." But the one thing they do not do is to question the reality of the problem. Yet its effects cannot be cured because it is not real."

Anyone believing they are a body cannot truly feel safe. They must live in fear. To believe you ARE a body requires that you believe you ARE the dream. And to believe you ARE the dream requires you to believe you are at the EFFECT of the dream or dreamer. That you are defined by it. And that means the dream is the cause of you. And being able to cause you with an alien will is an instant threat to your peace.

It can never be, that you can say, "Look at me, I'm a man, I am fearless". And it can never be, that you can say, "Look at me, I am a fierce and powerful woman". By identifying AS a body or a gender identity, or the attributes of the flesh, or the size and shape of its form, or its abilities, you are literally positioning yourself as a target for attack. And this belief in attack is inherent to seeing yourself AS a portion of a dream, and it is your own mind that is doing the attacking because it believes in being affected.

You cannot be "an invulnerable man" or "a bullet-proof woman". But you can be an immortal spirit, a soul, a child of God, who temporarily utilizes the dream body for a higher purpose, and therefore infuses it with life and protection. But this is a miraculous supernatural act, in which a power NOT OF THIS WORLD, from outside the dream (holy spirit), is used to OVERRIDE the physical laws of the dream.

It all hinges around the simple question of identity. Who or what are you? What are you identified WITH and AS? What is your NATURE? Are you made of illusions? Are you a reality? Are you something in space and time? Are you eternal and timeless? And this really boils down to the question or, where did you GET your identity from? Where did your TRUEST NATURE come from?

The answer to that comes down to, who is your father? Or who created you? What is your source? How did you come to exist? Because in that question lies all the facts about THEIR nature, and WHAT they could do in your creation, and WHAT you INHERITED from them. And if the ego is your daddy, then you are a mortal temporary limited fictional character in a spacetime of hell. But if God is your daddy, then you are immortal and permanent and can never be affected by dreams.

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds, which are misusing their own power."

"We said before that YOU are the will of God. His will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional because it is what you are."

"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."

"In his complete identification with the Christ, the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him, Jesus became what all of you must be."

"Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us."

"The Son of God is my identity."

"Then I lose myself in my Identity, and recognize that Christ is but my Self."

"The step I take today, my Father, is my sure release from idle dreams of sin. Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity."

"You I choose, and my Identity along with You. Your Son would be Himself, and know You as his Father and Creator and his Love."

"Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. And we have already learned that this identity is shared."

"The idea for today presents a very different view of yourself. By establishing your Source it establishes your Identity, and it describes you as you must really be in truth."

"His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity."

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death."

"Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS."

"But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs of your Identity, which God alone established in reality."

"I am not an illusion but a reality."

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God."

God is the law. His nature is the law. His creation is an extension of the law. Anything created is within the law and under the law and governed by the law. It is impossible that anything God created can be unlawful or capable of breaking the law, otherwise it would break God. God's will cannot be opposed.

Part of God's law is that everything created is unlimited in its freedom. This includes even the freedom to try to use freedom to imprison oneself and others. This is an attempt to be "freely imprisoned", which is an obvious contradiction and circular logic. This is why it's not really possible.

But the mind is free to deny that it's impossible and to pretend that it can be accomplished, even if doing so is insane and makes no sense and still cannot be accomplished. We cannot actually create a body, or create planet Earth, or create space or time, but we can imagine what they might be like if it were possible. And that's all we've done.

So now we seem to live in an imaginary world which seems to be a world where all of the laws of God are violated. Where everything is opposite to God's nature. Where impossible things seem to happen all the time, such as sickness and death. Things which would be a total violation of God's nature if they were possible, but cannot be possible in reality.

Even if you attack and destroy someone or something in this dream, this imagined world, it isn't actually accomplishing anything. Nothing real can be threatened, nothing immortal can die, nothing of God can be hurt. What is being attacked? Nothing but an illusion, attacked by an illusion, with illusory effects which mean nothing at all.

God's law is that we are free forever. Even if we attempt to use that freedom to deny freedom. If we use our freedom to deny the freedom of others we attempt to imprison and destroy them, expressing the idea that they are not free to exist - a seemingly murderous thought.

We are allowed to have this thought, the freedom to be mistaken is entirely within the scope of God's law. It doesn't mean God intends that you be imprisoned or that you imprison others, and in truth you cannot actually imprison or destroy anyone. You can dream of imprisoning and destroying but it isn't actually happening.

So you are free to, in a dream world, do whatever you want, without limits, given that you are free to do whatever you want per God's law. And therefore even if you seem to be a murderous evil person you still are not breaking God's law. That might sound controversial, but the attack isn't real and it has no real effects on anything real. So you are free to imagine you can be evil, but you can't actually be evil.

In effect all you can be is either correct or mistaken. You can either accept reality or deny it. But you can never change the law, you can never break the law, and you can never actually commit a real sin. You can dream of sinning and dream of being guilty, but these are fictional guilts and make-believe sins. They're not even real sins. And believing they are real sins is part of being mistaken.

God still wills that we be free and happy and loving, but he doesn't demand it or stop us from trying to be otherwise. Thus there is no guilt and no sin, no actual attack, no violation and no real victims. There are dreams and nightmares of such things but they're not real. They're just mistakes, all rooted and founded on a lie that such things are even possible in reality. We're kidding ourselves when we think we hurt people, so there's no point in trying to.

Forgiveness isn't about you recognising that you did something and then trying to get over it. It's about recognising that you actually didn't do anything. And your brother didn't actually do anything. It's all a dream fantasy of doing things that can't really be done. A dream of mortality and murder which has no effect on anything real.

This doesn't justify doing such things, because a person who is in touch with unlimited freedom is also unconditionally loving. A person aligned with God's will only wills life and happiness. Ironically and paradoxically, granting everyone total freedom to do anything produces a state of mind in which there is only a desire to do good, as God sees it. In other words, being truly free to 'murder' actually produces a state of having no desire to do so. It's only when you deny freedom that you think you could gain something from attack.

So God's laws can't be broken, we are never breaking them, and we are never in a state of sinning. We never do anything that demands a real guilt, because there isn't even such a thing as real guilt. There's a mistakenness about being guilty which is founded on a lie, that sin is possible when it isn't. You couldn't cause yourself to be destroyed even if you tried because God wills that you live forever, along with everyone else.

So really we need to recognize we cannot break the law of God, and this is the only real law. But if you embrace the law it means having to give freedom and love to everyone, because freedom and love is the law. And anything else you try to do can be nothing but an illusion.

"The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can. But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can."

"The ego, using its own warped version of the laws of God, uses the power of the mind ONLY to defeat the mind's real purpose."

"It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power."

"This IS the law of God, and it HAS NO EXCEPTIONS"

"You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."