Let's take a moment to recognize where we are AT, rather than where we think we should be. Although it may be increasingly obvious, in theory, what the truth is, it can be tougher to actually want to experience the reality of that truth. And most of us are still somewhat bound to wanting the things of this world, the body, and our sense of identity which is bound to it.

If we get honest, and put aside the intellectual theory, and look at what we are ACTUALLY doing, where our allegiance actually is, and the ways that we really do WANT things of this world still, we can at least be honest in admitting we don't want to wake up yet. We are resisting it, are unwilling to embrace it fully, and we want something else.

My own intellectual grasp of course metaphysics has become so revealing lately, that it even is starting to "scare" the part of me that does not want to accept it. I can understand how it is true and why it makes sense, but part of me does not want it. Does not believe it. Can't let go of the "something else" that I presently am attached to.

It can be useful though, if you are not willing to accept the truth, to at least admit that you don't want to accept the truth. Even if this doesn't mean you are going to suddenly change your mind and accept it, it at least does allow some light to enter, by "admitting" your present truth. And your present truth is that, while you are earnestly seeking God, you don't really want to be with Him, otherwise you would be.

This just means that we still have some work to do. Our minds still need training. We need to become willing. But generally speaking, moving towards the truth, when you are still bound to the ego, feels like approaching an enemy. It's like going towards something you do not want, something which threatens you, something which you don't trust.

I want to do the whole waking up thing, the miracles, the happiness, the love, but the fact is that right now, where I'm at, there is still a number of ways in which I don't want it. I'm still drawn to the body and the bodies of others. I still do not see with Christ vision. I still am afraid of God. I still avoid healing others. I still have grievances and losses. I still don't entirely trust the Holy Spirit or Jesus. I still want to keep the things of the world. I still believe the world is real. I still am scared by the idea that there is no world. And I still believe I am made of, identified with, stuff of the world which the course says does not exist.

I know that it's a journey, and over time there is progress. I also know that I gradually become more and more willing, and have progressed greatly in developing trust and letting go of fear. But I also know that where I am AT, versus what I understand the truth to be, are two different things. It's actually easier to grasp the metaphysics than it is to live it. And when I feel that my experience is lagging behind my understanding, it becomes frustrating.

This of course produces more guilt, to admit that you don't entirely want to ACTUALLY go there, yet. That you want to keep people imprisoned. That you want to keep suffering. That you still react to dreams as if they are reality. That you don't want to give up certain treasures, idols, experiences, pleasures etc. It makes it seem like you are doing everything you are not supposed to be doing.

I'm just sitting with this today. Just taking a break and being ego. Just acknowledging where I'm at, rather than the pressure of where I think I should be. Jesus reminds me "you are free". You can stay right where you're at if you want to, and when you're ready, he is there to help you move forward again.

"I will help you as much as you will let me."

"It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

The world was made to die. It is hell. Bad shit happens, sooner or later. Everything breaks down, suffers, dies in the end. It's an insane world.

However.

When a whole shit ton of bad shite happens, and it keeps coming, at first it seems to attack all the defenses you made against its nature. All your safeties are called into question. All your values are turned upside down. Everything you held dear is threatened. All your expectations that the world can be a great place are shattered. All the bodies that you valued highly are threatened.

You don't realize it at the time but this is a transformation and it's leading somewhere quite useful.

Later when the dust settles, the world has left a very bad taste in your mouth. You think perhaps that you should heal from this by undoing everything that the world did to you, except that you start to notice something.

By turning to vengeance and brutality and cruelty and despair the world (ego) revealed its true nature. It shoved its deadliness in your face. It taunted you with its unfairness and harmfulness. It opened up a chasm of hell and all the voices of sin roared up in front of you. While temptation tried to lead you deeper still into its suffering dirge.

And so now, you got a really good look at the shit hole that it is. It stopped being so hidden and all its fucked-up shite just flew out in the open. And it was hell, but then you noticed.

This is how the world is. Not just "this time". Not just "because it has a grudge against you personally". It's how it ALWAYS is.

And through its destruction of your defenses against this fact, and though its deterioration of the ways this is usually hidden from view, you see the world now more squarely. It's more obvious that it simply, fundamentally, sucks ass. Because it was designed to.

And now a new awareness starts to dawn on you.

While you might've tried to escape from hell's onslaught and veer off into coping mechanisms and avoidance and denial, grasping desperately at the rose-tinted glasses in attempting to scrape together some kind of normality, all of this was brought into question.

And now instead of moving in the direction of trying to dress up the world again, to make it home again, to repair the breakdown, to create another illusion of safety in the midst of turmoil, you instead shift direction.

You notice that you've been doing this your whole life. Building up defenses against death. Believing the world can be a great place to be. Trying to assemble a home to shut out the brutality and attacks of the outside world. Forming special relationships and allegiances to defend against the enemies. All this hiding. All this defending. All this avoiding. It comes to a halt.

And now you realize it wasn't just that the world COULD be a great place, and you just weren't very good at making it one, it's actually that there's a much bigger thing going on here. The world is DESIGNED TO FAIL. Over and over again. It is HELL BENT on death and destruction. It WANTS to end and it wants to end you. This is is NATURE. But no-one told you that, and everyone taught you of its illusory virtues and hopeful outcomes and partial loveliness.

It wasn't you. It wasn't just your efforts and your denials. It's the world. It's not just something you did wrong that kept making things fail. All the times you hoped that things would be better. All the wishful thinking. It was all pointless given that the world, itself, was ALWAYS going to end in the dirt.

And now the disguise has been taken off. The world's bullshit has slapped your face rather too openly, and now you are no longer in the business of defending IT, or dressing IT up to be something pretty, or imagining that ITS nature is fundamentally good. No more trying to turn the world into heaven or expecting that it CAN be that.

There is now a willingness to recognize, to accept, this world just wants to die. And it's always dying. And everything in it dies. It's not you, it's not even personal. It's just how the world is. It's it's nature. Kill or be killed, and kill anyway. This whole planet is going to turn to dust someday, or the sun will explode and destroy it. That's a fact. This is the inevitability of the wages of sin, in a world driven by laws of death.

In a way, the world's onslaught has done you a favor. It's brought into question all your little home-making defenses and all your special values and things you liked about it. It's ripped your life apart and destroyed your idol worship. It's shown itself it be cruel, desperate, unfair, brutal, vicious and deadly. And it cares not. Because it can't do anything but make everything die.

So now you know. Your eyes have been opened. No more denial about this world being a pretty bundle of icecream and kittens. This is the recognition that the world IS hell. It's NOT your home. It's designed to make you suffer and all things in it are cruel and tempt sin and guilt.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. "

You had taught yourself that this world was your home. You taught yourself it could be heaven. You taught yourself things in it didn't have to die. You taught yourself you could avoid and resist and deny all you want, but eventually it still turns to shit, and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.

Form, flesh, appearances, bodies, animals, nature, planets, galaxies, it's all part of a system of death. Take the veil off. Lift away the lies. See through the temptation to believe otherwise. Undo the confusion, in which you thought this world was heaven. Reverse the lies, in which you thought there was truth and reality and holiness to something which is just a dream of nothingness. See the world for what it IS.

The world is just an illusion of a world, the hell you made, an opposite to life, and designed to do nothing but destroy God's son. There is no way out of it except through forgiveness. There are no roads made of its hellish substrate that lead out of it. Everything dies here. It's what it does. Spacetime makes sure of that.

Recognizing this is seeing through illusions, not being deceived and learning. While hell came to take the truth from you, all it ended up doing was exposing itself. And now that you've had a good hard look at its desperate sucky ness, you can see it's not the dressed-up doll you thought it was. And that's a good thing. You now recognize it's made to die, so you can stop trying to run away from this, or expect otherwise for its forms.

You can indeed certainly become miraculous and overthrow all this, demonstrating that all this can be changed BECAUSE its an illusion. You can show that you are under the laws of ANOTHER world. You can demonstrate this world's fundamental bullshit by reversing its bullshit. But the world is what it is. And it will end because it never really began.

Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel, or the "gift" that has come of this passage through darkness, is that you can now see, without the blinders on, what this world really is like. And seeing that sets you free, because only denial keeps you bound to the lies. And recognizing the world's nature gives you power over it. It is ONLY what it is, and nothing else. It is ONLY an illusion, not a reality. It is ONLY a dream of death, NOT real life. There is nothing in it worth having or that you want, because everything you really want and value is of God. And that lives in another world.

When I write or read ACIM stuff, after a while I'll start to feel upset. I may feel overwhelmed, or agitated, even hurt, and might feel like I want to cry. It's almost like someone just said a whole string of lies about me.

I look at what part of me feels this way and I acknowledge what it is likely feeling. It feels offended by everything the truth says. It feels threatened by it. It does not want anything to do with the stupid-ass course and does not want to wake up at all. It wants it all to go away. It wants the truth to shut the hell up. It sees it as constantly attacking it, and it won't leave it alone. It feels victimized and threatened and hurt. It is offended by everything the truth said, as if it were all a personal insult and attack. It is frightened about the notion of the truth being true, and hates the Holy Spirit.

This "part of me" does not want anything to do with ACIM, or any spiritual path, or any kind of waking up, or anything to do with God. It just wants to be the way it is. It is reluctant to have anything to do with God or making truthful statements or reading what is true and or studying. It just reacts to it all from an ego perspective.

This is something maybe not spoken about by many people but it happens with me all the time and I think it probably does with most people too.

This stuff happens because the ego's vantage point is actually totally opposite to the truth, opposite to God, opposite to reality. It interprets everything to do with God as false, wrong, bad, evil, vengeful, an attack, offensive, abusive, hurtful, to be avoided, etc. Every possible attribute of "evil" is assigned to God by the ego. Every possible way to want nothing to do with it is given him. This is simply because the ego believes that what is true is false, and what is false is true, and in this it is actually insane and confused.

Then, there is my mind, which is "doing this ego", or is identified with the concept of it. So part of MY mind or self is latched onto this perspective, caught up in it, identified with it as if it is true of my own self, as if it IS me. So part of my mind is turning my back on God and is peering back at God through highly negating opposing ego glasses, and everything it sees is backwards and upside down and inside out. But it doesn't realize this. And so as I look "through" the ego, everything true is false, and everything real is an illusion, and God is death and death is life.

We have this stuff going on in us so long as we are identified with the ego/body. A bodily identification, an ego-thought-system identification, a sense of limitedness or exclusion or specialness. That collections of vantage points seems to form "the ego self" or false self, an "area" of our mind that is temporarily flipped inside out. And so long as we're still bound to it in that way, exposure to the light will be experienced as attack by darkness. And moving closer to truth is experienced as reality falling apart. And trying to open up to love and sharing and union is interpreted as a threat to my very life.

It's tough to go through this because on the one hand the majority of me is wanting to awaken and be loving and spiritual while this ego portion wants the exact opposite. And so doing the course, reading the words, doing the lessons, writing about the topics, whatever related to it, sooner or later pushes these buttons and out comes the tears and the tantrums and the emotional breakdowns and the resistance and the procrastination and all the rest of the dysfunction.

We perhaps have to be gentle with ourselves, with the part of our self that is still confused, still bound and identified with a way of perceiving that is backwards. And some times that part of ourselves needs a break, it needs a rest from course shit, it needs to stop reading and writing and thinking about it 24/7, and it needs to just live and do some basic earthly ego things for a while, to cool off, to feel less threatened and pressured. Because that self, typically filled with childhood traumas and twisted early beliefs, is completely confused about God and truth and everything real.

It wants nothing to do with it. And actually it can become seemingly "happier" when you ease up on threatening it. Gotta throw it some bones sometimes. Relax, take a study break, go shopping, eat some fun food, whatever. Be "normal" for a while. This can actually bring you a feeling of peace, at the ego level, temporarily. Then when you are rested and ready to press forward, go exposure yourself to what the ego interprets as "its demise" all over again.

"NO evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do NOT want."

""Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do." How simple is the obvious! "

"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. "

"You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. "

Sometimes, although we don't want anyone to suffer, and God does not will anyone suffer, ... .sometimes someone going through a "thing", a hardship, a suffering, is actually consentual and beneficial to the person.

There can be a great compulsion to stop it, solve it, take it away, make it better, avoid it, etc.... we are VERY avoidant of any threat to us. But in the big picture, these "trials" as they say are actually "lessons", which we've sort of agreed to go through in order to grow spiritually.

If we are in the business of just taking away everyone's troubles all the time, we might actually be denying them a tremendous opportunity for advancement.

How do we know that, perhaps a person becoming an alcoholic and hitting rock bottom could actually lead to them becoming a powerful advocate for healthy living and helping others to escape from it?

Or that, someone going through a horrible nightmarish experience of sickness might actually lead to new perspectives and opportunities and maybe even a new future career that ends up helping a lot of people? We have to be careful not to think always in such short-term aims, and look instead to what the purpose is in the LONG TERM plan of atonement.

Very often the things you go through give you a lot of wisdom and insight and personal experience, which "equips you" in a sense with perspectives and abilities and compassion for others who might go through something similar. And then you might find yourself using that to be helpful to them down the line.

You might for example have elected to be a really great therapist or something and, in order to do so, wanted to first-hand go through some horrible abuse situation which you had to experience and work through and heal, in order to find a way out, in order to become able to help others to find a way out. And without that, you might not have been able to be useful in that way, for the higher purposes of the atonement plan.

On an earthly level we often interpret any bad thing as bad and wrong and to make it stop. We insulate ourselves from problems and sufferings. We label all unpleasant things as unwanted. We try to make an idyllic life, comfortable and controlled, to shut out the chaos.

But in the big picture of the soul we come here to learn lessons, to grow, to advance towards God. The importance of returning to God in the long term, across even lifetimes, may be so significant that we would be willing to even go through hell and back if it meant we would find a way to rise above it when pushed to our limits.

A person might actually on a higher level be willing to go through tremendously difficult lessons because, in the big picture, they know what it is leading to. The potential for major spiritual growth. An opportunity to see the other side of a situation. The purpose of finding a different way to relate to others etc.

It's not like, God is there saying, you must suffer and I want you to go have a horrible disfigurement just so that you can learn, or some kind of cruel karmic punishment scenario. But because we have chosen to go away from God and into ego, we "need" lessons to help us to return to him. And that means we have beliefs that need undoing, and attitudes that need correction.

So we then find that the atonement plan is set up to use our "faults" and our unwillingness and our biases and blind spots and so on, as "lessons", which may appear at first like horrible trials and difficult challenges, in order to try to find a "better way". To find a way to make a better choice in that scenario so that in future we don't need to go through something like that. Or rather, that we stop making those kinds of forms of suffering because we've learned that they are ultimately not in our best interests.

So in general we can't be quick to judge whether something is a good thing or not. The most horrible looking through could well be very much consensual and very much asked for. If the soul knows that there is the POTENTIAL for massive growth and learning, it may in fact be WILLING on a deep level to suffer the most horrendous difficult challenges, because it knows that the payoff may be really really worth it.

So hats off to all you people who are and have gone through horrible states of hell and nightmares and abuses and victimhood and all manner of pain and misery. Because it may well indicate not that it was just some thing that "was not meant to happen" but rather, something that you consented to and were WILLING to experience because it would potentially have tremendous spiritual benefits.

No sane person in their right mind would want to choose any such trial or difficulty, but it's because we're NOT in our right minds that we DO choose these things, and the holy spirit REPURPOSES these things, in an effort to use them productively and constructively, to help us to make the best of it, so that it isn't all for nothing and a waste of time.

This is a more FORGIVING view of suffering, because it reframes it as potentially beneficial when used for a higher purpose. Instead of focusing on the thing itself through false perception, labelling it a dark and wrong and unwanted. We can USE anything for the purpose of becoming closer to God, and that's what all these "trials" are all about.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW139L19

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you." UrT31H2

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point." UrT2B69

"In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altars unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be." UrT31H3

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success." UrT18F1

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR." UrT31D3

Probably most of us start working on a spiritual path from a state of isolation. We see everyone else as flawed or a reason to want to be more spiritual, and so we work on ourselves - separately from them - in hopes that even if they suck, we can improve. We see ourselves as separate with the potential to separately grow.

You might then pursue some spiritual practices, usually on your own, maybe in secret, and maybe only at certain times or under certain circumstances.

But then at some point, you come to realize, you literally cannot become any more spiritual in isolation without bringing the isolation itself into question. The compartmentalization of your spirituality into a little box also has to be reconsidered. And when you allow yourself to 'get spiritual' or connect with Spirit has to shift from 'only when its really needed' to 'all the time'.

So then, it occurs to you, that to move forward in your awakening, you have to open up your spirituality to be more inclusive. You can't continue to have certain pockets of the world that you don't forgive. You can't keep certain people in the dog house forever. You can't withhold forgiveness from key individuals that you especially can't get over. And what you are attempting to access through your spirituality is opening up into an inclusive, shared oneness, which means it is surpassing the boundaries you set up.

So now to go further, you have to realize, as ACIM says, that you have to see everyone as Christ in order to see it in yourself. You have to forgive everyone to forgive yourself. "What you do unto the least of my brothers you do unto me" - Jesus. What you do to one member of the sonship you do to everyone. And what you are entering into as you advance is actually a SHARED spirituality where your identity is actually ONE with other people. Equality. Christ consciousness. Sonship/one-ship.

So at some point you have to confront all of the reasons why you want to keep your spirituality in a box, in order to progress further. You can no longer withhold love and forgiveness from those special-hate candidates. You can no longer think about your awakening as something that happens to you AND NOT other people. You can no longer see yourself as being ABLE to wake up `in isolation` to the exclusion of everyone else. You are waking up TO everyone being awake.

As the course says, we all wake up together. And as Jesus says in the course, until He awoke, the entire sonship was in darkness. And when he awoke, because he was a part of the sonship, the entire sonship woke up as one. And also because Jesus is part of the sonship, this absolutely means (this came to me last night) that Jesus is 100% included in your awakening and will be a PART OF YOU and is actually going to be fully present with you as part of the sonship - he's not just some occasional drop-in that goes away and hides behind a mind-cloud.

No stone left unturned. No person left unforgiven. No grievance left undone. No fear left uncorrected. No love left unshared.

Taking TOTAL responsibility for EVERYTHING you experience is the ONLY way to find salvation! It is the meaning of forgiveness.

Throughout ACIM there is a simple theme. You are doing this to yourself. You are responsible for everything you experience. Whatever you're feeling, you chose to feel it. Nothing in the world is causing anything that you expeirence at all. And this means you have to own up to full responsibility for choosing all your suffering, in order to stop suffering. It means you have the POWER to make yourself suffer, and to stop the suffering.

This also means that it is impossible for you to be in a victim role, its impossible for the world to hurt you or attack you, no-one is EVER doing anything to you, no one is EVER responsible for causing you to feel anything at all, nothing happens without your consent, you can't even die without your own consent, your own thoughts are the only thing that can attack you, and if you would stop hurting yourself you would never be hurt.

This simple fact of your TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY for everything you experience, is the central truth that all forgiveness is based on. It is really owning up to the fact that YOU ARE IMMORTAL. And because you are immortal and eternal, you never change, you cannot change yourself, and nothing can change you. Any seeming changes you experience YOU must have decided to pretend to have, and nothing OTHER than your own mind can cause these to appear.

If you were to say, there are no other people in the world, you are the only person left in existence, and absolutely nothing happens except what YOU decide, you'd be close to the truth. This is not to say people don't exist, but this is the kind of mindset you need. You can't blame anyone for anything. You are THE CAUSE OF EVERYTHING. And this is described as the Holy Spirit's ONE all-inclusive lesson, which would eradicate ALL forms of suffering.

If you want to know about what forgiveness means, here it is. Forgiveness is simply the total ownership of the power of God, in which you are purely causal, and in which you recognize your immortality and that of everyone. Since we are all immortal, no-one can sin or attack or hurt anyone including themselves. And this means that no-one can be blamed, no one is a victimiser or a victim, and nothing is happening to anyone. In this view, there is no sin, and everyone is innocent and forgiven. It is the recognition that there is nothing TO forgive because nothing real can be changed, and therefore you need do nothing.

It's as simple as the fact that, if you are suffering in ANY way, you ARE the one who is choosing to suffer in this way. As an immortal being, NOTHING can happen to you or change you in any way. Which means no-one can be responsible for ANYTHING you experience, and nothing in the world does anything to you at all. It therefore means that if you seem to be experiencing any kind of suffering, YOU must have chosen it and put it in place yourself. And because you have that power, you can also undo it.

This includes all states of unhappiness, all sense of fear and threat, all sicknesses and pain, all bodily conditions, cancer and disease and death, all forms of attack, all grief and loss, all despair and depression, every kind of victimhood, all roles, all states of stress and upset, every offence, every hurt, YOU MUST have put it in place yourself.

Sometimes it is very hard to RECOGNIZE that this is true, and indeed this is all about recognition. Because without recognition you will not see that you are the cause - that the cause is in your mind. And then you will seek somewhere else, outside of you, in someone else, for the cause of your suffering, to explain how it got there, having disowned responsibility.

Without recognizing what you are doing to yourself, you will just keep doing it to yourself. And this lack of recognition will turn into projection and blame and victimhood and more suffering. If you do not take total responsibility, you will require someone or something else to be responsible. And then you will want someone or something else to change in order for you to be better off, which is the ego's "forgiveness to destroy." You would seek to destroy another in order to make yourself feel better.

This is also why anger is never justified because it's always a reaction to a faulty perception that someone ELSE is responsible, someone ELSE is having the guilt, someone ELSE has the power of causation and has caused you against your will. This is a disowning of YOUR power and making yourself a victim of your own power. Through projection your mind splits and dissociates from your power and puts it outside of you, and then subjects yourself to it, and now you are affecting yourself and at war with yourself, but you will believe that someone else is doing it. This all hides the fact that YOU are responsible for it.

All effects you experience, you put there. All forms of sickness, you chose on purpose. All suffering, you wanted. All guilt you intentionally chose. All fear you subjected yourself to by threatening yourself. All shame you piled upon yourself. All sense of unworthiness you deliberately tried to convince yourself of to keep God and thus power and responsibility away from you. All unhappiness and loss and despair you wanted on purpose to justify why you were powerless and not responsible.

The ego exclaims, someone else did this, not me! I'm not the guilty one, they are! Look at what's wrong with them, look at their sins and errors, I can't be the one at fault, this isn't my doing, I am not the criminal here, other people are accusing me falsely, other people are blaming me, they are all doing it to me, they're out to get me, they're so evil and wrong and guilty, how can they think they are better than me when they are just as bad if not worse, it's not me at all, poor me I am suffering as a victim because of other people and the world, they are all responsible for my happiness, they are all choosing wrongly and choosing unhappiness for me, why won't they just love me and worship me and make me happy against my will?!

That is unforgiveness because it is powerlessness and irresponsible. There is no ownership of CAUSATION in that view. It is false perception. Only by OWNING CAUSE and BEING THE CAUSE can you be free from suffering, reclaim your immortality and eternal life, enter a state of forgiveness, re-identify as the pure Christ being that God created you to be, recognize there is no sin, reclaim innocence, and therefore find SALVATION from suffering and death forever.

YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR POWER BACK!!!!!!!!! OWN UP TO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!! LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!!! CHOOSE AGAIN!!!!!!!

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. -- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"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."

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one."

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it."

"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."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do. -- My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: --- I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. --- Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."

Trying to wake up from the ego while still having the ego is PAINFUL. We have identified ourselves AS the very ego that we're apparently trying to undo. And even as we take some small steps to undo it, we still retain much of it, and that means all the things we did 'to' it (as it perceives it), we will experience as being done to ourselves. That means we will take all of our attempts to wake up as slaps in the face, like being punched by the truth and attacked by the Holy Spirit.

I remember early on when working with the course especially, the feeling that the Course completely 'ignored' the existence of my ego self, and it sure as hell took that as a kind of huge slap in the face, like being ignored and unacknowledged. That produced suffering.

I also know that early on my understanding of course concepts was too ... unrefined, and full of holes, and too broad, so when I would apply some concepts I would grossly overshoot the mark and come to all kinds of conclusions which was not in alignment with the course. Those false conclusions and implications produced suffering. In particular I remember feeling like we had to 'give up' all of the things we have previously become interested in, like new-age stuff, a love of crystals, healing, various books etc, because - you know, if the world is not real then doesn't that mean we're not supposed to do any of this stuff? And so there was a lot of needless sacrifice, because we did not understand accurately enough.

It's kind of like we are attached to (identified with) this big lump of darkness and we're trying to rid ourselves of it, but at the same time, because we are doing basically both things at once - keeping it and tryin to remove it - we can't help but be in CONFLICT. Some people refer to it as "having feet in two canoes". One canoe seems to pull us one way, the other pulls us another. We want to wake up, but we sure as fuck don't. We want more truth, but we sure as fuck don't. We want to keep doing the Course, but we sure as fuck wish we would just stop the fucking thing. It's always like two steps forward, one step back, and we kind of can't help it.

If we could fully step out of the ego and stay out of it, we wouldn't have this problem. But the problem is we are very attached to it and still believe a lot of what it says. Push me, pull you. We yearn for truth in one direction, then the 'rest of us' pulls us in the other direction.

The ego interprets the truth as an attack. The ego sees the Holy Spirit as an enemy. It absolutely does not want to wake up, and the part of us aligned with it does not want to either. I mean, that's just honestly the case with most of us. We want it, but we don't. And every time we are exposed to some truth, part of us is like - oooo, ahhhh, I love this, I feel so light and happy, and then the other part of us which is holding on to ego is like. .. What the fuck are you doing man, that's totally bullshit, it's offensive, it's hurtful, there is no way you can accept that, you should get away from it.

This is the entire foundation for the 'ego rebound'. It is not just a simple backlash or retaliation. It is the parts of YOU that do not yet want to let go of the ego, even though there seem to be parts of you that do. It's the part of you that still believes you are a body. It's the part of you that truly believes that the ego is telling the truth and is your friend and savior. People DEFEND who they believe is their true savior with great vigor. The viciousness of the ego is entirely justified given how much it believes God is NOT the truth.

So as we take these steps toward awakening, we will continually experience that it is NOT what we want, and that exposing ourselves to light is literally killing us. And everything in us that believes the truth is NOT true, and that God is evil, and that Holy Spirit will destroy us (which can be a huge thing), will kick and scream and resist and run away and try to hide. It does this by RESISTING THE TRUTH. It is a resistance against awakening, but the ego sees it as a resistance against annihilation. To it, it is just self-preservation. It sees its motive as PROTECTION. It thinks it is completely justified and that stupid Holy Spirit should shut the hell up.

This resistance produces defenses, and its main defense is to try to make you even less awake by forcing extra unconsciousness onto you. It wants to dumb you down and numb you to the truth and pull you back into hell. It figures you are SAFER there. So the ego literally applies a kind of 'arrest' on the mind, a restraint, a contraction, a limitation, a blockage, as if you are literally trying to 'get away from' the truth and to withdraw from it into the body. These 'defenses' are what WE call 'sickness'. They are barricades against the truth. We think we NEED them because they are protecting us. We are just scared and confused and think that they serve us and that if we didn't have them, we'd be in danger. So there is no need to think of yourself as guilty for having sickness, it just means that you are confused about what the truth is and you currently are perceiving it as something you don't want. You could ONLY experience it as something you don't want if you are mistaken - ie still believing the ego's interpretation.

As the course says (quoted in earlier post) all sickness is the result of resisting awakening. We want to wake up, but we don't. And if we push ourselves to try to be awake too fast, i.e. before we are truly ready and willing (i.e. we can see clearly enough), we will dig in our heels and try to stop it from happening. That just means we need to take a break and go slower. It's ok to do so.

But the fact remains, trying to wake up is a minefield. We do not understand what it means, we resist it naturally, we think we need protection from it, we attack ourselves to defend ourselves from it, and we come to all kinds of misunderstandings which inflict pain and suffering in our lives. Waking up is therefore not exactly EASY, because we keep ping-ponging all over the place trying to settle on what the truth really is. It's a struggle. It's upsetting. It's painful. And we are bound to make a LOT of mistakes. But we will get there eventually.

The world out there, or in which your body-self is located, is a dream. It does not exist. You are dreaming it. It is no different to dreams at night. It is entire symbolic and filled with symbols. To awaken must mean the dream comes to an end. This means the world must disappear completely.

"Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (--the physical world is just a dream you're having)

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams." (--see, you're dreaming the entire world)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (--there is no love inside the dream of death, even if you see it with love - love is incompatible with dreams and would end them)

"They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams." (--recognizing the world is a dream is the key to awakening from it)

"Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see." (--dreams disappear when you awaken to the light of truth. In truth dreams do not exist and do not happen. They are unreal. There is no world.)

"To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams." (--can you have the peace of God and be inside the dream? No. This means you are still dreaming and are not at peace.)

"Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes." (--the split mind has multiple wills conflicting with each other - persona and shadow, and must be chaotic. There is no perfect dream or perfect world)

"The miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence." (--miracles are applied to the dream world to undo it!)

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." (--dreams can become happIER, but when the happiest possible dream is perceived, its usefulness is done and it will disappear and dreaming will end)

"Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world." (--the world is a sorry place, a dream of death. Beyond it is God's reality, which is not of this world and demonstrates this world does not exist)

"A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release." (--all dreams (the world, the body) are dreams of weakness - the world is attempted suicide)

"Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams gone. Let truth correct them all." (--you cannot die, it's just a dream of death.)

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you." (--enough said - we are to stop dreaming entirely and help others to do the same)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate." (--the world is a place of sleep, unconsciousness, and unawareness. Its condition or state cannot continue if the state of awareness increases and there is awakening. The dream must end. The world is over. ONLY heaven is real.)

The ego is NOT the idea of being an individual self. It is in fact the idea of DENYING your self, attacking your self, destroying yourself, and trying to kill your self.

The ego is the very idea of imprisoning your free will, trying to make you unwilling to be free, and stripping away your freedoms as an individual.

The ego is also the ILLUSION of having independence, which is made from pictures of isolation, imprisonment, limitation and restriction, all limits placed on your actual self.

When you wake up, you do NOT wake up to the end of individuality. You wake up TO your individuality. If being in the ego means you are NOT BEING YOURSELF, then waking up means you return to being yourself.

You have free will in God and you are an individual BEING. Here is what ACIM actually explicitly says:

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

That's what it ACTUALLY says. So that means that we actually ARE individual beings who have everything, which automatically implies that we must have free will.

Therefore, waking up means that you RETURN TO the freedom of your will, you lift away the imprisonment you've placed on yourself, you REGAIN your freedom to be individually free, you accept atonement for YOURSELF (not for others), you become part of the atonement plan and then you help others to heal and wake up.

This entire doctrine of thinking of the ego as "an individual" is actually FAILING to overlook THE ILLUSION that the ego is presenting. The ego has been quite clever to make it look as though its "separateness" IS independence. It is not. It is imprisonment. It's the exact opposite of what it looks like.

And since people think that the ego is "a self", they then conclude that undoing that self means kind of the disappearing of that self, or like the very core of your being is ripped out and doesn't exist any more. This is absolutely the OPPOSITE of what happens.

As you wake up, you become MORE OF YOURSELF, you INCREASE your freedom, you gain access to YOUR INDEPENDENCE, you return to being a CO-CREATOR (many many quotes that prove this), and you become a SELF again. An individual in heaven. You are a co-creator with God, with your own free will and individuality.

The entire FALSE INTERPRETATION of the course has led many people to think that you do not exist and have no soul and are not individual and have no free will. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE COURSE SAYS AT ALL. If you go and read it yourself and especially in the earlier versions, you will find out that this interpretation IS A LIE, and has been spread around like wildfire by well-meaning but MISTAKEN teachers.

Being individual does not make you an ego. Having free will does not make you an ego. Being a co-creator does not cause separation or isolation. You are not "just" the one son, you are one of many sons. This IS the teaching of A Course in Miracles, not the fabricated FICTION that has been spread over the top of it to cover up your individuality.

You have a permanent self which God created, it is free, it has its own mind, it can choose, and it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.